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the U.S. arsenal designed specifically for close air support of troops on the ground: the A-10 “Warthog.” Two A-10 pilots had spent many minutes circling low over the farm, scanning it at close range with the naked eye and through binoculars, then warning repeatedly that it was a bad target and refusing to strike as ordered. Their warnings were ignored by the ground controllers, who handed the mission over to the willing B-1. As a result seven people, including a ten-month-old baby, died.
With the exception of drone assassination strikes, close air support is the main function of airpower these days. Since targets tend to be close to friendly troops, commanders require precise information about the location and identity of targets. So one might assume the U.S. Air Force would cherish a plane that is uniquely and specifically designed to perform this mission. Such is not the case. Service chiefs appear determined to junk the A-10, which can operate close to the ground because of its armored cockpit; the location of its fuel tanks, which are well away from its engine; and other features that allow the pilot to brave enemy fire at altitudes that would prove fatal to thin-skinned fighters such as the F-16 — let alone a lumbering bomber like the B-1. In addition, the A-10 can fly slowly while maneuvering nimbly. Unsurprisingly, American soldiers and Marines, who are often themselves the victims of inaccurately targeted bombs, cherish the Warthog as a close friend in combat.
In theory, technology has taken care of the problem, with high-definition video screens for targeting, and bombs and missiles that are precisely targeted by GPS or lasers. In practice, things are not so tidy. “People just don’t realize,” one weapons designer commented to me, “that high-definition video isn’t good enough to show the subtle stuff you’ve got to see to keep from hitting your own guys or killing civilians.” He compared the task to watching a Super Bowl broadcast and attempting to determine whether a spectator was leaning on an AK-47 or a cane. The vaunted capability of drones to give operators thousands of miles away a low-flying-bird’s-eye view of the enemy gets unfavorable reviews from pilots. “If you want to know what the world looks like from a drone (video) feed,” an Air Force officer with extensive drone experience told me, “walk around for a day with one eye closed and the other looking through a soda straw.”
The consequences are frequently bloody. In a particularly deadly attack in May 2009, bombs from a B-1 killed at least 140 men, women, and children in Farah Province because the pilot, according to the Pentagon’s own explanation, “had to break away from positive identification of its targets” — i.e., he couldn’t see what he was bombing. Other mass-civilian-casualty incidents during the Afghan war, such as those in Kunduz (2009, ninety-one dead), Herat (2008, ninety-two dead), and Kunar (2013, ten children), can be traced to the same fatal dependence on video-screen images and inaccurate second-hand information from the ground.
As I explain in my Harper’s feature, the Air Force’s decision to junk the A-10 while retaining the B-1 and the even more unwieldy B-52 bombers for close air support may seem inexplicable, but it is in reality quite logical. The service owes its independence from the army to its success in marketing the notion that bombing an enemy heartland far from the battlefield can win wars. The principle of close air support for ground troops negates this core ideology. That is why the Air Force is junking the A-10. It claims it will save $3.5 billion over the next five years by removing the planes from service, but it is simultaneously planning to start a new long-range-bomber program that will cost at least $81 billion, and almost certainly many times that amount.During the presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to “negotiate” a solution to the student loan debt crisis. “This debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives,” Trump said. “It’s not fair and we are going to fix it!”
Trump is right. Student loan debt is thwarting the creation of young families. It is delaying marriages and putting off the raising of children. It means that first homes and new cars are purchased much later, if at all.
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The family is the key to American life, the American middle class, and the American economic engine. Trump’s choice of metaphors is an apt one; like the albatross in Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” student loans are the burden that becomes a curse when hanging around the necks of millions of young Americans.
It would be wise for the new White House and Congress to move quickly to convert Trump’s enthusiasm for providing student loan debt relief into policies that will ease the pressure of rising tuition costs for future students. But the help shouldn’t stop there. Even before they address student loan costs for future generations, 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 and members of Congress can provide relief to today’s millennials, their families and older student loan borrowers by enacting legislation to restore bankruptcy protection.
My colleagues and I in the world of bankruptcy law witness the plight of student loan borrowers in trouble every day. We witness firsthand the cumulative effect of the fees, interest and penalties that push loan balances to several times the original amount.
Unlike virtually every other debt, student loans — both government and private — are generally not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Financially distressed borrowers face a lifetime of debt with little or no chance for escape, no matter how dire their economic situation.
How big is the problem?
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s 2016 Q4 “Report on Household Debt and Credit,” outstanding student loan balances stood at roughly $1.3 trillion as of December 2016, growing by $31 billion in the 4th quarter of last year. In 2016, 11 percent of aggregate student loan debt was 90 or more days delinquent or in default.
We know that unmanageable student loan debt can have devastating financial consequences for people of all ages, often placing ruinous burdens on borrowers in cities, suburbs and rural communities, and preventing middle class and poor Americans from using their education to build better lives for themselves and their families.
In fact, student loan debt is so crippling for millennials that young families often cannot get off the ground. Student loan debts dramatically deter new graduates from using the fruits of their education to start new and innovative businesses. The prospect of becoming a parent and taking on financial responsibility of a home mortgage (and, even more daunting, another human being!) is often so unimaginable that marriage is put off.
Bankruptcy attorneys see all of this every day, yet we also know what the solution is. The truth is that there currently is no real way out for Americans saddled with student loan debt when there is little realistic chance that debt can be repaid. For most other consumer debts, the bankruptcy system affords that remedy. But, that is not the case when it comes to student loans, where borrowers must overcome substantial hurdles if they need bankruptcy protection.
The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) flagged the troubling parallels between the rise of student loan debt and the mortgage crisis half a decade ago in 2012. Over the last few years NACBA has reported on the growing numbers of Americans who are now seeking help with unmanageable student loan debt.
Of course, it is true that not all student loan borrowers will need bankruptcy protection, and that a small number of other programs, including refinancing to lower interest rates and repayment plans based on the income of the borrower, are available to some borrowers under certain circumstances. But for every borrower granted assistance through a program, there are scores or even hundreds of others left with unmanageable or unrealistic payoff plans with no alternative.
To be sure, the student loan debt crisis is a multi-faceted problem and will require a number of tailored approaches to address it. Restoring the bankruptcy discharge for student loans is an important piece of the puzzle – a targeted solution that would provide immediate relief to the most distressed student loan borrowers.
Congress must act now to defuse the student loan debt bomb. The good news is that S. 729, The Fairness for Struggling Students Act, introduced in the last Congress by Senator Durbin (D-Ill.) and co-sponsored by several of his colleagues, would restore bankruptcy protection for private student loans. Also, H.R. 449, The Discharge Student Loans in Bankruptcy Act, introduced last year by Congressman John Delaney (D-MD), would restore bankruptcy protections for both private and federal student loans.
President Trump has taken the important first step of highlighting the student loan debt crisis, and making a sweeping policy proposal to cap student loan repayment plans at 12.5 percent of income. Now, it’s time for Congress to respond.
Doing so will be a real shot in the arm for the economy, and it will help ease the way for millions of young people to move ahead with their dreams of marriage, family, a first home, children, and all the rest of the American Dream.
Jim Haller is the president of National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.
The views of contributors are their own, not the views of The Hill.In 24 hours, Australia could save one million square kms of ocean forever -- setting up the largest marine reserve in the world and preserving thousands of delicate species. But they will need a global outcry to beat out commercial fishing and mining companies hoping to destroy the plan.
The Australian government is holding a public consultation, hoping it will give them a mandate to take a big step towards a sustainable future for our oceans and our planet. But the reserve will cost money and without massive support right now, the short term financial interests of industry could beat out our hopes for a safe future for our seas.
The consultation closes Friday in Australia -- send a submission to the consultation now, then send this page to everyone!Think only humans can build on the knowledge of previous generations? Meet these pigeons
By standing on the shoulders of giants, humans have built the sophisticated high-tech world we live in today. Tapping into the knowledge of previous generations—and those around us—was long thought to be a “humans-only” trait. But homing pigeons can also build collective knowledge banks, behavioral biologists have discovered, at least when it comes to finding their way back to the roost. Like humans, the birds work together and pass on information that lets them get better and better at solving problems.
“It is a really exciting development in this field,” says Christine Caldwell, a psychologist at the University of Stirling in the United Kingdom who was not involved with the work.
Researchers have admired pigeon intelligence for decades. Previous work has shown the birds are capable of everything from symbolic communication to rudimentary math. They also use a wide range of cues to find their way home, including smell, sight, sound, and magnetism. On its own, a pigeon released multiple times from the same place will even modify its navigation over time for a more optimal route home. The birds also learn specific routes from one another. Because flocks of pigeons tend to take more direct flights home than individuals, scientists have long thought some sort of “collective intelligence” is at work.
But can pigeons improve this homing ability over generations, building on the knowledge of birds that have come before? The phenomenon, known as cumulative cultural evolution, was considered “arguably unique to humans,” says Dora Biro, a behavioral biologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
To find out if birds share this ability, Biro and Oxford biologist Takao Sasaki strapped GPS devices on homing pigeons and divided them into three groups: birds homing by themselves, birds flying with the same partner, and birds that switched up their partner every half dozen flights or so.
He and Biro based their design on the famous “spaghetti tower” test. In that experiment, one person was asked to build a tower as high as possible using raw spaghetti and clay while an observer looked on. Then, the builder left and the observer was asked to build a tower in front of a new observer. Researchers found that 10 “generations” of observers each built towers similar to the ones before them, but taller, demonstrating the basic idea of standing on the shoulders of giants.
Instead of building towers, the pigeons simply had to fly home, an instinctive behavior. Birds in all three groups improved in the first few flights home, but after that, only the group in which the most experienced bird was periodically switched out continued to get closer to the perfect route, the researchers report today in Nature Communications. The new bird in the pair was the equivalent of the observer in the spaghetti tower experiment and represented the “next generation” that learned from and built upon the experienced bird’s knowledge.
“I think the paper convincingly shows that animal groups can show both collective intelligence and cumulative culture,” says Harvard University animal behaviorist Albert Kao, who was not affiliated with the study. A naïve bird does not develop a completely new route, but instead changes an existing route that it acquires from a bird in the previous generation—and that’s a hallmark of cumulative culture, Biro adds.
Still, not everyone is convinced. “I like the paper. It is carefully—even beautifully—done, but I think this question of whether animals can and do have cumulative culture is still open,” says Claudio Tennie, a comparative psychologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved with the work. He argues that the pigeons are not really learning a new behavior, and thus the birds demonstrate just a subtype of cumulative culture.
Maxime Derex, an evolutionary anthropologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, agrees. Cumulative culture is more complex in humans, he says. We’ve gone from the spoken to the written word and now to ever more sophisticated electronics to communicate, he notes, whereas all the birds show is that they can improve their route home.
Biro and Sasaki accept this difference between pigeons and humans. “But our study demonstrates that nonhuman animals can accumulate knowledge and improve performance over generations, satisfying the criteria for cumulative cultural evolution,” Sasaki says. “Thus, our results suggest that [this ability] may not require sophisticated cognition as previously thought.”If you collect the first cabbage white butterfly of 2014 in the three-county area of Yolo, Solano or Sacramento, you’ll collect a pitcher of beer or its cash-prize equivalent from Professor Shapiro of the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology.
It’s all part of Shapiro’s 43-year study of climate and butterfly seasonality. He launched the annual contest in 1972 to draw attention to Pieris rapae and its first flight.
“It is typically one of the first butterflies to emerge in late winter,” he says. “Since 1972, the first flight has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20.” Shapiro, who usually wins his own contest, snagged the first cabbage white butterflies of 2013 on Jan. 20 and 21.
For more on the story, see the Vacaville Reporter at http://www.thereporter.com/news/ci_24838430THE long-awaited closure of Australia’s immigration centre on Manus Island is set to start within weeks.
Papua New Guinea immigration officials on Monday reportedly told refugees that an area of the Manus camp would close next Sunday, with the rest of the compound to be shut on June 30.
An unspecified number of asylum-seekers will be relocated to a transit centre, according to Reuters.
Detainees awaiting acceptance for resettlement by the United States have been told that some of them will be held at the East Lorengau camp, near the island’s major town.
AAP is seeking comment from the Department of Immigration.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has said refugees who aren’t taken under the US resettlement deal will settle in PNG, while non-refugees will be sent back to their home country.
The Australia-US refugee deal stoked tensions between the two countries with incoming US president Donald Trump calling it “dumb” and leading to a tense phone call between him and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
In a recent Time magazine interview Mr Trump denied his reaction to the deal had soured relations between the countries, claiming “we have a very good relationship with Australia and him (Mr Turnbull)”.
Although he repeated his criticism of the deal, calling it “ridiculous”.
The Manus Island complex was slated for closure on October 31, after PNG’s Supreme Court ruled it illegal in 2016.
Human rights groups and the United Nations have criticised the camps for cramped conditions, inadequate medical facilities, and violence, with activists renewing calls for the centre to be immediately shut down in recent months. News of the planned closure came after Amnesty International released its report into the Good Friday shooting at the centre.
The human rights group said verified footage and images confirmed bullets were fired directly into the camps during the rampage, contradicting initial claims made by Australian immigration officials and Papua New Guinea police suggesting soldiers only fired bullets into the air.
Mr Dutton has repeatedly stated PNG soldiers opened fire on the centre because they were concerned about the welfare of a young boy who was allegedly led into the compound.Posted May 20th at 8:00pm.
When Legends Become Ultimate With the start of MUTSeason, Madden Ultimate Team becomes a whole new ball game! Playmakers Become Legendary and Legends BECOME ULTIMATE! Follow @EASPORTS_MUT for LIVE TIME TOMORROW!
There are a few different Ultimate Legends and a couple different ways to earn them. There is also a new Ultimate Legends Badge that will be needed for the Ultimate Legends Sets. Find the Rookie, Power, and Speed versions of each Ultimate Legend player as well as a Team and Top Year Collectible in packs. Combine them all and complete the solo challenge to earn their 99 overall Ultimate Legend player item....But an even MORE over-powered BOSS version roams packs for 48 HOURS ONLY!
Derrick Brooks, LOLB - Buccaneers Selected to the Hall of Fame in 2014, linebacker Derrick Brooks was drafted 28th overall by the Buccaneers in the 1995 NFL Draft. He spent his entire 14-year career with the Bucs, recording 11 Pro Bowl selections, 9-time All-Pro, and won a championship ring in Super Bowl XXXVII.
In 2002, Brooks was selected as the winner of the AP Defensive Player of the Year award. He finished the season with 87 solo tackles, 30 assisted tackles, one sack, one forced fumble, one fumble recovery, 11 passes defensed, and 5 interceptions -- 3 of which he returned for touchdowns.
Emmitt Smith, HB - Cowboys Out of the University of Florida, Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith was drafted 17th overall in the 1990 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys. He went on to finish his first season with 937 rush yards and 11 touchdowns and won the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year Award. He's since been selected to 8 Pro Bowls, 4 First-team All-Pro teams, was the NFL leading rusher 4 times, Super Bowl MVP (XXVIII) and won three Super Bowls with the Cowboys.
Smith is the only running back to ever win a Super Bowl championship, the NFL Most Valuable Player award, the NFL rushing crown, and the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award all in the same season. In the 1995-96 season, he helped lead the Cowboys to their fifth Super Bowl after leading the league in rush yards for the fourth time in 5 years, and in 2002 beat Walter Payton's career rush yards record with 18,35... a record he still holds today.LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bernie Sanders predicted Monday that the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia could be “messy” as he pushed the party to adopt his progressive agenda, but added, “Democracy is not always nice and quiet and gentle.”
The Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press that his supporters hoped to see a platform at the July convention that reflects the needs of working families, the poor and young people as opposed to one that represents Wall Street and corporate America.
The Vermont senator said he will “condemn any and all forms of violence” but his campaign was bringing in newcomers to the process and first-time attendees of political conventions. He said the Democratic Party could choose to be more inclusive.
“I think if they make the right choice and open the doors to working-class people and young people and create the kind of dynamism that the Democratic Party needs, it’s going to be messy,” Sanders said. “Democracy is not always nice and quiet and gentle but that is where the Democratic Party should go.”
Asked if the convention could be messy, Sanders said: “So what? Democracy is messy. Everyday my life is messy. But if you want everything to be quiet and orderly and allow, you know, just things to proceed without vigorous debate, that is not what democracy is about.”
Sanders is vying for support ahead of California’s June 7 primary, a day that also includes contests in New Jersey and four other states. Rival Hillary Clinton has 271 more pledged delegates than Sanders and is just 90 delegates shy of clinching the nomination when the total includes superdelegates, the party officials and elected leaders who can support the candidate of their choice.
Sanders said he had a “shot” at winning the June 7 California primary against Hillary Clinton and said, given his delegate deficit, it was “imperative” that he perform well.
“What happens if I win a major victory in California? Will people say, ‘Oh, we’re really enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton despite the fact that Bernie Sanders has now won whatever it may be, 25 states, half the states?'” he said.
If that happens, he added, superdelegates “may rethink that. That is why you want the process to play out.”
The senator spoke after the Democratic National Committee announced a 15-member platform drafting committee, which write the first draft of the party platform and will include allies of both candidates.
Sanders said the drafting of the platform would be an “excellent time to educate the American people. There are two sides to every issue and I’m sure that Secretary Clinton will have very vigorous proponents of her point of view, as we will have.”
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Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KThomasDCBoxing Day is an interesting holiday, widely observed across what was once the British Empire. Generally held on December 26th, it is a day when the wealthy would traditionally give gifts to their employees or to people of lower social classes. More interestingly, the wealthy would often trade places with their household servants for a day.
What better way to observe this holiday than to trade places with the boss of all bosses? Let’s take a little time to just imagine trading places with God.
We’ll use the most common Christian view of God as omniscient (knowing everything), omnipotent (being able to do anything), and omnipresent (being everywhere at the same time).
The Great Fruit Debacle
In the beginning You create the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1). You go on to create everything according to the primitive conception of the world that the authors of Genesis held, and then you create it a second time in Genesis 2. In Genesis 2, you perform your first and possibly most evil act.
Like babies off a cliff This story is like setting your two little babies near the edge of a cliff, telling them “don’t crawl off or you’ll die”, and then leaving them alone. After saying this you just watch, silent and out of sight, while one of your older and more knowledgeable children goads them into crawling off the edge of the cliff one at a time and falling to their deaths. This would be an easy task since the babies couldn’t possibly understand the meaning of your words. Once they’ve both fallen, then you go down to see their shattered bodies on the rocks beneath and you say “You stupid babies, I told you this would happen! Now that you finally understand what I already knew, I won’t let you live even though I could save you. In fact, I will make you suffer before I let you die. Better yet, I’ll make every living thing in the world suffer and die, and I’ll blame it all on you. Now go away.”
You create Adam, you create the Garden of Eden, and then you create “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. You stick the tree right in the middle of the garden, and then you tell naive Adam (who can not yet know the meaning of good and evil) not to eat from that one tree or he will die.
Ignoring the fact that Adam could not have comprehended death in this deathless world, and the fact that he could not have understood the “evil” of disobeying your command, what possible reason could you have for putting this tree in the garden!? It could have gone outside of the garden, and it would never be a problem, or it could simply not exist, but you chose to put it there.
The only reasonable explanation for this is that you knew exactly what would happen, you intended Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, and you are as guilty of instigating this mess as a police officer entrapping a mentally challenged child. You knew what would happen, and you set up the circumstances to allow it to happen, and you never stepped in to prevent this outcome when the serpent tempted Eve.
Being omniscient and omnipresent you must have seen it, and being omnipotent you could have stopped it or at least reminded them not to eat the fruit, but you just sat there and watched them destroy the world with a bite of fruit.
You didn’t stop Eve when she put the fruit to her lips, and you didn’t stop Adam when she offered it to him. You didn’t forgive them or repair the damage, you became afraid of them and you set us all on the endless trail of horrible suffering and death that still plagues the world to this day, just because you were angry and afraid.
Not only did you punish the entire world forever for the mistakes of Adam and Eve, you set the whole thing up knowing exactly what would happen. If anyone is responsible for “the fall of man”, it is you.
Mmmm…Burning Flesh
Once you’ve kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden, Eve starts having babies and suffering through the painful childbirth you inflicted on her and all of her descendants (Genesis 4:1-2, 3:16). She has Cain and she has Abel.
The first thing worth mentioning that happens in their lives is that they each bring an offering to you.
Cain is a farmer, so he brings “the fruit of the ground”. Abel is a rancher and he brings you the fat little firstborn baby animals from his flocks.
Cain brings the products of his farm to you, probably burning them for you as is the later custom, but you are not impressed. You don’t seem to have told people yet that you prefer sacrifices that bleed, cry, fear and feel pain.
Abel soon finds this out though when he brings the innocent little baby animals and kills them and burns them all just for you. There’s no reason for him to slit the throat of that cute little lamb, there’s no need to bash in the head of the calf he’s just dragged away from its mother, no reason that is other than your desire for all kinds of animals to be killed and burned for you, apparently just because you like the smell (Genesis 8:21, Exodus 29:18, 25, 41, Leviticus 1:9, 13, 17, Numbers 28-29, etc.).
So you let them know you don’t like Cain’s sacrifice, but you sure are happy with Abel’s! After all there is nothing you love more than the smell of the burning flesh of animals needlessly killed just for you. It’s so great in fact that you spend more verses in the Bible talking about how burning flesh is “an aroma pleasing to the Lord” than you do about the creation of the entire world!
Cain just can’t understand this. He’s angry and confused because Abel’s offering made you happy and his didn’t. So what do you do? Do you clearly explain to him what you want and that you still love him and you’ll be happy when he comes back and kills and burns helpless baby animals for you? No, you say something cryptic about how he would be accepted if he did well and then you leave.
You don’t calm Cain down so he won’t do anything crazy, you don’t save Abel from being murdered by his brother, you just set up the conflict and watch it unfold. There seems to be a pattern here: You cause trouble, you watch it play out, and you punish whoever’s left standing.
So Cain goes out into the fields with his brother and talks to him, and then we’re not sure what happens. Maybe Cain is still just mad and already planned to kill his brother, or maybe Abel laughed at him because God didn’t like his sacrifice? Whatever the reason, Cain kills Abel.
Of course you show up at this point, late again, but being omniscient and omnipresent, you were hanging around and watching the whole thing anyway. So you get mad at Cain and you kick him out of the place that you kicked Adam and Eve out to, and Cain (the only living person yet mentioned in the Bible after Adam and Eve) runs off to live in Nod.
Apparently Adam and Eve had enough female children to go out and build the city of Nod, but you must have thought they were not worth mentioning in your Bible, probably because they were female and you view women more as chattel, the possessions of their fathers or husbands, than as valuable individuals (Genesis 19:1-8, Exodus 20:17, 21:4, 7-11, Numbers 5:11-31, 30:1-16, 31:17-18, Deuteronomy 20:14, 22:13-21, 22:28-29, Ephesians 5:22-24, Colossians 3:18, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, 1 Peter 3:1, etc.).
So Cain goes to Nod and takes a wife, who would also have to be his sister, and they start having sons. Eve has another son, Seth, to replace Abel, and Seth has a son to finish up Genesis Chapter 4. If any of them have daughters, apparently you don’t care.
Once again, in this second tragedy the Bible describes, you have instigated the whole thing and done nothing to prevent the tragic outcome, but you have still convinced people to believe that you did nothing wrong. Bravo God, bravo.
The Rest of the Bible
So far we have only covered the first couple of pages of the first book of the Bible, but you have already created the world and engineered its demise, as well as inciting one of only four humans in the world to murder one of the other three and then you just watch it happen.
After a long list of Adam’s descendants in chapter 5, in chapter 6 of Genesis there are already half-human half-angel hybrids roaming the land (Genesis 6:1-4), and you already regret creating people (6:5). You decide this was all a big mistake and you should wipe out all life on Earth (6:6-7) which you do in chapter 7. You only spare 8 people along with 2 of each other unclean species of animal and 7 of each clean one.
This means that you kill nearly every man, woman, child, infant, dog, cat, cow, sheep, elephant, frog, bird, beetle, tyrannosaurus rex and every other species that has ever lived on this planet. Even if we discount the deaths of millions upon millions of innocent animals, how many people do you kill here? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?
As soon as you’re done with Noah, in Genesis 11 you get scared that people building a tall tower will actually reach heaven, so you go down and change their languages so they can’t understand each other and you scatter them all over the world. At least you refrained from killing everyone for once, but that still isn’t nice, and isn’t all this fear unbecoming for an omniscient and omnipotent being?
The Bible goes on and on like this, book after book. You tell a Satan to torture Job, kill his whole family and take everything from him just to prove that he will still worship you. This is what the whole book of Job is about!
Here are just a few more of your many murders and commands to enslave, murder and massacre individuals, cities and even whole nations.
You command the Israelites to kill everyone in their way, every man, woman and child in many cases (Deuteronomy 3:1-7, Joshua 6:20-21, Judges 21:10-24, 1 Samuel 15:2-3, etc.).
You tell them to wage genocidal campaigns against the Babylonians, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Jeremiah 50:21-22, Exodus 23:23).
You condone slavery (Exodus 21:1-11, Leviticus 25:44-46, etc.).
You ask Abraham to kill and burn his own son as a sacrifice to you (Genesis 22:1-18).
You kill 70,000 people because King David conducts a census (1 Chronicles 21:9-14).
You kill a baby for the sins of its father, again King David (2 Samuel 12:11-14).
You kill all of the firstborn sons in Egypt to convince the Pharaoh to let your people go, but you don’t hurt the Pharaoh himself (Exodus 12:29-30).
This is just a small sample of the horrors you perpetrate in the Bible. Are you ready to go back to your “sinful” human self yet?
What would you really do?
If you were God, what would you do with the world? Would you help, or hurt? Would you create and responsibly maintain an earthly paradise, or would you continually set people up to be hurt and killed and fail in the most horrible ways?
This little role reversal is done in a humorous way, but it is intended to make you think seriously. Religious apologists will always be able to come up with some twisted exegesis to explain away the horrors of the Bible, but if you carefully read the entire Bible and honestly ask yourself each time God says or does something, “would I think this was right and good if I did it?”, you will find yourself answering “no” a disturbingly large number of times.
This idea will be scoffed at by many Christians because “we can’t know the mind of God”, but even our limited minds can see problems in the words and deeds of the Bible’s god. These are problems that do not appear less severe to more intelligent observers, they only become more abhorrent and disturbing when we see them as being done by a god who knows everything about everything and can do anything he wants to do with the universe.
In this light, the god of the Bible is a monster.As a writer, I draw a lot of parallels with beer and music. They’re both man-made art, analog, and evocative. Just as I can remember songs I listened to with friends twenty years ago; their beats, lyrics, and bass lines…I can remember beers I’ve had on camping trips decades ago. Tying these two brain-banks together is Stereo Brewing in Placentia.
Opened by Rick Smets and Amanda Pearce, the couple met at a Dylan concert, freaked out over beers, now are knee deep in a Premier stainless steel jug band brewhouse that makes hop beats over malt basslines.
The tasting room is an aquarium of music with spinning vinyl and music posters throughout. The beer, on soft opening, was clean and full of personality. Coming from Firestone and Left Coast, Rick has his eye on quality first, opting to dump the first batch of IPA. Instead, hop heads will swoon over the Robot hoppy red. Dancing like a robot listening to Kraftwerk, I thought Stereo’s Blonde on Blonde Kolsch was the best beer on the playlist. So much so, I took a crowler of it home, just to be sure.
Stereo Brewing opens Saturday 10/15/16, check them out! www.stereobrewing.comAn eBayer has lost £5,300 after he was conned out of his bitcoins. Now he is being chased for money he is said to owe
Will Phillips is £5,300 out of pocket after falling victim to a very 21st-century financial scam involving hacked PayPal accounts and the digital currency bitcoin.
For the uninitiated, bitcoin is a "virtual currency" that, depending on who you believe, is going to change the world by turning e-commerce on its head, or end very messily like a modern-day version of the "tulip mania" that gripped the Netherlands in the 17th century.
In recent months it has become a magnet for speculators and, last autumn, 32-year-old Phillips, who freely admits he is a "a bit of a geek," decided to grab a slice of the action.
At the start of 2013, one bitcoin was worth around £7. At the end of November the price hit £750 while on Wednesday this week it was around £350.
Within weeks, the bitcoins Phillips had bought for around £800 were worth many times that, so he decided to sell them on eBay. But now he has lost the lot, and says PayPal is threatening to send in debt collectors.
What seems to have happened is, in the space of one night, fraudsters hacked into legitimate PayPal accounts and, posing as these people, bought his bitcoins on eBay and made off with them. This type of scam is not new, and usually PayPal comes down in favour of the individuals whose accounts were hacked. In this case, the account holders have had their money refunded. However, Phillips is now being pursued for more than £1,300 that PayPal says he owes them.
His case emerged just hours before bitcoin was plunged into chaos by the news this week that one of its best-known "exchanges," the MtGox website, had disappeared from the internet amid rumours that almost 750,000 bitcoins, worth more than £200m, may have been stolen.
Bitcoin has been around for about five years, but it was in 2013 that it started to move from the tech chatrooms into the public consciousness – helped by a high-profile news story in November about a man who realised that the computer hard drive he had chucked out |
homoeroticism in scripture and talking about interpretation and context, the fact is that if Jesus existed, the religion he founded has spent most of the last two thousand years marginalising, brutalising, criminalising and killing queer people – by now, on every continent on earth except Antarctica. (Apply and adjust as appropriate for other faiths.) I doubt theres a single queer person here who hasn’t faced queerphobia in Christian or other religious contexts, and some of us have been profoundly harmed by it.
If Jesus meant to preach acceptance of LGBT people, he didn’t do a very good job. A god who can’t get his own message across for most of his followers’ history doesn’t seem plausible to me. Given a global platform and with sincere intent, most children could now tell the world to be nice to queer people without prompting millennia of violence – really, those five words would be enough – and I struggle to believe in a god who lacks the communication skills of a ten-year-old.
Yet I’ve often seen religion promoted in queer spaces. I’ve seen LGBT student groups where clergy came to deliver sermons, where religious flyers were handed out on the door and meetings were moved so as not to clash with church. I’ve seen LGBT discussion events held in churches. I’ve been told to pray and about how God created me. I know I’m not alone in this.
As an atheist and an apostate in the queer community, I feel profoundly uncomfortable with this – not least because LGBT believers often seem set on dismissing realities of religious queerphobia, both historically and today. Many queer people, I think, have sat uncomfortably through public events held to stress the compatibility of queerness and faith sensing precisely this, yet feeling that to voice their ambivalence would be an appalling act of rudeness, bigotry or ‘hate’.
A colleague of mine, Heina Dadabhoy – a bisexual, nonbinary ex-Muslim – wrote this about one such incident:
The worst experience I had was at a local conference about mental health and LGBT issues. Fully half the panels were about religion, and every panel had a representative of what was euphemistically referred to as ‘the faith community’. It is bizarre, to say the last, to sit in a room filled with LGBT folks and hear nothing but praise for religion and disdain for criticism of religion. Any mention of the homophobia in Christianity or any other religion was treated as if it were taboo, or at least unnecessarily hostile.
My guess is that many in this room can relate to that – I know I can.
Unequivocally, I support the work (and existence) of queer religious people like the other panellists here, and of everyone working toward positive religious reform. In many religions, being queer has traditionally meant being viewed as an apostate: in many religions, it’s still regularly assumed that if your sexuality and/or gender is incorrect, you’ve abandoned the faith. Putting an end to that can only be a good thing, because being treated like an apostate is hard: it can mean losing your community or family and having to face social stigma and threats, even violence.
But I know this because many of us, and many LGBT people, really are apostates – whether because of religious queerphobia, religious abuse or other bad experiences, because we can’t believe in a god who has our back or simply because religious beliefs don’t make sense to us. Attempts to be ‘inclusive’ of religious queer people by godding-up our communities with sermons, prayers, clergy and promotion of religious groups often mean excluding us. To that effect, let me share the comment I started with (by a user called Paul) in full.
I think we can’t stress enough how triggering overt religiosity can be and is to many LGBT people. If I knew an event was taking place in a church, I would avoid it – I don’t feel safe in churches, I don’t feel comfortable in churches. Churches scare me, they make me uncomfortable and they make me [feel] unsafe. In our desire to let [supportive] religious groups play the ‘we’re not all like that’ game, we’re frequently required to pretend they’re mainstream, rather than exceptions, and that so many of us are somehow not legitimately and severely frightened by overt religiosity. That is not an unreasonable or unfair fear, nor one that isn’t based on experience, nor one that isn’t based on experience – yet I am expected to treat it as such. No matter how neutral the event is intended [to be], if it is held in church property it is something that will push me out. And that ‘we’re not all like that’ game is destructive. For me to even remotely consider that a religious ‘ally’ is an ally, I need to know they realise their faith has a bigotry problem – because at the moment our desire to make religious groups comfortable and play PR for them is giving them a pass for bigotry and denying the scale of it in organised religion. How do we counter that if we’re all pretending it doesn’t exist or is ‘fringe’?
So here’s my take-home message: if you’re a secular queer person and you feel uncomfortable around religion, that is absolutely valid. It is not hatred; it is not bigotry. And if you’re a queer believer, that’s just as valid (even if it doesn’t make sense to me) – but please let’s remember there are times when toning down the God-talk is considerate, and please let’s face facts, because atonement starts with contrition.Late on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Nova Scotia's House of Assembly voted 33-17 to approve Bill 75, a lawyer for the House walked down Barrington Street toward Government House. The official copy of the bill was in his hand.
When the lawyer got to Government House, he was ushered into a meeting with the lieutenant governor.
The meeting did not last long. The lawyer put Bill 75 on the table, and the lieutenant governor signed it. There was no hesitation. The people's assembly had spoken.
At that precise moment — the moment of royal assent — Bill 75 became the law of Nova Scotia.
At that moment, a contract was imposed on teachers, and any strike action was illegal.
Legally, it's done. Politically, Bill 75 is far from over.
The people are paying attention
On the bright side, the passage of Bill 75 through the House of Assembly exposed many Nova Scotians to how politics works.
Suddenly, thousands of citizens were paying attention to how decisions are made, how a bill moves through the House, and how elected representatives make up their minds.
That has to be a good thing. The enemy of democracy is disengagement. Democracy fails when good people shrug and do nothing.
This level of citizen engagement in our democratic government — though it be messy, noisy and at times, wrong-headed — is an unalloyed good.
Something is wrong with the system
That doesn't mean everything was sunshine and roses as Bill 75 wended its way through the law-making process.
Nobody should watch laws and sausages being made, Bismarck is supposed to have said. (He didn't, but it's a good line.) Neither is very appetizing.
Something is wrong with a system that relies on midnight sittings.
Something is wrong when the premier and ministers are being questioned at one o'clock in the morning.
Something is wrong when the committee tasked with hearing from the public decides not to hear from the public when it ceases to be convenient.
But overall the system works
In some larger sense, though, the system works.
A majority of members in a freely elected assembly voted in favour of Bill 75.
Those who opposed it had ample time to have their say in a public forum.
The majority's reasons may be debatable, but they are sincerely held.
Perhaps our MLAs are a little too ready to heed the crack of the party whip, but they are not defenceless lambs and they are accountable for the decisions they make.
Soon enough, we will have another election, and those happy or unhappy with the McNeil government will have a secret ballot on which to mark their X.
The election will be run by an independent, clean, well-organized election authority.
If the government changes, there will be a peaceful transition of power, and the new government is free to repeal Bill 75 if it wants to.
Yes, the system works.
Politics of bill just beginning
There are two reasons why the politics of Bill 75 are just beginning.
The first is that Bill 75 imposes a contract only on teachers. The number of public-sector workers without a contract still numbers in the tens of thousands.
I anticipated Bill 75 would deal with all outstanding contracts, but it did not.
With an election on the horizon, there is no way the McNeil government will go through another politically painful episode like this one.
My best guess now is that Bill 148 — passed in December 2015 but so far unproclaimed — will soon be invoked against the remaining public-sector unions. That can be done with the stroke of a pen, though some pretext is needed first.
Bill 148 imposes tight constraints on all public-sector wage settlements.
Poking a bear
The other reason why Bill 75 isn't over is that Stephen McNeil has poked a bear.
But how big is the bear, and how angry?
Will the bear roll over and go back to sleep?
If the bear gets up, does it know what to do, or will it aimlessly paw the air?
These are the questions that will preoccupy political strategists for the next couple of months. They will poll.
If McNeil likes what he hears — if he hears from his pollsters that the bear is tame — then it will be he who strolls down Barrington Street to Government House.
He too will sit down with the lieutenant governor and he will advise an election.SpaceX is set for a salvo of events over the coming months, ranging from resupply runs to the International Space Station, to abort test objectives for its Dragon 2 program. The company envisions two launches of its Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket in April, followed by a pad abort test in early May – all conducted from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40.
Busy SpaceX:
The SpaceX team have already conducted three successful launches in 2015, kicked off by the CRS-5/SpX-5 Dragon mission to the ISS in January.
The Dragon concluded her mission with a splashdown finale in the Pacific Ocean the following month, just a few days prior to SpaceX’s next launch – with the successful lofting of the DSCOVR spacecraft.
Less than three weeks passed before SpaceX completed a hat-trick of launches in 2015, as another Falcon 9 v1.1 launched the rocket’s first dual passenger mission, lofting the ABS-3A and Eutelsat 115 West B satellites into orbit.
A fourth Falcon 9 mission was penciled in for late March, with SpaceX tasked with launching Turkmenistan’s TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSat 1 (TurkmenSat 1) communications satellite.
However, an issue spotted ahead of the Static Fire test, specific to the helium pressurization system’s bottles (COPVs), resulted in a change to the planned manifest.
Falcon 9 v1.1 with CRS-6/SpX-6 Dragon:
With SpaceX currently launching both commercial satellites and NASA cargo resupply missions, schedule considerations are naturally favored towards the latter.
This mainly relates to the busy Visiting Vehicle schedule of the International Space Station, with numerous constraints resulting in short windows of opportunity for when a Dragon can set sail for the orbital outpost.
As such, SpaceX – in agreement with NASA – opted to ensure the CRS-6 Dragon would be in a position to launch to the ISS within an available slot in April.
This Falcon 9 v1.1 launch will also include the latest attempt to successfully land the First Stage on SpaceX’s floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
While returning the core to the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) isn’t a primary mission objective, a successful touchdown on deck will provide a major advance in SpaceX’s reusability aspirations.
Aided by the experiences of previous return attempts, the first stage’s Merlin 1D engines, control thrusters, grid fins and landing legs will all be working together toward the goal of not only a smooth ASDS landing, but also the prospect of a life extension.
A success will result in both a triumphant return to port and a trip to Spaceport America in New Mexico for additional testing.
The initial launch CRS-6 date of April 10 has since slipped slightly to April 13 (4:33 pm EDT) – with each opportunity somewhat constrained by the orbital requirement of an instantaneous launch window. A Static Fire test was scheduled for April 10, before moving to the right by a day to the 11th.
In the event the launch date holds, this latest Dragon spacecraft – carrying 4,300 pounds of supplies and payload – will arrive at the ISS on April 15, prior to being grabbed by the Station’s robotic arm under the control of Expedition 43 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti.
The spacecraft will return to Earth around five weeks later, by which time SpaceX will hope to have launched its fifth mission of the year.
Falcon 9 v1.1 – TurkmenSat 1:
Providing the CRS-6 mission is launched without any major issues or delays, SpaceX may be in a position to hold its next launch opportunity – involving the TurkmenSat 1 mission – to what is currently scheduled for April 24.
The TurkmenAlem 520E spacecraft was built by Thales Alenia Space, based on the Spacebus-4000C2 platform. Sporting 38 active Ku-band transponders shared over three beams, the satellite is expected to enjoy over 15 years of service in geostationary orbit.
As with the ABS-3A and Eutelsat 115 West B mission, the Falcon 9 v1.1 won’t have enough spare propellant to conduct a first stage landing attempt on the ASDS, thus the stage is without grid fins and landing legs.
As previously mentioned, this mission was set to launch in March, prior to the discovery of “bad trends” in the data relating to the helium tanks (bottles) used on the Falcon 9.
It is not fully understood if the data related to routine helium system testing or a fault in the hardware of the actual Falcon 9 tasked with the TurkmenSat-1 launch. However, the issue is now classed as resolved.
Dragon 2 – Pad Abort:
Following the launch of TurkmenSat-1, SpaceX engineers will conduct their usual post launch clean up of the SLC-40 pad, prior to switching gears to conduct test program objectives for Dragon 2, part of NASA’s Commercial Crew aspirations.
The pad abort test will utilize a flight-like Dragon 2 and Trunk, departing from a truss structure under the power of its SuperDraco thrusters, rather than sitting atop of a Falcon 9 – as previously outlined by Crewed Dragon Program Lead Dr. Garrett Reisman.
Based on the latest L2 schedule information, this test is currently targetting May 2, although this target is subject to change due to the two launches that are planned to take place ahead of the test.
The vehicle itself is in a stage of processing that will see it ready for the test by mid-April.
Additional information notes the abort vehicle has been outfitted with seven seats, one of which is already occupied by a human-size test dummy, embedded with a suite of sensors.
The dummy – yet to be named – has been placed in a “black composite flight article” seat, whereas the other seats are constructed from an aluminum metal frame with white steel plates bolted to them to simulate crew weight. The interior is surrounded by bare isogrid walls, accompanied by a few black boxes.
The pressure vessel is based on the cargo Dragon vehicle, albeit with the smaller hatch. There are no actual windows in the capsule, with gold mirrors mimicking the outer windows of the operational Dragon 2.
The Trunk is a composite structure with cork insulation, with the exterior painted white.
Following Near-Term Objectives:
Following the Pad Abort test, preparations will take place to launch the next cargo Dragon on the CRS-7/SpX-7 mission to the ISS. Also on the books are missions that include Orbcomm OG2 and Jason-3.
The Jason-3 launch vehicle flow is already progressing, as shown via an interesting note from the Launch Services Program (LSP) claiming this flight’s Falcon 9 will see its interstage swapped out, based on a SpaceX recommendation, as outlined in according NASA notes (L2).
The Jason-3 mission is also classed as the first potential opportunity to return the first stage to a designated landing pad at the launch site.
SpaceX is also looking to conduct another Commercial Crew objective for Dragon 2, with the Ascent Abort test currently showing July 1 as the earliest possible test date.
However, that date is likely to move to the right over the coming weeks, based on natural movement in the company’s busy launch schedule.
Otherwise known as the “In Flight Abort test”, the objectives will utilize a Dragon 2 test vehicle on a Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg, providing a real life test of an abort scenario occurring at “Max Drag” in the transonic region.
The results of this test will feed into SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract milestones, ahead of the uncrewed Dragon 2 mission, designated “SpX-DM1”, to the ISS in December 2016.
(Images: via L2’s SpaceX Section, including renderings created by L2 Artist Nathan Koga – Click here for full resolution F9, F9-R, FH and BFR renderings and more – these are not official SpaceX images. Other images from SpaceX)
(Click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/ – to view how you can support NSF’s running costs and access the best space flight content on the entire internet)A new initiative seeks to improve the assessment of cognitive development among people with an intellectual disability. Better methods to evaluate changes in status are critical for the development of new treatments and programs.
The five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) calls for three research universities to develop tools to more accurately measure and track changes in the cognitive functioning among individuals with an intellectual disability.
The project is necessary as traditional evaluative tools are unable to accurately assess cognitive development for individuals with special needs.
“The lack of good measures to document improvement in thinking that are appropriate, valid, and measure change in children and young adults with intellectual disabilities is a critical problem,” said Dr. Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, professor of biochemistry, neurological sciences, and pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
She called it “one of the largest barriers to development of new treatments to modify the underlying disease in developmental disabilities.”
Berry-Kravis is co-investigator of the study and site principal investigator at Rush.
“This study will help us to evaluate new, investigational treatments for people with intellectual disability,” said Berry-Kravis.
The tests will eventually be used to ascertain the effectiveness of medications and other treatments, specifically for people with fragile X and Down syndromes and other intellectual disabilities.
Fragile X and Down syndromes are among the leading causes of intellectual disability in the United States and around the world. Fragile X syndrome also is the leading single-gene cause of autism spectrum disorder.
“Most currently available standardized tests have been developed mainly for the general population and are not well-suited for people with intellectual disabilities,” said David Hessl, principal investigator and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the MIND Institute, part of the University of California, Davis.
“They just weren’t designed for people with the level of functioning we typically see in fragile X and Down syndromes. What we will be working to do is modify and then validate the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery, so that it works well for individuals with intellectual disability.”
The NIH Toolbox is a multidimensional set of brief measures assessing cognitive, emotional, motor, and sensory function from ages three to 85, meeting the need for a standard set of measures that can be used as a common currency across diverse study designs and settings.
The cognitive test battery used in the study is a computer-based set of tests tapping processing speed, memory, attention, and language.
The research will be conducted in concert with two other leading research institutions with robust programs in intellectual disabilities.
In addition to the researchers at Rush and the MIND Institute, investigators from The University of Denver and Northwestern Medical School will be involved in the project.
To evaluate the reliability, validity, and sensitivity of the battery, researchers at each university will enroll 150 individuals with intellectual disability between the ages of six and 25 years with either fragile X syndrome, Down syndrome, or intellectual disability of unknown cause.
The participants will undergo one round of testing and a second round four weeks later. The overall growth in the participants’ intellectual skills will be tested again after two years.
The Northwestern University team, which is responsible for the development, maintenance, and training of the NIH Toolbox, will assist with making modifications to the tests to suit this unique population, maintain the data generated from the study, and participate in interpreting and disseminating the study findings.
Source: Rush University Medical Center
New Tools Sought to Assess Cognitive Growth in Intellectually DisabledThe co-chairperson of a group providing oilsands advice to the Alberta government has placed her support firmly behind the anti-pipeline B.C. NDP ahead of that province’s election next week.
Tzeporah Berman told The Tyee magazine that an NDP government in the province “would be a huge leap forward on climate change.”
She also criticized David Suzuki’s endorsement of the Green Party, arguing it could lead to vote splitting and another term for Christy Clark’s Liberals.
British Columbia’s NDP Leader John Horgan has condemned the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to Vancouver.
He and Premier Rachel Notley discussed the issue when she headed west after its approval, but the two agreed to disagree.
An outspoken critic
Notley has barred Alberta NDP staff from helping out with the B.C. wing of the party but has said in the past Berman is free to speak her mind on environmental issues.
Berman certainly has done so, arguing against the Kinder Morgan expansion and comparing Alberta’s oilsands to Mordor.
Environment Minister Shannon Phillips echoed Notley’s past comments on Monday, saying Canadians are free to support whatever political party they want.
Phillips can’t see her government and Berman ever seeing eye to eye on pipelines, but said they both share a belief in the importance of reducing oilsands emissions.
Phillips said she’s not worried an NDP victory in British Columbia would spell the end of the Kinder Morgan project.
That project and an Enbridge expansion were both given the green light by Ottawa in November, and Phillips pointed to their approval by the National Energy Board and a number of indigenous and other communities along the route as proof they will be built.
“(The) Kinder Morgan expansion project is in not just Alberta’s best interests but Canada’s best interests,” Phillips said.
The oilsands advisory group was formed last July.
Members are entitled to $601 for each day of work more than eight hours long, plus travel and living expenses.
OSAG member payments since July 2016
According to figures provided by the province, the group has billed taxpayers $101,863 since its creation.
David Collyer (co-chairperson): $29,001
Tzeporah Berman (co-chairperson): $22,922
Melody Lepine (co-chairperson): $11,978
Tim Gray: $11,045
Veronica Bliska: $9,464
Simon Dyer: $8,416
Alison Ronson: $9,037
egraney@postmedia.com
twitter.com/EmmaLGraneyOur Own Worst Enemies
Sometimes, it seems, that Israel’s security echelon is as bent on terrifying the country’s Jewish population as it is the Palestinians. Considering the paranoid prognostications of Major General Eyal Eisenberg, that the Arab Spring could give way to “a winter of radical Islam … and as a result the possibility for a multi-front war has increased, including the potential use of weapons of mass destruction,” one would be hard pressed to imagine otherwise.
It is no coincidence that Eisenberg issued this dire warning the same week as Turkey suspended military ties with Israel and increased its overtures toward the transitional Egyptian government. For the past three decades, Turkey and Egypt have been Israel’s staunchest allies in the Middle East. But the times are changing fast. Israel’s long out-of-date mindset and diplomatic “strategy” are driving it into unprecedented isolation.
The stubborn refusal of the Netanyahu government to apologize for killing nine Turks (one of whom was also a US citizen) in the infamous flotilla incident in 2010 is only the tip of the iceberg. Tensions have been brewing with Turkey for some time, ever since the current government, one both more popular and somewhat more influenced by Islam (though Turkey remains decidedly secular,) came to power.
The upheavals throughout the Arab world, particularly in Egypt, have also made it much more difficult for governments to acquiesce to American pressure and tolerate Israel’s ongoing occupation. Always a de-stabilizing factor in the region, the Israeli occupations of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and its ongoing siege on the Gaza Strip remain causes for popular rage. The shifts in attitude and policy in both Turkey and Egypt simply reflect governments that are more responsive to public sentiment than their predecessors.
Eisenberg’s response to these developments is, unfortunately, much too common in Israel these days. And not only there. The idea that intense opposition to Israeli policies is based on “hatred,” be it political, ideological or religious, has never been stronger amongst Israel’s so-called supporters. It’s irrational. But that’s what it means to not take responsibility for Israeli policy.
Of course, it is true that there are Turks, Egyptians, Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) activists, as well as Americans, and not a few Jews, who harbor considerable hostility and ill will toward Israel. But that such hostility remains a minority opinion, even in the political and communal circles one is likely to encounter it.
What unites an enormous swath of people around the world, including in Israel and the US, is opposition to an occupation that holds millions of Palestinians hostage, without rights, whose features include both routine and, periodically, large-scale human rights violations. Forty-four years long, with few penalties for Israel, is enough time to incite global ire.
Turkey’s reaction to the recent Palmer Report is a perfect example. Israel’s leaking of the document to the New York Times inspired the Turkish decision to suspend military cooperation and defense trading with the Netanyahu government. Given Bibi’s troubled relationship with Turkey, he ought to have anticipated such a response. Yet, Turkey’s action is not just another chapter in its subjective struggles with Israel. It is also a reflection of the international community refusing to act in any substantive way to incentivize Israel to change its policies towards the Palestinians, and end the occupation.
As Sari Bashi, executive director of the Israeli human rights group, Gisha, said: “ A positive outcome of the Palmer report … could have been an affirmation of Israel’s authority to stop ships linked to a clear statement of the responsibility such authority imposes, namely to allow the free passage of civilians and civilian goods by other means…But the message headlined throughout the Israeli media … is that the UN has given its stamp of approval to Israel’s closure of Gaza, and that there is therefore no need to lift it.”
Each new settlement unit Israel breaks ground on brings nothing more than another “tut-tut” from the US and the European Union. But Egypt recently took action to prevent Israel and Hamas from escalating the brief firestorm between them in the wake of the terrorist attacks in southern Israel. And Turkey is now moving to exercise its own form of pressure on Israel.
No doubt, Ankara’s recent actions have delighted Palestinians and anti-occupation activists, as well they should. Still, it’s worth remembering that Turkey has its own human rights problems, particularly in its treatment of its Kurdish citizens. This has gotten better in recent years, certainly as compared to the awful situation in the 1990s. Still, Turkey, like every other country, has a long way to go before it can credibly claim to be promoting human rights.
That said, the Palestinian cause resonates strongly in Turkey, as it does throughout the Muslim world (and, increasingly, in Europe and even to some extent in the US), and it thus becomes a vehicle not only for the government to increase its domestic popularity but, much more importantly, a course for Turkey to assume much greater popularity and leadership in the Mediterranean. Much the same is true for Egypt. Both countries have very strong national pride that puts a great deal of emphasis in their own historic roles as strong empires.
Still, despite the growing tensions between Turkey and Egypt, on the one hand and Israel on the other, relations still exist between them all. That is to say there is still something for Israel to work with.
But in order to do so, Israel will have to stop deluding itself with ideas like Eisenberg’s, which sees anti-Israel sentiment not as a natural outgrowth of its policy of occupation, but as an irrational extension of anti-Semitism. Such denial can only lead the country to the conflicts prophesied by Eisenberg.
Can Israel overcome such instincts? The implications of changing this mode of thinking are profound. Such a shift would inevitably lead to a wholesale transformation of the post-1967 status quo: Granting the Palestinians independence, ceding the West Bank and the external control of Gaza, sharing Jerusalem, and coming to an agreement on the Palestinian refugee issue. When the dust settles in Syria, it would also ultimately involve a return of the Golan Heights. The consequences are that profound.
I think we can rest assured that the current Israeli government will shy away from any such endeavor, and so would one led by the opposition Kadima party. However, the age of Israeli impunity in these matters could be coming to an end. Turkey and Egypt are not the same as Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Turkey and Egypt are key regional, even global players. Their approach has been focused on specific issues that touch on the broader occupation, and has been free of the demagoguery indulged by Iran’s leadership. This makes it harder to marginalize their demands.
The price of the occupation will rise if Turkey and Egypt stay on their present course, all the more so if other Arab states adopt their approach. That price will also be paid by Israel’s American patron. At some point, even rational actors have to ask themselves what price they’re willing to pay for Israel’s settlement project and its insistence on starving Gaza.
Photograph by Joel Schalitposter="https://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201610/3733/1155968404_5173612188001_5173602609001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Trump lashes out at Republicans for not buying election rigging line 'Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!' Trump fired off in a tweet.
Donald Trump on Monday lashed out at Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, who have pushed back against the GOP nominee’s message that the election is being rigged against him.
“Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!” Trump tweeted.
Story Continued Below
He followed up with a unity message for the deeply fractured party, saying, “We have all got to come together and win this election. We can't have four more years of Obama (or worse!).”
But while Trump stuck to his claim that the fix will be in on Election Day, even some of his own supporters found it difficult to back the real estate billionaire's assertions. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a Trump supporter, could offer only a tepid defense of his party's nominee during a Monday morning interview on Don Imus' radio show. In the exchange, first reported by CNN, King responded to a question about Trump's allegations of a rigged election by saying, "Is it legally rigged? No it's not. Whoever wins, wins."
But King continued that while Trump was wrong to say that the election would be stolen from him by illegal means, he did see an array of forces working to stop the former reality TV star from ascending to the White House.
"I do think there's a lot to what he's saying, whether it's conscious or not, of having people in the so-called establishment, whatever that is, the big money people, the media, the political leaders, they are petrified of the thought of Trump being elected," King said. "So they consciously and unconsciously just do everything they can."
Another congressman, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), offered a similarly reserved defense of Trump in an interview on Monday morning, telling CNN's Chris Cuomo that the GOP nominee's claims of a rigged election are "partially unsubstantiated." King said that suggestions of a grand conspiracy to keep Trump out of the White House are overblown, but he added that it would require only a handful of votes to possibly swing the election. As evidence, he pointed to the famously close race in Florida in 2000.
“Chris, I don't want to say anything on this program that delegitimizes the elections because I don't want the American people to lose faith in our process. If we do, this entire constitutional republic could come tumbling down," the Iowa lawmaker said. “We have a mainstream media that there's plenty of evidence to point to that they have been tilted in favor of Hillary Clinton, by and large. We have evidence out there that illegals have been voting by the hundreds, if not the thousands. It only took 537 in Florida. Those are things that do concern me.” George W. Bush carried Florida over Al Gore by 537 votes in 2000.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway contended that Trump will accept the outcome of the election — but only if the results are clear and there are no irregularities or voter fraud. Asked why her candidate continues to claim the election is rigged, Conway pointed to media coverage that she said skews negatively toward Trump.
“If you’re Donald Trump and you feel like every single day you are facing lies and distortions and an avalanche of negative coverage or — I would say put differently — incomplete coverage as if there’s only one person running for president and not two, then the frustration mounts, and you wonder what could happen if people really wanted to stop you,” she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
And Ohio's Republican secretary of state, who will oversee next month's election in the crucial Midwestern swing state, took the GOP criticism of Trump a step further, labeling the rhetoric on election rigging from his party's nominee "irresponsible." Jon Husted, speaking on CNN, offered a guarantee to Trump and any of his supporters worried about Election Day that "I am in charge of elections in Ohio, and they're not going to be rigged. I'll make sure of that."
“The idea of widespread voter fraud would require some systemic problem in our system, and so if there's a systemic problem, please identify it. Don't just make an allegation on Twitter. Tell me, tell the secretaries of state around the country what the problem is so that we can fix it,” Husted said.
He added that cases of voter fraud do occur, but that they are "rare" and are often caught before the vote in question is even tabulated. Husted said the election system is "the only place you can find Democrats and Republicans working cooperatively together."
Trump has amped up his claims of a rigged election after the release of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which the billionaire cavalierly talks about being able to get away with sexual assault and a subsequent march of women who have accused him of groping them.
The nominee has pushed back forcefully, promising to offer evidence to refute his female accusers, while accusing the media of blindly giving a megaphone to the women and trying to fix the election against him.
On Monday, Trump expressed disbelief that the accusers are being viewed as credible and pushed the idea that Vice President Joe Biden is guilty of being a groper.
“Can't believe these totally phoney [sic] stories, 100% made up by women (many already proven false) and pushed big time by press, have impact!” Trump tweeted.
He followed up with a retweet from New York radio host Mark Simone, who tweeted out a video with the message, “Watch Joe Biden's Long History Of Grabbing, Kissing and Groping Women Who Are Cringing.”
The video is a compilation of images of Biden offering lingering hugs and tender gestures to Hillary Clinton and female family members during the Senate ceremonial swearing-in. Biden, long an advocate of sexual assault prevention, has called Trump's remarks on the "Access Hollywood" tape "sexual assault."
Biden's office declined to comment.
Continuing his spree on Monday morning, Trump retweeted Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson, who had promoted a Daily Caller article about former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos, with Watson writing, “Trump accuser praised him in an email as recently as April! This is all yet another hoax.”
Trump has offered up almost equal scorn for his female accusers, the media, and for Ryan, with whom he’s been tangling ever since the House speaker abandoned him early last week. Ryan’s office over the weekend appeared to further undermine Trump’s message that the election is being engineered in Clinton’s favor, coming out with a statement on Saturday saying Ryan is “fully confident” in the election system.
“Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,” said Ryan spokesperson AshLee Strong.
Trump continued to trash Ryan over the weekend, as the nominee geared up for a Monday evening rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The billionaire fired off a series of tweets Sunday afternoon and evening, some of which criticized Ryan.
“The Democrats have a corrupt political machine pushing crooked Hillary Clinton. We have Paul Ryan, always fighting the Republican nominee!” he messaged, following up with, “Paul Ryan, a man who doesn't know how to win (including failed run four years ago), must start focusing on the budget, military, vets etc.”
And he accused Ryan of doing nothing to ensure Clinton doesn’t win next month. “Wow, interview released by Wikileakes shows ‘quid pro quo’ in Crooked Hillary e-mail probe.Such a dishonest person - & Paul Ryan does zilch!”
But even as Trump tussles with Republicans who are not willing to push his election rigging message, the nominee’s own running mate has not always seemed in sync.
"We will absolutely accept the result of the election," Mike Pence said Sunday during an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press,” adding that the GOP ticket will "accept the will of the American people."
But during a rally on Monday, Pence appeared more on message. "I have no doubt the national media is trying to rig this election with their biased coverage in Hillary Clinton |
PDF of the book.
All physical reward levels will include a Kickstarter exclusive 3D printed Tile bookmark! Available in black and transparent blue! More colors and designs can be unlocked with Stretch goals!
Blue bookmark pictured with pages from Adventures in Gondwanaland
The book itself is available plain, signed in, or signed and sketched in with a custom drawing of Tile.
I also have seven 5 x 7" prints. A pledge at the $50 tier comes with your choice of any 3 of them, though any reward level that includes a book is eligible for print add-ons!
A limited number of custom original art commissions are available, such as 4 x 6" pencil drawings,
and custom 5 x 7" ink illustrations.
The $250 tier includes this 8.5 x 11" original Tile watercolor painting!
And the $500 tier includes the 8.5 x 11" original lineart of the cover!
Here is a visual breakdown of the reward tiers (images not to-scale):
If you have already pledged at a level that includes books or bookmarks, you can click "modify your pledge" to increase the pledge amount to receive additional books, bookmarks, or other add-ons, as detailed below!
Additional bookmarks can be in either black or blue, or in any style or color unlocked by stretch goals.
Additional books can be signed or sketched in as per your chosen tier.
5 x 7" prints can be added on to any tier that includes a book.
Available as an add-on to any level with physical rewards is Wh-ZAH! A 24-page minicomic featuring two background characters from Tile on an epic quest!
There are also buttons! Available to any reward tier $7 and above, you can get 6 random 1.25" buttons such as the ones below!
For only $20 as an add-on to any book-level tier, you can get a random original page from one of the stories collected in the book!
About half of the funds raised will be going towards printing, which includes the shipping to me. Then I estimate approximately 30% will go to packaging and shipping the rewards to you. Kickstarter takes 5%, and Stripe takes 3-5% for payment processing. I will need to purchase an ISBN number for the book, and I allowed for another 5% as a safety margin.
I'm Maryanne. I attended the Savannah College of Art and Design, and earned my BFA in Sequential Art.
I have been working in comics since 2005, starting in webcomics, and moving to self-publishing minicomics in 2010. In 2014 I launched the fantasy webcomic, Xylobone Tomes, which I continue to update with a new page every week.
Tessellated Tile will be my first perfect-bound book, and I am very excited.
Thank you so much for your support!
Video music credit: Ukulele by BensoundThis outline has five video segments for review. I warn you in advance the brutality on these videos is very disturbing. This is what we predict the MSM will spend all day avoiding.
Violence the mainstream media support, they call speech. Speech mainstream media does not support, they call violence.
Last evening in San Jose California a violent mob of several hundred were allowed by the San Jose Police Department and Democrat San Jose Mayor to attack Donald Trump supporters as they were leaving the rally venue.
Now, I strongly welcome anyone to challenge the wording emphasized in the above paragraph because what you are about to see is clear evidence the local San Jose authorities ALLOWED this violence/terrorist activity to occur.
San Jose is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. Remember, all of these videos took place within sight of the San Jose police department, the police officers therein, and the San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia. According to his own statements, Chief Garcia spent two full days preparing his officers and leadership for the event. He was right there on scene, at the mobile command center. Garcia watch this all as it took place.
Lets start with this video from last night (It’s only 15 seconds) A rally attendee is walking away from the convention center:
The Mayor. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo is a party Democrat who held a campaign event last week for Hillary Clinton. In responding to the brutality last night he blamed Donald Trump and his supporters for not accepting the beatings with more appreciation:
(via AP) The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with. “At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” Liccardo said.
This was Mayor Sam Liccardo last week:
Mr. Liccardo was not on hand to greet republican candidate Donald Trump. Exactly the opposite, Mr. Liccardo told his police chief, Garcia, to ensure that candidate Trump found an inhospitable venue.
Police Chief Eddie Garcia did exactly what he was instructed.
Video #2. Here is another rally attendee walking away from the venue, minding his own business, and completely within line-of-sight of the police that were only steps away:
Video #3. Here is video of two locations again only a few steps away from police. The attacks were so brutal and dangerous the media was even calling 911 to report the violence. However, the 911 calls were unanswered, and the San Jose Police Department were directly on scene watching:
Video #4. Here is a female rally attendee who was walking toward the Marriott hotel, when she was set upon by a hoard of approximately 100 Mexican flag waving mob members. The Marriott hotel is less than a block away from the convention center where the rally was held. In the background of the mob approximately 10 police officers are shown standing and watching. This video is disturbing:
According to CNN Reporter Sara Murray, this woman got what she deserved. After all, she was taunting the raging mob:
Video #5 Another guest in the hotel began taping footage of the mob from the inside looking out. The Marriott had clerks acting as guards and were holding the doors closed in a feeble attempt to provide security. The Marriott did not have additional security because the San Jose Police Department was stationed outside. Let that sink in as you watch this:
This is how the Associated Press is reporting on the events:
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP)— A group of protesters attacked Donald Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate’s rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests. At least four people were taken into custody, though police didn’t release total arrest figures Thursday night. One officer was assaulted, police Sgt. Enrique Garcia said. There were no immediate reports of injuries and no major property damage, police said. (read more)
This is what Trump supporters exited the convention center to find at the conclusion of the rally:
This is what happened when Trump supporters tried to walk through that mob:
This is what the Associated Press calls “no reports of injury“:
No, that’s not an AP camera man right there…. couldn’t be, right. Right?
Nothing to see here folks. Move along… move along:
After all, things went exactly as planned….
…Right Chief Garcia?
Exactly as planned!
AdvertisementsMr Macron is expected to drive a hard bargain over Brexit, striking a strident note during his campaign by warning that negotiations would be “no walk in the park” and that Britain would be left in “servitude” as a result of leaving the EU.
However, the result was welcomed by some senior Conservatives who argued Mr Macron would bring much-needed stability to Europe ahead of the Brexit negotiations.
“We don’t want to be negotiating with an EU in existential crisis – which it would be if Le Pen had won,” said Crispin Blunt, the Tory chairman of the Foreign Affairs select committee.
European leaders rushed to welcome the victory of Mr Macron who had flown EU flags at rallies throughout his campaign and has promised to lead a ‘rebirth’ of the European project.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, had a “very warm” call with Mr Macron, his team reported while the German chancellor called his election a “victory for a strong, united Europe”.
Ms Le Pen’s party had made it clear they were gunning for at least 40 per cent of the vote. She failed to achieve such heights, but her performance maintained her record of improving the Front National’s score in every election since she became leader in 2011.
With around 11 million votes in her favour, Ms Le Pen, 48, won more than twice the amount her estranged father and FN co-founder, Jean-Marie, mustered in 2002. Ms Le Pen said the “historic and massive result” turned her “patriotic and republican alliance” into the “main opposition force against the new president’s project”.On Tuesday the preliminary injunction court in Haarlem tried the case on whether or not 4-year-old deaf failed asylum seeker Kalma had the right to an operation that will make her able to hear. The lawyers' arguments focused mainly on whether the operation on the deaf girl is a "medical necessity", AD reports.
Kalma and her parents fled from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the Netherlands two years ago. Their request for asylum was recently rejected. In the two years the family lived in the Netherlands, they discovered that Kalma is deaf in both ears. A hearing implant, which costs 60 thousand euros, may help her hear again. Normally Kalma would be entitled to this operation, but seeing as her family's asylum application was rejected, the case ended up in court.
The parents, supported by Defence for children, believe that Kalma is entitled to this "necessary" surgery while she is in the Netherlands, according to international treaties. There is almost no chance that the girl will be able to get such a surgery back in Afghanistan. The surgery is also time sensitive - the procedure combined with the recovery period is a long term process and needs to be done before her 5th birthday for the greatest chance of success. Kalma turned 4 last week.
The family's lawyer argued that only a doctor can decide what is medically necessary and denying the girl this surgery is a violation of her human rights. The State earlier determined that the surgery is not necessary because Kalma is not in mortal danger.
The court will rule on February 1st.Smartphone Shipments To India Declined For The First Time Ever Last Quarter, Says IDC
India may be Asia’s fastest-growing smartphone market, but shipments slowed down last quarter for the first time. According to IDC, the quarter-over-quarter lag was caused by a surplus of inventory left over after India’s festive season in October and November.
During Q4 2014, smartphone shipments fell four percent quarter-over-quarter, but fared better than featurephones, which dropped by 14 percent. Shipments of featurephones began declining in 2013 as more Indian consumers nixed them in favor of inexpensive Android smartphones from Samsung and Micromax.
As IDC’s latest numbers show, featurephones are continuing a slow but gradual slide into oblivion. The firm found that smartphones accounted for 35 percent of all mobile phones shipped in Q4 2014, a considerable increase from 13 percent a year ago.
IDC says smartphone shipments to India will continue to be slow in Q1 2015 as vendors sell off their remaining inventory.
Vendors who have prepared 4G smartphones, however, may fare better because telecoms are preparing to debut 4G LTE service. Users who are tired of unreliable 3G connections will be eager to snatch up 4G devices and data plans as soon as they are available. Manufacturers that might benefit include China’s Xiaomi and Huawei, which have already launched inexpensive 4G smartphones in India.
In terms of how individual companies performed in Q4 2014, Samsung managed to hold on to its lead with a 22 percent vendor share, even though its overall market share is declining thanks to heavy competition from the iPhone as well as other Android smartphone makers. Micromax took the number two spot with an 18 percent share. Intex came in third with 8 percent, while Lava took 7 percent and Xiaomi 4 percent.When the betting line for the Los Angeles Rams’ Week 9 game opened, it didn’t seem like much. It was just 3.5 points – no big deal. However, that line has since moved to four points, which makes the line far more notable.
It’s the first time the Rams have been favored by four or more points on the road since Week 1 of 2005 when they were 4.5-point favorites over the 49ers. Since then, they’ve been 3.5-point favorites three times with the most recent game coming in Week 17 of the 2015 season.
All things considered, it’s pretty shocking that the Rams haven’t been favored by this many points on the road in more than a decade. We all know the Rams haven’t been good in a long, long time, but being favored by fewer than four points in every single road game since 2006 is shocking.
Going back to that 2005 game where they were 4.5-point favorites over the 49ers, the Rams actually lost that one. San Francisco knocked off St. Louis by a score of 28-25 despite only putting up 217 yards of total offense compared to the Rams’ 405.
Marc Bulger threw for 362 yards and two touchdowns, but his comeback wasn’t enough to overcome a 28-9 deficit in the second half.Get your hands on an exclusive Summer Special membership package today. Save yourself over 25% on 3 months' membership and get an XP-boosting aura and amulet to help prepare for the Elf City launch!
The Enlightenment Aura grants you a double XP boost for 2 hours every week throughout June, July and August! Even once summer's over, the aura's yours forever - and as long as you're a member in future summers, you'll get the same bonus then.
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The Summer Special's a great way to get access to all our members' content - including these amazing updates, coming in the summer months:
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Elf City Quest
Finish the Mourning's End series with this Grandmaster quest, and herald the opening of Prifddinas itself.
Combat 2014
Special Attacks and 138 combat are coming back, and you'll also get your hands on the Legacy Mode Beta!
Barbarian Assault Revamp and Penance King
This mighty minigame is getting a graphical overhaul, better rewards, a new hard mode, and the dreaded Penance King!
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Finally, this autumn, the city you've been waiting for finally opens its gates. Eight districts, a brand new Grand Exchange, and more crystal gear than you can shake a staff at will be yours to enjoy! Battle, quest, and skill your way through this summer to reach your final destination: Prifddinas, the Elf City!
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The RuneScape TeamFull Superpole qualifying results (2) from the eighth round of the 2015 World Superbike Championship at Misano Marco Simoncelli World Circuit, Italy.
1. Tom Sykes GBR Kawasaki Racing ZX-10R 1m 34.214s
2. Leon Haslam GBR Red Devils Roma Aprilia RSV4 1m 34.426s
3. Davide Giugliano ITA Aruba.it Racing Ducati 1199R 1m 34.442s
4. Jonathan Rea GBR Kawasaki Racing ZX-10R 1m 34.459s
5. Max Biaggi ITA Red Devils Roma Aprilia RSV4 1m 34.463s
6. Jordi Torres ESP Red Devils Roma Aprilia RSV4 1m 34.551s
7. Alex Lowes GBR Voltcom Crescent Suzuki GSX-R1000 1m 34.811s
8. Ayrton Badovini ITA BMW Italia S1000RR 1m 34.881s
9. Sylvain Guintoli FRA PATA Honda CBR1000RR 1m 35.061s
10. Michele Pirro ITA Aruba.it Racing Ducati 1199R 1m 35.139s
11. Chaz Davies GBR Aruba.it Racing Ducati 1199R 1m 35.473s
12. Matteo Baiocco ITA Althea Ducati 1199R 1m 35.862s
Grid positions determined by SP1
13. Leandro Mercado ARG Barni Ducati 1199R 1m 35.285s
14. Niccol? Canepa ITA Althea Ducati 1199R 1m 35.464s
15. Michael van der Mark NED PATA Honda CBR1000RR 1m 35.642s
16. Markus Reiterberger GER BMW S1000 RR 1m 35.658s
17. Roman Ramos ESP GO Eleven Kawasaki ZX-10R1m 36.205s
18. Leon Camier GBR MV Agusta F4 RR 1m 36.247s
19. Randy de Puniet FRA Voltcom Crescent Suzuki GSX-R1000 1m 36.262s
20. David Salom ESP Pedercini Kawasaki ZX-10R Did not set time
Did progress to Superpole, grid positions determined
21. Santiago Barragan ESP Grillini Kawasaki ZX-10R 1m 38.523s
22. Gianluca Vizziello ITA Grillini Kawasaki ZX-10R 1m 38.675s
23. Christophe Ponsson FRA Pedercini Kawasaki ZX-10R 1m 38.931s
24. Gabor Rizmayer HUN Team Toth BMW S1000RR 1m 39.792s
25. Imre Toth HUN Team Toth BMW S1000RR 1m 41.415sIntroduction
Lurking on the foggy periphery of the American psyche for decades, a rapidly developing Prevailing Gray Swan has finally come to roost with a vengeance. This year’s presidential election process has been such an incessant, abominable circus that it has flipped a kill switch deep inside each of us that we didn’t know existed, perhaps evolutionarily serving as a societal-level purging mechanism in the guise of an epiphany. The epiphany is that the American people — in emergent collective disgust — are being abruptly forced to define who they are, what they stand for, and what they are willing to tolerate in terms of a viable government and who is fit and worthy to lead them. The biological trigger appears to be that the bar can go no lower, with these candidates our capacity to adapt finally hit rock-bottom in 2016. The consequences loom large: we are at a fork in the road and defaulting to the usual knee-jerk paths of least resistance — wanton denial or acceptance of the barely palatable — has now crash landed.
Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States. (Source: WikiMedia (public domain))
Much has been written about this election but what is unique about this intelligence briefing is that the election and its machinations is crafted to be seen through the eyes of the US Constitution’s framers while they witness their magnificent creation’s breakdown, failure and aftermath. In doing so, this intelligence briefing is blind to political leanings; yes, it focuses on Secretary Clinton but that is only because her path delineates where the Constitutional crisis lies. In the process of presenting the facts, a major objective was to eviscerate all of the opacity, obfuscation and propaganda with laser focus. Then, with diligence, preserve only the quintessential skeletal elements of justice and government in a context of what those ideals should mean — must mean — in the 21st-century real-world despite its complexity, murkiness, consequences, brutal compromises, and frightening uncertainty. We urgently need to do this now; our current, severely distorted sense of justice needs to be recalibrated back to its original settings because failing such remedial response, a functional society will no longer be possible.
Simply: Americans are being forced to either defend the spirit of the US Constitution and the gifts it afforded while its ink was drying or detach from its essence and proceed down a dark path to immanent oblivion. The dilemma we face transcends the technicalities of academic law per se; fancy sheepskins are not required to be an equal participant in the determination of our fate, only lucid command of common sense: we now — no matter what walk of life — must look in the mirror, draw a line in the sand, and defend that position with spine, and, should push comes to shove, teeth.Jose Mourinho is set to rest David De Gea, Nemanja Matic, Ashley Young and Phil Jones in Manchester United's Carabao Cup quarterfinal at Bristol City on Wednesday.
United have a run of five games in 14 days following their trip to Ashton Gate and Mourinho has taken the opportunity to give four senior players the night off.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan is set to feature after the Armenia midfielder was omitted from eight of the last nine matchday squads.
Paul Pogba will also make his return after serving a three-game suspension.
Antonio Valencia has been added to an injury list that already included Eric Bailly and Marouane Fellaini after the right-back limped off with a hamstring injury during the 2-1 win at West Bromwich Albion on Sunday.
Manchester City and Arsenal have already booked their places in the semifinals, the draw for which will take place on Wednesday night.
They could be joined by United and Chelsea, who face Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge.
United are defending the trophy they won last season, and Marcos Rojo said the competition was a priority for Mourinho and his squad.
He told MUTV: "People talk about this trophy, saying it is not important, but when you have had the experience of getting a long way in the competition and eventually winning it, everyone wants to do it again.
"I think it is important, even though we are away from home, that we go there really positive and try to take the game to them, impose ourselves on the game and try to dominate proceedings from the word go.
"Hopefully, by imposing our style, we can come away with a victory that we need."Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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President Obama speaks with reporters at the White House. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Ad Policy
President Obama has riled loyal Democrats by tossing Social Security onto the table in his poker game with Republicans. Not to worry. I think I know how this story ends. A year from now, when the 2014 congressional campaigns are hot underway, Republicans will be running against Obama-the-slasher and promising to protect Social Security from the bloodthirsty Democrats.
By then, having lost on his too-cute strategy, the president will be reduced to lamely reassuring old folks. Really, he didn’t actually intend to cut their benefits, really he didn’t. It was just a ploy to get tightwad conservatives to give in a little on tax increases. Republicans can pull out the videotapes in which Obama and team explain their high-minded purpose—sacrificing the Democratic party’s sacred honor in order to get Republicans to play nice.
Forget about that. House Speaker John Boehner promptly brushed off Obama’s gambit. If the president wants to whack Social Security, Boehner suggested he can do it, but don’t expect the GOP to collaborate in such a plot. “If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to shore up these programs, there is no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes,” Boehner said.
The president set this trap himself; now Boehner will spring it on him. Does Obama not remember how Democrats lost control of the House back in 2010? The party got very little credit for enacting health care reform because the Republicans had already demonized the accomplishment as a threat to the much-beloved program of Medicare. The rightwingers promised to save Medicare from bloodthirsty Democrats by repealing Obama’s new reform program. This was all a ridiculous lie, of course, but the White House declined to call out the liars. Instead, Obama responded with flowers. This time, he is taking Republicans out to diinner.
So here is what I expect to happen. The elaborate and confusing charade of deficit politics will continue through this year and next—both parties solemnly seeking to shrink the swollen federal deficits—and distracting Washington from the real economic threat of stagnation or worse. At the end of the day, Social Security will not be cut. Nor will much else be accomplished, for good or for ill. Yes, the two parties may eventually approve some grandiose budget resolutions—official promises to cut spending drastically. But that process is usually a charade in itself with a long-established history of fiction and fantasy.
These budget promises do not become real until Congress authorizes projects and appropriates the money. The appropriators have the real power and they can change the numbers and designs and whatever else they wish. Depending on how senators and representatives feel at the time, they can embrace the promises and cut specific spending or totally ignore whatever the budget resolution had promised the public.
This is why I expect Social Security to survive the onslaught. When it gets to the money roll calls this year and next, individual members of Congress will have to swallow some big lies in order to vote for cutting Social Security benefits. First, of course, the cost-of-living gimmicks Obama has proposed will not shave a penny off the federal deficits or debt. That is because the Social Security benefits are not paid by the federal budget. They are drawn from the Social Security Trust Fund—the money paid in by working people every payday. People know this is their money, not some government handout.
So who gets tell the folks that their FiCA deductions were a joke—only an accounting fiction? The financial problems facing Social Security are easily fixed (as Obama himself has said) and are actually 30 years away. When the Congressional Budget Office is required to “score” Obama’s so-called cost-of-living reform, it will be compelled to announce that whacking the old folks contributes not a penny to reducing the federal government’s deficits.
In fact, there is an even bigger lie concealed by the fiscal scolds and ignored by witless media, too. Again and again, self-righteous critics have portrayed Social Security as the profligate monster borrowing from the Treasury and sucking the life out of federal government.
Guess what? It's the other way around. The federal government borrows from Social Security. The Treasury has been borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund for 30 years, and the debt to Social Security beneficiaries now totals nearly $3 trillion. The day is approaching when that money will be needed for its original purpose: paying Social Security benefits to the working people who contributed to the fund.
That is the real crisis that makes the financial barons and their media collaborators so anxious to cut Social Security benefits. They would like to get out of repaying the debt—that is, giving the money back to the people who earned it. The only way to do this is cut the benefits—over and over again. Count on it. If the president and Congress succeed in this malicious scheme, they will come back again and again to cut more and more. If the politicians join this sordid conspiracy, voters should come after them with pitchforks and torches.
How much will elected progressives budge on Obama's scheme? Read John Nichols's analysis.Image caption The government says protesters will have their say before the treaty is ratified in Poland
Thousands of protesters have taken to Poland's streets over the signing of an international treaty activists say amounts to internet censorship.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Tokyo on Thursday.
The treaty, known as Acta, aims to establish international standards to enforce intellectual property rights.
But critics say it could curb freedom of expression, and government websites have been hacked in protest.
Later on Thursday, hundreds of people took to the streets of the eastern city of Lublin to express their anger over the treaty.
Several marches had taken place in cities across the nation on Wednesday, says the BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw.
Crowds of mostly young people held banners with slogans such as "no to censorship" and "a free internet".
After convening a special government meeting to discuss the issue, Mr Tusk said the government would not be blackmailed by the treaty's opponents.
There would be ample time for public discussion about the treaty before it was ratified by the Polish parliament, he said.
Poland was one of several European Union countries, including Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Greece, to sign the treaty on Thursday but it appeared to be the only place where it caused protest.
The agreement was signed by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea last year.
Acta shares similarities with America's Stop Online Piracy Act, which US lawmakers set aside last week after Wikipedia and Google blacked out or partially obscured their websites for a day in protest.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
FAIRLAWN, OH - A body was discovered in a garbage truck in Fairlawn early Saturday morning.
Police got the call around 4 a.m. from a Republic Waste Services truck driver who told them that he thought there was a body in the back of his truck.
The driver was stopped at a commercial area on West Market Street, and his route picked up trash from three different jurisdictions. Fairlawn police are now working with detectives from Akron and Copley to determine where the body came from.
The identity of the deceased person has not been released pending notification of next of kin.
Fairlawn police are asking that anyone with information - or questions - on this call the detective bureau at 330-670-4300.Australian premier Tony Abbott on Friday said Narendra Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister should not be blamed for the 2002 riots in the state as he was just a "presiding officer" who has been cleared in "endless inquiries".
"My understanding is that there has been endless inquiries into this and Mr Modi has always been cleared. That certainly is good enough for me," Abbott said in an interview on an English news channel.
Elaborating his thoughts on the issue, the Australian Prime Minister said he accepts that sometimes "we" (leaders) are presiding when terrible things happen.
"I don't believe the presiding officer should be blamed just because something terrible happens in the country over which he is presiding," he said. Abbott, who is on a visit to the country to deepen bilateral ties, recalled Modi's visit to Australia twice as Chief Minister of Gujarat.
"He struck out some good friendships in Australia and he has quite a cheer squad in Australia. There was tremendous enthusiasm for him and for the change of government among the half a million strong Indian community," he said adding that even Australian politicians were "convinced" that he was going to bring about a "real fresh breath of air" to the government and the economy of India.
Calling India as a "first class international citizen", the Australian Prime Minister said he wants his country to be the source of energy for India.
Talking about the India-Australia nuclear deal, he said "this is a very important sign of trust between our two governments. I want it to be a trusted partnership and plainly, selling uranium to India, which can take place under this agreement, is a great sign of trust that exists between India and Australia".
Asked if Australia supports India's membership of Nuclear Supplies Group, Abbott said the fact that both countries have signed the nuclear cooperation agreement "means that we think that India is a first class international citizen and is entitled to membership of all the various clubs that goes with that".
He said Australia was confident that India will use Australian uranium for peaceful purposes. He said Australia, which has about 40 per cent of the world's known uranium deposits, was open to business and "that means for coal, for uranium, for gas, for beef, dairy, wines... We are open for business".
Abbott said he would like Australia to be in a position to provide India the energy security that India need in years and decades to come. "Not just uranium, but obviously in coal and perhaps in gas as well," he said.
Talking about Pakistan, he said Australia seeks good relations with it and "we hope for better relations between Pakistan and India overtime".
"I know that Prime Minister Modi, in a sense, reached out to Pakistan upon his election and let's hope that there will be positive developments there," he added.School children rescued as flash flood strands bus
Updated
A bus load of school children has been rescued from flash flooding in Brisbane as drenching rain buffets south-east Queensland.
A swift water rescue crew retrieved the 16 children after a bus became stranded in flash flooding at Acacia Ridge on the city's southside.
Water was rising in Learoyd Street around the bus but the students were pulled to safety within about an hour.
Queensland Fire and Rescue Service spokesman Andrew Sturgess says they had a lucky escape.
"Certainly a potentially dangerous situation," he said.
"It was just fortunate the water stopped rising at that time otherwise they would have been trapped.
"It's a message that we want to get out there - if it's flooded, forget it."
Emergency Management Queensland is urging residents to prepare for flash flooding with more heavy rain expected in the state's south-east.
Falls of up to 200mm are forecast for some areas.
EMQ spokesman Bruce Grady says the slow-moving system is nowhere near as severe as ex-tropical cyclone Oswald last month.
"We have got a very different weather pattern at the moment," he said.
"We are not seeing the same amount of rain - we are certainly not seeing the same level of wind from this event, so a very different set of circumstances.
"People just need to be alert to what is possible."
Deluge continues
It has been a hectic time for emergency crews as heavy rain drenches south-east Queensland, with more to come.
Up to 90 millimetres of rain has fallen across parts of Caboolture and the Sunshine Coast in the last 24 hours and more than 60 millimetres across Logan and the Gold Coast.
Brisbane's CBD has been spared most of the heavy falls but the weather bureau says a reprieve from the extreme weather is not expected until the end of the week.
Emergency crews have rescued a number of motorists from flooded roads, while dozens of traffic accidents have been reported.
A number of roads have been closed due to flash flooding in Brisbane's south-west, with landslips reported north-east of the city at Mount Mee.
The Brisbane City Council has opened four centres with sandbags for residents in low-lying areas.
At least one school on the Gold Coast hinterland has been closed because of flooding.
The Darling Downs and the Granite Belt have also been included on the list of regions to prepare for extreme weather.
A swift water rescue crew were called to save a person who was trapped in their car at Toowoomba.
Dam releases
Water is being released from Wivenhoe and North Pine dams in south-east Queensland as a precaution.
Earlier today Wivenhoe was at 88 per cent capacity and North Pine was at 95 per cent.
Seqwater spokesman Mike Foster said releases could be stepped up.
"That will really depend on the volume of the falls over the next couple of days," he said.
"As always with rainfall, it depends on where the rain falls and the intensity of the falls.
"There's a huge difference between 200 millimetres falling over 48 hours and 200 millimetres falling over two hours."
Meanwhile, the Sunshine Coast council has placed its local disaster management group on alert.
A flood warning has been issued for the Mary River between Moy Pocket and Gympie.
Topics: emergency-inc |
making any rash comments and showed a more presidential side of himself. But the comments that Trump made later in speeches at the subsequent campaign rallies completely negated that. Trump indirectly called on gun advocates to stop Clinton, and even dubbed President Obama and Clinton as co-founders of IS.
Indeed, Trump's original appeal was that he'd "tell it like it is" to the political elite, and that carried enough of a populist electorate through the Republican Party primaries. "That core group of supporters will stay with him and continue to see him standing up to the status quo. However, for much of the electorate, Trump's 'telling it like it is' is seen as a dangerous, temperamental, thin-skinned, and combative personality that is unfit for the White House," Mahaffee said.
The establishment got rid of the heavy headache called Bernie Sanders, yet his movement remains strong and it seems that most of his supporters are completely determined not to support Hillary. Normally, these progressive voters, which include a significant part of the American youth, would not compromise to participate in another bi-partisan process, but this time they have a third choice.
Therefore, the new headache of the establishment is called Jill Stein. The leader of the Green Party is clearly an unknown factor which probably makes the establishment mechanisms even more nervous and puzzled on how to handle her. It is probably the first time in the American political process that a third party comes with a remarkable momentum which can't be clearly measured, at least for now.
What brings further anxiety to the establishment, is the probability that Stein will manage to attract more progressive voters from the big tank of US citizens who have chosen not to participate in the political process so far. This may change balance to an unknown level against the establishment's number one candidate, Hillary Clinton.
As various scandals against Hillary are still coming on surface, the establishment realizes that she has reached her limits and it's more probable that she will lose voters rather than gain new ones.
So, inside this completely uncertain situation, it is natural that the establishment should start preparing its best alternative, Donald Trump. The saturated base of the Republican populist voters is not enough for the presidency. This explains the warnings of the pundits to Trump, to "regulate" his attitude and rhetoric. With the advantage of "clean past" in the political field compared to "dirty" Clintons, he could attract more Right Wing moderate voters.Adam Schreck, The Associated Press
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- The United Arab Emirates on Monday laid out a strategic framework for a newly created space agency that aims to integrate various arms of the Gulf federation's burgeoning space industry.
The seven-state federation, perhaps best known for its oil wealth and extravagant attractions like Dubai's Palm-shaped islands and record-breaking Burj Khalifa skyscraper, is fast establishing itself as the Arab world's leader in the space sector.
The UAE Space Agency, created last year by presidential decree, aims to regulate and support the country's space sector, which includes existing Earth-orbiting satellite programs and plans for a mission to Mars in 2020.
Agency Chairman Khalifa Mohammed Thani al-Rumaithi said the space industry will help diversify the country's economy and create highly skilled jobs for a growing youth population.
"The United Arab Emirates is seeking to confirm its status as a spacefaring nation in which the industry plays a key role in sustainable economic development," he told a gathering at an event rolling out the federal body in the capital, Abu Dhabi, that featured models of existing Emirati satellites and waiters serving space-themed canapés including hummus in metal squeeze tubes.
Space technology is one of several high-tech industries the OPEC member nation is championing as a way to create jobs and diversify an economy still heavily dependent on oil.
Thuraya, an Emirates-based satellite phone operator, was responsible for the country's first commercial satellite, launched in 2000.
The Emirates' first government-backed satellite, an Earth-observation satellite known as DubaiSat-1, blasted into orbit atop a Russian rocket launched from Kazakhstan in 2009. It and the follow-up DubaiSat-2 were collaborations between Emirati engineers and a South Korean satellite firm.
Abu Dhabi's Al Yah Satellite Communications Co., better known as Yahsat, hopes to put its third satellite into orbit in 2016. Its first communications satellite was launched aboard an Arianespace rocket from French Guiana in 2011.
The announcement comes less than three weeks after the Dubai-based team behind a 2020 mission to Mars announced that its probe will circle the planet studying its atmosphere, including changes over time and how surface features such as volcanoes, deserts and canyons affect it.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said earlier this month that he hoped that probe, named "Hope," will provide inspiration for the Arab world. It is the first Mars mission being attempted by any Arab country.
Some 75 Emirati engineers are currently working on the Mars project, and officials hope to double that number by 2020.
Aabar Investments, which is backed by the Abu Dhabi government, is a key investor in Richard Branson's space tourism company, Virgin Galactic.
It agreed to pump $280 million into the space startup in 2009 in exchange for a third of the company, and later raised its stake to 38 percent after agreeing to additional funding for the development of a satellite launch program. Its initial deal called for the development of a spaceport in Abu Dhabi.
Virgin Galactic's plans are now uncertain after its experimental rocket ship, SpaceShipTwo, broke apart in flight over California's Mojave Desert in November.Russian President claims that the weapons to Kiev are already being supplied by the West.
BUDAPEST (Sputnik) — The West is already supplying weaponry to Kiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin said when asked about Russia's possible reaction to arms deliveries discussed by the West.
© AP Photo / Pavlo Palamarchuk US House Proposes $1Bln in Lethal Aid, Military Assistance to Ukraine
"According to our information, the arms are already being delivered," Putin said at a press conference Tuesday after talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The Russian President mentioned, however, that there is nonetheless a significant reduction in military activity in southeastern Ukraine (Donbas), where Kiev forces have been fighting against independence supporters since last spring.
"Regarding the hostilities [in Donbas], we [Russia] generally mark a significant, and I want to stress that, reduction of military activity there," Putin said.
The Russian President added that the sooner the suspension of hostilities and withdrawal of artillery is implemented in Donbas, the sooner the Ukrainian conflict will be settled.
Last week, a ceasefire agreement was reached between Ukraine's conflicting sides following 16-hour talks between the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France in Minsk. The previous ceasefire agreement, signed by the Contact Group on Ukraine in the Belarusian capital in September, 2014, failed to hold.
Also in September, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked the US Congress for lethal aid, however, US President Barack Obama refused to grant the request, although the United States has been providing Ukraine with non-lethal assistance.
Meanwhile, a number of European countries, including Germany, have rejected lethal aid to Ukraine saying that an influx of weapons into the conflict-torn country would not help solve the ongoing crisis, which has claimed the lives of over 5,600 people, according to the latest UN estimates.
France, Italy, Spain and Finland have all rejected providing Ukraine with lethal assistance. Russia has warned that arms deliveries to Kiev that the US Congress has been calling for could lead to a sharp increase in violence in Donbas, where fighting intensified at the start of 2015.Staff at a hospital in Sydney's inner west should pay greater attention to the concerns of parents after a 13-year-old boy died hours after being discharged, the NSW Deputy State Coroner has recommended.
Carey Alexander was taken to Concord Hospital by his mother on August 9, 2014, when flu-like symptoms he had experienced for a few days started to get steadily worse.
Carey Alexander, 13, died of borderline myocarditis after being discharged from hospital. Credit:Nine News
While he was being cared for in the emergency department, he was extremely lethargic, had an irregular heartbeat, lost consciousness for 30 seconds after fainting in a toilet, and was unable to walk without assistance.
Throughout the night, his mother told clinical staff she was worried about several things, including the fact her son's skin was blotchy.Of course, SAM doesn't currently hold any office -- nor could it likely legally run for one, under current laws -- and her (yes, yer) conversations are still very limited. But she's an experiment to create a representative that listens to people and responds to their questions with facts and policy positions. Currently, you can ask her about a number of New Zealand's issues from a pre-selected list of topics, though SAM's capability will theoretically grow the more public opinion she ingests.
It's fitting that SAM was built to represent New Zealand given its recent political upheaval, when Jacinda Ardern was sworn in as Prime Minister heading a three-party coalition government. While Arden's appointment was somewhat surprising (she's the third female PM and youngest in 150 years), her coalition started their administration with renewable energy goals and plans for a minimum wage hike. She's also taken no lip from Donald Trump.
"SAM and Jacinda would likely get on very well as they are both receptive, interested in ideas, and like to engaged with contemporary issues and society," SAM's creator Nick Gerritsen told Tech In Asia.
But SAM could be the politician of the future, one that could theoretically field thousands of inquiries at once. While bots are only unbiased as far as they're programmed to be, an AI chatbot could become a political asset or even influence. By New Zealand's next election in 2020, Gerritsen hopes SAM is more advanced, though he wasn't clear on whether she could legally run, telling Tech In Asia that "SAM is an enabler and we plan to operate within existing legal boundaries."Zee Media Bureau/Salome Phelamei
New York: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a key summit on climate change Tuesday in New York where more than 100 world leaders including US President Barack Obama will attend the meeting.
However, PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi jinping are reportedly skipping the event.
At the meeting, Mr Ban Ki-moon will discuss the issues pertaining to climate with the leaders.
The aim of this meeting is to stir member states to sign up to a comprehensive new global climate agreement at talks in Paris next year.
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time. Now is the time for action,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said ahead of the summit, reports the BBC.
Three separate sessions will run simultaneously in three different rooms during the one-day meeting.
Earlier on Sunday, Mr Ban took part in a climate change march in New York with thousands of protesters. The march also saw the participation of Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who has recently been appointed a UN representative on climate change. DiCarpio is expected to give one of the opening speeches at the summit.
On the other hand, scientists has warned that more carbon pollution was emitted globally last year than ever before, chiefly due to China, the US and India.Today the 2 year old child of Pastafarians George and Tammy Clarke was killed during the ritual that seems it was taken straight from a medieval torture book.
Their way of baptizing a child is to put them in a pot of water then wait for it to boil which they then tip the water out into the sink keeping the baby in the pot holding a fork underneath catching it and all the while chanting “that’s a spicy meat-a-ball”
“It’s not all bad news” George said “Now that our child’s died we can send her body to that guy who makes drones out of dead animals, it’ll be so fun”
George and Tammy seem to be unaware that they will be going to jail for a long time.
AdvertisementsPalestine solidarity rallies were held in response to Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – One of Canada’s oldest national Jewish organizations is speaking out after some of its members claim seeing disturbing events at two Palestinian solidarity rallies in Vancouver this weekend.
They had been planned in response to US President Donald Trump’s announcement to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but Aidan Fishman with the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada says that was not the case.
Pro-Palestine protestors have just ripped the #Israeli flag out of Adams hands @NEWS1130 pic.twitter.com/6kIEugX6uz — Hana Mae N. Nassar (@HanaMaeNassar) December 10, 2017
“The target of these rallies is not the United States or its president really, the target was the state of Israel, and its existence as a Jewish state,” says Fishman, who is the Interim National Director of the organization.
He explains people have been reaching out to the group to say the rallies promoted anti-Semitic messages, as well as messages he finds “disturbing.”
“You have people marching at the rally, shouting again in Arabic ‘millions of martyrs are marching to Jerusalem,’ that’s what they’re saying in Arabic. These are all things that imply or condone the use of violence in this conflict over Jerusalem, which we find to be very disturbing.”
According to Fishman, Israeli flags were also purposefully burned and ripped apart by pro-Palestinian protesters. “That’s very worrying. That’s not a sign of productive or peaceful protest on the decision about the status of Jerusalem. That’s clearly a call for the state of Israel in its entirety to be burned or destroyed.”
(Hana Mae Nassar, NEWS 1130 Photo)
Organizers of the Solidarity for Palestine rallies say the gatherings were meant to be peaceful, but Fishman claims they were anything but. B’nai Brith Canada is now calling on the Jewish community in Vancouver to come forward and urge the City to take action since these events are said to have taken place on public property.
“Public space has to be there for freedom of expression, for both sides of this issue to share their opinion and have their voice heard. But one side can’t be attacking and intimidating the other side in a public space.”
Fishman says the Vancouver Police Department has been told, and claims an investigation is ongoing.A man was shot to death early Friday in Marietta after he appeared to be pulling a gun at a social gathering he had earlier been asked to leave, police said.
About 2:50 a.m., officers responded to the 700 block of Franklin Road, building 9, Marietta police spokesman Charles McPhilamy said. The woman who called 911 said she shot the man after he tried to force his way into her apartment.
The man, identified as Laurentis Forrest, 26, and two women were asked to leave the gathering about an hour before the shooting happened, witnesses told police.
“The witnesses stated the male returned an hour later and was enraged, demanding to be let back inside,” McPhilamy said. “They stated he began kicking the door and making verbal threats toward everyone inside, and that when they opened the door the male abruptly reached for his waistband as though he was drawing a firearm.”
Apparent self-defense shooting occurred overnight. One involved party deceased. Click link for more details. https://t.co/up2ftKs0qE — Marietta Police (@MariettaPD) June 2, 2017
A woman in the residence then drew her gun and shot Forrest multiple times, witnesses told police. Forrest was taken to WellStar Kennestone Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The shooting appears to be self-defense, McPhilamy said. The Cobb County District Attorney’s Office has reviewed facts and witness statements. No charges have been filed.
In other news:The payroll tax holiday hasn't done anything to stimulate job growth, so Republicans may not support extending the tax cut favored by President Obama and Democrats -- at least in its current formula -- a key GOP senator said Sunday.
Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and a member of the failed Super Committee, said Congress is working to address the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefit extensions before the end of the year when they are set to expire.
But, he said, even though Republicans backed tax breaks under George W. Bush that were not paid for, the payroll tax holiday is a different ball of wax.
"The problem here is that the payroll tax doesn't go into general revenue, it supports Social Security. And you can't keep extending the payroll tax holiday and have a secure Social Security. That's the first problem," Kyl told "Fox News Sunday."
Kyl said the second problem is the effort by Democrats to raise the current tax rate for top earners -- which Democrats argue unfairly favors the wealthiest Americans -- to pay for the payroll tax holiday.
"By taxing the people who provide the jobs, you put off the day we have economic recovery and job creation in this country," Kyl said. "And that's precisely what the Democratic plan would do. It would hit those people, the small businesses who we all acknowledge are the ones who create the jobs coming out of economic difficulty."
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said not extending the payroll tax holiday will amount to a tax increase of $1,500 for the average family.
"If we don't provide the tax relief that President Obama has asked for, families are going to see an increase in taxes," said Durbin, who appeared with Kyl. "I can't believe that at a time when working families in this country are struggling paycheck to paycheck, when we need them to have the resources to buy thing in our economy, to create wealth and profitability and more jobs, that the Republican position is, they'll raise the payroll tax on working families? I think that just defies logic."
Some economists argue that failing to extend both the payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits will cut growth by 1 percent to 2 percent next year and cost more than a half million jobs. Others argue those are bogus numbers.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he finds it difficult to grasp that Republicans would oppose a tax cut.
"They've spent so much time fighting to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the millionaires, it's hard to believe they wouldn't want to preserve a tax cut for the middle class," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I think it's very hard for Republicans to vote against this given their past history of defending the tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. If they don't, if it doesn't pass once, we're going to put it on the floor again and again, and we would be open to other ideas of paying for it if this one fails," he added.
Democrats have contended that Republicans are afraid to raise taxes on high-income Americans because it would violate a no-new taxes pledge proposed by the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, which is led by Grover Norquist.
Norquist, who followed Schumer, said he doesn't oppose extending the payroll tax holiday on its face, as long as it isn't accompanied by additional tax increases. And while he said he could tolerate a short-term measure, the whole point of the plan was that it is supposed to be temporary.
"Obama was the guy who said that this was a tax holiday. Calling it a tax holiday kind of suggests they viewed it as temporary. Holidays aren't permanent," he said.
Norquist added that the reason Republicans are sticking with the pledge -- signed by 236 House lawmakers and 41 senators -- not to raise taxes is not because they are afraid of him -- as Schumer suggested -- but because twice in the last 30 years, they've agreed to raise taxes as long as spending was cut, but spending never was cut.
"The American people aren't falling for that again. We know that if you raise taxes, the politicians in Washington simply spend it. And they can promise anything they want, but Lucy and the football, Charlie Brown isn't going to fall for this again," he said.
"Tax increases are what politicians do rather than reform government."STEPHEN KING
Stephen King. (AP Photo/Mirek Towski/DMI via AP)
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Author Stephen King waited 36 years to publish the sequel to his 1977 horror classic "The Shining." But it took him only about 36
months
The playlist King regularly listened to while writing his latest best-selling novel, "Doctor Sleep," included Microwave Dave's track "Pay Bo Diddley," according to "The Powell's Playlist" blog on Portland, Ore. retailer Powell's Books' website.
"I have a playlist for every novel I write," King said, according to the blog. "The music serves the book. Hope you enjoy these tunes — some are on the grizzly side. I would have included 'Freebird,' but you know it's a very long song."
"Pay Bo Diddley" was released as part of Microwave Dave & The Nukes' 1995 Johnny Sandlin-produced album "Goodnight, Dear." King's 2013 tome "Doctor Sleep" centers on the now-40-something Danny Torrance, who was a child character in "The Shining."
"I think I need to buy the man a beer, yes?" singer/guitarist "Microwave" Dave Gallaher said via e-mail, regarding King's "Doctor Sleep" playlist.
Microwave Dave. (Bob Gathany | bgathany@al.com)
In late 2010, King touted Microwave Dave & The Nukes in his final, long-running weekly column for Entertainment Weekly. ""I want to beg you to go to YouTube and check out Microwave Dave & the Nukes blasting 'Highway 49' at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Huntsville, Ala. That electric slide guitar will change your way of life," King wrote.
"Highway 49" is a hard-driving shuffle, with roots dating back to the sandpaper-voiced blues singer Howlin' Wolf and the 9-string-guitar-playing Big Joe Williams.
"He had to have found it strictly on the name," Gallaher told me in 2012, of King's EW praise. "I can't imagine what else it would be."
According to Powell's Books, King's "Doctor Sleep" 15-track "Doctor Sleep" playlist also contained Shoals-founded rockers Drive-By Truckers' "Days of Graduation (Act I)," "Lullabye" hit-maker Shawn Mullins' "Beautiful Wreck," outlaw-country scion Hank Williams III "My Drinkin Problem," Irish musician Shane McGowan's "St. John of Gods," country bad-boy Steve Earle's "F the CC," and songwriter's-songwriter John Prine's "Glory of True Love."
Other authors to contribute entries to "The Powell's Playlist" include Daniel Alarcon, J. Robert Lennon and Jenni Fagan.
Microwave Dave's upcoming solo shows include 9 p.m. Jan. 3 at Kaffeeklatsch (103 Jefferson St.), 5 p.m. Jan. 6 at Mama Annie's Restaurant (4550 Merdian St. N.), 6 p.m. Jan. 8 at Bandito Southside (11220 S. Memorial Pkwy.) and 7 p.m. Jan. 10 at Moe's Original Bar B Que (445 Providence Main St.)
More: microwavedave.comThe Philadelphia 76ers didn't have the luck they were hoping for at the NBA draft lottery, but the team is still reportedly trying to trade up for the No. 1 overall pick. Philadelphia is offering its No. 3 overall pick and 25-year-old power forward Thad Young to the Cleveland Cavaliers for No. 1 overall, according to ESPN's Chad Ford. Ford says the Sixers have their eye on Kansas forward Andrew Wiggins, and that Wiggins' camp also prefers Philadelphia over No. 1 Cleveland and No. 2 Milwaukee.
The 76ers have been engaging in trade talks with the Cavaliers, but are reportedly unwilling to give up the No. 10 overall pick in the deal. Philadelphia acquired that pick from the New Orleans Pelicans on draft day a year ago in a deal that sent Jrue Holliday to the Big Easy.
Why this makes sense
Wiggins is a logical fit in Philadelphia's system. The 76ers played at the fastest pace in the NBA last year, and the uptempo scheme would mesh perfectly with Wiggins' supreme athleticism. The former Jayhawk proved himself to be a terror in transition at Kansas. He'll be better with more opportunities to run early in his career.
Wiggins' highlight potential on the fast break obscures where he could help the Sixers the most, and that's on the defensive end. Philadelphia finished with the fourth-worst defense in the NBA last season, per NBA.com. Wiggins is considered a much better defender than fellow top prospect Jabari Parker because of his length and lateral quickness.
Wiggins' ability to get up and down the floor makes him a better fit in Philadelphia than Parker. The presence of Nerlens Noel, the No. 6 pick in last year's draft, means the Sixers don't really need Joel Embiid. It makes sense that Philadelphia would covet Wiggins, and they have the assets to make Cleveland think long and hard about a deal.
Why this doesn't make sense
While no one can ever tell what the Cavaliers are thinking on draft day, there is a growing consensus that Wiggins may be available for Philadelphia even without a trade. The latest mock drafts from Chad Ford and Draft Express each have Wiggins falling into the Sixers' lap at No. 3. It would be a perfect scenario for Philadelphia.
Cleveland needs a big man with the two-way potential of Embiid, the only lingering question centers on his health. If he checks out medically, Embiid would appear to be the leader in the clubhouse to go No. 1 overall. The thornier scenario from Philadelphia's perspective involves the Bucks' decision at No. 2. Parker's advanced offensive game does seem like the best fit in Milwaukee, but it's possible the Bucks could be blown away by Wiggins' athleticism in a private workout setting.
Would the 76ers really waste an asset like Young if it seems like Wiggins will be there at No. 3? It's something GM Sam Hinkie will have to consider.
Likelihood: 9/10 it was offered, 2/10 it happens
Let's specify: it's very likely Philadelphia would trade No. 3 and Young for No. 1. Will Cleveland actually accept it? That's a different story. The Bucks would likely be salivating if Embiid fell to No. 2, which means Cleveland only makes this deal if the player it really covets is Parker. That may very well be true, but it's too early in the process to state it as fact.
There are only 16 days left until the 2014 NBA Draft. Deep breaths, everyone.Image copyright Ezra Wolfinger/Israel Antiquities Authority via AP Image caption Prisoners dug the tunnel in a pit they were kept in
A tunnel dug out with spoons by Jewish prisoners escaping Nazi captors in World War Two has been uncovered in Lithuania's Ponar forest.
The prisoners were from the so-called Burning Brigade, who were forced to burn corpses to cover up Nazi atrocities as the Soviets advanced.
Knowing they too would be killed, they dug a tunnel in a pit where they were kept. Eleven escapees survived the war.
A research team used a ground-scanning system to map out the tunnel.
The exact location of the 34m (112ft) tunnel had been lost since the end of the war, but the international team, including the Israel Antiquities Authority and researchers from the US, Canada and Lithuania, have now located it.
The team employed the electrical resistivity tomography system, also used in oil exploration, so as not to disturb any human remains at the site.
'Yearning for life'
Ponar forest, known now as Paneriai, is outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, a hub of Jewish life before the outbreak of the war.
But under Nazi occupation, mass burial pits and graves were carved out of the forest to hold the bodies of up to 100,000 people, including 70,000 Jews, killed during the Holocaust.
As the Red Army closed in, the Nazis tried to cover up their atrocities. They forced about 80 prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp, chained by the legs, to dig up bodies and burn them.
Image copyright Ezra Wolfinger/NOVA Image caption Ground scanning was used to pinpoint the tunnel
Image copyright Ezra Wolfinger/NOVA Image caption The scanning was used so as not to disturb any human remains at the site
They were called Leichenkommando (corpse unit), but later became known as the Burning Brigade.
According to one account, one brigade prisoner even identified his wife and two sisters among the bodies.
Kept overnight in one of the pits where the bodies had been buried, the prisoners began to dig a tunnel and on the night of 15 April 1944, 40 made their escape attempt through the 2 sq ft tunnel.
But guards were alerted by the noise and hunted them down. Many were shot but 12 escaped to reach partisans. Eleven survived the war to tell their story.
Jon Seligman, of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said he was reduced to tears on the discovery of the tunnel, calling it a "heart-warming witness to the victory of hope over desperation".
"The tunnel shows that even when the time was so black, there was yearning for life within that," he told Associated Press.
Archaeologist Richard Freund, also on the team, told the New York Times that Ponar was "ground zero for the Holocaust", evidence of systematic murder before the Nazis started using gas chambers.Representative Marcy Kaptur, the dean of Ohio's congressional delegation, has a plan to fix the public lands.
America's public lands are in a sorry state.
Agency budgets are shrinking. Maintenance backlogs are forever growing. Park entrance fees are on the verge of skyrocketing. It's a dire situation indeed, owed largely to decades of austerity policies in Washington, D.C.—and it's a situation that the Trump administration seems bent on exacerbating. The White House, with its budget-busting tax bill and miserly fiscal policies, threatens to further reduce public financing and weaken popular support for our country's national parks, forests, and more.
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There are, however, alternative visions of the public domain's purpose and promise.
For nearly a decade, Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the dean of Ohio's congressional delegation, has been calling for massive federal investment in America's public lands and resources. Inspired in part by the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps, she has relentlessly championed the creation of an ambitious publicly funded program that could put millions of under- and unemployed people to work. An urban and regional planner by training, Kaptur wants to restore and rehabilitate the federal domain and, in doing so, transform the public lands into a red-hot engine of job creation.
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Kaptur re-introduced her bill, called the 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps Act, in Congress in April. It calls for as much as $16 billion per year in funding over the next four fiscal years to provide "gainful employment to unemployed and underemployed citizens of the United States through the performance of useful public work, and for other purposes." The act would enable the president to put millions of people to work re-foresting, combating invasive species, rehabilitating trails on federal lands, and mitigating damage from floods and forest fires, and completing other such projects. Relying on the expertise of agencies like the Department of the Interior, the Department of the Labor, and the Army Corps of Engineers, the program would offer workers food, clothing, transportation, housing, medical care, and money during their time of employment. It would also, according to Kaptur, provide them the experience of a lifetime.
"It would be life changing, it would be perspective changing for people," Kaptur tells me. "Imagine taking a youngster from Detroit, or someone from Toledo who is unemployed, and giving them an opportunity to do something really great for the country." Much like the original Civilian Conservation Corps, Kaptur says her bill would create a huge cohort of life-long conservationists who deeply understand and appreciate our public lands.
"I am old enough to have met people who worked in the CCC camps" during the Great Depression, Kaptur adds. "There wasn't a one that didn't tell me it was one of the greatest experiences of their life. It changed their lives."
Representative Marcy Kaptur, pictured here in 2011. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Kaptur says the need for such a program is evident by the number of Americans who are currently out of work. The official unemployment rate in this country stands at roughly 6.5 million people—that's 4.5 percent of the labor force. (The National Jobs for All Coalition, though, estimates the number is, in fact, closer to 16.5 million people—or 10 percent—if you factor in underemployment and those who have dropped out of the labor market altogether.) The congresswoman's bill couples this destabilizing need for employment with our nation's desperate need for improved infrastructure and natural resource restoration.
The National Park Service has a roughly $12 billion maintenance backlog. The Forest Service is wrestling with roughly $5 billion in unmet infrastructure needs. There aren't enough rangers or trail workers on public lands. And the land itself is in need of help. Invasive Asian carp are marching up the Mississippi River, heading straight for the Great Lakes. Spotted knapweed is edging out native flora across the West. Kaptur says that Ohio and other Midwestern states need to re-plant at least 20 million trees after years of arboreal devastation caused by invasive beetle infestations.
"There are a lot of jobs that can be created in this country," Kaptur says, "tending to our natural and environmental systems."
It's plain that Kaptur's bill stands little chance of passage in the current political climate. But big ideas—from universal health care to free college tuition to well-funded federal lands—have a tendency to resurface. With enough public engagement and organizing, the political climate can change. Perhaps a second Civilian Conservation Corps, and its populist vision for the public lands, is not so far away.Wow. I'm new to the Dark Souls series and it's worth it to note that no previous experience in the series is required to enjoy this game. This is the best single player RPG experience I've had since FF7, Zelda, Diablo - I haven't played games in years. I understand why this series has such a strong cult-like following now. As new player that's unfamiliar with the series, you really have to push through the initial learning curve to really start appreciating the game for what it is. What do I mean by that? It's a game that doesn't leave good first impressions in my opinion - my first impression of this game was that it was lack luster. The graphics I thought looked like crap compared to other games like battlefield one, Until dawn, and so on. I thought the controls were stupid - I can't jump, the enemy aiming initially felt bad and confusing. I couldn't even customize the button actions to make it all better and had to adapt to what the game forced me to use and that led to an intial frustrating experience as I struggled to dodge, block, hit enemies and even just general movement across the starting area lead to death from falls off cliffs and unexpected enemies. And the game gives you no breaks, you can't even pause in the game which is what I'm used to. If I want to take a break I just press the pause button, but not in this game you have to be in a safe zone if you want to rest or just plain quit the game ( and there is a special menu option for you to quit, you can't just hit the PS4 button and close the app ). So yes, the game doesn't leave a good first impression, but if you can push past that and give it a few hours, defeat the first boss, learn the controls and start getting better weapons and understand the upgrade system, you start to be able to appreciate what this game has to offer and I think it's a rare thing to have quality RPG games like this. It is genuinely addictive. Gameplay: It's hard to explain the game play without experiencing it yourself. Watch a few game review videos if you want an idea, but the gist of it is that it's not a button mashing game. It's a third person RPG that requires enemy targeting and some level of strategy. Every enemy can be a challenge and has the ability to kill you if you are carelessly swinging. You need to know their attack patterns and know when to attack and if you're really into it, what to use for attacking that works most effectively. It's casual enough that you can just jump right in but not so casual that you can just hack and slash your way through the entire game ( if you're new ). Besides that, the game offers a pretty unique way to level up, but the stat adjustments are typical of the genre but with a twist here since the game has unique attributes associated with each stat. There are no skill branches, just attributes, weapons, armor, weapon/armor upgrades, spell purchases, but it's varied enough that you can have near unlimited choices to make the character you want. And the game can be as hard or as difficult as you want it to be depending on the time you spend upgrading/leveling. Game progression: The game progression itself is rather linear with forks in the quest line that you can choose to do and affect outcomes at different parts of the game with NPCs and game endings, but it's done so well that you never mind that it's linear since there is enough freedom that it makes the player feel they have control of what they want to do next. There are enough things players can do and side areas to explore if they so please. Basically it has an open world feel in terms of side quests vs main storyline but the map areas are pretty closed with hidden and optional areas but the level designs are so well done ( the best I've ever seen ) that I rather prefer that than exploring a boring barren open world. Boss battles: If you're looking for epic boss fights then this is the right game for you. The fights can be brutal but impressive and no two bosses behave the same way or have the same attacks. They are enjoyable and I hesitate a little every time I see the door that could lead to the next boss fight because I just don't know what to expect. Game replay value: I am only going through this game my first time and I'm hooked. The game does have a lot of replay value, different endings, new game difficulty after your first |
and President Trump’s own statement that additional North Korean threats would be met with “fire and fury.”
Images of the rally were released by North Korea’s state media organ, KCNA, the outlet which has also carried the country’s uniquely-worded statements dismissing Trump as “bereft of reason” and warning “only absolute force can work on him.” Pictures of the rally could not be immediately independently verified.
One of the large propaganda signs carried by protesters stretched nearly 20 people across and showed a trio of fierce North Korean military members, holding grenades and rifles, and seemingly ready for battle.
Other attendees, dressed in black, belonged to the country’s elite class, The Independent reported. They applauded the animated displays of the white shirt-wearing workers.The war on drugs has proven to be more like a war on civilians.
Between 2001 and 2010, 8.2 million people were arrested on marijuana-related charges, and nearly 90 percent of those arrests were for simple possession. The ACLU has posted a comprehensive review of the issue, which shows despite the United States accounting for just five percent of the world’s population, we also hold 25 percent of the world’s prison population. The review added people of color were nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.
Thanks to the DEA’s ruling today, marijuana will still be considered a Schedule 1 drug, the same status as heroin and ecstasy.
According to the DEA:
“Schedule 1 drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule 1 drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.”
So I spoke to Evan Nison, a board member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for Sensible Drug Policy to shed some light on what the DEA’s decision means.
He told me the DEA made their statement today as a “response to an official petition to reschedule by Governors Gregoire of Washington and Chaffee of Rhode Island. They simply rejected the petition.”
Ironically, Evan relayed to me that simultaneously: “The White House announced that they’ll make it easier for universities to research marijuana, which is a good thing for the scientific community.”
It is difficult to understand why the DEA would reject the petition so quickly, as Evan explained: “Half of the states have some form of legalization.”
In fact legalization has proven to be effective for preventing drugs reaching the hands of children in Colorado, a state that has fully legalized recreational usage of marijuana for adults over the age of 21. And medical marijuana has been used for decades, as Evan elaborated: “Cannabis has been shown to help a number of ailments, and many with PTSD have said cannabis is their best and most reliable medicine.”
Constituents of states, their elected representatives, and medical doctors agree marijuana is a potentially useful medicine. So why is it still Schedule 1? Evan claims while “the tides are certainty turning in favor of legalization, the DEA is tasked with opposing legalization efforts.”
And will the DEA’s decision hurt the legalization efforts across the country? “I don’t view this as a regressive step for legalization,” he explains. “I just view it as unfortunate that the DEA continues to live in the dark ages.”
Evan has a point. Not only has marijuana proven to be effective as a medicine for an enormous list of ailments, and a substitute for powerful and harmful pharmaceutical drugs, it is also an enormous source of potential revenue.
In Colorado, the tax revenue from marijuana sales hit nearly $1 billion dollars in 2016. Much of the money is being put back into school systems, large public infrastructure projects like interstate highways, recreation centers, addressing homelessness, public health and education programs. This seems like a prudent way to generate revenue at a time when the nation is suffering economically.
With so much evidence to support the claim that marijuana is not only a potentially beneficial medicine, but also a lucrative industry, why is the DEA so firmly opposed to rescheduling?
“Today isn’t worse than it was yesterday for cannabis advocates or the marijuana industry, but we now know the DEA is still ignoring science.”
He added: “History books won’t look kindly on the DEA for making these decisions, but I’m confident that cannabis will still be legalized throughout the country and world despite their efforts to prevent it.”
Considering the massive incarceration of non-violent offenders due to marijuana, and the bloated budget of the DEA, and the statistics that show the war or drugs disproportionately affects minority communities, perhaps Nison is correct about history. Not to mention there has never been a single documented overdose death attributed to use of marijuana.
Going forward Evan believes our “public and our elected officials are going to have to lead on this issue.” This has already happened at the state level in numerous places.
Today the Whitehouse said they will allow research to be done on a drug the DEA has simultaneously declared to be one of the most dangerous drugs available and has no accepted medical usage. So it would appear that the United States government disagrees with itself.Niki Anderson
A group of children and young adults is suing President Donald Trump’s administration for denying their right to a livable environment, claiming that by not properly addressing climate concerns, the United States is taking away their right to a healthy future. Two of the case’s lawyers, Julia Olson and Philip Gregory, spoke to a group of Yale students, faculty and community members Saturday about their work on the lawsuit, Juliana v. U.S.
The talk was part of a larger conference focused on modern world issues called “Onslaughts of the Poor: Corruption, Emissions, Violence,” hosted by the Global Justice Program from Friday through Sunday. Olson, an environmental lawyer focused on conservation, and Gregory, a litigator who specializes in business and environmental law, represent Our Children’s Trust, an organization that fights for climate reform using legal action on behalf of young people.
“Young people, they need a platform,” said Olson. “Part of what we are trying to do is help young people reclaim their democracy.”
The event’s coordinator, postdoctoral fellow Alex Gajevic Sayegh, told the News he hoped it would create “a discussion between legal practitioners and scholars in politics and law to see how the law can be an effective tool to fight climate change.”
The plaintiffs in the case are seeking no money. What they want is a remedy to the current failure by the government to adequately address climate change.
Saturday’s talk centered on the legal arguments brought by the children and their attorneys. Both speakers emphasized that their work is centered on the stories and the futures of the people they represent.
“What we’re essentially proving … is that the federal government has known for over 50 years about the issues concerning these greenhouse gases … and has acted affirmatively in light of that knowledge,” Gregory said. “They are implementing policies that are directly contrary to all the scientific evidence.”
He used the analogy of the government placing a foster child in a home it knows to be abusive. Any situation in which the government actively and knowingly endangers people is an infringement of their rights, he claimed.
The lawsuit began in 2015 against the Obama administration and took a new turn when Trump took office. In June, a federal judge denied the White House’s motion to have the case dismissed.
The Trump administration has since sought a writ of mandamus, a rarely used legal procedure in which a higher court orders a lower court to fulfill its legal duties properly. Many observers consider this move a desperate act by the Trump administration to prevent the case from seeing court.
Olson explained that her case rests on a few arguments. The first invokes the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person may be denied their rights to life, liberty and property without due process. Olson and Gregory claim that by ignoring and perpetuating environmental problems, the federal government is in effect depriving its people of those rights.
Olson said the ruling on this argument will “define the scope of our liberties and what they mean.”
A second argument portrays the situation as systemic discrimination against young people. Olson explained that the government is discriminating against young people, who will suffer the most from the effects of climate change.
Olson and Gregory’s last argument holds that through its actions, the government is creating a state-centered danger.
The speakers clarified that they are not accusing the government of not doing enough to prevent climate change — it is not a failure-to-act case — but rather of actively contributing to the problem and disregarding established scientific facts for political reasons. They added that there is widespread support for the case, likening it to the Supreme Court case regarding gay marriage.
Sayegh said he was optimistic about the case, calling the logic underlying Olson and Gregory’s arguments “bulletproof.” He added that the case has the potential to redefine the way the judiciary views climate policy.
Some opponents of the case, including representatives of the Trump administration, have argued that a ruling in Olson and Gregory’s favor would represent an abuse of power by the judiciary.
One attendee, Alex Sabbeth ’71, said he was unsure about the future of the lawsuit.
“[Climate regulation] is of the utmost importance,” Sabbeth told the News. “Our government is shirking its responsibilities and making a mockery of its responsibilities. This is an astounding fact.”
The case is set to be heard on Feb. 5, 2018.
Niki Anderson | niki.anderson@yale.edu
Correction, Oct. 30: A previous version of this article mistakenly stated that the lawsuit was launched in 2016. It was, in fact, launched in 2015.A confrontation between Tesla and two trespassing journalists has resulted in felony assault charges. Tesla is publicly sharing its side of the troubling incident, which occurred last Friday, in a blog post published today. According to the company, an employee noticed two people snapping photos of the Gigafactory, Tesla's still-under-construction lithium-ion battery factory, and immediately called for assistance.
The journalists refused to identify themselves once notified that they were illegally trespassing on Tesla property, though Tesla notes that IDs from the Reno Gazette Journal were hanging from their pockets and plainly visible. (Both were later confirmed as RGJ employees, in case you were wondering whether they were merely impersonating journalists.) They also tried to argue that they weren't knowingly trespassing, though Tesla says the only way into the Gigafactory is through a fence with plenty of "private property" warnings.
The journalists were asked to remain at the scene while the local Sheriff's department and more Tesla security responded to the complaint. And that's when things just got downright insane. Here's how Tesla says the events unfolded:
Disregarding this request, the RGJ employees entered the Jeep. As the Tesla employee attempted to record the license plate number on the rear bumper, the driver put it in reverse and accelerated into the Tesla employee, knocking him over, causing him to sustain a blow to the left hip, an approximate 2" bleeding laceration to his right forearm, a 3" bleeding laceration to his upper arm, and scrapes on both palms. As the RGJ employees fled the scene, their Jeep struck the ATV that carried the two safety managers. When one of the safety managers dismounted the ATV and approached the Jeep, the driver of the Jeep accelerated into him, striking him in the waist.
One of the journalists, photographer Andy Barron, is being charged with two counts of felony assault, and both will face trespassing charges. Tesla is understandably livid about the situation, as it would seem these journalists ignored common sense (and the law) in pursuing a scoop on the company's $5 billion battery plant. "We appreciate the interest in the Gigafactory, but the repeated acts of trespassing, including by those working for the RGJ, is illegal, dangerous and needs to stop," Tesla said in its blog post. "In particular, we will not stand for assaults on our employees and are working with law enforcement to investigate this incident and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice."
So far, the Reno Gazette Journal has not sought to discredit or dispute Tesla's version of the story, but says its jeep came away with a shattered driver's side window — said to be smashed with a rock — and slashed seatbelt. For its part, Tesla says the RGJ jeep struck its security ATV and hit another safety manager in the waist before arrests were made. "We take this situation very seriously and it is under investigation at this time," publisher John Maher said in a statement. Barron has worked as a photographer for the company since 1998.SALT LAKE CITY — "He is carrying a snow shovel door-to-door, and it's not snowing," the man can be heard telling the 911 dispatcher. "I would just like an officer to check him out."
The lone 911 call made on Jan. 8 that resulted in the fatal confrontation between a Salt Lake police officer and James Dudley Barker, 42, in the Avenues was released Tuesday through a Government Records Access and Management Act request.
The 911 call, which lasted nearly six minutes, was made by a man who reported Barker was acting very suspicious. The man's name and address were redacted by police.
"I would like an officer to swing by my place as quickly as possible," he told the dispatcher, "because I've got a guy that's very suspicious walking in the Avenues. The other day, this guy — I'm 95 percent sure this same guy — was looking in cars."
At one point, the man speaks more softly as he apparently looks out his window to describe to the dispatcher where Barker was, what he was doing and what he was wearing.
"He's been going up and down the street," he said.
The man said Barker was going door-to-door asking about snow shoveling jobs, but skipped his house when he saw he was home.
"I did confront him before. He was knocking on my neighbor's door. He skipped my door because he had seen me in the driveway," he said.
Moments later, a Salt Lake police officer, whose name has not yet been released, was called to the area of 2nd Avenue and I Street and confronted Barker on a front porch. The confrontation was recorded on the officer's body camera.
The officer points out there's no snow on the walks to shovel.
I would like an officer to swing by my place as quickly as possible, because I've got a guy that's very suspicious walking in the Avenues.The other day, this guy — I'm 95 percent sure this same guy — was looking in cars. –911 Call
"All right, well, I'll wait for it to snow again, and then I'll be back out," Barker eventually says.
The officer tells Barker that there have been calls from residents complaining about him.
The discussion appears to be drawing to a conclusion without incident until the officer insists on the man giving his name, which he was legally required to do.
Without warning, Barker's demeanor changes from calm to aggressive, and he screams at the officer, "I'm trying to make a living!"
"You need to calm down and quit yelling at me right now," the officer replies in a calm voice.
"Go back to your car. I'm doing my business," Barker angrily tells the officer while pointing his finger at him.
Less than two minutes after the officer arrives at the scene, Barker raises his shovel like a baseball bat and swings at the officer.
Chief Chris Burbank said his officer was hit seven times. Before the officer's body camera was disabled by the shovel, it showed a large chunk of the hard plastic shovel had been broken off from hitting the officer.
The officer's Taser was knocked from him by the shovel, Burbank said. The officer suffered fractured bones in his arm and foot.
As of Tuesday, the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office had not issued the results of its investigation into whether the shooting was justified.
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Related StoriesAuthor's Note - According to the MPAA, you can drop one F-bomb and not be rated R.
A battle raged near the entrance between Hogwarts and Peverell. Four indistinguishable people shrouded in Armageddon Robes were firing spells and erecting wards against Aurors attacking from the Hallway. Selwyn fought beside them, still disguised as a student. He hadn't had time to put on his robe, but since the Fiendfyre had melted the Thief's downfall the Aurors still wouldn't be able to ID him.
He'd followed his cursed Phoenix through the door, guided by the floor plans into the closet. The others had followed quickly, stating that they were under attack. Somehow they'd been discovered. After dealing with nearby Aurors, Selwyn arranged the defenses to protect their rear. The others, those coming in from the outside, could get the stone. Spells flew underneath the dripping remains of the Thief's Downfall, but so far the enemy remained unseen. They'd been defending for a few minutes, when Draco Malfoy slid in beside Selwyn, coming to an abrupt stop after dashing across the open room. As he crashed into the hastily constructed barricade, he bumped into Selwyn who promptly aimed at him, but the boy spoke up first.
"Immortality," Draco hissed the password. "You fucked up, Karkaroff!" Draco Malfoy threw down his cane against the barricade (another upturned bed) where it hit and rolled around, clattered noisily. Draco ignored it and started rifling through Wilhelmina's pockets. She'd gone down in the first minute, killed when Aurors hit her with multiple Ventus spells from different directions, snapping her neck.
That was before they'd secured the room.
The boy showed no squeamishness, taking her supplies as his own. He snatched the wand from her dead hands. Draco pulled back the hood and glanced at her face while still searching. "I'm lucky to be alive. I didn't have time to get my wand. This was supposed to be stealthy.."
"I am not Karkaroff," Selwyn corrected, but Draco's scowl acted like a shrugging whatever and Selwyn dimly recalled that he and Karkaroff Polyjuiced as twins, "Teachers and Aurors outside, they discovered us somehow. Unlucky. Must admit, I am impressed. Much better than Lockhart. Plan still on. Other group fights past remaining Aurors."
"Where is Lockhart?" the boy growled and ducked back down for a second, rage showing on his face. He glanced around the barricade, and poked his head over it, looking around for several long seconds. Draco nodded abstractly to himself and grabbed his cane, tapping it to Selwyn's shoulder then pointing it towards the right-most of a pair of doors behind him. The other door led to the Fountain, and somewhere, the stone. A battle raged in that room. "Once I get in position, open that for me. Hold them off as long as you can, join up in recovery."
Selwyn shot another spell and scowled in annoyance. "Stone is through other door."
"Along with most of the other Aurors, who I can't fight. They are your problem. Escaping is everyone's problem."
Selwyn nodded. "Ten minutes, can last."
"If you are late I'm diving out a hole in the wall. This isn't over, Cover me." Draco Malfoy said as he dashed away, keeping low to the ground.
Selwyn smiled and launched a cloud of noxious gas into the hallway that would poison and blind anyone there. He turned to the skull faced figure beside him and spoke in fluent German. "I am pleased I didn't murder him, earlier," then lobbed of another spell towards the door. He directed the Fiendfyre to burn through the door.
Sharon Wallace sat in the floor, crouched low, huddling back and forth. The door towards receiving started glowing, and she let out a sobbing cry. Where were the Aurors? She was just a nurse. A dark fire poked into the room, cruel wisps reaching towards her and she closed her eyes, but suddenly the heat disappeared. A small face appeared in the hole, eyes darting around the room and she panicked for a second, and wished that she had a wand, but only Aurors and people who'd taken an Unbreakable Oath were allowed wands in Peverell, and she hadn't been willing to commit to that. She was just a nurse. The eyes locked in with hers for a second and then a small blond boy crawled into the room with her.
"Nurse Wallace," the boy said after blinking once, then moved quickly towards the other side of the room towards the door into the fountain area and poked his head over the window. She recognized him, he'd done some loyalty testing for the Aurors. Tried to bribe her, then been admitted for a nasty Triffid bite, although she hadn't been working that day. Draco Malfoy. She remembered.
"We can't get in through there, one way door. If we could go in there I'd have done it, the Aurors are holed up in there with the Chalice."
He didn't seem to be paying attention to her, and just mumbled to himself.
"I don't suppose you have a wand."
Without looking taking his eyes away from the window, the boy tossed a wand in her general direction.
"I wouldn't try to fight anyone. No offense, but we're outclassed," he said. "Wait for an opening, dive out the window and cast Wingardium Leviosa. Don't cast inside, you'll attract attention."
"Wait," he said. "You didn't have a wand?" She shook her head. "You haven't taken the Vow?" She shook her head again. He quickly crouched down beside her and fished a package out of his pocket and started speaking rapidly.
"Do not touch this. Do not. Not until I tell you." He was quickly opening the package, which had two small cardboard boxes, one green and one red. He stuffed the green package back into his pocket, and grabbed a towel off the shelf, "You know I was helping with Security, right Nurse Wallace? Remember, I tried to bribe you. Chocolate Frogs?"
"I remember," she said.
"OK, so don't freak out, and when I tell you, touch this once. Just once! It's safe." He flipped the lid off the red box and slapped it down onto the ground, then lifted it up, and she gasped.
Sitting on the ground was a blood red stone. She looked at it and he nodded. She reached out and touched it, and instantly a second stone appeared next to the first. Draco carefully wrapped the original in a towel and handed her the towel.
"If anyone chases you shake this out of the towel, don't touch it! Just drop it and run. Make sure they see you dropping it. Actually, wait. Touch it once more." She did, and again it duplicated. The boy snatched up both stones, and shoved them into his pocket. For some reason they didn't do anything when he touched them, she thought.
He crawled to the hole he'd come in and poked his head out, but no shots came. He turned back. "Follow me, I'm crawling right, you duck left, out through the wall. Keep your head down."
Clutching her wand in her right hand, with a stone wrapped in a towel underneath her left arm, Susan Wallace watched the boy disappear through the hole. She took a deep breath and started to crawl.
"Another part of Draco's preparation... he'd made a decoy Philosopher's Stone. I've been pestering the goblins about this; they are stonewalling me."
"It duplicated itself?" Hermione asked.
"Yes, I asked about that. Apparently the Malfoy vault has had security like that for years. Anyone unauthorized who touches anything will create a phantasm copy. In close quarters this can actually smother would-be burglars. It's called the Midas Trap. Draco's plan has levels and levels, but you can see the repeated theme - duplication and deception. It's standard among muggle magical entertainers. You show one person disappear and reappear on the other side of the room, but it's actually two people, a pair of twins. Talking with the Weasleys, Draco had looked into how to defeat security using them, and they thought about it, too. Obviously you'd have to work with things people never expect to be duplicated."
"Two Dracos, Two Canes, Two Stones," murmured the Headmistress."Very clever."
"Three stones," Harry corrected. "Remember, the nurse saw two fakes, originally, before duplication. Only one had the Midas trap."
"And the other one?" asked Hermione.
"He needed one that wouldn't be an obvious fake when touched, for any version of the plan. It didn't have to hold up to close inspection, just not do anything obviously wrong when touched."
"But why give one to the nurse?"
"Well, it's not like it cost him anything. Nurse Wallace did in fact escape, but if she'd been chased it might have helped her survive. And a bit more chaos probably didn't hurt his chances. When he ducked out he probably waved to Selwyn to let her go, or just made sure the coast was clear. I don't think it really matters. As far as Draco was concerned, she's just an innocent bystander. Getting back to it...by this point Aurors were counterattacking and thanks to the Headmistress's clever planning, the attack from the Hogwarts side was going well."
Headmistress McGonagall had just jumped back one hour, and she paused to take stock. She had a dread feeling she wouldn't be able to prevent or fake the student's death, Albus had warned her about that, and she'd asked Harry Potter to explain this last summer, after the full weight of her responsibility had hit. She was afraid - not of inaction or hesitation - but of blundering in and locking in the Death she'd felt. Or even making things worse. Minerva McGonagall felt resolved, but anybody who intuitively understood Time Turners had to be kept safely locked away in Saint Mungos until they forget. The only possibly sane expert was Harry Potter. He claimed nobody really understood Time Travel, but he got closer than most.
Harry had what he called 'a useful set of Heuristics for manipulating paradoxes to your advantage.'
She knew the rules, but he could think through the implications faster, and improvise. And Minerva still felt flustered by the terrible voice of Hogwarts, echoing in her head like dread bells. Harry had warned her about that. That's why Heuristic #1 was - "Jump back in time quickly, but then be as cautious as possible. Take a moment to relax and think." Headmistress McGonagall took three deep breaths, but she didn't have to make her first decision, she'd already decided on her primary strategy long time ago.
Because If anyone could bluff time itself, could stare it down, make it shrug and fold a winning hand, it would be Harry Potter. The Headmistress pulled out a mirror to call him, but he didn't answer. She sent her Patronus to find him then said, loudly, "Winky," and a small house-elf appeared with a bow.
"Wake and assemble the professors and have them assemble in the Great Hall, I need to address them. And have Harry Potter contact me immediately, no delays." Winky disappeared with a bow. Minerva hesitated for a second and then picked up a mirror. "This is Headmistress McGonagall. This may be nothing, but please deliver a message to Mr. Thicknesse that something terrible will happen at Hogwarts in exactly... fifty six minutes, and they should mobilize. No! Don't come before then...I'll send more details, when I can."
Ged and his trio had abandoned their position guarding the Stone after it became unbearably hot. But they'd had a bit of time and followed protocol, they'd thrown fingers and he'd "won," so he grabbed the stone and pocketed it. It would have survived the Fiendfyre, but then whoever got there first would have simply grab it. They didn't have to stay and guard the stone, not at the risk to their life. But their Vow forced reasonable efforts to secure the stone. When possible. Right now they were in a defensible position. If they could just make it past those bastards in Armageddon robes they'd scatter out of Hogwarts and regroup. Spells whizzed overhead. Spells and... something else.
Ged had seen the figures... assassins, more like it... crouching, crawling and maneuvering towards them, trying to get an angle. One had been running a second ago but something had knocked him down. A second later there was a loud noise - followed by ringing silence that echoed and echoed in his ears. Ged, Xanthippe and Aleister rocked unsteadily from the sheer pressure wave of the spell. Suddenly Xanthippe lunged, grabbing at something on the ground and then there was another blood red stone and Aleister lunged and grabbed it. Ged's hand had gone to his secure pocket (you dare not put the Philosopher's stone inside a magical pouch, because of what might happen).
Ged knew he had the real stone.
But... maybe it had fallen out. Maybe? Doubt nibbled at Ged's mind, but he didn't feel compelled to grab the stone. His Unbreakable Vow never compelled him to do anything dangerous, but his own doubt...
Ged grabbed the stone on the ground while keeping his eyes peeled for assassins. As his right hand closed around the stone and he held it, another appeared. He dropped the first stone and grasped at the second and the thought Midas Curse! cross his mind. His left hand felt the lump in his vest where he'd stashed the real stone and he knew the others were fake. Ged tried to shout something to Aleister, and he felt his screaming voice, but couldn't even hear himself over the ringing in his ears before something struck him from behind and he was unconscious.
Hermione heard the fumbling in the hallway and tried to shout, but again nothing happened. Only Xare responded with her own plaintive wail. So Hermione waited and fumed, another few minutes of waiting after the hours she'd already endured. At least I don't seem to get sore, resting in the same position, Hermione thought. Eventually she saw Pomona Sprout leaning over her.
Ennervate.
Hermione bounced up in a smooth motion. "We have to go, Draco's been Imperiused! They're inside Hogwarts, PolyJuiced!"
"Breathe, dear. Breathe."
"We have to rush."
"We already have, dear. That's what Time Turners are for." Professor Sprout pulled out her mirror and called Minerva. "Headmistress, I've found Miss Granger. She'd been petrified. No sign of Potter, though..."
Hermione Granger summoned up all of her willpower snatched the mirror from her Sprout's hand, while knocking her wand well down the hallway. "Headmistress! They've Imperiused Draco! They burned Harry's office, I tried to stop them but..."
"Thank you, Hermione. Please stay with Professor Sprout. Do you have your cloak or Time Turner?"
"No, they took everything," Hermione said, "but we can..." The mirror went black. Hermione looked at it for a second, then started running, impossibly fast, as Professor Sprout shouted at her to stop. Hermione didn't even slow down as she snatched up Professor Sprout's wand.
Minerva McGonagall straightened her hat and rubbed her eyes. Still no sign of Mr. Potter. She'd handled coordination, looping back to the same hour over and over again, trying to use the final moments to narrow down what had happened, and where, while being careful to avoid witnessing the event and locking something critical. She'd sent Lockhart, Slughorn, Flitwick and Sprout back the full five hours to investigate. (Because she herself had gone back an hour, they were limited to five hours. She'd told them to use their discretion as to what to investigate and when to re-loop). After she'd made her sixth and final jump back an hour, the others had reported in. She'd heard about the damage, the signs of Fiendfyre. Several students had been seen in multiple places at the same time. Miss Granger was missing, as was her Phoenix.
Hogwarts was infiltrated, perhaps as many as a dozen wizards. Her office had been burned. Harry's too.
Nobody seemed able to find Harry Potter. And, as near as everyone could tell, the infiltration had happened at least a few hours before the student died. She could hear the third of Harry's Heuristics. Anyone clever will make sure that going back six hours won't be enough. This was not an idle threat. This was a clever attack. Like last year.
At least Pomona had finally located Hermione, but they'd taken her Cloak. And, ominously, her Time Turner.
Harry had explained the key to successfully navigating time loops was secrecy. That's when he'd disclosed that Hermione owned the True Cloak of Invisibility - a gift from Albus Dumbledore, he'd explained - should the Headmistress ever need it.
You could use a regular cloak of invisibility, as Minerva had for the past (repeated) hour. But with the True Cloak she could have risked more, watched the future unfold and then gone back with the information. If it had only been one student's life, she would have.
The Headmistress didn't see a way to prevent the future, which left Heuristic #5 - In the worst case, have the cavalry arrive at the exact moment of crisis. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing.
She picked up her mirror.
"Mr. Thicknesse. I have information from twenty two minutes in the future. At precisely that time, send all available Aurors into Hogwarts. I'll lower the wards then and provide details... I don't know...I'm afraid all I can say is that it will be bad."
Minerva would cry later. For now, she had twenty one minutes to prepare. She spoke in a loud confident voice, to the empty room.
"In twenty one minutes, only a single student will die."Audit: Anglos on HPD more likely than black cops to use Tasers Audit says Houston police more likely to Taser blacks
Wilbert Foxx was tasered at least 3 times by HPD officers during a February 2005 traffic stop. Wilbert Foxx was tasered at least 3 times by HPD officers during a February 2005 traffic stop. Photo: Steve Campbell, Houston Chronicle Photo: Steve Campbell, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Audit: Anglos on HPD more likely than black cops to use Tasers 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Houston police officers use their Tasers on black people more often than any other suspects, confirming trends that have roiled community controversy since the stun guns came into widespread use four years ago, according to an audit released Monday.
The audit also, for the first time, analyzed the race and ethnicity of Houston Police Department officers who used their stuns guns and found that black officers turned to their Tasers less often than Anglo or Hispanic officers, particularly in encounters with black suspects.
The one-year, $210,000 study overseen by Controller Annise Parker examined some 1,400 incidents in which Houston police officers used Tasers between December 2004 and June 2007. During that time, the audit found, 67 percent of the people officers shocked were black, while encounters with black suspects made up just 46 percent of all police interactions.
On the whole, the audit team found Tasers to be an effective tool for controlling suspects and noted that officers used stun guns in less than 1 percent of all encounters with the public. But the team also identified issues such as the racial disparity, the public's perception that Tasers are an alternative to the deadly force of firearms and shortcomings in HPD's policies to monitor officers' Taser use.
"We need further analysis of the patterns we have discovered — that there are racial and ethnicity differences in how officers use Tasers and in who they are used on," Parker said Monday after presenting the audit to City Council's public safety committee. "We need to know why that difference exists."
Executive Assistant Police Chief Charles McClelland denied the significance of those findings, saying race plays no role in Taser use.
"A Taser is race neutral," he said. "What triggers an officer's response is a suspect's actions."
A notable flashpoint
Parker initiated the audit last year after public calls for tighter restrictions, if not a moratorium, on Taser use after several controversial incidents. One flashpoint for conflict was the November 2006 encounter between officers and Texans offensive lineman Fred Weary during a traffic stop. An officer shocked Weary, who was arrested and charged with resisting, only to have a judge later dismiss the charge as baseless.
After that incident, Mayor Bill White called for an independent review of Taser use.
HPD has armed most of its officers with the stun guns since December 2004, one year after officers shot and killed two unarmed teens. Police Chief Harold Hurtt, who reduced officer shootings in his previous post in Phoenix, endorsed Tasers as a way to curb some such shootings, and City Council approved a $4.7 million contract.
Despite public suggestions that Tasers could reduce the use of deadly force, HPD considers them intermediate weapons that can be used anytime an officer would use a baton or physically confront a suspect.
"There is a disconnect between how the department expects Tasers should be used and how citizens expect they will be used," Parker said. "We have been building on this myth that they are (an alternative to deadly force), and they are not."
The audit team found that the number of officer shootings has remained steady since the introduction of Tasers. They did, however, identify 53 incidents in which officers could have fired their guns but instead deployed a Taser.
Parker's team offered a series of recommendations to better monitor Taser use, including the suggestions that HPD study each incident in which an officer shocks the same suspect more than four times and that it track officers who use their Tasers frequently. The audit found that two HPD officers have used their Tasers more than 13 times — far more than any other officers on the force.
"The department ought to be aware and monitor (such) officers," Parker told the public safety committee.
The audit also recommended that officers be taught to fully evaluate the situation before each repeat deployment of the Taser and to weigh whether switching to another tactic might be more effective. Parks also asked HPD to put greater emphasis on real-life scenarios in its Taser training.
McClelland pledged to seriously review the audit's recommendations. But Parker said she is unsure of what will happen because of her experience after past audits that have identified problems, particularly with data collection, at HPD.
"The department has been resistant to change," |
adles and into beds at a young age. The state doesn’t.
People who have spent almost two decades in cradles perched high in treetops look for safety nets. The state offers lots of safety nets.
Here is a great irony. In 1890, about 200,000 American students attended high school: 7% of the population, ages 14–17. This rose to 1,000,000 in 1910 and about 2,000,000 in 1920: one-third. In 2010, most students graduated from high school and about a third started college. After a decade more of tax-funded education than most students had in 1890, voters clamor for more safety nets, more comfortable safety nets, and more compulsion to pull more taxpayers into funding safety nets.
What the state has provided is an education system that imparts fear of risk. A system of tenured teachers with secure salaries creates students in its own image.
SAFETY NETS FOR ALL
Western governments ever since the late nineteenth century have steadily adopted a series of economic safety nets for citizens. This process accelerated after the introduction of the income tax: 1911 in Great Britain, 1913 in the United States. Voters have demanded this. They do not like the risk-distribution associated with the free market, where individuals reap the rewards of successful risk-taking but suffer losses when they fail. People are generally more afraid of losses than they are eager to make gains. There is always a risk of failure. People are afraid of failure. So, they want to avoid these risks of personal failure at zero cost or at least at a below-market cost.
Beginning in late medieval Europe, the development of statistics has enabled people to protect themselves against certain kinds of failures through insurance. These failures are set-backs that happen on a predictable basis in large populations. The famous law of large numbers allows risk-averse people to pool their assets in a way that their joint venture pays money to victims of individually unpredictable events. Insurance is one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the West. The political problem arises when people go looking for participants in the pool of risk-sharers who pay more than their statistically fair share of the premiums. Sick people want entry into the pool at rates charged to healthy people. But what company will offer this opportunity to all sick people? None, unless they are compelled by law to enroll them. The state can make this compulsory.
Then there are lots of healthy people who would like taxpayers to cover a portion of their premiums. That can be arranged. It is called Medicare. The typical payment per Medicare beneficiary is approaching $11,000 a year. Medicare runs a deficit. This deficit will grow.
A safety net is a wonderful thing when it is available on a voluntary basis. But when it is imposed by law on people who are unwilling or unable to buy one, a series of questions arises:
Who holds up the net?Who repairs the net?For how long?At what price?For how many people?
There is no such thing as a free safety net. If anyone gains access to a safety net at a below-market price, this increases the likelihood that the net will break if more people are pushed into it than the design of the net will bear.
WIDE NETS, CHEAP ROPE
As the number of nets has increased over the years as a result of political intervention into the market, the cost of funding these nets has increased. Taxpayers do not want to bear this expense. So, they seek to pass on a portion of these expenses to others. Well-organized small groups that receive a subsidy vote in blocs and are more successful than larger groups that are dispersed. The larger groups pay for benefits received by the smaller groups. Democracy produces a system of rule by well- organized minorities.
Medicare and Social Security are the big ones. The political success of the present recipients is based on these factors:
Better political organization: “Vote for money.”Guilt manipulation: “Pity the aged.”Hope: “You’ll get yours someday.”Larceny: “Get taxpayers to pay for your granny.”Ignorance: “Free lunches are possible.”Naïveté: “Debts do not come due.”
As the population ages, more people fall into the safety nets. The government must borrow more money in order to pay for these new arrivals. The lenders assume that they will be repaid, even though it is clear from the statistics that this is not possible in the long run. The investors think: “I’ll get out in time. I will pass to someone else the old maid card.” As with love in the case of a man who marries a woman with six ex-husbands, desire is stronger than probability statistics.
The crisis will hit when there are few lenders at low rates. That will come sometime in the next decade, and perhaps in the Administration of the President elected in 2012. At that point, politicians will have to find ways of paying for the repair of the nets or else reduce the level of protection. Some government budgets will have to be cut in order to continue the funding the safety nets.
The other major area of frayed nets is the state and local pension system. The crisis is even more obvious. There are legions of retirees who have fallen into the retirement safety net. They are dependent on this net for their lifestyle. They are out of the labor force. Their skills have become rusty. They no longer have the emotional will to go back into the classroom. In any case, the jobs are not there. The teacher glut is enormous and will not be reduced, given the continuing flow of certified teachers from the colleges. Police forces are not hiring 70-year-old men. Fire departments are not hiring retirees.
The nets are going to break. Yet people who are resting in a net do not want to look at the quality of the rope, the strength of the support bars, and the distance to the ground. They prefer to believe that a government promise is as good as gold.
BACK-UP NETS
State and local politicians are hoping that Congress will intervene and come up with money to fund their safety nets. But Congress can see that this will be a permanent demand. The size of the population of people resting comfortably in state and local safety nets will get larger. The demands by local politicians will be perpetual. If local politicians are unable to solve the long-term pension problem this year, they will be unable to solve it next year, either.
The safety nets associated with old age are not only continuing, they are expanding. The age distribution of the population works against the net system. A lot of the baby boomers are already on Social Security. They took early retirement at age 62. Medicare kicks in by law this year for the first year’s cohort: at age 65 for people born in 1946. This will continue at an escalating pace until 2025. The peak for American births per woman was in 1957: almost four children.
The safety nets constitute most retired Americans’ source of revenue. They have no private pensions. They do not want help from their children. Their income has fallen. Social Security or a municipal pension is all the institutional safety they possess.
There is no real sense of concern yet. There is a vague gnawing away at people’s confidence in the reliability of the nets in general. There is no clear indicator that Congress will allow the actual default of a large state, such as California. Always, lenders have come to the rescue in the past. Meredith Whitney has said that there will be defaults this year by dozens of state and local governments. This prediction has been universally dismissed as extreme. The experts insist that this is not going to happen. Someday, yes, if things don’t change, there will be a default by this or that small city, but not soon and not many. The capital markets do not send an indication of trouble. But they did not in late 2007, either.
It will happen, and the dominoes will begin to topple. It will happen in this decade, maybe in this half decade. The Federal government’s existing nets are so full and so frayed that it is not likely that Congress will cave in to the requests of state governments to rescue them from a default on their bonds. If it does, there will be no effort made by other local governments to escape the problem by radical cost-cutting and higher taxes. If Uncle Sam says to one state, “Nets repaired here, free of charge,” there will be a lot more nets to repair.
The easy way out for a fiscally busted city will be a declaration of bankruptcy. When this finally happens, and nothing serious happens to local services, the way of escape will be clear to all: let the safety nets break. Let the pensioners sue in court. Let the lawyers argue. The courts can declare anything they like. How can they enforce their rulings? Will a governor send in state troopers? To do what? To freeze local bank city accounts? Then what happens? The schools will close. Then a state court will declare that the state must take over the funding of the closed schools. After all, there are state compulsory attendance laws on the books. The governor now has the tiger in his lap. He will have to come up with the money out of his budget. The next fiscally hard-pressed city council sees the light. “Cut the nets.” The governors will figure out fairly soon that replacing local nets at state expense is bad politics.
Local voters in a defaulted city are not going to see local services cut drastically for the sake of the retirees who thought their futures were secure because politicians in the 1980s promised. Those who bought municipal bonds are rich people trying to escape Federal income taxation. They have no politicians openly in their corner.
NO SAFETY NETS IN ASIA
Asia has only one net: central bank inflation. The central bank keeps the national economy running. If it stops inflating, the recession will hit. There are no safety nets. There are tanks to deal with rioters.
The competitive position of Asia is obvious. The employers pay no Social Security taxes, no unemployment insurance taxes, no retirement programs. They can price their exports accordingly, and do.
American manufacturing is declining. The large firms see the future: plants in Asia. Why pay taxes here for workers who want promises? Better to hire workers who are glad to get jobs without pensions.
The safety nets have become straight jackets. They were set up by politicians to protect voters from the failures in life, and foreign workers now make American businesses an offer they don’t refuse: “Don’t pay for expensive safety nets. We will walk life’s tightropes without them.”
Politicians assumed that if they passed laws constructing safety nets, they would make life less risky. They ignored international competition. Foreigners can sell goods to Americans at prices below domestic goods’ prices. Costs are lower in Asia, and they will remain lower for as long as Asians walk the tightrope of economic life without government-funded safety nets.
It is now more risky to be an American worker in manufacturing than it would have been without the nets. The politicians promised workers greater safety. The result: less safety. This is one more example of Ludwig von Mises’s warning: the outcome of government intervention is the opposite of whatever the intervention was officially declared to achieve.
CONCLUSION
The governments’ various safety nets will not hold. To the extent that you are planning your future in terms of any of these nets, you will be disappointed. To the extent that you rely on such safety nets to produce safety, you will find yourself less safe.
In review:
Rock a bye baby in the treetop, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, And down will come baby, cradle and all.
Under this system, cradle-to-grave security is more risky than politicians and educators have told us. If you are in a government-funded safety net, get out and climb down the tree. Don’t stand around under it, either.
Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2011 Gary NorthThis is not the Wiki bot; the real bot is a computer program, which just looks like a string of random letters and numbers.
You might think writing 10,000 articles per day would be impossible. But not for a Swede named Sverker Johansson. He created a computer program that has written a total of 2.7 million articles, making Johansson the most prolific author, by far, on the "internet's encyclopedia." His contributions account for 8.5 percent of the articles on Wikipedia, the Wall Street Journal reports.
But how can a bot write so many articles, and do it coherently? As Johansson--a science teacher with degrees in linguistics, civil engineering, economics and particle physics--explained to the WSJ, the bot scrapes information from various trusted sources, and then cobbles that material together, typically into a very short entry, or "stub." Many of the articles cover the taxonomy of little-known animals such as butterflies and beetles, and also small towns in the Philippines (his wife is Filipina).
Johansson's creation, known as Lsjbot, is certainly not the only bot to write articles meant for human eyes. For example, the Associated Press just announced that it will use robots to write thousands of pieces, and other news outlets use programs to write articles, especially finance and sports stories. And on Wikipedia, half of all of the edits are made by bots.
Several long-time members of Wikipedia are not happy that so many articles are being written by non-humans. But Johansson defends his bot, pointing out that the articles it writes are accurate (although there have been some glitches that he claims have been corrected), and can very useful. For example, Lsjbot wrote a stub about the town of Basey, in the Philippines. When Typhoon Yolanda hit the town, causing deaths, people were able to visit this stub and find out more about the town and its location.The
will not appeal a court ruling that declared its gun ban on its seven campuses exceeds its authority and is invalid
The system still has authority to control its property and facilities and can make and enforce internal policies that ban guns from university classrooms, dormitories and sports stadiums, said
on Tuesday. Some universities, for example, already prohibit firearms in sports arenas as a condition of purchasing a ticket to a sporting event.
"While we feel strongly that the court decision is not in the best interests of our students and campus communities, we do not want to go through a long and costly process (of appeal) that may produce the same outcome," Pernsteiner said in a prepared statement. "Instead, we have started work on internal processes that are already in place or that we can put in place that will maintain a reasonable and satisfactory level of campuses safety and security."
Kevin Starrett, executive director of the
questioned whether the university system can restrict students with permits from carrying guns in public buildings. He said he had predicted university officials "would try to find ways to circumvent the intent of the (court) decision."
The decision was the result of a lawsuit filed by the foundation, a nonprofit group that fights for second amendment rights. Starrett said he could not say whether the foundation would take further legal action.
"What we can do will be predicated on what they do," he said.
A three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals said in September that the State Board of Higher Education cannot use an administrative rule to ban guns. Only the Legislature can regulate the use, sale and possession of firearms, the court said.
Some campuses have some agreements to restrict guns from some buildings. Portland State University, for example, bars guns from its student housing, but students or faculty still can pack concealed guns into classrooms and other buildings if they have permits, said Scott Gallagher, spokesman. The university has not made plans to strike agreements to restrict guns from buildings other than housing, he said.
But lawyers across the system are working on a comprehensive set of contracts and policies that would effectively ban guns from all classrooms, dorms and university buildings, said Di Saunders, spokeswoman for the system. It may take up to a year to put those changes into place, she said.
In the meantime, students and faculty with permits can carry concealed guns into classrooms and other buildings where contracts are not yet in place, she said. University leaders have not talked about turning to the Legislature to pass a law to keep guns off campuses, Saunders said.
The state's 17 community colleges, which each has its own governing board, have various positions on guns. Some have no policies while others have barred guns with policies similar to the OUS ban that was struck down by the court.
The Oregon Community College Association has recommended they all review their policies in light of the OUS decision, said Andrea Henderson, executive director.The expansive world of wine boasts plenty of room for exploration -- and each week, New Orleans wine shops lead locals on mini-tours through wine regions, types and varietals.
Wine shops around the city hold free tastings each week, sometimes based on seasonal or geographic themes, and often showcasing lesser-known boutique wineries and bottles brand-new to local shelves.
Wine shops often use free tastings to highlight new offerings and special deals, or guide customers into unfamiliar territory.
"The whole purpose of our wine tastings is to get people trying things that they might not instinctively try or pick up for themselves," said Catherine Markel, owner of Faubourg Wines in Marigny.
Free tastings give customers a chance to learn more about which wines they like without the risk of spending money on a glass or bottle that may not suit their tastes, Markel said.
These complimentary sample sips can inspire ideas for wines to accompany particular occasions. Bin 428, a wine shop Uptown, often spotlights bottles that could work well for seasonal celebrations, said assistant manager Katie Ostrowski. For example, the store plans champagne tastings in advance of New Year's Eve.
Weekly tastings also act as neighborhood gatherings, reinforcing another important aspect of wine, Markel added.
"Wine is about community and bringing people together," Markel said.
Here are nine New Orleans wine shops with free weekly tastings. And here's a tip: Get there early to get a good taste of what these shops have to offer, which along with wine, sometimes includes samples of craft beer and specialty spirits.
Tastings are especially popular during the holiday seasons when folks are planning meals, picking up a bottle to bring to parties and celebrating at home.
Where do you like to attend wine tastings? Tell us in the comments below.
Faubourg Wines, 2805 St. Claude Ave.
Free weekly tasting: Wednesdays, 6-8 p.m.
Faubourg Wines usually offers samples of about four different wines, sometimes based on a theme and sometimes not. On the first week of December, the shop highlighted Spanish wines.
Owner Catherine Markel said the shop uses the tastings to create a community gathering while helping customers learn more about what they enjoy, and just generally "the world of wine through the window of these four specific wines."
For details, check the Faubourg Wines website.
W.I.N.O. (Wine Institute New Orleans) Shop, 201 St. Charles Ave.
Free weekly tasting: Thursdays, 4:30-6 p.m.
Known for its wine classes and keeping more than 100 wines on tap for sampling, the Wine Institute of New Orleans (W.I.N.O.) took on a new venture this year by opening a retail store in Place St. Charles.
The shop's tastings tend to feature six to eight kinds of wine, usually from a particular producer or wine region. For example, the first week in December tasting included samples of wines from Frank Family Vineyards in Napa Valley, Calif.
The tastings sometimes include whiskeys and other spirits.
For the holiday season, the tastings will include champagne tastings and possibly a port tasting as well.
For information, call the W.I.N.O. Shop at 504.592.7090.
Keife and Co., 801 Howard Ave.
Free weekly tasting: Thursdays, 5-7 p.m.
Keife and Co. offers about five to six wines during the shop's weekly tastings, and sometimes throws in a spirit sampling.
The wines spotlighted tend to be new arrivals, sometimes from one particular wine region or producer and sometimes from an eclectic mix of regions and wineries, said Jim Yonkus, who owns Keife and Co. with John Keife.
For information, visit the store's website or Facebook page.
Pearl Wine Co., 3700 Orleans Ave. (in the American Can Building)
Free weekly tastings: Thursdays and Fridays, 5-7 p.m.
Weekly wine tastings at Pearl Wine Co. dovetail with the wine shop's general focus on "affordable, small-production, family-owned wineries from around the world," said Pearl Wine owner Leora Madden.
Tastings tend to include three or more hand-crafted wines from wineries that have gained notice for their processes, but that still offer bottles at affordable prices, Madden said. During tastings, the shop also gives customers a 10-percent discount on the featured wines.
The weekly tastings sometimes incorporate samples of cocktails, spirits and, usually on Fridays, beer. On Thursdays, the tastings coincide with the Crescent City Farmers Market, which runs from 3-7 p.m. at the American Can Building. Pearl Wine's Friday tastings include grub available for purchase from Foodie Call Food Truck.
For the holiday season, Pearl Wine also plans to host a free New Orleans Rum and Hook & Ladder tasting at 5 p.m. Dec. 10 and a special champagne tasting at 7 p.m. Dec. 30.
For details, visit Pearl Wine Co.'s website or Facebook page.
Martin Wine Cellar, 714 Elmeer Ave., Metairie; 3827 Baronne St., New Orleans; 2895 U.S. 190, Mandeville.
Free weekly tastings: Fridays, 4:30-6 p.m.
Tastings at Martin Wine Cellar tend to reflect the tastes of several staff members, who take turns choosing the wines for each week's event. Whether selected by geographical theme or other factors, the wines are typically chosen from a host of wines set for promotion, said Marc Pelletier, wine and spirits consultant for Martin Wine Cellar.
"We have a large list we pull from each month," he said.
Though tastings are usually scheduled for 4:30-6:30 each Friday, the December schedule often deviates from the norm to accommodate the holiday season. The weekly tastings are set to return to their regular schedule in January, a spokeswoman for Martin Wine Cellar said.
For information and updates, check the calendar on the shop's website.
Swirl Wine Bar and Market, 3143 Ponce de Leon St.
Free weekly tasting: Fridays, 6-8 p.m.
Swirl Wine Bar usually spotlights four or five wines during its weekly tastings, usually selecting bottles by region but sometimes by producer, said Swirl owner Beth Ribblett.
Wines opened at the tastings almost always are new additions to the store -- and often, recent arrivals to the local market -- "whatever is new and exciting," Ribblett said.
Swirl also has a good relationship with neighboring restaurant 1000 Figs, so that customers can order food from the eatery and have it served at Swirl, to be accompanied by the free wine samples, Ribblett said.
For details, check Swirl Wine Bar's website.
Second Vine Wine, 1027 Touro St.
Free weekly tasting: Fridays, 6-8:30 p.m.
During tastings, Second Vine Wine likes to highlight up-and-coming wine regions or give patrons a taste of different grape varietals, usually through bottles from small-production wineries, said Mauricio Burns, general manager of the spot's retail shop.
"We try to focus on boutique wines," Burns said. "We've been doing some really good stuff, we've been doing some really creative stuff."
For more information, visit Second Vine Wine's website or Facebook page.
Bin 428, 2801 Magazine St.
Free weekly tastings: Fridays, 6-8 p.m. and Saturdays, 2-4 p.m.
Tastings at Bin 428 often aim not only to educate, but also to help patrons select bottles for particular occasions.
For example, free tastings during the first week of December focused on sparkling wines from Italy, France and South Africa, in hopes that customers would gain inspiration for bottles to enjoy at holiday gatherings, said Katie Ostrowski, assistant manager.
"We think it's a great holiday celebration companion," Ostrowski said of sparkling wines.
For more information, visit the Bin 428 website.
Hopper's Carte des Vins, 5601 Magazine St.
Free weekly tasting: Saturdays, 2-5 p.m.
At Hopper's Carte des Vins, tastings tend to highlight two to four wines from particular wine regions or in conjunction with the seasons, such as roses for summer or bubbles for the holidays.
Owner Ric Hopper said the weekly tastings aim to be educational and encourage patrons to get out of their comfort zones.
"We typically highlight wines people may not gravitate to, are off the beaten path, but at good price points," Hopper said.
For details, visit the shop's Facebook page or website.DETROIT -- While his teammates practiced Sunday afternoon, Detroit Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard was in the training room at Joe Louis Arena receiving treatment on his sprained left shoulder.
His spirits were good. He is relieved that he did not suffer a serious injury Saturday night, when Toronto's Joffrey Lupul fell on top of him in the third period.
An MRI revealed no damage. Howard is listed as day-to-day. He is hoping to return for Wednesday's home game against St. Louis. That appears overly optimistic. But he is confident he'll play some games before the playoffs.
“I'll be ready for the playoffs. We got enough games left. Still a couple of weeks away,'' Howard said. "Hopefully this doesn't keep me out (too long). Hopefully I can come back possibly Wednesday. I'm going to do the best I can to try to get back as soon as possible, icing it like crazy and continue to work with (trainers).''
Howard said he "dodged a bullet.''
“I was just hoping it wasn't anything serious and it wasn't. The MRI came back, it was fine, just a sprain,'' Howard said. “My arm just got caught underneath him. Where my glove was, my arm didn't really spread out and he just landed on my shoulder.''
The club has recalled Thomas McCollum from Toledo (ECHL). He'll play for the Walleye tonight and then dress as Joey MacDonald's backup for Monday's game against the Chicago Blackhawks at the Joe (7:30 p.m., Versus).
MacDonald has not allowed a goal in 109 minutes, 45 seconds, dating back to March 3 in San Jose.
McCollum, the club's top pick in the 2008 entry draft (30th overall) has struggled in Grand Rapids, where he is 6-11-2, with a 3.18 goals-against average and.881 save percentage. He is 11-8-2, with a 2.69 GAA and.911 save percentage for Toledo.
Coach Mike Babcock said Howard is "going to take a little break.''
"I don't know exactly when he'll be back,'' Babcock said. “The bottom line, just like any other player who's got an injury, he's got to get back and get healthy and get playing. Ideally it won't be very long.''Image caption Letzgo Hunting contacts men by posing as girls
A vigilante group which claims to "expose paedophiles" has said it is not to blame for the suicide of a man it confronted.
Gary Cleary was found hanged at his Leicestershire home on 13 May - four days after he was arrested by police.
The Letzgo Hunting group claims it gathered evidence Mr Cleary was a paedophile after contacting him online and posing as a 14-year-old girl.
But police said the 29-year-old had not been charged with any offences.
The Leicestershire force would not say what crime Mr Cleary had been arrested on suspicion of, but confirmed he had been interviewed by officers and released on bail.
Letzgo Hunting poses as girls under the age of consent and chats to men online, saving the conversations as evidence.
The group then arranges to meet the men in public places, and confronts them about their alleged actions while they are filmed.
In April, Letzgo Hunting told BBC Radio 5 live's Victoria Derbyshire: "We're not there to hurt anybody."
'Sorry for his family'
But the group said it would not change its methods following the death of Mr Cleary, who lived in Newbold Verdon.
A spokesperson told the BBC: "We told Victoria if anyone hurt a person we caught we would stop; that doesn't include self-harm."
The group told the Leicester Mercury: "We feel sorry for his family for the loss of their son."
'Personal circumstances' led to suicide A statement on the Letzgo Hunting Facebook page said: "We feel sorry for Mr Cleary's family however we are not to blame for this man's suicide... he believed he was meeting up with a 14 year old girl he had groomed for approximately one month." The group said it arranged to meet Mr Cleary, who then approached an 18-year-old woman posing as the 14-year-old girl. The group said they then confronted Mr Cleary while filming him. An inquest was held into Mr Cleary's death but neither his arrest nor confrontation with Letzgo Hunting were mentioned during the hearing. Coroner Terry Kirkman said the notes made it clear that Mr Cleary had killed himself because of "personal circumstances".
Leicestershire Police and neighbouring Nottinghamshire Police said they were not aware of any cases where the involvement of Letzgo Hunting had led to any offenders being charged.
Letzgo Hunting has claimed that its investigation into a Nottingham man, called James Stone, led to him being convicted of sexual offences against a 15-year-old girl.
But Nottinghamshire Police said Stone was arrested after the girl's mother contacted them.
Letzgo Hunting told the BBC it had recorded online chats with both Gary Cleary and James Stone, and filmed meetings with both men.
The online conversations and footage were then given to police, the group said.
"All of our evidence is passed to police, otherwise they wouldn't have been arrested," said a spokesperson.
Stone has pleaded guilty to grooming, making an indecent image, possessing indecent images, possession of an indecent image with a view to distribution, possession of extreme pornography and two counts of sexual activity with a child.
Six of these charges relate to the 15-year-old girl, but none of the charges relates to material gathered by Letzgo Hunting.
Stone, 24, who lives in Nottingham city centre, is due to be sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court on Friday.
'Loss of evidence'
The Letzgo Hunting website is currently down, with a message saying it is in "maintenance mode".
Det Insp Martin Hillier, of Nottinghamshire Police, said the force was encountering "a worrying increase in those who think they can take the law into their own hands when it comes to internet grooming cases".
He said posting videos of alleged offenders online could "compromise any subsequent criminal proceedings" and lead to the collapse of court cases.
"Most importantly, any delay in reporting cases such as this to the police can lead to loss of evidence, and, crucially, delays the provision of vital medical treatment or psychological support that the victim may need," he said.
"If you suspect someone of online grooming or sexual offences, or indeed any crime, the only course of action should be to call the police immediately."Australians overwhelmingly believe in climate change, according to a new poll, and they are more than ready for the government to do something about it.
According to The Climate Institute's 2016 Climate of the Nation report, 77 percent of Australians believe climate change is happening. That number has grown year on year in the annual report since 2012, when only 64 percent believed in the phenomenon. Of this group, 90 percent feel human activity is at least partly the cause.
The report, released Monday, also indicates the majority of Australians trust the science that suggests human activity is to blame for climate change.
People are worried about food security, the Great Barrier Reef and more bushfires.
Interestingly, city and rural populations are more aligned on the issue than might be expected. According to the poll, 62 percent of city dwellers trust the science of human-caused climate change, compared to 57 percent of those in rural areas.
Australians also want the federal government to do something about it, and now. Ninety percent think the government is responsible for tackling the issue. They're not handing out medals for its performance so far — only 19 percent of respondents think federal politicians are doing a decent job.
"The sense of urgency has been dampened by frustration with political squabbling, scare campaigns and setbacks," The Climate Institute CEO John Connor said in a statement. "Despite this, there is a strong expectation for leadership and action on climate change, a transition to renewable energy and the phasing out of coal."
People march along a road during a rally calling for action on climate change in Melbourne on Nov. 27, 2015. Image: AFP/Getty Images
Australians are also coming to grips with some of the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Respondents were most worried about the impact of droughts and floods on food security, the fate of the Great Barrier Reef and more bushfires.
The report polled a representative sample of 2,015 people over the age of 18 in an online survey.
The Climate Institute's poll comes just after the Earth experienced its hottest August ever recorded. As Mashable reported, that means we have experienced a record warm monthly temperature during every month for the previous 16 consecutive months.
Perhaps that's why the number of Australians who believe in climate change continues to grow. They're living it.The Sensible BC campaign is not welcome at Tim Hortons: not at its coffee shops, and until recently, not on its customers’ laptops.
Sensible BC Director Dana Larsen will appear on tomorrow’s episode of Cannabis Culture News LIVE to discuss the latest about Tim Hortons’ Sensible BC ban. Watch it at 4PM PT, September 6 on Pot TV.
That’s the message Dana Larsen is getting after he learned that the website for his campaign to decriminalize marijuana had been blocked on the coffee franchise’s WiFi networks, only days after being told not to hold meetings at its restaurants.
Larsen recently completed a tour of approximately 40 stops in B.C.’s Interior and on Vancouver Island, where he held campaign meetings at various coffee shops including Tim Hortons in Port Alberni and Victoria.
Two weeks ago he got a call from the company’s head office to stop meeting at its coffee shops.
“I went online and checked meetings at Tim Hortons and there’s plenty of people out there advertising that they’re meeting at Tim Hortons with all kinds of meeting groups,” Larsen told The Huffington Post B.C. at a Vancouver campaign event on Wednesday night.
“I don’t know exactly why they singled us out.”
About a week later a supporter told him that he couldn’t access the campaign’s website on the Tim Hortons WiFi network.
– Read the entire article at The Huffington Post.This is likely to be a controversial topic, and it’s honestly a bit tongue in cheek, but the thought has occurred to me more than once recently. I figured that it would make for an interesting blog post and some interesting discussion. I think that, in the modern Software Development world, Testing is harder than Development.
If you had said this to me 10 years ago, I would have thought that you were crazy. Perhaps it wasn’t true 10 years ago (it likely wasn’t). Perhaps you think I am crazy to think this today, but in this post I am going to outline 8 reasons why I’m not.
Let me make a confession. When I left University, I took a job in Testing because I thought that it would be easier than Development. I had struggled with writing much worthy programming code during the 4 year course. Even for the generic and mostly straightforward lecture assignments. I didn’t feel that I had produced anything of decent quality. The thought of having to write ACTUAL code, to solve real problems in the real world terrified me.
But I knew that I was going to work in IT. At the time it was the only thing that I was passionate about. So I decided to take the easy path of a career in Testing. Let some other boffin come up with the complex solution I thought. I’ll just run a few manual tests and tell him (or her) if it works or not. What could be simpler!
Well, 15 or so years later, it hasn’t exactly worked out like that for me. Thank heavens for that as well. The job I described in the last paragraph doesn’t sound like the most fulfilling. It’s not something I could persist with day after day.
So why on earth do I think testing is harder than development? How can that even be possible? Let me clarify that for this post I am talking about the role of the modern tester. The tester who is embedded deep in the Agile team, flanked by developers. The SDET – Software Development Engineer in Test (or whatever variation your company has chosen to adopt). Not the old fashioned manual tester that I described above.
Let me make an important distinction here. Crappy testing is easier than crappy development. There isn’t much doubt about that. In this post, I am saying that excellent testing is far harder than excellent development. This was highlighted by Neel Kumar in this great post on Quora. I obviously know that excellent development work is hard too. But I feel that sometimes there is a perception within the industry that testing is significantly easier that development. I don’t think that is true, hence the reason for this post.
Without further ado, here are the 8 reasons why testing is harder than development:
Reason 1 : You need a broader set of skills So of course you have the core set of traditional tester skills. Strong attention to detail. The ability to think outside the box. To be able to spot a potential bug or defect from a mile away. To write a great defect report with detailed recreation steps. All that good stuff. But there is so much more as well. You must be able to read and understand the development code. I mean REALLY understand it. To a point where you can explain why something is wrong or inefficient (and how to improve it). You also might need get involved and write your own development code. I am noticing more SDETs getting asked to write development code. This doesn’t have to be a bad |
oath to protect their citizens and laws.”
Harry Kazianis, an Asia security specialist at the Center for the National Interest, said the Trump administration has to balance concerns about human rights and domestic challenges in the Philippines against U.S. foreign policy and strategic priorities in Asia. The Philippines has been in a longstanding territorial dispute with China over a group of islands in the South China Sea.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus defended Trump's praise of Duterte on Sunday, saying the president's top priority is addressing the threat of North Korea and partnering with countries in Southeast Asia.
[Rodrigo Duterte is the Trump of the Philippines, because everyone is the Trump of something]
“The issue on the table is North Korea, and there is nothing right now facing this country and facing the region that is a bigger threat than what's happening in North Korea,” Priebus said on ABC News's “This Week” on Sunday morning. “And if we don't have all of our folks together — whether they're good folks, bad folks, people that we wish would do better in their country, doesn't matter, we've got to be on the same page.”
ABC's Jonathan Karl repeatedly pressed Priebus on Duterte's “abysmal human rights record,” asking how Trump could praise a leader accused of mass killings. Priebus would not say whether the issue came up in the call, saying he didn't hear the entire conversation.
“We obviously want to encourage him to do better, but this call, the purpose of the call, is all about North Korea,” Priebus said.
At one point, Karl asked, “Does that mean that human rights don't matter now?”
“Absolutely not,” Priebus responded. “It doesn't mean that human rights don't matter, but what it does mean is that the issues facing us, developing out of North Korea, are so serious that we need cooperation at some level with as many partners in the area as we can get.”
Priebus added that human rights are “very high at the top of the list” of the president's priorities, citing Trump's decision to attack an airfield in Syria after President Bashar al-Assad was accused of using chemical weapons against his own people.
[Trump’s invitation to Duterte is a sign of the times]
Robespierre Bolivar, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila, told reporters that if Duterte accepts Trump’s offer, he may visit soon because of the urgency of the threat over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the AP. The United States wants to consult with its allies in Asia on how to deal with the tensions in North Korea, Bolivar said.
Duterte has implored the United States to show restraint and patience in dealing with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and warned against an aggressive approach.
“I'm sure President Trump by now is cautioning his military to just maybe hang on there and not to start something which they cannot control,” Duterte said in a statement. “Everybody's worried. Nobody's clapping his hand. And I'm sure that if war breaks out in the Korean Peninsula, the imponderables of life is really, you cannot foresee, even project what will happen.”
In a news conference before the call Saturday, Duterte said he would urge Trump to ensure that war is avoided. Otherwise, “my region will suffer immensely,” according to the AP.
“It behooves upon America, who wields the biggest stick, just to be prudent and patient,” Duterte said. “We know that we are playing with somebody who relishes letting go of his missiles and everything.”
Whether Trump will take his ally's advice remains unclear.
In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Trump said he prefers a diplomatic approach to settle mounting friction over North Korea's nuclear program but warned that a conflict is possible.
“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely,” Trump said. “We'd love to solve things diplomatically, but it's very difficult.”
[Philippine President Duterte unveils his Trump impression, complete with profanities]
The relationship between the United States and the Philippines soured under President Barack Obama, who criticized Duterte's drug war. Not one to take criticism lightly, Duterte snapped at Obama on a few occasions, telling him to “go to hell” and, at one point, using the Tagalog phrase for “son of a b----” or “son of a whore” when talking about the then-U.S. president. In September, Obama canceled a meeting with Duterte, whom he called a “colorful guy.”
But with Trump at the helm, the relationship between the two countries seems to be shifting.
The White House said it “is now heading in a very positive direction” and that Trump is looking forward to visiting the Philippines during the East Asia and U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, summits in November.
Bayan, a left-wing organization in the Philippines, is urging Duterte to not accept Trump’s invitation. Renato Reyes, the group’s secretary general, told the AP that he does not believe the Philippines has much to gain from the visit other than “an interesting photo op.” Bayan has said it will lead a protest during Trump’s visit.
The Trump Organization has a licensing deal with Century Properties, which owns Trump Tower at Century City, a 250-unit luxury apartment building that opened last year in Makati City in Manila. Century Properties is led by Jose E.B. Antonio, whom Duterte appointed last fall as his economic envoy to the United States. The company told ProPublica that Antonio will be a liaison between U.S. and Philippine companies and that the position is a “non-government paid, non-policy making role.”
Emily Rauhala contributed to this report.
READ MORE:
Trump is not ruling out military action against North Korea
No sign Philippines raised sea feud win vs. China in summit
A Trump-Duterte bromance would be complicated — but so are U.S.-Philippine tiesGRAND RAPIDS — While the American Homebrewers Association’s National Homebrewers Conference was certainly a win for West Michigan, it was even more so for a group of local home brewers.
Jeff Carlson (PrimeTime Brewers), Nick Rodammer (Brewsquitos Homebrewing Club) and Kathy Troxell (Rivertown Homebrewers) were three home brewers who took home medals at the event, for three very different brews.
As we sat on a deck in July, enjoying the brewers’ winning drinks, the three medalists began to talk about their approach to home brewing.
For Troxell, she was more than pleased by the results. She won a silver medal in her first-ever competition with her Cherry Tart Kiss Melomel.
“I never expected to place in the finals — this was my first mead and my first competition,” said Troxell. “I was so surprised and overwhelmed. I didn’t believe my name had been announced. The guys at the table had to tell me three times I had won the Silver.”
But for all three home brewers, it’s not just about winning — it’s about what they learn in the process.
“You want some feedback, it’s probably the best advice to get,” said Carlson.
The long-time brewer took home two medals at the conference — a gold in the Specialty Cider and Perry category, and a bronze in the Standard Cider and Perry Category.
All of them agreed that winning solidifies the fact that a home brewer can be capable of creating something on par with some of the area’s best beer, cider and mead.
“My goal every time I make a beer that I’m serious about is, in my mind I want it to come out as good as anything you buy at a pub or in a store,” said Rodammer, who won gold with his Rodtoberfest in the European Amber Lager category. “Oktoberfest is probably my favorite style, which is why I was so happy to win a medal in it.”Judge Posner Dumps Ridiculous Patent Fight Between Apple & Motorola As Contrary To The Public Interest
from the with-prejudice dept
[re a slide-to-unlock patent] Apple’s.. argument is that “a tap is a zero-length swipe.” That’s silly. It’s like saying that a point is a zero-length line.
Motorola’s contention that the term has a “plain and ordinary meaning” is ridiculous; Motorola seems to have forgotten that this is a jury trial.
Judge Richard Posner is, perhaps, the most influential judge not on the Supreme Court. Beyond writing a ton of books (and columns and articles and blog posts), his rulings often seem to carry extra weight. On intellectual property, he's been something of a mixed bag. He's written an entire book (which I consult frequently) on The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law. While extremely knowledgeable on the subject, he does (too frequently) come down on the side of believing that without IP law, you couldn't have a functioning market for products that are covered by intellectual property. Still, he doesn't just roll over on IP cases (or, really, any case -- though I'm still troubled by his belief that filming the police in public can be a bad thing).While he normally is on the 7th Circuit Appeals Court, appeals court judges will sometimes "slum it" down at a district court. So Posner was handling apatent fight: one filed by Apple against Motorola for patent infringement concerning (of course) smartphones, down in the Northern Illinois district court. As we've discussed at length in the past, there are a whole bunch of patent disputes concerning smartphones, with companies suing each other in the courts or seeking injunctions from the ITC. This case was one of the "main events," especially considering Google's purchase of Motorola.So it's pretty interesting to see that Posner has told everyone he's dumping the case. The trial was supposed to start on Monday, but he released a statement saying that there's nothing worth reviewing at a trial, and that he's dismissing the case(meaning it can't be refiled), and effectively saying (in much nicer language) that the whole thing is a joke. The note concerning this says he'll issue a full ruling within a week -- though, he says that "in the course of... preparation I may change my mind" on the reasoning for the dismissal. Still, he lays out the basics, which are that there's simply nothing worth discussing. As he puts it: "neither party can establish a right to relief." Apple has admitted that "it cannot prove damages for the alleged infringement" of two of the patents, that two other patents do "not create a genuine issue of material fact" that would allow a trial to move forward and, with the final patent, Apple's evidence of damages "fails to create a genuine issue of material fact."This isn't a huge surprise, since Posner's statements in filings from a few weeks ago certainly suggested his annoyance that a lawsuit had been filed over these patents. As quoted by Jeff Roberts at GigaOm, Posner had hit back at claims from both sides with pretty strong language:The statement from Posner also rejects the idea that, outside of the damages question, "injunctive relief" (blocking one another from offering the products) was reasonable, stating that it would "impose costs disproportionate to the harm" and "would be contrary to the public interest."Roberts also notes that, in a bit of interesting timing, Posner had just a few days ago posted a blog post discussing the importance of capitalism, but noting that our version of capitalism is lacking in many ways -- with him specifically calling out the "dysfunctional patent system" as one of a litany of problems with the way we've embraced "capitalism."Posner has certainly always appeared to recognize that intellectual property law could be abused, but this seems like a strong indication that he's realizing just how widely itbeing abused under today's patent system.
Filed Under: damages, itc, richard posner, scotus
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This page is for overall team NFL free agent grades in the 2014 offseason. I'll be updating this page until all of the teams are complete. You can view the individual NFL Free Agent Grades via this link.Follow me @walterfootball for updates.The Cardinals lost one key member of their defense in Karlos Dansby, who took a ton of money to play with Cleveland. Dansby was great for Arizona this past season, but the team couldn't possibly match the preposterous price for a player his age (4 years, $24M; $14M guaranteed). To make up for this, however, the Cardinals signed Jared Veldheer, ensuring that they'll have a quality blind-side pass protector for the first time in what seems like ages. This was crucial, as Carson Palmer is as immobile as they get.Arizona didn't do much outside of signing Veldheer - Ted Ginn will help on returns, though Arizona overpaid a bit - but filling one of its top needs for a fair price was enough go earn a solid B grade.UPDATE: I bumped up Arizona's grade a bit for the Antonio Cromartie signing. I love the deal they got for him. Check out the link below for more analysis.Antonio Cromartie, CB, Jets - AJared Veldheer, OT, Raiders - B+Jonathan Dwyer, RB, Steelers - B+Ted Ginn, WR/KR, Panthers - C+Thomas Dimitroff is often aggressive in free agency, and this spring wasn't any different. The Falcons paid lots of money to three new players, all of whom will help bolster the trenches in some fashion. The big name was Paul Soliai, who will be a great force inside. Jon Asamoah, meanwhile, will help upgrade an offensive line that was in shambles last year.What's important is that the Falcons are bringing back most of the members of their defense. In fact, the one big-name defender who's gone is Asante Samuel, and he was banged up this past season. Tony Gonzalez has departed as well, but Atlanta couldn't do anything about that. His replacement will have to be drafted.All in all, this was a decent offseason for Atlanta, though I think Dimitroff overpaid for some players; namely Tyson Jackson.UPDATE: I'll have an update here for the Devin Hester signing once financials are known.Corey Peters, DT, Falcons (re-sign) - A-Jonathan Babineaux, DT, Falcons (re-sign) - B+Joe Hawley, C, Falcons (re-sign) - BPaul Soliai, NT, Dolphins - B-Devin Hester, KR, Bears - B-Jon Asamoah, G, Chiefs - C+Tyson Jackson, DE/DT, Chiefs - C-The Ravens had three goals in free agency, and all of them concerned re-signing their own players. The team absolutely had to retain Eugene Monroe, Dennis Pitta and Daryl Smith, in that order. It came as no surprise that Ozzie Newsome managed to keep all three, all of whom stayed on for very reasonable deals.The only reason Baltimore isn't getting an "A" for its free-agency ventures is the Steve Smith signing. I gave it a "Millen," as you can see below (click the link for the write-up). Newsome is only human, so even he can make mistakes. Smith looked completely done in Carolina this past season, and at 35, he's not suddenly going to regain his speed. The contract Newsome gave Smith was mind-boggling, but that one blunder won't be enough to bump Baltimore down from its high grade.Eugene Monroe, OT, Ravens (re-sign) - AJeremy Zuttah, C, Buccaneers - ADaryl Smith, ILB, Ravens (re-sign) - B+Dennis Pitta, TE, Ravens (re-sign) - BJacoby Jones, KR, Ravens (re-sign) - C+Steve Smith, WR, Panthers - MillenThe Bills didn't have a terrible offseason, but their front office did a few dubious things. It started when they allowed Jairus Byrd to walk and instead paid a ton of money to Aaron Williams, the team's other starting safety. Giving Williams $14.6 million guaranteed was strange, given that he's had just one successful season as a starter. It was rumored that Byrd didn't want to return, but Buffalo didn't have to unnecessarily give a one-hit wonder a boatload of money.The next move was worse. Buffalo handed guard Chris Williams a $13.5 million deal with $5.5 million in guarantees. That's not a ton of cash, but Williams is a reserve-caliber player who has no business as a starter. The Bills are unquestionably paying him a ridiculous amount of money for his talent level. Having Keith Rivers to come in and be a starting linebacker for two years and $5 million isn't as egregious, but it's still a poor move.Buffalo did some good things, like signing Brandon Spikes to a 1-year "prove it" deal, but the team made too many mistakes in free agency to warrant any sort of high mark.Brandon Spikes, ILB, Patriots - B+Corey Graham, CB, Bills - B-Scott Chandler, TE, Bills (re-sign) - B-Anthony Dixon, RB, 49ers - CKeith Rivers, OLB, Giants - CMike Williams, WR, Buccaneers (trade) - C-Aaron Williams, S, Bills (extension) - C-Chris Williams, G, Rams - MillenThis was a disastrous offseason for the Panthers. They watched several offensive linemen retire, including Jordan Gross; lost a number of key free agents, thanks to a severe lack of cap space; and whiffed on all of the top free agent wide receivers.The latter is a huge concern. With Steve Smith, Brandon LaFell and Ted Ginn gone, Carolina's top wideouts currently on the depth chart are Marvin McNutt, Tavarres King, Kealoha Pilares and that Nate kid from the Play 60 commercials. They missed on all of the affordable wideouts like Hakeem Nicks and James Jones, and now they'll be forced into choosing multiple receivers early in the 2014 NFL Draft (I have them going with receivers in Rounds 1 and 3 in my 2014 NFL Mock Draft.) With Cam Newton coming off surgery, he won't have much time this offseason to work with his new weapons.Meanwhile, the one major player the Panthers signed was Roman Harper, who isn't very good. They didn't overpay for him, but he won't have much of an impact.UPDATE: The Panthers signed Jerricho Cotchery for too much. That doesn't help their grade.Roman Harper, S, Saints - B-Graham Gano, K, Panthers (re-sign) - CJerricho Cotchery, WR, Steelers - C-The Bears had some work to do with their defense - a unit that was already in shambles this past season and was in danger of losing some big names like Julius Peppers and Henry Melton. Both Peppers and Melton are no longer with the team, but Chicago did a good job of adding some solid defenders.Lamarr Houston and Willie Young aren't as well known to casual fans as Julius Peppers is (especially the latter), but both outplayed the current Packer this past season. They'll definitely help bolster the pass rush - and at reasonable prices, too - though there's still a major void in the middle of the defensive front that must be addressed in the 2014 NFL Draft.The secondary, meanwhile, got a bit of help with Charles Tillman re-signing and Ryan Mundy coming in from the Giants, but it's still the weakest group on the roster. This area absolutely has to be strengthened in the draft as well.Update: The Bears signed Jared Allen. They overpaid for him, but there's no doubt that he makes their team better as they chase a Super Bowl in 2014.Roberto Garza, C, Bears (re-sign) - AWillie Young, DE, Lions - A-Ryan Mundy, S, Giants - BJared Allen, DE, Vikings - B-Lamarr Houston, DE, Raiders - B-Israel Idonije, DE, Lions - B-Charles Tillman, CB, Bears (re-sign) - CThe Bengals, as usual, did nothing in free agency. I'm against splurging in March because it often backfires - just ask the 2013 Dolphins or the Philadelphia Eagles "Dream Team," - but there are quality bargains available that owner Mike Brown tends to ignore every single spring. Even worse, Cincinnati allowed some players to get away. Both Anthony Collins and Andrew Hawkins are both gone. The latter departure was ridiculous, as the Bengals could have completely avoided losing him to the Browns had they spent just a bit more and slapped him with a second-round tender instead of the low-level variety.Andrew Hawkins, WR, to Browns (lost tender) - DThe Browns had a pretty mixed free agency. They managed to land a steal in Ben Tate. The former Texan is injury-prone, but talented, and Cleveland signed him to a good deal. The team also managed to keep stud center Alex Mack around via the transition tag when it was initially expected that it would lose him.Unfortunately, Cleveland downgraded the safety position, going from T.J. Ward to Donte Whitner. Inside linebacker was upgraded, but the Browns gave Karlos Dansby too much money considering that the former Cardinal proved that he won't always give 100 percent if he's financially content. Receiver Andrew Hawkins was also overpaid.Ben Tate, RB, Texans - ADonte Whitner, S, 49ers - B-Andrew Hawkins, WR, Bengals - CKarlos Dansby, ILB, Cardinals - C-Thanks to a barrage of terrible moves, Jerry Jones found his team way over the cap entering the offseason. He had to release long-time Cowboy DeMarcus Ware, and he also was forced to watch Jason Hatcher and Anthony Spencer leave the team. Dallas, as a result, has a depleted roster.Considering the financial implications, however, the Cowboys didn't do a poor job with what they were capable of accomplishing. The Henry Melton signing was a nice one, as Dallas basically obtained him for a 1-year "prove it" deal. There's also some potential with Jeremy Mincey, who was effective in limited action with the Broncos late last season after being released from the Jaguars because he didn't fit Gus Bradley's scheme.The Cowboys will be one of the worst teams in the NFC in 2014, but things could have been much worse with more mismanagement this offseason.Henry Melton, DT, Bears - A-Jeremy Mincey, DE, Broncos - BTerrell McClain, DT, Texans - DConsidering the Broncos are "all in" and willing to sacrifice the future for a chance to win now with Peyton Manning, they had an excellent offseason. They signed three difference-makers on defense for very reasonable prices. DeMarcus Ware has the potential to lead the league in sacks if he can stay healthy. T.J. Ward is a huge upgrade at safety. And Aqib Talib was perhaps the most meaningful signing because Denver stole him away from New England.The Broncos didn't have to do much on offense outside of finding a replacement for Eric Decker. They did just that with Emmanuel Sanders. They overpaid for Sanders a bit, but there won't be much of a drop-off considering Decker was the product of Manning.With its moves this offseason, Denver solidified itself as the favorite in the AFC. Mission accomplished for John Elway.DeMarcus Ware, DE, Cowboys - A+T.J. Ward, S, Browns - A+Aqib Talib, CB, Patriots - BEmmanuel Sanders, WR, Steelers - BThe Lions made two major moves this offseason, and I discussed why they overpaid for both players in the individual NFL Free Agent Grades page. The Seahawks didn't think very much of Golden Tate, as indicated by the low offer they gave him that apparently insulted him. The Brandon Pettigrew re-signing was a bit better, but Detroit is still bringing back an underachiever who constantly screws up.The Joique Bell contract saves Detroit a bit, but this has been a poor offseason for its front office thus far.Joique Bell, RB, Lions (re-sign) - B+Brandon Pettigrew, TE, Lions (re-sign) - C+Golden Tate, WR, Seahawks - DThe Packers seldom sign anyone in free agency, preferring instead to grow their own talent. They made one key move, which was to bring in former Bear Julius Peppers to help with the pass rush. Peppers struggled in 2013, but given that he has a chip on his shoulder after being cut and is effectively on a 1-year "prove it" deal, he could give 100 percent and rebound this upcoming season.What I didn't like was the Packers not re-signing Evan Dietrich-Smith. Aaron Rodgers really wanted him back, and yet all Dietrich-Smith got was $7.25 million guaranteed on a 4-year deal from Tampa. Green Bay could have afforded that. There was no need for Ted Thompson to be so stingy with Rodgers' center.James Starks, RB, Packers (re-sign) - B+Julius Peppers, DE, Bears - B-I don't know how I can give the Texans a grade. They had no money, so they couldn't sign anyone outside of Ryan Fitzpatrick to be the team's new backup quarterback. They also lost a bunch of players like Ben Tate, Antonio Smith and Owen Daniels, so they'll need to draft well to compensate.Ryan Fitzpatrick, QB, Titans - TBAKendrick Lewis, S, Chiefs - TBAThe Colts overpaid for pedestrian players last spring, so they appeared to pick up where they left off when they overpaid for D'Qwell Jackson before free agency even began. However, Ryan Grigson turned things around with a quartet of solid moves.Indianapolis added two big names in Arthur Jones, who will bolster a weak defensive line, and Hakeem Nicks, who will be trying his hardest for a change because he's on a 1-year deal. Andrew Luck suddenly has a potent trio of targets in Nicks, Reggie Wayne and T.Y. Hilton. If the two tight ends can grow up, Indianapolis will have a very dangerous offense.I also liked that the Colts were able to retain Vontae Davis and Ahmad Bradshaw for very reasonable deals. The former is especially key, as he was one of the top corners in the NFL last year.Arthur Jones, DE/DT, Ravens - A-Hakeem Nicks, WR, Giants - A-Ahmad Bradshaw, RB, Colts (re-sign) - A-Vontae Davis, CB, Colts (re-sign) - B+D'Qwell Jackson, ILB, Browns - CPat McAfee, P, Colts (re-sign) - C-You'd think that a team with two "Millens" and a "D" in terms of individual signings would receive a poor grade overall, but that's not the case because Jacksonville also made some quality moves.Gus Bradley was able to use his influence to bring over two of his former players from Seattle, Red Bryant and Chris Clemons, both of whom will provide a big boost to the stop unit. Cheaply re-signing Jason Babin was a solid move for depth purposes, while obtaining something (sixth-round pick) for Blaine Gabbert was a borderline miracle.Unfortunately, it's difficult to ignore the blemishes. General manager David Caldwell gave way too much money to a duo of scrubs (Ziggy Hood, Toby Gerhart), and he grossly overestimated the talent level of Zane Beadles, who will be yet another of Peyton Manning's linemen to leave his team and struggle elsewhere.Sixth-round pick for Blaine Gabbert - A+Red Bryant, DE/DT, Seahawks - AJason Babin, DE, Jaguars (re-sign) - B+Chris Clemons, DE, Seahawks - B-Dekoda Watson, OLB, Buccaneers - B-Chad Henne, QB, Jaguars (re-sign) - C+Zane Beadles, G, Broncos - DZiggy Hood, DT, Steelers - MillenToby Gerhart, RB, Vikings - MillenThe Chiefs didn't have much cap space entering the offseason, so their top four free agents (Branden Albert, Geoff Schwartz, Dexter McCluster, Tyson Jackson) all signed elsewhere. Unlike Houston, however, I can give th Chiefs a grade because they used some of their money on a free agent of note. They signed Vance Walker, who may not fit Kansas City's scheme. The Chiefs, who had a fluky start to last season, will find it difficult to reach the playoffs again in 2014 after losing some key personnel.Husain Abdullah, S, Chiefs (re-sign) - AVance Walker, DE/DT, Raiders - CA year ago, most talking heads praised the Dolphins for having the best offseason. They spent the most money on the biggest names, after all, so of course they improved their team tremendously.Jeff Ireland is long gone, but some of the foolish spending continues. I have no idea what new general manager Dennis Hickey was thinking by giving $5.5 million guaranteed to Cortland Finnegan, who was one of the worst cornerbacks in the NFL last year. Hickey also grossly overpaid for the injury-prone Branden Albert, who received elite left tackle money despite not being close to elite.Fortunately for the Dolphins, they made some quality transactions as well. They were able to re-sign Randy Starks at a great price. Keeping Brent Grimes was huge as well, while the Louis Delmas addition has promise.Update: The Dolphins made a great move by signing Knowshon Moreno, which will increase their grade.Randy Starks, DT, Dolphins (re-sign) - AKnowshon Moreno, RB, Broncos - ALouis Delmas, S, Lions - B+Brent Grimes, CB, Dolphins - B+Branden Albert, OT, Chiefs - C-Shelley Smith, G, Rams - C-Earl Mitchell, DT, Texans - DCortland Finnegan, CB, Rams - MillenThe Vikings did a great job in free agency, for the most part. They absolutely had to find a cornerback to start across from Xavier Rhodes, and they managed to obtain one in Captain Munnerlyn at a great bargain price. They also were tasked with replacing Kevin Williams and Jared Allen. Linval Joseph will be an upgrade over the former, while Corey Wootton will provide depth at the latter's position. Both were secured for very reasonable deals.The only reason I can't give the Vikings an "A" is because of the Everson Griffen contract. Giving $20 million guaranteed to a player with one career start was seen as ridiculous at the time, and given the sort of contracts handed out to defensive ends this month, it's now beyond absurd. I'm actually ashamed of myself that I didn't grade it as a "Millen" when the move was initially made. Perhaps I can posthumously dub it the "Millen Equinox" because I'm writing this on the first day of spring.Captain Munnerlyn, CB, Titans - ALinval Joseph, DT, Giants - B+Corey Wootton, DE, Bears - B+Charlie Johnson, OT, Vikings (re-sign) - BEverson Griffen, DE, Vikings (re-sign) - DJasper Brinkley, ILB, Cardinals - TBAIt initially seemed like the Patriots were going to be the big losers of free agency when the Broncos stole Aqib Talib and Julian Edelman was rumored to sign elsewhere. New England silenced all concerns, however, by signing Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner, all while retaining Edelman in the process.The Seahawks, 49ers and Broncos were the three best teams in the NFL by far prior to the Revis signing. With all of these moves, the Patriots became the league's fourth super power. How are teams going to throw on New England with Revis and Browner locking down opposing wideouts? Imagine what Bill Belichick is going to be able to do schematically without having to worry about opposing receivers getting open.The offense is still a concern with Edelman being the only reliable presence at wideout - adding Hakeem Nicks would have been nice - but perhaps Aaron Dobson will be able to develop. Having Rob Gronkowski stay healthy would also solve a lot of problems.Darrelle Revis, CB, Buccaneers - A+Brandon Browner, CB, Seahawks - A+Julian Edelman, WR, Patriots (re-sign) - BBrandon LaFell, WR, Panthers - B-The Saints went on a cutting spree to open the offseason. They dumped Will Smith, Jabari Greer, Lance Moore and Roman Harper, and then they traded a declining Darren Sproles for a fifth-round pick. All of this was done to retain Jimmy Graham, who was franchised. The Saints were also able to sign Pro Bowler Jairus Byrd and retain Zach Strief, but New Orleans overpaid for both players.In summary, the Saints had a pretty mediocre offseason. They bolstered their secondary and were able to keep their top weapon, but they lost depth and hurt themselves financially down the road with some bad contracts.Update: I've upgraded New Orleans' mark for the Champ Bailey signing, which was a quality move.Champ Bailey, CB, Broncos - A-Jairus Byrd, S, Bills - C+Fifth-round pick for Darren Sproles - C+Zach Strief, OT, Saints (re-sign) - C-The consensus is that the Giants are one of the winners in free agency. They've been heavily praised on Twitter and in various news-aggregator publications, but as is usually the case, the popular opinion is wrong.New York handed out several poor contracts this offseason. The front office grossly overpaid for Jon Beason, who struggled mightily in coverage this past season. It wasted $3 million on J.D. Walton, who hasn't played a full game since September 2012. The worst deal of all was Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. That signing was an embarrassment. With tons of money in his bank account again, the lethargic corner will once again live up to his "Doesn't Really Care" nickname.Having said that, the Giants made some quality transactions. I love the Walter Thurmond acquisition, as the team brought him in for a great price. There were also some other solid signings, including Rashad Jennings and the versatile Geoff Schwartz. Retaining Stevie Brown and Trumaine McBride without spending very much was nice as well.Walter Thurmond, CB, Seahawks - AStevie Brown, S, Giants (re-sign) - AHenry Hynoski, FB, Giants (re-sign) - AJohn Jerry, G, Dolphins - AMario Manningham, WR, 49ers - A-Rashad Jennings, RB, Raiders - BGeoff Schwartz, G/OT, Chiefs - BTrumaine McBride, CB, Giants (re-sign) - BJon Beason, ILB, Giants (re-sign) - CJameel McClain, LB, Ravens - CJ.D. Walton, C, Broncos - C-Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie - DJohn Jerry, G, Dolphins - TBAYou can't exactly call this a successful offseason for the Jets. Rex Ryan wanted to bring back Darrelle Revis, but arch rival New England stole him away. Ryan then wanted Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Antonio Cromartie, yet New York whiffed on both and now has nothing at corner. Meanwhile, the front office added a No. 1 receiver for Geno Smith. Except Eric Decker is not a No. 1 option. He was a product of Peyton Manning, so he won't be nearly as effective in his new home.Free agency wasn't a total disaster though. The Jets brought back Willie colon cheaply and inked Breno Giacomini to a reasonable deal. Of course, Giacomini is a downgrade from Austin Howard, who was yet another player to get away from Ryan.UPDATE: The signing of Philadelphia's former quarterback drops this to a C-. He will fire yet another coach (Rex Ryan will be added to the extensive list of coaches he has canned) and will destroy the confidence of Geno Smith. Not that Smith had much hope in the first place, but the Jets wasted $5 million on this signing.Willie Colon, G, Jets (re-sign) - A-Breno Giacomini, OT, Seahawks - BCalvin Pace, DE/OLB, Jets (re-sign) - BJeff Cumberland, TE, Jets (re-sign) - BEric Decker, WR, Broncos - CQBDK, QB, Eagles - DThe Raiders remind me of the 2002 Texans. Coming into the league, Houston used the expansion draft to pluck 30-year-old overpriced veterans off other rosters. General manager Charley Casserly wanted to be competitive right away around No. 1 overall pick David Carr, and the team was - it upset Dallas in the opener - but this decision was ultimately a poor one because the Texans were soon in financially difficulty. Of course, Carr busting didn't help.Oakland used this offseason to obtain many of the same type of veterans. The difference, however, is that general manager Reggie McKenzie signed most of his free agents relatively cheaply. He had a ton of cap room to work with, and almost all of the players he obtained won't mess around with the fiscal situation in the future.With that in mind, I think this offseason has to be considered a relatively successful one for the Raiders. They needed to become competitive because they will be using an early selection on a quarterback. Perhaps it'll be another Carr...Tarell Brown, CB, 49ers - A+Justin Tuck, DE, Giants - ADarren McFadden, RB, Raiders (re-sign) - AKevin Boothe, G/C, Giants - A-Antonio Smith, DE/DT, Texans - B+Donald Penn, OT, Buccaneers - B+LaMarr Woodley, DE/OLB, Steelers - BJames Jones, WR, Packers - BMatt Schaub, QB, Texans - B-Austin Howard, OT, Jets - C-If the Eagles' goal in free agency was to distance themselves from the other inept teams in the NFC East, then mission accomplished.Philadelphia made three key moves during this period. The first was trading for Darren Sproles |
.. for a 1/84-scale Tomica-built L-Series.
AdvertisementsParadox of nihilism is the name of several paradoxes.
Meaning [ edit ]
According to Hegarty, the paradox of nihilism is "that the absence of meaning seems to be some sort of meaning".[1]
Religion [ edit ]
Rivas locates the paradox in the "conservative attitude of Roman Catholicism" developed in reaction to Nietzschean nihilism, in that it "betrays a form of nihilism, that is, the forced oblivion of the real ambiguity and the paradox that inform the distinction between the secular and the sacred".[2]
Critical legal theory [ edit ]
In Critical Legal Studies (CLS) theory, the arguments used to criticize the centrist position also undermine the position of CLS.[3][clarification needed]
Ethical nihilism [ edit ]
According to Jonna Bornemark, "the paradox of nihilism is the choice to continue one's own life while at the same time stating that it is not worth more than any other life".[4] Richard Ian Wright sees relativism as the root of the paradox.[clarification needed][5]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Introduction
I’m currently enrolled in a moral psychology class. We spend a lot of time talking about human moral instincts — the ways we think about moral situations when we haven’t had time to reflect on the consequences.
Sometimes, our instincts are excellent; they help us save people from oncoming trains when there’s no time to think about alternatives. But other times, they lead us down strange paths.
Many studies have shown that people are usually natural deontologists; they instinctively think about moral decisions in terms of duties and rights, rather than measuring the consequences of each possible action. Sometimes, they’ll also think in this way even when they have time to consider a problem carefully. For example, some people say that they would choose to sacrifice the lives of five people to avoid killing one person through their own actions.
(For an excellent overview of moral instinct, skim this paper from Joshua Greene.)
I am a utilitarian; I believe in trying to take actions whose outcomes are as good as possible. When I examine the trolley problem — or any similar dilemma — my goal is to bring about an end result that leaves as many people alive and healthy as possible.
In this post, I discuss classical moral dilemmas using different “frames”, with the goal of helping people look at controversial situations from new angles.
If you’re a utilitarian: I hope you find some of these thought experiments useful in your next moral discussion. Post your own examples in the comments!
If you aren’t a utilitarian: I hope that some of these experiments make you think about moral issues a little bit differently. Feel free to counter with your own examples in the comments!
(If you spot any weaknesses or unfairness in these thought experiments, please let me know so I can improve this post. As of 2016, they’ve also been criticized on Reddit, so that might be worth reading.)
Utilitarian Thought Experiments
The Runaway Train
You’ve gone hiking with some friends on an abandoned railroad track that winds along the edge of a deep gorge. Falling from your height would certainly be fatal, but you have plenty of room to walk safely. On the other side of the gorge, your group spots a single hiker, on a separate stretch of the track. A few hundred feet ahead, the tracks come together at a switching point, which formerly allowed oncoming trains to run along either track. The lever used to switch between tracks protrudes from the ground a few yards away.
You’ve settled down to eat lunch when a member of your group spots the impossible — a train, roaring down the tracks ahead.
The train is headed straight for you, but it hasn’t arrived at the switching point yet. If someone could switch the train onto the other set of tracks, your life would be saved. So would the lives of your friends. You’d live to see your children again, and your spouse, who you left at home this morning when you went hiking, giving them a quick kiss before you said goodbye.
But someone would have to switch the train, and there isn’t anyone… WAIT!
A figure dressed in a railroad uniform is standing right by the lever that would switch the train onto the other tracks! The hiker on the other side of the gorge would be killed, but that’s only one person, and there are five of you!
Your group begins shouting at the person next to the lever. Switch the track! Help us! Please!
You’re just close enough to see the person turn their head. They look at you. They look at the single hiker on the other track. Back to you. They aren’t doing anything, and the train is getting closer and closer. Finally, they back away from the lever, turn their back to you, and clamp their hands over their ears, as though to block out your shouting. The train speeds past the switching point, barreling down the tracks toward your group. You are all going to die. Your children will never see you again.
Your last thought, of course, is of the face of your spouse. Tears form in your eyes as the roar of the train grows louder and louder.
But your next-to-last thought is different — more a burst of pure shock than anything concrete. If you had the time to express it in words, the words would be: Why did they do that? Why didn’t they save us?
The Hands of Fate
Rewind to the beginning of the runaway train story.
This time, though, you aren’t playing a particular character. Instead, please use this random number generator to choose a number, setting “min” to 1 and “max” to 6. Or, if you have a six-sided die handy, roll it.
If you got a number between 1 and 5, you are one of the five hikers who die.
If you get the number 6, you are the hiker who lives.
Now, run the random number generator a few times. Consider the fact that you might someday encounter a situation like this firsthand. You won’t be trapped on train tracks, but you might be trapped in a healthcare system that has to allocate money efficiently, or encounter a natural disaster that leaves triage units choosing which lives to save.
And even if you never become dependent on another person’s moral choice, many other people live in that state of dependence, every day. (You’ll meet some of them in a minute.)
The Choice: Part I
No more random number generators. Now, you are the person standing at the lever. You can act, or not act. If you act, one hiker will die. If you do not act, five hikers will die.
Will you pull the lever?
The Nepalese Village
You are a child living in rural Nepal.
Your family is very poor; you barely have enough to eat. But still, you are happy. You attend school on a regular basis, you help your parents with chores, and you spend a lot of time taking care of your baby sister.
One day, you get sick. You start to cough up blood, and you often wake up lying in a puddle of sweat. You are losing weight, and you were already skinny to begin with. Your parents keep you in bed and give you water, because the nearest medical center is a full day’s travel away. But when you don’t get better after a few days, your father leaves to find medicine.
He arrives home looking miserable. The workers at the medical center gave him medicine, but he knows that the pills he has will not cure your sickness. The treatment for the disease you have contracted (it’s called tuberculosis, though you don’t know the word) is extremely expensive — it costs over 200,000 rupees ($2000), which is more money than your family makes in two years.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, in the United States, a charity called the Make-A-Wish foundation spends, on average, $7500 per child to help kids like you, with diseases just as life-threatening, feel better for a while. Their work is beautiful, visible, and makes a big impact in some ways — but they do not save very many lives, if any. Instead, they buy tickets to Disney World.
You don’t know that this charity exists, and if you did, it would make no difference to your life. You aren’t very visible, because you live far away from people who can afford to donate money, and because most of the charities that help kids like you aren’t very famous. (Certainly not famous enough to take over one of the world’s richest cities for an entire day.)
* * * * *
Your father gives you the pills. They lower your fever and make you feel better, but soon the symptoms return, stronger than ever. By the end of the year, you will be dead, and so will your sister.
There are charities working to improve care in Nepal, so that every child has access to tuberculosis treatment, but they lack the funding to operate in your part of the country.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation granted almost 14,000 wishes in 2012, and it continues to expand every year.
The Choice: Part II
You are no longer a Nepalese child. Instead, you live in the developed world. If you are reading this, you probably live in the United States, where the average person earns in a week what the average Nepalese person earns in a year.
You are standing next to a “lever”. It isn’t a physical lever, like in the runaway train scenario. But there are two paths, just the same.
You could spend money on a charity that will use it to help a small number of people in the United States. Or you could help a much larger number of people who live in a much poorer country, but whose lives, in most ways, are very similar to those of Americans — they laugh, play games, fall in love, and work hard at their jobs.
Almost all of the money that Americans give to charity goes to help other Americans. The “train” in this scenario is rushing towards the rest of the world. But you have the chance to “pull the lever” and change the lives of many people. There will be consequences. But every decision — even the decision not to pull — has consequences.
Will you pull the lever?
Epilogue
I use this line of thought, which you could also call a “mantra”, to help me donate to charity, even when it seems hard:
It was a random accident of fate that I was born into my own lucky circumstances. But people born in other circumstances are just as real as I am, no matter where they live, or how similar they are to me.
Before I decide what to do with my money, I will try to see through the eyes of all the people my decision affects. I will imagine the future of the world after each decision I could make. Only then will I decide.
It often takes a long time for me to choose where to give, but I am faithful that my giving makes a strong impact.
(I still don’t donate nearly enough money, but I’m slowly increasing the percentage of my income that I give away.)Hillary Clinton used the same exact method as Donald Trump to pay less tax, according to her own tax returns released by her presidential campaign.
Donald Trump reportedly avoided paying federal income taxes by reporting massive losses on his 1995 tax return, which the New York Times somehow obtained before Trump himself released it.
The Wall Street Journal describes the loophole that Trump used:
The tax treatment of losses, bound to become a subject of national debate, is a typically noncontroversial feature of the income-tax system. The government doesn’t pay net refunds when business owners lose money, but it lets taxpayers use those losses to smooth their tax payments as they make money. That reflects the fact that “the natural business cycle of a taxpayer may exceed 12 months,” according to a congressional report. Typically, for federal returns, such net operating losses can be carried backward for two years to offset past income and then kept on a taxpayer’s books for 20 years, though Mr. Trump’s losses could only qualify for a 15-year carryforward under the law at the time.
The Clinton campaign has hammered Trump on his unreleased tax returns. When pundits on cable news now refer to the “Taxes” issue, they’re usually talking about Trump’s personal “taxes” issue, not the taxes paid by American voters.
But the Zerohedge blog first noticed something that could undercut Clinton’s ability to hit Trump on his “net operating losses.”
Clinton’s 2015 tax returns reveal that Hillary Clinton also reported capital gains losses in order to lessen her tax burden through a “carryover.”
Page 17 of the tax returns show “Capital Gains and Losses” for “WILLIAM J CLINTON & HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON.”
The Clintons reported a “Long-term capital loss carryover” of $699,540.
Thus, the Clintons reported a “Net long-term capital gain or (loss)” of “-699,540.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill did not immediately return Breitbart News’s request for comment.Hong Kong, Feb. 28 (CNA) Two Taiwanese nationals were denied entry to Hong Kong on Saturday for placing "stickers" on the cover of their passports, the Hong Kong Immigration Department said late Saturday.
When processing their entry documents, immigration officials noticed that the travelers' Republic of China (Taiwan) passports had stickers on them, a department spokesperson said.
The officials suspected that the Taiwanese nationals did not have legal authorization to change their travel documents and deported them after questioning, the spokesperson said.
The department did not specify what kinds of stickers were found on the passports, but Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported that they showed the name "Republic of Taiwan."
The stickers are used by supporters of the Taiwanese independence movement who do not recognize the Republic of China -- Taiwan's official name -- as a country, and instead support a "Republic of Taiwan."
[Supporters of the Taiwanese independence movement display an enlarged version of the altered passport cover. (CNA file photo)]
It was the first time that Taiwanese nationals were denied entry in Hong Kong for using such stickers, but similar incidents have occurred in Singapore and Macau in the recent past.
According to the revised Passport Statute Enforcement Regulations, which took effect on Jan. 1, authorities can revoke citizens' passports if they deface or alter them, including putting stickers on them.
(By Stanley Cheung and Christie Chen)
ENDITEM/lsBad Rats: The Rats' Revenge When the Rats are in charge, cats are simply lost! The Rats wants revenge against their historical enemies, the Cats, and with your help, in Bad Rats, this will happen. On this game you'll need to find solutions to the puzzles, and help the Rats to execute their annihilation plans. Bad Rats is a physics puzzle game. The Objective changes every map, but it's basically to make an object (the key) to hit another (the target), using real physics principles, as the objects weights, building levers, paths and others. The levels' themes are fully varied, but completing a map will always result on a different annihilation of a cat, with some cartoon violence, cartoon blood and some cartoon body pieces flying around. There are countless solutions for each map. And you, Which solution can you invent? Take a look at the videos, images, play the demo and have fun with Bad Rats!March 21, 2012
ON MARCH 17, the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, activists organized a celebration and attempted a 24-hour re-occupation of Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan.
By early evening, there were as many as 1,000 to 2,000 people in the park. Demonstrators held a General Assembly and were buoyed by speeches by Cornel West and Michael Moore, who had been speaking at the Left Forum conference being held nearby.
However, by late evening, the numbers of protesters in the park had dwindled to a few hundred. As they laid down cardboard and blankets, and prepared for a march, the NYPD moved in--with their all-too-familiar brutality.
Police announced that the park was closed, and everyone had to leave. Activists, who have been participating in regular trainings, pointed out that they were in full compliance with zoning regulations. The NYPD's response was to attack with overwhelming force and arrest scores of activists.
OWS activist Cecily McMillan was so brutalized in the process of her arrest that her ribs were cracked, and she suffered a seizure. Police refused to allow volunteer paramedics from Occupy get near her, and it was 15 minutes before an ambulance arrived. She remains hospitalized as of this writing.
When protesters began a march up Broadway, they were met with similar police violence--thrown against metal shutters, stomped in the neck and beaten with their own megaphone. NYU student Nisha Bolsey described seeing one marcher--a medic--thrown so hard against the door of Bolsey's dorm that the glass was broken.
The NYPD is clearly attempting to send a message to our movement: If you attempt to re-occupy space, even that to which you are legally entitled, we will use any level of force necessary to stop you.
By every account, the protesters on Saturday were not only completely peaceful, but also in full compliance with the law. We must stand in solidarity with the protesters who were brutalized and organize against police repression. There are planning meetings and actions throughout the week that will culminate in an anti-police brutality march this Saturday, which needs to be as big as possible.
At the same time, however, last weekend's actions highlight the need to assess the state of our movement and how we can take it forward.
Many of the most committed activists, who have continued to organize through a difficult winter, believe that last weekend represents the reemergence of the Occupy movement of last fall. OWS activist Max Berger, writing for Salon.com, described this as the coming of the "American Spring"--an image that is widespread among the core of the Occupy movement in New York.
There are a series of actions planned for this spring that activists hope will put Occupy back on the map--weekly solidarity marches, direct action trainings, a spring "assembly of assemblies" and, most importantly, actions for May Day are all in the works. At the start of the week, a new encampment of a couple hundred people has been established in Union Square Park--though as this article was being written, police were threatening to evict the encampment, even though the park has no restriction against people being in it 24 hours a day.
The plans for this spring are positive developments. But we need to be realistic about the state of the movement.
Neither the actions last weekend nor the plans for the coming weeks represent a revival of the Occupy movement on the scale we saw last fall--when several times more people were involved on a daily basis than were at Zuccotti at the height of the March 17 demonstration, and even larger numbers came to demonstrations and other actions.
The actions that have taken place so far this year have been almost entirely confined to a relatively small core of activists. We have not yet seen wider layers of people coming into the actions. Thus, the strategic questions of what it will take to rebuild our movement are paramount.
IT IS certainly possible--and even likely--that we will see a higher level of struggle this spring, at least compared to the last several months. The basic conditions that produced Occupy Wall Street and galvanized widespread sympathy for the struggle--above all, the pent-up anger with the greed, corruption and power of the 1 percent--still exist.
And over the course of the winter, hundreds of Occupy activists have continued to organize in New York City.
In some cases, they have successfully infused existing struggles with new energy and excitement. So, for example, housing activists have been deepening and expanding their efforts, with successful blockades of foreclosure auctions and ongoing plans for eviction defense. Housing activists from several different community groups are coming together in an attempt to form a new citywide coalition and develop new leadership.
Similarly, the Rank-And-File Labor Committee and the Labor Outreach Committee of Occupy Wall Street have organized important actions in solidarity with workers at Verizon and Sotheby's and members of the Transport Workers Union on New York's buses and subways.
Some activists in the May Day and Immigrant Workers Justice groups have built new connections. And there have been important campaigns against police harassment and school closures.
These examples represent only some of the organizing that has been taking place in the last several months. Throughout the movement, there is a high level of dedication and commitment, which is critical to taking new steps forward.
But this work has not yet been connected to an overall strategy for how to advance the struggle. And unfortunately, the movement remains largely inaccessible to new people who might want to get involved. For those who are already connected to activist circles or a working group, there is plenty of organizing getting done. But there is nothing yet that serves to bring in those not already participating.
The idea that we are entering a new American Spring is based on the hope that if we continue to pursue the tactics that worked in the fall, we will eventually re-connect with the mass sympathy that existed then as well. In particular, activists look to the inspirational example of occupations and a radical vision (not tied down by demands) as catalysts for the movement.
But there are two problems with this view. First, the specific activities that created the initial success of Occupy Wall Street won't be easily reproduced--especially now that the forces of the state are prepared to do everything they can to prevent the reoccupation of public spaces, as the NYPD showed last weekend.
Attempts to recreate the Occupy of last fall through attempts at renewed occupations will exhaust our forces as we face mass arrests and repression, and the resulting need for jailhouse solidarity, medical support and legal defense. In a growing movement, these can help to galvanize people and draw in new activists. But at a moment like this, they can easily become very draining on the limited number of activists able to sustain them.
Even more problematic, the insistence on militant tactics like occupations as the key to rebuilding the movement can point Occupy activists away from the type of organizing work that needs to be done right now.
The challenge facing us is to find a way to reconnect with the broader layers of working-class people which gave Occupy Wall Street its mass character. At best, the overemphasis on militant tactics--as a result of which, confrontations with police and the threat of violence are constant threats in the current circumstances--means that we will miss opportunities to build more modest struggles around issues people care about, like housing, school closures and police brutality. At worst, by setting the bar for participating in the movement so high, we could push away the people we most need to reach.
MOST OCCUPY activists are sincerely committed to rebuilding a mass movement, but aren't sure how to do so. However, there are sections within the movement that have embraced our marginalization. These activists see themselves as the "radicals," who must oppose anything that dilutes struggle.
So, for example, as planning for a spring "assembly of assemblies" got underway, one activist expressed concern over the focus of reaching out to labor and community organizations. Writing on an OWS listserve, he argued, "Most, maybe all, of these are of course going to be the traditional, irrelevant, failed Old Left and liberal organizations and professional activists that OWS should be blasting away with a cleansing stream."
In an article for Truthout, J.A. Meyerson echoed such ideas when he argued that the protests last weekend set the stage for a "radical spring" that will be more militant and confrontational than ever.
But this analysis doesn't account for the fact that the numbers at Occupy events are still small compared to last fall--and it doesn't offer a way for the movement to grow. The question for us shouldn't be how "radical" the movement is, but what is the best way to bring into action those who are most directly affected by the abuses of the 1 percent.
What we need is a strategic reorientation. First of all, we need to recognize that the police have the ability and the will to use overwhelming force against us. For a period last fall, the cops were thrown onto the defensive by the size of the movement and the widespread support it had. But they have clearly regained their confidence to crack heads. No amount of street actions or legal training will be enough to overcome this, until the size of the movement grows substantially.
I've been on too many marches where we end up running from street to street, as the police separate us into smaller groups, and then beat and arrest us. We can't compete on that terrain right now. So we need to think about how to build the confidence and organization among larger numbers of people to participate in Occupy actions.
This means connecting to immediate struggles around housing, school closures, budget cuts, police brutality, workplace struggles and many other issues, to provide support and also to offer a broader vision of radical change.
One important opportunity to do this is May Day, which has taken on an important prominence among Occupy activists. However, all of the discussions about how to take our movement forward have arisen in the planning for May 1.
Here in New York City, there were long and frequently heated debates about whether to endorse a call for a general strike on May Day. Broadly speaking, there were three basic positions on the question.
The position that represented the largest number of people was that an actual general strike was not possible on May 1, but that we needed a big, bold action to excite people, and therefore, we should support the general strike call. A second position, largely advanced by labor and immigrant rights activists, as well as members of the International Socialist Organization, was that the general strike call was a mistake because it would make it more difficult to bring in other forces like unions. A third position, supported by insurrectionary anarchists, was that we shouldn't care what unions think, and that the general strike had to be "re-conceptualized" to mean not workers withholding their labor, but any kind of radical action.
Because the organizing meetings were run on consensus, there was no way to fully resolve this debate. Instead, a compromise was reached in which OWS committed to "stand in solidarity with calls for a general strike, a day without the 99 percent and more."
Most activists were relieved to be able to move beyond the contentious discussion and begin organizing. But because the underlying issues weren't resolved, they continue to emerge on practical questions, and have to be decided at that level.
One of the most positive developments is that a coalition of labor, immigrant rights and Occupy activists have come together to plan for a mass solidarity march on May 1. The initial slogan for this march is "Legalize, unionize, organize to fight the 1 percent." This represents a tremendous opportunity to bring together activists from a wide array of struggles and unite them in a demonstration based around the Occupy slogan of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent.
However, there are a large number of activists who see the march as a secondary priority--and who believe that a permitted, mass march is "boring" and doesn't represent the new energy of Occupy. Attitudes about whether to participate or not vary, but these activists share a sense that Occupy Wall Street's contribution to the struggle is to escalate and radicalize through civil disobedience actions that directly target the 1 percent.
There are a number of problems with this position. At the most basic level, it means that many Occupy activists won't commit themselves fully to building the demonstration. OWS activists have energy, creativity and a range of connections that could help make this protest large and successful.
More problematically, the attitudes of these activists open the door to actions that could undermine our efforts on the day. For example, if there is an attempt to lead more militant actions out of the mass march, this could put more vulnerable participants such as undocumented immigrants at risk of arrest. Or if small groups of individuals decide to block workers from getting to work as part of the "general strike," it could alienate potential supporters.
THE CONDITIONS for an "American Spring" most certainly exist. There are deep reserves of anger at the unremitting assault on our living conditions and most basic rights--and a continuing sympathy for Occupy Wall Street and what it represents, although it remains passive. And there is a core of hundreds of dedicated organizers that has emerged from this struggle.
But the road to renewing the movement on a mass scale isn't clear or easy. Simply repeating the tactics of September and October won't accomplish the task. It may be that the revival of the movement will revolve around some unexpected event or action that has the power galvanize support on the level of last fall.
The most important step we can take for now is to increase our own organizing capacity. This will require patience and a willingness to employ a range of tactics, even those that many activists consider a step backwards. Above all, it will require participating in the concrete struggles by working-class people around immediate issues and building coalitions with organizations, including unions, that working-class people look to.
None of these are simple tasks, and they will require discussion, debate and mutual collaboration. But together, they constitute a process we have to go through to build the mass, militant movement we all want to see.Recently by William Norman Grigg: He Didn't Say ‘Infidels’: Homeland Security Theater, Continued
Why did they use a SWAT team?
If Tucson resident Jose Guerena was plausibly suspected of narcotics trafficking, why wasn’t he arrested on his way to or from his job at the nearby Asarco Mission copper mine? What justified a military assault on his home, when investigators knew that they could have executed a conventional search warrant?
Jose was never charged with a crime. In a previous encounter with police he consented to a search of his vehicle. In an separate traffic stop, Jose was a passenger in a car in which police found a handgun and a trivial amount of marijuana; he was arrested and subsequently released without being charged with a crime. He was an honorably discharged Marine combat veteran and — of infinitely greater importance — a gainfully employed, married father of two children.
There’s no reason to believe that anything other than a conventional search warrant — served by officers who aren’t kitted out in paramilitary drag, who knock on the door, identify themselves, and display the document in question before gaining entry — was either necessary or appropriate. This could have been done with minimal risk to everyone involved.
If a routine search warrant had been executed on the morning of May 5, the substantive result would have been the same: The police would have found no evidence of criminal activity. The most important difference, of course, would be that Vanessa would still have a husband, and her children — grade school student Jose, Jr., and toddler Joel — would still have their father. Instead, Jose was a victim of criminal homicide at the hands of a Pima County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) SWAT team.
At the time of the raid, Jose had just finished a twelve-hour shift at the local Asarco copper mine; he was startled awake by terrified cries from his wife, Vanessa, who told him that there were armed men laying siege to their home. Jose told her to hide in a closet with their four-year-old son, Joel.
When the intruders burst into the home, Jose was in his boxer shorts and reportedly was holding an AR15 rifle, which he never discharged — contrary to the SWAT team’s initial report, which was that Jose had fired on them. His wife, who claims that she had never seen the gun before, initially told investigating detectives that it had been “thrown” next to Jose’s body. Whether or not Jose actually pointed the gun, the invaders flung a total of 71 rounds in his direction, twenty-two of which hit him.
Significantly, none of the wounds, as described in the official Medical Examiner’s report, appears to have been a killshot. Jose was grazed in the head, and wounded in the extremities. One round penetrated a lung and his spleen, causing a hemorrhage. The same report notes that there was “no evidence of medical intervention,” despite the fact that one member of the SWAT team — deputy Jay Korza — is a medic, and paramedics summoned by Vanessa’s panicked 911 call arrived at the home mere minutes after the shooting.
Rather than rendering or permitting medical aid to their victim, the SWAT team barricaded the crime scene while Jose bled to death. They didn’t even confirm Jose’s death directly. Instead, they deployed a camera-equipped remote-controlled robot to investigate, and then obtained an official pronouncement by telephone from a SWAT team physician who was miles from the scene.
The likelihood that Jose could have survived if the SWAT team had provided timely medical care elevates this crime from simple homicide to second degree murder through depraved indifference. But the guilty parties here aren’t limited to the trigger-pullers who spilled Jose’s blood: Given that there was no legal justification for a military raid in the first place, the policy-makers responsible for signing off on it are just as guilty as the people who carried out those orders.
In a petulant and self-serving television interview with local ABC affiliate KGUN, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik insisted that the SWAT raid was entirely “appropriate,” and that since Jose was “part of a very violent organization, we considered it high risk.”
As helmet camera video of the raid documents, the comportment of the SWAT team was not what one would expect from police carrying out a “high risk” mission against a potentially violent criminal. Music can be heard playing in the background; the mood of the SWAT operators seems more like what would be expected of a sports team preparing for a pickup basketball game, rather than combat-ready tactical specialists steeling themselves to confront a dangerous offender.
Furthermore, Dupnik’s rationale for the “high risk” operation is contradicted by Michael Storie, the attorney representing Jose’s killers. Asked if Jose’s previous arrest played a role in the SWAT team’s strategy in carrying out the raid, Storie replied: “No. They didn’t know anything about it and they didn’t even know Guerena would be in the house at the time they approached.”
What this means, apparently, is that a SWAT team was sent to carry out a combat-style raid against a home the team believed was occupied only by a young mother and her four-year-old child. The task force investigating Jose knew his work schedule and his family’s daily routine; did it neglect to share that information with the SWAT team? Was that intelligence deliberately withheld?
Nothing was “mishandled” here, maintains Sheriff Dupnik, ignorant of the fact that once incompetence is eliminated as an explanation, we’re left with something can only be regarded as sinister — and criminal.
The public shouldn’t be alarmed over the raid that killed Jose Guerena, the Sheriff assured KGUN, since “We average about 50 of these searches” every year. Wouldn’t this mean that there is a SWAT raid of this kind taking place practically every week in Pima County? In light of what happened on May 5, should Pima County residents receive these tidings with relief, or apprehension?
“This was an unfortunate situation that was provoked by the person himself,” Dupnik maintained, asserting that this is the inevitable outcome when someone points an “assault rifle” at cops. A more honest person would acknowledge that the SWAT operators first pointed their weapons at Jose when they had no cause or justification to do so, and that it’s always a bad idea to invade a home occupied by a young mother with a toddler.
Dupnik, however, was too busy wallowing in self-pity to spare any sympathy for the young father who was slaughtered on the floor of his own home: “Unfortunately, in this particular case, the printed media … for whatever reason, decided to beat Dupnik up, over the head, with a sledge hammer….”
Sending a paramilitary death squad to bust down a door and hurl lead in every direction is conscientious police work; criticizing the synapse-challenged apparatchik responsible for such atrocities is something akin to criminal assault. Is everybody clear on this?
Dupnik’s casually defamatory statement that Jose Guerena was part of a “very violent organization” isn’t supported by evidence, and will never be proven in court. Since Jose was killed before being charged with a crime, his innocence will forever remain an unimpeachable legal fact. However, it is a moral certainty that Clarence Dupnik is the chieftain of a “very violent organization” that can kill innocent people with impunity.
The search warrant affidavit that lead to the May 5 raids in Tucson — a tapestry of supposition held together by begged questions — purports to describe a large, well-organized narcotics smuggling operation involving Jose’s older brother and other relatives.
The PCSO’s Special Investigative Unit (SIU) investigated Jose and the others for about two years, including six months of relentless, highly intrusive surveillance. This included wiretaps, stakeouts, and detailed scrutiny of household finances. The central figure in the investigation appears to have been Jose’s older brother, Alejandro, who did have a criminal history (albeit one not involving mala en se).
Suspicions were piqued by the fact that this group of Mexican-Americans, most of whom received welfare, appeared to be living beyond their means — which, while exceedingly unwise, is neither a crime nor uncommon, even in post-Bubble America. Jose, according to his wife, was the kind of frugal provider who made birthday pinatas for their son, rather than buying them. The affidavit insists that none of the subjects appeared to be gainfully employed. That statement is offered despite the fact that the same affidavit acknowledges that Jose, who retired from the Marine Corps several years ago, worked long hours at the copper mine.
Despite the depth of their suspicions and the extent of their investigation, the affidavit admits: “During the SIU surveillance concerning the aforementioned subjects [that is, Jose and the others], they were not observed handling or even in the proximity of narcotics.”
The functionary who filed the affidavit, identified only as “Detective Tisch,”offers a litany of excuses for the absence of tangible evidence of the drug trafficking ring he and his comrades had purportedly identified.
Some “drug traffickers are aware that electronic communications are subject to law enforcement interception … [and therefore] prefer most transactions to be in person,” he writes in lines 123-124 of the affidavit. Where and when did those transactions occur? Ahem — well, you see, “it is your Affiant’s belief … that suspects who are involved in drug trafficking are aware that law enforcement officers conduct surveillance of their residences, their businesses, and their activities” — so none of the deals would go down in any of those places, y’see.
Well, why not stalk those insidious people to the secret lairs wherein they ply their insidious trade? Ah, gee, well, as much as I’d love to, Tisch stammers in print, drug dealers “are conscious of being followed by law enforcement officers and are therefore difficult to follow.” All right — what about the fact that the SIU had terrifyingly detailed access to the financial records of those whom they were |
question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all. There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark. And there’s a lot of people looking for it.”Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell – (A prominent Clinton Backer)
THE UKRAINIAN AND SYRIAN VARIABLES
The demonization of Russia didn’t actually begin at the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 or even during the Syrian crisis. There were always a few crazies in the back of the room (like John McCain and Mitt Romney) pushing the narrative, but no one was listening to them. However Russia’s successful defiance of the U.S. in Syria and Ukraine triggered the equivalent of a temper tantrum on the part of the U.S. and European ruling elite. Obama in particular got egg in the face several times during these crises, and this created an emotional link for those who were committed to supporting the Obama administration no matter what. Russia had made their leader look bad. Therefore Russia was an enemy. This phenomenon is an expression of the pack instinct. The Alpha must be protected at all costs.
The counterattack became a question of repetition and psychology, rendering the facts irrelevant. Rather than acknowledge that over 95% of the Crimean people voted to reunite with Russia in a referendum that no one has been able to discredit in any meaningful way, or the fact that under international law, the right to self determination is a valid premise for such a reunion, the mainstream media blurred the issue with a simple slur, parroted endlessly: Russian aggression, Russian aggression, Russian aggression.
THE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES
The short-term political utility of tying Trump to Russia has blinded many on the left to the long-term effect such a strategy is bound to have. Consider for a moment the implications of an entire generation being raised in the United States right now marinating in news and commentary which frames Russia as enemy number #1 (or #2 depending on where Trump supposedly fits). The facts and specifics won’t matter to these formative minds. It all boils down to sentiment. This sentiment can (and likely will) be used in ways that those fomenting it never imagined.
A recent poll by Reuters found that a stunning 82% of Americans now view Russia as a threat. This is a ticking time bomb.
It is a strategic error to assume anti-Russian propaganda will always work in the favor of the political left. Remember the original Mccarthyism. Neocon Republicans like John McCain and Mike Pence would like nothing more than a chance to clip Putin’s wings, and in the right context that’s exactly what they would attempt to do. By linking Russia to Trump (arguably one of the most hated political figures in American history) the left is unwittingly laying the psychological groundwork for war.
If and when the moment comes where a Republican president decides to escalate tensions with Moscow (by direct or proxy intervention), “progressives” will find themselves in an extremely uncomfortable dilemma: either they get carried along with their enemies in the wave of anti-Russian sentiment they helped create, or they try to reverse tack and play opposition.
Reversing tack wouldn’t be easy under any circumstances, but in the midst of a crisis it would be all but impossible, and such protests would be easily shot down with snippets of their own words. Hypocrisy is after all, a vulnerability in and of itself.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.A small fleet of Culture ships cross the vast expanse between the Galaxies and arrives at the outer limits of the 40k galaxy.
Chapter Text
The Premise - Intro post to the versus thread that this originated from
A small fleet of Culture Vessels crosses the vast expanse between the Galaxies and arrives at the outer limits of the 40k Galaxy.
Setting themselves the task of converting the ENTIRE 40k galaxy and all its factions to their way of thinking. How do they fare?
The Culture Fleet consists of a single Systems Class GSU (controlled by 3 Minds), a single GSV (controlled by 1 Mind) and a pair of GCU's (controlled by 1 Mind each). With 300 million starting population of assorted Pan-Humans & Drones.
How does the Culture proceed? Do they go in guns blazing, sit back and manipulate or something in between?
It should be fairly apparent that space combat wise the Culture would dominate totally, but this isn't (necessarily) about blasting the opposition to atoms.
How do they deal with unyielding threats like Tyranids, Orcs, Necrons, Chaos etc?
What about the more approachable factions (for dialogue anyway) like Eldar or Tau?
How long would it all take or are they doomed to corruption by Chaos from the outset?
Notes:
Hyperspace, Grid Energy and all the other fancy Culture technology work perfectly fine and according to its own rules in the 40kverse.
The Culture begins with zero knowledge of anything to do with the 40kverse. No knowledge of Chaos, of Psychics, The Warp or anything. A complete Blank Slate.
Conversely, no one in the 40kverse knows anything about the Culture, not Chaos, not Eldar Farseers, no one.
Story Structure
The structure of the story is in varying parts. Each Part will have a head post that describes overall developments in the Culture fleet (usually technology and First Contacts); each part is 3 weeks long and events are placed to within 1 week accuracy.
Each part will also have a number of subsidiary bits, usually grouped by the race it happened to (but special events also exist), each of those bits consist of events during the 3 weeks of the Part it happened under (eg. the Tyranids update happens in part 6, and "Week 3" in that chapter refers to the 3rd week of part 6). These all happen concurrently and sometimes reference events happening in other bits.
Later in the fic, Hypothetical parts occasionally appear. These are thought experiments involving a major change to Culture policy and can be considered to be non-canon for the purposes of this fic. Aka. they didn't actually happen.
This fic's interpretation of the Warp
It follows strange physics, one that recognizes patterns. Instead of the rules operating on atoms or fundamental forces, the rules operate on patterns. Patterns are the building blocks of things in the Warp.
The soul is one such conglomerate of patterns. Patterns themselves are indivisible but they can be unraveled to release the energy contained. Aggregates of them, like a soul, are, obviously, separable into pieces. Patterns are made of Warp energy and can interact with the Warp to move or affect raw Warp energy or other patterns. Patterns can also appear from Warp energy or other patterns.
Patterns have a position in the Warp. Where a pattern is can distinguish between one pattern somewhere and another identical pattern elsewhere. These positions in the Warp correspond to positions in the Real.
The Warp is atemporal. The Warp is immutable and the passage of time in the real is not represented as changes in the Warp, but as the trajectory of patterns through it. Patterns in the future and in the past can affect the present, they are all there and it never really goes away.
Nevertheless, there are restrictions that the Warp follows with regards to time. I haven't worked this out yet, but it should line up roughly with the restrictions on time travel.
The Real
Warp phenomena happens when the Warp energy temporarily rewrites the rules of the universe. Patterns in the Warp have specific patterns of matter or energy in the Real and a very large number of them deal with organic brains. But things like lightning bolts (that aren't lightning) are generated by the Warp imposing a pattern on the Real.
Manifested Warp patterns in the Real are subject to what rules of the Real that still apply, but the more patterns that manifest, the less rules remain.
Too many Warp patterns, and bam, you have a Warp rift, a place where none of the Real's rules apply any more and the Warp enters the Real.
The Soul
Psykers and psychic sensitivity is how much of "you" is in the warp. Each person, a bunch of matter that processes other matter and energy in the real, attracts patterns in the warp as they form. By default, each arrangment of matter in the real will have a certain amount of Warp pattern associating with it, but by circumstance or deliberate control, more or less patterns can aggregate around the corresponding position of the real material.
This is highly sensitive to how the being develops and genetics, being the controlling developmental program, plays a very large part.
Organic beings have a pattern of material that affects the Warp in ways that attract patterns. Metals do not and a being made of metals does not affect the Warp. Intelligence, the ability to process information and representations of things (aka. concepts), attracts even more Warp patterns.
This conglomerate of Warp patterns is typically called the Soul.
A soul affects the body as much as the reverse. Kill the person in the real, and the patterns in the Warp will disperse. Kill the soul in the Warp, and the corresponding effects of the patterns will affect the real (usually killing the person).
In fact, in some cases, not all of a person's intellect resides in the Real, some of it is in the Warp. Souls interact with each other, usually to no major effect, but they can sense each other and communicate this to the brain in the Real.
Psychics
Psykers are organic people with a conglomerate of Warp patterns that can create other Warp patterns, including one that makes the Warp intrude into the real to impose a pattern. This may or may not be deliberately controlled, often not.
Races have inclinations (Eldars are more like to interact with the patterns corresponding to the future) based on biology that changes what patterns in the Warp are most likely to occur.
Blanks are the reverse of psykers, they have very few or no patterns associated with them in the Warp because they attracted a pattern that undoes other patterns.
Their ability to drive psychics crazy or make normals disgusted with them is because of the soul. They have none or very little to interact with in the Warp and consequently creep people out unconsciously due to the lack of that interaction.
Their invisibility to psykers, resistance or plain immunity to Chaos corruption, immunity to purely Warp effects, are all explained by this. But clearly, if you hit them with a lightning bolt, even a Warp lightning bolt, they still die.
Machines and devices that use the Warp are also possible. Those that manipulate the Warp by using arrangements of Real materials that attract Warp patterns can acheive Warp effects. (eg. Null Matrix generators, Gellar fields, D-Cannons) Copies these devices in the Real alone will work, since they manipulate the Warp for their effects.
Devices that partially exist in the Warp use both arrangements of the Real and patterns in the Warp together to acheive an effect. (eg. Eldar Wraithbone, Webway travel, Psychic weapons, Warp drives) These require both a Warp and Real construction method to make them, so it can get very complicated and often needs another Warp + Real device to do that.
Future Sight - Interpretation, terms and stuff
1. Future sight sees the possiblities of the future. Future-paths refer to the chain of visions that describe a path through various branches. The lower probability of a future, the harder it is to trace.
1b. The Farseers are able to 'vision' on demand and focus on a time and place if they wish. This lets them 'vision' their way around the timeline to trace paths and branches. Obviously, they're highly practiced and very good at it. The lower probability some future 'vision' has of coming to pass, the harder it is to tell which other 'visions' lie in the past of that future 'vision', making them very very hard to track.
2. Future vision is 100% accurate. There are no false visions (although false interpretation is perfectly possible), all future-paths refer to a future that can happen provided the correct branches are taken. It is not comprehensive, however, so while it is impossible to make errors in future visions, the Eldar don't see everything and certainly not all combinations of branches. They may not see some branches or some futures, and they might only have a vague idea or partial list of needed actions to cause a certain future.
2b. A branch refers to a set of Eldar actions at a certain point. Obviously, no one else has branches unless they also have future vision. This is how they can tell the Culture has no future vision, since they don't see any Culture branches.
2c. Some branches are 'chance' branches, which means the factor that decides it is a small effect outside Eldar influence. This is basically chaos-theory (the one that small effects in the right places have major effects).
3. Visions are limited in spatial and time resolution. They cannot steal tech by visions nor discern the working process of anything more complicated than say a steam engine. Culture effectors work too fast and invisibly for them to detect. Culture FTL is also nearly incomprehensible, Eldar cannot track Culture vessels through hyperspace, they can only detect the rough position of their vessels relative to various worlds. The large scale visions, like they used to try to discern what will happen to the galaxy, detects the overall minds in the galaxy. This is mostly war, because this is Warhammer 40k, but the visions are very sensitive to the emotions of the people concerned in the vision.Share Share 0 Share
The needs of people with progressive neurological disorders are not being properly addressed by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), according to a new publication.
The Neurological Alliance Australia has released a position paper making several recommendations aimed at improving NDIS outcomes for people with these disorders, reports Deidre Mackechnie, the Chair of the Alliance and CEO of MS Australia.
The paper warns that some NDIS participants are being placed at risk of avoidable hospitalisation.
Deidre Mackechnie writes:
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is set to transform the lives of people living with disability. But is the Scheme able to respond to the needs of people living with episodic and progressive conditions?
The Neurological Alliance Australia (NAA), ten national peak not-for-profit health organisations, met recently in Canberra with parliamentarians and their staff, people living with these conditions and advocacy groups to launch a joint position paper highlighting the issues relating to people with progressive neurodegenerative diseases in the NDIS.
The NAA can see that many NDIS plans have had positive, life-changing impacts, but many people, particularly those with progressive conditions, have experienced challenges in accessing the NDIS, including insufficient plans that will adversely affect their quality of life and place some at risk of avoidable hospitalisation.
There is a need to overcome these challenges if the NDIS is to fulfil the promise of having a positive impact on the lives of all people living with disability and their families and friends. We want to see changes for people with progressive and episodic conditions.
Improved pre-planning support is needed, as lack of pre-planning can lead to ineffective plans that will require an NDIS review and/or result in negative health impacts for people.
Funding for expert organisations to provide support to people with a complex conditions as they prepare for NDIS planning sessions, or for targeted NDIS education, would significantly reduce the risk of inappropriate or insufficient NDIS plans and the need for unscheduled plan reviews.
Planning sessions that recognise the unique needs of people with progressive or episodic conditions will offer true choice and control in individual plans. By gaining a better understanding of the diseases impacting clients and, wherever possible, meeting with these people face-to-face during the NDIS planning phase, will result in better plans and better outcomes.
People with progressive diseases are caught between a changing disability sector and aged care sector and there are limited options available to them within the marketplace.
Coordination of support mandated in all plans will ensure support and advocacy without which, many could fall through the cracks and be unable to access appropriate services.
Background
The NAA represents adults and children living with progressive neurological and neuromuscular diseases in Australia. Established in 2010, the Alliance promotes improved quality of life, coordinated services and greater research investment.
As health sector workers know, a health condition can impact both the patient and the important people in their lives. So the NAA, in supporting the 850,000 people directly affected by these conditions, is also there for their parents, partners, children, friends and workmates – an Alliance ultimately supporting and being supported by a total of more than five million Australians.
The impact of any chronic condition can undermine individual or family resilience, vital to their ability to remain purposeful, engaged in their community and in control of their lives; plus prevent financial burden.
Progressive neurological and neuromuscular diseases are both complex and disabling. While this broad group contains conditions with various characteristics, different disease trajectories and life expectancy, all are degenerative and incurable. This results in significant disability and the need for expert information, care and personal assistance.
Significantly, when the progressing and complex needs of these people have been overlooked due to lack of understanding of these diseases or for the sake of expediency (for example, conducting planning sessions over the phone), the outcomes have been overwhelmingly poor.
People with a progressive neurological disease run counter to the ‘traditional’ trajectory of most people on the NDIS as their care needs inevitably increase over time.
Consideration of their disease and anticipated progression is vital during planning meetings. NDIS plans need to balance independent goal setting with advance care planning; providing pre-planning education and support to assist them as they consider their future needs that go beyond the first year of their plan.
People with cognitive or communication issues require patience and understanding, limited distractions, clear speech, eye contact and non-verbal indicators; difficult to achieve over the phone.
Many of our consumers tell us their planning meetings have been conducted only with the person’s carer or without the participant present. So, the plan outcomes are less than optimal and the participant (and their supporter) is deprived of choice and control.
Wide-ranging benefits
The recommendations will not only improve NDIS plan outcomes for people with progressive neurological conditions but will also result in improved outcomes, including increased labour force participation of primary carers of people with disability; and social participation of people with disability.
The NAA remains an advocate of the NDIS, knowing that the roll out of this scheme is one of the greatest changes to care of Australians since the introduction of Medicare.
However, if people with a progressive neurological disease are to receive equitable and effective support within the NDIS, the NDIA and government must address these unmet needs.
The recommendations in the Position Paper will go a significant way to aligning the original intent of the NDIS with its practical application.
The NAA comprises Alzheimer’s Australia, Brain Injury Australia, Huntington’s Australia, Machado Joseph Disease Foundation, Motor Neurone Disease Australia, Multiple Sclerosis Australia, Muscular Dystrophy Australia, Muscular Dystrophy Foundation Australia, Parkinson’s Australia and Spinal Muscular Atrophy Australia.
• Deidre Mackechnie is the CEO of MS Australia, the national peak advocacy body for people living with MS in Australia and Chair of the Neurological Alliance Australia. Deidre commenced with MS Australia in early 2013 in the role of Executive Officer and Company Secretary before her appointment as CEO in 2015. In 2016 she also took on the role as Chair of the Neurological Alliance Australia.
Caption for feature image
L to R:
Graeme Shears – CEO, Epilepsy Australia;
Phil Martin – CEO, Muscular Dystrophy Foundation Australia;
Robyn Kapp – Executive Officer, Huntington’s NSW;
Carol Birks – CEO, MND Australia;
Julie Cini – CEO, Spinal Muscular Atrophy Australia;
Deidre Mackechnie, CEO MS Australia and Chair of the NAA;
Steve Sant – CEO Parkinson’s Australia;
Laurie Stroud – MD Ambassador, Muscular Dystrophy Australia;
Ara Caswell – CEO, Carers Australia; and
Nigel McPaul – Policy and Program Manager, Alzheimer’s Australia.The death penalty bill is one of the most heated issues in the country today. Naturally, it will spark a lot of debates. Once again, Philippine ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Teddy Locsin Jr. weighed in on the burning issue via Twitter and ended up causing an even bigger social media fire.
The death penalty bill is already controversial enough, but adding the discussion of rape to it makes it even more so.
Rape removed from death penalty offenses
On Monday, February 20, the House majority decided in a caucus to reduce the number of offenses covered in the death penalty. House majority leader Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas explained that they did this to increase the bill's chances of being passed in the Senate.
In his ABS-CBN News report, RG Cruz quoted Fariñas as saying, "Kami ang posisyon ni (House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez), i-whittle natin sa bare minimum. Tingnan natin kung papasa sa Senate kasi if we include so many offenses and 'di maski isa 'di papasa sa Senate (We agreed with the position of House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez to whittle it down to the bare minimum of offenses. Let's see if it passes in the Senate because if we include so many offenses, it may not get passed in the Senate)."
The report noted: "As such, the proposed death penalty bill now only covers three offense: drug-related crimes, plunder, and treason."
Then again, Fariñas pointed out that they could add other offenses if the Senate passes the bill.
Continue reading below ↓
Teddy Locsin Jr.'s latest Twitter argument
Locsin reacted to the ABS-CBN News story on the removal of rape from the list of death penalty offenses, tweeting, "Fair. Why not only on a case-to-case basis for heinous crimes as SC determines, which anyway can strike down every death sentence."
@ANCALERTS Fair. Why not only on a case to case basis for heinous crimes as SC determines, which anyway can strike down every death sentence — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
Another Twitter user then asked Locsin, "Are you saying that rape is not a heinous crime?" Locsin then tweeted in response, "It is a crime, an indignity, an outrage—but not a heinous crime. What's wrong with you?"
@AngelisePerion @ANCALERTS Not is not a heinous crime. It is a crime, an indignity, an outrage but not a heinous crime. What's wrong w you? — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
Locsin went on to tweet so many other examples of heinous crimes in response to other Twitter users who had found his rape comment insensitive.
@AngelisePerion @ANCALERTS Rape when an ugly man in power beds a young girl who is poor, that's heinous or his face is. — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
@AngelisePerion @ANCALERTS Gang rape like in India where they raped girl then raped her with led pipes until they tore her up—heinous. — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
@stefanieumali Hey, politicians rape young girls with their money all the time. At panget pa sila. Think they will DP themselves? — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
@AngelisePerion @ANCALERTS Want more? Killing is not heinous, not even premeditated. It is a common crime. — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
@Pattygrew Setting young girls on fire in a cage like ISIS does, that's heinous. — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
@MsDearlady Oh yes I might, if I go to jail and get raped in the showers by big men but it would still not be heinous. — Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) February 20, 2017
But while Locsin seems to have viewed the Twitter encounter as just another lively exchange of ideas, so many others thought his remarks were in bad taste.
@teddyboylocsin so if your daughter mother or sister gets raped, thats ok with you and all is well? i mean, rape isnt a heinous crime right? — father dan (@wetchurro) February 20, 2017
@teddyboylocsin @AngelisePerion @ANCALERTS Have you ever been a rape victim or encountered a rape victim for you to say that so easily? WTF — Rainiermaxis Mendoza (@rainiermaxism) February 20, 2017
@teddyboylocsin @Pattygrew How many of your family members or friends have to be raped before it is heinous? To think I respected u. Gosh! — The Silent Minority (@RNITGuy) February 20, 2017
For what it's worth, at least Locsin's tweets are going to make people rethink the classification of heinous crimes. Sometimes collective outrage is needed to get things done.42 years ago today Brian Clough walked into Nottingham Forest's City Ground for the very first time. Irish Daily Star Sports Editor BRIAN FLANAGAN has been a lifelong Forest fan and here he gives an account of the turmoil the club are currently enduring.
BEFORE Brian Clough arrived at the City Ground, Nottingham Forest were, as he so eloquently put it himself, "in the s**t."
13th in the old Division Two, Forest were getting crowds of below 8,000 and weren't even the best team in Nottingham. One of their own committee members even described them as the "most unprogressive club in the country."
They were known for very little apart from taking part in the first ever match to use goal nets and for once having a game abandoned because a player was bitten by a rat.
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But the arrival of Clough, on this day 42 years ago, changed everything.
Between 1975 and 1980, Nottingham Forest went from that second-tier provincial side to champions of England and back-to-back European Cup winners.
They suddenly became a famous club. Players like Martin O’Neill, Trevor Francis, Peter Shilton and John Robertson were household names.
It was the stuff of miracles. Only Leicester City’s epic Premier League triumph last season can come anywhere close to matching it.
But now in the early days of 2017 the club finds itself very much back in the ‘brown stuff.’
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They are 20th in the Championship, deep in trouble, and fighting it out with the likes of Burton Albion, Wigan Athletic and Rotherham to avoid relegation to League One.
On the surface that doesn’t sound a complete crisis with half the season still to come but behind the scenes Forest are a club drifting towards potential ruin.
If Clough’s arrival in 1975 was life-changing for Forest the appearance of Kuwaiti businessman Fawaz Al Hasawi as owner in 2012 has seen him emerge as a bigger pantomime villain on Trentside than even the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Al Hasawi’s reign at Forest has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.
Net debt stands at close to £100m. The club have fought off several winding-up orders and a second transfer embargo in a couple of seasons hangs over them this week.
Al Hasawi’s tenure has also been a series of bizarre decisions. He’s even taken to Twitter and engaged in some senseless exchanges with supporters, while players have at times allegedly threatened a revolt over being paid late and not receiving bonuses.
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He sacked Sean O’Driscoll in 2012 just hours after a 4–2 win over Leeds when sitting 7th in the table and has had six managers since.
Al Hasawi has also infuriated supporters by selling prize assets like Oliver Burke to Red Bull Leipzig for £13m and Michail Antonio to West Ham for £7m, and not reinvesting the money, while the recent game with Preston saw the lowest home attendance for a league game in 12 years (15,864) at the City Ground.
Even in the past few days the club are rumoured to be on the brink of selling captain and fans favourite Henri Lansbury to Aston Villa for £3m while promising youngsters Matty Cash and 17-year-old Ben Brereton are also thought to be on the market to the highest bidder
But the Al Hasawi calamity doesn’t end there.
He announced during the summer, to the fans delight, that he was selling the club to a Greek consortium headed by shipping magnate and Olympiakos owner Evangelos Marinakis.
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But the £50m sale fell through due to continued dithering from Al Hasawi which eventually put the Greeks off the scent.
The Guardian newspaper reported that he was believed to have asked for a series of extraordinary demands including a 20 per cent stake of future profits and an annual salary of £1m — a claim Al Hasawi subsequently said was "inaccurate."
His latest suitor is American millionaire John Jay Moores, the former owner of the San Diego Padres baseball franchise, and although he appears a more likely candidate than the Greeks, more hesitation and indecision from Al Hasawi has meant no deal is done yet.
The BBC yesterday reported that Moores is growing inpatient having been ready to finalise the sale on December 22 but Al Hasawi has yet to sign off on the deal.
In the meantime Forest are staring relegation in the face, particularly if the family silver is sold in an attempt by the Kuwaiti to recoup some of his investment before jumping ship.
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Current manager Philippe Montanier has surprisingly survived the sack as it’s believed Al Hasawi doesn’t want to pay him compensation and until the Americans arrive, he’ll limp on with limited resources.
In truth, Forest’s problems stretch much further back than to the arrival of Al Hasawi.
The 1991 FA Cup Final defeat to Tottenham is thought by many Forest fans to have been a huge turning point in the history of the club and the first chapter in a long story of catastrophe.
Clough was never the same afterwards and disintegrated into a fog of alcohol addiction which eventually saw his final act being relegation in 1993 despite having Roy Keane and Stuart Pearce in his team.
The year 1999 was another shambles.
In debt to the tune of £20m, the club waved goodbye to the Premiership and hello to a succession of managers - four in all, the last being David Platt, who went on to spend every penny of the £12m initially invested by the then chairman Nigel Doughty on clumsy signings.
Doughty sadly died of a heart attack aged just 54 in 2012 having ploughed millions of his own cash into the club.
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2005 saw them become the first winners of the European Cup ever to drop to third tier football and although they fought their way back into the Championship in 2008 the Promised Land of the Premier League remains out of reach for 18 years now despite a couple of Play-off semi-final appearances in 2010 and 2011 under Billy Davies’ stewardship.
Aside from the Cloughie era, Forest’s story is not particularly unique in the murky world of English soccer outside of the Premier League’s elite.
Clubs like Leeds United, Coventry, Portsmouth and Charlton have also suffered badly from bogus ownership while Swansea have shown in recent weeks that even life inside the Premier League bubble can be turbulent when the wrong people are in charge.
Forest’s plight now probably rests on whether, and how soon, the American consortium can get the deal over the line and Fawaz out of Nottingham.
But even that is no guarantee.
In an interview with MLB.com this week Moores said, “he doesn’t know anything about soccer.”
That 18 years out of the Premier League doesn’t look like ending anytime soon.
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I wonder what Cloughie would make of it all?Have you, or anyone you cared about, submitted into the hands of addiction? Addiction to alcohol? Painkillers? Benzos? Or all of the above? I have.
My addiction started when I was prescribed painkillers for a neck injury in 2003. I didn’t know how powerful the opiate drug was until I found myself taking an insurmountable amount of Vicodin. To be exact, I was taking 65 extra strength Vicodin per day. I started taking one pill a day, and before long kept doubling the dose over and over again. I loved the feeling it gave me, because it allowed me not to feel anything.
Let’s go back to a time before I fell victim to this disease. Growing up, I experienced many tragedies in my life, but I never grieved because I was on a mission to etch my legacy in stone in amateur wrestling. There was nothing I wanted more than to make my family proud, especially those I had lost in the past. My father died in a construction accident when I was 16. That’s the day I vowed I would do something great for my dad. I promised that nothing would stop me from winning a gold medal. I went to college and was preparing for my first NCAA Division 1 title when my grandma, my only living grandparent, died of a heart attack the day before my big event. I had spent every weekend with her growing up and we were very close. She was special to me. I knew that I had to put on my game face and win the title for her and my dad, and I had NO time to grieve for them. I know that they would have been proud of me win or lose, as long as I gave my very best. I did that, and I was so happy that I didn’t disappoint them.
Move ahead 5 years, and I was finally where I wanted to be. I was #1 on the USA freestyle wrestling team and had won numerous national titles and a world championship in 1995. I was “on par” to see my dream become reality. Then it happened again. My coach and mentor of team Foxcatcher, Dave Schultz, was shot and killed by the club owner, John DuPont. This was six months before the Olympic games.
To make matters worse, three months later I broke my neck at the U.S. open. I was told I couldn’t compete anymore, and my life crashed before my eyes. But with lots of prayer, determination and a great doctor, I was able to wrestle at the Olympic trials. The doctor used a very risky but clever method. He would inject 12 shots of Novocain into my neck right before each match. It worked, and I found myself on the Olympic team. I would need the injections to continue on my Olympic journey, so we did it, even though I was risking paralysis. You may think I’m stupid, but I think anybody who had the chance of winning Olympic gold would have done the same. I won gold, and found myself in a position where I enjoyed the competition so much that I needed to match that feeling again.
What now? I knew I didn’t want to make the Olympic journey again so I took a stab at pro wrestling. In 1999, I signed with WWE, and by the end of that year I was on WWE television and doing incredibly well. I had found my new love, professional wrestling. But it was almost taken away from me, AGAIN, when I broke my neck again in 2003. I had surgery and was put on pain medication. That was the beginning of my dark journey.
The pills made me feel invincible and kept me in the game, until my sister Le’Anne died of a heroin overdose, not long after my surgery. I didn’t want to feel pain, or anything. I had not grieved for my father, my grandmother, my coach or my sister, and I wasn’t about to begin. At least not with the success I was having in WWE. I felt like everything was being taken away from me.
So I started taking more and more Vicodin, stuffing the pain deep inside of me. Before I knew it, I was knee deep (more like shoulder deep) into my addiction. I was hiding it from WWE, and at that time they weren’t drug testing for medication like they do now. I then broke my neck 2 more times over the next 2 years, and the bad relationship/marriage I was in made me feel more alone than ever. I decided that I could not handle the rigorous schedule of WWE and I felt guilty about being a liability to Vince McMahon. So I asked for my release and I swore I’d get my life together.
After I went to TNA, I was taking a lower dose of medication but I didn’t entirely quit. I started drinking alcohol excessively and went through a bad divorce. Eventually, I found the true love of my life, my wife Giovanna. But I kept taking the pills and drinking until I passed out each night. I knew it wasn’t fair to my wife or my kids, but I did everything I could to hide my feelings and emotional pain.
I had a successful career with TNA as I did in WWE, but I ruined any good reputation I had by receiving 4 DUIs in 5 years. I knew I had to do something to save my life and my marriage, so I checked into rehab and I’ve been clean and sober for over 3 years.
I’ve witnessed my mother suffer and die from cancer (leukemia) and my brother David go to jail for admitting to killing his wife while he was high on drugs. But I’ve dealt with those issues sober. I have allowed myself to experience true emotional and physical pain, even from the past. It’s not easy, but it’s the right way to live life. I’ve salvaged what could have been a tragic story, and I’m writing my own story on how the rest of my life will pan out. I thank God that I didn’t mess up my liver due to the medication I inhaled. (I just had a physical and everything is good). I love my wife and kids too much to go back to the drugs, and I am worthy of enjoying what I accomplished in my life. I want to be there to help my kids and make sure they never make the mistakes I’ve made. I love my life, I love my family and I love my fans.
What’s my next move? To help others suffering from addiction. I have started a program called #AngleStrong to help addicts in recovery STAY clean. It’s the least I could do for what God has blessed me with, and it’s time to give back for a life that was so focused on me and my accomplishments. #AngleStrong will be launching this year, and I will be promoting it, along with the #AngleStrong |
officers average only $42,192 each. A single OCS recruiter can sign up dozens of college seniors and graduates each year, which costs far less and is how the Marine Corps finds most of its officers. The Army should eliminate half its ROTC programs (and half its ROTC brigade headquarters). Eliminating half would only reduce ROTC commissioning by some 25% since the smaller programs would be eliminated and cadets with ROTC scholarships redirected to universities with larger programs. However, the Army should review why it awards generous four-year ROTC scholarships when it can sign up capable college graduates for OCS. 2000 - Cut recruiting command overhead Higher pay and benefits have made recruiting much easier. This has allowed all the armed services to keep raising the bar to enlistment to a point where most healthy high school graduates are turned away. The Army is reducing its recruiters and hopefully closing some sites. However, the Army has not touched related overhead. It should eliminate two of five recruiting brigade headquarters along with a dozen battalion headquarters. 2000 - Merge the U.S. Army Pacific Command with I Corps HQ The Army doesn't need a four-star "Army" command in the Pacific to command a single under-strength Corps. If a major war occurs, strategic transport limits mean that it would take a year to assemble several divisions in the Pacific for I Corps command, and it wouldn't need help (i.e. micromanagement) from a more senior headquarters in Hawaii. I Corps HQs might move from Washington state to Fort Shafter in Hawaii, as two thousand headquarters personnel are eliminated by merging these senior commands. 2000 - Merge ARCENT into CENTCOM People talk about headquarters fat, and "component" commands are the best example. When Congress forced the establishment of unified commands, each service kept a separate "component" command. A Unified Command J-3 does not control forces directly, but must route everything through unneeded service component command layers. For example, the Central Command covers the Middle East. For practical reasons, its headquarters is based in Florida with a forward headquarters in Qatar. However, the Army insists on having a huge separate "Army" headquarters to pass messages from CENTCOM to army units. It doesn't like mixing with the cluster of Generals in Florida, so it has a big headquarters building in South Carolina. ARCENT/3rd Army should disappear or downsize to a General and a dozen staff and move into the main CENTCOM building in Florida and allow a Corps HQ and CENTCOM staff to direct army units themselves. 2000 - Eliminate half the Army's bands Military bands are an old tradition whose value has fallen ever since recorded music appeared. Soldiers are not cheap draftees anymore. The cost and questionable value of bands has attracted the attention of the media, and Congress demanded cuts, yet this was ignored since Generals love bands. The Army doesn't need 5000 soldiers in over 100 bands in the active force and reserves. 2000 - Eliminate all Sustainment Command headquarters Sustainment Brigades do not need a Sustainment Command headquarters passing them messages from a Theater Sustainment Command headquarters, or from division or corps G-4 sections. These are just bureaucratic layers that provide jobs for senior officers, whose disappearance would actually improve Army logistical responsiveness. 1500 - Eliminate U.S. Army Forces Command FORSCOM is an unnecessary layer of command between HQDA (i.e. the Army Headquarters in Washington DC) and various commands. Some Army training centers mysteriously fall under FORSCOM rather than its training command (TRADOC). Large Army commands can manage their own affairs without FORSCOM at Fort Bragg passing along messages from the Pentagon. 1200 - Withdraw soldiers from Okinawa The presence of some 17,000 U.S. Marines on the Japanese island of Okinawa often makes news. Few realize that 1700 American soldiers are also based on this small island as well as several hundred Army employed civilians. Most are based at Torii Station, which should close while the 500-man Special Forces battalion moves to Guam or a downsized Army base in Alaska, Hawaii. or Washington state, and island-wide base support functions are turned over to another military service. The Army's Patriot Air and Missile Defense battalion should remain at Kadena airbase. 1000 - Federalize Army Prisons The Army operates its own prisons for historical reasons. There is no longer a need to assign expensively trained combat soldiers to stand around and guard former soldiers sentenced to more than a year confinement, as this article explains. The Army's Correction Command has almost one military/civilian person per each military prisoner! The Army should transfer its prisons and prisoners at Forts Leavenworth and Lewis to the cheaper and much larger civilian-run federal Bureau of Prisons, which already confines hundreds of military prisoners for practical reasons. 1000 - Slash ADA HQ Fat Army Air Defense Artillery (ADA) structure receives little attention. For example, the Army has two battalions in Germany, commanded by an ADA brigade headquarters. As the Army grew in recent years, someone decided that single brigade needed oversight, so in 2011 the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense (Theater) Command was activated in expensive Germany. That senior command should deactivate, as well as a similar unit in Hawaii called the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command. This HQ was activated in 2005 to supervise the only ADA brigade in the Pacific, which has just two battalions in Korea and is already under the command of the 8th Army HQ there. A decade ago, the Army moved an ADA battalion to Kadena airbase on Okinawa, Japan for base defense. The Army is considering placing a battalion on Guam. If the Army is serious about a Pacific shift, it should move an ADA brigade headquarters and one battalion from Texas to Guam, but there is no need for the 94th Command HQ in expensive Hawaii. 1000 - Eliminate Higher Command Sergeant Majors While the number of Generals need be cut, there is fat on the enlisted side too. The growth of Command Sergeants Major (and the odd Command Chief Warrant Officers) has created a layer of fat. They didn't exist until after the Korean war, yet grew until every General and most Colonels now have a $100,000 a year E-9 sidekick. They aren't part of the official chain-of-command, yet they hold meetings, attend conferences, and tour "their" command. They rate extra pay and many have personal assistants, travel on executive jets, and hold press conferences. A traditional Sergeant Major is valuable as the senior enlisted of a 300-1000 man unit. There is no need for enlisted or CWO command advisory positions above them, something proven during World War II. Eliminating these would slice expensive bureaucrats and their assistants out of our bloated command structure. If Generals and Colonels wish to consult with senior enlisted men, they can summon unit Sergeant Majors, who are more in tune with enlisted problems at their frontline posting. 1000 - Disband the 1st Space Brigade The U.S. Strategic Command includes a forward element in Colorado. Since some Army officers want to play war in space, the Army formed a space battalion that grew that into the 1st Space Brigade in 2003. While the Army's 100th Missile Defense Brigade there makes sense, the Space Brigade has a vague mission to provide "space support" to everyone, which is already provided by the Air Force and other agencies. Any essential components can move into the 100th Brigade structure. 1000 - Shut down one basic combat training site As the Army sheds one quarter of its manpower, it should shut down one of its four BCT sites where initial basic training occurs. It can mothball that site for wartime use. The Navy and Air Force train all their recruits at a single site, the Army doesn't need four. 1000 - Trim West Point Our military academies averaged 4000 cadets on campus the past few decades. During the plentiful war budgets of the past decade, the U.S. Military Academy increased to 4500. This manpower is counted toward the Army's total manpower since cadets are on active duty and provided with food, housing, medical care, and paid nearly $1000 a month. Since the regular army will be around 20% smaller, it needs fewer officers. Cutting cadet size to 3800 is reasonable, and 700 fewer cadets allow support staffing to be reduced by around 300. Civilian Oversight is Required Civilian leaders must demand that Army Generals present a detailed downsizing plan this year. They will stall and cite the need for domestic base closings and mumble something about vague missions. Generals may imply that an Army of 400,000 active duty personnel backed by 300,000 civilians will be unable to field a single combat-ready brigade. This may seem preposterous, but General Odierno recently announced that his Army can field just two combat-ready brigades totaling less than 10,000 troops, even with 530,000 soldiers still on active duty! Army Generals obviously need help, and civilian leadership is the remedy. Demanding answers about the potential savings of eliminating the 100,000 positions listed here is a great place to start. Carlton Meyer editorG2mil@Gmail.com ©2013 www.G2mil.comA recent study reveals that one-fifth of Americans are religiously unaffiliated -- higher than at any time in recent U.S. history. But for those younger than 30 that number is even higher. A third of young Americans say they don't belong to any religion.
Americans drifting away from religion is big news, but the story behind that number is more complicated than you would think. Only 6 percent of Americans define themselves as atheists, while more than 14 percent consider themselves agnostic -- unaffiliated but open to suggestions.
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In an interview set to air today, NPR's Morning Edition talked to young people about what religion and faith look like in the age of the Millennial. What they found might surprise you.
Good without God
A growing number of young people might not be believers, but many still feel rooted in the values, tradition and community provided by the religion they were raised with.
Like Miriam Nissly, who doesn't need God to enjoy going to synagogue. "I find the practice of sitting and being quiet and being alone with your thoughts to be helpful, but I don't think I need to answer that question [about God] in order to participate in the traditions I was brought up with."
Liz Reeves, also raised Jewish, added:
I wanted so badly to believe in God and in heaven, and that's where he was going. I wanted to have some sort of purpose and meaning associated with his passing. And ultimately the more time I spent thinking about it, I realized the purpose and meaning of his life had nothing to do with heaven, but it had to do with how I could make choices in my life that give his life meaning. And that had a lot more weight with me than any kind of faith in anything else.
Question everything
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Many of those interviewed balked at orthodoxy, saying that a religion with too many "easy" answers was a major turn off.
Or so says Melissa Adelman, who was raised Catholic. "I remember a theology test in eighth grade where there was a question about homosexuality, and the right answer was that if you are homosexual, then that is not a sin because that's how God made you, but acting upon it would be a sin. That's what I put down as the answer, but I vividly remember thinking to myself that that was not the right answer."
Rigoberto Perez was raised a Seventh Day Adventist, but a series of family tragedies left him questioning the beliefs he was raised with:
While I was younger, my father drank a lot. There was abuse in the home. My brother committed suicide in 2001. So at some point you start to say, 'Why does all this stuff happen to people?' And if I pray and nothing good happens, is that supposed to be I'm being tried? I find that almost kind of cruel in some ways. It's like burning ants with a magnifying glass. Eventually that gets just too hard to believe anymore.
Searching for purpose
Millennial-types are skeptical, but that doesn't mean many aren't searching for something bigger than themselves. Or so says Kyle Simpson, who was raised Christian and continues to struggle with losing his faith.
Advertisement:This video showing Warren Weinstein, a U.S. contractor held by al-Qaeda militants, was released in 2013. The full 13-minute video was sent anonymously by e-mail to several journalists who have reported from Afghanistan. (As-Sahab/AFP)
This video showing Warren Weinstein, a U.S. contractor held by al-Qaeda militants, was released in 2013. The full 13-minute video was sent anonymously by e-mail to several journalists who have reported from Afghanistan. (As-Sahab/AFP)
A CIA drone strike in January that was aimed at a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan accidentally killed two hostages, including a kidnapped American, U.S. officials acknowledged Thursday.
U.S. officials said they did not realize until weeks later that two civilians had died in the attack — kidnapped aid workers Warren Weinstein of Maryland and Giovanni Lo Porto of Italy — despite assurances from the CIA at the time of the operation that only al-Qaeda fighters were present.
The CIA had been conducting surveillance on the site near the Afghan border for hundreds of hours, U.S. officials said.
But the spy agency later discovered the strike had also killed a second U.S. citizen, Ahmed Farouq, who U.S. officials said had joined al-Qaeda years earlier and was among the suspected militants at the compound.
After the CIA slowly pieced together what had happened, the spy agency’s director, John Brennan, delivered the news to President Obama last week. On Thursday, in brief remarks from the White House, a grim and downcast Obama informed the nation of the botched operation.
“As president and as commander in chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni,” Obama said. “I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government, I offer our deepest apologies to the families.”
Weinstein, 73, had been held since 2011 after being kidnapped in Lahore, Pakistan. Lo Porto, 39. had been in al-Qaeda captivity since 2012.
Obama said he spoke Wednesday with Weinstein’s wife, Elaine, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to inform them.
In a statement, Elaine Weinstein said Thursday that she and her family were “devastated” by the news and “do not yet fully understand all of the facts surrounding Warren’s death.”
“We were so hopeful that those in the U.S. and Pakistani governments with the power to take action and secure his release would have done everything possible to do so and there are no words to do justice to the disappointment and heartbreak we are going through,” she said.
Earnest said the families of the two hostages will receive U.S. government compensation, but he declined to provide details.
[Weinstein family statement on his death: ‘We are devastated’]
View Graphic A U.S. government contractor kidnapped by al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan in 2011 called on the Obama administration to negotiate with his captors and says he feels “totally abandoned and forgotten.”
Obama said that the operation was “fully consistent with the guidelines” he has established for counterterrorism strikes against al-Qaeda but that he has ordered “a full review of what happened.”
“It is a cruel and bitter truth that in the fog of war generally and our fight against terrorists specifically, mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes, can occur,” the president added. “But one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”
Obama provided only limited details about the operation. He did not specify how or where the hostages were killed, or which arm of the U.S. government was responsible.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they believe Weinstein, Lo Porto and Farouq were killed during a Jan. 15 drone strike in the Shawal Valley in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s tribal belt.
A statement released earlier this month by al-Qaeda’s media arm also reported that Farouq had been killed on Jan. 15 in the Shawal Valley, but it did not identify the little-known figure as an American or make any mention of the hostages.
The CIA has been conducting drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan for more than a decade under a covert program first authorized by President George W. Bush and substantially expanded by Obama. The strikes have caused widespread public anger in Pakistan for inflicting civilian casualties but have been tolerated by the Pakistani government as part of an unspoken arrangement with the U.S. government.
Although Obama did not mention it in his remarks, another American was killed in a separate counterterrorism operation in January, the White House acknowledged in a statement Thursday.
Adam Gadahn, 36, a California native who converted to Islam and joined al-Qaeda more than a decade ago, was killed in a CIA drone attack in Pakistan within a week of the strike that killed the hostages, U.S. officials said.
Gadahn, who called himself “Azzam the American” and helped run al-Qaeda’s propaganda department, was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2006 on charges of treason.
As with the strike that killed Farouq and the hostages, U.S. officials said they were targeting a suspected al-Qaeda compound and did not realize that an American citizen was there.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama had not personally approved the operations but that U.S. counterterrorism officials had the authority to conduct them.
Earnest described Gadahn and Farouq as al-Qaeda leaders but said the U.S. government had not classified either man as a “high-value target,” meaning they were not considered an imminent threat and otherwise would not have been singled out for a lethal attack.
Al-Qaeda had listed Farouq as a leader of its branch in the Indian subcontinent. U.S. officials said he was born in the United States and moved to Pakistan as a child.
[Read: A letter from Warren Weinstein]
It is not the first time that the U.S. government has killed Americans in drone strikes overseas. In 2011, a CIA drone in Yemen targeted and blew up Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born cleric who was a key figure in al-Qaeda’s franchise on the Arabian Peninsula.
Four other Americans, including Awlaki’s teenage son, have died in drone attacks. In each of those cases, however, U.S. officials said they were unaware of the Americans’ presence beforehand and described them as incidental casualties.
In December, a failed rescue attempt carried out by U.S. Special Operations forces inadvertently led to the death of Luke Somers, an American held hostage in Yemen.
Thursday’s disclosure of the accidental deaths was sure to bring increased pressure on Obama to curtail or scale back drone strikes, a signature tactic of his presidency.
The bungled operation will also force the White House to confront lingering questions about its policies for responding to the kidnapping of Americans by extremist groups in the Middle East and South Asia.
[Archive: Family of Warren Weinstein tries to ‘keep hoping’]
“I’m saddened, disappointed and outraged that our government was not able to bring Warren home,” said Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), Weinstein’s representative in Congress. “Today’s news is a personal tragedy for Warren’s family but also a sobering national security and government failure.”
Although Obama has insisted that the CIA and U.S. military take every precaution to avoid civilian casualties, drone strikes have resulted in numerous deaths of Pakistani, Afghan and Yemeni civilians.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the panel had already been secretly reviewing the January strike that killed Weinstein, Lo Porto and Farouq but would now “review that operation in greater detail.”
Feinstein added that more information should be made public about U.S. counterterrorism strikes, including an annual report on the number of combatants and civilians who are killed.
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the January attacks in Pakistan raised doubts about the reliability of the intelligence used to justify drone strikes.
In both operations, he said, “the U.S. quite literally didn’t know who it was killing. These and other recent strikes in which civilians were killed make clear that there is a significant gap between the relatively stringent standards the government says it’s using and the standards that are actually being used.”
U.S. officials confirmed that the strike that killed the hostages was a “signature strike” — a category in which the CIA has authority to attack based on suspicious patterns of activity even when it cannot identify the individuals being targeted.
The sequence suggests the hostages had been held at the compound over a long period. Current and former U.S. officials said that analysts watching drone footage can typically detect the movement of hostages by al-Qaeda captors.
It’s not clear how CIA drones, presumably equipped with infrared sensors, would have failed to recognize the presence of two additional people at the compound before it was hit. But officials said al-Qaeda has adapted to the drone campaign by taking extensive measures to obscure its facilities from drone cameras.
The number of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan has gradually declined since reaching a peak in 2010, when there was, on average, one attack every three days. This year, there have been seven reported drone strikes in Pakistan, but only two since January.
Although Obama said such counterterrorism operations were under review, other U.S. officials said the CIA drone program has not been suspended.
Tim Craig in Mingora, Pakistan, Aamir Iqbal in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Julie Tate, Karen DeYoung, Dan LaMothe and Dan Morse in Washington contributed to this report.
Read more:
Weinstein family statement on his death: ‘We are devastated by this news’
Pakistan braces for a long and deadly war in tribal areas on Afghan border
Archive: Family of Warren Weinstein, U.S. citizen held by al-Qaeda, tries to ‘keep hoping’
The anatomy of a failed hostage rescue deep in Islamic State territoryThe reshaping of the Philadelphia Union this offseason continues with an intriguing twist as the club will announce on Friday a role for established European soccer coach René Meulensteen with the club. Meulensteen, whose resume includes a stint at venerable English Premier League side Manchester United as an assistant and most recently with Fulham as an assistant. A league source tells Metro that Muelensteen will be a consultant “to assist with the sporting director structure” of the club. He has been linked to the team over the past half-a-year, with erroneous reports this past summer saying that he would be hired as head coach. It is a bold move for the Union to say the least and will provide much needed support for current technical director Chris Albright, who has made several solid moves in recent months to shore up the team. Pair this Meulensteen hiring along with last week's news that Jim Curtin would be hired full time since being interim head coach this summer and the Union certainly will have a new direction. Recommended Slideshows 4 Pictures PHOTOS: Singapore's treasures star in NY Botanical Garden's 2019 Orchid Show 4 Pictures 36 Pictures Oscars 2019: Red carpet looks and full list of winners 36 Pictures 36 Pictures All of these celebrities have had their nudes leaked 36 Pictures More picture galleries 16 Pictures These photos of Trump and Ivanka will make you deeply uncomfortable 16 Pictures 4 Pictures Inside Brooklyn's Teknopolis is tech that makes us more human 4 Pictures 4 Pictures Inside The Strand's Fight Against Being Named a New York City Landmark 4 Pictures Metro broke the news in late September that Curtin would be named as head coach on a full-time basis, a decision that was made permanent and official after the end of the regular season. Under Curtin's direction as interim head coach, the team rebounded well from a sluggish start to to the season work their way into playoff position over the final month of the season; in addition the team made the final of the U.S. Open Cup. With some budget flexibility this offseason and a good young core in place, the franchise could be pointed towards a second playoff appearance since their inception in 2010. Related Articles Union remove interim tag, name Jim Curtin new head coach: Source Metro Exclusive: Former U.S. National Team member Chris Albright breaks down this yea... Chris Albright has seen it all in his 15 MLS seasonsWILL the world eradicate polio? If it does, some of the credit may go to a 73-year-old billionaire horse-breeder from the Indian city of Pune: he wants to provide injectable polio vaccine at a loss—at least for some time.
The world has made much progress in the fight against polio, a dreaded disease which leaves infected children paralysed. India is a good example. In 1985 the country counted more than 150,000 cases. Next January, after three years without a new case, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative will formally declare India polio-free.
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The effort to get there has been monumental. During India’s National Immunisation Day, for instance, more than 2.5m volunteers inoculate over 170m children under the age of five. Since each child receives two drops of the vaccine, an astonishing 340m drops of oral polio vaccine (OPV), a vaccine developed in the 1950s by Albert Sabin, a Polish-American scientist, is needed.
Given such massive quantities, pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur, have been able to keep the prices of the polio vaccine low. A two-drop dose of OPV costs between $0.10 and $0.13.
But the injectable polio vaccine (IPV) is a better way to inoculate children against the disease: it is safer because it does not carry the live virus. Unhappily, it is also more expensive. Still, nearly 140 countries, including India, will be relying on the IPV in the coming years, says Apoorva Mallya of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The shift to IPV is a key part of the endgame in the fight against polio.
This is where Cyrus Poonawalla, the billionaire horse-breeder, comes in. He is the founder and chief executive of the Serum Institute. Although it is lesser known than its European and American competitors—GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck and Novartis—the firm is the world’s number one producer of measles and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) vaccines. Globally, two of three children receive a Serum vaccine, according to some estimates.
Mr Poonawalla started Serum in 1966 with $12,000. The firm’s main business model is high-volume and low-cost—which attracted Mr Gates’s interest. Last year he and Mr Poonawalla met at a dinner. And their conversation led Mr Poonawalla to purchase a Dutch pharma company, Bilthoven Biologicals, a maker of IPV. This move allowed Serum to become a principal supplier of this type of vaccine.
Currently, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline are the primary producers of IPV. They sell it to UNICEF for more than $5 per dose, says Mr Poonawalla. But Serum will now offer it for nearly half that price. And Mr Poonawalla wants to “crash” the price further, to $1.60.
The steep drop is simply a matter of numbers, he explains. Once larger quantities are purchased (upwards of 5m doses—which is expected as more countries transition from OPV to IPV) it will become financially viable to sell the vaccine at this price.
In the short term slashing the price is a “gesture of philanthropy”: the company will be selling them at loss. But the move is not entirely altruistic. By knocking down the price, Mallya says, he will pave the way for a “rapid uptake” of the vaccine.
It also upsets the competition. Before heading to the Global Vaccine Summit, held this April in Abu Dhabi, Sanofi committed to provide a further 1.7 billion doses of the OPV over the next four years. Sanofi has already supplied UNICEF with 5 billion doses of OPV in the past two decades.
Serum’s plans will also push Sanofi and others to do more to help countries to transition from oral to injectable vaccines. Mike Watson, in charge of global vaccination policy at Sanofi, points out that his firm has supplied 1.5m doses of IPV to Indonesia at no cost. The donation was part of a study to see how the tropical climate might affect the vaccine. Sanofi also has plans to expand its IPV production capacity.
Offering IPV at a deeply discounted price is likely to rattle big pharma companies. But for Mr Poonawalla this is what it takes to get the vaccine’s price down. “Unless a manufacturer from the developing world challenges the status quo,” he argues, “there will not be a cheaper option.”
The reporting for this article was funded by the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting.MUMBAI: The BJP, which has been promising corruption-free governance, came in for some embarrassment after one of its corporators and her aide were trapped by the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) for allegedly demanding and accepting a bribe from a garage owner to protect his ‘illegal shed’ in Chembur. The party has suspended the corporator Rajshree Palande (40).Palande and her assistant, Sunil Khanna (45) have been granted bail.The accused had allegedly demanded Rs 1 lakh and a part of the land plot where the shed was constructed.The matter pertains to a plot of land in Chembur where the complainant, a garage owner, had illegally constructed a shed, said ACB officials. The BMC had also issued a notice to the garage owner, and had decided to prosecture him. That is when Palande and her assistant approached him to help quash the notice. In exchange they demanded Rs 5 lakh and a part of the plot, said an ACB official.Palande, said the official, assured the complainant that she would get the notice against him quashed and would ensure that his illegal structure would remain intact.“After some haggling with the garage owner, Palande agreed to settle the matter for Rs 1 lakh in cash and a part of the land. Khanna was to collect the first instalment on Friday,” said the official, adding that the garage owner approached the ACB. “Khanna was caught accepting Rs 50,000. Subsequently, Palande was arrested from Chembur. We found Rs 2.5 lakh cash at her house.”While Palande lives in a rented accommodation in Chembur, Khanna has lives in a 1,000-sq-ft house in in a plush building at Deonar, said another official.Confirming that Palande had been suspended, city BJP chief Ashish Shelar, who is also an MLA, said it was done to send a strong message that corrupt practices are not acceptable to the party.Coordinates:
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were a British protectorate from 1892 and colony from 1916 until 1 January 1976, when the islands were divided into two colonies which became independent nations shortly after. A referendum was held in December 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration.[1] As a consequence of the referendum, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony ceased to exist on 1 January 1976 and the separate countries of Kiribati and Tuvalu came into existence.[2][3]
Location [ edit ]
The Gilbert Islands[4] (formerly Kingsmill Islands[5]) are a chain of sixteen atolls and coral islands in the western Pacific Ocean that are recognised as part of the Micronesia subregion of Oceania. The Gilbert Islands are the main part of what is now Republic of Kiribati ("Kiribati" is the Gilbertese rendition of "Gilberts"[4]) The atolls and islands of the Gilbert Islands are arranged in an approximate north-to-south line. In a geographical sense, the equator serves as the dividing line between the northern Gilbert Islands and the southern Gilbert Islands. The Ellice Islands are south of the Gilbert Islands.[6] The Ellice Islands comprises three reef islands and six true atolls spread out between the latitude of 5° to 10° south and longitude of 176° to 180°, west of the International Date Line.[7] The Ellice Islands are midway between Hawaii and Australia. The Ellice Islands are recognised as part of the Polynesia subregion of Oceania.
Naming [ edit ]
In 1606 Pedro Fernandes de Queirós sighted Butaritari and Makin, which he named the Buen Viaje (‘good trip’ in Spanish) Islands.[8][9] The Gilbert Islands were named in 1820 by a Russian Admiral, Baron Johann von Krusenstern, after a British captain, Thomas Gilbert, who encountered the archipelago in 1788 while exploring an Outer Passage route from Port Jackson to Canton. French captain Louis Duperrey was the first to map the whole Gilbert Islands archipelago. He commanded La Coquille on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825).[10]
Funafuti atoll was named Ellice's Island after Edward Ellice, a British politician and merchant, by Captain Arent de Peyster,[11] who sighted the islands in 1819 sailing on the ship Rebecca.[12] Ellice owned the cargo of the ship. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands, of what is now Tuvalu, after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.[13]
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were formerly designated an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "GE" until 1977.
Administration of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands [ edit ]
Protectorate administered as part of the British Western Pacific Territories [ edit ]
A protectorate was generally established over this area (but not over these islands) by the Pacific Islanders Protection Act[14] of 1857 and then in 1877 for the Western Pacific Territories.
The sixteen islands of the Gilberts were declared a British Protectorate by Captain Davis R.N., of HMS Royalist between 27 May and 17 June 1892.[15] The Ellice Islands were declared a British Protectorate by Captain Gibson R.N., of HMS Curacoa, between 9 and 16 October of the same year.[16]
The British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) were administered by a High Commissioner resident in Fiji. A Resident Commissioner, Charles Swayne, was appointed for the Ellice Islands in 1892 and for the Gilbert Islands in 1893. He was succeeded by W. Telfer Campbell in 1896, who established himself on Tarawa Atoll and remained in office until 1908. Telfer Campbell was criticised for his legislative, judicial and administrative management (including forced labour alleged to be exacted from islanders) and an inquiry was held by Arthur Mahaffy, a former colonial official in the Gilberts, resulting in a report in 1909.[17] In 1913 an anonymous correspondent to the New Age journal described the maladministration of Telfer Campbell, linked it to criticisms of the Pacific Phosphate Company which was operating on Ocean Island, and questioned the impartiality of Mahaffy.[18]
The seat of government was then moved to Ocean Island (now known as Banaba Island), which had been included in the protectorate in 1900, to take advantage of the improved shipping connections resulting from the Pacific Phosphate Company's activities, and the status of the islands was changed on 12 January 1916[19] to that of a Crown Colony.[16] The role of the British colonial authorities emphasised the procurement of labour for the Ocean Island phosphate mining and keeping order among the workers.
Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony [ edit ]
The islands became a Crown colony on 12 January 1916 by the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Order in Council, 1915.[20][Note 1]
Fanning Island and Washington Island also became included in the colony together with the islands of the Union Islands (now known as Tokelau); Christmas Island was included in 1919 but was contested by the U.S. under its Guano Islands Act of 1856.[21] The Union Islands were transferred to New Zealand in 1926.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony continued to be administered by a Resident Commissioner. In 1930 the Resident Commissioner, Arthur Grimble, issued revised laws, Regulations for the good Order and Cleanliness of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, which replaced laws created during the BWTP.[16] The Phoenix Islands were added to the colony in 1937.[22]
Banaba Island (Ocean Island) remained the headquarters of the colony until the British evacuation in 1942 during the Pacific War when Ocean Island and the Gilbert Islands were occupied by the Japanese. The United States forces landed in Funafuti on 2 October 1942 and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943 and constructed an airfield on each island and other bases. The atolls of Tuvalu acted as a staging post during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943. Colonel Fox-Strangways, was the Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony in 1941, who was located on Funafuti.[23]
After World War II, the colony headquarters was re-established on Tarawa, first on Betio islet and subsequently on Bairiki islet.[22][24][25]
By the Tokelau Act of 1948, sovereignty over Tokelau was transferred to New Zealand. The five islands of the Central and Southern Line Islands were added to the colony in 1972.[22]
The Tuvaluans were concerned about their minority status in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. In 1974, ethnic differences within the colony caused the Polynesians of the Ellice Islands to vote for separation from the Micronesians of the Gilbert Islands (later Kiribati). The following year, the Ellice Islands became the separate British colony of Tuvalu.
Transition to self-determination [ edit ]
In 1947 Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, was made the administrative capital. This development included establishing The King George V Secondary School for boys and the Elaine Bernacchi Secondary School for girls.[26]
A Colony Conference was organised at Marakei in 1956, which was attended by officials and representatives from each island in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, conferences were held every two years |
and those whose levels improved. All the men provided stool samples for analysis of their gut microbiota.
Men whose blood sugar levels stayed normal over the year had more gut bacteria that are considered beneficial for metabolic health, whereas those who stayed pre-diabetic had fewer beneficial bacteria and more harmful bacteria. In addition, the group whose levels improved had more abundant Akkermansia--healthy bacteria--than the group that maintained normal blood sugar control throughout the year.
The study suggests that differences in the gut microbiota already exist in pre-diabetes, Barengolts said.
Although the study found connections between composition of the gut microbiota and blood sugar control, Barengolts said further research is needed to confirm these findings and evaluate whether certain intestinal bacteria cause type 2 diabetes. However, based on other research her group has conducted and studies in animals, she speculated that the foods we eat affect our diabetes risk through our gut microbiota. If the mix of organisms in the intestinal tract is indeed responsible for the development of type 2 diabetes, she said, it may be possible to lower one's risk by changing the gut bacteria.
"If we can identify those with microbiota signatures indicative of pre-diabetes, and intervene with dietary changes or other interventions that we know boost populations of beneficial gut bacteria, we may be able to prevent the development of diabetes," said Ciubotaru.Image copyright EPA Image caption A 10m-high statue of the Stig in Warsaw (2015)
It's hard to go anywhere in the world these days and not find that Top Gear has got there before you. The programme may have begun on regional television in the UK - but it's now viewed in pretty much every region of the globe, writes Daniel Silas Adamson.
The taxi was a beaten up Toyota with half a million kilometres on the clock and an amulet of the Virgin Mary twirling from the rear-view mirror. The driver was a Quechua Indian called Ricardo, who knew every bend in the Peruvian dirt roads around the old Inca city of Sayhuite and who, when he found out I was British, had just one question: "Who is the Stig?"
It was not the first time I'd been reminded of Top Gear in some far-flung corner of the world. A few years earlier I pulled over at an outdoor roadside cafe in the Jordan Valley, not far from Jericho in the West Bank. It was late at night, but there were 20 or so Palestinian men sitting around a screen on plastic chairs, smoking shisha pipes and watching The Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.
Almost a decade before that, I'd seen a handful of Indian men gathered under a corrugated tin roof in Dharavi, Mumbai's biggest slum, watching the programme on a TV set rigged illegally into the power cables that ran above the shacks. One of the men had already incurred the undisguised contempt of his wife, who was hard at work, but he seemed to think this was a price worth paying for an hour with Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson would surely have approved.
Image copyright ALAMY Image caption Jeremy Clarkson filming in Moscow (2012)
The formula - a macho, wise-cracking, stunt-filled show, fronted by by three ageing men with questionable taste in denim and a proclivity for infantile jokes - seems to float effortlessly across barriers of language, culture, and social class.
In Iran, where Top Gear is broadcast by BBC Persian TV (PTV), the voice actor who dubs Clarkson into Farsi, Mozaffar Shafeie, has become a star in his own right. When an episode of the programme was dropped in 2012 to make space for an interview with Hillary Clinton, the channel was bombarded with complaints from Iranian fans. "Hillary Clinton has got many things to say about Iran," said Clarkson afterwards. "You'd have thought that Iranians would have found this relatively interesting - more interesting than three fat old men falling over."
The show's appeal in Iran, says Darius Bazargan, a British documentary maker, comes not just from the cars and the stunts but also from Clarkson's vivid turn of phrase. "He once described a gear shift as being 'as smooth as licking honey from a woman's naked body', and the producers take a lot of effort to get the translation right… you would never hear a phrase like that on Iranian state television."
One of Bazargan's friends recently found, as I did in Peru, that for many people around the world Top Gear is now an emblem of the UK - as much or more than Manchester United or James Bond. On a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, he found there were two pressing issues people wanted to talk about after discovering they had a British guest: the chances of British military intervention against the jihadists, and their favourite episodes of Top Gear.
Image copyright ALAMY Image caption Top Gear festival in Durban, South Africa (2012)
And it's not just the men. Given that Clarkson has been fending off accusations of sexism for decades, it's surprising to find that some 40% of the show's viewers are women.
"My wife also watches the programme, not just because of the cars but because it's a fantastically entertaining show," says Hormuzd Sorabjee, editor of Autocar India magazine. "A lot of Indians, men and women, find Jeremy very amusing. He takes the mickey out of a lot of people, and I can see why some of them might get upset. But there's nothing below the belt, I don't think."
Top Gear's executive producer, Andy Wilman, put it this way in an interview with CBS News a few years ago: "It's a journey into the male mind, which I believe, is a really, potentially very funny place - because let's face it, nothing happens there."
And if this is true anywhere, it is true everywhere.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.Nuclear
AEOI Chief: Iran to Launch New Uranium Dioxide Production Units Soon
TEHRAN (FNA)- Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi lauded the AEOI experts for their relentless efforts to develop the country’s nuclear industry, and announced that new uranium dioxide production lines will be launched in the near future.
“The UO2 (production) lines will be completely launched in the next few months,” Salehi said while visiting the different sections of the Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) in Isfahan.
The AEOI chief underlined that the country’s nuclear industry has reached a level that it should focus on the generation of science and technology as well as research development instead of copying other's knowledge.
In April 2011, Iran launched its first UO2 production unit on the occasion of the country’s 'National Day of Nuclear Technology'.
UO2, also known as urania or uranous oxide, is an oxide of uranium, and is a black, radioactive, crystalline powder that naturally occurs in the mineral uraninite. It is used in nuclear fuel rods in nuclear reactors.
UO2 is used mainly as nuclear fuel, specifically as UO2 or as a mixture of UO2 and PuO2 (plutonium dioxide) called a mixed oxide (MOX fuel) for fuel rods in nuclear reactors.
Uranium dioxide is produced by reducing uranium trioxide with hydrogen.
This reaction plays an important part in the creation of nuclear fuel through nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment.Police arrested a 35-year-old man after finding a gun in a lunch box he was carrying and a second gun in his underwear, officials said.
Officers found Juan Pimental at the intersection of Ruggles and Tremont streets early Wednesday, Boston police said. They had been searching for him after a woman reported that he pointed two guns at her at the intersection of Camden and Tremont streets at about 1:45 a.m. The woman said Pimental had a “picnic bag with a big gun in it,” police said.
Officers found and stopped Pimental shortly afterward. When they approached him, Pimental stepped backward quickly, police said. Officers restrained him and took a small orange lunch cooler off his shoulder.
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Inside the cooler, which was later seized as evidence, officers found a loaded.357-caliber magnum revolver and a prescription pill bottle in someone else’s name, police said.
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Upon frisking Pimental, officers felt a metal object in the groin area of his pants, prompting him to yell that it was going to “go off,” police said. Officers removed a loaded 9mm gun from inside his underwear.
They also found a small white powdered rock, believed to be crack cocaine, in the pocket of Pimental’s pants.
Pimental was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and possession of Class B drugs.
Aneri Pattani can be reached at aneri.pattani@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @apattani95President Barack Obama proposes a fee on oil that the industry says will hurt consumers. Some, however, see it as an opportunity to usher in a new era for U.S. energy. Pool Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI | License Photo
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Republican leaders in the U.S. House said a White House proposal to impose a $10-per-barrel tax on U.S. oil stands no chance of gaining legislative traction.
President Barack Obama proposed an additional fee on crude oil, calling for a $10-per-barrel tax to be phased in over five years to help fund new vehicle technology, rail initiatives and cleaner transportation systems.
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said the proposal is indicative of the Obama administration's track record of enacting policies that hurt the nation's energy sector.
"He has waged open warfare on American energy," he said. "The House will kill this absurd proposal, and instead focus on lowering costs and growing our economy."
The White House said a new budget slated for congressional consideration would include the tax as part of an effort to spur investments and address chronic solvency issues in the Highway Trust Fund. The political appetite for such a tax may be influenced by the low price of crude oil, though retail petroleum analysts said the industry may not have much of an appetite for additional charges.
Retail gasoline prices have hovered under $2 per gallon in recent months, giving U.S. consumers a de facto stimulus. Patrick DeHaan, a senior analyst with retail market watchdog GasBuddy, said in response to email questions the $10 fee could trickle down to the consumer and add another 20 cents at least to the price of gasoline.
"It's certainly a very bold move by the White House, especially in an election year," he said. "As with almost every tax increase on fossil fuels, whether at the state or federal level, it will likely be completely passed to consumers in the years ahead."
For the first time in two decades, the United States has started producing more oil than it imports, though inventories continue to build, causing oil prices to decline. Industry group American Petroleum Institute said the consumer benefits of the U.S. oil production would be erased by the tax proposal.
"The White House thinks Americans are not paying enough for gasoline," API President and CEO Jack Gerard said in a statement.
The proposal does have its supporters. The non-profit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said the funding would help support the advancement of autonomous vehicles, whose development could save the country an estimated $1 trillion per year and lead to widespread productivity gains.
RELATED BG Group ends independence on high note
On the environmental front, David Turnbull, a director with low-carbon advocacy group Oil Change International, the proposal could help usher in a new era for U.S. energy.
"While we await the full details of this new effort, Oil Change International applauds the Obama administration for thinking creatively about how we can transition off of oil and fund a new transportation paradigm for the United States," he said in a statement.Last Chapter Next Chapter
“A king?” Pauz asked.
The birds settled, landing on the snowbanks all around us. The dogs sat.
Fuck. I didn’t want to see him listening.
“Ix-nay the ealing-day ith-way evils-day,” I muttered.
“Thirty languages of mankind,” Pauz said, his voice far too deep for how small he was. When he stood, he used the claws on his hands to perch. When he moved forward, he used the claws to keep his balance, with the oversized head and heavy slouch. His blind eyes were heavily lidded, as he glared at me. “I have learned from each host that I have taken. But I do not know this tongue?”
“For real?” I asked.
“For real,” Pauz said, deadly serious.
“My companion doesn’t want me to deal with you, Pauz,” Rose said. “He thinks it’s dangerous.”
“Then he is right,” Pauz said. “I am a danger to you.”
Was it bad that a very small part of me wanted to laugh in response to that? Rationally, I knew he was in no way harmless, but… so tiny.
“You are,” Rose said. “You’ve made that clear, here. But you have a goal, don’t you? Standing orders? I wasn’t too far off when I assumed you were acting against the natural order?”
“Mm hmm,” Pauz said.
“Upheaval, disorder, sowing seeds. Doing damage that won’t ever be repaired. The animals here are never going to act completely normal again, are they?”
“No,” Pauz said. “They are mine, and so are the people. I have my claws set in them, and already, I rend these people, strip things away, and change them.”
“Building a foundation,” Rose said. “So you can climb the ladder, access the greater powers, and more important people. Turn them upside down as you have with the animals.”
How would that work? A politician or CEO made feral? Savage? Falling from power, doing as much damage on the way as they could?
Pauz’s head turned. A car was approaching from the end of the street. The animals all moved simultaneously, crows alternately flocking closer or flying away, dogs slinking into the shadows or recesses where they could hide between cars and snowbanks. The birds descended on the disemboweled rabbit carcass I’d discarded, then took to the air, flying with the carcass carried between them, rending it, tearing, savage.
The car slowed as it approached the airborne flock, which only made it easier for them, when they dropped the dead rabbit onto the windshield. The glass cracked but didn’t break.
The car skidded to a stop. There was a pause, where the driver and passenger looked at me, the whites of their eyes showing. They started moving again, crawling forward, and then turned into a driveway.
Were they going to comment? Wonder why I was standing in their neighbor’s driveway? Force me to leave, and abandon the safety of my improvised circle?
They backed up, accelerated, then braked hard. The tattered rabbit corpse slid over the hood and onto the driveway, just in front of the garage.
They fled the car, glancing at me, then hurried into their home, leaving the corpse where it was. The car locks were activated after they were inside.
Pauz climbed up the side of the car, onto the hood. One strike of his claw punctured the window where the cracks already spiderwebbed out from the impact site, leaving a hole I could maybe have fit my head through.
The imp hopped onto the roof of the car, while a skeletal dog climbed up and wormed through the hole in the window, the edges of the glass slicing it here and there.
I could see the dog through the car windows, moving in between the driver and passenger seats, into the back seat of the car. Not sitting there, but hiding on the floor of the car.
Something told me it wouldn’t act until the car was well in motion.
No. I had to pay attention to the birds, the dogs. It was a fundamental problem, a change in the overarching dynamic of how they operated. They were cooperating, acting in sync, according to Pauz’s more malign interests, but working against the system that was our ecosystem.
If a politician was brought under the influence of Pauz the way the animals here were, then they might do as Pauz wanted them to do, while working against civilization and society.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about what kind of damage someone could do, given zero compunctions, an imp on their shoulder, and a powerful position.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about what Conquest would do, given the same.
Fuck.
“This isn’t going to work the way you want it to, Rose,” I said, speaking under my breath.
“We don’t have much of a choice,” she said. “And we’ve got him listening.”
“Remember the nuke analogy? He’s the equivalent of fallout, the radiation, pollution, whatever you want to call him. Handle with fucking care, Rose.”
“I know. Back me up? Trust me?”
I had to think about it for a second.
“Blake.”
“Yeah,” I said. I’ve demanded the same of you too often to do anything different. “I’ll hear you out on this.”
“Pauz!” Rose called out.
“Mm?” Pauz responded. He was watching crows tear apart the rabbit.
“You’re not getting very far, are you? You’re seeding your malignancy here and there, but something’s going wrong, isn’t it? You keep changing hosts. You’re not getting traction. I’m offering you a shortcut.”
“You’re offering me a king.”
“Yes. Someone with power, with clout.”
“Who?”
“The Lord of Toronto. An Incarnation of Conquest. He thinks he can use you.”
“Does he?” Pauz asked.
“We can set you up with him, so you’re in a better position than ever.”
“How? Why?”
“The why is easy,” Rose said. “We’re not exactly on good terms with the local Lord. As for how… I’m going to need you to play along. We’re going to bind you.”
“Trickery,” Pauz said. He made his way across the roof of the car, his claws scratching and poking through the metal as he did, eliciting nail-on-a-blackboard screeches. “Deception, lies.”
“A little more subtle than that, Pauz. I’m thinking… If we simply bind you and release you, it’s too obvious. He’ll bind you himself, whether you agree or not. But if we give the contract a time limit.”
“Hm?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m on the same page as the Imp here. Hm?”
“If we did the binding now,” Rose said, “and I’m not saying we should, we’d give it a time limit of sixty hours. Then you’re free. No fanfare, no announcement, nothing overt changes. We could even mock up a fake connection or binding to hide it, in case he bothers to check… but I don’t get the impression Conquest knows the ins and outs of demons and devils. He wouldn’t be dealing with this or relying on us if he did. You’re in our service and in our power when we turn you over to Conquest, as payment, the time limit runs out, and you’re free to do as you see fit, positioned right next to him.”
“With him there and listening,” Pauz said. “Easily swayed.”
“And,” Rose said, “If we can manage it, you’d have distractions.”
“You’re thinking about the other two,” I said. Fuck me, Rose. This isn’t playing with fire. This is playing with the big red button.
I’d almost protested out loud, but she’d asked me to play ball. I’d asked her to play nice enough times… I supposed this was where we really were the same person, or were siblings. It was only natural the tables would be turned, that she’d reflect my own personality traits.
“Yeah, I’m thinking about the other two,” Rose said. “We have to deal with them one way or another, anyhow. Let’s use them.”
“I’ll need time to consider,” Pauz said.
So do I.
“We can give you that,” Rose said.
“You can return tomorrow,” Pauz told us. “The Dowght home. My realm.”
“No,” Rose said. “Tonight, not tomorrow. We’re on a schedule.”
“Tonight,” Pauz conceded.
“Neutral ground,” I added.
“My realm,” Pauz said, his eyes narrowing. “You’re ‘on a schedule’. It is where you’ll find me, diabolists.”
“We’ll also need a promise of safety, for my companion, when he leaves this circle,” Rose said.
Pauz didn’t reply.
“The deal is off the table if you don’t,” Rose said.
“If I don’t,” Pauz said, “You die. You’ll get colder, others will ask you to move. Something will force you from that meager defense. Then the crows take your eyes, and the dogs eat the softer bits of you.”
“Not me,” Rose said. “My companion? Sure. But you’d only really get one of us.”
“Hey,” I said.
“I suppose it’s up to you, imp of the fifth choir,” Rose said. “One more death at your hands… or a chance to manipulate Conquest itself, possibly affecting this whole city.”
“Or,” he said, “I ask what you’re willing to give me.”
“You’re trying to extort from me?” Rose asked.
Pauz didn’t reply. He left his question hanging in the air.
“My name is Rose Thorburn,” Rose said. “Your kind knows of my blood. Demons greater than you have dealt fairly with us, insofar as there is ever a fair deal. What will they think, if a mere imp were to disrupt that arrangement?”
“Depends who you asked,” Pauz said. His voice was a low growl, tense and wary.
“I’d ask the big names,” Rose said. “Shall I say them? Shall I speak the names of the higher members of the fifth choir? I’d need only say them once, and we would have their attention. Say them five times, and I could negotiate with one of the entities you answer to.”
Pauz was tense.
“You’re not even a pawn to them, Pauz,” Rose said. “You’re not even a pawn on their pawn’s chessboards, so to speak. You’ve been largely forgotten, and I don’t think you want to be remembered. Not when you’re in the act of spoiling a longstanding working arrangement. Not when I could ask them to remove them from the picture as a bargaining point they wouldn’t even think twice about.”
“Brave words, from the woman in a mirror inside a very fragile circle,” Pauz said.
I had only a split second to think about it. I stepped out of the confines of the rabbit-gore circle, passing the threshold, moving closer to Pauz.
Radio static. Outside of the circle, I could feel his presence. It was like radio static in my head. White noise that wasn’t pleasant to listen to, fuzzing around the edges. Prickling at my skin, making me irritable, hypersensitive to everything that might bother me otherwise. The nip of the cold, the discomfort where the hatchet’s holster bunched up my boxers beside my balls, and the feeling of sweat-soaked clothes pressing against my shoulders and back.
Senses in overdrive, distracting white noise.
I could smell him, now. Feces, hot garbage, and blood. More of the same, a physical representation of a presence that was radiating into the area.
I wondered how different this would have played out, without the circle. Would the meeting have opened with a hit of static and stench that would have rocked my senses, kept me from maintaining my senses?
Despite the distractions, I still advanced closer, kept my shoulders square, chin up, my gaze level. I couldn’t react to anything I was experiencing; I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get my bearings and remain stoic in the face of it all.
I had to move around the snowbank that separated the two driveways to draw closer. My hand involuntarily clenched as the sense of distortion built up. The noise of it steadily increased, dissolving my thoughts now. No longer did I have that one concrete line of thoughts, all the other thoughts at the edges, cross-checking, comparing, searching for ways to expand or elaborate the thought.
Just one, one idea plodding along, and everything outside of that one line of thinking was noise and chaos, working against instead of with.
Dimly, I was aware that what I was doing was stupid, walking headlong into the radiation. I heard flapping nearby, the crows drawing nearer.
The idea became an action, singular, an impulse.
Rose spoke, and I wasn’t entirely able to make it out. The flapping continued, but they weren’t drawing nearer, now.
Somewhere along the way, I crossed another ten feet, reaching the car at the end of the driveway. I had the hatchet in my hand as I looked up at Pauz.
I thrust it out, into the side window of the car. The top of the hatchet’s blade punched through the glass, and frost spread out from the impact site.
Pauz moved back a half-foot as the frost spread along the car’s exterior.
I stayed there, arm extended, hatchet sticking through the shattered window of the car.
I wasn’t able to do much else, besides fight the pressure.
Rose said something else. “Do I need to say a name? Baph-”
“No,” Pauz interrupted. “There is no need. Go, diabolist.”
The word was enough. The order, almost. Still stiff-necked, back straight, I turned to leave. I fought the urge to stop when I saw the animals waiting, clustered on the snowbanks, at the edges of driveways, lurking in the shadows beneath and beside cars. Dogs, crows, rabbits and cats, all in ill-health.
“Blake,” Rose said, when we’d left the imp behind.
“No,” I replied.
“No?”
I could still feel the effects of being so close to the Imp. It was hard to piece two and two together, much less string multiple words along. “No… not now.”
Not with the animals still here, watching.
We were almost at the subway station when I started to feel like I was getting back to normal.
My heart was pounding, I realized, my mouth was dry, and the adrenaline was making my hands shake. I felt pumped, but it wasn’t a good kind of pumped.
It was the rush that lingered after the flight or fight instincts had kicked in. I’d experienced it enough times. If I could go my entire life without ever experiencing it again, I’d die content. Fat chance.
Well, maybe not, now that I thought about it. The way things were going, with the estimations people kept making about my life expectancy, dying soon might not be out of the question.
“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath, as if that could help with the vaguely sick feeling and the way my heart was still beating out of sync with what my body, mind, and emotions were doing.
“Okay?” Rose asked.
“I’m… up to talking, and I don’t think he’s got any animals that close by.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thoughts?”
“Still reeling,” I admitted. “That last bit was unpleasant.”
“I don’t think either Pauz or I expected it,” she said. “Why?”
“Because my mind turned off, and because… I don’t know. I was sort of trying to show we weren’t to be trifled with, and I wanted to break the car window.”
“Huh?”
“When they see the damage, they’ll look,” I said. “It’s… close as I can figure, the only way they’re going to see the dog that’s inside the car. Maybe they’ll shit themselves when they walk over to the second broken window and the dog starts barking and snapping, but at least they won’t find out about the dog while they’re driving on a busy road and it bites their arm or throat.”
“You were thinking about all that?”
“I was going with my instincts,” I said. “Which is apparently the only thing you can do when you’re face to face with him.”
“Until he starts perverting your instincts,” Rose said.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Him? That? That was not what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
“Something more feral. Something more like the barber. That was more like a goblin, and… it wasn’t stupid. There were times it seemed eerily human.”
“The books warned against using labels, putting things into tidy category of goblin and demon and whatever else. So maybe Pauz is more on the goblin-ish side of the spectrum.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Except goblins, as far as I know, don’t involve the metaphorical radiation we’re talking about.”
“And it’s a parasite. Remember what it said about the languages?”
“It knows thirty, but somehow it skipped Pig Latin.”
“It’s moving from host to host. And it’s taking something away from each one. Bits of personality, bits of knowledge. Piecing things together. It’s growing, I’m sure, with each one. Remember, it’s a spark. It’s trying to become a fire. Consuming, devouring, growing to a point where it’s out of control.”
“Which is why it’s been stopping and starting again?” I asked.
“No. I don’t think that’s why,” Rose said. “We won’t know for sure, until we meet this Dowght person he’s infected, but I think he’s killing them by accident. Think about what the women described. Dowght is feeding wild animals, drawing them to the area, then abandoning them to remain here, starving and vulnerable to Pauz’s influence. He’s living in filth, hoarding…”
“He’s maybe starving at the expense of feeding the animals?” I asked. “Or he’s getting bitten, or scratched, or diseased… so he dies in a little while, of an infection he’s not taking care of because Pauz has sway over him. Pauz moves on, starting the cycle anew, a little stronger each time, a little more human, as he collects bits of his hosts. Fanning the flames, until the blaze you’re talking about finally takes.”
“I think so,” Rose said. “It’s what I imagine, when I picture the situation and the relationship between the imp and its current host. That thing doesn’t seem like it would take good care of someone it’s using, not if it’s not taking care of the animals. If we extrapolate… I don’t think it considers events beyond the present.”
“Which is why you’re offering the deal you are?”
“In part,” Rose said. “It might be easier to deal with the two of them than it is to deal with Conquest and Pauz separately.”
“Unless they get along,” I said.
“Let’s hope they don’t,” Rose told me. “Because this is the closest thing I can come up with to a backup plan.”
“Next to orchestrating a mutiny?” I asked.
“Next to a mutiny,” Rose said.
I trudged on in silence, resisting the urge to fidget and burn off more of that lingering adrenaline. I pulled my gloves off and wrung my hands, then cracked my knuckles.
“Heads up. I won’t be able to reply in a few seconds,” I said, “Approaching the subway, don’t want to be seen talking to myself.”
“If we got a phone,” Rose said. “You could hold it up to your ear.”
“Kid on the subway saw you,” I said. “I’m not sure people wouldn’t hear you, too.”
“There was one thing that bugged me, by the way,” Rose said.
“Hm?” I grunted. I was uncomfortably close to a bystander, a guy standing just inside the subway entrance to smoke. Which was illegal, but still.
“You ask me to trust you, cool. I’ve made that leap, knowing a hell of a lot less going in than you knew going into this. But I ask you to trust me, and you hesitate?”
I rounded the corner as I descended the stairs. There were people on the platform below, but not in earshot.
“Dealing with demons,” I said, “A little different.”
She didn’t reply. I supposed it was because the mirror pendant gave her a view of the people in front of me.
We need to find a way to pull all this together, I thought.
A growl behind me made me whirl around.
It was an older lady, carrying a small dog that wore a jacket. The dog snarled, as my eyes met his. Or hers.
“Shhh, honey,” the old woman said.
The dog yapped, lunging in an effort to get out of its owners arms. Never mind that it probably would have hung itself, the way the leash was coiled up.
“I’m so-” the woman said, stopping as the dog tried to lunge again. “Sorry!”
The yapping, growling and struggling grew more intense.
“He never does this!”
“It’s-” I started.
But the sound of my voice seemed to tip the balance. The dog bit its owner, tiny white teeth disappearing into the meat of her fingers, exposed gums meeting flesh as blood welled up.
I fled, backing up, moving to the far end of the platform. There was nothing I could do.
Only distancing myself.
“Man,” a guy standing near me said. He smiled a little, “You always wonder about those owners who put their dogs in little jackets.”
I couldn’t bring myself to react, nor respond.
No doubt in my mind. This was our metaphorical radiation.
I could only hope it wore off soon.
I caught the train, not in the direction of home, but the University.
■
Crows in nearby trees called out as I walked down the broad footpath. Taunting me. Maybe threatening me.
The buildings were old, or as old as buildings got, in a country that only dated back a couple hundred years. Stone, stately, majestic.
The Sphinx’s domain.
I’d received no help from Fell or the Lord, but I did need to reach out, and this was the only place I could think of to start looking. Problem was, the university was probably two or three times the size of Jacob’s Bell, especially when the various residences and student buildings were taken into account.
It was a starting point, but it was damn nebulous as starting points went.
Well, the most obvious solution was often the correct one.
I headed straight for the visitors center, entering a building with a stone exterior and great white pillars framing the glass turnstile door.
Students milled this way and that, most in winter gear. A desk at the back had staff waiting, but it also had lines.
My eye fell on the table with campus calendars, and the two computers that stood on either side. Each computer, it seemed, was set up with a basic search engine for campus information.
Isadora, I tried.
Nothing.
I looked for a list of professors instead.
Phixopolous, Isadora, Professor of Ethics
Not even trying to mask it. She apparently wasn’t concerned about other practitioners finding her.
I dug a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote down the name and then found the building for the Ethics department, and a map to get my bearings.
I left the visitors center and headed for the building in question. Odds were good that she wouldn’t be there, but that was ideal.
Trouble presented itself before I was halfway there.
One at first, then – I saw him wave over some others out of the corner of my eye. A whole group of college-aged guys peeled away from a cluster in the open area just beside the university center. Following me. They moved in twos and threes, but they formed a general group of about eight or so. The connections between them and me marked their interest in me.
A few seconds after I’d noted the connection, some girls joined the group. I got a glimpse of them all as I rounded a corner, doing my utmost to keep from tipping them off.
The girls hadn’t joined the group after all. Instead, they walked on the very periphery of it. Each girl was independent, while the guys were a herd.
The Sphinx’s people?
No. The connection seemed fairly feeble, as such things went. As far as I could tell, without looking over my shoulder and letting them know I was on to them, they had no tie to the ethics department I was headed to.
“Rose,” I said, under my breath. “People following me.”
“What can I do?”
“Get a feel for them. Hop to any nearby reflections, see if you can’t get a better look at what I’m up against, come back and fill me in?”
“I can.”
It was a long walk, one that gave them chances to catch up. The girls were pulling ahead, more athletic in general, more given to the pursuit.
“I don’t know who or what they are,” Rose said.
“I’m wondering if they’re just susceptible to whatever effect is sticking to me after that talk with Pauz. Drunk people, more in tune with their baser instincts…”
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think that’s it. I don’t really have any senses, outside of sight. I can look at them, and they’re boys from college, talking, bumping shoulders, joking around, walking with arms around each other’s shoulders. Some drinking surreptitiously.”
“But?”
“But… I feel like there’s an energy there. I don’t know if I feel it or if I’m seeing stuff I can’t put my thumb on. Like, they’ve got a vibe, good looking, they’re high-energy, naturally outgoing people, and they get people swept up in their attitude?”
“And the girls?” I asked. I didn’t even care that some people gave me quizzical looks. The guy talking to himself.
“Girls?”
“Yeah, Rose. There are girls there too.”
“Be right back,” Rose said. She sounded as if she were saying it while in the process of making her exit.
“Okay.”
A few seconds later, Rose reported in. “Yeah, there are girls.”
“I know there are girls.”
“They’re more predatory somehow? They remind |
Baqeri’s team in his Ankara visit was kept confidential.
Now, however, Fars has revealed the names of some of those who accompanied the Chief of Staff in his historic visit. They included General Muhammad Pakpur, Commander of the Ground Forces of the IRGC, Gen. Qassem Rezai, Commander of the Border Forces and the deputy head of the regular army’s planning division. Gen. Rahim-Zadeh.
Also present in Baqeri’s team was Gen. Mehrabi, who heads the Khatam al-Anbia base, a conglomerate that runs the IRGC’s economic and business enterprises, indicating that the “triple alliance” may also include the sale of certain categories of weapons by Iran to Turkey and Iraq, as well as joint construction projects in border areas.
The presence in Gen. Baqeri’s team of Gen. Hassan Baqeri, in charge of the army’s training programs, indicated the intention to extend military cooperation into educational and academic domains.
The fact that Baqeri also met the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildrim, Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli and Security Chief Hakan Fidan underlined the broader political dimensions of his high profile role in reshaping Iran’s defense and foreign policies.
The “triple alliance” also envisages cooperation in training of the security forces of the three neighbors.
In talks with his Turkish and Iraqi counterparts, Gen. Baqeri proposed the development of plans for academic level “joint action” in the field of defense and security. That could allow for an exchange of students seeking military careers at higher academic levels.
Such an exchange would enable Iranian trainee officers to get familiar with the military culture of NATO, something that was available to Iran before the Islamic Revolution in 1979. At the same time, the program would enable the military in Iraq and Turkey to obtain direct understanding of Iran’s military doctrine, mindset, methods and practices.
It is not clear how many trainee officers would be exchanged among the three members of the proposed alliance.
However, according to Gen. Baqeri the putative allies would also organize joint courses for trainee officers from all three countries. That would allow the gradual emergence of a new generation of officers who have studied together and thus know each other’s way of thinking more closely, fostering an esprit de corps that could strengthen neighborly ties.
According to Fars, it was the Kurdish secessionist referendum in Iraq that speeded up a process that had been “in gestation at thought level for some time”.
In an unusually frank statement, Gen. Baqeri has asserted that Iran, Iraq and Turkey will not allow Iraqi Kurds to secede.
Iran and Turkey have a long history of alliance treaties.
The first came in 1639 when the two neighbors divided Mesopotamia on the basis of the Qasr-e-Shirin Treaty, ending centuries of conflict and war over who controls what is now Iraq. That ended centuries of wars between the Ottoman Empire and Iran in which, at times, Iranians allied themselves with European powers against the Turks.
After the collapse of the Caliphate in Constantinople, Iran and Turkey went through a period of “national redefinition” and in 1933 concluded the Saadabad Pact which even envisaged the creation of joint military units.
That was interrupted in 1941 when the Allies, Great Britain and Russia, invaded and occupied Iran for almost five years.
In 1955 Iran and Turkey created a new alliance with Iraq. Known as the Baghdad Pact it also included the United Kingdom.
The Baghdad Pact collapsed in 1959 when the new Iraqi pro-Soviet regime of Col. Abdul-Karim Qassem denounced it. That forced Iran and Turkey to create a new alliance known as the Central Treat Organization (CENTO) with Pakistan added as a new member and the UK retaining the place it had in the Baghdad Pact. The United Sates was included as an associate member, emphasizing CENTO’s close ties to NATO.
Right now Iran, Iraq and Turkey have a number of major concerns.
The Kurdish secessionist bid is highlighted as a major threat. In reality, however, such a threat could be no more than marginal in military-security terms. More urgent is the need to fully cleanse the region from the remnants of ISIS and find a way out of the quagmire that is Syria.
Iran and Turkey have been on opposite sides in Syria for seven years.
Now, however, Tehran is beginning to realize that it is losing its dominant role in Syria as Russia assumes the role of big power there. An alliance with Turkey and Iraq could help Iran regain part of its lost influence in Syria without risking a direct clash with Russia.
The forging of the triple alliance also boosts the prestige and authority of Gen. Baqeri as a top-level player in Iran’s macro-politics, eclipsing that of President Hassan Rouhani and his Cabinet who have been excluded from the entire process.
The 56-year old two-star general, whose full surname is Afshordi-Baqeri, took over as Chief of Staff last June and has hit the road running. Holder of a PhD, Baqeri is regarded in Iranian military circles as an intellectual soldier as opposed to his long-serving predecessor Gen. Hassan Firuzababadi, who was more of a bureaucratic figure.
Gen. Baqeri has also established direct contact with his Pakistani counterpart Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, who is visiting Tehran next week. According to sources Gen. Baqeri wants Pakistan to join the emerging “triple alliance” or, at least, to revive aspects of military cooperation it had with Iran and Turkey before the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979.
In a gesture of goodwill toward Baqeri, Gen. Bajwa ordered the deployment additional Pakistani military units on the border with Iran to prevent infiltration of “terrorists” and smugglers into Iranian territory.
Gen. Baqeri is also sending an indirect message to the United Sates at a time that President Donald Trump is reportedly pondering whether or not he should declare the IRGC a “terrorist organization.”
Gen. Baqeri’s message is clear: The IRGC and the Iranian armed forces are really important players in the nation’s politics. Antagonizing them would be bad policy on the part of the US, especially at a time that the new commanders, under Baqeri, are trying to establish links with NATO via Turkey.
“Iran has already entered a post-Khamenei transition period,” says Nasser Zamani, an analyst in Tehran.
“What is certain is that the mullahs cannot handle that transition and that gives the military an opening to offer an alternative narrative of the revolution, paving the way for normalization with the outside world.”
Gen. Baqeri’s efforts to make the “triple alliance” possible is an indication, albeit indirect, that his priority is national security and regional military cooperation rather than “exporting revolution”, a project that has already failed.
Amir Taheri Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. Mr. Taheri has won several prizes for his journalism, and in 2012 was named International Journalist of the Year by the British Society of Editors and the Foreign Press Association in the annual British Media Awards. More PostsThree years ago we built a ridiculous, $10,000 gaming rig called the Large Pixel Collider. We grabbed four Nvidia GTX Titans, a ton of storage, 64 GB of RAM, the fastest CPU we could get our hands on, packed it all in the biggest all-metal case available and sealed it up with some custom liquid cooling.
The LPC became more than our testing rig: it was a mascot, a constant reminder of what's possible on PC. We loved it when developers who visited us posed for photos with it.
Now, we're getting that itch to build something absurd again. Next month we're resurrecting the LPC project, and taking another crack at building the best PC we can using 2016's best components. We're also going all-out to create an appropriately custom, over-the-top exterior for the build.
Being PC gamers, we're not putting the original LPC out to pasture. No component goes to waste, especially when our three-year-old rig still has tons of power. We'll turn the old LPC into a multiplayer server, open to the PC Gamer community. And we'd love to hear what multiplayer game you think deserves to run on it. Help us decide by voting in the poll below.
Thanks to Intel for sponsoring our crazy endeavor to build the highest-end PC that we can. Stay tuned during the next few weeks as we reveal the components, our ridiculous theme for the LPC, and start firing up some games.Following a security breach that exposed the credit information of 143 million people to hackers, it was revealed that Equifax Chief Information Security Officer Susan Mauldin was a music major in college.
Equifax, which is a credit reporting agency, hired Mauldin as their Chief Information Security Officer in 2013. Previously, Mauldin was the Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer at First Data Corporation until 2013. Prior to that, she was also SunTrust Banks’ Group Vice President from 2007 to 2009.
How she got any of these positions, or the skillset required for them, is still an open question considering her educational background. According to her LinkedIn Mauldin did not have any technology or security credentials. Instead, she got a bachelor’s degree and a Master of Fine Art’s degree in music composition from the University of Georgia.
There’s been virtually no coverage of Mauldin’s credentials following the security breach but, as ZeroHedge has pointed out, Equifax scrubbed Mauldin’s LinkedIn and took down videos and podcasts with her. Since then, Mauldin has resigned from her position as Equifax’s CISO.
Could this all have been done in an attempt to hide that the individual that Equifax put in charge of protecting 143 million American’s credit information was an affirmative action hire meant to meet some quota?
That still remains to be seen, though we do know that Equifax, like most other major corporations, has diversity programs in place – indicating that their hiring process may also put a premium on women and racial minorities over white men. This is supported by the fact that the security breach and the handling of it since then both indicate that Susan Mauldin had no idea what she was doing.
As Lily Hay Newman at Wired and security journalist Brian Krebs have documented, Equifax committed an embarrassing series of mistakes that led to the security breach and then left multiple vulnerabilities in the following months.
The breach itself happened because Equifax was using an old web application that had not been updated – despite the fact that a security update that would have prevented the breach was made available two months prior to the incident. Following the breach, Equifax took six weeks to notify the public that it had occurred. Then, they set up a web portal for handling credit disputes with the username of “admin” and the password of… you guessed it, also “admin.”
But hey – diversity is our greatest strength, right?See also by Nicholas Stix: “Hate Crimes”: Washington’s War Against White Working Class Dissent
Part of the anarcho-tyranny being imposed by the Obama/Holder Regime is the ongoing persecution of white men by prosecuting them for non-crimes, overcharging them, and/or imposing draconian punishments on those convicted. At the same time, nonwhite defendants from “protected” groups are enjoying Affirmative Action justice where they are largely immune from prosecution for crimes against whites.
Take white man Michael Dunn, the latest victim of a racially biased justice system. Dunn was just sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 90 years in a blatant example of politically motivated prosecution.
Dunn was parked in a gas station parking lot while four black teenagers blasted music from an SUV next to him. When he asked them to turn it down, it led to an argument between him and one of the teenagers, Jordan Davis. Dunn told the jury during his trial that Davis threatened to kill him, but Davis’s friends claim they did not hear him threaten Dunn. [Jury deadlocks on murder charge in loud music trial by Julia Dahl, CBS News, February 15, 2014.]
Of course, young and not-so-young black men obsessively harass whites with the intention of provoking a response. The response is then a pretext to engage in violence. Often, even if there is no response, one is simply invented.
For example, in the latest Drudge linked episode of racial violence in Chicago, black teens who videotaped their attack on an older white man in the subway, simultaneously claimed they “didn’t do nothing” and that their attack was justified because the man was “saying racial slurs.” [Cruel teenagers caught on video cackling with laughter as they slap and taunt elderly man on subway in sickening attack, by Mia de Graaf, Daily Mail, December 13, 2014
In Dunn’s case, Dunn said he thought he saw a shotgun coming out of the SUV’s window. Dunn fired ten shots into the car, hitting Davis three times and killing him.
The prosecutor in the Dunn case was none other than Angela Corey—the same prosecutor who tried to destroy George Zimmerman for defending himself against Trayvon Martin. The Main Stream Media and prosecutors worked hard to poison the jury pool by presenting Dunn as a mouth-breathing white supremacist, including releasing and publishing highly prejudicial letters Dunn had written from jail to his family and friends. [Michael Dunn: Letters from jail, CBS 47, October 17, 2013]
The jury deadlocked on the first-degree murder charge, but Dunn still faced a staggering minimum mandatory 60 years in prison for three convictions for second degree murder [Jury deadlocks on murder charge in loud music trial by Julia Dahl, CBS News, February 15, 2014.] Nevertheless, Corey retried Dunn on the first degree charge. This time he was convicted and was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus 90 years. [Dunn gets life in prison by First Coast News, October 17, 2014.]
To put this sentence in perspective: In his memoir, The Criminal Justice Club, career Los Angeles County prosecutor Walt Lewis cites research by Prof. Joseph Bessette, the former Acting Director of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, who found in 1992 that convicted murderers served on average fewer than 5.5 years in jail and prison. Bessette later revised his work for Lewis, and found that by 2001, the average had only increased to eight years and eight months.
But Corey’s overcharging of Dunn with first-degree murder, instead of Murder Two (the shooting was obviously not premeditated) and the two juries’ verdicts and draconian sentences were nakedly political—they were intended as a loud warning to white men across the country: Do not defend yourselves against what appears to be mortal danger from black aggressors, or we will end your life.
Let’s look at some other prosecutions/ persecutions of Politically Incorrect whites.
Last month, Neo-Nazi William “Bill” White was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for allegedly emailing death threats to an FBI agent, a judge, and a prosecutor. White had not committed any violent acts, or even made any serious plans to do so. [Neo-Nazi sentenced to federal prison for threats to Central Florida officials by Jeff Weiner, Orlando Sentinel, November 24, 2014.]
In 2007, the Bush II/Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice turned protected symbolic speech by white man Jeremiah Munsen into a “hate crime” for his mockery of the Jena Hoax. He was coerced into a confessing to a felony and received four months in federal prison, six years of probation, and community service.
In 2010, Missouri officials railroaded the Mizzou Two, Sean D. Fitzgerald, 19, and senior Zachary E. Tucker, 21, into confessing to a felony and getting two years of probation. Their crime: Putting cotton balls outside a Black Cultural Center.
White nationalist Michael Weaver/Carothers was subjected to the peculiar medieval punishment of being banned from his home county of Chattahoochee County in Georgia. His crime: He maintains that in 2010, he defended himself with Mace against a robbery attempt by two drunken black felons. Eight months after the DA had charged him with misdemeanor assault, he was charged with a felony for the same incident and his politics were ruled to be relevant to a trail. To avoid a possible 20 year prison sentence, he accepted a severe plea bargain.
As a Jew, I obviously hold no brief for neo-Nazis. However, the same Obama-Holder Justice Department that has routinely violated whites’ civil rights, and in particular hunted those who are pro-white, has enthusiastically supported racist black terrorists who have actually threatened or committed violence.
Contrast the punishment of Bill White to the anarchists and communists who made death threats against hotel staffers in order to shut down an American Renaissance conference. The feds never even investigated the terrorists’ crimes. The only justice anyone got was when the late David Yeagley sued the terrorists in civil court, and won a judgment of $50,000 from black racist thug Daryle Lamont Jenkins of One People’s Project—though Yeagley died before he could collect.
Or look at the New Black Panther Party, which openly promotes racism and anti-Semitism just as fanatically as any Nazi. [Malik Zulu Shabazz, Discover the Networks]
On Election Day 2008, the NBPP was caught on videotape, violating whites’ voting rights at a Philadelphia polling place—blocking their path, brandishing a deadly weapon, and hurling racial epithets at them. The Bush DOJ initiated prosecution against the NBPP. But when the defendants refused to show up in court, AG Eric Holder scuttled the case.
In 2012, the NBPP put a $10,000 bounty on the head of George Zimmerman, “Dead or Alive.” Again, Eric Holder ignored the crime. [CNN Reports ‘Black Panthers’ Offering Bounty on Trayvon Killer George Zimmerman, Mediaite, March 26, 2012]
In August 2014, the group called for the murder of white police officer Darren Wilson. Again, the feds ignored the NBPP.
President Barack Obama in particular has long supported the NBPP. In 2007, he marched with them. [Obama Marched with Zulu Shabazz and the New Black Panthers in 2007, RedState, October 4, 2011] He campaigned on the same stage with NBPP leader Malik Zulu Shabazz. After winning the election, Obama reportedly had Shabazz as his guest at the White House on at least one occasion. [Surprise! Guess Who Visited White House, by Aaron Klein, WND, November 1, 2009]
Far from prosecuting black racial terrorists, Obama and Holder have encouraged them by sending Justice Department activists to Sanford, Florida, and Ferguson, Missouri and inviting racist black thugs to the White House to incite racist violence.
Blacks committing hate crimes against whites (e.g., mob attacks) are typically not arrested at all, and those arrested are rarely punished. Black persistent felony offenders increasingly enjoy jail-free convictions, and are permitted to repeatedly commit additional felonies, without being incarcerated, until they commit murder (see victims Eugenia “Jeanne” Calle, Atlanta; Eve Carson, NC; Sam Irick, TX; et al.).
Black felony defendants are routinely under-charged. Prosecutors and judges alike engage in jury-shopping, to try and get blacks less time, or no time. Black jurors routinely indulge in various degrees of jury nullification, and judges destroy prosecutors as retaliation for aggressively litigating heinous black criminals.
Contrast the watered-down sentences for minority criminals to these draconian sentences being meted out to whites for political crimes. Just as the British Establishment credited “exemplary sentencing” with crushing British working class resistance to Third World immigration, so the American Establishment is trying to break any white resistance to nonwhite crime and imposed demographic change.
In Obama’s America, it’s a far worse crime to call a minority an impolite name than it is to randomly assault a white. It’s far worse to harbor Politically Incorrect thoughts than undertake violent actions. And justice, rather than being blind, seemingly operates on a quota system. Like some real world version of Animal Farm, under our federal government, we’re constantly preached to about how everyone is equal—but some people are more equal than others.
Cory Strolla, Dunn's attorney in his first trial, withdrew from the case when Dunn’s family could no longer pay his fees. A state-appointed lawyer, Waffa Hanania, represented him at the second trial. (Lawyer for Michael Dunn withdraws from case, by Larry Hannan, staugustine.com, March 11, 2014.) Neither returned messages I left for them for comment.
Nicholas Stix [email him] is a New York City-based journalist and researcher, much of whose work focuses on the nexus of race, crime, and education. He spent much of the 1990s teaching college in New York and New Jersey. His work has appeared in Chronicles, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, Daily News, New York Newsday, American Renaissance, Academic Questions, Ideas on Liberty and many other publications. Stix was the project director and principal author of the NPI report, The State of White America-2007. He blogs at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored.Prague (or Praha), the capital of Czech Republic, is an outstanding city! If it is still not in your bucket list by now, well, it should be there!
Why? I hope these 20 pictures will explain you better than words:
1. The Old town square
Photo credit – @Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho
Prague’s Old Town (or Staré Město pražské) is the heart of the city that remained almost untouched since the 12th century. The most important sights are the Jan Hus statue in the middle of the square, the Old Town Hall Tower and the Tyn Church. The square is full of musicians and vendors and it has its incredible atmosphere!
2. The astronomical clock
This one-of-its-kind medieval astronomical clock was one of the main reasons I wanted to visit Prague! Every hour you can enjoy mechanical performance. The clock’s sophisticated construction also has 12 medallions with the signs of the zodiacs.
During the Middle Ages it was considered one of the wonders of the world, but it still amazes people nowadays!
3. Charles bridge
Photo – @skoeber
You will see many things named in honor of Charles IV (Karl) in Prague, this bridge being the most important of them. Stroll across the bridge to encounter countless vendors and musicians.
As it is very crowded during the day, Charles bridge is best explored at dawn.
4. Prague Castle
Do you want to visit one of the largest castle in the world? Consider it done in Prague Castle!
This huge complex includes royal residences, gardens, cathedrals (still operating, you can even get married there!). Don’t forget to go inside the Vitus cathedral to admire its stained glass windows.
5. Find the best city view
When going up the hill to the castle (near Vitus Cathedral) don’t forget to look around, as you will find a viewpoint. You will see a fabulous view to the whole city!
6. Touch the “lucky” statue
Oh, and near the Vitus cathedral, there is this statue on the hill, where you should touch the shiny part of the monument for a good luck.
What would you not do for a good luck, right? 😉
Update: I have just had a talk with a couple of Czech local people and they found this tourist “invention” of sightouching unpolite and out of place. Please consider that when you think if you should be in the line to take that picture.
7. Victims of the communist regime memorial
Picture by @Audrey Penven
Czech Republic was under communist regime from 1948 to 1989. The memorial made out of 7 bronze figures descending the stairs is dedicated to “not only those victims, who were jailed or executed, but also those whose lives were ruined by totalitarian despotism”.
8. Eat in a local restaurant
I ate in “U fleku” restaurant. It was one of the first on Tripadvisor and I have also heard about it from my friends, so I decided to give it a try. The place quite touristic, but still fun, a lot of traditional music and local cuisine. Also, Kolkovna is a chain of restaurants where you will find traditional food and be sure it is not a tourist trap, locals eat there too!
9. Try knedliky
Photo –@hamadryades
Knedliky (or knodel) is something that you have to try while in Czech Republic! They are some kind of spongy steamed bread dumplings. You either hate them either love them. Anyway, to get your own opinion, you have to try it!
And when you eat knedlinky, don’t forget to also order …
10. Try Czech beeerr!!
Did you know Czechs hold a proud number 1 place in the world of beer consumption per capita? No wonder, their beer is so good! And also cheap, often it is even cheaper than a bottle of water! 😉
11. John Lennon wall
In Berlin they have a Berlin wall, here they the John Lennon’s one. Everyone can draw graffiti on it, there is always someone playing music and a great atmosphere around it!
12. Dancing house
The Nationale-Nederlanden building has a nickname, people simply call it the Dancing house.
Really, just look at it – isn’t it a man holding a woman in a dance, definitely not just one more boring office building!
13. Zorbing/boats along the river
Take a boat ride under the Charles Bridge or run along the water of Vitava river. All that can be very much fun if the weather is nice. Do it, you will not forget the experience!
14. Strahov Monastery Library
The most famous library in Prague is actually the Klementinum library, it was even descried by BoredPanda as the world’s most beautiful library. But it is very touristic and you have to book a tour in advance. There is one more library that is the same beautiful but less known, I recommend visiting Strahov Monastery! I did not notice any difference in beauty, but it is definitely less crowded there.
15. Pregnant woman statue
This “statue” is made by David Černý – a controversial Czech artist, famous for his provocative sculptures all around Prague. Černý is hated by the government and loved by the citizens. You will see many of his statues around the town. Like…
16. Barcode kids statue
Photo by @Coralie Mercier
I gave them this name myself, don’t look it up in the Internet, I am not sure they have a specific name.
You can find these babies at the Kampa museum and you are welcome to think about your own meaning of this piece of contemporary art.
17. Zizkov TV Tower
Photo by @Karl Davison
Apparently Cerny really likes babies theme in his works because you will find some huge kids crawling up the Zizkov Television Tower. Wait, what?
Yes, that is exactly what I mean – just some huge iron babies climbing u the TV tower. Just yout ordinary view when in Prague…
18. Feel the Parisian charm in Prague
I felt like I am back in Paris when I saw these art-noveaux style buildings. Just walk around in the area near Prague University and you will see many buildings like that!
19. Visit Jewish Quarter
Prague’s Jewish Quarter, formerly a walled ghetto, is one of the most complete collections of Jewish historical monuments in Europe today. If you are interested in the holocaust subject, there is a great movie called Niki’s family, that tells the nearly forgotten story of Nicholas Winton, an Englishman who organized the rescue of 669 Czech and Slovak children just before the outbreak of World War II.
20. Prague at night
Photo credit – @Nico Trinkhaus
The city by night is absolutely marvelous! Walk along the river front and admire the illuminated buildings and, of course, walk the Charles Bridge when there is almost no one there
Where to stay in Prague
Luxury (200€ and up) – Cosmopolitan Hotel Prague is an amazing 5-star luxury hotel located right in the heart of Prague. This boutique hotel awaits you with free Wi-Fi, gorgeous rooms and complimentary access to gym and sauna. Another great option for luxury travelers is Myo Hotel Wenceslas – a beautiful 4-star hotel located very close to the city center. I am sure you will feel like a princess/prince during your stay there!
Middle (100€ – 200€) – Residence U Černého Orla is a very stylish and modern accommodation for middle-priced budgets. The breakfast is delicious, the rooms are very nice and well decorated and it has an overall great value for money. Alveo Suites is my second recommendation if you are looking for a place where you can have a nice and comfortable stay in Prague! You will appreciate the simple and cozy rooms and all the facilities.
Budget (between 30€ – 100€) – Little Quarter Hostel is one of the best budget accommodations in Prague! The hostel is set in a historical building, the rooms are cozy and clean and the sunny terrace is perfect for some relaxation! Travel&Joy backpackers is another great choice thanks to the friendly staff, cozy rooms and great amenities!
Changing money
There is no EUR in Czech Republic, the currency there are “koruna”. Be careful when changing money, I have seen all kinds of rates, including some which were extortionate!
First of all, check if they charge a commission, and, secondly, if the rate is good. Before giving them your money, ask them how much you will receive. I can recommend you a good exchange office where I changed my money. It is very close to the Charles bridge, it has a good rate and doesn’t charge any commission. The address is Kaprova Street 14/13.
Conclusion
Even though it was a very short visit (I went there as part of my 30 days traveling in Europe by train with Eurail), those 2 days were enough to understand that I will come back for a longer time period as soon as I have a chance!
Thanks a lot for reading! I hope you liked my photo essay of Prague!
Yulia
RELATED READ: 22 Best Things To Do In Berlin That You Cannot Miss
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What do you think about Prague? What did you like the most if you have already visited the city?In Houston, America's Diverse Future Has Already Arrived
Enlarge this image toggle caption Elise Hu/NPR Elise Hu/NPR
All this week, NPR is taking a look at the demographic changes that could reshape the political landscape in Texas over the next decade — and what that could mean for the rest of the country.
To see the speed of demographic change in Texas, look no further than its largest city — Houston. Only 40 percent of the city's population is non-Hispanic white, and by a Rice University count, it's the most racially and ethnically diverse city in America.
"Houston is an immigrant magnet," says Glenda Joe, a Chinese-Texan community organizer whose extended family came to Houston in the 1880s.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Elise Hu/NPR Elise Hu/NPR
"Texas looks like me. I'm half-Chinese; I'm half-Irish," she says. "I also do business; I work with universities; I also ride horses. That's what Texas is."
At about 35 percent of the population, Latinos make up the second-biggest group in Houston after non-Hispanic whites or Anglos, according to Census numbers. But Asian-Americans are the fastest-growing group — doubling between the 1990 and 2010 census to about 7 percent.
"There is no majority group here, not even close," says Michael Emerson, a Rice University sociologist who studies Houston's demographic change. He and his research partners put together the 2012 analysis that gave Houston the title of most diverse metropolitan area in America. If you look at the four major ethnic groups — Anglo, black, Asian and Latino — all have substantial numbers in Houston, with no one group dominating. It comes closer to having an equal balance of each group than you would find in New York or Los Angeles.
The city's transformation to an international megalopolis happened quickly, and only within the past few decades. As the metro area shot to nearly 6 million people, 93 percent of all that growth was non-white.
"Houston runs about 10, 15 years ahead of Texas, 30 years ahead of the U.S., in terms of ethnic diversity and immigration flows," Emerson says. "So it is fundamentally transformed in a way that all of America shall transform."
Jobs fuel the transformation. The energy industry remains a huge player, but there's also the Texas Medical Center, burgeoning biotech and a bustling shipping port. Despite crippling humidity, long commutes and a reputation for refineries, Houston's cheap land, affordable homes and low barriers to doing business have lured immigrants from all over.
"You are here to make your fortune; you are here to move ahead in the world. You are about making things happen. There's no way that you could be a leader here in this community and not recognize that," says Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who is a minority among politicians. She's the only female mayor among the top 10 most populous cities, and she's one of the only openly gay politicians, period. And she's learned a few lessons about governing a place where different cultures combine.
"Too often what happens in a state capital or in Washington is that it is about parties and partisanship, not about the practical realities of running something. Cities have to run," Parker says.
For her, running the place means embracing the sociological situation. Houston is remarkably practical that way. Just ask seventh-generation Chinese-Houstonian Glenda Joe.
"It's inexorable. The change in terms of leadership, the change in terms of how we look — it's inexorable," Joe says.LOS ANGELES, California, May 4, 2015 (ENS) – AIRPod, a $10,000 car that runs on compressed air, has won a development deal on the American TV program “Shark Tank.”
Robert Herjavec, one of the investors, or sharks, Friday night agreed to invest US$5 million in Zero Pollution Motors, the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, developer of the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine.
In return Herjavec, a Croatian-born Canadian businessman, investor and auto racing enthusiast, will acquire 50 percent equity in Zero Pollution Motors.
Pat Boone, the famous music star from the 1950s, joined Ethan Tucker of Brattleboro, Vermont, who owns the Zero Pollution Motors rights to manufacture and sell the AIRPod in Hawaii, to pitch the new eco-friendly compressed air car to the sharks.
The AIRPod will be built in regional turnkey micro production factories throughout the United States.
Unlike the huge traditional auto assembly plants, these plants will manufacture 80 percent of the vehicles and will sell them in the same location.
This method will decrease costs and logistic problems and also has a significant beneficial impact on the environment, Tucker and Boone explained to the sharks.
Hawaii is the anticipated location of the first production plant.
Tucker told the sharks the islands are an ideal location for an AIRPod factory because it is a contained location, is overloaded with vehicles, suffers from air pollution and is dependent on weekly shipments of petrol.
Herjavec agreed to put up the $5 million, but only if ZPM is able to get the rights to manufacture and sell the AIRPod in the entire United States.
The AIRPod vehicle was developed by French inventor and environmentalist Guy Negre. The vehicle design is owned by MDI Sa based in Luxembourg.
To power the vehicle, cold air compressed in tanks to 300 times atmospheric pressure is heated and fed into the cylinders of a piston engine.
No combustion occurs, so there is no air pollution. Negre has said that the air emitted from the tailpipe is cleaner than the air that goes in, due to an internal filter.
The AIRPod can be refilled from a compressed air station, similar to those that exist today at gas stations for the inflation of tires but with larger capacity and higher pressure.
The AIRPod can be refilled with air at home using an electric compressor and Negre hopes that, one day, drivers will be able to recharge the cars in filling stations in three minutes for as little as three dollars.
Zero Pollution Motors intends to produce the first compressed air car for sale in the United States by the second half of 2015.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2015. All rights reserved.[cairo] Cairo and ISO C++
Hi, my name is Herb Sutter and I chair the ISO C++ standards committee. Behdad referred me to this list as the right place to raise this question: We are actively looking at the potential standardization of a basic 2D drawing library for ISO C++, and would like to base it on (or outright adopt, possibly as a binding) solid prior art in the form of an existing library. You can find a quick summary of goals and discussions to date in these two papers: * http://isocpp.org/files/papers/n3791.html * http://isocpp.org/files/papers/N3825.pdf As noted in the latter paper, we are currently investigating the direction of proposing a mechanically C++-ified version of Cairo. Specifically, "mechanically C++-ified" means taking Cairo as-is and transforming it with a one-page list of mechanical changes such as turning _create functions into constructors, (mystruct*, int length) function parameters to vector<struct>& parameters, that sort of thing - the design and abstractions and functions are unchanged. This would also allow us to track Cairo as it evolves in the future, by continuing to reapply the same rules to new updates to Cairo. We know about Cairomm but it seems to have languished so we are focused on current Cairo as a starting point, even though it's not C++ -- we believe Cairo itself it is very well written C (already in an OO style, already const-correct, etc.). We want to make sure we're doing this in the right way and with the group's approval, so your feedback would be much appreciated. Also, we might want to reuse parts of the Cairo documentation in our specification, which we understand is governed by MPL 1.1, and we would like to know if this would be all right with your group. Thanks, and best wishes, Herb -------------- next part |
immerse himself in extreme or alien environments, going alone and learning from indigenous people. As The Sunday Times put it: “Filming whatever actually happens, without all the hidden paraphernalia of a film crew, and whether in danger or lonely or undergoing various exotic rituals, he has effectively taken the viewers’ experience of adventure as far as it can go.” However, most of his more challenging journeys – depicted in his first five books – in fact took place before he began filming his exploits. “I belonged to the last generation that might pass through a wilderness for months on end and not encounter a single person of my own culture. It was a privileged time: never in all those years can I remember coming across a single other foreigner, whilst out on a trek.” Such isolation seems inconceivable today.Reference : Benedict Allen You could also check out the post'Psychedelic Torrent on Books, Movies & Documentaries on Drug Awareness '!Related Articles :The holiday shopping season has arrived, and many of us are already buying presents to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the New Year. One of Chatterbox’s favorite places to shop is Amazon.com, which has a wonderfully large inventory and usually ships items very quickly. Nobody’s service is perfect, however, and Amazon is no exception. Should something go wrong with your order, you can click the “Help” button at the top of the page and be directed to a menu with various subheadings (“ordering,” “shipping,” “returns,” etc.). If none of these answers your question, you can click on a “Contact Customer Service” button for “immediate assistance.” This turns out to be another menu with more subheadings (“order and refund questions,” “account assistance,” “using features & services”) that link to various FAQs (that’s Web-talk for “frequently asked questions”). There’s also a help department search engine that enables customers to find answers to more unusual queries.
What you will not find is a customer service telephone number. That isn’t because Amazon lacks a customer service number. Rather, it’s because Amazon doesn’t want you to find it. As more and more people traverse the Web, Web site proprietors are increasingly hesitant to give out phone numbers. Many Web sites stash the phone numbers in a place where only the most determined Web surfers will find them. Other Web sites don’t give out phone numbers at all. Amazon falls more or less into this second category. According to an article by Brad Grimes in the September 2001 issue of PC World, the only Amazon page that gives out its customer service number is the one you’re sent to after you’ve bought something. So if you’re having trouble with an order or purchase and need to speak to an Amazon customer service rep about it, the only way you can do so is by placing a second Amazon order. Neat, huh?
Actually, there is another way. You can come here! Chatterbox is pleased to announce that the customer service line for Amazon.com is:
1-800-201-7575.
Chatterbox tracked it down by scrolling to the bottom of Amazon’s home page, clicking on “Investor Relations,” clicking (in the left-hand column) on “SEC filings,” and then clicking on Amazon’s last quarterly filing, dated Oct. 24. Here Chatterbox found Amazon’s corporate address and phone number in Seattle. Chatterbox dialed the number, asked for the customer service number, and was given it. (Only after going through this exercise did it occur to Chatterbox to search Google for “Amazon.com customer service phone number.” That turned up a few non-Amazon sites that give away its customer service number. See, for example, this and this.)
That number, again, is
1-800-201-7575.
Chatterbox urges Amazon shoppers to bookmark this page and refer to it next time there’s a problem that can’t be solved without a human voice. That number, one last time, is
1-800-201-7575.
Tell ‘em Chatterbox sent ya!Texas A&M began to separate itself from the hashtag "WRTS" on Thursday as more questions arose about the connection to its top football recruit.
Various people and accounts connected to Texas A&M started using #WRTS, which stands for We Run This State, on Twitter during recruiting this past season. Among those that used it was the @AggieFBLife handle, which is run by a third party but connected to an athletic staff member with the Aggies.
Five-star defensive tackle Daylon Mack's father filed for a trademark four months before his son committed to Texas A&M. Ray Carlin/USA TODAY Sports
The hashtag was also used by Daylon Mack, a five-star defensive tackle and the No. 1 recruit in Texas, who was deciding between Texas A&M and Texas before eventually landing with the Aggies.
But it went deeper than that. Mack's father, Coris, filed for the trademark to #WRTS with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in June, four months before his son committed to the school. Mack trademarked the phrase to be used on virtually every form of athletic apparel through Derek Gilliland, the same attorney who has filed for all of Johnny Manziel's trademarks, including "Johnny Football."
Coris Mack didn't own the trademark yet, as the Patent and Trademark Office had given him until July to answer questions about the phrase before granting him ownership. But A&M rendered the mark, at least at its school, virtually useless Thursday in an attempt to disconnect from any appearance of impropriety.
"Texas A&M has not had any plans -- past or future -- to trademark, purchase, or otherwise profit financially from #WRTS," the school said in a statement Thursday. "Texas A&M was aware of Mr. Coris Mack's trademark application but this trademark application had nothing to do with the recruitment of Mr. Daylon Mack as a student-athlete at Texas A&M."
The school also said it has "disallowed licensees from using #WRTS in connection with Texas A&M trademarks, to include official logos, phrases and colors, in production of licensed goods. Texas A&M's Office of Business Development, which oversees the university's trademarks and licensing, is not a part of the athletics department, and is not involved in the recruitment of student-athletes."In an interview with Larry King on CNN last night, Mrs Obama also denied being upset with Sarah Palin for her attacks on Barack Obama.
Mr McCain’s oddly-phrased reference to Mr Obama has sparked a furore with some going so far as to accuse him of racism.
But Mrs Obama said she had hardly noticed it. “These little, you know, sound bites don't register with me,” she said.
“A lot of times I'm looking around at the faces of the undecided voters in the room, I'm trying to see how they're reacting. So there is so much going on in a room that a phrase here or there just doesn't resonate."
Despite the increasingly combative nature of Mrs Palin’s comments about her husband, Mrs Obama was complimentary about the Republican vice-presidential candidate.
" I think she provides an excellent of example of all the different roles that women can and should play," she said. " I'm a mother with kids and I've had a career and I've had to juggle. She's doing publicly, what so many women are doing on their own privately.
Mrs Obama also made a second US television appearance last night, this time on the Daily Show with the satirist Jon Stewart.
Resisting his attempts to get her to attack Mrs Palin, she admitted that she didn’t like being in the debating arena alongside her husband. “I get nervous,” she said.
She added: “I’m a tough critic. I’m not soft on Barack.”
In both interviews, she played down any personal animosity between her husband and Mr McCain – at least on Mr Obama’s part.
“Some of it is theatre and the reality is Barack has tremendous respect for Senator McCain,” she told Stewart.It dragged on and on… you will have to decide for yourself why the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the UK’s press regulator, took so long to review the inaccuracies in Caroline Criado-Perez’s July 23rd piece about domestic violence. Published on the New Statesman’s website, Criado-Perez made the following assertion.
Domestic abuse is the largest cause of morbidity in women aged 19-44, more than war, cancer or motor vehicle accidents.
This is a dramatic statement, which caught the attention of many readers. When I surveyed Twitter tweets that linked to the article, I found ten percent repeated the claim verbatim. However, Criado-Perez’s domestic violence statistic is utterly false. It was most notably debunked by a 2009 episode of More or Less, the BBC’s statistical fact-checking show.
Criado-Perez did worse than repeating a common lie. If she had stopped there, then maybe she could have feigned innocence, pretending she made an honest mistake. Criado-Perez went further, trying to hoodwink gullible readers by hyperlinking her pseudostatistic to a 246-page report published by the World Health Organization, even though that report contains no data to support Criado-Perez’s hyperbole. The WHO report dates back to 2002, and the most pertinent data it contains is that interpersonal violence then ranked as the 43rd-highest cause of morbidity for women.
Though it has taken too long, IPSO has finally reached a decision. Their Complaints Committee said:
The Committee made clear that it would not be able to establish the accuracy of the statistic itself. However, it did consider it misleading for the magazine to cite as a source a WHO report which did not contain the assertion in question. The magazine had not been able to demonstrate that it had taken care. As such, there had been a breach of Clause 1 (i) [of the Editor’s Code of Practice].
Criado-Perez and the New Statesman have misled their readers. That was so obvious that nobody could sensibly deny it, even if they wanted to. I know that some of you have contacted Criado-Perez directly, asking why she cited the WHO report and what was the real source of her claim. Her attitude is plain: she intends to simply ignore those questions. Criado-Perez expects this all to blow over, allowing her to continue her career as a campaigner and journalist without even a hiccup. Instead of choosing to be honest, frank and transparent, Criado-Perez believes that the best course of action is to refuse to discuss questions relating to her integrity as a journalist. Better still, she hopes nobody will ask them. If the press, and its regulator, refuse to hold her to account, then only the public can do so.
I am not satisfied with the conclusion of my complaint. In all my dealings with the press regulator, I emphasized that time is of the essence, when correcting errors on popular websites. Articles on major websites are mostly read during the first few days of publication; this is when the article is featured on the home page and promoted via social media. The article may remain on the web forever, but only a very small number of people will read it after the initial rush. I contacted the New Statesman and Criado-Perez within hours of the publication of this article, alerting them to the error. It took the New Statesman two weeks to delete the bogus statistic (substituting other statistical misinformation in its place). By then, the article had long disappeared from their home page. Nobody was reading the article any more, so it hardly mattered what changes were made. No real effort has been made to correctly inform the readers who have been misinformed. In total, it has taken 10 weeks to get a judgment from the press regulator, though their standards state the following.
We will deal with your complaint as quickly as possible. We will explain any delays and keep you informed of the progress of our investigations. Overall, we aim to deal with complaints in an average of 35 working days.
The press regulator never explained why this complaint needed so much longer than their ‘average’. 10 weeks is a long time on the internet. In that time, a lie can spread worldwide.
More than that, we must question the purpose of a press regulator that is ‘not able to establish the accuracy’ of assertions made by the press. In this case, we are not dealing with a rarefied branch of theoretical physics or speculations about the nature of God. Either domestic violence is, or is not, the largest cause of morbidity for a certain range of women. Either there is statistical data to support this assertion, or there is not. In this instance, nobody can find any data to support this falsehood, and there is plenty of data to the contrary. In short, what is the point of a press regulator tasked to ‘uphold the highest standards of journalism’ and to ‘enforce’ a code which requires ‘the Press [to] take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information’, if that regulator cannot tell the difference between a statistical fact and some made-up garbage that gets repeated by people who should know better?
Even now, the press regulator is complicit in misleading readers. If you visit the offending article on the New Statesman’s website, you will see a footnote. That footnote is a lie, though it has the blessing of IPSO. The footnote begins: ‘Update, 7 August 2014’. I believe an ordinary person, with no knowledge of the history of this article, would assume that this update occurred on the 7th of August. It did not. The wording of this footnote originated in late September. IPSO’s complaint handler told me about it on the 1st of October.
From: Bianca Strohmann
Subject: Complaint 143805
Date: 1 October 2014 09:58:07 GMT+01:00
To: Eric Priezkalns Dear Mr Priezkalns, My apologies for the delay in bringing your complaint to a conclusion. The statistic in the New Statesman has now been amended to The prevalence of domestic abuse means that in some countries 40-70 per cent of female murder victims are killed by a husband or boyfriend, according to the UN. And the footnote has been updated accordingly.
The article was first amended on August 7th, and a footnote was inserted then. But what you see today is not the version of the article, or the footnote, as it looked on August 7th. It would bore most normal people to describe every edit made to the article, and to the footnote, since then. Let me assure you that what you see today is actually the fourth version of this article, and the third version of this footnote.
Throughout this process, the ‘independent’ press regulator has been in repeated contact with the New Statesman, negotiating changes to the wording. After each change, I was asked to comment. The implication is clear. The editors of the New Statesman wanted to make the least possible change, and to draw the least possible attention to the inaccuracy in the original article. The press regulator aided and abetted this, by asking me to comment on every change.
A genuinely impartial body would have no need to ask my opinion, because they could have told the New Statesman that the changes were clearly inadequate, as they continued to mislead readers by presenting statistical falsehoods. Why ask me about every change, only to then negotiate further changes, unless the regulator hoped I might drop my complaint? Why draw this process out unnecessarily, with repeated trivial edits, unless the goal was to avoid issuing a formal decision that the Editor’s Code had been breached?
Over the last 10 weeks, a lot of my time has been wasted. My ‘reward’, such as it is, is that the regulator was finally forced to issue a decision, stating that the public had been misled. This is of scant benefit, if the public does not learn the truth. Though it is entitled to do so, the regulator has not published its decision. I received the decision by email, as if lies about the prevalence of violence in our society are a private matter between me and a group of career journalists who never had the decency to respond to me directly.
At every turn, the regulator has done the least it can possibly do, to correct the misinformation spread by Criado-Perez and the New Statesman. It should not be up to private citizens, like you and me, to hold the press and public servants to account, in this fashion. But it is up to you, and me, to hold them to account. We cannot rely on anyone else to do it for us.
Criado-Perez is a famous victim. Her fame is inextricably linked to the abuse she received from Twitter trolls. Our society is humane; we have sympathy for victims. But we all know that bad people can be victims too. We must not allow sympathy for Criado-Perez to grant her leeway we would not permit to every journalist. She lied, and it was a gross lie. The readers of her articles should know about this, and apply appropriate scepticism to everything she writes in future.
The truth has come out, somewhat. But the truth has arrived late, and is only spoken in whispers. You are reading this now, but many more people read the original article by Criado-Perez, and they believed its contents. They are not reading this, or learning they were misled.
In many respects, this process shows how liars and cheats are winners in our society. It is people like you and I, who want journalists to present reliable information to readers, who are the losers. Perhaps we are in the minority. But even if we are a minority, I intend to keep fighting, and I hope to find myself fighting alongside you. If you agree with me, that Criado-Perez was caught in a barefaced lie but has suffered no repercussions, then I urge you to tell others about this incident, and the judgment issued by the press regulator. We cannot rely on others to do it for us.
The full text of the IPSO decision follows.As everybody knows, Michigan was said to be headed for a huge Hillary victory by a big margin…
Yesterday.
Yesterday, in Nate Silver’s view, a 99% slam-dunk for her.
Yesterday, it was viewed as one of the last nails in the campaign coffin for Bernie.
Today it’s quite something else.
One of those things is the amount of small-donor money that will be flowing into the Sanders’ campaign.
Another is the momentum it will give us Berniacs going forward.
Let me repeat what I wrote five weeks ago:
Sanders has already breathed new life into the progressive agenda, called forth a can-do spirit for our struggle against the domination of the 1%, and presented a vision of a future America not ruled by naysayers and numbskulls. As Sanders has said all along, this campaign is not just about him or just about gaining the presidency. Win or lose the nomination, the campaign is about building a movement, or rather building an alliance of the different movements we’ve seen slowly arising over the past 15 years. Sanders has done more to inspire us in that direction than even most of his strongest backers thought he could achieve a year ago. [...] Bringing his cross-generational vision to fruition—however long it takes—is our task, whether we just turned 18 or are pushing 75. We won’t get there whining about how the odds are stacked against us. They definitely are. But that shouldn’t stop us any more than our predecessors were stopped when the odds were stacked against them. As Frederick Douglass once famously said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." In the streets and in the voting booths, it is by focused and relentless struggle that we can bring about the changes our nation desperately needs in spite of the obstacles—the sexists, the racists, the homophobes, the warmongers, the plutocrats, and their marionettes in Congress. We should adopt the message of the Galaxy Quest folks: Never give up. Never surrender. Sticking to it requires that we take seriously what Sanders has repeated throughout the first seven months of his campaign.
We have a long way to go. But Bernie Sanders and his campaign staff and volunteers in Michigan took us a smidge closer to our goals than we were yesterday. Huzzah! to him and them.Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli announced that the country's security forces have discovered a secret tunnel in Eastern Iran that the terrorists sought to use for sabotage operations.
AhlulBayt News Agency - Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli announced that the country's security forces have discovered a secret tunnel in Eastern Iran that the terrorists sought to use for sabotage operations.
"Two nights before, we discovered a 40-meter tunnel in the 20-meter depth of the earth in the Eastern parts of the country and they (the terrorists) intended to use it secretly in ripe conditions for conducting explosion and other operations," Rahmani Fazli said, addressing a forum in Tehran on Thursday.
"40 people were arrested in this regard," he added, but declined to provide any further details.
In a relevant development, an informed source said on Wednesday that the Iranian security forces dismantled a terrorist cell in the Southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan.
"Members of a team which sought to carry out sabotage acts and blow up different places in Khash were identified and arrested," the source said.
In the same region last month, the Iranian security forces arrested a member of Ansar al-Forqan terrorist group.
"During the Law Enforcement Police's clashes with members of a terrorist group in Khash in the last (Iranian) month (of Khordad - mid June), several people were killed but one of them was arrested alive and his confessions showed that these people were members of Ansar al-Forqan terrorist grouplet," said Mohammad Marziyeh, the general-prosecutor of Zahedan city.
A senior Iranian police commander announced on June 13 that the country's Law Enforcement troops have dismantled a terrorist cell in Sistan and Balouchestan province after killing five of them in fierce clashes.
"The members of the terrorist group who had come to the region on a sabotage mission were trapped by the police," Commander of Sistan and Balouchestan province’s Police Force Brigadier General Hossein Rahimi said.
He noted that five terrorists were killed and two others are at large in the city of Khash in Sistan and Balouchestan province, and said, "One Iranian Law Enforcement soldier was also killed during the clashes with the terrorists."
Brigadier General Rahimi said that a large amount of explosives and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were also seized from the terrorists.
Also in June, the Iranian intelligence ministry announced that the country's security forces have defused several suicide and terrorist attacks in different provinces, including Tehran.
"One of the biggest terrorist plots of Takfiri Wahhabi groups was thwarted" in recent days, the intelligence ministry said in a statement.
The statement added that the Takfiri terrorist groups had plotted imminent bombings in different parts of the country, including Tehran and a number of other provinces, during the religious ceremonies in the holy month of Ramadan.
The ministry ensured that all these have been foiled by the country's security and intelligence officials.
"The terrorists have been apprehended and a number of ready-to-explode bombs and a large amount of explosive materials has been discovered and seized from them," it said.
Given the continued field investigations in and outside the country and interrogation of terrorists that is currently underway, more information will be released in future, the statement added.
/257The Jacob Trouba saga may not be coming to an end anytime soon.
So says TSN's Bob McKenzie, who - on Tuesday's edition of Insider Trading - outlined the difficulties facing the Winnipeg Jets in regards to their asking price in any deal involving the young defenseman.
"Not an easy transaction to conclude because the Winnipeg Jets' desire - in what they get back for Jacob Trouba - is so very precise as to make it difficult," McKenzie said. "They're looking for a left-hand shot defenseman of similar age, experience, potential. And that's really difficult. Anaheim's not trading Hampus Lindholm, Toronto's not trading Morgan Rielly, Arizona's not trading Oliver Ekman-Larsson."
Still, McKenzie added, more than half the teams in the NHL have varying degrees of interest in the talented, two-way defenseman, with four standing out as most willing to make a deal.
"I can think of four teams - maybe more - that have a really significant interest in this player but don't have the proper fit right now," he said. "That would be Arizona, Boston, Colorado, and the New York Rangers, among others.
"Maybe the parameters change at some point, but this would suggest to me maybe this is going to be a long, drawn-out affair."
Trouba's agent has made it clear his client is looking for a top-pair role on the right-side of the ice, and the restricted free agent isn't looking to reach a new deal with the Jets at this time.
That the Jets have specific requirements in place and that the trade request was made public only further complicate the matter, allowing prospective suitors to wait and see if the parameters for a trade do indeed soften from Winnipeg's side.Many stars of the long-running CSI franchise are expected to return for the two-hour series finale set for Sept. 27.
CBS confirmed Friday that William Petersen (Gil Grissom) and Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows) will go behind the yellow tape, as will Ted Danson (D.B. Russell), Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle), Jon Wellner (Henry Andrews), David Berman (David Phillips), Paul Guilfoyle (Jim Brass), Wallace Langham (David Hodges), Elisabeth Harnois (Morgan Brody), Robert David Hall (Dr. Al Robbins), Eric Szmanda (Greg Sanders), and Melinda Clarke as Lady Heather.
There will be two notable absences: Elisabeth Shue, who played Julie Finlay, and George Eads, aka Nick Stokes. As EW reported exclusively, it’s unclear how the producers will deal with Shue’s absence. Eads, in the meantime, opted not to participate, according to TVLine.
Production on the special will begin July 29 in Los Angeles. The show’s creator, Anthony Zuiker, is penning the script. Executive producers on the special include Jerry Bruckheimer, Carol Mendelsohn, Ann Donahue, Jonathan Littman, and Petersen.A decade or so ago, when it was time to send my children to preschool, it never occurred to me to do anything else. For an upper-middle-class family like mine, enrolling my kids in a half-day nursery school program with all of its benefits (socialization and school readiness, among them) was a no-brainer.
Now, amid a highly contentious national debate about whether preschool should be made available to all children, a new study provides a mountain of evidence that my parental instincts were right on the money. Literally. High-quality preschool programs are “the most cost-effective educational interventions and are likely to be profitable investments for society as a whole,” concludes the study, financed by the Foundation for Child Development and produced in collaboration with the Society for Research in Child Development.
The report, written by an interdisciplinary group of 10 early-childhood experts, is actually a “research brief” — an overview of “the most recent rigorous research” on a hot-button issue. Among its key findings:
•Large-scale, high-quality public preschool programs can have substantial impacts on children’s early learning. •Quality preschool education can benefit middle-class children as well as disadvantaged children, though children from low-income families benefit more. •Quality preschool education is a profitable investment, with $3 to $7 saved for every $1 spent.
The analysis will undoubtedly be greeted as good news by the Obama administration, given the president’s call to make federally funded, high-quality preschool “available to every single child in America.” Not that the critics can’t find fault. The research brief points to evaluations of early-childhood education programs in Tulsa, Okla., and Boston, which found large gains in math and reading among participants. But scholars at the Brookings Institution and elsewhere have attacked the Tulsa and Boston studies for their supposedly unreliable methodology.
More broadly, those who question the wisdom of extending early-childhood education cite research showing that third and fourth graders who are part of the federal government’s Head Start program and other such initiatives perform no better on standardized tests than do their peers who never attended preschool.
But the research brief released today, titled “Investing in Our Future,” makes clear that this is a narrow way to look at things. While the analysis fully acknowledges that there is little, if any, difference in test scores between those who go to preschool and those who don’t, it also found that there are “long-term effects on important societal outcomes such as years of education completed, earnings and reduced crime and teen pregnancy.”
At last count, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research, 41 percent of 4-year-olds and 14 percent of 3-year-olds in the United States are enrolled in publicly funded state and federal pre-K programs. Millions of children, especially from lower-income homes, find themselves shut out due to a shortage of spaces. Lack of access, however, is only part of the story. As the research brief notes, “only a minority of preschool programs are observed to provide excellent quality, and levels of instructional support are especially low.”
This suggests that even low-performing preschool programs are better than none at all. Imagine the gains to children and to society if both access and quality were increased. The writers go on to assert that “the most important aspects of quality in preschool education are stimulating and supportive interactions between teachers and children and effective use of curricula.”
“Children benefit most when teachers engage in stimulating interactions that support learning and are emotionally supportive,” the report said. The best of these exchanges “help children acquire new knowledge and skills... and foster engagement in and enjoyment of learning.”
Of course, I didn’t really need a team of Ph.D.’s to confirm this last point. Any mom or dad whose kids have benefited from a good preschool program could have told you that.Nancy Pelosi wanted to talk about a bailout for Puerto Rico today, but a reporter wanted her opinion on “gun legislation” moving through Congress instead.
The House Minority Leader couldn’t hide her disdain for — or fear of — the question.
While addressing reporters today, Pelosi muttered “oh God” into a hot mic while a reporter was asking about the bill.
“Madame Leader, I’d like to get your thoughts on some gun legislation moving toward the floor…” the reporter began.
“Oh God,” Pelosi said.
“Yeah,” she muttered to herself when the reporter said the bill would “deregulate silencers and undermine concealed carry laws.”
“Well, in addition to that, it’s the silencers, it’s the, uh, conceal and carry,” Pelosi said, repeating what the reporter just said, “and it’s also, uh, uh,” she continued, before suffering a brain freeze for several awkward moments, before blurting out, “pier— uh, um, armor-piercing bullets.”
One reason she may not have wanted to talk about guns is because the National Rifle Association has a higher approval rating than Congress.
Last year, the NRA enjoyed a 42 percent approval rating, according to NBC.
The job approval of Congress sits at a paltry 8 percent, according to an Economist poll.
Pelosi’s approval sits at 26 percent, the poll reveals.InXile Entertainment's initial pitch asked for $900,000 to create a sequel to the post-apocalyptic role-playing game Wasteland. Last April, Wasteland 2's Kickstarter campaign ended with almost $3 million in pledges from more than 61,000 backers.
InXile believes it has learned a critical lesson from its crowdfunding success. The creative leads at InXile believe that the traditional publisher/developer model of funding video games is broken, and the developer is staking its future on that claim.
Today, the developer announced a Kickstarter campaign for Torment: Tides of Numenera, a spiritual successor to the old-school RPG Planescape: Torment. InXile's project director and creative lead explained to Polygon in a recent interview that the game also represents its goal to subvert the traditional business model and sell games players want directly to them.
"There are many very appealing aspects of crowdfunding, especially for midsize or smaller developers like inXile," project director Kevin Saunders told Polygon. "We like how it makes us accountable to the players directly. We have to convince them that we have the capability to give them the game they want to play."
"We like how it makes us accountable to the players directly. We have to convince them that we have the capability to give them the game they want to play."
The crowdfunding process turns development into something of collaboration long after the funds are acquired. InXile defines the vision of the game, pitches it to potential players, then solicits feedback and makes adjustments. As with its theory of the broken funding model, it's more than just talk: InXile has already put that into practice with Wasteland 2. In a recent update on the game's progress, it announced that the game would ship with defaults alongside a "robust settings menu." It was an acknowledgement that "everybody has their own preferences," and a tangible way to react to the game's backer-players.
"Part of the appeal of using Kickstarter is that we are making the game that our players say they want to see made — as opposed to saying, "Okay, we're going to go with a target metric audience here that has been defined extensively though focus groups and consumer testing from our enormous lab,'" creative lead Colin McComb told Polygon.
Like Wasteland 2, the Kickstarter campaign for Torment: Tides of Numenera is an attempt to create a game that publishers wouldn't. InXile believes there is a demand for a successor to Planescape: Torment, a 1999 RPG that has gained a cult following.
The rights for the game are "all tied up in the ongoing litigation with Interplay and Atari and Wizards of the Coast," McComb said, making a direct sequel all but impossible. Last year, McComb and Chris Avellone began talking about a sequel. McComb said he approached Wizards of the Coast, which owns the rights to Dungeons and Dragons and Planescape, about the possibility of using the canonical setting. He didn't get very far.
"After several months of not being able to do anything with it, I was like, 'Okay, you know what? Forget it. I'm not going to do this anymore.'"
A few months later, InXile founder Brian Fargo contacted McComb to join the Wasteland 2 team. He did, and a few months after that, Fargo mentioned that InXile acquired the Torment intellectual property.
In the meantime, a designer of the original Planescape, Monte Cook, had successfully funded a tabletop role-playing game called Numenera on Kickstarter. It was in this new universe that the successor to Planescape: Torment would be built.
By last November, McComb was musing publicly about a successor to Planescape: Torment. Avellone gave McComb his blessing, which was made public in an interview last December. In January, Cooke announced on his blog that he'd entered into an agreement with InXile to bring his Numenera universe into the video game realm.
More recently, Avellone made the NSFW-laden video below to offer his support.
InXile doesn't want to make a direct sequel. Rather, the plan is to create a character-focused campaign that evokes the same feelings as Planescape: Torment.
"It's about finding your place in the world, about understanding who you are, about what legacy you leave," McComb said. "What does one life matter?"
Set amidst a world in which several ancient empires and civilizations have risen and fallen, the single-player RPG will attempt to have players answer that final question from an individual's perspective. It's about being forced to confront the reality wherein you're just one link in a seemingly endless chain.
"Everything sort of spun out from there," McComb said.
Torment: Tides of Numenera won't attempt to answer its central question, however. It's up to the players. As they discover the ruins of ancient civilizations, how will they put them to use? Whether for good or for evil, the game will adapt.
"Characters in the game will judge you — the world will judge you — but the game won't," Saunders said.
Much of that will play out in the game's Tides system, alluded to in the title.
"The Tides are our version of the alignment system in D&D, which is perhaps the closest parallel," he said. "There are five of them, but they don't oppose each other directly. It's not like good versus evil. There's much more complicated interactions between them."
The Tides system is the developer's way to track the results of player action, which are a de facto demonstration of what's important to them. There is no right or wrong, but rather a series of choices with consequences.
"Characters in the game will judge you — the world will judge you — but the game won't."
"There are forces you are manipulating here, but it's essentially an external manifestation of the choices you have made," McComb said. "If you've decided that your choice is to become a bloodthirsty butcher, people will react to you that way, and your powers within the game will change as well."
As an example, McComb offered the Passion Tide, which is color-coded red to give it meaning beyond its one-word description.
'When your Passion Tide is strong, it means you're more driven by the things that move you, as opposed to reason or empathy," he said.
InXile decided to begin the new project now, as Wasteland 2 is still in development and scheduled for release around October 2013, for several reasons. Perhaps most practically, it needs to cover the costs of preproduction. But it's also about moving those in the company to a new project as development on Wasteland 2 ramps down. This is, after all, the studio's experiment in sustained, crowdfunded development.
The Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera, an isometric RPG, kicks off Wednesday. The game is planned for a DRM-free distribution on Windows, Mac and possibly Linux platforms.
But that's likely the minimum viable product. As the stretch goals for Wasteland 2 proved, financial success changes a project based on backer desires, and InXile is comfortable in its new paradigm. Based on its past, it's willing to adapt. As with Wasteland 2 before it and, it hopes, other games after it, InXile will also use the new crowdfunding mechanisms and the dialogue it has with players to establish the game's final scope.As had become the norm over the last few days, the first thing Ruby felt after waking |
2049 9732 3.90 -0.14 3.77 103.4 113.6 109.9.524 13.6 31.8 0.262.499 14.9 35.8 0.256 86 2016-17 SAS* NBA 82 61 21.744 19805 3222 6864 2469 4937 753 1927 1440 1806 821 2777 3598 1954 655 484 1101 1498 8637 7.20 -0.06 7.13 94.2 111.1 103.5.524 12.6 24.0 0.210.492 13.5 22.4 0.192 87 2015-16 CLE* NBA 82 57 25.695 19855 3171 6888 2291 4460 880 2428 1333 1783 873 2777 3650 1861 551 317 1114 1666 8555 6.00 -0.55 5.45 93.3 110.9 104.5.524 12.7 25.1 0.194.496 12.6 21.5 0.205 88 2009-10 UTA* NBA 82 53 29.646 19755 3227 6575 2788 5368 439 1207 1654 2233 872 2588 3460 2187 675 400 1246 1859 8547 5.34 -0.01 5.33 93.8 110.7 105.0.524 14.2 26.8 0.252.492 14.2 24.4 0.269 89 2015-16 OKC* NBA 82 55 27.671 19830 3372 7082 2694 5137 678 1945 1616 2067 1071 2916 3987 1883 603 487 1305 1691 9038 7.28 -0.19 7.09 96.7 113.1 105.6.524 14.0 31.1 0.228.484 11.7 24.0 0.205 90 2015-16 LAC* NBA 82 53 29.646 19830 3141 6759 2344 4569 797 2190 1490 2152 721 2727 3448 1873 709 460 1063 1746 8569 4.28 -0.15 4.13 95.8 108.3 103.8.524 12.1 20.1 0.220.480 13.8 26.2 0.222 91 2004-05 MIA* NBA 82 59 23.720 19980 3097 6368 2622 5108 475 1260 1658 2466 887 2639 3526 1790 528 474 1127 1814 8327 6.52 -0.76 5.77 90.8 110.2 103.1.524 13.1 27.0 0.260.460 12.4 25.9 0.242 92 1994-95 PHO* NBA 82 59 23.720 19830 3356 6967 2772 5383 584 1584 1777 2352 1027 2403 3430 2198 687 312 1167 1839 9073 3.88 -0.02 3.86 95.9 114.5 110.4.524 12.7 29.7 0.255.515 14.0 30.2 0.228 93 2017-18 MIN* NBA 82 47 35.573 19805 3365 7063 2707 5218 658 1845 1592 1980 848 2593 3441 1861 689 345 1021 1495 8980 2.23 0.12 2.35 96.0 113.4 111.1.523 11.4 24.4 0.225.539 13.9 23.6 0.189 94 2009-10 BOS* NBA 82 50 32.610 19780 3039 6294 2540 4861 499 1433 1559 2090 716 2449 3165 1930 701 402 1219 1816 8136 3.66 -0.29 3.37 91.6 107.7 103.8.522 14.5 22.8 0.248.487 14.9 26.2 0.251 95 1981-82 DEN* NBA 82 46 36.561 19830 3980 7656 3940 7507 40 149 2371 2978 1149 2443 3592 2272 664 368 1470 2131 10371 0.52 -0.40 0.13 109.8 114.3 113.9.522 14.1 31.8 0.310.528 13.9 35.7 0.213 96 2007-08 BOS* NBA 82 66 16.805 19755 2986 6286 2390 4722 596 1564 1677 2176 830 2615 3445 1833 696 379 1246 1864 8245 10.26 -0.95 9.30 90.9 110.2 98.9.522 14.7 26.6 0.267.457 15.2 25.6 0.253 97 1989-90 UTA* NBA 82 55 27.671 19830 3330 6593 3104 5963 226 630 1874 2484 953 2501 3454 2212 677 491 1410 2031 8760 4.79 0.03 4.82 96.1 110.3 105.4.522 15.5 30.1 0.284.468 13.4 30.5 0.268 98 2018-19 ATL NBA 61 20 41.328 14665 2471 5455 1721 3311 750 2144 1077 1434 693 2053 2746 1543 504 315 1110 1437 6769 -7.23 -0.32 -7.54 103.8 106.7 113.7.522 15.4 24.9 0.197.543 13.1 23.8 0.233 99 2010-11 PHO NBA 82 40 42.488 20005 3219 6844 2518 4987 701 1857 1472 1939 821 2478 3299 1945 545 357 1169 1666 8611 -0.89 0.43 -0.46 94.4 109.5 110.4.522 13.2 23.7 0.215.513 13.1 28.4 0.211 100 2009-10 TOR NBA 82 40 42.488 19780 3199 6631 2681 5234 518 1397 1618 2118 806 2507 3313 1804 469 384 1100 1819 8534 -1.78 -0.05 -1.83 93.1 111.3 113.2.521 12.7 24.7 0.244.513 11.8 27.1 0.247 Next page
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A record number of people contacted the Samaritans seeking help last year, the charity has revealed.
The organisation said it handled more than 5.7 million cases in 2016, which was an increase of nearly 300,000 over the previous year.
Samaritans credited the launch of a free confidential helpline in autumn 2015 for the rise - previously there was a two pence-a-minute charge.
The figures were released to coincide with the start of Volunteers' Week.
There were 5,703,830 contacts in 2016, including helpline calls, emails, texts and face-to-face support, compared with 5,404,331 in 2015.
Samaritans chief executive Ruth Sutherland said: "Suicide is complex but it's also an inequality issue and a number of factors, including deprivation, can put you at increased risk.
"Even two pence a minute was enough to deter some callers, which is why we were determined to make all calls to Samaritans free.
"These figures show our volunteers are making the difference by being there for increasing numbers of people, but we're just one part of the equation."
She added: "Suicide is not inevitable, it's preventable and everyone has a role to play, from politicians, parents and health workers to employers, businesses and the media."
Volunteers' Week, organised by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, runs from 1-7 June.Biography
Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President-Elect Obama’s transition advisory board. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, Aftershock and Beyond Outrage.
Professor Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. His commentaries can be heard weekly on public radio’s Marketplace. In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Vaclav Havel Vision Foundation Prize, by the former Czech president, for his pioneering work in economic and social thought. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the ten most successful cabinet secretaries of the century. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his J.D. from Yale Law School.
Curriculum Vitae
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Areas of ExpertiseCNBC is reporting that Sprint and regional carrier MetroPCS were literally hours from announcing an $8 billion merger when Sprint's executive board rejected it — even after it had CEO Dan Hesse's sign-off.
The circumstances of the deal are unclear, but the two companies had apparently been hammering it out for "months," says CNBC's David Faber. Considering the complexity of Sprint's spectrum situation as it makes the transition to LTE, Clearwire's financial troubles, and LightSquared's woes, it stands to reason that the company would be looking at other alternatives. That said, much of MetroPCS's spectrum lies in the AWS band, which would've made integration considerably more difficult; Sprint doesn't currently use AWS.
MetroPCS just reported earnings this week and registered 9.35 million subscribers as of the end of Q4; combined with Sprint's 55 million, the new company would still fall well short of juggernauts AT&T and Verizon but likely would've put T-Mobile in an even more precarious and fragile position than it is today.
$S Sprint was hours away from buying PCS for $8b when deal vetoed by Sprint board. — DAVID FABER (@DavidFaberCNBC) February 24, 2012
In regard to the rumored deal, Sprint says "we never comment on rumors or speculation."Welp, this turned out to be the disaster it looked like it could be in early October. Check out the graphic the SEC is using to promote its Week 12 doubleheader of games.
Original
I can’t wait to watch Alabama go to Auburn on Nov. 25. And two weeks before, it’ll be fun to watch Georgia go to Auburn. These teams are legitimately somewhere between very good and incredible. And if you have three teams of that caliber, you are a legitimate league.
But other than that? This SEC schedule is a snoozer. About half of the fan bases in the league want to fire their head coaches. Vanderbilt (!) has been on CBS and ESPN national broadcasts in back-to-back weeks.
The reason the schedule is so bad is the number of teams who just can’t be taken seriously as threats to win the conference or even to challenge the conference contenders in a given game.
Texas A&M blew a 34-point lead to a UCLA team that’d lose to Memphis.
LSU got stomped by Mississippi State and gave up 190 yards to Troy’s running back in a loss in Death Valley.
That Mississippi State team subsequently lost to Georgia and Auburn by a combined score of 80-13.
Arkansas was stomped by TCU.
Ole Miss is a disaster.
And that’s just in the West.
On the East side, it’s Georgia and the six dwarves.
Two-time defending East champ Florida was crushed by a baby-faced Michigan that lost everyone from 2016 to the draft and needed miracles to escape Kentucky and Tennessee.
Tennessee lost to Georgia 41-0 in Knoxville.
Kentucky lost to Florida by twice failing to have a cornerback in the game to cover a receiver. The Wildcats beat Southern Miss, FCS Eastern Kentucky, and Eastern Michigan by an average of just a touchdown.
Vanderbilt has its best team in a half-decade... and lost at home to Alabama by a score of 59-0.
Missouri is one of the worst teams in the Power 5, having lost at home to Purdue, South Carolina, and Auburn by a combined 87 points.
I don’t envy new CBS announcer Brad Nessler.
Having to hype up this slate of games is going to be brutal. The SEC is normally a national brand, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find people, outside of those wearing the colors of the teams in the game, who want to watch teams that have already showed themselves to be far from the standard the SEC normally boasts.
This one’s going to be fun.
We’re heading to Tuscaloosa for @Vol_Football vs. @AlabamaFTBL on October 21st! pic.twitter.com/98HF670OVx — SEConCBS (@SEConCBS) October 9, 2017
SEC Network games will be pure comedy gold, as the announcers have to try and shill for these sad-sack teams.
What other games do you really want to see in this league?
Maybe Georgia vs. Florida, just for the weirdness?
If you’re in a pool to bet on which game Butch Jones makes it to, the road trip to Kentucky might be interesting to you, and only you.
If you’re not an LSU or Florida fan, do you care about the stupid hurricane-related spat that was borne out of mismanagement by the SEC office last year?
Do you care when Auburn goes to Death Valley, after seeing how War Eagle crushed the Mississippi State team that did the same to LSU?
I don’t personally care to watch Arkansas try to bring its pro-style offense to Tuscaloosa and get brained for the umpteenth year by a Tide defense that loves to face teams that don’t run the spread.
What about Week 12, when half of the league is facing Group of 5 cupcakes or FCS opponents?
Does watching Will Muschamp’s South Carolina host a Florida that still plays like it is coached by Muschamp intrigue you? Oh right, I forgot to include South Carolina in the list above. There’s probably a reason for that.
Wake me up come November.ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Up in the sky, a plane floated a banner reading “Some cuts never heal” as Republican Gov. Rick Snyder gave the University of Michigan commencement address at the campus football stadium on Saturday.
On the ground outside the stadium, union workers at the university along with students, nurses, teachers, a cross section of concerned citizens and unions both public and private, formed a huge picket line. It was sparked by outrage that a governor who calls for a 15 percent cut for higher education and huge cuts to K-12 education would be invited to give a commencement address at the flagship state university campus.
Before marching to the “Big House,” as the football stadium is dubbed here, protesters rallied at nearby Pioneer High School and a number of U of M graduating seniors addressed the crowd.
Adonia Arteaga, from Flint, Mich., graduating with highest honors, said that as a future teacher she was protesting her own commencement because “I find the cuts unconscionable.”
Another graduating senior, Zack Goldsmith from nearby Ypsilanti, told the crowd American democracy is being strangled under the grip of the rich. “It wasn’t the CEO or hedge fund banker who built this country,” he said. “Instead it was the teachers, firefighters, public workers.”
Ann Arbor Democratic state Sen. Rebekah Warren condemned the passage by the Michigan House of the governor’s tax overhaul, which gives an 86 percent tax cut to corporations while raising taxes on seniors and the working poor. “It’s been a tough week in Lansing,” she said. “These are not our values, we need to take back our state.”
The president of Firefighters Local 693 in Ann Arbor, Matt Schroeder, asked why firefighters and other public workers were being bullied, vilified and expected to shoulder the burden of the state’s economic woes. He got a loud cheer from the crowd when he declared, “People who work for a living deserve a good living.”
And how often does a fifth grader steal the show at a rally? Showing future political moxie far beyond her age, Haslett Elementary School student Lexie Salazar said she was “pretty typical.” She said she wears red every Tuesday to show support for her teachers. Salazar wants to become a zoologist, she said, but she worries cuts to education will make her dream more difficult. Getting a huge roar from the audience she finished her remarks holding up a sign echoing the airplane banner: “Some cuts never heal.”
United Auto Workers President Bob King decried Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican-controlled legislature for eliminating the state Earned Income Tax Credit, saying it will place a heavy burden on the working poor. King blasted the new dictatorial powers the governor has given to “emergency financial managers.” For municipalities in financial distress, these Snyder-appointed “managers” will replace local elected officials. Referring to the governor’s first name, Rick, protesters chanted “No to the Ricktator.”
Making an impromptu appearance at the rally were the far-right billionaire Koch brothers, or at least two men dressed in top hats and coattails using the name. To loud guffaws they said cuts in education were good because, “The less you know the better. Ignorance is bliss and we want you to be really happy.”
The mood of rally participants was upbeat.
One explanation for that could be found in the remarks of William Copeland, a school janitor and vice president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1182. He said, “We are standing up to Goliath because we still have a rock in our slingshot.”
Photo: A section of the crowd that filled the Pioneer High School stadium in Ann Arbor, Saturday, April 30. PW/April SmithChef Paul Liebrandt has left Corton, the two Michelin star NYC restaurant. In a statement Liebrandt's publicist gave the New York Times this weekend, Liebrandt explains: "I felt it was the right time to move on to new and different projects which, in addition to the Elm, are already in the planning stages, including a signature Paul Liebrandt restaurant." The announcement comes while Corton is on "summer vacation" and shortly after the opening of Liebrandt's Brooklyn restaurant The Elm.
The future of Corton is still uncertain. Restaurateur Drew Nieporent, Liebrandt's partner at Corton, has not announced official plans for the restaurant, and tells the Times: "I'm not saying it's going to continue on, or close... At this moment I haven't made that decision." Apparently, friction between the two men developed as a result of Liebrandt's decision to open The Elm. "Your partner cannot be your competitor," Nieporent notes. Nieporent says he gave Liebrandt the option of buying him out of Corton.
Nieporent has reportedly been approached by chefs interested in working with him, and he says: "Keep your eyes open, because something exciting's going to follow." Eater NY editor Greg Morabito explains the impact of Liebrandt's decision on Corton: "Corton was very much a showcase for Liebrandt, who was both the chef and co-owner. It's hard to imagine the Corton brand living on without the chef at the restaurant."
· Paul Liebrandt Is Leaving Corton [NYT]
· Chef Paul Liebrandt OUT at Corton in Tribeca [Eater NY]“Exercise is good for everyone if it is balanced,” says Tracy Anderson, the entrepreneurial force behind her namesake health plan – “The Tracy Anderson Method.” “Running is not good for [women]. Lifting weights over and over is not good for us. Overuse of your joints is not good. Compartmentalizing your muscles, making them bigger and bigger and bigger, is not good for us. This is not the animal we are meant to be,” she says. Instead, Anderson, who has already established a cult following with the ladies, believes in balance, something she’s implemented into her results-driven routine. Anderson, whose method up until now has been targeted towards women, has recently introduced a program geared specifically for the guys. Here, Life+Times talks to the whip-smart businesswoman about the process behind her brand.
Life+Times: Tell me a little bit about how you even started with The Tracy Anderson Method?
Tracy Anderson: I did what it takes to create a real fitness method. I probably actually set a gold standard of what it takes to set a real fitness method. I did a five-year research study with 150 women and measured them every 10 days and I created original content and sequencing for each of them and navigated them.
L+T: With these women, what were you measuring?
TA: I wasn’t measuring BMI or typical measurements. I was measuring based on the idea of how to create balance where there is imbalance in the body. I told them everything they needed to do. They knew they were guinea pigs. They all transformed like Stepford wives. They all did the work, but they all transformed completely. That word of mouth spread like wild fire. This was in Indiana.
L+T: Are you careful about what you eat?
TA:No, I’m smart about what I eat. If I ate a tablespoon of Yak Butter, which has 800 calories in it, or if I drank a diet soda – what would happen? If you asked 100 people in the middle of America the following question – “Will I gain more weight if I ate a tablespoon of Yak Butter or drank a soda?” – unanimously they would say Yak Butter. But they’re wrong. Your body has no idea what the hell to do with the soda, so this floats through your body, and it stores it as inflammation, which is a very important word that needs to be understood correctly.
L+T: Alright, I know the women go crazy for you. But what about your recently launched “Men’s Program.” Can you tell me a little bit about it?
L+T: Men want to be panthers. They want to be machines that function. Right now, it’s all about being ‘skinny ripped’ – you want to look good in a tailored suit. It’s important for men not to overdevelop.
L+T: There’s clearly a big difference between your program for men and women – right?
TA:Men and women are very different. Men go through one hormonal change in their life, women go through at least four, however, we both have over 600 muscles in our body and the brains connection to firing those muscles is the same. If you walk out on ice, both of our brains recalibrate and help us. The amount of work that I have done carving out the relationship between the brain and the muscles, is incredibly beneficial to men as well as women and kids as well as teens. Let me tell you, there is not a women that you can put in front of me, that I can’t make every dream come true for her on her body if she gives me her time and trust. I’ve taken that approach and have developed the same mentality for men.
L+T: There’s also this whole psychological approach to your method too.
TA:Our muscles and our brains are the only tools we have. We can’t change the vessel of our body. You have free will – what are you going to do with these tools? Make it part of your life – smart, sustainable, lasting, that is going to feed you and last.
L+T: You must get stopped on the street often by people who have said you’ve changed both their bodies and outlook. What do you make of this?
TA: Totally. Someone actually stopped me the other day that cried to me for 30 minutes about how I changed their body. Recently I was in a store and someone heard my voice and they stopped me and told me that they recognized my voice because they watched my DVD’s every morning. I loved that as I really feel like I put myself as your teacher in your living room.
L+T: Do you feel as if you’ve established a brand?
TA:If you develop yourself and if you want to be a long lasting brand, you have to be the person that would create your brand and be happy doing it for a single person and not necessarily thousands and thousands of people. If not, you are manufactured and I believe you don’t have what it takes.
L+T: Do you still teach?
TA: I love teaching for 20 people. At this point in my career, I don’t have to be like “Unless 1,000 people are showing up at a detox weekend, I am not moving.” In fact, my favorite thing to do is to go to my TriBeCa studio and teach a master class. I do this often.
L+T: The members must love that.
TA: I did yesterday, and I’m doing it tomorrow. I do it randomly, but the members know. I have to be able to connect to the people I change and I have to be able to say “OK, I am going to move like this now. How are they following me? Is the language I’m speaking able to be accepted? Luckily, they’ve responded and I couldn’t be prouder.
For more information on Tracy Anderson, click here.Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist from Kansas, participates in his network's seminar at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. (Photo by James Hohmann)
With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
THE BIG IDEA:
COLORADO SPRINGS—The wealthy donors who finance the conservative Koch network have many reasons to celebrate five months into Donald Trump’s presidency. Justice Neil Gorsuch sits on the Supreme Court, and a slew of other pro-business judges have been nominated. Major regulations enacted under Barack Obama have been rescinded. Environmental rules have been scaled back. A bill signed into law Friday, which makes it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire employees, offers a blueprint for scaling back civil service protections. The administration has proposed massive spending cuts.
But with Trump’s self-inflicted wounds and persistent GOP infighting in the capital, the financiers assembled at the Broadmoor resort on Cheyenne Mountain are also being forced to reckon with the possibility that golden opportunities to overhaul the tax code and repeal Obamacare are being squandered. Some also quietly fear that voter backlash to the president in 2018 could derail their long-term plans to remake the federal government.
“We believe we have a window of about 12 months to get as much done as possible before the midterms become all consuming,” Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, told the 400 donors attending the network’s summer seminar.
When the group last convened in January, one week after Trump took office, the attendees and the operatives who work for the groups that they fund still expected to see a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Now they’re encouraging Republican senators to make the draft bill under consideration go further in that direction.
“Perhaps we were naïve in thinking a full repeal vote would happen,” Phillips said Sunday. “This has been humbling for us. … We’re determined to make (the Senate bill) better. … The road ahead of us on health care is uncertain. … We learned from health care that we cannot take anything for granted.”
Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, arrive at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs on Friday. (Christian Murdock /The Gazette via AP, Pool)
-- The network, led by billionaire Kansas industrialist Charles Koch, steadfastly refused to back Trump during the 2016 campaign, even as most recalcitrant Republicans fell in line. Now both sides seem eager to put the last election behind them. The Kochs want a seat at the table and pledge to work with the administration to advance their shared goals. Trump’s team, which includes many people who used to work for the Kochs, wants their help.
Vice President Pence, who has long been an ally of the network, met with Koch here on Friday evening for 45 minutes. They were joined by Marc Short, who directed political efforts for the Koch network until last year and is now the White House’s legislative liaison.
-- Trump himself has rarely been mentioned by name, either positively or negatively, during the three-day conclave, which continues through tonight. Some of his biggest Republican critics in the Senate during last year’s campaign participated in events here over the weekend, including Ben Sasse (Neb.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Ted Cruz (Texas) and Mike Lee (Utah). But none publicly criticized the president, at least in sessions that reporters were allowed access to. (Reflecting the network’s power, John Cornyn – the No. 2 Senate Republican – also attended.)
During a cocktail reception on Saturday night, Lee and the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo were feted for their work to confirm Gorsuch, Trump’s pick to replace the late Antonin Scalia. Koch-funded groups, led by Concerned Veterans for America, invested heavily in that effort.
-- The weekend’s sessions focused a little less on areas in which the network disagrees with Trump than in the past, including trade, immigration, criminal justice and entitlements. There was additional emphasis on areas where they can make common cause, from tax policy to school choice.
-- Koch stressed to his allies that he’s not backing off any of his core principles. Quoting Martin Luther, he said: “Here I stand, I can do no other.” He has long had an affinity for abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s line, which he repeated: “I will unite with anyone to do good and no one to do harm." And he likes to cite Calvin Coolidge making the case that persistence is more important than talent, genius or education.
He is also accustomed to this balancing act. The Koch network has a history of challenging Republicans that dates backs to its founding during the George W. Bush administration. Koch initially convened a small group of like-minded conservatives and libertarians alarmed about Republican policies such as steel tariffs and No Child Left Behind, which expanded the federal role in education.
“When I look at where we are, at the size and effectiveness of this network, I’m blown away,” Koch said Saturday, reminiscing about the first seminar in 2003. “We are more optimistic now about what we can accomplish than we’ve ever been. … I think we’re really going to start doing some good.”
Brian Hooks, president of the Charles Koch Institute and a co-chair of the weekend seminar, said that the network has simply chosen to be pragmatic. “To be clear, we’re not looking for perfect public policy because we know that there’s no such thing,” he explained during a Sunday afternoon panel. “What we are looking for is policy that moves our country in the right direction. … That happens one step at a time. When lawmakers stray … we’ll do everything we can do to get them back on track. … When we disagree with House Republicans or with this president, believe me when I tell you that we do it with the best interests of this country in mind.”
“One of the things that makes our network unique is that we want to work with these guys on these issues,” Sean Lansing, chief operating officer of Americans for Prosperity, added in an interview. “We want to be helpful. I think there’s a lot of groups in our sphere who just use the stick. They don’t always engage with the carrot. We want to engage with the carrot. … We want to see these policies pass because that’s what we’re here for. We’re not an appendage of the Republican Party. It’s not about ‘R’ or ’D’ for us. It’s about getting things we care about signed into law.”
Mark Holden, a top Koch adviser, chats with his boss, Charles Koch, in Wichita, Kansas, in 2015. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
-- The network reiterated previously announced plans to spend $300 million to $400 million on policy and political campaigns during the 2018 cycle — up from $250 million during the 2016 elections. Officials said the final number will probably be in the high end of that range.
Emily Seidel, who directs political strategy for Freedom Partners, which is part of the network, delivered a presentation Sunday afternoon about how tough the midterms might be for Republicans. “We’re facing a reinvigorated progressive left,” she warned.
While there are 10 Democratic senators up for reelection next year in states Trump carried, Seidel said: “None of these will be an easy lift.” She noted that Democrats need to flip 24 House seats, and Republicans must defend 23 seats in districts Hillary Clinton won. The GOP also needs to defend 27 of the 38 governorships that are up in this cycle. “In midterms since 1982, the president’s party has lost an average of four seats in the Senate and 20 in the House,” she said. “If that happened next year, Chuck Schumer would be the majority leader and Nancy Pelosi would be four votes away from being Speaker. … These governors’ races could very well determine control of the U.S. House for the decade following the Census in 2020.”
Seidel stressed the need for the network to spend early. “Early engagement with paid media is how we set the narrative,” she explained. She cited the successful effort in Ohio last year to negatively define Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s challenger, Ted Strickland, before he could raise enough money to go up with his own television commercials. Once the airwaves become saturated, she explained, the network’s grassroots programs will then drive voter engagement.
Donald and Melania Trump depart the White House on Saturday to attend the wedding of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. (Ron Sachs/EPA/Pool)
-- Donors are split on Trump: To be a member of the seminar network, someone must agree to contribute at least $100,000-per-year to Koch-backed causes. These benefactors – who consider themselves “investors” – remain divided over Trump. Some support him strongly; others couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him last November. But the network’s more conciliatory tone keeps everyone under the same tent, and there was consensus among attendees who agreed to be interviewed during a reception last night that they should work with the White House whenever beneficial.
Bob Fettig, who runs a metal fabrication business in Lake Geneva, Wis., believes the country is finally moving in the right direction and expressed more faith in Trump than Republican leaders in Congress to do the right thing. “A lot has been accomplished,” he explained. “The system was designed to make it difficult to enact legislation, so in a way the system is working. … I think he’s doing great from the standpoint that he’s shaking up the system.”
Fettig, a longtime booster of Scott Walker, said it doesn’t matter whether he agrees with Trump 100 percent of the time: “The fact he’s following through on the things he said he was going to do … tells you he has some convictions, and he’s acting on them. … I’m confident that Trump will continue to push forward, but will Congress get its stuff together? He’s not a politician. It’s the politicians who continue to be politicians.”
Chris Rufer, who processes tomatoes in the Central Valley of California, voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in November. He lamented that the migrant workers his agriculture industry depends on are fearful of being deported by Trump. Rufer also exports his product to more than 40 countries, and he said that one of his customers in South America didn’t buy from him this year because he was afraid Trump would put in place tariffs. The contract went to a Chilean company instead. Rufer said Trump is clearly not a deep thinker and has shown that he cannot become more presidential. Asked if he might support a primary challenger in 2020, the businessman smirked: “It’d be kind of fun, wouldn’t it?”
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), seen in the Capitol last month, spent the weekend at the Koch seminar. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
-- More than anything else, the network wants a comprehensive rewrite of the tax code completed while Republicans have unified control of government. Folks are very encouraged by the blueprint that the Trump administration released this spring, with lower corporate rates and flatter individual rates.
The |
anti-doping tests,” WADA spokeswoman Maggie Durand said Tuesday.
WADA added caffeine to its Monitoring Program for 2017 so experts could study whether athletes are using the substance “with the intent of enhancing performance.”
WADA’s study will continue through September, at which point the agency will issue a three-month notice that the substance will be added to the Prohibited List the following year. To be added to the prohibited list, the substance must meet two or three criteria: 1) It has the potential to enhance performance; 2) It poses a health risk to athletes; and/or 3) It violates “the spirit of sport.”
Caffeine has been a prohibited substance before, but it was removed in 2003 to prevent athletes “who … drink cola or coffee from testing positive to banned substances,” Agence France-Presse reported at the time.
“Hence the thresholds or reporting values established for some prohibited substances naturally present in foodstuff,” Durand said.
Without more research, WADA can’t predict what its threshold might be. Nor does the agency want to predict whether it’s likely caffeine will wind up back on the prohibited list at this point, but it appears, whatever happens, it’s likely Diaw and others won’t have to give up their pregame rituals.
The old threshold from when caffeine was previously on the prohibited list was 12 micrograms per milliliter, which amounts to about “four Starbucks lattes” ingested within a couple of hours, according to Men’s Health.
The NCAA currently limits caffeine consumption for college athletes to 15 micrograms per milliliter, or roughly six to eight cups of coffee ingested two to three hours before a competition.
“More caffeine is not necessarily better,” a report published by the Collegiate & Professional Sports Dietitians Association states. “Caffeine consumed at very high levels — 6-9 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight — can cause gastrointestinal issues, nausea or shaking, as well as ‘overstimulation’ that can negatively impact training, sleep and performance.”
Likewise, the report said some caffeine can enhance speed and stamina, but it really depends on the individual.
Diaw and the Jazz declined to comment, but whatever they’re doing is working, whether it has to do with the coffee or not. The team is fourth in the very competitive Western Conference, with a 40-24 record.Crafting a brilliant resume that grabs the reader's attention and makes it "smack in the forehead" clear to the hiring manager that she absolutely must invite you in for an interview is almost never easy. For many, it's a downright awful experience. Marketing yourself properly on paper often feels like boasting or bragging, so it's very common for people to completely undersell themselves through a resume that's, at best, vanilla.
As one who plods through dozens of resumes every week, both as a recruiter and a resume writer, I feel obliged to share some of the most common mistakes I see on resumes and alert you of the things you must leave off your new resumes at all costs. Let's get right down to it:
The common mistakes
Lack of a focus and strategy. You can’t just list out the stuff you did at every job. That's called an autobiography. Your resume is a marketing document. Repeat: Marketing document. You need focus and strategy. You have to keep in mind who the target audience is, and what they’re going to care most about. Tell an overall story as you outline your career history, a story that speaks specifically to what will matter most to your future employer.
Failure to include the relevant key words. Most companies today have an applicant tracking system (ATS) sitting at the front end of the recruitment process. This is the electronic database that is going to store and scan resumes before the humans take a peek.
If you’re not yet clear on how the ATS works, or how recruiters and corporations use them in the recruitment process, you must must must drop everything right this minute and educate yourself on what they are. In doing so, you’ll realize that it’s beyond crucial for you to incorporate relevant key words (relevant to your industry, your job function, etc.) in the resume. If you plan to apply for any jobs online at all, chances are your resume is going to enter an ATS. The goal is to get the resume through the ATS and on to the human eyeballs. Don’t screw this step up – If you do, you could be lost forever in the ATS (even if you’re a spectacularly qualified candidate).
Use of an old school format or, worse, a Resume Wizard Word template. Hi. 1998 called. They’d like their resume template back. Please give it to them. A simple, Word formatted layout with consistent fonts, white space and bullet points will do just fine.
Formatting inconsistencies. I see this often. It makes me woozy. Be consistent with what you put in bold, and what you italicize. Use consistency in font sizing. Assuming you use bullet points, make them all the same style. No one wants to see a maze of dots, arrows, dashes and craziness on this thing. I call this a “Las Vegas resume.”
Grammatical inconsistencies. If you hyphenate a word in one spot on the resume, and then use the same word without hyphenation elsewhere? You look careless. Mostly, because you are careless. Check, check again and check again.
Inclusion of references, or the actual phrase “References available upon request.” It’s totally unnecessary. I have a little secret: If an organization is interested in you, and you get to the point in the process at which they want references? The interviewer will ask you for them, whether you’ve included this phrase on your resume or not. I swear.
Unbending belief that this sucker needs to be a one-pager. Please stop believing this one. It’s OK to go beyond a page. Very OK. In nearly a decade of recruiting, I've not ever had a corporate client come to me (after I'd submitted a candidate resume) and say, "Gee, this Sally Smith candidate looks interesting. Unfortunately, her resume is two pages long, so we will not be able to consider her." Not even one time.
The stuff you must leave off at all costs
Objectives. Especially an objective which says absolutely nothing (which, by the way, is what the majority I’ve seen say).
“Seeking a challenging position within a growing corporation that will allow me to make a positive contribution to the bottom line of the… blah blah you are killing everyone blah bitty blahhhh.”
Typos. I refuse to even expound on this one.
The phrase “Responsible for…” Again, this is a marketing document. You are presenting your value proposition, or your “so what?” It is not a job description. Not to mention, “Responsible for” is, bar-none, the most overused resume phrase on the planet. (Second only to “results-oriented.”)
Irrelevant / controversial hobbies or personal interests. You like to visit nudist camps and attend gun rallies with your family, do you? Through the eyes of the hiring manager, will these interests give you a distinct advantage over your competition? In most instances, no. Unless the hobbies are relevant to the types of positions you’re pursuing (or AMAZING, non-controversial conversation starters), leave them off.
Age, marital status and DOB. My dad used to do this. He was born in the 1940s.
A photo of yourself. Surely you already know this. Save that swanky mug shot for your LinkedIn profile, unless you happen to be a model or actress and may be hired specifically based on your appearance.
Any other photos, logos, graphics or text boxes. Some applicant tracking systems (and recruiters, for that matter) can’t deal with them.
Any personal mantras or motivational quotes. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen them. Go ahead and live by the words of Vince Lombardi in your professional life, just don’t highlight that you do on your resume.
Need more help crafting a resume that works? We'll take you step-by-step through the process our team uses in the Ridiculously Awesome Resume Kit. (You'll also get plenty of resume and cover letter samples to use for inspiration.) And don't forget... if you simply don't want to craft your own, we're happy to take on the project through our Ridiculously Awesome Resume Service.Daniel Tosh, photo via popculturemadness.com popculturemadness.com There's a new face on Comedy Central who is more popular than Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.
That would be Daniel Tosh, the host of "Tosh.0," a talk show that "chronicles all that's newsworthy, weird and lewd about the Internet," and that has roughly 2.4 million viewers, which makes it Comedy Central's most-watched and top-rated studio-based show.
Reuters reports:
Since the comedian's summer season premiered June 2, five of the show's six episodes have marked a new series high.
"It's a show that came in under the radar and it's a truly word-of-mouth kind of show," said Kent Alterman, head of original programing at Comedy Central. "He hasn't been written about that much. There's really just one factor that stands out -- the show is really funny."
"Tosh" is averaging 2.2 million viewers this season vs. 2 million for "The Daily Show" and 1.4 million for "Colbert Report." Overall, it is the third most-popular show on the network (behind "South Park" and "Futurama").
Comedy Central has already renewed the show for a third season, with 29 new episodes set to debut next January, in addition to a stand-up tour for Tosh.
Read more at Reuters >>How to make a glue sponge ~ no more messy glue bottles
Have you seen all the glue sponges floating around on Pinterest recently? I have been meaning to make one for a while and I finally got around to it. I have to say, I wish I would have done it sooner. It is so easy to make, super cheap and eliminates excess use of glue. Totally a win in my book. Read on for our full tutorial on how to make a glue sponge. There are tips and tricks at the end of the post for reusing your glue sponge for years to come!
Glue-soaked Sponges are Perfect for Classrooms
These little glue sponges are super cheap to make and surprisingly last a long time. I picked up a pack of 2 sponges at the Dollar Store along with the plastic container. I used approximately a 4oz bottle of glue for each sponge. Total project cost ~ under $4.
No more sticky messy glue puddles or excessive use of glue. No more fighting caps on glue sticks and having them dry out.
Glue sponges are perfect for preschools, art teachers, summer camps, art camps, day cares etc. Really anywhere where you are using lots of glue. Imagine how easy the next paper mosaic or cut and paste project will be.
To make your own glue sponge, you will need:
A shallow, tight sealing container ~ I found ours at the dollar store. Make sure that it is about the size of your sponge and not too deep.
Regular household cleaning sponge
Elmer’s glue ~ really any white school glue will work, I just love Elmer’s
a few drops of Tea Tree Oil ~ optional, but will help keep bacterial from growing on your sponge.
Ready for the easiest tutorial ever?
Pour enough glue into the bottom of your container to cover the bottom.
Dampen your sponge and place it in the gluey container.
Pour more glue on top of the sponge. You will end up using about a 4oz bottle of glue to achieve a fully saturated sponge.
Place the lid on the container and set aside overnight.
You can use the glue sponge right away, however it will work the best once the glue has fully penetrated the whole sponge.
Glue sponge tips and tricks:
Keep your sponge is well saturated with glue. This will help keep shapes from being crumpled when being pressed into the sponge. Kids won’t have to press their paper so hard into the sponge if it is well saturated. A gentle tap should be all you need.
A few drops of Tea Tree Oil will help mold, funky smells or bacteria. Not everyone uses Tea Tree Oil and have reported no problems. You can use your best judgment.
If you use a deeper container, you can stack 2 sponges on top of each other. Although this will result in almost double the amount of glue needed to fully saturate the sponges. I recommend a container as close to the size of the sponge that your are using.
Spray the sponge with a little water after each use. This will help it to stay moist and not dry out.
If you notice that the sponge is not super gluey, just flip the sponge over.
Add glue as needed to the top of your sponge and let sit overnight.
Check out this informative video from the Kindergarten Smorgasbord.
Looking for more inspiring ideas to do with glue? Check out our
Painting on Wet glue
Mixing Glue and Yarn
Marble Painting with Glue
Raised Salt PaintingThe vessel was arrested on 16th January as it was operating in the waters around Svalbard, the Norwegian Arctic archipelago. It is suspected of having engaged in illegal catch of snow crab on the Norwegian shelf in the Svalbard fishery protection zone, the Norwegian Navy informs on its Facebook page.
«The Senator was inspected by [coast guard vessel] KV Svalbard and the inspectors then revealed that the ship had started fishing in the area without permission from Norwegian authorities», the Coast Guard says.
The crabber was subsequently forced to set course to the port of Kirkenes, where it today is awaiting police prosecution. The «Senator» had put out 2,600 snow crab traps in the area, NRK reports.
However, the arrest of the «Senator» is more about politics than about crabs.
Per Arne Totland. Photo: Wikipedia
According to Per-Arne Totland, a writer and expert on the Svalbard archipelago, the snow crab has the potential to become a new conflict issue in the area.
«The snow crab is defined as a sedentary species, which lives on the sea bottom and consequently is included in regulations applying to the continental shelf», Totland says. «In other words, the same laws which apply to oil and gas.»
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«This means that a conflict over the snow crab could be seen as a test whether Norway can be subject to pressure with regard to the shelf around Svalbard».
Norway argues that the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 gives it full sovereignty over the continental shelf around the archipelago. That view, however, is disputed by the international community, which maintains that all signatory counties of the Svalbard Treaty have equal rights to engage in economic activity in the waters and on the shelf.
The EU, UK, USA and Russia all challenge the Norwegian stance on the issue.
According to NRK, the EU has officially approved a list of 16 EU vessels which can engage in snow crab fishing around Svalbard. That has enraged Norway’s Minister of Fisheries Per Sandberg.
Per Sandberg is Norway’s Minister of Fisheries. Photo: Thomas Nilsen
«This is not the way to negotiate», Sandberg says to NRK. «The EU can catch snow crab, but then we want something in return», he underlines. Meetings with the EU Commission is reportedly due this week.
The snow crab, an invasive species, has over the last year expanded explosively in the Barents Sea. The crab, which first was discovered in the area in 1996, is now located over major parts of northern and eastern Barents Sea. In 2015, about 8,600 tons of snow crab was landed in Norway, the Marine Research Institute says.
Not only Norwegian and Russian fishermen want a piece of the cake. Also third countries vessels are in the area. Since 2013, several EU vessels have engaged in the snow crab fishing. Most of them are from Lithuania and Latvia.
According to Per Arne Totland, Norway has good arguments with regard to its stance on the Svalbard shelf.
«But it is a vulnerable position for Norway to stand alone against the rest of the world», he underlines
«If the issue was taken to the UN court in the Hague, it would be hard to predict which side will win».The Google logo is seen on the front door of a Google Engineering center in Zurich. (Photo: Walter Bieri, AP)
Users of Google's services could soon see their profile name, profile photo or comments appear in online advertising.
The company updated its Terms of Service to allow them to add users' names, photos or comments in a series of ads called Shared Endorsements.
In a statement issued Friday detailing the changes, Google stresses users will have full control over whether they share information through these endorsements.
"On Google, you're in control of what you share," reads a statement from the company. "This update to our Terms of Service doesn't change in any way who you've shared things with in the past or your ability to control who you want to share things with in the future."
The endorsements would appear across Google services including Google Play, Maps and Search. For example, if you rated an album or song on Google Play, your friends will see that activity; or any +1's given to businesses might be included in Search advertisements.
Users can choose to enable Shared Endorsements and who can view them.
The Terms of Service take effect November 11.
Including users in online advertising has become a heated issue among customers of services who don't want their information tied to any ads. Last year, Instagram backtracked on changes to its privacy policy that suggested the photo sharing service could feature user images in ads.
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @bam923.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1atjGzHThe American Health Care Act falls far short of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but there are some big potential changes. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)
Republicans' Obamacare replacement plan would cut spending by $1.2 trillion over the coming decade and save the government $337 billion, according to an analysis released Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
To find those savings, Republicans are proposing cuts to programs designed to help the poor and the working class. Here's where the GOP found the money:
Medicaid: The most significant provision, in dollar terms, of the Republican bill would reduce spending on Medicaid — the government's health insurance program for the poor — by $880 billion. Republicans would roll back the Medicaid expansion instituted under Obamacare (officially known as the Affordable Care Act). The GOP plan also would place a limit on how much states could spend on care for each Medicaid beneficiary, indexing it to inflation and to the prices of health-care services. Proponents of the measure say it would offer states more flexibility to administer the program in the hope that they would find more effective ways to spend their resources.
Tax credits: The measure would also cut spending by replacing Obamacare's insurance subsidies with a new, less generous (and less expensive) system of tax credits. The subsidies under Obamacare were projected to cost $673 billion over the next decade, while the CBO's analysis says the Republican bill's tax credits would cost $361 billion.
Planned Parenthood: Federal funding for Planned Parenthood would be eliminated for one year, which the CBO says would save $156 million over a decade.
These spending cuts come coupled with $883 billion in tax cuts, which would largely benefit companies and high-income households. Here's what the GOP proposes:
The insurance mandate: The measure would repeal one of the Affordable Care Act's most controversial provisions: the mandate that Americans, with a few exceptions, purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. Wiping out that penalty would eliminate $210 billion in fees to the federal government, the new analysis projects.
Investment levy: Obamacare included a 3.8 percent levy on gains from several types of investments. The GOP bill would eliminate that, saving taxpayers (or, if you prefer, cutting government revenue) $158 billion over 10 years. The tax applies only to individuals with incomes of more than $200,000 or married couples with incomes exceeding $250,000.
Income surcharge: Obamacare also levied a 0.9 percent surcharge on wages and salaries for individuals with incomes of more than $200,000 or married couples with incomes over $250,000. The GOP plan would eliminate that tax as well, a cut of $117 billion over a decade.
Insurance company tax: The Republican plan would cut taxes on the health insurance industry by $145 billion over a decade.
Other industry taxes: The Affordable Care Act also contained a number of new fees on industry, including taxes on medical devices (projected to raise $20 billion over 10 years), over-the-counter drugs ($6 billion over a decade) and tanning beds ($600 million over 10 years).
Republicans touted the bill in the wake of the CBO release, with Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, saying that the office “confirmed our legislation protects taxpayers, decreasing the ballooning deficit by more than $330 billion and curbing growing health-care costs.”
Democrats, unsurprisingly, saw it differently. While much of the criticism focused on the bill's effect on the nation's ranks of uninsured — the CBO projected that 24 million more people would go without health insurance in the next decade under the measure — opponents also balked at its redistribution of wealth.
“You could not possibly cut all those taxes, and still save money on the deficit, unless you were dramatically cutting back coverage,” said Robert Shapiro, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, before criticizing a chief architect of the measure, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan. “The White House cannot have one without the other, and neither can Paul Ryan.”DMR Vault pedals:
The Vaults feature a massive platform size and eleven pins per side to keep your feet in place.
DMR Vault pedal details:
- Extruded 6061 aluminium body
- 115 x 115mm platform size
- 17mm body thickness
- 4140 cromoly steel axles
- Titanium axle upgrade kit (335g total weight, 185lb rider weight limit)
- Aftermarket 'flipPin' pin kit available
- DU bushing and cartridge bearing internals
- Weight: 400 grams (claimed), 438 (actual)
- MSRP $139 USD
The details:
The Vaults also make use of side to side concave that has been machined into the pedal body (left). Hex head pins thread in from the pedal's opposite side (right).
You can drop another 35 grams from the Vaults by installing their ti-nitride coated titanium axles (left), as long as you don't weigh more than 185lbs. An aftermarket pin kit is also available in different colours, consisting of 44 steel pins (right), with 16 shorts and 28 long pins.
Performance:
The Vault's shape tapers at the front and back, saving valuable weight without decreasing performance, to match up with the contact area of the sole of your shoes.
Pinkbike's take:
DMR's classic V8 and V12 pedals worked well, but it was time for them to release an updated design to compete in the high-end pedal market. Their Vault pedals do just that, with great looks, solid reliability and impressive traction. These are all around great pedals that simply make sense to us. - Si Paton
The Vaults are the latest pedal to come out of DMR HQ, based in England. DMR are listed in the platform pedal history books with their well known V8 and V12 models that have sold in the thousands. For the Vaults, DMR went back to the drawing board, developed these pedals over a two year period and then released them out onto the open market at the end of 2010. The Vaults make use of a larger platform than most other designs, with it measuring out at 115 x 115mm. Total weight for the pair is 438 grams on our scale. The Vaults retail for $139 USD.What sets the Vault pedals apart from the crowd? Their massive 115mm square platform that is roughly 20mm longer and wider than some other options out there. That large footbed should put the Vaults on the radar of any riders with massive feet, or those who like a lot of real estate for their shoes. Their large size doesn't necessarily mean a large weight, though, with them coming in at 438 grams on our scales. Part of the reason for the reasonable weight is their minimalist body, including the tapered shape, with the corners of the underside's lead edge removed. This also reduces the Vault's frontal area to limit the chance of pedal strikes. Overall body height is a somewhat standard 17mm, but they do use a concave, dished shape that should do a good job of minimizing the chance of slipping a pedal.DMR has spec'd hex head pedal pins - 11 per side - that thread in from the opposing face. While the thread pitch and size means that you can likely pick up replacements down at the local hardware store, the stock pins make use of a larger diameter shoulder that should provide extra strength and support. They haven't tried to rewrite the book with the Vault's internals, instead employing a standard layout of an inboard DU bushing with a sealed bearing at the outer end. Stock axles are of the 4140 cromoly variety, but Vault owners can shave a further 35 grams by installing the aftermarket ti-nitride coated titanium versions. Cake chasers should take note of their 185lb weight limit, with it also being an upgrade that the huckers and chuckers out there might want to avoid.Can we agree that your pedals are only as good as your footwear? Descending down the Champery World Cup track wearing a pair of high heeled Manolo Blahniks () will certainly have a negative effect on your performance. Pop on a pair of any of the latest tacky soled kicks and you'll discover a world of diference. With that said, we won't hesitate to say that the grip provided by the Vaults is second to none. It literally feels as if someone has lashed you to the pedals, it's that impressive. The pedal's side to side dish and massive platform play a big role in that secure feeling, but the Vault's pin layout is also key. The pedal's four central pins are slightly shorter than the outer seven, creating a concave that makes you feel as if your feet are "in" the pedals, rather than gripping to the top of them.The huge platform also means that there is more useable real estate available. That could add up to the pedal being easier to find after having to thrown out a foot, or that you'll be more likely to plant your foot back into a comfortable position after doing so. What it didn't mean, at least for us anyways, is more pedal strikes. Despite the pedal body protruding out from the crankarm more than with other designs, we can't say that we suffered from more impacts than usual, although one hit in particular did manage to knock a single pin askew. We've put a full year of riding on the Vaults and reliability has been great. They are still spinning smooth and without rattles, despite a full season of abuse that included countless races, muddy conditions and absolutely no service. There just hasn't been a need to pull them apart yet. The Vaults don't make use of any special sealing system or internals, but that may be the key to their longterm reliability - they are simple and just keep running smooth.The Vault's offer up loads of traction, but there is a tradeoff for that sure-footedness. Some riders may actually find that they havegrip, while others will counter that there can never been enough. If you find yourself constantly shifting the position of your feet in corners, or to get more extension for inverted tables and other tricks, you may want a set of pedals that don't bite so hard. We can also see the massive 115 x 115mm platform size being more likely to make contact with roots and rocks when compared to a smaller platform. Those who throw in extra pedal strokes on the trail where others don't could up the chance of pedal strikes if using the Vaults. This will certainly depend on the riding style, though, with many likely not noticing the difference.Office 365 is proving to be one of the hits of the SAAS world. The convenience of not having to host the associated infrastructure and central storage capability are not doubt appealing. However organisations must recognise that this is still their data and ultimately they are responsible for protecting it. I previously wrote a whole post on this subject, outlining that Microsoft ensure the data availability of Office 365 but do not offer backup and restore functionality in line with what you would expect in a traditional datacentre.
Veeam offer an Office 365 backup product and if you want to have play with it you can now with a free NFR licence. The licence is for 1 year, up to 10 users and is available to all VMware vExperts, Microsoft MVP, VTEC members, Certified Engineers and Trainers. You get an unrestricted version with all the features for use in a test lab environment. You just need to register at this page to receive your NFR key.
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Google35 U.S. cities that could host the Olympics (but maybe shouldn't)
Within the next two years, countries will have to start bids for the 2024 Summer Olympics. The USOC sent a letter to the mayors of 35 U.S. cities on Tuesday to gauge interest in hosting the Games. We ranked all 35 cities in order of Olympic host city potential.
Note: A low ranking on this list is by no means a denigration of a specific city. Except for Jacksonville.
35. Chicago -- How a city of shady elections could lose a shady election to host the 2016 Olympics continues to amaze.
34. Phoenix -- It's not the heat that'll get you, it's the sportswriters whining interminably about the heat that will.
33. Nashville & Davidson County -- When you think about how the Olympics have gone to most major world cities -- London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing -- but not Davidson County, it's almost criminal.
32. Orlando -- Not a favored choice of Bob Costas, both because Disney owns a competing television network and because he's not tall enough to ride Space Mountain.
USA TODAY Sports
31. Jacksonville -- Except for signing Tim Tebow, it's the only way they'll be able to get that tarp off the seats.
30. Sacramento -- The Games would probably stay for a while, then grow restless and move to Seattle.
AP
29. Charlotte -- Me, to a friend who lives in Charlotte: "Could you guys host an Olympics?" Friend who lives in Charlotte: "I don't know. They do film Homeland here though."
Homeland
28. Pittsburgh -- Me, to a friend who lives in Pittsburgh: "Could you guys host an Olympics?" Friend who lives in Pittsburgh: "No."
USA TODAY Sports
27. Rochester -- Official bid motto: "Hey, don't laugh, Lake Placid did it."
26. Columbus -- Free tattoos for all athletes!
25. Las Vegas -- Downside: Desert. Upside: Inevitable Ryan Lochte showgirl scandal.
Getty
24. Baltimore -- Intriguing, if only for Grantland's inevitable 45,000-word piece about why Avon and Stringer would have made the greatest badminton team ever.
23. Detroit -- Marathon shortened to 8 miles due to budget shortfalls.
22/21/20. San Antonio/Houston/Dallas -- We know all these Texas cities are different, but it really infuriates Texans when you say they're not.
19. Minneapolis -- Having a city name with a Greek word is the closest Minneapolis is going to get to the Olympic spirit.
18. Boston -- Within 10 seconds of an announcement about Boston's potential bid, someone with a shamrock tattoo will suggest they put the Olympic cauldron on top of the Green Monster seats.
17. San Diego -- Modern pentathlon: Who's still standing after five nights in Tijuana.
Independent Journal
16. Miami -- You'll be sick of medalists saying they're going to take their talent to South Beach by the end of the first day of competition.
15. Portland -- BUT WHICH PORTLAND?
14. San Jose -- Why is San Jose so high on these rankings? I missed it on my initial perusal of the list then was too lazy to go back and change all the numbers.
13. Indianapolis -- Bid presentation: Play the last five minutes of Hoosiers. Drop the mic.
12. Los Angeles -- Will be moot when the Dodgers continue their free agency binge and sign the Olympics to play right field.
11. Tulsa -- Scoff if you want. We did.
10. Memphis -- Who will light the torch: Young Elvis or Fat Elvis?
Young Elvis
9. Austin -- The hipsters would love it, mainly because they'd appreciate the irony of un-ironically supporting an Olympics.
8. San Francisco -- Proposal: Country that does worst at 2020 Games has to house its athletes at Alcatraz.
7. Denver -- Front page editors at the New York Post are already preparing "MILE HIGH CITY" headlines for a potential 2024 Olympic drug scandal.
6. Seattle -- Needs a civic pick-me-up after this subpar season of Top Chef.
5. New York -- "We couldn't have it here, it'd be a logistical nightmare," says New Yorker who just spent 45 minutes telling you how great New York is because it can handle anything.
4. Washington D.C. -- What better way to close out President Clinton's second term than by giving 77-year-old First Husband Bill a chance to ogle some beach volleyball players?
Todd Plitt/USA TODAY
3. Philadelphia -- You know what the Olympics needs more of? Booing during medal ceremonies.
AP
2. St. Louis -- The last time St. Louis hosted an Olympics, the ice cream cone was invented.
AP
1. Atlanta -- As anyone who's not named Lolo Jones will tell you, the second time is even better.
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Hey folks!
Sorry to confirm the NHL and NHLPA - in their collective yet infinite wisdom - have decided the better thing to do with their time is posture, point fingers and whine rather than stone up, find the middle, compromise and not piss away their product.
Make no mistake about what's on the table: the potential of another lost season, the second in a decade. Hockey didn't need another black eye, but its very owners and players are about to give it one.
As we sit on the sidelines, please know our site isn't going dark at all. We'll be here hockey or not. Our goal has always been to foster the best community of Vancouver Canuck fans and give you a happy home no matter what. So if we have to put our big boy pants on before the owners and players do, than so be it.
Thanks for sticking around. We'll get through this together.
Go Canucks Go.Legalization of recreational use of marijuana could mean a tax bonanza for California with tax collectors already taking the first steps toward getting a handle on the emerging industry.
The California Board of Equalization approved a proposal Tuesday to ask for funds to hire staff in anticipation of 2018 when legalization of recreational use kicks in after California voters decided Nov. 8 to approve Proposition 64. As many as 25,000 cultivators are expected to register and begin paying taxes. The board expects to need $20 million by 2021 to support a staff of 114.
State analysts estimate local governments could see $1 billion in revenue from the production and legal sale of marijuana even though pot remains illegal on the federal level, and it is unclear how the incoming administration will deal with the patchwork of laws across the country.
Eight U.S. states and the District of Columbia allow recreational use of marijuana. In all, 28 states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana, with more poised to enter the club. California was the first state to approve medical marijuana. Some 1,700 dispensaries have opened in the past 20 years.
President Barack Obama said in a Rolling Stone interview this week he thinks marijuana should be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes.
Proposition 64 directs the state to treat cannabis like alcohol, allowing people at least 21 years of age to possess an ounce of pot legally and to grow six plants in their homes. Cities and counties can impose their own regulations and taxes.
Consumers will pay a 15 percent excise tax on retail sales for both recreational and medical marijuana, and a cultivation tax will be applied to harvested plants on the commercial market.
People have been growing weed illegally in California for decades, some grows operated by drug cartels. Board member Diane Harkey said no one knows how the state is going to bring them into the system.
"It's just going to be the wild, wild West out there," board member Jerome Horton told Medical Xpress. Horton said he thinks the board will need a lot more staff and funding than what was approved this week.
Because of federal prohibitions, the board and local taxing bodies will have to figure out how to collect those taxes. Federal law prohibits banks and credit card companies from handling money associated with the drug trade, forcing many marijuana businesses to operate on a cash-only basis.
Marijuana currently is still listed as a Schedule I drug and earlier this year the Drug Enforcement Agency refused to reclassify it.
More than 65 million people now live in states that allow some form of marijuana use. A recent Gallup poll indicates 60 percent of Americans support legalization compared with 12 percent in 1969.
In Colorado, the first state to allow recreational use of marijuana and with a population a seventh the size of California’s, tax revenue from both medical and recreational sales totaled $134 million in the first nine months of this year.In the age of the hacktivist, corporate lawyers have a new responsibility: deciding whether or not to litigate based on their ability to handle attacks from groups like Anonymous.
“Everyone needs to be aware of information security,” said Tanya Forsheit, a founding partner of the InfoLawGroup LLP at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. “I think a lot of law firms have not historically paid attention. They thought they were not required.”
Law firms and the clients they represent are the latest groups to be targeted in online hacker-activist attacks. As Steven Teppler, partner at Edelson McGuire explains, Anonymous is an entity that acts when it is affronted or when it takes on a cause. The group is industry agnostic and will bully any group or person it |
more than 10 times smaller than Ontario and Quebec, which have over seven million residents each. The large provinces would thus have to sacrifice a great deal of their own power to make Triple-E work. The province of Alberta is the only part of Canada where Senate elections were regularly held, but in 2015 these were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, on the grounds that Canada’s founders never intended the Senate to be an elected body. The other leading proposal is for the Senate to be abolished outright, which is a position that tends to be favoured by Canadian progressives, particularly those in the New Democratic Party. While this is certainly a simple solution, it’s also been accused of being too radical. Few modern democracies have only one chamber of parliament, and some worry that getting rid of the Senate altogether would simply consolidate more power in the hands of the House of Commons and the prime minister — both of which are already quite powerful to begin with. In any case, the Canadian Supreme Court has now made clear that substantial Senate reform will require a constitutional amendment, and as we discuss in more detail in the Constitution chapter, passing constitutional amendments in Canada is a notoriously complicated and difficult task. Elected Senators in Canada, Election Almanac
More About the Senate of Canada About the Senate, Senate of CanadaPart of the Truthout Series Solutions
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)Longtime military watchdog and Truthout editor Dina Rasor paints a well-informed picture of what might be motivating the 359 retired senior military officers endorsing the GOP presidential candidate, and asks: if we continue to allow them and their peers to throw their rank around in the political arena, what message does that send to more junior members of the military, not to mention the public?
On October 17, Mitt Romney’s campaign announced that he had received the endorsement of 359 retired generals and admirals in the form of a “military advisory council,” thus furthering the corruption of former military members through politics and defense money. There may be many personal reasons that these retired military would want to endorse Mr. Romney – based on my past 30 years’ experience investigating the military, I can think of a few reasons.
Money, Money, Money
Mr. Romney has promised to shoot the defense budget into the stratosphere at levels that have been unseen since the height of the Korean War. As in a past column, I have inserted here a chart that I think is one of the most significant of the presidential campaign, and it should be passed around to as many people possible before the election.
According to most sources, Romney wants to raise the defense budget to $2 trillion above what the military has asked for and what Obama plans to spend in the next decade. The Romney campaign, in a defense spending Etch a Sketch moment, has partially walked back this figure slightly, saying that it might not make it that much until a second term, which would still put it at a mind-boggling $1.75 trillion.
In the presidential debate on October 22, President Obama tried to pin down what Romney wanted to spend money on – and then ridiculed him when Romney mentioned weapons that were suited for the cold war era rather than to the newest threats to our national security.
Did these 359 generals and admirals throw in their lot with Romney because they thought that this money could be spent wisely and was absolutely necessary to defend our country? I cannot read the minds of these top officers but, based on years of revolving door practices and other types of abuses, maybe many of these officers were motivated by the fact that they had lucrative post-retirement jobs with defense contractors who promise to become even more flush with money if a budget of this size passes. The lure of money for the revolving door might have clouded their judgment.
As I wrote in a past column, it was considered unseemly and unethical for generals after World War II to take a job at a defense contractor after they retired. It is now commonplace. Take a look at some of the generals on Romney’s list and their post-retirement employment, as compiled by boldprogressives.org:
Just to be sure that these generals and admirals were not just cherry-picked out of the list of 359, I dart-boarded some names and found that these generals had also done the lucrative swing through the revolving door:
Rear Admiral Patrick David Moneymaker, USN, (Ret.):
According to Forbes,
Patrick D. Moneymaker, 64, has served as a director of Kforce since July 2008. Currently a consultant, he previously served as president and CEO of Proxy Aviation Systems from July 2008 to August 2010. He served as the CEO of Kforce Government Holdings, Inc. (“KGH”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kforce Inc., from September 2006 to July 2008, and also served as a director of Kforce from June 2005 to September 2006. Prior to his role as CEO of KGH, Mr. Moneymaker served as the CEO, operating officer and president of Ocean Systems Engineering Corporation (“OSEC”), a privately held company, from October 1998 until OSEC’s sale in May 2006.
Rear Admiral Hamlin Tallent (Ret.):
Rear Admiral Tallent went to work for Sentek Global, a defense consulting company with defense program clients such as Space and Naval Warfare Systems (SPAWAR)
General Paul X. Kelley, USMC
General Kelley went to work for one of the largest Washington lobbyist firms, Cassidy and Associates, helping defense companies get their piece of the Pentagon’s budget pie.
Civilian Control
Perhaps some of the resentment against President Obama was that he was one of only a few president sin history who refused to get rolled by the generals and asserted civilian control after years of President George W. Bush going along with most of what his generals told him to do. Some of the top military showed open contempt for President Obama when the young president took office, similar to the hazing a young President Kennedy received.
As I wrote in a past column on military versus civilian control:
From accounts in [Rolling Stone reporter Michael] Hastings’ book and other news accounts, the top generals didn’t have much respect for Obama when he first came into office. What probably made that situation worse was that they were so used to President George W. Bush’s rubber stamp of what they wanted in the war, once the war started. (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pushed back hard and severely before the Iraq war when some generals were concerned that we didn’t have enough troops and no exit strategy. But once we were in the war, Bush claimed that he was going to listen to the generals on the ground.) In the end, the generals underestimated Obama’s civilian resolve, which was hardened like Kennedy’s when he saw that they were trying to undercut and go around his authority. Jonathan Alter’s book, “The Promise,” illustrates Obama’s first round of attempted hazing by the military brass. Hastings describes in his book the contempt that the top generals had when Obama said that he was going to honor the troop withdrawal agreement with Iraq and have troops leave at the end of 2011. (There is plenty of controversy surrounding the State Department’s 5,000-person army of hired mercenaries, but they are small compared to the troops that Obama pulled out.) The generals and some hawks in the administration leaked like crazy to the press that this was a “soft” date and insisted on the caveat that it depended on the old phrase of “the situation on the ground,” as the date neared. But Obama prevailed despite the leaks, most likely helped by his firing of McChrystal and overruling his generals on the Bin Laden raid by insisting that there were backup helicopters.
How to Fix This
In a past column, I made a bold suggestion about what generals should be required to do to stop the insidious corruption of our top officers from going through the revolving door to lucrative defense company jobs and disillusioning our junior officers:
So, my reform solution for the general officer corps requires them to make a choice. If they want to go work for or invest money in a defense contractor, they must give up their title of general and lose their military retirement pay and perks. If they think it is unfair because they earned the retirement and the military rank, they can keep to a higher calling and work in some other civilian industry, as many generals did after World War II. (See my January article on the corruption of the general officer corps.) If the generals still want to work on military issues and strategy, they can go work for one of the myriad of nonprofit organizations that look at military issues or oversight, as long as they strictly stay away from any lobbying efforts with the DoD or the Congress. They also cannot go work for a nonprofit organization that accepts contributions from defense contractors unless they give up their rank and pensions. They should also not be allowed to fill a civilian political office in the DoD because of the necessary authority of civilian rule and they are still considered military. These rules would not be subject to any type of executive or Congressional waivers.
Now we have 359 retired generals and admirals corrupting our political process by using their rank instead of just their name to endorse a political candidate. Romney uses a fig leaf to pretend that people will understand that these are retired military by saying at the bottom of the list of his “military advisory council”:
“Use of Military Branch and/or Rank does not imply endorsement by the service branch or the Dept. of Defense”
If that phrase was really true, why put their rank down at all? I am not the only one concerned with what this mixing of rank and politics might do. According to the Army Times:
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, has repeatedly urged retired officers to stay out of the political fray. “Former and retired service members, especially generals and admirals, are connected to the military service for life,” Dempsey wrote on a Pentagon website in June. “When the title or uniform is used for partisan purposes, it can erode the trust relationship. We must all be conscious of this, or we risk adversely affecting the very profession to which we dedicated most of our adult life.”
General Dempsey might have sincere sentiments, but his statement will clearly not stop this problem, and the Romney campaign has just increased the problem 359 more times. This is such a serious breach of ethics by these former retired brass that I would suggest the same bold requirements be applied to them, if they wish to endorse a political candidate, as I suggested for retired military officers who want to go work in and profit from the defense industry.
Congress should pass a law that if top military officers want to endorse a political candidate for federal office, they must also give up their rank, their retirement pay and their military perks. It would not work to just forbid these officers to use their rank in the endorsement, because the media would pick up that they were retired military officers and report it. If retired officers feel so strongly that they must, as any civilian citizen may, publicly endorse a federal candidate, they must also have the honor to give up their title, pay and perks in order to avoid damaging the military institution they served.
Unless we stop this slide of our top military personnel into areas that corrupt the institution, our junior officer corps will become cynical and jaded, and the best officers will leave before they ever reach the top military level. Presidential campaigns should not encourage this behavior, and the Romney campaign just pushed the limit much farther – 359 times.Kaspersky Lab Collected, Then Deleted NSA File from a Home Computer
Concerns over handling classified US data one of the reasons why Kaspersky Lab CEO ordered file deletion, company says.
Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, under scrutiny for allegedly helping Russian agents steal classified US government data, today conceded its software had collected a file containing source code for a classified NSA hacking tool from a home computer in September 2014.
But the company then deleted the file on the instructions of CEO Eugene Kaspersky and did not share it with anyone else, the security vendor said in a report Wednesday outlining the initial findings of an internal investigation.
According to the security vendor, the file was automatically uploaded to its AV network for analysis from the home computer of an NSA contractor who was running Kaspersky's software. The 7zip archive file contained what appeared to be new, unknown, and debug variants of a hacking tool used by the Equation Group, a hacking team of the NSA.
The home computer on which the NSA file was hosted had a pirated - and malware-infected - version of Microsoft Office running on it, and Kaspersky Lab's AV software apparently detected the NSA file as potentially malicious as well, automatically submitting it to the vendor for analysis. Such automatic submissions are common to all AV tools when they encounter new or previously unknown malware. In this case, Kaspersky's analysis showed the archive to contain malware and source code for Equation APT malware.
"The reason we deleted the files is because first of all, we don't need the source code to improve our protection technologies and secondly, because of concerns regarding the handling of classified materials," a Kaspersky Lab spokesperson said. This concern was later turned into a rule that requires Kaspersky analysts to delete any potentially classified materials that the company's software accidentally collects, she added.
It's too soon to say whether Kaspersky Lab's latest explanation will tamp down or inflame concerns raised by recent reports that Russian agents have used the company's software to steal US secrets.
The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets have quoted unnamed sources as informing them about Russia-sponsored actors using Kaspersky Lab's antivirus technology to search for and steal classified US data from computers running Kaspersky's software. The reports have alleged that the company tweaked its AV software so Russian agents can search systems belonging to Kaspersky's customers using keywords such as "classified" and "top secret."
The US government earlier this year banned federal agencies from using the vendor's software after Israeli cyber spies informed it about discovering classified material on Kaspersky's network. The Israeli agents had previously broken into Kaspersky's network and were apparently spying on the security vendor's activities when they discovered the material.
On Wednesday, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), called on the Trump Administration to declassify any information it might have on Kaspersky Lab even as the House prepared to begin hearings on the issue. Meanwhile, in September Best Buy confirmed it would no longer carry Kaspersky's products citing concerns the company's alleged connections to the Russian government.
Kaspersky Lab has vigorously denied the claims and has suggested it is the victim of the current geopolitical climate. Earlier this week, the company announced that it would allow review of its source code by independent third parties. The security vendor's internal investigation, too, is part of an effort to tell its side of the story.
But some experts say Kaspersky Lab's explanation for how it happened to find the NSA material and what it did after, while plausible, raises more questions.
From the security vendor's report, the NSA file was running on a machine with a virus created by key generator (keygen) for the pirated software, says Simon Gibson, security architect at Gigamon and former Bloomberg CISO. "This keygen software triggered a scan and subsequently the debug or test versions of new Equation Group software being developed were found and uploaded to Kaspersky for analysis," he notes. While that is plausible, it suggests a level of sloppiness on the NSA contractor's part that is surprising, Gibson says.
"People are lazy and make mistakes like downloading a Windows keygen rather than submitting the paperwork to get a paid-for license from their employer," he says. But "most hackers know how hacking works and have a natural sense of self-preservation which makes this level of sloppiness hard to believe."
Wesley McGrew, director of cyber operations at Horne Cyber Solutions, says his concern is with Kaspersky Lab's claim that it deleted the NSA file.
"It's difficult to imagine a scenario where an antivirus company, with an interest in analyzing new malicious software samples and developing signatures for detection, would pass up the opportunity to analyze a collection of source code and debug samples for a malware family," he says.
Kaspersky Lab has analyzed and published research on other Equation Group malware samples, and has claimed to be neutral in the pursuit of nation-state malware samples, he says. "At the time the decision was made to delete, they had already collected the data and associated it with a group they're interested in. Why would their take on it being nation-state intelligence-affiliated push them to delete?"
But John Pescatore, a former NSA analyst and director of emerging security threats at the SANS Institute, says there's little Kaspersky Lab can do at this point beyond what it already has to prove it is not complicit with the Russian government.
"They have provided their source code for inspection," he says. "There's not much further they can go."
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Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year... View Full BioNothing can save Ellie now. Well, then again, I’m not sure. I try not to read ahead. My emphasis in this strip is not to make fun of the mother, but to further ingrain that Ellie is a complete TWIT.
When I first started making this strip, I was pretty envious of those that have sprite comics, or elements thereof. A sprite comic is one where the character templates are used over and over and over again. Example:
This would save me a tremendous amount of time, but in the end, I would loath myself for it. I could upload 10 times a week, but I wouldn’t get the emotional angles and subtle nuances I want. So I thought, why not make the backgrounds like that. Like “sets.” I could draw the characters however I feel, and BOOM, background done. Well… doesn’t work quite that well. Well… kinda my fault though. I don’t draw the characters to suit the straight forward angle of a prefab background. Even if it were at an angle, I’d feel inclined to force the angle over and over. So, eventually I gave up on that. I just cut down on mandatory backgrounds unless they’re actually required.
An example of one that COULD work, would be something an animated show would use, like an location set up, like so:
This is Quinn’s apartment from when she kicked Ellie out originally (the day time version.) Some dramatic cheap lighting, and you get what I used for the evening:
You should be able to click these for a larger resolution if you so desire. Quinn’s car is on the left. If you can’t tell by now, purple is her color-identifier out of her “Violet in the Woods” color scheme. Warm colors contrasting her personality.
Interior of the apartment and Ellie’s application hub. No obvious need to finish a phone that won’t be seen.
Ellie’s register was such an elaborate set I only truly used once in it’s entire glory. I just can’t let myself feel like I’m hack-jobbing the strip. And it’s not even hacking it! I certainly don’t knock anyone who does a sprite comic. There’s nothing wrong with it if it works with your premise/style or line of humor. It’s just something stupid in my brain. I’m overly-adamant of not repeating any ART anywhere on the site (other than the cast page avatars.) Below are all the props, each a moveable layer in Photoshop, as demonstrated:Cohen writes: "Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of the more important liberal litigators and jurists of her generation. She has been trailblazer on the issue of women's legal rights and a powerful voice for progressive causes as a justice on the highest US court in the land. And she must retire. Right now."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg enters for the 2010 State of the Union address. (photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivias/EPA)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Should Do All Liberals a Favor and Retire Now
By Michael A Cohen, Guardian UK
The longer Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer wait to retire, the more likely a GOP president will pick their supreme court successors
uth Bader Ginsburg is one of the more important liberal litigators and jurists of her generation. She has been trailblazer on the issue of women's legal rights and a powerful voice for progressive causes as a justice on the highest US court in the land.
And she must retire. Right now. While we're at it, Stephen Breyer should retire too.
This call has nothing to do with either justice's job performance. Ginsburg's commanding dissent in last year's 5-4 decision to overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act is compelling evidence that she remains a vital member of the court.
But no longer is the decision of when to retire about them; rather it's about what comes after they leave the court. If Ginsburg and Breyer wait to retire, it will only serve to maximize the possibility that a Republican president will choose their successor and in the process undo much of what they've worked for their entire careers.
To be sure, I'm not the first person to make this argument and Ginsburg has publicly pushed back on talk of her leaving. What's changed in recent weeks, however, are new poll numbers that suggest Democrats are at very real risk of losing their majority in the Senate. While such an outcome next fall would be demoralizing for Democrats, it wouldn't have much of a policy impact. No matter who controls the Senate, House Republicans are hardly leaping at the opportunity to work with President Obama. It would, however, make it much harder for Democrats to fill the judiciary with progressive judges.
Even worse, it would increase the possibility that President Ted Cruz, Rand Paul or Paul Ryan might appoint Ginsburg and Breyer's replacements, which is a risk that, as liberals, they simply shouldn't be taking.
The argument for Ginsburg's early retirement is often predicated on her advanced age (she is 80) and her bouts with pancreatic and colon cancer (Breyer is 75. While the case for him to go is strong, it's not as strong as it is for his colleague). Leaving the court before the end of President Obama's term would allow him to choose their successors. These political calculations are based, in some measure, on when Obama's term of office ends in 2016. But what if Senate Republicans take control of the body in November?
Considering that Harry Reid was forced to employ the nuclear option against the filibuster to get Obama's lower court judges past Senate GOP obstruction tactics, does anyone really doubt that Republicans would block Obama's supreme court nominees? Unlike today where Republicans would have to take the unprecedented step of using the filibuster to stop a potential nominee, a GOP-controlled Senate could simply vote one down with a 51-vote majority. Democrats would have little recourse to stop them.
Then, if a Republican were to be elected president in 2016, they could put two conservatives judges in Ginsburg and Breyer's place, as well as choose new judges to replace Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, should they step down. The result would be a virtually unbreakable conservative majority on the court for the next 20 to 30 years.
The potential impact of this is hard to overstate. Two years ago, the court was one vote shy of overturning the signature piece of progressive legislation of the past four decades – Obamacare. This past summer, a 5-4 majority overturned key provisions of the Voting Rights Act and only the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy allowed for the overturn of the Defense of Marriage Act. Liberals are already at a disadvantage on the court, with Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voting in conservative lockstep and Roberts and Kennedy often not far behind. For liberals, swapping Ginsburg for a conservative judge would be catastrophic. Overturning the landmark abortion case, Roe v Wade, would be only the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, this scenario may not necessarily occur. The Senate while looking more and more likely to go red is still a toss-up and in 2016, Senate Democrats would be at a significant advantage with the GOP having to protect a host of vulnerable seats. And while it's certainly possible a Republican could win the presidency in 2016, the smart money is still on President Clinton II. Nonetheless, as President Gore will remind you, nothing about presidential elections is written in stone.
Even if there is a 10% chance that Republicans capture the White House in 2016 (and it's almost certainly much higher than that) there is simply no good reason for Ginsburg and Breyer to take that risk. Considering how politicized the Court has become – and the extent to which partisanship increasingly seems to trump judicial precedent – their membership in the liberal block is actually more important than their particular legal acumen.
Retiring now would allow President Obama to do what he's done with his first two supreme court picks – choose young, relatively progressive judges who will remain on the court for decades to come.
While it would be unusual to step down in the middle of the court's current session, Ginsburg and Breyer could announce their intention to retire in the summer and thus give the president and Senate Democrats plenty of time to get new nominees in place.
To those who argue that basing a retirement on political or ideological considerations would politicize the court … been there, done that. Unless, of course, people think it's a coincidence that liberal judges such as Harry Blackman, John Paul Stevens and David Souter retired while Democrats sat in the White House; and Sandra O'Connor and Warren Burger just happened to leave the bench while the GOP controlled the presidency.
When Earl Warren retired from the court in June 1968 it was done, in large measure, to ensure that Lyndon Johnson named his replacement – a gambit that ended up failing when the Senate refused to confirm his preferred successor Abe Fortas. The supreme court is a political body just like any other and they are hardly immune to the growing partisanship and polarization in American politics. There is no point in denying what is obvious to most court observers.
In an era of growing political dysfunction in which House leaders get praised for passing bills that were once largely considered pro forma (ie the debt limit), the Congress has become a black hole for social progress and reform. The courts and, in particular, the highest body in the land are ground zero for policy debates that will likely affect the lives of millions of Americans. With the make-up of the current nine justices in such a narrow ideological balance swinging it one direction or the other will have long-term implications – ones that Ginsburg and Breyer must factor into their thinking about when to step down. That moment is now.
No matter when she departs the court, Ginsburg will enjoy a sterling reputation as a progressive jurist. Breyer doesn't have the same esteemed standing, but from the perspective of liberals, he's been a strong and consistent progressive voice for nearly two decades.
Now the best thing they can do for the positions they hold dear, the issues they care most deeply about and the liberals that have long relied on them is to pass the torch.Google Docs is touted by Google as the perfect replacement for Microsoft’s expensive Office suite. But it looks as though it might by vying for a place on animator’s PCs too.
What we didn’t realize until now is that Google Docs actually makes for a great collaborative animation tool. It’s seriously work intensive to achieve anything, but the results are fantastic considering this is a basic presentation package in the cloud.
Check out the video above, which was created over 3 days by 3 animators across 450 pages. It uses no animation software, no special hardware, just Google Docs’ presentation app.
You can view the original presentation, but be warned, it’s a huge file that takes a while to load. The animated version in video form is much more enjoyable.
via YouTubeWhen we talk about people’s power we are not thinking about putting our leaders into the very same structures. We do not want Nelson Mandela to be the state President in the same kind of parliament as Botha. We do not want Walter Sisulu to be Chairperson of a Capitalist Anglo-American corporation.
So said a United Democratic Front pamphlet called “Building People’s Power” that was produced in the 1980s. It continued, “We are struggling for a different system where power is no longer in the hands of the rich and powerful. We are struggling for a government that we will all vote for.” The UDF, formed in 1983, was a coalition of anti-apartheid community, church, worker, youth, sports and other groups. Along with forces like the “workerist” Federation of South African Trade Unions it played a key role in resistance.
What the UDF wanted sounds like almost the exact opposite of what actually happened: more than 20 years later, it is not Sisulu who is chairperson of Anglo-American Corporation, but the ANC’s Cyril Ramaphosa, the Butcher of Marikana, who is a shareholder on the capitalist Lonmin Corporation. Even though people have the right to vote now, fewer and fewer people are actually voting because they don’t get what they vote for; and power and wealth are still in the hands of the rich and powerful.
What went wrong, and what lessons we can draw? What are some of the similarities between the 1980s and today? What is the way forward?
Lessons from the 1984-85 Vaal Uprising for Rebuilding a United Front of Communities and Workers Today
By Jonathan Payn
This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation at a workshop hosted by the International Labour Research & Information Group (ILRIG) and the Orange Farm Human Rights Advice Centre in Drieziek extension 1, Orange Farm township, south of Soweto, South Africa, on 24 June 2017. It was attended by a hall full of community and worker activists, including veterans of the big rebellions of the 1980s.
Comrades, the talk I am giving is based on a paper that I have written. The paper is a work in progress. I am hoping that, through the discussions we will have, you will give me some direction. I can see some of the dots that can be connected, but I am missing some. The written paper is called “Asinamali! Rebuilding a united front of communities and workers: #GraveFeesMustFall, neoliberalism and the 1984-1985 Vaal Uprising.” It’s a big title but we’ll unpack it.
When we talk about people’s power we are not thinking about putting our leaders into the very same structures. We do not want Nelson Mandela to be the state President in the same kind of parliament as Botha. We do not want Walter Sisulu to be Chairperson of a Capitalist Anglo-American corporation.
So said a United Democratic Front pamphlet called “Building People’s Power” that was produced in the 1980s. It continued, “We are struggling for a different system where power is no longer in the hands of the rich and powerful. We are struggling for a government that we will all vote for.” The UDF, formed in 1983, was a coalition of anti-apartheid community, church, worker, youth, sports and other groups. Along with forces like the “workerist” Federation of South African Trade Unions it played a key role in resistance.
What the UDF wanted sounds like almost the exact opposite of what actually happened: more than 20 years later, it is not Sisulu who is chairperson of Anglo-American Corporation, but the ANC’s Cyril Ramaphosa, the Butcher of Marikana, who is a shareholder on the capitalist Lonmin Corporation. Even though people have the right to vote now, fewer and fewer people are actually voting because they don’t get what they vote for; and power and wealth are still in the hands of the rich and powerful.
What went wrong, and what lessons we can draw? What are some of the similarities between the 1980s and today? What is the way forward?
The Vaal Uprising, 1984
Conditions in the townships for the black working class in the 1980s were very similar to the conditions today. Starting in the late 1970s and into the ’80s, the economy was in a recession. If we look at the Vaal, there had been a slump in the steel industry, so there had been mass retrenchments at ISCOR, the old state steel company, which had a large plant in the Vaal. This has since been privatised and is now Arcelor-Mittal. The conditions in the townships, which were already bad, because of the racist policies of separate development between the black townships and white suburbs, were getting worse and worse. There was a deepening education crisis that had been exposed in 1976, and black youth were not happy with the quality of education that they were receiving, with racism in the schools and so on. There was a severe housing crisis as well. The government was not building nearly enough of the houses that were required in the urban townships.
And, to top it off, starting in the late 1970s, the local government dealing with black African townships – the Black Local Authorities and the Bantu Administration Board – started increasing rents and charges for services like electricity and water included in the rent. In July 1984, the Lekota town council announced that there would be a rent increase in the Vaal. The Vaal Civic Association, which was affiliated to the UDF, started organising an anti-rent campaign throughout August, and, on the 2nd of September 1984, the different representatives from different committees that were part of the VCA met at the Roman Catholic Church to plan for a stay-away, or community-based general strike, the next day, Monday 3rd September.
That fateful day workers responded to the VCA call for a stay-away. Students responded, there were protest marches and so on and, as some of you comrades will recall, the police opened fire on marchers, and the situation exploded. People started to fight back and what started here, in the Vaal, on the 3rd of September, had within a matter of months spread across the country, beginning the 1984-85 township uprising.
People organised themselves, as they had already been organising for some time, and they made the townships ungovernable: the BLAs began to crumble, they didn’t have any authority in the townships, and neither did the larger apartheid state. Some areas were made no-go zones for the state, and people started to take control of the townships and to take back control of their lives.
#GraveFeesMustFall
That was part of the beginning of the end for the apartheid system. What started on the 3rd September contributed directly to the collapse of apartheid. But more than 30 years after the Vaal Uprising began, here in the very same region in the Vaal, people have found it essential to start organising against another rates increase, this time imposed by the post-apartheid government: grave fee increases.
Starting last year, people have organised against increases in the cost of municipal plots to bury their relatives. I am sure comrades have heard – it has been talked about on community radio, and you have heard about the #GraveFeesMustFall campaign, or been involved – the cost of a plot went from between R400 to R600, to over R1,000. And that is only if you get buried in your municipality of residence. If you get buried outside your municipality, it is even more expensive. Because municipal cemeteries are getting full, sometimes you either have to resort to “reopening,” where they bury someone on top of an old grave, or you have to get buried at another municipality. But if you get buried elsewhere, costs are huge. So, say for example, that you lived here in Orange Farm, in the City of Johannesburg municipality, but the local cemeteries are full, then you have to go to another municipality to be buried, and your family gets charged up to R4,000.
When we ask why the grave fees have become so expensive, there are two main reasons. First, it seems that the ruling party, the African National Congress, and the state, are selling land to private individuals to profit by opening private cemeteries. Second, local government is using every opportunity to squeeze more money out of working class and poor residents.
If the cemeteries are getting full, then surely the government needs to make more land available for graves instead of privatising them. What we need are cheap affordable grave sites, and yet these are getting privatised or commercialised to make a profit. This shows where the government’s priorities lie.
Urban Neo-Liberalism
The problem is linked to the capitalist system of neo-liberalism, which is affecting us, in every part of our lives. Privatising, commercialising and raising service charges, which is what the #GraveFeesMustFall campaign is fighting, brings us up against the problem of neo-liberalism, and how this links to the legacy of apartheid.
It is important to understand what neo-liberalism involves. It is about privatisation, commercialisation, outsourcing, rising service charges, more cut-offs, flexible jobs – and removing all barriers to profit-making at the expense of the working class and poor.
Starting in the 1970s, the economy internationally, and also in South Africa went into crisis. The bosses were not making enough money, they were losing profitability, and one of the ways that the government tried to get profitability back for the capitalists and bosses from the 1970s, was to use neo-liberalism.
Neo-liberalism is enforced by states, allied with big companies. It is embraced by the ANC today, but did not start with it. It started with the racist National Party government, which moved in the 1970s in the neo-liberal direction. It cut its social spending on things like education, healthcare, service delivery and so on, and started making local governments raise more of their own money within the municipal area. So instead of the national treasury giving enough money to municipalities, local government needed to find ways to raise money itself to be able to function. This meant charging more and spending less, and ensuring cost-recovery, meaning recovering money spent on things.
The NP and the Townships
Obviously this approach hits the black working class hardest, whether under the ANC or the NP. So, in the 1970s, when the apartheid state introduced the BLAs, and allowed black Africans to vote for local councillors in the BLAs, it also made the BLAs have to raise their own money for development in those townships, from those same voters.
One of the main ways that municipalities raise money is by charging businesses, corporations and property owners taxes, based on the value of their property. Another key way is to charge them for electricity, water and so on. So, when the apartheid |
backs show how his drinking, his PTSD from WWI informed Doss’ early violent streak. His father clearly saw too much, serving his country.
GIBSON: There is that aspect. I don’t know that his father was actually that solider, but he did have problems, some PTSD stuff. There were altercations involving firearms. Desmond wrote about it in a biography and he talked about his childhood and that illustration that he looked at when he was a little kid and he was crying because he couldn’t understand how someone could kill his brother.
DEADLINE: You mean the illustration of Cain and Abel that led him to renounce violence.
GIBSON: That part was a very real thing. He came from a family where the dad would drink and get violent. So in our story we said it was because of PTSD, which I think is a good thing to focus on because…I’ve talked to guys. When I was a young man, I talked to guys from World War I and I talked to guys from World War II.
DEADLINE: This goes back to when you made Gallipoli?
GIBSON: I met all those old diggers from the trenches. I talked to World War II guys, because I’m into research. I talked to murderers in prison. I find it intensely interesting to try to access somebody’s head who do some incredibly interesting things. I talked to the Korean War guys, a lot of the Vietnam guys. I’ve talked to the guys from Iraq, a lot of disabled vets. In fact, we showed it to the Disabled American Veterans conference. I went [with the film] to Georgia, South Carolina, Fort Benning. I’m really quite gratified that it played out the way it did, especially for the vets and the disabled guys is that they found it cathartic but they found it therapeutic. They really dug it.
I was worried. Is it going to trigger some kind of reaction? Some of them had a tough time with it but they thought it was a very positive and good thing to watch. Even one of the guys in the film, the guy that gets his legs blown off. That guy is a real vet. He was in Afghanistan and he had his legs blown off.
DEADLINE: How did he come to be in the movie?
GIBSON: Well, he came as an actor and said, can I be in the movie? I’m like yeah, we’ll put you in the barracks with the other guys. We’ll put legs on you. He put his prosthetics on. We just thought he was a guy with legs. He did his stuff. He’s in all the scenes. He’s standing next to Desmond. He’s in the battle scenes and then he sort of reenacted having his legs blown off.
DEADLINE: What was that like for him?
GIBSON: He was kind of edgy going into that and didn’t quite know how he felt about it. I don’t know what the word is. He was a little bothered by it. He did a great job. He was screaming and the whole thing. Then we were finished and we all had a word. Told him thank you for his service, and all this stuff. It turned out he found it a most freeing thing. He said, “I didn’t think it was going to have that positive effect. It’s great.” You can’t stop this guy. He snowboards. He surfs. He’s all over.
DEADLINE: These soldiers you met, from WWI, WWI, Vietnam and Afghanistan. What similarities did you find?
GIBSON: That’s what I was getting to. Their hearts and minds and souls are indelibly marked by the experiences of war. Back then, they didn’t have a name for it. You just come back, man up and swallow it, but the shocking thing today is I think the official statistic is there’s 22 guys a day dropping a hammer on themselves. That’s the official statistic. They calculate that [through soldiers who are] back six months, within 120 days of active service. So the real number is probably twice that. That’s a serious problem and I think it needs more attention. It comes down to vets helping vets, because guys who understand can help guys better than those who don’t understand. It’s only those guys that can help each other.
DEADLINE: What’s the hardest thing to find funding for a war movie where your hero won’t touch a gun?
GIBSON: It wasn’t difficult, but it’s Bill Mechanic’s terrain and he has been riding on this one for 15 years. You know, Hal Wallis was trying to get the rights to this man’s story back in the late ’40s. They even sent Audie Murphy to go and talk to Desmond Doss to see if they could loosen him up to give them the rights. He said, not for sale. He was a farmer. He was growing his vegetables. He never even went to a motion picture.
DEADLINE: What changed his mind?
GIBSON: I think, toward the end of his life, the members of his congregation appealed to him and said, you need to really tell this story because it’s inspiring to other men. When he would talk about it or when the story did get out there…there were other conscientious objectors since who have gone into battle as medics, because of the inspiration of that guy. So he thought it was a way to talk about conviction, faith and courage. He didn’t see himself as a hero but guys like that never do. He didn’t want to brag about it or even talk much about it, but at the end I think the elders in his congregation prevailed on him and said, give us the rights. He said, maybe after I’m gone. They made a documentary about him.
DEADLINE: That made this narrative feature possible?
GIBSON: Yeah. He entrusted the members of his church with his life rights. Then Mechanic came along and he said, “Look, you give it to me and I promise you I’ll do the right thing.’ We showed it to all of them, the Desmond Doss Council and the Seventh-day Adventists. They dug it.
DEADLINE: Wasn’t Mechanic the executive who brought Fox into Braveheart for foreign rights, helping make the film possible?
GIBSON: Right. He took the international. You don’t say foreign, anymore. It’s International.
DEADLINE: Even Braveheart was difficult to fund?
GIBSON: None of these are easy. They never are. I mean people see afterwards that it’s pretty good, but maybe it doesn’t seem great in the idea stage. On this one, Bill spent 15 years. He even sent me the script, twice before. I passed, both times.
DEADLINE: Is it unusual for you to come back around on a pass?
GIBSON: Well, I did that with Braveheart. I passed on it. I kind of liked it and I thought maybe…I don’t know. One reason or another. Then, it’s like what happened with this one. The wheels start going around and you start visualizing it. They didn’t offer Braveheart to me to direct, anyway. They offered it for me to star in.
DEADLINE: They wanted you to play William Wallace.
GIBSON: Yeah. But then I started visualizing it, a lot. I would think about how cool could this be? You’d have a shot list in your head and visualize what you wanted to see. Two years later, I’d finished a movie and someone said, what do you want to do next? I said there’s this script I read a long time ago, that I’d passed on it but I sort of dig it. He said what’s it about? I described the whole story to him from memory but I told it to him in a shot list. I said then you’re in a low angle and he was listening to this story. He went and read the script and he said it’s a great script but what you were saying is kind of different. I really got to see it. So I read it again and I thought, I’ve got to do this. So I went and threw my hat in the ring to direct it.
DEADLINE: This was after you directed Man Without A Face?
GIBSON: I put my toe in the water with that small-budget film, a little coming-of-age story. So the same happened with this film. It came back. I looked at it again and I just saw it with new eyes.
DEADLINE: In Hacksaw Ridge there is a slow build to the battle in the title, but the shocking, concussive and intense nature of warfare is as jolting and disorienting as what I remembered in Saving Private Ryan. How do you do all this for $40 million?
GIBSON: You just work like crazy. Everyone is good at their job and you make do with less and you find shortcuts. There’s things that I wanted to do that I didn’t do.
DEADLINE: Like?
GIBSON: Well you were saying how it was intense. I wanted to get inside of it more. It would have taken more time than money. I had some ideas that were really crazy ideas. Investigating the area between the man and the bullet. Just getting on the inside of that stuff. But this was pretty graphic, you get the idea that it’s realistic and it has the right edits and it moves along. I think it does its job. Too much more might have pushed it over an edge.
DEADLINE: Who’s responding to the film?
GIBSON: We tested it twice and I don’t think anyone disliked it, and the scores were really good. Women liked it more than guys.
DEADLINE: Why?
GIBSON: I think they like the romance aspect, and the girl [played by Teresa Palmer]. I also think there’s something endearing about Andrew. You see this guy who’s a nurturer. I think women naturally are, as human beings, more nurturers. So you see a guy doing that I think it just touches something in there at a core level of who they are. I mean most women become mothers at some point. They’re nurturing kind of people. So this character was as completely selfless as a mother. So I think it just kind of plays to women.
DEADLINE: You went all the way back to Australia to bring this in for $40 million? When was the last time you shot a major film there? Mad Max?
GIBSON: Yeah, when I was 28, so this was about 30 years ago. It felt good to go back there and do it. We got some good breaks because it was a totally Australian film, and a good rebate. They had a very good plan there. Filmed in New South Wales. Screen Australia and all that stuff. The exchange rate for the U.S. dollar was good at the time, and I think we locked in at about 72 cents on the dollar and took a $27 million budget and turned it into a $40 million budget. It was a completely Australian film, all the players were Aussies except Andrew and Vince Vaughn. So the whole production is an Aussie film, but a very American story, which is kind of unusual. My worry was, is it going to look like we’re in Lynchburg, and Okinawa? I think we got away with it.
DEADLINE: You made Apocalypto for around $30 million?
GIBSON: Yeah. It was a little more than that.
DEADLINE: What do you think when you read about all of these big summer movies that cost $200 million and up? Do they have to be that expensive?
GIBSON: I don’t believe so. I look at them and scratch my head. I’m really baffled by it. I think there’s a lot of waste, but maybe if I did one of those things with the green screens I’d find out different. I don’t know. Maybe they do cost that much. I don’t know. It seems to me that you could do it for less.
DEADLINE: If you hit, the rewards can be enormous, but you’ve got to make a lot of money to just break even.
GIBSON: That’s the game, isn’t it?
DEADLINE: Is it a good game though?
GIBSON: Wow, I mean if you’re spending outrageous amounts of money, $180 million or more, I don’t know how you make it back after the tax man gets you, and after you give half to the exhibitors. What did they spend on Batman V Superman that they’re admitting to?
DEADLINE: I want to say $250 million. Then you’ve got marketing.
GIBSON: And it’s a piece of sh*t.
DEADLINE: Well it was self-serious and it wasn’t fun at all.
GIBSON: I’m not interested in the stuff. Do you know what the difference between real superheroes and comic book superheroes is? Real superheroes didn’t wear spandex. So I don’t know. Spandex must cost a lot.
DEADLINE: The battlefield staging here is terrifying. So was Braveheart, which seemed to inform stylistically so many medieval stuff that followed, including The Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones. This one’s different, with the concussive gunfire and explosives. What’s the big challenge of staging these kind of epic battle pieces?
GIBSON: It’s maintaining safety and yet making it look incredibly insane or whatever the word is. A kind of madness in what’s going on in there. A barrage of fire and explosives and guns and having it look real, and not hurting anyone. There is a bit of CG, but most of the pyrotechnics are there, and the explosions are real. When you see guys having their legs blown off, that’s real. They’ve got devices now that you can almost walk through, as they go off. These guys are getting like six feet away from them, walking through the middle of it. Crazy stuff. I’ve looked at other war films, and there are very few explosions because they were real and dangerous. The things we used, you saw them going off like crazy. People being lit on fire. That’s old but they’re even getting better with that stuff, these neoprene suits and stuff they put on is amazing. The pyrotechnics of it to keep it really going. The Japanese called it a steel rain.
DEADLINE: That was the battle strategy?
GIBSON: A steel rain. They got it coming and going both ways. They called it a steel rain, and it was the first real use of napalm. So when they were squirting these guys down with petrol and stuff that was so bad. They had to use it because of the caves and the underground stuff and it became a much feared new tool. The logistics of filming that with all the gunfire, with the explosions, with the flamethrowers, the intensity of the battles I think…a lot that goes into that. And I was killing myself to get it all in, in 59 days. About 30 of that was in combat. We got a lot of bang for our buck.
Warner Bros
DEADLINE: You made your early films with Australian directors like George Miller and Peter Weir. Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road was like a post-apocalyptic Cirque du Soleil. Were you thinking about directing when you were young and working with those guys?
GIBSON: I absolutely was absorbing everything. George is a doctor, and he had this Einstein persona going where he used to have the same suit eight times so he didn’t have to think about what he was going to wear. He’s slightly eccentric but he’s the nicest guy. The best thing about George was that he had good ideas about editing and how to shoot something and you’re right it is a Cirque du Soleil thing. The best thing about him is that he’s generous. I would ask him a million f*cking questions. What are we doing here? He’d take his time and explain it because he loves the process and he loved to share it. So a guy like that, I mean I just drank it up like a sponge. I mean you’re 22 years old and just sucking it up. I worked with him three times and I kept asking the questions. Then of course you work with Peter Weir. Completely different kind of filmmaker altogether.
DEADLINE: Gallipoli, The Year Of Living Dangerously.
GIBSON: There’s just something ethereal about him. Both these guys are excellent directors but they’re so different, which pointed something out to me. There’s no one way to achieve excellence. He was also very generous in his explanations and descriptions. His explanations weren’t as mathematical, they were more spiritual. It was pretty interesting. These are the people I’m learning from when I’m very young. How can you possibly do better than those two guys? Everybody else I worked with later, it was the same. I was always tapping into whatever they did and asking them a million questions. Dick Donner was amazing. He always denigrates himself. I’m just a traffic cop, is what he’d say. But he’s actually brilliant. He knows structure. He knows how to shoot something. He knows how to make it funny. He knows how to move it along and keep the energy. He underrates himself.
DEADLINE: So you had those lessons, but what a step up in scope from The Man Without A Face to Braveheart, and then Apocalypto and now Hacksaw Ridge.
GIBSON: I wanted to show people things they’ve never seen before, things I wanted to see and thought I could achieve. I figured even if I get halfway there it’s going to be OK.
DEADLINE: What war films were touchstones for you?
GIBSON: I like The Sands Of Iwo Jima. Did you ever see a film called Objective, Burma?
DEADLINE: No.
GIBSON: I love that film and its way of dealing with war in the Pacific, in hindsight. Things were heavily censored back then and you couldn’t show a lot of awful things, but it was kind of suggested. Raoul Walsh directed it and Errol Flynn parachutes into Japanese-occupied Burma in hopes of destroying a critical radar base. The mission is a success but the group reaches the air strip where they expect to find planes ready to fly them to safety. Walsh was one of the f*cking greats. He had an eye patch, like some kind of pirate. Walsh made some great movies. The choices he makes in Objective, Burma, they really horrify you about war, and this was in the ’50s.
REX/Shutterstock
DEADLINE: Andrew Garfield is best known for Spider-Man, but showed an empathy in films like Boy A. What put him on your radar?
GIBSON: The first time I saw Andrew was in The Social Network. I remember he was very minimal in what he did but very truthful and he could say little things with his eyes where you go, there’s a whole paragraph, which is pretty interesting. He’s a very good actor. The screen is really his medium. He’s not a muscle man, he’s just a regular guy. He seemed like the Desmond kind of guy. The other thing is, he looks younger than he is and I think he has the benefit of having more years under his belt than you can see.
DEADLINE: Why aren’t you in this, playing his father? I recall you played William Wallace only because you had to, to get it financed. You couldn’t get it done with your choice, Jason Patric. Weren’t you tempted here to play a strong role?
GIBSON: No. I wasn’t, once I saw Hugo Weaving. The guy killed me. I thought he was great. He became the obvious choice to do that part. You get somebody like Hugo you use that guy. I can’t do what he can do.
DEADLINE: Do you cast films you direct thinking, I’ll play this role if I don’t find the right guy?
GIBSON: Kind of. I don’t want to, because when you’re in something and you direct it, by the end of the shoot you’re in a strait jacket in a rubber room. Because the workload is too great. After Braveheart, I couldn’t even talk to anybody for a month. This, after 105 shooting days. I was just wrecked. You’re just in the editing room, numb.
DEADLINE: You said at times that you wanted to scale back your acting anyway. You just did Blood Father. You did Get The Gringo, Machete Kills, and The Expendables. What’s your ambition for acting?
GIBSON: I enjoyed those things, getting up there and doing it. I can do it. I’m reasonably proficient. Of course, my biggest interest is directing. I really love doing that the most. It’s the ultimate storytelling experience.
DEADLINE: But it’s been 10 years then, right?
GIBSON: Ten years since I directed. Something like that.
DEADLINE: Why the long time away from behind the camera?
GIBSON: You really want honesty?
DEADLINE: Of course.
GIBSON: I don’t know if I want this in print. You know why.
DEADLINE: But I’d like to know more about something that completely hindered your ability to be behind the camera and tell stories. I don’t think I saw a better movie in the calendar year when Apocalypto got released. I don’t think enough people gave it a chance, but wow, was that was an original piece of filmmaking. And then 10 years pass.
GIBSON: I’m extremely proud of that film and the reception it still gets to this day.
DEADLINE: I’m trying to think of a way for the readers of this interview, the industry, to know where is Mel Gibson at this point in his life?
GIBSON: I think if you make a film, your personality is sort of in the film, if it’s coherent and sticks together. I’ve done a lot of work on myself these last 10 years. I’ve deliberately kept a low profile. I didn’t want to just do the celebrity rehab thing for two weeks, declare myself cured and then screw up again. I think the best way somebody can show they’re sorry is to fix themselves and that’s what I’ve been doing and I’m just happy to be here. He who tries, gets. If you try, you get somewhere. I’ve got eight kids I love very much. They humble you. One of my sons got married a few weeks ago. One of my boys is in this movie. He plays one of the soldiers, the one with the Thompson gun.
DEADLINE: Which one? I think Andrew Garfield was the only one not holding a gun in this movie.
GIBSON: The Thompson gun is a Thompson machine gun and there’s only one guy using it in the show. The Thompson wasn’t as user-friendly on the battlefield as the grease guns they gave the sergeants.
DEADLINE: So your son got bit by the acting bug?
GIBSON: A little bit. He enjoyed himself. He played a guy called Lucky. You see him in the barracks reading a girlie magazine. That’s my number five son…I don’t think I answered your question very well, did I?
DEADLINE: When you find yourself in a situation like that…
GIBSON: Like what?
DEADLINE: When you come out the other side, what’s the big thing you learn about yourself when you have to go through this?
GIBSON: I’ve learned a lot of things, like phone etiquette…how to use my “indoor voice”…and if you’re going to drink, don’t talk. Have a designated talker. Nobody has ever said to a drunk person, “That’s a brilliant thought! You need to share that with the world!” Can we move on?
DEADLINE: Yeah, we can. You’re next going to star with Sean Penn in The Professor And The Madman. How did you find your way into that one?
GIBSON: That’s actually a book that was brought to us by Luc Besson, who said, English isn’t my first language, and this is about the English language. I read the book that he optioned and it seems like it’s going to be the driest matter on Earth, the Oxford English Dictionary, etymology, definition. But I started reading and couldn’t put it down. Then you hear the true story of the compilation of the greatest compendium of any language ever; no one’s got a dictionary like the OED. It took 70 years to do it because they didn’t have computers.
DEADLINE: A major contributor was confined to a mental institution. Sean Penn plays him?
GIBSON: He was an American. The interesting thing about the Oxford English Dictionary is that the two guys who probably contributed most to it, neither of them was English. One was a Scot called Dr. James Murray who was an autodidact, self taught, and he knew all about words. He knew Greek and Latin and he just knew the roots and origins of words. He was very scholarly. Oxford hired him for the mammoth, daunting task of putting out a companion of the English language, which had been attempted a few times by different people in other centuries. Samuel Johnson did one. I think he had a 40,000- or 60,000-word entry. The Oxford English Dictionary had a word entry of a half million.
DEADLINE: Is the message that the distance between genius and madness is razor thin?
GIBSON: That’s quite correct. James Murray was given the task but the man who helped him the most was a fellow he corresponded with, a doctor from an insane asylum. Murray wondered how a guy who worked as a doctor in this institution could possibly have the time to read as much and to contribute so much to the breaking down of words, their pronunciation, their etymology, their origins. How could this guy have been so prolific? So he finally goes up to visit him and he finds out he’s not a doctor working in the place. He’s an inmate. He was put into an institution for the criminally insane. He was rather an extraordinary character. He was a surgeon in the Civil War and he was sawing people’s legs off. He saw a lot and I think his mind walked away so he had some problems. He was suffering from PTSD. He thought someone was in his room one night and he grabbed his service revolver, ran out into the fog, and he shot the first guy he came in contact with, thinking he was someone else. It was just some guy hauling coal. So he realized he’d done the wrong thing and was very repentant. This was 1800s and they felt all these Americans have guns and they wanted to lynch him but realized he was insane. They put him into this place at his majesty’s pleasure for many years. He finally did get out when he was old. These two guys formed a good friendship and it’s a very interesting story. Sean always like this and we’ve been going back and forth for a couple years.
DEADLINE: What about that Viking epic?
GIBSON: That’s still lying around. Randall Wallace and I wrote that one. It’ll probably surface one of these days.
DEADLINE: Do you really see a sequel in The Passion Of The Christ?
GIBSON: That’s something we’re starting to talk about. Sort of a sequel, that moves on from the Resurrection, but jumps back before, after, back to the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a pre-figurement of everything and the New…you can correlate them in an uncanny way.
DEADLINE: Hollywood keeps trying to tap the faith-based audience that turned out for Passion Of The Christ. But these Biblical epics have largely failed to measure up, whether it was Exodus, Noah, or Ben-Hur, with its parallel story line dealing with Jesus Christ. What were they missing?
GIBSON: I don’t know. I never saw any of them so I honestly couldn’t tell you. I know that the audience didn’t respond to them on some level. I’d have to watch them all to really comment.
DEADLINE: They veered creatively from the Old and New Testaments. Exodus was pretty good, but Ridley Scott’s honesty about his own atheist beliefs probably didn’t help appeal to a potential audience of believers. His depiction of the Plagues was pretty cool, though.
GIBSON: You got to see the Plagues, the frogs and all that stuff? I’ve got to check it out. What else did they have? Flies?
DEADLINE: They had them, along with the bloody river, the locusts. Ridley Scott is good at that kind of stuff and it was touching when he dedicated the film to his brother, Tony Scott. It seemed like Ridley threw his grief into that ambitious movie. Everyone’s trying to hit that faith market, and it has proven elusive.
GIBSON: Randall Wallace did OK with his little $12 million movie, Heaven Is For Real. And TD Jakes had Miracles From Heaven. Randall and I are talking about [the Passion sequel]. It’s a pretty deep subject because you have to use what’s there and not stray too far away, but at the same time you have to use what you have juxtaposed against other things that are there to enlighten what’s there more, and to illustrate things that perhaps you never thought of before. It’s tricky but doable. If you could make something clear or make somebody realize something about what they thought they knew or have a more intense experience with it or find something surprising about it or another aspect of it that they never before considered, that’s pretty good. It’ll be a couple years away because it’s a big one. I’d like to direct it. There are so many ways into the subject of the Resurrection.
DEADLINE: What else has you excited?
GIBSON: There’s one for TV, The Barbary Coast. It’s kind of like a tabloid history written by a guy called Herbert Asbury back in the ’30s, about San Francisco from the days of the Gold Rush. Actually from when it was Mexico and then all of a sudden it wasn’t Mexico anymore and then gold was discovered. It spans from there, to the earthquake in 1906. It’s an amazing story that made Ancient Rome look tame. They called it the Barbary Coast because it was full of pirates and crime and gangsters, corruption and debauchery and greed. This free-for-all mud-wrestling match that got worse and worse and more extreme. When I say opium dens and murders and the worst kind of racism where people murdered Mexicans indiscriminately and got away with it or Chinese. It was the first Chinatown. It’s where the triads formed. It literally took an act of God to shut it down, with this earthquake.
DEADLINE: You are collaborating with Kurt Russell?
GIBSON: Kurt, Kate Hudson, and Kurt’s son Wyatt, and Oliver Hudson. I was telling my manager, Rick Nicita, about this obscure book I read that would really make a good film. He said I’ve heard of that book and I didn’t believe him. He said, Kurt was telling me about it. His kids brought him the book and he said why don’t you two guys get together. I worked with Kurt on Tequila Sunrise years ago, when we were both young fellows. I’m slightly younger than he is, I think. TV has become a whole different animal and pretty exciting. The way to tell a big story like Alexander the Great is on television, because it’s too big for two hours. There are many stories like that.
DEADLINE: You have other big stories like the Maccabees; will you move them to that format?
GIBSON: Well, initially with this book I was thinking an aspect of the book would be a good film and I still might do that. But the whole story is giant and the best way to tell it all is television. Mark Gordon has it and he’s with eOne. We don’t have a network yet but they’re out there. We’ll get it written, hopefully it will be compelling and I’ll direct some of them, maybe not all of them. There are other good directors out there. The Maccabees, that’ll get made one day too. It’s like the Viking thing, on a back burner, somewhere. It’s the best story in the Old Testament. Like a Western, but set in 175 BC. It’s just fantastic.
DEADLINE: That Viking film sounds pretty ambitious, too.
GIBSON: Well, nobody saw it. I see it. You can take a horse to water…
DEADLINE: Well, they didn’t see Passion either.
GIBSON: Or Apocalypto. There was a time I used to reach into my own pocket, but I’m not doing that anymore because you can get burned too easily. You can have a hit film and have all the screens yanked after a week, which happened on Apocalypto. In the words of a wise old accountant, OPD. What’s that? Other people’s dough. It’s not as lucrative if you win but you get to do it and you don’t have to walk home.
DEADLINE: When you look back on these movies like that, was The Bounty a good memory?
GIBSON: That was tough.
Orion Pictures
DEADLINE: Roger Donaldson has such a great cast. Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson, Laurence Olivier and Anthony Hopkins.
GIBSON: That was great. I was a kid, man, 27 years old and playing Fletcher Christian. It was pretty weird. It was an OK film. If you’ve got to make a choice of a direction in a film I think the best thing about it was what Tony Hopkins did. He played to the truth of who Captain Bligh was and it kind of exonerated Bligh because Bligh wasn’t really a bad guy.
DEADLINE: He came off as the villain.
GIBSON: In fact, Fletcher Christian was kind of a bad guy. I mean, you don’t set people adrift in a lifeboat to die like that. It wasn’t a good enough reason. Bligh and the other members of that crew hadn’t done anything to warrant that treatment. What they were trying to do was make Christian look like young, romantic hero guy and at the same time exonerate Bligh, but you couldn’t do both. I think it would have been more interesting to turn the story completely around so you couldn’t do both things to make Fletcher Christian the villain of the piece because that was the truth. He was kind of a villain. Bligh actually did something extraordinary. An open sea voyage without a compass and he found his way to where he was going. It’s an unequaled feat of seamanship to this day. He survived and kept everyone alive. Good in a crisis, this guy. He had one fault and it was that he was a perfectionist and he would be very harsh on people if they didn’t come up to their standard. So people copped a resentment toward him because he’d tell them off. But he was the captain. And he was vilified in the stories.Hundreds of thousands of Dublin Bus passengers are facing six days of disruption in September with staff set to stage a series of strikes.
Trade unions will today serve formal notice on the company of the planned stoppages, with the dispute believed to involve up to three strikes of 48-hours duration each next month.
More than 330,000 passengers use Dublin Bus services every day.
Five trade unions representing the 3,200 staff at the State-owned bus company met yesterday to consider a joint strategy for the forthcoming industrial action.
Formal notice
However, it is expected that the dispute will involve a series of strikes, each lasting a full two days.
Unions have to give the company seven days notice of strike action so any stoppages will not take place until the middle of next week at the earliest.
The industrial action comes after staff at the company rejected a Labour Court recommendation of pay increases of 8.2 per cent over three years.
Unions at the company are seeking increases of about 15 per cent over three years, dating back to January this year, as well as a 6 per cent rise originally due in 2009 under the former “Towards 2016” national agreement that was never paid.
However, bus drivers represented by the National Bus and Railworkers’ Union are looking for pay parity with drivers on the Luas light rail system, which could involve increases of up to 31 per cent.
Luas increases
Staff at Dublin Bus have argued that the Luas dispute revealed for the first time the pay gap that existed between them and workers in the privately operated light rail system.
The unions involved in the talks yesterday included Siptu, the National Bus and Railworkers’ Union, the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, Unite and the TEEU.
Minister for Transport Shane Ross expressed his disappointment at the outcome of the recent union ballots to reject the Labour Court pay recommendation and urged unions and management “to re-engage as soon as possible with a view to an early settlement”.The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Mar 9, 2013 10:00 PM
Sen. Kimberly Yee has become the go-to legislator for bills involving Arizona’s medical-marijuana law.
The Phoenix Republican is the primary sponsor of three measures this session that would tighten what members in the law-enforcement community have identified as loopholes in the 2010 voter-mandated law as well as pave the way for university researchers to study the effects of medical marijuana.
Her bills give direction to law enforcement on what to do with medical marijuana that is seized during a criminal investigation (destroy it) and would require manufacturers to put warning labels on edible medical-marijuana products — ice cream and candy, items attractive to children — similar to those on cigarettes.
We recently spoke with Yee about her work involving the medical-marijuana act. Here’s an edited excerpt:
Question: All of your bills to modify the medical-pot law have passed through the Senate and are advancing in the House, unlike a repeal measure that went nowhere. Does that say something about legislators’ acceptance of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act?
Answer: A small majority of voters passed this medical-marijuana act in 2010, so clearly it was the will of the voters to proceed with medical marijuana in this state. I believe it is the legislators’ role at this point to close any loopholes that they see in the measure, and so that’s what we’re doing here. It’s certainly not in the same path as (the) one person who sponsored the bill in repealing the act altogether.
Q: Some critics say medical marijuana is the |
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Be sure to whitelist any third-party alarm clock app you are using, or it will be prevented from waking up your device!Conservative blogger and radio host Erick Erickson wants you to know that he’s upset that “prosperity gospel” preacher Paula White is one of several religious figures who have been invited to say prayers at the upcoming inauguration festivities for Donald Trump.
Most people concerned about White’s appearance are criticizing her sleazy claims that people who give her money will magically receive divine blessings. That’s apparently not what really bothers Erickson, however. Instead, he’s concerned that she is a “trinity denying heretic” who allegedly doesn’t share the view of the divinity of Jesus that Erickson does.
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Erickson found an old video somewhere in the bowels of the internet in which White appears to say that all humans are “begotten” of God, just like Jesus Christ. Based on that, Erickson went into high-dudgeon mode over the possibility that Donald Trump, a man literally no one considers to be a devout Christian, might give incorrect spiritual guidance to the American people:
“The President of the United States putting a heretic on stage who claims to believe in Jesus, but does not really believe in Jesus, risks leading others astray,” Erickson wrote on his personal blog. “Trump letting this heretic pray in Jesus’s name should offend every Bible believing Christian.”
Lots of people are worried that Trump’s inexperience and bombastic behavior might lead to diplomatic disasters. Erickson is worried that Trump will literally send Americans to hell:
I’d rather a Hindu pray on Inauguration Day and not risk the souls of men, than one whose heresy lures in souls with promises of comfort only to damn them in eternity. At least no one would mistake a Hindu, a Buddhist, or an atheist with being a representative of Christ’s kingdom.
Erickson’s view that “heretic” Christians should be banned from public life is well within a longstanding and infamous tradition within the Religious Right.
Contrary to their many public pronouncements in favor of “religious liberty,” many Christian nationalists have shown that they are less interested in freedom and more interested in supremacy.
In recent years, several incidents have made this attitude crystal clear. Many of them involve followers of the Hindu tradition, the one which Erickson begrudgingly says would be OK with him.
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One such episode took place in 2000, when the U.S. House of Representatives invited a Hindu priest named Venkatachalapathi Samuldralato to deliver an opening prayer before its Sept. 14 session.
Such prayers, led by a wide variety of priests, ministers, rabbis, imams and other religious figures, are a daily routine in both houses of Congress. They are not mandatory and members rarely attend. Most Americans pay no attention to the invocations and they have never been a significant issue to the general public.
To some Christian nationalists, however, the idea of inviting a Hindu to pray before the Congress was a tremendous outrage.
The Family Research Council, which claims to support expressions of faith in the public square, condemned the prayer on its website:
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Our founders expected that Christianity — and no other religion — would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate people's consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference. Many people today confuse traditional Western religious tolerance with religious pluralism. […] As for our Hindu priest friend, the United States is a nation that has historically honored the One True God. Woe be to us on that day when we relegate Him to being merely one among countless other deities in the pantheon of theologies.
After the statement was picked up by the Associated Press, FRC mostly retracted it. The sentiment was certainly still resonant among certain people, however. About a month after the prayer, Timothy Lamer, managing editor of the Protestant magazine World, denounced the Hindu prayer as “infidelity in the public square” and claimed that “the U.S. House and Senate basically bowed down to Baal.”
For this alleged infraction, Lamer believed that “any congressman who is a professing Christian [who] took part in the service, the elders of his church should call him to repentance and, if he doesn’t repent, excommunicate him.”
Unlike FRC, Lamer never retracted his error-ridden piece— among other things, the Senate had nothing to do with the prayer — and the essay was still available on World’s website until a recent redesign rendered its URL into a dead end.
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Seven years after that episode, in 2007, Christian chauvinists once again displayed their intolerance for other faiths when the U.S. Senate invited a Hindu named Rajan Zed to open a session of the legislative chamber.
Most American Christians remained utterly unaware of his prayer but it incensed many of the same people as before, to an even greater degree.
The American Family Association — a fundamentalist Protestant political group many political junkies have never heard of, despite its $20 million annual budget and deep connections to high-level Republicans, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — urged its members to contact their senators and express their outrage at the “pagan ritual.” An AFA spokesman claimed that permitting a Hindu to pray in Congress might bring punishment from God upon the nation. Anti-gay and anti-abortion activist Janet Porter urged her radio listeners to express their outrage to senators about the “abomination.”
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Despite the protestations, the ceremony was not canceled. It did not go as planned, however, as three members of the audience decided to interrupt the invocation, with one shouting, “Lord Jesus, forgive us, Father, for allowing a prayer of the wicked which is an abomination in your sight!”
The protesters were removed and arrested. According to Zed, it was the first time in congressional history that a prayer had been interrupted by protests.
Sadly, the bigotry did not end after the prayer was over. In the ensuing days and weeks, several high-profile individuals and organizations continued to express their disapproval of the invocation. Bill Sali, then a Republican congressman from Idaho, claimed that Zed’s invocation “creates problems for the longevity of this country” since it alleged risked angering God. Former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, who is now a member of the Colorado House of Representatives, claimed that the “idolater” Zed had prayed to “millions of false gods” and that the protesters had demonstrated “spiritual courage.”
Not realizing that the Constitution makes no mention of gods of any kind and that Hindus acknowledge a single supreme being, AFA president Tim Wildmon claimed that “this fella does not even believe in one God, as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence speak of.” FRC also weighed in, saying it believed Zed should not have been permitted to pray in the Senate.
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Wiley Drake, former vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, defended the protesters, saying they “had no choice” but to protest the “ungodly” prayer. After trying to prevent the ceremony, Janet Porter blasted it as “state-sanctioned prayer to false gods” and praised the disruptors for having “boldly stood up.” Without a hint of irony, she proclaimed that “God and freedom [were] assaulted in the Senate."
In 2015, eight years after the U.S. Senate incident, Rajan Zed was once again targeted by Christian supremacists, this time in Idaho when a state senator named Steve Vick tried to stop him from delivering an invocation to the Boise legislature. Fortunately, Vick’s intolerance was ignored, although he was joined by two other fellow senators who refused to be in the chamber during Zed’s prayer.
One of the dissenting senators, Sheryl Nuxoll, was especially noxious in her refusal claiming that “Hindu is a false faith with false gods. I think it’s great that Hindu people can practice their religion but since we’re the Senate, we’re setting an example of what we, Idaho, believe.”
Despite receiving many calls for an apology for her disrespectful and unprofessional language, Nuxoll doubled down on bigotry, saying, “I felt I had to abstain, because I’m not going to be praying to false gods. … It is a Christian nation based on Christian principles.”
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Erickson’s fellow Religious Right warriors have also targeted Jews and other Christians as well. Even high-level party officials have been willing to do so. In 2010, a member of Texas' powerful State Republican Executive Committee wrote in a private email that he wanted to remove house speaker Joe Straus from his position, solely because Straus is Jewish.
"We elected a house with Christian, conservative values,” committee member John Cook said in an email to his colleagues. “We now want a true Christian, conservative running it."
According to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Christian denominations that believe in same-sex marriage can only “loosely” be described as being followers of Jesus. As such, he said, they are not entitled to the full protections of the First Amendment.
“Here’s a test of what is a true religious freedom,” he said on his radio show in 2014. “A freedom that’s based on orthodox religious viewpoints. It has to have a track record, it has to come forth from religious orthodoxy.”
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Perkins was replying to a caller who had asked him about a court case launched by some North Carolina ministers who were suing their state because it prohibited clergy from performing marriage ceremonies for couples who did not possess an official wedding certificate. North Carolina did not permit same-sex marriages at the time, and the ministers argued their freedom of religion was being infringed since they could not perform even unofficial lesbian or gay weddings. The plaintiffs won their case later that year but, according to Perkins, they should have been laughed out of court.
“They’re playing games here, trying to turn the effort that so many Americans are now faced with of preserving religious freedom,” he argued. “They’re now trying to do a jujitsu move and say, ‘We’re going to use religious freedom to say we have a right to do same-sex marriage.’ Well, there is no foundation for that. There is no orthodox Christian holding that has ever said marriage is between people of the same sex.”
Erick Erickson may indeed be correct that Paula White has a different view of the trinity than most Christians do. That's not why she shouldn't be strutting her stuff at the Trump inauguration, however. It's because she's a scammer who (like so many other "prosperity" preachers) takes advantage of legal loopholes to enrich herself.
The government has no business determining who is or isn't a "true Christian." Someone who wishes to be taken seriously as a political commentator shouldn't be in that business either.UP to 42 people were forced to sleep in a two bedroom house in Bradford after being brought into the country by a human trafficking gang, a trial has heard.
Leeds Crown Court was told how Mark Kovacs lived in the house in Rand Place, Bradford, and worked 11 hours a day for a bed company in Kirklees.
He was also expected to work for free at weekends doing house renovations, painting and gardening, from 9am to anything up to 6pm or 7pm, before he finally escaped “the clutches” of the organisation’s boss, a jury was told.
Ethical audits by a series of leading high street retailers failed to spot the bed supplier was employing a "slave workforce”.
Large numbers of Hungarian nationals were employed by Kozee Sleep which supplied firms including John Lewis, Next and Dunelm Mill, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Three men connected to the West Yorkshire business have gone on trial accused of people trafficking.
A jury has been told that the Hungarians were provided to Kozee Sleep by Janos Orsos and his people-trafficking organisation to work at the firm's factory in Dewsbury and its subsidiary, Layzee Sleep, in Batley.
Prosecutors said company owner Mohammed Rafiq and two other men who had positions within the firm - Mohammed Patel and Mohammed Dadhiwala - knew that workers supplied to them by Orsos were trafficked.
Christopher Tehrani QC, prosecuting, told the jury: "Kozee Sleep provided some of the UK's largest retailers with beds and mattresses either directly or through intermediary companies.
"These companies included Next Plc, the John Lewis Partnership and Dunelm Mill.
"As part of the contract, Kozee Sleep was required to adhere to each company's policies re ethical trading, which included how they treated persons who worked on their premises."
Mr Tehrani said each firm conducted regular ethical audits prior to May 2014 but he said: "Nothing untoward had been uncovered during those audits."
The prosecutor has told the jury: "The prosecution submit that the three defendants were involved with Janos Orsos and his human trafficking organisation to source them cheap slave labour to work at Kozee Sleep and Layzee Sleep factories.
"The prosecution case is that the three defendants were aware of the circumstances of the Hungarian nationals who were working at these sites and went along with their exploitation as a slave workforce for their own and others' gain."
Rafiq, 60, of Thorncliffe Road, Staincliffe, Patel, 40, of Carr Side Crescent, Batley, and Dadhiwala, 46, of Upper Mount Street, Batley Carr, all deny a single count of conspiracy to traffic individuals within the UK.
Mr Tehrani explained how workers brought to West Yorkshire from Hungary were normally given £10 a week and told they would get £1,000 after six months. They would also be given tobacco, food and accommodation.
The prosecutor said there was evidence Orsos was paid £3 a hour for the workers he provided - well below the minimum wage and normal agency rates for the area.
Mr Tehrani told the jury how Mark Kovacs came to the UK in January 2013 and was put in a two bedroom house in Rand Place, Bradford.
He said: "There were mattresses in every room. During the four months he lived in this property, Mr Kovacs estimates that between 25 and 42 people were living in the premises at any one time."
The prosecutor said he was later moved to a three bedroom flat in Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury, where, when he moved in, 30 people were living.
"He describes people sleeping anywhere they could - in beds, bunk-beds, on mattresses, on the table or on the floor," Mr Tehrani said.
He added: "The house was overcrowded."
Mr Tehrani said that as well as working 8am to 7pm weekdays at Kozee Sleep, he was also expected to work for free for Orsos at weekends doing house renovations, painting and gardening, from 9am to anything up to 6pm or 7pm.
He said Mr Kovacs "escaped Mr Orsos's clutches" with the help of a charity called Hope for Justice.
Another man, Robert Bodo, came to Batley from Hungary in January 2010 and was taken to live in a property in the town called Gothic House where 40 to 50 people were living and he shared a room with three others.
Mr Tehrani said inspectors found the house was in "a horrendous state".
When the authorities issued a prohibition notice on the house, Mr Bodo was moved, he said.
He told the jury how Mr Bodo was at Kozee Sleep for three-and-a-half years where he worked a minimum of 60 hours a week or he had to do extra work somewhere else.
The prosecutor said he was paid £10 every Friday by Orsos. When he found out Orsos was being paid £3 an hour by the firm, Mr Bodo tried to leave but "couldn't as Janos Orsos had his national insurance and bank card", the prosecutor said.
The trial, which is expected to last ten weeks, continues.According to a team of paleontologists from the United Kingdom and Japan led by Dr Haruyoshi Maeda of Kyushu University Museum, color vision evolved in animals as early as 300 million years ago (Carboniferous period).
Dr Maeda and his colleagues studied the tissues in the fossilized eye of a 300-million-year-old fish, named Acanthodes bridgei.
The specimen – an extinct species of fish that resembles a small shark – was uncovered from the Upper Carboniferous Hamilton Formation in Kansas, the United States.
It was scanned under an electron microscope and further chemical analysis on the fossil showed evidence of cone cells and rods in the retina.
“This fossil fish eye is the first evidence to suggest animals saw in color as early as 300 million years ago,” said Prof Andrew Parker of the Natural History Museum in London, who is a co-author of the paper published in the journal Nature Communications.
Parts of the visual system are not usually preserved in the fossil record because the soft tissue of the eye and brain decay rapidly after death.
“It is the first case of color vision in an ancient, extinct animal, proving color vision existed a long time before the Jurassic period,” Prof Parker said.
The retina of Acanthodes bridgei is very well preserved, enabling paleontologists to find the first record of cone cells and rods in animals.
Prof Parker added: “these are both in the retina of a modern human and animal eye to enable color vision.”
“We can now use these techniques to examine color pigments in other ancient animals, bringing us closer to the time when color vision first evolved.”
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Gengo Tanaka et al. 2014. Mineralized rods and cones suggest colour vision in a 300 Myr-old fossil fish. Nature Communications 5, article number: 5920; doi: 10.1038/ncomms6920As world leaders prepare to gather in Paris for a landmark climate summit, a new analysis from Stanford University and University of California researchers lays out roadmaps for 139 countries, including the world's major greenhouse gas emitters, to switch to 100 percent clean, renewable energy generated from wind, water and sunlight for all purposes by 2050.
Mark Z. Jacobson, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and director of the school's Atmosphere/EnergyProgram, said the roadmaps should give negotiators and leaders confidence that they can meet energy demands in all energy sectors—including electricity, transportation, heating and cooling, industry and agriculture—with clean sources.
“The main barriers to getting to 100 percent clean energy are social and political, not technical or economic," Jacobson told members of Congress and ambassadors from countries participating in the negotiations during a forum Thursday in Washington, DC.
All the roadmaps are available via an embeddable collection of interactive maps on The Solutions Project's website.
Jacobson and his colleagues found that future costs for producing clean energy are similar to a business-as-usual scenario of about 11 cents per kilowatt hour, similar to the average cost in America today. The air pollution and climate costs due to fossil fuels, however, are virtually eliminated by clean-energy technologies.
Overall, the analysis found, the business, health, plus climate costs of a 100 percent clean and renewable energy system were more than 60 percent lower than those of a business-as-usual system.
Switching to 100 percent clean energy would prevent four to seven million premature deaths each year globally from pollution associated with fossil fuels. By comparison, about six million people die prematurely each year from smoking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Globally, the transition to clean, renewable energy would create more than 20 million more jobs than would be lost in the transition. It would also stabilizeenergy costs, thanks to free fuels such as wind, water and the sun; reduce terrorism risk by distributing electricity generation; and eliminate the overwhelming majority of heat-trapping emissions that contribute to climate change.
The researchers also calculated that just 0.3 percent of the world's land footprint would have to be devoted to energy production under a 100 percentclean energy scenario. That is less than the size of Madagascar.
Jacobson and his colleagues are also slated to publish a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 23 which examines how to achieve reliability under a 100 percent clean energy scenario for the U.S.
The countries in the roadmap include the world's major emitters, and were selected based on available International Energy Agency data. Last week, the IEA's energy outlook concluded for the first time that renewables are already set to outpace coal as the world's leading source of electricity.
“The past few years have seen dramatic increases in the growth of renewable energy," Jacobson said. “Countries can ramp that up even faster and enjoy a host of economic and health benefits by doing so."
Earlier this month, National Geographic highlighted Jacobson's earlier research on clean energy roadmaps he drew up for all 50 U.S. states, calling the project a “blueprint for a carbon-free America." The magazine will highlight his new research on the 139 country roadmaps to clean energylater this month. The paper, along with underlying data and tables are available on Jacobson's faculty website. The analysis uses the same methodology as a previous study published in Energy and Environmental Science, and will be formally published in a journal next year.With the re-release of so much classic material from Wizards of the Coast like Dungeons of Dread S1-S4 and Against the Slave Lords A0-A4, as well as all the PDFs on DnDclassics.com it has never been easier to try your hand at classic adventures that helped establish the game and the hobby. My one issue with playing the classics is having to deal with all the quirks of 1e AD&D. I’d rather not have to deal with separate saves for Petrification, Spells, Wands, etc., descending AC, THAC0, and the like. It is no secret I’m a big fan of Dungeon Crawl Classics, which I feel combines the best of old school style with the benefit of picking and choosing the best mechanics of all the versions of D&D from the past 40 years.
My current mission is to convert S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth for DCC levels 4-5. I listened to the recent Spellburn Podcast (which you should definitely check out if you like DCC) and they mentioned that roughly 1 DCC level equals about 2 AD&D levels. Thus, with the original adventure for character levels 6-10, I think it should be a good match. My plan is to have the players start at 4th level, then level up to 5th when (if?) they reach the lower caverns. I also plan on having them start out with one +1 and one +2 item. Whether that item is a weapon/staff or armor is up to the player.
I can’t wait to use the very cool magic item creation tables in DCC for both wizard staffs and magic swords. To quote from the DCC RPG book for those unfamiliar, “There is no such thing as a ‘generic’ magic item. All magic items are unique.” When creating a magic item, you roll on a bunch of tables to determine its intelligence, alignment, motivations, banes, and special powers! I’ll also encourage the players to name their weapons and either create or roll back-stories (yes, there is a table for that) as to how they were created and previous owners, etc.
Here is a sample sword: Neutral Long Sword +2, Int 11, Empathic, 3 banes (Serpent – festering wound +1d6 dmg, +1d4 dmg next round, Undead – +1 Crit threat range, Giant – Unerring throw, can be thrown 60′, returns to hand, regular melee dmg), Special purposes – bring balance to a specific place – Live alone as a warrior-hermit, sheds light 20′ at-will, detects gems within 30′. Now THAT is a magic sword!
I think most monster and save conversion will be fairly easy. For converting descending ACs to ascending, I plan on subtracting 20 from the current AC and making the result positive, i.e. AC 4 becomes AC 16 (4-20= -16). Most saves seem somewhat arbitrary in AD&D (Ah yes, a rockslide. Save vs…..SPELL!?!) So for those I’ll just use what has become common practice in 3.5, Pathfinder, and 4e: Poison vs. Fortitude, Charm/Sleep vs. Will, Lightening/Fire vs. Reflex.
I can’t imagine how this was a tournament module, as the scope just seems daunting to try and accomplish in even an all-day session. For publication, Gary added a very detailed and sprawling wilderness section that was not included at the original Con version, but even still, he does advise this will “likely take several gaming sessions.” It will be a few weeks before we gather our band of treasure seekers and take a delve. Be sure and check back to see how it went!
AdvertisementsJohn Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, served as counselor to President Barack Obama and chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
MOREHEAD, Ky.
Weaving through the mountains on a cross-country road trip with my wife, I was quite surprised to discover that — at least according to President Trump — I am the talk of the Group of 20 meeting.
(Washington Post Live)
Trump tweeted : “Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!”
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Really? Everyone? I’ve been at my share of global summits, so I sort of doubt that. The world leaders certainly have more important topics to grapple with. To take one issue close to my heart: how to deal with the challenge of climate change now that the president has declared that the United States will be withdrawing from the Paris climate accord. Or how to deal with the leadership vacuum now that Trump has turned his back on our traditional allies in Europe and Asia.
On one level, the president’s tweet is so obviously wrong and so evidently self-serving that the temptation is simply to ignore it. But, because he is the president, his words warrant a response.
First, I had nothing to do with the Democratic National Committee — I chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. So there was no DNC server for me to refuse to give and I was never asked for one. Second, the CIA has no role in domestic intelligence-gathering — in fact, it’s prohibited. The CIA would never ask anyone at the DNC for a server. Whether the FBI asked the DNC for access to a server, I don’t know, beyond what I’ve read.
What I do know is this, which is why I’m choosing to respond to Trump’s tweet: The Russians stole my emails. When they did that, they committed a crime. They also invaded my privacy, and the privacy of a multitude of friends, family and colleagues with whom I communicated. That, combined with vicious lies spread by the alt-right media such as the so-called Comet Ping Pong What I do know is this, which is why I’m choosing to respond to Trump’s tweet: The Russians stole my emails. When they did that, they committed a crime. They also invaded my privacy, and the privacy of a multitude of friends, family and colleagues with whom I communicated. That, combined with vicious lies spread by the alt-right media such as the so-called Comet Ping Pong conspiracy, exposed them to potential harm, as was evidenced by the shooting at Comet. The crime the Russians committed, as the intelligence community has concluded, was for the purpose of helping Trump get elected president.
So the responsible thing for a U.S. president to do, in these circumstances, is to have the backbone to stand up against Russian interference in U.S. democracy — not to question, as Trump So the responsible thing for a U.S. president to do, in these circumstances, is to have the backbone to stand up against Russian interference in U.S. democracy — not to question, as Trump did on Thursday, the competence of our own intelligence community and to publicly doubt, once again, the conclusion that Russia was behind the hacking. Trump talks big on Twitter, but when he came face to face with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, we heard him say what an honor it was to meet him. It has been reported that Trump asked Putin about the election hacking, giving Putin the chance to issue an obligatory denial, despite all the evidence gathered by the U.S. intelligence community. One can only hope that Trump made clear to Putin that the United States won’t tolerate continued Russian interference in elections, as we’ve seen in the United States, France and now in Germany and across Europe. (This is one conversation that it would be nice to have a tape of.)
As president, Trump is supposed to be doing his job representing the United States in a respectable fashion to make sure we maintain and enhance our standing around the world. Instead, he has his face glued to his phone. It’s really sad that the U.S. president can’t get his head in the game even at the G-20 summit of world leaders.
God only knows what our president will be tweeting by the time my wife and I get to Utah.Taking the next crucial step in his gradual career rehabilitation, Mike Tyson will star in his own reality show for Animal Planet, Taking On Tyson, in which the former heavyweight boxing champion and convicted rapist shares his lifelong love of racing pigeons—or “mens’ [sic] first feathered friends,” as Tyson puts it, the sort of friends who don’t judge a man for being dangerously self-destructive or rapey—and remakes himself as a gentle, face-tattooed giant, who just happens to be mentally unstable and have difficulty relating to humans the way he does to birds. Premiering on March 6, the show will follow Tyson as he returns to his old Brooklyn neighborhood and trains pigeons for competition (hopefully by shouting inspirational maxims at them), but it’s also a look into Tyson’s “colorful past,” as he says, adding, “We go to some places in the past which are a pretty dark place for me.”
A self-defined “dark place” for Mike Tyson is objectively terrifying, considering, but anyone who’s seen James Toback’s Tyson already knows about his past as a shy adolescent whose violent streak was sparked when a neighborhood bully killed one of his pigeons in front of him, leading him to win his first fight, then use that memory as inspiration for every match after that, perhaps by imagining that every opponent was out to take his pigeons away. Of course, now Tyson’s got an all-new enemy out to stop him from enjoying his hobby, one he can’t just punch in the face: PETA, who protested the show when it was first announced back in July, saying it amounted to animal cruelty while also predicting that it would lead to a pigeon-collecting craze similar to the “101 Dalmatians syndrome,” where people would be so inspired by Mike Tyson’s example they would then begin casually acquiring their own pigeons as pets. Yeah, we wouldn’t worry so much about that last part.Nothing in Marvel comics is as vast and sprawling as the universe of the X-Men. What I’m trying to say is this reading order is immense (and stunningly impressive, likely created by a man of tremendous physical power). For those of you looking to catch up on X-Men comics from the 2000’s, or perhaps to get started for the first time after enjoying X-Men: The Animated Series as a lad/lass, this is the guide:
Index:
I) Classic X-Men – Chris Claremont Era Reading Order
Ii) Classic X-Men – Age of Apocalypse
Iii) Classic X-Men – Onslaught
II) Modern X-Men Events Fast Track
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III) Setting the Stage – Nov 1999 to June 2001
IV) New X-Men by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
V) Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon & John Cassaday
VI) Messiah CompleX and Hope
VII) Dark X-Men and Utopia
VIII) Second Coming to Schism
IX) Wolverine & The X-Men to Avengers vs. X-Men
X) Marvel NOW! X-Men
Before the Beginning – November 1999 through June 2001
For me, the logical starting point for a modern X-Men reading order is with Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. We’ll get there in a minute, but there are a handful of X-issues that you can read before New X-Men that will help set the stage for references to come.
X-Men vs. Apocalypse: The Twelve
Issues Included: Uncanny X-Men #376-#377, Cable #73 – #77, X-Men #96 – #97, Wolverine #145 – #147
It’s worth noting here, these first two selections fit most appropriately within our full Apocalypse reading order.
X-Men vs Apocalypse: The Ages of Apocalypse
Issues Included: X-51 #8, Uncanny X-Men #378 and Annual 1999, Cable #77, Wolverine #148, X-Men Unlimited #26, X-Men #98, and X-Men: The Search for Cyclops #1-4. (The Search for Cyclops issues are the ones most referenced by Morrison)
Uncanny X-Men #388 – #390
The events of ‘X-Men: Dream’s End’ will play an important role in Joss Whedon’s upcoming Astonishing X-Men. You can also add issues Cable #87, Bishop #16 and X-Men #108-110 for the full experience.
Note that “Dream’s End” is diving in head first to the tail end of 90’s X-Men that is hot on the heels of the Onslaught Saga.
Uncanny X-Men #394 – #399
From this point forward Uncanny X-Men, Marvel’s flagship X-book, takes a back seat to the ‘New X-Men.’ You can approach this revelation in a few ways, one of which is to just bypass Uncanny X-Men all together. This is my recommended approach for anyone feeling a bit overwhelmed by the volume of all these X-options. Note, though, that a fair amount of questions can be answered during this period of Uncanny X-Men, such as “When did Juggernaut become a good guy?” and “When did Iceman get so frigid?”
New X-Men by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely – July 2001 through May 2004
Grant Morrison is likely the second most critically revered and influential comic book author of the last 35 years, trailing only Alan Moore in terms of recognition and output. While his Big 2 superhero work has been primarily with DC Comics (including Animal Man, The Doom Patrol, All-Star Superman with Quitely, and Batman: Arkham Asylum ), for a three year stint Marvel was able to convince the legend to revamp the X-Men.
And revamp them he did.
Along with Quitely’s design, New X-Men refreshes everything about Marvel’s favorite mutants. The core characters and stories presented in the pages of New X-Men set the stage for all X-stories through today.
New X-Men, Vol. 1 – #114 to #126 + Annual #1
New X-Men, Vol. 2 – #127 to #141
New X-Men, Vol. 3 – #142 to #154
Issue by Issue Reading Order:
New X-Men #114 – #117 + Annual #1 + #118 – #133
Uncanny X-Men issues #400 – #415 occur during this same timeframe
Buy New X-Men Omnibus
X-Force #116 – #129 + X-Statix #1 – #26
Technically this X-Force series (retitled X-Statix after issue #129) occurs over a longer timespan, intersecting chronologically with New X-Men. That said, once you know the state of Morrison’s New X-Men you can largely read Milligan and Allred’s X-Statix all the way through. It’s one of my favorite Marvel comics series of all time. Not your father’s X-Men, but peripheral to that world.
Buy X-Statix Omnibus
Read X-Force #116 – #129
Origin #1 – #6
This is the long awaited origin of Wolverine.
Read Origin
Emma Frost #1 – #18
Emma’s first (and to my knowledge only) solo series, predominantly composed of flashbacks. Underrated early 2000’s comic expanding on the upbringing of the New X-Men’s most interesting addition.
Read Emma Frost (2001)
New X-Men #134 – #145
Uncanny X-Men issues #416 – #434 occur during this same timeframe
Wolverine #1 – #6 begins here
I won’t tell you how to live your life, but when Greg Rucka writes a comic, that’s typically a book you want to be reading, and the relaunched Wolverine is no exception.
Weapon X #1 – #13 + Weapon X One-Shots (Kane, Marrow, Sauron, Wild Child, Zero)
Read Weapon X (2002)
New X-Men #146 – #154
Uncanny X-Men issues #435 – 443
Wolverine #7 – #19
Weapon X #14 – #28
Mystique #1 – #13 (Brian K. Vaughn)
As suggested a moment ago with Greg Rucka and Wolverine, when Brian K. Vaughn is writing a Marvel Comic, that’s a book you probably want to check out. His thirteen issue run on Mystique is less clever and celebrated than, say, Runaways, but it’s still worth a read.
Read Mystique (2003)
Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon & John Cassaday – July 2004 through March 2008
Following Morrison and Quitely’s magnum opus, the go-to X-title shifted from New X-Men to Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. You may recognize Whedon from such works as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and a little movie known as The Avengers. His 25 issues on X-men with Cassaday are arguably the greatest X-Men comics of the decade. Very arguably, but still, arguably. You can read the story straight through without continuity interruptions, but I include the various chronology of other books for reference.
Interspersed with all that you’ll find that Marvel’s era of events begins to impact the world of mutants in increasingly meaningful ways. From House of |
course, for the big-money races, that feature disappears. For those of us who don't mind taking slightly longer to level up, it's a godsend.
Badly spaced check points are another easy way of booting the player out. As I found, oftentimes you'll simply not want to redo a section of the game that you didn't find enjoyable, especially when you had assumed you had bested that particular section of the game. You can alleviate this problem by saving more often, but you shouldn't have to; badly placed checkpoints are insanely obvious when they occur. After a big set piece, the game should auto-save. The quiet after a long firefight? Autosave. Progressing through a Bioware-style RPG, you know where the "beats" are, and this sort of annoyance at having to replay a long stretch of grinding game play is hard to excuse.
It's bad when you quit for the night; it's even worse when the game goes back onto the shelf, never to be finished.
It's not that games should be made easier, or the player given more tools to "cheat" or squeak through—the best games still provide a thrill when you finally best a challenging area—it's more like there should be much more attention paid to the moment when a player goes from "one more round" to "okay, time for bed." The best games understand this balancing act, and those are the titles that rob our sleep and haunt our dreams. The games fail when we sigh and turn the console off, suddenly losing interest in seeing where the story would have taken us.
So I ask you: what takes you from thinking you can give a game another hour or two to quitting for the night? What makes you walk away from an otherwise good game completely, and how should it be fixed? The best games are the ones we finish because we never hit these snags, but those are few and far between. What games handle this challenge well? I'm interested in your thoughts.Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak will not be named in the United States Justice Department's forfeiture complaint, US-based publication The New York Times reported today.
However, the department is expected to name his step-son, Hollywood film producer Riza Aziz, as well as controversial businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, in the complaint.
A former International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) executive, the United Arab Emirates-based Khadem Al Qubaisi, will also be named in the complaint, according to NYT.
The US government reportedly plans to move and seize more than US$1 billion in assets purchased with money that people close to Najib reportedly “stole” from his brainchild, Malaysian strategic investment fund 1MDB.
The assets are in the form of real estate, art and other luxury goods and the forfeiture complaint is to be issued by the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative unit, NYT reported.
This is said to be the largest such case brought by the Justice Department, it added.
Although the Kleptocracy unit usually seizes assets rather than charge individuals, the report said an asset complaint does not preclude possible criminal charges.
NYT said it could not immediately obtain comment from Riza, Jho Low or Khadem.
The influential New York-based newspaper reported that about US$150 million worth of purchases of residential properties in New York and Los Angeles, as well as several works of art, were made through shell companies.
Malaysiakini cannot independently verify the NYT report, and is attempting to contact 1MDB for its response.
A response has also been sought from the US Justice Department and the Prime Minister's Office.
Earlier today, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Justice Department is expected to act to seize assets linked to 1MDB in what the report states is the largest asset seizure in US history.
The US Justice Department's lawsuits state that more than US$3.5 billion was misappropriated, Reuters reported.
The lawsuits seek to seize assets "involved in and traceable to an international conspiracy to launder money misappropriated from 1MDB", the newswire reported.
Related stories
Riza Aziz, Jho Low and 2 others named in US Justice Dept lawsuit
Dr M: Set up tribunal, invite foreign judges to hear 1MDB case
DIGP mum on 1MDB probe, passes buck to top cop
US expected to seize 1MDB-linked assets, possibly biggest in history
To save Malaysia or to throw Najib out?The 1988 Maldives coup d'état was the attempt by a group of Maldivians led by Abdullah Luthufi and assisted by armed mercenaries of a Tamil secessionist organisation from Sri Lanka, the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), to overthrow the government in the island republic of Maldives. The coup d'état failed due to the intervention of the Indian Army, whose military operations efforts were code-named Operation Cactus by the Indian Armed Forces.
Prelude [ edit ]
Whereas the 1980 and 1983 coup d'état attempts against Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's presidency were not considered serious, the third coup d'état attempt in November 1988 alarmed the international community[who?]. About 80 armed PLOTE mercenaries[1] landed in the capital Malé before dawn aboard speedboats from a freighter. Disguised as visitors, a similar number had already infiltrated Malé earlier. The mercenaries quickly gained control of the capital, including the major government buildings, airport, port and television and radio stations. However, they failed to capture President Gayoom, who fled from house to house and asked for military intervention from India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi immediately dispatched 1,600 troops by air to restore order in Malé.[2]
Operation Cactus [ edit ]
According to Rejaul Karim Laskar, a scholar of Indian foreign policy, India's intervention in the attempted coup became necessary as in the absence of Indian intervention, external powers would have been tempted to intervene or even to establish bases in Maldives which being in India’s backyard would have been detrimental to India’s national interest.[3] India, therefore, intervened with “Operation Cactus”.
The operation started on the night of 3 November 1988, when Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft of the Indian Air Force airlifted the elements of the 50th Independent Parachute Brigade, commanded by Brig Farukh Bulsara, the 6th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, and, the 17th Parachute Field Regiment from Agra Air Force Station and flew them non-stop over 2,000 kilometres (1,240 mi) to land them over the Malé International Airport on Hulhule Island. The Indian Army paratroopers arrived on Hulhule in nine hours after the appeal from President Gayoom.[2][4]
The Indian paratroopers immediately secured the airfield, crossed over to Male using commandeered boats and rescued President Gayoom. The paratroopers restored control of the capital to President Gayoom's government within hours. Some of the mercenaries fled toward Sri Lanka in a hijacked freighter. Those unable to reach the ship in time were quickly rounded up and handed over to the Maldives government. Nineteen people reportedly died in the fighting, most of them mercenaries. The dead included two hostages killed by the mercenaries. The Indian Navy frigates Godavari and Betwa intercepted the freighter off the Sri Lankan coast, and captured the mercenaries. Swift operation by the military and precise intelligence information successfully quelled the attempted coup d'état in the island nation.[5]
Reaction [ edit ]
India received international praise for the operation. United States President Ronald Reagan expressed his appreciation for India's action, calling it "a valuable contribution to regional stability". British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly commented, ‘"Thank God for India: President Gayoom's government has been saved". But the intervention nevertheless caused some disquiet among India's neighbours in South Asia.[6]
Aftermath [ edit ]
In July 1989, India repatriated the mercenaries captured on board the hijacked freighter to Maldives to stand trial. President Gayoom commuted the death sentences passed against them to life imprisonment under Indian pressure.[7]
The 1988 coup d'état had been headed by a once prominent Maldivian businessperson named Abdullah Luthufi, who was operating a farm on Sri Lanka. Former Maldivian President Ibrahim Nasir was accused, but denied any involvement in the coup d'état. In fact, in July 1990, President Gayoom officially pardoned Nasir in absentia in recognition of his role in obtaining Maldives' independence.[5]
The operation also strengthened Indo-Maldivian relations as a result of the successful restoration of the Gayoom government.
Published accounts [ edit ]
Documentaries [ edit ]
Operation Cactus : How India Averted Maldives Crisis in 1988 (2018) is a TV documentary which premièred on Veer by Discovery Channel series, Battle Ops.[8]
See also [ edit ]When many people think of the word “entrepreneurship”, the same faces spring to mind. The big hitting innovators, inventors or business people who have made millions and found fame through business enterprise. Bill Gates, Richard Branson. Donald Trump. And, in more recent years, people like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Inspiring as a lot of these people are, though, they are just the top of the tree, and in fact anybody who sets out with an idea, innovation or just some great business acumen to take control of their own success can be considered an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship is an art that involves making money by being resourceful, smart, creative and ambitious. This art has led to the creation of new organizations and even the complete makeover of many existing businesses.
Entrepreneurs are people who love to think outside of the box to be successful. With a desire to be in control of their own matter, entrepreneurs get results from anything they do and every journey they set forth Entrepreneurs are thus different from the average businessman. They make full use of modern technology and market trends to become exceptional.
Do you need a Special Genetic Code for Entrepreneurship?
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Becoming an entrepreneur might seem like the best idea from far away but if you take a closer look, you will see that being an entrepreneur is not as easy as it seems. It requires a mix of creativity and passion with just a hint of leadership and business discipline in order to be great.
A lot of research has been done to find out if entrepreneurs have a specific gene that makes them who they are. Although there are certain shared traits that have been discovered, there they are not enough to prove that entrepreneurs have a special gene that makes them who they are. Of course there are many factors that make them who they are but if people thought it was genetics, think again.
Entrepreneurs Are Opportunists Businesses usually face problems every day. This is due to the external environment. Most usually ride this “wave” and endure. They try to brace the company for what is to come rather than finding a way out or better, finding opportunities. Entrepreneurs are such that they find opportunities that others would not find. They find solutions that others can’t create. They always find a silver lining and hence make some good out of chaos.
Entrepreneurs Are Ready To Take the Plunge The management expert, Peter Drucker, and the economist Frank Knight, both believe that entrepreneurs are daring people who are willing to take the plunge whenever they even a little bit of an opportunity. Taking risks to make a profit proves to be better than enduring the chaos in most cases. Successful entrepreneurs know how to take risks and learn from any failures.
Entrepreneurs Have the ‘Just Do It’ Attitude Passionate entrepreneurs are always in control of any situation. By taking risks and seizing opportunities, entrepreneurs are quite practically go-getters with a ‘Just Do It’ attitude. It is this attitude that enables them to make a profit from their ideas. They rarely listen to the idea of people who say “it’s a bad idea”. They control what they want to and do what they feel is right. In the end, they “just do it”.
Entrepreneurs Sketch their own Vision Everybody has ideas and it’s not a bad thing. However, ideas are no longer what set people apart but rather the ability to decide what is a good and bad idea. Smart entrepreneurs however know that once you have a good idea, you need to make it real despite anything. Entrepreneurs that become leaders are such that they bring out the best in the people around them and make them work both smarter and harder.
Taking on the Entrepreneurship Challenge
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Some entrepreneurs seem to have dropped out of college to start out their own successful business -Bill Gates of Microsoft or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook are prime examples. A survey done by Ernest and Young, shows that most entrepreneurs usually start their journey at a young age.
From being bossed around to being the boss; that is the aim of an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs can be classified into three categories:
Those who dream of an idea and creates concepts Those who pick up new concepts from others and make a profit from them Those who create new concepts and make a profit from them
Building a Reliable Team
Entrepreneurs know that if you want to be successful, you need to find the right people. They know that you need to find people who share the same ideas as you and can pitch in to the development of the idea. Entrepreneurs can easily create a reliable team with people who share similar traits.
Entrepreneurs may be thought of as people who do not conform to anything, but that does not mean they can work without a team. With their leadership qualities, they can influence and direct others. They inspire confidence by encouraging creativity among their team members rather than criticizing them.
Dig Deeper and Exploit the Market
You will often see potential entrepreneurs thinking and pondering about ways to make an idea work. They think about the current market and how to make the most out of it. They know that they can create, modify or extend a product to make a lot of profit. Henry Ford was one such entrepreneur who saw the market and created affordable automobiles.
Not only did he create a new market but he was also one of the first people to introduce the assembly line production system that you see in every factory today.
Build Your Own Organizational Culture
You cannot cage passionate entrepreneurs. They just won’t use traditional ways of thinking in commerce nor will they “follow the leader”. They will take their ideas and qualities and take the world head on. They create their own culture and value system that shows the world who they are and what their aim is. This fact can be seen in their decisions and in the team that they make.
Entrepreneurs – They either stick with it or experiment
After the initial success, entrepreneurs either grow old with their company or they start another venture. Young entrepreneurs generally tend to experiment with their ideas and try to make their next big idea, the next big thing. They start a company and sell it – making huge profits as they go along.
You can either play it safe and choose to be bossed around, or you can let your ideas make you money. The choice of being the entrepreneur is up to you.
The importance of entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is hugely important to the advancement and stability of civilized society. This is not just because it has given us all of the significant inventions and ideas we now rely on, but because it is part of the fabric of communities. Imagine a town where nobody ever started a business. It would have nothing interesting to offer at all! In the current economic climate entrepreneurship is even more important, because it will take enterprise and innovative thinking to revive the economy and create jobs.
The current rise of entrepreneurship
With economic times tough, many people are finding themselves disillusioned with the idea of doing a job for someone else. The lack of security in the current climate leaves many professionals changing employer every couple of years, and feeling increasingly less loyal to the businesses they work for. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that over the past few years there has been an increasing interest in entrepreneurship and business. TV shows like Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice (which focus on invention and business skills) are hugely popular, and books and websites offering advice to would be business owners are everywhere. More and more talented people are deciding to take the plunge and launch a business rather than sticking it out in the employment jungle, and business is becoming an ever more attractive option to younger people starting out.
Technology and entrepreneurship
As well as the economic and social reasons why entrepreneurship is growing in appeal, modern technology has opened up new opportunities to would be entrepreneurs and made it easier for them to execute their ideas. In the age of social media and mobile internet, businesses can now support their marketing and productivity with technology in ways previously not possible (or prohibitively expensive), allowing entrepreneurs to support all kinds of enterprises. Because mobile and home working are now both easy and commonplace, and communication on a global basis is simple and often free, start up businesses can operate with very low overheads, making certain types of businesses accessible and viable for people with very little capital.
Types of entrepreneurs
Innovators and inventors
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There are several different styles of entrepreneurship, and the one that has probably the biggest impact on the world we live in comes from the innovators and inventors. While the most successful of these also have to demonstrate impressive business sense to make their products and ideas household names, the real value to what they do is in what they sell, and not how they sell it. These people range from the people who conceive of all those quirky “As Seen on TV” products to the late Steve Jobs.
Business moguls
Other entrepreneurs take ideas that already exist, and use their business skills to make them successful. On the top end of the scale, this would be people like Branson, Trump and Hilton, who certainly didn’t invent the ideas of hotels, casinos, airlines or anything else they have in their respective empires, but who have made themselves big names and plenty of money out of running them through great entrepreneurship. The majority of entrepreneurs you meet in the “real world” also fall into this category. It is worth noting however, that the most successful of these, while they do not come up with an entirely new product or business model, tend to still be innovative in their thinking, coming up with new ways to promote what they do and maximize profit.
Funding and support for would be entrepreneurs
Launching a new venture can be a huge challenge, and even the greatest entrepreneurs had to start somewhere, with that first successful enterprise. For this reason, there is a variety of support available for people looking to start a business, both in terms of financial help and softer resources. Ways of getting funding for a venture vary from conventional business loans, usually obtained from a bank on presentation of a viable business plan, through to capital obtained from private funds in return for a share of the business (usually termed venture capitalism). Often when a business is funded by investors in this way they bring other things to the table, along with the cash. This can include new contacts, or guidance from more experienced business professionals.
Education and entrepreneurship
Some entrepreneurs start out straight from school, having decided that business was the path for them early on. It is frequently pointed out that many of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs either never attended or dropped out of college without graduating. This makes some sense, because without potential employers to impress with their qualifications, many of these people felt it made more sense for them to start young and get on with the process of making money, rather than studying. It can still be beneficial for young would be entrepreneurs to further their education, given that a strong background in business and financial skills (or technical skills in certain areas) can prove essential, so many colleges do provide courses specifically for those interested in entrepreneurship. These can provide good opportunities to get advice from experienced entrepreneurs and make new contacts as well as passing on invaluable skills, so can be a great option for would be entrepreneurs who want to “learn the ropes”.
Entrepreneurship is one of the most important and interesting areas of modern business, and has turned some of the most unlikely seeming people into successful household names. It is no surprise that more and more people from all different backgrounds are considering a career as an entrepreneur, and with modern technology and the support available, there is plenty of opportunity for those with the right skills and ideas to succeed in entrepreneurship.
[ois skin=”Free Report”]There was some bafflement in Tottenham’s decision to replace their relatively successful manager Harry Redknapp with Andre Villas Boas this summer. Redknapp had won close to 50% of his games at Tottenham and led them to fourth spot in the Premiership twice during his tenure while Villas Boas was coming out of a difficult time at Chelsea amid reports of player unrest.
Worries were not so much because people thought Villas Boas was a bad manager; he won the Portuguese and Europa League with Porto and Roberto Di Matteo never quite brought more consistent results with Chelsea than the Portuguese manager. In the 2011/12 season Villas Boas’ Chelsea averaged 1.7 points per game while Di Matteo only achieved 1.5, although that is forgotten about when considering the Italian won the club’s first European Cup.
Where some people thought Villas Boas would struggle was in a man-management capacity. He tried to instill a new playing philosophy very quickly and managed to irk several senior members of the squad. Tottenham, having been drilled the same way under the same manager for several years, could have presented a similar problem.
However by all accounts Villas Boas seems to have learnt from his earlier missteps, making only minor tweaks to how Tottenham play and trying to implement an overhaul in a more gradual way. Doubtless more change will come slowly as transfer windows pass and more of Villas Boas’ preferred players arrive (such as Joao Moutinho and Lewis Holtby).
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As the statistics above show, Villas Boas has cast aside his reputation for being tactically inflexible, managing to actually marginally improve Tottenham through this transition period while also having to deal with the loss of his best player, Luka Modric, to Real Madrid.
His high line and pressing was thought to be too much for an aging Spur’s back line in much the same way as it was too much for Chelsea’s but Villas Boas has reigned in that aspect of his plan while bringing through more athletic defenders in Jan Vertonghen and Steven Caulker. Spurs don’t operate a more frantic defense, tackling and intercepting at pretty much the same rate as they did under Redknapp, which allows aging defenders such as William Gallas to still have a valuable role to play.
In fact, Villas Boas has modified his normally possession heavy strategy to take advantage of Tottenham’s pace and trickery on both flanks. The one real change from Redknapp’s time is the amount of passes played per match, especially in the final third. Now Spurs are using tricky players such as Gylfi Siggurdson and Moussa Dembele to penetrate rather than calmly switching play from side to side with Luka Modric. As Michael Cox points out, now Aaron Lennon and Gareth Bale are expected to make runs behind the defense on the break rather than beat their man and put in a cross. Bale, in fact, is in the best goal scoring form of his career, already matching his career high in the league with 18 games yet to play.
It’s only been 21 league matches but in his fledgling Tottenham career Villas Boas has shown some important things. He hasn’t been wedded to a 4-3-3, ready to stick somewhat to formations that his players had become accustomed to with a 4-2-3-1/4-4-1-1 with Clint Dempsey dropping off. He’s learned from his mistakes at Chelsea and avoided alienating senior figures in the Spurs camp. And in a refreshing change of pace from Harry Redknapp he’s taken all competitions that Tottenham compete in very seriously. Spurs have tried hard in the Europa League, rarely resting the majority of their regular starters, and look serious contenders to progress far in the competition. Not only does this instill a winning mentality in the squad but more importantly it gets first-team players used to working under a new manager. In any club, it takes time for players to truly become adept at their new roles under new management, and more serious games can only help the process.Editor’s Note: We’re updating this story to correct the name of the victim and other details initially provided by the Mabini police.
BATANGAS CITY–The body of a call center senior manager, who went missing while scuba diving on Sunday morning, was retrieved in the waters off Mabini town in Batangas province on Monday, police said.
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Chief Insp. Arturo Divino, Mabini police chief, said a team of policemen, Philippine Coast Guard personnel and Bantay Dagat (sea patrol) members found the body of Agnes Maria San Pedro, a senior manager for training and development of a business process outsourcing firm in Metro Manila, at 10:30 a.m. in the village of Mainit.
Reports from the police and friends and relatives of the victim, said San Pedro joined a group of eight divers, including their dive instructor, at 11 a.m. and descended 29 meters deep.
After about 30 minutes, Divino said the instructor signaled the divers that they needed to return to their boat but San Pedro failed to follow.
The dive instructor, police said, immediately sought the local Bantay Dagat and reported that San Pedro went missing, leading to a search.
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A single mother who suffered with depression was “unlawfully” sent to jail after she was unable to pay her council tax debt.
Melanie Woolcock, from Porthcawl, was sentenced to 81 days in prison after falling behind on her council tax payments when she became unemployed from her part-time job in a sports shop.
After being sentenced at Bridgend Magistrates’ Court she spent 40 days in jail before she was released on bail.
But on Wednesday, the High Court ruled her committal to prison was unlawful and that magistrates had failed to asses her financial means and had no basis for concluding her failure to pay was because of culpable neglect.
Ms Woolcock, who lived with her 17-year-old son, failed to make council tax payments of £10 a week - which amounted to a total of around £4,700.
She prioritised paying rent, bills and food
In a court statement she explained she had struggled to make the payments because she prioritised paying rent, gas, electric and buying food.
A handwritten note from a court hearing states she “suffered with depression”, was a “single parent with very limited means” and was “not well enough to work”.
She did make payments of £10 a week - £5 for each of the two properties she occupied, in Precinct Rest Bay and Seagull Close in Porthcawl - for some months but then fell behind.
In August last year she paid £100 towards the outstanding debt but bailiffs explained the payment was “too late” as the warrant for committal had already been issued.
She was arrested at her home and had to phone her mother to ask her to look after her son before she was taken to Eastwood prison.
She served 40 days behind bars before she was finally released on bail.
Around 100 people are jailed every year for not paying council tax
The Centre for Criminal Appeals is now preparing a judicial review of the system, which sees people committed to prison for not paying their council tax.
Each year around 100 people are imprisoned for not paying their council tax, according to figures supplied by the Ministry of Justice.
And research by the Centre for Criminal Appeals shows almost all cases have been found to be unlawful when reviewed by the High Court.
Helen Ball, a volunteer researcher at the Centre, has identified and reviewed 145 cases since 1980 where a person’s committal to prison for non-payment of dues such as fines, council tax and the community charge has been ruled unlawful in the High Court.
She said: “In these cases, magistrates have often incorrectly concluded that there’s been culpable neglect or a wilful refusal to pay. Moreover, magistrates have regularly failed to properly assess a person’s ability to pay and to consider reasonable alternatives to prison.”
Suzanne Gower, Managing Director of the Centre, added: “I’m pleased that the High Court has ruled that sending this single mother to prison because of her inability to pay council tax was unlawful. It is truly shocking that in the 21st Century over 100 vulnerable people are being imprisoned each year for being poor.
“I hope the Government will work with us to put an end to similar cases. The current system is Dickensian and benefits no one.”Earlier this year, in the midst of reading over some statistics about how violent imagery in games affects players, I found myself wondering how they affect the people who make them.
We regularly celebrate the artists and animators who pepper games with the lovely and the magnificent; I rarely hear much about the people who spend their days creating the gruesome, disgusting, and just plain gross aspects of contemporary games.
I’m not just thinking of horror games here -- developing even an austere sci-fi shooter like Halo requires that some folks on the team spend significant amounts of time poring over pretty gruesome reference material in order to create disquieting monsters and levels.
To do their jobs well, some developers spend a surprising amount of time studying disgusting material for their day job; they’re rarely celebrated, and it’s even rarer that they talk openly about how their work affects them personally. While I don’t have any meaningful stats to share on this topic, I do have some stories to share that help shed some light on what it can be like to be an artist or animator assigned to viscera detail on a big project.
Vic DeLeon, long-time Halo artist
"What I thought was neat at first really came to bear down on me."
Former Halo artist Vic DeLeon has seen some of the more gruesome aspects of his day job spill over into his personal life. While working on Halo 3 as an environment artist, DeLeon found himself tasked with helping to create a level in which players explore a Covenant ship infested by the parasitic Flood (two such levels would make it into the final game).
"I took two weeks to gather a bunch of different reference images: scientific stuff, biological stuff, a lot of just really gross stuff,” recalls DeLeon. "We wanted a lot of long stringy tunnels, and I'd gotten the idea of looking at colonoscopy videos for reference. So I was watching all these colonoscopy videos to get ideas on what I could do to mimic their style, that feeling of being inside something."
The Flood-infested "Cortana" level from Halo 3
DeLeon didn’t stop there, either; the former Halo dev says he started studying images of tumors and other lesions in order to get an idea of how to texture and sculpt in-game surfaces, then took a “deep dive” into mycology reports to study the grossest mushrooms and slime molds he could find.
“I remember looking at different types of gross biological things and saying ‘Okay, we can integrate this, and that...but not that,’ and then later in the day I would suddenly start thinking about these super-gross images, just...out of nowhere,” says DeLeon. “My tolerance is pretty high, but I would still, all of a sudden, just be overcome with nausea. It was a rough couple of weeks.”
Like other artists I’ve spoken to, DeLeon says he was surprised at how studying this sort of repugnant reference material led to a change in his mental state. Despite feeling like he has a higher-than-average tolerance for disgusting images (“I was a bio major in college”), the artist found these images seeping into his day-to-day life.
“They’d come up when I was least expecting it. Something would just pop into my head -- an image or something -- and for a while there I felt...I wouldn’t say traumatized, but haunted, like when you’re a kid and you see something really disgusting or gory or scary in a movie,” says DeLeon. “I started associating that level with feeling disgusting. Once it was built it took months and months of polishing, and in those months I couldn’t wait to work on something else. The level was so disgusting, and what I thought was neat at first really came to bear down on me.”
DeLeon’s fellow developers weren’t unsympathetic, either, though they eventually also learned to steer clear of his desk if they didn’t want to ruin their lunch.
“People would walk by my desk and just like shudder, or scream,” says DeLeon, recalling that it became a standing office joke that people would avoid looking at his monitor while passing or visiting his desk. “I was working on that level for eight months! So for eight months, people had to step real careful around me.”
"I was working on that level for eight months! So for eight months, people had to step real careful around me."
While DeLeon moved on to work on other projects, his strategy for coping with the mental stress of working on that Flood level wound up evolving into a permanent part of his personal life.
“I started looking at other scary images, but images that weren’t particularly gross, gory or gruesome...classic stuff like Frankenstein, or the old Romero Night of the Living Dead stuff,” says DeLeon. “I tried to look at those things and get back in touch with my childhood fears, because at least I can manage that. I figured if I could reintroduce some of the old stuff that used to scare me into my mind, maybe some of the new stuff wouldn’t affect me so strongly.”
And it worked -- sort of. DeLeon’s coping mechanism grew into a renewed fascination with classic horror, and he began posting a vintage horror image to Twitter every night before bed. People kept asking for more, and now the spooky image post is part of DeLeon’s evening ritual.
“I’m telling you man, it’s now been six years of me, every night, posting a scary picture on my Twitter account at 10 o’clock,” says DeLeon. When I ask him if he’s sleeping better or worse in the years since he started the ritual, he answers without a moment's hesitation. “Better, for sure. I’ve completely desensitized myself to this stuff now. I’m the proud owner of a human kidney.”
Wait. What?
“It’s a long story,” DeLeon says, with a laugh. He explains that a friend in New York was going through a collection of university cast-offs that had gone to auction, and spotted a misshapen fleshy thing in a jar. Knowing DeLeon’s background as a biology major and his fascination with oddities, he gave the artist a ring.
“He didn’t know what it was, or that it was a human kidney, and $100 later...I’m now the proud owner of a preserved kidney,” says DeLeon. “I had some weird stuff before, for sure, but I’d like to think that I took it to the next level and became even weirder thanks to working on that level.”
Steve Bowler, animator on Mortal Kombat
Animator Steve Bowler, by contrast, says his time spent animating fatalities and “X-Ray” attacks in NetherRealm’s 2011 Mortal Kombat didn’t have a meaningful adverse affect on his life.
“A lot of the time, while we’re working on these things, there’s this degree of separation,” he tells me. As a Mortal Kombat animator he mostly found himself working with the actual character model of an attacker and just a blank, featureless male or female model (“we called it ‘Naked Guy’”) in place of the victim.
“So while the motions and stuff were gruesome and violent, we had this detachment because it was like, ‘well, I’m just attacking this plain dude.’ Even though I’m ripping his arm off, it’s clean; there’s no gore, there’s no blood,” says Bowler. “It’s almost like the system we created to just get through the work also sort of protected us from the hyper-violent, disgusting aspects of it."
An X-Ray attack in Mortal Kombat 9
I tell him about DeLeon’s deep dive into colonoscopy videos, and over the phone I can almost hear Bowler wince. “I think artists have it the worst,” he says, and tells the story of how even the most grisly sequences can appear outlandish and cartoony from an animator’s perspective.
"The system we created to just get through the work also sort of protected us from the hyper-violent, disgusting aspects of it."
“An animator next to me worked on a disembowelment animation for an MK9 fatality, and the intestines he was animating were basically just represented as a chain of bones, because it was the only way we had to animate them,” recalls Bowler. “The end result was really gruesome; people would see it and say ‘Oh my god, that looks horrible.’ But to the animator working on it, it was just an abstraction. Whereas the artist on that, he had to painstakingly model that intestine.”
Still, Bowler suggests that working on hyper-violent games for sustained periods of time desensitizes you as a person, even if you aren’t an artist or an animator. He compares it to an Andy Warhol exhibit that once came through Chicago (I believe he’s remembering Warhol’s Death and Disaster series) which guided visitors through a series of increasingly more shocking and gruesome images of accident scenes.
“The whole point of the exhibit, other than the shock value, was to funnel you through so you saw these things in a specific order,” he says. “By the time you came out the other end, you were totally desensitized; Warhol could put the most disgusting and gruesome images at the end, and it wouldn’t shock you anymore.”
Bowler suggests that perhaps everyone who works on a violent game goes through something like that. You learn to deal with it if you want to work on these projects, he says, or you leave and work on something else. And that’s okay. Especially if you’re an artist, an animator...or a sound designer.
“The guys I always feel the worst for are the cinematic artists, because they have to make sure that like, each bone is cracking in a realistic way,” he says. “Even the audio guys probably have a bit of like, PTSD, because they have to spent all this time carefully picking out and putting in all these gory, juicy, crunchy, eviscerating sound effects.”
Mike Jungbluth, artist and animator on everything from Shadow of Mordor to Black Ops
Artist, animator and occasional Gamasutra blogger Mike Jungbluth says he’s experienced both sides of this phenomenon during his career in game development, which encompasses work |
wrote the Op-Ed in The Times. The assessment, completed on Oct. 30, 2015, concluded that the allegation was “credible”; this meant the coalition had known for more than a year that it had “more likely than not” killed civilians and that it had recommended a full investigation into the strike, even as Basim’s attempts to reach the coalition were being ignored. Despite this finding, the coalition neglected to include the incident in its public tally of deaths — which, in Iraq at that time, stood at 76 civilians — because of what Col. Joseph Scrocca, a coalition spokesman, called “an administrative oversight.”
Basim’s case had now become impossible to ignore. Based on the evidence we provided, Maj. Gen. Scott Kindsvater, then an Air Force deputy commander, ordered an internal investigation to determine what might have gone wrong on the night of the strike. And then, on Feb. 14, for the first time in the 17 months since the attack, Basim received an email from the coalition. “We deeply regret this unintentional loss of life in an attempt to defeat Da’esh,” Scrocca wrote, using another term for ISIS. “We are prepared to offer you a monetary expression of our sympathy and regret for this unfortunate incident.” He invited Basim to come to Erbil to discuss the matter. Basim was the first person to receive such an offer, in Iraq or Syria, during the entire anti-ISIS war.
Early in the morning of his scheduled meeting, Basim dreamed about Mayada. He could feel her skin next to his. He suddenly felt a surge of regret for things said and left unsaid, accrued over a lifetime together. He awoke in tears. “I washed my face,” he said, “did my morning prayer and sent her my prayers. It made me calmer.”
It was March 17. The air outside was soft and cool; Erbil had finally experienced rainfall after a parched winter. The coalition had asked Basim to go to Erbil International Airport, where he would be picked up and taken to meet coalition representatives and receive a condolence payment. He invited us to join him, and we agreed. Basim did not know how much money the Americans would offer, but he had spent hours calculating the actual damages: $500,000 for his and Mohannad’s homes, furnishings and belongings; $22,000 for two cars; and $13,000 in medical bills from Turkey. We stood waiting in the parking lot. A white S.U.V. with tinted windows rolled by. A family emerged from a taxi, the father juggling two suitcases and a toddler, heading off on what appeared to be a vacation.
Basim checked his phone to see the latest messages from friends in Mosul. It had been a month since Iraqi forces seized the eastern half of the city, but the Woods were still too dangerous to visit because ISIS controlled the opposite bank and was lobbing mortars across the river. On the west side, thousands were trapped in the Old City, and Basim heard stories that ISIS was welding doors shut to keep people in their homes, holding them hostage against heavy artillery and air power. That morning, an airstrike flattened almost an entire city block in the Mosul Jidideh neighborhood — killing 105 civilians, according to the coalition, or possibly double that number, according to Airwars, in either case making it one of the largest aerial massacres since the war began.
It was late afternoon, 30 minutes past the meeting time, when an S.U.V. rolled up, an American in Army fatigues behind the wheel. We climbed in, and the truck moved off through the sprawling airfield, past rows of parked helicopters, toward a set of hangars. Basim struggled to maintain his composure. He’d imagined this day a hundred times, but now he wasn’t sure what to say, how to act. The driver made small talk about the weather, the winter drought, the needs of farmers. He pulled the truck around to a prefab trailer ringed by blast walls. Inside, sitting around a large wooden table, were more American soldiers. Capt. Jaclyn Feeney, an Army attorney, introduced herself and invited Basim to be seated.
“We just wanted to start by expressing our deepest sympathies, not only on behalf of the Army but on behalf of myself,” she said. “We do take the closest care in what we do here, but it’s high risk, and sometimes we make mistakes. We try our best to prevent those mistakes, but we hope that since we did make a mistake here, we can do everything that we can to right it, as best we can. I know there’s nothing that I can say that can make up for the loss that you’ve — ”
“The only thing that cannot be returned is the loss of life,” Basim said. His hands gripped the armrests, as if he were using every ounce of energy to stay seated. He struggled to keep his voice steady. “Everything else could be redone or rebuilt. The loss of life is unrepairable.”
“Certainly. We are prepared to offer you a condolence payment,” Feeney replied. “It’s not meant to recompensate you for what you’ve lost, or for rebuilding or anything like that. It’s just meant to be an expression of our sympathy, our apologies for your loss.”
Outside, a plane lifted off, and the room trembled. Feeney was holding documents in her hand. “And so for that reason, we are capped in the amount that we can give you. So the amount in U.S. dollars is $15,000, which we will be paying you in Iraqi dinars, so 17,550,000 dinars. And so, if you’re willing to accept that — ”
Basim looked at her in disbelief. “No.”
“You’re not willing to accept that?”
“This is — this is an insult to me. No, I will not accept it. I’m sorry.”
Feeney looked stunned. “I’m sorry also,” she said.
Moments passed, and everyone sat in silence. Feeney explained again that they were capped by their own regulations. Basim replied, “This is, I have to say, I’m sorry to say, ridiculous.” Basim said he wanted official documentation proving his innocence, so that he could return safely to Mosul one day. Feeney promised to make some calls. The meeting quickly came to an end.
Basim walked out into the late-afternoon air. Traffic at the airport had picked up: buses overloaded with families, children sticking their elbows out of taxis. Basim drove home in disbelief, as if he were living through an elaborate hoax and the Americans would call back any minute with a serious offer. The truth was, he never expected to recover the full extent of his material losses, and he knew the military was not in the business of compensation, only condolence, but after so many months, so much back and forth, the humiliation burned. “This is what an Iraqi is worth,” he said.
At home, he considered his options. He wanted a lawyer — but from where? Could an Iraqi find an American attorney? The amount the coalition had offered exceeded its own guidelines, which stipulated $2,500 per Iraqi, but did not cover Mohannad and Najib, which meant he — or his sister-in-law — would potentially have to endure this process again. He considered traveling to the United States to find an advocate, but getting a visa was almost impossible. Once, in the first months after the attack, he even wanted to move there, seek asylum. Now the thought seemed absurd.
Despite everything, Basim could not bring himself to hate Americans. In fact, this experience was further evidence for a theory he had harbored for a while: that he, fellow Iraqis and even ordinary Americans were all bit players in a drama bigger than any of them. A few weeks later, he spoke to Sociology 119, Sam Richards’s Race and Ethnic Relations class at Penn State. “I have nothing against the regular American citizen,” he told the class of some 750 students. “I lived among you guys for eight years. I was never bothered by any person — in fact, many of them were very helpful to me.”
“This situation of war,” he continued, “big corporations are behind it.” This is where the real power lay, not with individual Americans. He’d come to believe that his family, along with all Iraqis, had been caught in the grinder of grand forces like oil and empire, and that the only refuge lay in something even grander: faith. He had rediscovered his religion. “There was some bond that grew between me and my God. I thanked him for keeping my son alive. I thanked him that my operation was successful. Now I can walk.”
It was the same God who had written out his whole life from the 40th day in the womb. Basim’s faith in this divinely authored fate had become a calming current, coursing through his every waking moment. “Sometimes I go out with my friends,” Basim told the students. “But when I come back home, when I go to bed and thoughts start coming into my head about my wife, what would have happened probably five years from now, my daughter would be in college, she wanted to study this and that — there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about them. But in the end, life goes on.”
Ahmed al-Layla tried to persuade his parents to escape from Mosul with his sister, Eaman, and join him in Erbil, but they were stubborn. His father, Mohammed Tayeb al-Layla (below left), a former dean of engineering at Mosul University, refused to abandon his prized library, shelf after shelf of books on engineering and soil mechanics. As the Iraqi Army approached, neighbors told us, several ISIS fighters broke into the home, climbed to the roof and assumed sniper positions. Ahmed’s father raced up in pursuit, with Ahmed’s mother, Dr. Fatima Habbal (below right), a prominent gynecologist, close behind. Not long after, an airstrike flattened the home, killing the snipers, along with Ahmed’s parents and sister.
This spring, Iraqi forces pushed deeper into western Mosul, into the Old City, a hive of stacked houses that lean over narrow streets. The neighborhood was being pounded with airstrikes and mortars, while ISIS was refusing to allow people to leave. Basim learned that three in-laws of Abdullah, Mohannad’s son — a pregnant woman, her husband and his father — had tried to bribe their way to the east side but were caught and beheaded. Nearly everyone was telling such stories. Meanwhile, word spread that Basim had taken his case to the coalition, and aggrieved families started to reach out for advice. Basim felt like an elder statesman of heartbreak, and he offered whatever counsel he could. The strike on his house remained a great mystery, though, and not a day passed when he did not retrace the hours and days before the attack, wondering what could have brought it on.
In April, through the Freedom of Information Act, we finally obtained a portion of the coalition’s internal probe of the strike on the Razzo homes. As Basim read though a dozen partly redacted pages, a story began to emerge — the coalition had been receiving intelligence that his and Mohannad’s houses were an ISIS command center. The report suggests that this may have been because of the J.C.C. next door; Basim recalled that ISIS briefly occupied the J.C.C. when it first conquered Mosul but had long since abandoned the facility. Yet the coalition’s intelligence source apparently passed along this outdated information and in the process confused his house with the J.C.C.
Next, according to the report, the coalition dispatched a drone to surveil the property. Over three days, in 15-to-30-minute windows, his house was filmed. The investigation acknowledged that “no overtly nefarious activity was observed,” but nonetheless everything the coalition witnessed confirmed its conviction that it was filming a terrorist headquarters. No weapons were visible, but the report noted that ISIS “does not obviously brandish weapons,” so as to go undetected. Occasionally Basim or Mohannad would open their shared gate to the street, allowing a guest to enter. The coalition simply saw men opening a gate, an action that it determined was consistent with the activity of an ISIS headquarters. And, perhaps most important, the report stated that the coalition did not observe any women or children outdoors — although in the ISIS-controlled city, women rarely left the house to avoid the religious police, and most filming had occurred under the blistering afternoon sun, when almost everyone stayed indoors.
Though the Razzos hadn’t known it, the burden of proof had been on them to demonstrate to a drone watching them from above that they were civilians — guilty until proved innocent. In the end, 95 minutes of unremarkable footage had sealed the fate of Mayada, Tuqa, Mohannad and Najib. The report concluded that there was “no evidence indicating carelessness or bad faith” on the part of the coalition and that its targeting process “remains sound.” (It also declared that because of an equipment error, the drone footage no longer existed for investigators to review.) Yet to Basim, the truth seemed just the opposite: The coalition had disregarded ground realities and acted on flimsy intelligence.
Not long after receiving the report, Basim decided to return to the Woods. It was risky to visit — ISIS was still controlling neighborhoods on the opposite bank — but he wanted to see, to touch, what was left, and he took us along. We set out in the early morning, driving past dusty abandoned villages, through checkpoints sporting brilliant hoists of red, blue and green militia flags and onto a broad boulevard, teeming with pushcart vendors and street children. Whole city blocks were flattened. Basim was not caught off guard by the destruction, which he expected based on the videos he’d seen, but he was surprised by the traffic. He regarded the passing scenes as if he were a tour guide, recounting the history of each neighborhood. It appeared to be an affectation of calm, a studied attempt to withstand the torment of return, but the truth eventually surfaced. “I’m numb,” he said. “I’m just numb.”
We drove past more ruined buildings. Around the wreckage of one stood a concrete wall, still intact, where ISIS had painted two hands open in supplication. Basim translated the inscription: THANK GOD FOR EVERYTHING YOU HAVE. IF YOU DO, HE WILL GIVE YOU MORE.
We headed toward the Tigris River. As we approached, we could see the apartments, houses and minarets on the other side, still under ISIS control. And then suddenly, the city was gone. We entered the Woods, which remained a bucolic oasis. The trees were heavy with figs, apricots and lemons, and the air buzzed with mosquitoes. We pulled up to a pale yellow gate. Basim lingered outside for a moment, afraid to approach. He then opened it and stepped onto his property for the first time in 18 months. We followed him along an overgrown stone path. He stopped in front of a smashed-up wall surrounded by chunks of concrete. Rebar snaked out like hairs. “This was the laundry room,” he said.
To the right stood what was once his kitchen. A faint rotten odor emerged from within. The remnants of a table and three chairs were visible. Scattered amid the shattered glass and charred metal bars were pages of recipes: Cookies & Cream Freeze, Chocolate Mousse Torte.
We moved over the rest of the debris. Marble shards, concrete blocks, several mattresses, two satellite dishes, a Spalding tennis racket, an iron, a book of equations, a bathroom sink. The backyard was intact. “At least we still have a swimming pool!” Basim said, laughing absently.
He circled back to the laundry room. There he spotted in a corner, poking out of the rubble, a white platform heel. It belonged to Tuqa. “I told her they were too high and that she would fall,” he said. He could picture her wearing them, coming down the stairs.MAKHMUR, Iraq — Ten kilometres from Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham front lines, in a dusty, impoverished Kurdish town where the marauding extremists had been expelled several weeks ago with help from U.S. warplanes, locals expressed immense gratitude Friday after it was confirmed that Canada was going to send six RCAF fighter-bombers to join the international air campaign against the jihadists.
“I know all about what Canada is doing. You had a government minister here recently and he made us some promises,” shopkeeper Behar Namiq said in an apparent reference to a visit to the Kurdish region two weeks ago by John Baird, the minister of foreign affairs.
“It was very good what the Americans did here before and it will be very good what the Canadians will soon do in Iraq.”
Hearing clashes as ISIS fighters attacked the western outskirts of the town, Mr. Namiq said that he and every other adult male had fled into nearby hills, but only after first urgently sending their women and children to the relative safety of the Kurdish capital of Erbil, which is about a 40-minute drive away.
“We had to leave. We were so nervous because everybody knew that Daesh had killed everyone they found in some towns,” Mr. Namiq said, referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym. “When we came back after the bombing we found that Daesh had done some terrible things such as killing dogs they had booby-trapped with bombs.
“Those people claim to be Muslims but they have no religion except killing. That is their belief.”
With ISIS forces still close by, and equipped with artillery guns that can reach more than 20 kilometres, the tension remained palpable in Makhmur Friday. Every few hundred metres soldiers belonging to the Kurdish peshmerga or two other armed Kurdish militias manned guardposts and checkpoints on the roads while other fighters hid from the blazing sun under trees in compounds that were crowded with homemade fighting vehicles and guns.
“We still badly need more weapons,” said Lt. Gaylan Ahmed, who was the officer of the watch at the main peshmerga base. “But even more than new weapons, we need people to train peshmerga how to use them because we have no previous experience of heavy weapons.”
Pointing around him, a grizzled and worn-out looking peshmerga fighter, still in dirt-stained battlefield dress, said the fighting against ISIS had been “very hard.”
The battered carcass of a 155 mm M777 towed artillery gun that had been struck by a U.S. missile had been given pride of place in front of the peshmerga base. Although many of Makhmur’s 10,000 residents had still not returned, the big howitzer was already something of a tourist attraction.
“The gun was given to the Iraqi army by the United States and fell into Daesh [ISIS] hands during the spring and now belongs to the peshmerga,” Lt. Ahmed said, explaining the unusual provenance of the weapon, which is also used by the Canadian army.
Bullets from heavy machine guns pocked several nearby walls and houses, providing further evidence that there had been intense firefights in some parts of the town.
“We kicked Daesh’s ass up in the mountains first. The fighting down here was intense, too, but it only took one hour,” boasted Aslan Guany, a Turkish Kurd and militia member aligned with the Turkey-based Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization by many western governments.
“It’s good to hear that Canada and other countries are coming here to fight on the Kurdish side even though we do not have direct links with them,” Mr. Guany said.
Amir Ali Ahmed, who runs a car parts shop, commended the PKK for joining the fight.
“They were really helpful to the peshmerga here,” Mr. Ahmed said, before volunteering to show a video he had taken of the bloody bodies of seven ISIS fighters who had been killed in the town. Better them than us, he said.
“If Daesh had had the chance they would have shot us dead in the street or captured us and cut our heads off.”
U.S. jets could be heard flying overhead every night, probably spying on ISIS fighters, Mr. Ahmed said. “But I have not heard them drop any bombs for about four nights now.”
Impatient to learn when the RCAF’s CF-18 Hornets might join the air war, Mr. Ahmed seemed disappointed when told that it might take several weeks for them to reach a nearby country where they would first run through a long list of safety checks before being declared operational.
The first Canadians to reach the Middle East for this mission, expected to leave home this weekend, will be a small advance party of engineers and logisticians. They will reconnoitre the airfields from which the Canadian jets, surveillance aircraft and in-air refuelling tankers will fly. Maintainers and weapons specialists as well as the supersonic jets and their pilots will follow some days later.
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New York City, New York – Police Commissioner Bill Bratton of the NYPD recently proposed a plan that would grant amnesty for over 1 million people with open warrants for low-level offenses, inadvertently revealing that 1 in 7 New Yorkers have warrants for their arrest.
According to The United States Census Bureau the population of New York City is 8.406 million. The number of people who currently have open arrest warrants is 1.2 million. That means that 1 in 8 people in the city is currently under the threat of imprisonment for things like “drinking in public” or “disorderly conduct.”
These statistics call attention to one of the primary root causes of police brutality, and that is the over-criminalization of victimless crimes, and the need for constant collection of revenue. If the crimes are not serious enough that an amnesty policy is being suggested, and if there is no victim to complain about it, then these laws should not even exist to begin with.
For this reason, many politicians in New York are hesitant to approve such a measure, as it would undermine their authority and prove that fines and legal penalties for small infractions are neither practical nor moral.
Speaking with CBS News, Council Public Safety Chair Vanessa Gibson said that “I think it would be a very delicate conversation where we want to find the right balance. We also want all New Yorkers to respect the laws we have on the books because laws are meant to be implemented. They’re meant to be enforced.”
It is also important to point out that the only reason that a measure like this has any chances of passing is because the police department and local legislators have political motivations to lower the crime rate statistics.
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.The Quotations Page
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Today's Featured Quotation BookCalgary mayoral candidate Jon Lord says he will not be at a major debate next week but will instead be working on his grilling techniques at a cook-off in Kansas.
Lord says he won a barbecue competition in Alberta last year and was invited to the 34th Annual American Royal World Series of Barbecue in Kansas City.
He says he doesn't find debates with many candidates that useful.
"So they basically just ask the same question of all the candidates and you just go through an evening of doing that on 10 different questions," he said.
Lord says he can get his message across better on his website and Facebook page.
The barbecue competition wraps up Oct. 6, but Lord says he won't be able to make the CivicCamp debate at the University of Calgary Oct. 7.
Calgary's municipal election will be held Oct. 21 with advanced polls opening on Oct. 9.In a bizarre incident that took place in Madhya Pradesh, an infant girl who was delivered in a lavatory bowl of a toilet was rescued alive from the sewage tank after two hours.
Gujarat woman delivers in Gir forest, baby gets lion's share of attention
The incident which has been termed as a miracle took place in the Sheopur district on Tuesday, where a woman 'unconsciously' delivered the baby into the lavatory bowl.
The 28-year-old woman who was identified as Papita Gurjar, is a resident of Sheopur's Bangrod village.
The woman, after coming out of the washroom told her husband that she was experiencing abdominal pain. Papita's husband Ghanshyam Gurjar then immediately took her to the hospital, assuming that his wife was in labour, her family members told the doctors.
Papita was nine months pregnant and used to go to Vijaypur community health centre (CHC) for regular check-ups. However, when the doctors took her to the Operation Theatre they found her uterus empty.
On enquiring, Papita's family members informed the doctors that she was complaining of an ache after coming out of the toilet. Her husband and the doctors subsequently realised that she must have delivered the baby in the toilet bowl.
"We too had a suspicion that she must have delivered the baby in toilet. I immediately dispatched ambulance to their house," said Dr Ashok Khare, medical officer of Vijaypur CHC was quoted as saying by the Times of India.
The doctors immediately sent an ambulance to Papita's house.
The ambulance driver heard the infant's cries when he entered the toilet. He rescued the baby from the sewage tank. The doctors said that though the baby was alive, she was gasping for breath as she was in the sewage tank for two hours.
"The infant was brought to hospital and admitted to neonatal ICU. She is stable now," Dr Khare, added.
Female infanticide?
However, as this region is infamous for female foeticide and infanticide, police are now investigating whether the girl child was purposely flushed down the toilet or was it an accident.
The police are trying to find out who clipped the umbilical cord in order to determine whether it was a case of infanticide.The NBA D-League will now be known as the NBA Gatorade League, or the G-League for short, the league announced on Tuesday.
Terms of the sponsorship deal have not been released.
The minor league was formed in 2001 as the National Basketball Development League but shortened its name to the D-League in 2005. The G-League is comprised of 22 teams. Three additional teams will be added in the 2017-18 season, bringing the league closer to a full 30-team farm system for the NBA. Most NBA franchises currently have a one-to-one relationship with a G-League squad, allowing closer relations and strong development programs for young players on assignment.
The NBA said it aims to use Gatorade’s sports research institutes to improve player development.
Welcome to the NBA G-League!
Beginning with the 2017-18 season, the @nbadleague will be renamed the NBA Gatorade League... Watch Why! pic.twitter.com/qplhLf9dHd — NBA (@NBA) February 14, 2017
The G-League player base is a mix of young prospects and veterans hoping to be called up to the NBA. The new NBA labor deal is expected to boost G-League salaries and make the transition from the minor league to the NBA smoother financially. As it stands now, a single 10-day contract in the NBA is worth more than a full season of work in the G-League.
For more on the G-League announcement, visit Ridiculous Upside.WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he’s “fine” Wednesday after collapsing during a Washington, D.C., race and being taken away by ambulance.
Tillis, 56, was seen on the ground being treated by bystanders at about 15-20 minutes into the three-mile race in Anacostia Park in the southeast part of the city. Tillis at first appeared unconscious but was revived and breathing when taken away by ambulance.
Tillis later posted a video on Twitter from his hospital bed Wednesday morning saying he was OK and thanking people for “all of your prayers and well wishes.”
“Hey everybody, I’m fine. Just running about 2 and a half miles in and got overheated, no CPR, no special measures, just checking me out,” Tillis said in the video. “See you back on the Hill.”
Tillis was participating in the ACLI Capital Challenge race, an annual event in Anacostia Park in the district. He was leading his own team, “Team Tillis.”
Many politicians and other prominent Washington, D.C., figures run the annual race. Proceeds go to charity.
When not in Washington, Tillis lives north of Charlotte. He was a consultant for Pricewaterhouse and later IBM.
Tillis served on his town council for two years, followed by one year as PTA president of his children’s high school before defeating an incumbent Republican in the 2006 primary for a state House seat. He vaulted up the ranks at the General Assembly, becoming minority whip in his second term.
He quit his IBM job to find legislative candidates and money for the 2010 elections, when Republicans won majorities in the House and Senate for the first time in 140 years. He was rewarded by being elected speaker. During his four years at the chamber’s top job he helped push through a series of conservative policies on taxes, regulations and abortion.
Tillis ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014, where he defeated incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan.
Tillis is known for his athleticism as an avid mountain biker and participant in obstacle endurance races.
He is married to Susan Tillis and has two children.
It was not immediately known what hospital Tillis was taken to.Doctor in critical condition after allegedly being punched at entrance to Box Hill hospital on Tuesday night
A surgeon is fighting for his life after he was allegedly assaulted at a Melbourne hospital for telling a man to stop smoking.
Heart surgeon Patrick Pritzwald-Stegmann is in critical condition at the Alfred hospital after he was allegedly punched near the entrance to the Box Hill hospital on Tuesday night.
Joseph Esmaili, 22, did not apply for bail when he faced the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday accused of the attack.
His lawyer told the court Esmaili was suffering from a number of psychiatric illnesses for which he had been prescribed medication, as well as drug withdrawal symptoms.
“He’s currently withdrawing from a drug dependence,” the defence lawyer told the magistrate.
Esmaili, of Mill Park north of Melbourne, faced court in handcuffs after he was arrested on Wednesday and charged with intentionally causing injury to the surgeon. Prosecutor Ashleigh Harrold said the incident was captured by CCTV cameras.
Detective Senior Sergeant Ian Shepherd told the ABC Esmaili allegedly punched the victim in the head, knocking him unconscious, before fleeing the scene.
“The staff member appears to be leaving the hospital. As he’s leaving he becomes in a discussion with an unknown male, the exact nature of that conversation we’re unable to tell,” he said.
Shepherd said it was possible the two men had argued about smoking near the hospital but police had not been able to confirm that.
An Eastern Health spokeswoman said Pritzwald-Stegmann’s family had requested privacy after the “terrible incident”.DOJ Had 400% More Emergencies That Required Immediate Warrantless Info From ISPs?
from the busy-year dept
A letter (pdf) submitted by Verizon to Congressional committees in 2007 revealed that the company had received 25,000 emergency requests during the previous year. Of these 25,000 emergency requests, just 300 requests were from federal law enforcement agencies. In contrast, the reports submitted to Congress by the Attorney General reveal less than 20 disclosures for that year. Even though no other service provider has disclosed similar numbers regarding emergency disclosures, it is quite clear that the Department of Justice statistics are not adequately reporting the scale of this form of surveillance. In fact, they underreport these disclosures by several orders of magnitude.
Well this seems questionable. Chris Soghoian has received info from a Freedom of Information Act request (which only took 11 months) that shows that the Justice Department made use of a special "emergency" claim to get ISPs to turn over info without a warrant 400% more times in 2009 than in 2008. Of course, in 2009 there was a new administration in town (one which campaigned on greater transparency and being against things like warrantless wiretaps). In this case, 91 such requests were made to ISPs in 2009. In 2008 the number was just 17. In 2007, it was just 9. In 2006, it was again 17.So, either there were a lot more "emergencies" in 2009 than in 2008 (or previous years), or it appears that the new boss at the Justice Department decided to redefine what constitutes an emergency that let's them spy on internet communications without a warrant.Of course, some might also claim that "only" 91 requests doesn't seem like that much. I would disagree. It seems unlikely that there were so many emergencies that were so immediate and so crazy that they precluded the (very, very simple) process of obtaining an actual warrant. Furthermore, the 91 number is likely misleading. Soghoian spends a fair bit of time explaining why the numbers in the reports are "deeply flawed":
Filed Under: emergencies, warrantless wiretappingThis is an updated version of a story that originally ran in 2017.
Friday is April 20, better known to many as 4/20, or “Weed Day.” People around the world are celebrating the unofficial marijuana holiday by gathering for rallies, smoke-outs, policy discussions and thousands of other weed-centric events.
It’s a day of blissful hypocrisy for millions of cannabis users in the U.S., who by and large are still expected to be somewhat covert about their fondness for the plant. The federal government maintains that marijuana is a dangerous illegal drug, with no accepted medicinal value and a high potential for abuse. Despite repeated calls for the reclassification of cannabis, it remains on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of Schedule I substances ― which also includes heroin, mescaline, LSD and a broad category of synthetic stimulants often referred to as “bath salts.”
The government’s message is clear: Marijuana and the psychoactive compound within it ― tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC ― poses a severe hazard to your health. To get a better sense of just how dangerous these substances are, The Huffington Post set out to compile a list of every person who has ever died solely as the result of a marijuana overdose.
Here’s what we found:
There are no recorded instances of anyone dying from a fatal dose of marijuana alone.
Nothing has changed since the last time HuffPost highlighted this fact in 2013. And because the list was once again relatively easy to compile, we had time to find this GIF of a dog with the munchies. He did not overdose on marijuana ― though dogs can, so keep that in mind. He is also a good boy.
Fatally overdosing on marijuana in its most commonly ingested forms is seemingly impossible. In 1988, a DEA judge argued in favor of rescheduling marijuana in part because of its low harm profile. In his ruling, he wrote that a user would have to ingest somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC contained in a single joint to approach lethal toxicity.
“A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response,” wrote Judge Francis Young.
Study results vary, but some suggest a lethal dose of marijuana may be even higher. Extrapolating from cannabis toxicity research on monkeys, a human would have to orally ingest more than 2.9 grams of THC per kilogram of body mass to be at risk of poisoning. At 88kg, the average American man would have to down more than an 9 ounces of 100 percent THC extract. That’s almost certainly not possible, but if it were, it might involve taking this “Dragon Ball” to the face.
“That’s far more than most people will consume throughout their entire lifetime,” said Jahan Marcu, chief science officer at Americans for Safe Access, an organization that advocates for cannabis as medicine.
The lack of death by marijuana poisoning doesn’t mean people haven’t been trying. Humans have been getting high since prehistoric times and for millennia, cannabis ― both in its flower and concentrated hashish forms ― has been one of our favorite intoxicants. People aren’t particularly prudent in their efforts to chemically alter their consciousness, so if it were possible to use a fatal dose of marijuana, it seems like someone would have done it. In fact, if some poor soul had managed to blaze up the close to a ton of herb necessary to achieve this morbid feat, you can be damn sure it would be the stuff of legend.
“People have tried to ingest as many plant cannabinoids as possible and there is no fatal overdose that has ever been documented in human beings,” Marcu said.
Opponents of marijuana might argue that just because it hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the |
it would welcome. Councillor Joe Mihevc made the successful motion backed by Mayor John Tory, who will convene a meeting of community leaders to see if they have space for shelter or respite spots. Mihevc pegged the investment at $30 million for the first phase, $10.6 million for the second and, for new shelters set to open next year, $45 million in one-time capital costs and $12 million in ongoing operating expenses. The new spaces are a “major, major investment in the shelter system of Toronto that has not happened in at least a decade,” he said, adding between 9 per cent and 13 per cent to the current 5,651 beds, 1,300 of which are motel rooms rented by the city for $105 per night including food. Mihevc added he’s “disappointed some people don’t think it goes far enough.” They include his colleague Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who choked back tears describing the impacts of overcrowding on homeless people in her downtown ward and distraught staff begging for help.
“Lives are definitely at risk — there is no doubt in my mind we will see deaths this winter just as we have seen deaths in previous winters,” said Wong-Tam, noting that more than 70 homeless Torontonians have died this year. “If you can’t see the crisis and the emergency, you really shouldn’t be here.” Cathy Crowe, a street nurse and Ryerson University professor famed for her work with the homeless, said in an interview the initiatives passed by council seem focused on the long-term while Toronto has an immediate crisis and the armouries could have been opened within days.
Article Continued Below
“I don’t understand the logic of turning it down, I just don’t,” she said of an invitation, relayed by Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, to request the armouries. Paul Raftis, the city’s interim general manager of shelter, support and housing, told council the armouries “would not be the No. 1 option moving forward” because occupying military facilities with an “active workforce” raises security challenges and, when used in the past, cost the city $4,200 per day. On Tuesday night city beds were at 95-per-cent capacity, well above the never-attained 90-per-cent maximum set by council, Raftis said, adding recent measures to add capacity — mostly motel spaces — have been immediately overcome by demand. About one-quarter of shelter users are refugees, up from 10 per cent in early 2016, Raftis said, noting his department will overspend its budget by $10 million this year and has warned council it expects an $18-million overspend next year. The surging cost of Toronto housing, and a drum-tight vacancy rate, are also keeping people in shelters who could otherwise move to long-term rentals. With files from Emily MathieuThe news: Japanese cultural phenomenon Hello Kitty is turning 40 this week, and though the billion-dollar sensation hasn't aged one bit, her creators have revealed something kind of startling: Hello Kitty, apparently, is not a kitty at all.
In a Los Angeles Times report, Harvard anthropologist Christine R. Yano explained that while preparing written texts for an exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, Hello Kitty's corporate owner, Sanrio, quickly corrected Yano for referring the cartoon character as a cat:
"I was corrected — very firmly. That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it's called Charmmy Kitty."
Wait, what? Yano also explained Hello Kitty's backstory: She's British, has a twin sister and is a "perpetual third-grader." In the '70s, when Hello Kitty was created, Japanese women "loved the idea of Britain. It represented the quintessential idealized childhood, almost like a white-picket fence. So the biography was created exactly for the tastes of that time."
Lo and behold, a Google search does, in fact, reveal that Charmmy Kitty does look much more like a real-life cat than Hello Kitty. Sanrio's site has a little more mention of said twin sister Mimmy, who apparently is not at all resentful of her sister's massive success. Her family also seems properly British, with bonnets and embroidering and mentions of pudding.
Still confused? That's not surprising — there's no explanation what Hello Kitty actually is. Some strange English genetic hybrid? An alien life form sent to scout the planet before its furry masters arrive to usher in a new dark age? Some kind of albino demon?
Hello Kitty may be a little girl, she clearly isn't a human one. She never ages, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't even have a mouth. Whatever Hello Kitty happens to be, I really hope it's satisfied with an annual blood sacrifice of billions in sales.
h/t Mary SueAdvertisement
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When TLC first aired "19 Kids And Counting" (originally called "17 Kids And Counting"), it seemed they had hit Nielsen gold. Year after year, Americans tuned in to see The Duggar Family masquerade as the perfect Christian family. While people obviously saw them as a bit over-the-top, there was nonetheless a wholesome joy in watching them grow together.
This upward trend continued, with the 2014 wedding of Jill Duggar reaching almost 4.5 million viewers, according to Variety. But while the family's rise to living-room prominence was fast, their fall from grace was even faster.
In 2015, numerous sexual assault allegations against the family's eldest son, Josh Duggar, came to life. Victims included everyone from members of his family to an adult film actress, Chicago Tribune reported.
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America's perfect Christian family's dark side was revealed.
In the wake of numerous sexual assault allegations against high profile men in the media, looking back at The Duggar Family legacy can reveal a lot about today's world. Much like Matt Lauer, Louis CK, and Harvey Weinstein, the actions of the family only revealed a known dark side to the family.
The Duggar family were true believers
The Duggars appeared on television as a large, quirky, but ultimately loving family. In spite of this, the show was criticized from the beginning for giving a platform to hateful viewers.
Before the sordid past of Josh Duggar came to light, he served as the executive director of the lobbying PAC of The Family Research Council.
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While the FRC tried to masquerade as an interest group supporting the rights of American families, its motives are far more sinister. It is labeled as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Much like Harvey Weinstein's behavior revealed the dark underbelly of Hollywood misogyny, there is hatred and bigotry at the core of the Duggar family facade. The Family Research Council has lobbied against same-sex marriage, accused the "It Gets Better" campaign of attempting to "recruit" kids into the LGBT-lifestyle, and has said the LGBT rights movement's goal was the legalization of pedophilia.
While these ideas were not parroted by the Duggar family on TLC, their platform allowed them to serve as a wholesome face for a movement that is anything but.
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Meanwhile, the family remained active in promoting this agenda: family matriarch Michelle Duggard came under fire in 2014 for recording a transphobic robocall opposing an anti-discrimination ordinance, according to Washington Post.
Everybody knew
It was particularly ironic that, while the Duggar Family was active in accusing the LGBT community of having a hidden agenda, they had their own dark secrets.
When Josh's teenage molestation was unveiled, they were also exposed for covering up his heinous actions. This reveals another unfortunate parallel regarding the behavior of The Duggar Family.
The Vulture reported that Louis CK's behavior was a comedy rumor for years. Harvey Weinstein's predatory behavior was an open secret, and Matt Lauer's behavior had become a part of the culture at NBC News. In politics, Roy Moore was able to climb Alabama's political ranks on a family-values platform in spite of known predatory behavior at shopping malls.
Ultimately, the stories of both The Duggar Family and Hollywood's predators were stories of open secrets. People are more interested in maintaining a facade than repairing a broken system.
What's even more shocking is the fact that the consequences are not severe
After Josh Duggard was made a pariah at TLC, "Counting On", a spin-off show focused on the remaining Duggars premiered. Comedians are already expecting a Louis CK-comeback, and Senator Al Franken is refusing to resign, in spite of multiple harassment and groping allegations.
Ultimately, this is a problem of cover-ups, a lack of consequences, and no responsibility. Regardless of one show's cancellation, or one producer being fired, the root causes need to be dealt with.ANN ARBOR, MI - SEPTEMBER 03: University of Michigan Athletic Director David Brandon talks at a press conference after a weather shortened game between the Michigan Wolverines and the Western Michigan Broncos at Michigan Stadium on September 3, 2010 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Michigan won the game 34-10. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
University of Michigan Athletic Director David Brandon is under fire from fans of Wolverine football. Chiefly due to QB Shane Morris being allowed to play with a concussion, followed closely by the storied team losing games and tickets given away with the purchase of soda.
These issues are throwing his ability to do the job into question. A group of protesters rallied on the Ann Arbor campus Wednesday to call for Brandon to be fired and an online petition for him to be removed topped more than 10k signatures within hours.
As with most things, people on the Internet took to Twitter to make jokes and express their frustration.
Wondering what David Brandon would think about this situation, we went for the only Dave Brandon who would likely address this blind rage. A package delivery driver from Harrison Twp., Mich. who shares the name of the U-M AD came into the studio to read some of the Tweets.
Enjoy!
Related: Rally On Michigan’s Campus Calls For Firing Of AD David Brandon
UM President Extremely Disappointed With Handling Of Injury To Shane Morris
This Is Michigan? Students React To Deal That Offered Free Football Tickets With Soft Drinks PurchaseAnnounced earlier in the year, it is now official: Discover bank cards will be supported by Apple Pay from September 16th, the same day as iOS 9 is released. Discover joins Visa and MasterCard in the US as supporting card types for Apple’s contactless payments service.
To sweeten the deal, Discover is even offering a special cashback promotion to celebrate the addition of Apple Pay. You can get 10% cashback on up to $10,000 of in-store purchases until the end of the year, as long as those transactions were using Apple Pay.
Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial
Discover it Miles, Miles and Escape cards will also earn an extra 10 miles per dollar as part of the promotion, again up to a $10,000 limit. Like other cards, using Apple Pay with Discover is seamless and automatic. You also get the same purchase and fraud protection with Discover on Apple Pay as when using a plastic card.
Unsurprisingly, Discover said in a statement that they are excited to be on board with Apple Pay.
“We are excited for Discover cardmembers to have the ability to use Apple Pay. Rewards have always been important to our cardmembers, and we want to make sure they receive a generous offer for shopping with Discover and Apple Pay,” said Heather Roche, vice president of rewards at Discover. “We want to encourage new and existing Discover cardmembers to add their Discover card to Apple Pay with a few simple clicks using our mobile app, take advantage of this 10% Cashback Bonus, and experience the ease and convenience of using Apple Pay.”
Apple Pay works with iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch.Donald Trump came up with a new idea to stop ISIS militants during his speech in South Carolina last night: shut down parts of the Internet.
During another Trump rambling on Islamic terrorists and criticizing the media’s coverage of Paris and San Bernardino, the mogul bemoaned how ISIS frequently uses social media to spread its propaganda and recruit militants. Now, because this is Trump, who only knows how to take measures in insanely-broad strokes, he said that the best thing to do was to talk to Microsoft founder Bill Gates and just have him turn off the internet for terrorists.
“We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”
NBC noted that there was a lot of discussion amongst the GOP regarding the shutdown of encrypted software in order to disrupt terrorist communications. Even so, the San Bernardino gunmen were not under government terror watches before going on their rampage, and no other candidate has suggested taking the Internet down in areas en masse as a way to address the issue.
“Somebody will say, ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech,'” Trump said as he continued. “These are foolish people.”
For those who have called Trump a fascist, it might not alleviate their anxieties to consider that Internet censorship and widespread shutdowns are the staples of societies like North Korea, Russia, Egypt and China.
Watch above, via CNN.
[Images via Wikipedia Commons]
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comOne of the more interesting games of the last console generation was NieR, so I am suitably happy to learn that Square Enix will be following it up with a new game called NieR Automata.
NieR was a curious game and one that likely went under the radar for most gamers. Developed by the now defunct Cavia and headed up by Yoko Taro, it was a bleak and quite haunting action RPG. It was also in part connected to the Drakengard games.
NieR was a wonderfully dystopian action RPG and it had beautiful music as well by Keiichi Okabe that set the game apart from a lot of its competitors.
It was very much a cult hit and I am happy to see that Square Enix is still supporting it.
While Cavia are no more, both Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito are on-board. Not to mention the aforementioned Keiichi Okabe, who is again handling the music.
The actual development is being handled by Platinum Games this time around but Square Enix are clear to point out that the elements that made the original NieR so special won’t be cast aside in favor of a full on action game.
This is not to say that Platinum Games makes bad action games, as they are arguably one of the better developers out there for that kind of thing, but that NieR is a different kind of beast.
The new setting for the game is also quite interesting, as it is set after a huge alien invasion of Earth with humanity fleeing to the moon. The game’s protagonist (shown above) is actually an android created by the remaining human forces to take back the planet.
How it fits into the original NieR is not yet known but I am sure that reveal will be a good one.
NieR Automata is set for a release sometime next year and looks to be a PS4 exclusive. Personally, I’m really looking forward to this, as it will make a nice break from the glut of dudebro shooters around these days.
Follow me on Twitter and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii.
Read my Forbes blog here.SAN DIEGO—In an effort to conserve water amid the state’s severe drought, SeaWorld officials announced Tuesday that the southern California marine park had drained all of its animal tanks halfway. “When facing a crisis this dire, everyone has a responsibility to make difficult sacrifices, which is why we at SeaWorld have decided to reduce the amount of water in all our whale, seal, and dolphin habitats by 50 percent,” said SeaWorld San Diego spokesperson Patricia Leeds, adding that the marine animals only needed a couple of inches of water to survive and that evaporation could be prevented by simply covering many of the creatures with tarps. “Our trainers are going to hook the orcas up to a winch and flip them over about once an hour to help their entire bodies stay moist. There’s still enough water in their enclosures, especially if the animals stay in one place like they’ve been doing.” Leeds added that implementing the new measures was not a problem for the company, as SeaWorld’s management had already been planning on making such a change to its animal habitats anyway.
AdvertisementBroadcast primetime live + same-day ratings for Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016
Note: Live coverage of the vice presidential debate on ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC will result in greater adjustments than usual for all four networks.
The numbers for Tuesday:
Time Show Adults 18-49 Rating/Share Viewers (millions) 8 p.m. The Voice (NBC) – clip show 2.0/8 7.81 NCIS (CBS) 1.8/7 13.90 Dancing WIth the Stars (ABC) 1.4/5 8.84 The Flash (The CW) – P 1.2/5 3.13 Brooklyn Nine-Nine (FOX) 1.0/4 2.46 8:30 p.m. New Girl (FOX) 1.0/4 2.15 9 p.m. Vice Presidential Debate (NBC) (9-10:30 p.m.) 1.9/6 6.69 Vice Presidential Debate (ABC) (9-10:30 p.m.) 1.2/4 5.99 Vice Presidential Debate (CBS) (9-10:30 p.m.) 1.1/4 6.49 Vice Presidential Debate (FOX) (9-10:30 p.m.) 0.7/3 2.20 No Tomorrow (The CW) – P 0.5/2 1.59 10:30 p.m. Debate Analysis (NBC) 1.4/6 5.25 Debate Analysis (ABC) 0.9/4 4.63 Debate Analysis (CBS) 0.8/3 5.09
The vice-presidential debate between Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine ruled Tuesday’s ratings, though not to near the extent the first presidential debate did last week. Preliminary figures have the combined audience on ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC at 21.37 million viewers, not quite half of the preliminary figure for the record-setting presidential debate (45.31 million).
The CW kicked off its season with somewhat lower numbers than last season. “The Flash” scored a 1.2 rating in adults 18-49, down from a 1.4 for last fall’s premiere. It was, however, even with the 2015 premiere in adults 18-34 (1.1) “No Tomorrow” debuted to a 0.5, off 0.2 from “iZombie” in the same spot a year ago.
A “Voice” clip show scored the night’s best 18-49 rating with a 2.0. “NCIS” slipped to a series-low 1.8, down three tenths of a point from last week. “Dancing With the Stars” (1.4) ticked up a tenth of a point for ABC, while FOX’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (1.0) and “New Girl” (1.0) were even with last week.
Network averages:
NBC CBS ABC CW FOX Adults 18-49 rating/share 1.8/6 1.3/5 1.2/4 0.9/3 0.8/3 Total Viewers (millions) 6.82 8.73 6.71 2.36 2.24
Late-night metered market ratings (adults 18-49, households):
11:35 p.m.
“The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”: 0.9/5, 2.5/7
“Jimmy Kimmel Live”: 0.6/3, 1.9/5
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”: 0.5/3, 2.2/6
12:35 a.m.
“Late Night with Seth Meyers”: 0.4/3, 1.3/5
“The Late Late Show with James Corden”: 0.3/2, 1.1/4
“Nightline”: 0.3/2, 1.2/4
Definitions:
Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.
Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings are available at approximately 11 a.m. ET the day after telecast. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns.
Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time.
Time Shifted Viewing: Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live +Same-Day and Live +7 Day. Time-shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs. Live+SD includes viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3 a.m. local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live +7 ratings include viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.
Source: The Nielsen Company.Gregg Popovich Donald Trump's a 'Soulless Coward' & 'Pathological Liar'
Gregg Popovich: Donald Trump is a 'Soulless Coward'
Breaking News
Gregg Popovich is absolutely fed up with President Trump... calling POTUS a "pathological liar" and "soulless coward" for comments he made while talking about the deadly ambush in Niger.
Here's the deal... Trump has been criticized for not publicly addressing the 4 U.S. soldiers who were killed in an ambush in Niger on October 4.
Today, POTUS defended himself while calling out former presidents... claiming he is more caring with families of fallen soldiers.
Popovich -- whose never held back when it comes to Trump -- RIPPED into 45 in a conversation with The Nation about his swipe at Barack Obama and George W. Bush... and everything else.
"This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others," Pop said.
"This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner -- and to lie about how previous Presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers -- is as low as it gets."
The Spurs coach went on to say... "We have a pathological liar in the White House: unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day."The USMC crackdown on barracks life may in fact exacerbate the trouble
By "Rick" NFI
Best Defense department of Marine culture, because the Marines have culture instead of doctrine
Many current and former Marines, as well as others, may be aware of the commandant calling for a crackdown on rowdy behavior in the barracks and his desire to institute new measures in the barracks across the Corps to "reawaken it morally and crack down on behavioral problems that are leading to Marines hurting themselves, their fellow Marines, civilians, and damaging the Corps’ reputation."
In addition, the commandant further cited problems of sexual assault, hazing, drunken driving, fraternization, as well as the failure to maintain personal appearance standards among the issues he wants fixed (speaking of personal appearance, fortunately the current commandant wasn’t around in my day to see my platoon come back aboard ship after trading various parts of uniforms with the Royal Thai Marines … yea, I got a belt).
Do I, as someone that served through similar events (possibly worse) after the early post Vietnam wind-down, view what the commandant is requiring as too draconian and an overreaction to Marines settling into garrison after many years on a high-energy war tempo? I say not necessarily, because without a doubt the safety of our men and women in uniform is of the utmost importance, as adhering to high standards of conduct is a Corps tradition and is surprisingly expected by the public. But rather than dwell on the trivial, such as having personnel on duty wear an appropriate seasonal dress uniform, which is nothing new but rather a return to bygone days when this was normal practice, let me address a primary concern.
Let me remind all what makes the U.S. military, let alone the Corps, different than many of the world’s militaries: It is our cadre of NCOs/petty officers that we ideally empower with trust and confidence to carry out duties and missions normally found performed by officers in foreign militaries. Therefore, when the commandant states that corporals and sergeants will no longer be promoted as a group, but individually, giving promotion a personal nature and meaning, that can only be a good thing and something that was done when I was promoted to those ranks prior to Vietnam.
However, if the Corps is going to talk-the-talk about NCOs being the backbone of the Corps, then it must walk-the-walk and allow its NCOs to supervise what goes on within the bounds of their authority among the rank and file, holding them accountable and correcting where necessary, while certainly making available 24/7 both staff non-commissioned and commissioned officers to assist and/or take over in resolving matters beyond their NCOs’ experience level and/or authority when required, as well as pointing NCOs in the direction to arrive at the correct solution as opposed to doing it for them.
Unfortunately in my view, the commandant, by introducing security cameras in the barracks and having the barracks roamed by seniors beyond the normal staff duty and officer of the day routinely after hours, can create a climate that the Corps doesn’t trust its corporals and sergeants to maintain authority along with good order and discipline. Odd, in a manner of thinking, since many have been carrying loaded weapons around 24/7, supervising other doing the same thing, among other things. Thus, I would recommend local commanders who know their Marines are the best informed to make decisions on how much further supervision, along with "health and comfort" inspections, are necessary within their command/unit. Although, it might not hurt to have a junior officer available after hours and on weekends periodically that is approachable for informal chats after hours, which is something I took upon myself to do once upon a time during the dark days immediately following our withdrawal from Vietnam.
In closing, I would caution that some further discussion take place in regard to what is and isn’t necessary involving supervision, and would point out not using measures tantamount to spying and micromanagement. Because nothing drives young Marines crazier than boring, unimaginative garrison training and assigning make-busy tasks than superiors popping in and out of the barracks at all odd hours, displaying a lack of trust that may lead many living in the barracks to find homesteads elsewhere after sunset, under less ideal conditions, contributing to the very problems the commandant is trying to get under control.
"Rick" NFI is a retired Marine interested in seeing the spirit of Lt. Gen. John A. LeJeune’s belief that the relationship between senior and subordinate should be one of mutual trust, within the framework of a father mentoring and guiding a son (or daughter) without hovering over him (or her).In the 1970s, one study of 31,940 women found that saccharin users gained more weight than non-users. A 2008 study titled "Fueling the Obesity Epidemic? Artificially Sweetened Beverage Use and Long-Term Weight Gain" looked at 3,682 participants in the famous San Antonio Heart Study and found that people who used artificial sweeteners gained more weight than non-users over the course of the trial. And a widely cited prospective study of 78,694 middle-aged women in the 1980s found that those who used artificial sweeteners were more likely to gain weight.
Those are all just correlations, but consuming artificial sweeteners in isolation has also been shown to make people hungrier later on. Dr. Barry Popkin, a distinguished professor of global nutrition at the University of North Carolina, wrote in a recent literature review that since most artificial sweeteners aren't consumed in isolation, that's not really an issue. So the key distinction in studying and using these sweeteners is the idea of replacement as opposed to addition.
In addition to the sweeteners I mentioned, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also allows use of acesulfame potassium, luo han guo extract, neotame, saccharin, erythritol, hydrogenated starch hydrolysates, isomalt, lactitol, maltitol, mannitol, sorbitol, and xylitol; other countries also use cyclamate, thaumatin, neohesperidin dihydrochalcone, alitame, and polyglycitol syrup. More are on the way. Still the largest randomized-control trial to look at weight gain as a function of replacement of sugar with low-calorie sweeteners involved 641 people, which is not a ton of people, and the study only lasted 18 months, which is not a ton of months. It did find that replacing sugar-sweetened beverages with low-calorie sweetened beverages reduced weight gain and fat accumulation in normal-weight children.
"It would not be expected for a single dietary change, i.e., replacement of sugar with low-calorie sweeteners, to cause clinically meaningful weight loss," the current study reads. Weight management is really about overall dietary and lifestyle patterns. But it's worth considering if you think of an afternoon Diet Coke as a bonus, as opposed to replacing a regularly scheduled Coke heavy.Californians didn’t like Donald Trump on election day and that animosity hasn’t faded much since the Republican businessman and reality TV star took office last month, a statewide poll released Thursday has found.
Trump received about 32 percent of the state’s vote in November and 33 percent of California adults now have a favorable opinion of the new president, according to the Public Policy Institute of California survey. That approval slips to 30 percent when residents were asked about Trump’s early job performance.
“The winner in an election sometimes gets a bounce, with people giving him the benefit of a doubt until they can see how he will govern,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s president and the director of the poll. “That more generous response to the change in leadership isn’t happening in California.”
The poll numbers are brutal for Trump, even with his strong partisan backing from California Republicans. But with Republicans making up only 26 percent of the state’s registered voters, there aren’t enough of them to move the needle much on the poll questions.
For example, only 28 percent of Californians have even a “good amount” of confidence that Trump will make the right decisions for the country’s future. While 78 percent of Republicans have that level of confidence in the president, a dismal 9 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of independent voters feel the same.
The partisan chasm is highlighted at the extreme ends of the survey. Among Republicans, 47 percent have a great deal of confidence that the president will do the right thing for the country during his time in office. But two-thirds of California Democrats have no confidence at all in Trump’s decision-making.
“There’s a huge partisan gap,” Baldassare said. “And since Trump came on the scene more than a year ago and is in the news every day, there are very few people who haven’t formed an opinion about him.”
But this is still California, where even the Republicans don’t always march in lockstep with the conservatives in Congress or back many of Trump’s most controversial programs.
The 85 percent of California adults who want to find a way to allow residents in the U.S. without authorization to stay in the country include 65 percent of the state’s Republicans. While an overwhelming 85 percent of adults say climate change is a threat to the country, two-thirds of Republicans agree. And despite Trump’s opposition to abortion and GOP leaders who want to end government support for Planned Parenthood and overturn the Roe vs. Wade abortion-rights decision, 60 percent of California Republicans believe government should not interfere with a woman’s access to abortion.
“These are settled areas for most people,” Baldassare said. “People decided on these issues a while ago, and they’re not going to change just because of an election.”
Californians’ worries about what’s happening in Washington, D.C., are balanced by a growing belief that good times will be getting better in the Golden State.
Better than 60 percent of adults, including a quarter of Republicans, are pleased with the job Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is doing. The Legislature’s 57 percent approval is the highest the poll has seen since 2001 and a record 66 percent of California adults believe Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature will be able to work together and accomplish a lot this year.
Contrast that to the one-third approval rate for Congress and the bare 50 percent of adults who believe Trump will be able to work well with the Republicans who hold both the House and the Senate.
The same California adults who predict a bleak future for the country, with 57 percent convinced the United States is headed in the wrong direction, are optimistic about the state, with 58 percent saying things are going well for California.
Residents of the Bay Area, where employment is rising and the economy is growing, are the most euphoric, with 70 percent convinced the state is on the upswing.
“People are very happy about the state of affairs in California, which is very much at odds with where they see the federal government heading,” Baldassare said. “We expect our state leaders will act in our interests.”
With more Californians convinced the hard times of the Great Recession are in the rearview mirror and 53 percent saying good financial times are ahead, thoughts are turning to making improvements to the state, even if they cost money.
While 61 percent of the state’s adults believe that spending more on California’s roads and highways is very important, 51 percent say the best way to make those improvements is by using existing funds more wisely.
But a large number of Californians are taking a more pragmatic approach.
Use existing money more wisely, 40 percent of those surveyed agreed, but also boost the amount of money coming from the state.
The poll is based on a telephone survey of 1,702 California adults, taken Jan. 22-31. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuthI recently read two blog posts about data walls that got me thinking about how I help students monitor their progress and see improvements, both academically and behaviorally.
If you have a data wall in your classroom, you must read these two posts (post one, post two).
As you probably know, I do a lot of work around goal setting, specifically setting SMART goals and helping students monitor their progress. This is good stuff people. Goal setting helps students see their progress and focus their learning. As a teacher, it helps me see where a student needs assistance and where I can focus my attention.
Let me make this very clear: NEVER SHAME A CHILD. Though the use of goal setting, NEVER make a child feel like they aren’t measuring up. That is not the purpose of goal setting.
Is the goal too high?
If a child is not reaching his goals, think about the goals that are being set. They’re probably too high for the student. Reset the goals to something more appropriate and within the student’s zone of proximal development, or ZPD.
A good rule of thumb is a 10% increase, whatever that looks like for the skill you’re working on. You’ll need to adjust that for some students, depending on their need and your standards. Be continually adjusting the goals to meet the needs of your students.
Data Walls
If you use a data wall in your classroom a few recommendations:
Set whole group SMART Goals
DO NOT put student names or numbers on rubrics. Don’t identify which students are at which level. One, students probably already know where they are at, and if they don’t, that should be done during individual conferencing. Two, identify who is losing creates an unhealthy learning environment. You NEVER want to tell a student in front of the class that she is not making it. This doesn’t motivate them to do better.
Use amounts of students, not specific students
For instance, I created a chart for Kindergarteners when setting a goal with letter sounds that included three levels. We focused on the number of students who knew a certain amount of sounds and those who were close and those who had far to go. We set a SMART goal that X number of students would know their sounds, which is a sum of those who already know their sounds and those who were close.
Here are a few examples from my 1/2 combo class a couple years ago. In the first example, my groups of students were working toward reaching a certain benchmark. At the time, our district was still measuring reading rate. Everyone worked toward the goal, but we counted our success based on the “we did it” and “almost there” groups. We all celebrated when those two groups met the goal (which they did every time because the groups were specific enough to the students who could do it).
This is a very blurry photo (sorry!), but each strip has the numbers 1-24 on it, which is the number of students in my classroom, and the addition strategy underneath it. As students mastered a specific addition strategy, I colored in one more student space on the strip. No names and no numbers are attached to it, but it shows us working toward ALL students reaching the goal of learning that strategy.
Use a Rubric
If you only have 1-2 students in the lowest rubric area, fudge you numbers. Again, you don’t want to single students out. It’s okay to tell students where they should be at a point in the year, but don’t single out |
, clicking his pen and readying it to begin taking notes again.
"She killed her own parents. The CCTV footage proves it."
"How? Give me details, something to work with. If we get this evidence back how can we know it's the right one?"
Hans took a deep breath. "It's footage of school. Elsa runs out of the room with her eyes." His voice cracked. "Her eyes are glowing."
"Glowing?"
"A bright, bright blue. Like magic." He said, waving his arms for emphasis.
The officer chuckled. "Magic?"
Hans lowered his arms and balled them into fists again. "Don't you laugh I know what I saw. Ice was all over the room!" His phone began to ring; he took it out and shot an apology to the officer. "Sorry it's work I'll be a minute."
The officer watched Hans half turn to stare out of the window. He looked down to the note pad. This was looking like it was going to be the strangest case he'd ever worked on. Or was Hans just deluded? On drugs? He scanned his notes. 'Ice magic' He'd written and underlined. He couldn't help a chuckle escape from his throat.
"WHAT?!" Hans shouted down the phone brining the officer out of his thoughts. "You can't suspend me! The play!?" He fumed. The officer took half a step closer to try and hear the other side of the conversation.
"Mr Westerguard you have tampered with a senior member of staff's account and removed data onto a personal storage drive, we have the logs here."
"So?!"
"This is against policy and means you are suspended while we investigate."
Hans threw the phone across the room, it slammed against the wall and fell to the floor in pieces.
"Mr Westerguard?" The officer questioned. "This is highly inappropriate."
"Don't you fucking tell me what to do. I've seen some ice shit and everyone expects me to just be fine with it? And now it's cost me my job. My play." He looked to his shaking fists. "Elsa. I'll fucking kill her."
"Sir, calm down." The officer said.
"Fuck you." Hans said as he took a swing for the policeman's head. But he didn't flinch at all, and simply caught Hans' ill-aimed punch in his hand.
"You're under arrest."
Elsa, Kristoff and Anna walked back into Elsa's home. Where Olaf and Sven were still sat on the couch, Anna limped over and sat by the small boy.
"What happened Anna?" Olaf asked, looking to the girl's foot.
"Oh nothing. Just a little sore that's all."
"We got it." Elsa said holding up the CD. "It's here."
Olaf quickly snatched it and threw it to the floor. He jumped up and down on it for several minutes. "Ahh, that ought to do it."
"Just to make sure." Kistoff said coming out of the kitchen with a knife. He turned the disc over and scratched several deep lines into it.
"What now?" Elsa asked.
"Well Hans is currently being put into a police car, so there's that." Olaf said.
"Wait what?" Anna said, jumping up a little too quickly. The pain in her ankle reminding her to keep sudden movements to a minimum, for now at least.
Olaf turned his laptop around and showed the group Hans' live CCTV footage. He was currently being escorted down the pathway to the main road, hands cuffed behind his back.
"How's he being arrested? They should be after me, what's he done wrong?" Elsa asked.
"I might have accidentally told the head of university that he logged into a senior staff's account. Then I might have accidentally emailed him all the logs that prove it." Olaf said.
"Olaf you genius! You thought of all that yourself?" Kristoff asked.
"Yeah, why?"
"It's brilliant."
"But it still doesn't stop anyone with access looking at that footage and seeing the same thing Hans saw." Elsa pointed out.
"Were in a drama department Elsa, if anyone does look we'll just say we were in dress rehearsal." Kristoff said.
"It's our word against his." Sven added. "And who are they most likely to believe?"
"Hans did make the connection between my parent's deaths and me." Elsa said tapping her chin. "If Hans can do it; means anyone else can."
"Again, he kind of saw your magic first hand. As long as you don't scare anyone else shitless with it, I think you'll be fine."
"That wasn't her fault." Anna said.
"Never said it was; well it technically is, I don't think anyone else would leak ice when they're upset."
"One of the many reasons why Elsa is so unique." Anna said. "Love you Els."
Kristoff dry heaved. "Shit that was bad Anna, even or you."
"Shit it Kris." Elsa said. She strutted over to Anna and gave her a kiss. "I love you too."
"Kris?" Kristoff questioned. "I've not given you permission to give me a nickname." He folded his arms across his chest.
"I don't care." Elsa said looking into Anna's eyes.
"Okaaaay. Let's give these two some room." Sven said jumping up, feeling slightly awkward.
"Awww, can we watch? Please Elsa." Kristoff smiled. "I'll let you call me Kris if you say yes."
"How about fuck off?" Elsa said.
"Well that's just rude."
"C'mon." Olaf said as the boys huddled out of the room.
"Wait. Where are you all going?" Anna said snapping out of Elsa's gaze.
"Giving you two some time alone?" Sven said.
"Wait, we're not doing anything you tools." Anna said. "Jesus."
"Okay." Olaf came waddling back in and sat on the couch again.
"Didn't look like you were doing nothing." Sven said to the floor, still stood awkwardly in the doorway.
"Dammit. I was going to do the empty glass against the door thing. D-Does that actually work?" Kristoff said scratching the back of his neck.
"Jesus Kristoff, we need to find you a lady friend." Anna smirked.
"Well yeah that would help. I asked Elsa is she has sisters but she told me to fuck off." Kristoff said sitting down.
Elsa laughed. "Sounds harsh, I'm sure I didn't say it like that. I don't have sisters anyway, or brothers. So can't help you out. Sorry."
Kristoff lowered is eyebrows and shook his head side to side "What? You're always saying things like that!"
"You're just exaggerating." Elsa waved her hand dismissively.
"You said the line 'how about fuck off' literally less than five minutes ago."
Anna butted in. "I think it's the inner Ice Queen showing herself. Kind of sexy though, she doesn't take any shit."
"Hmm." Was all Kistoff could say.
"So what are we going to do this afternoon?" Olaf asked.
"We could head into drama for the afternoon." Sven said. "See what's what now that Hans is suspended. I guess the play is off?"
"Could be." Kristoff replied.
The group got up and made their way to the door. They all exited and Elsa began to lock up.
"Erm E-Elsa?" Anna stuttered.
"Hmmm?"
"You weren't expecting a visit from some police people were you?"
"What?" Elsa turned her head and saw a police car making its way up the long drive.
The small man in a black suit grabbed the lamp that was on the table and swivelled it around so it shone right into Elsa's eyes.
"What do you know about Hans Westerguard?" He squeaked, his voice was very high pitched for a man.
Elsa squinted, trying to get her vision to refocus with the new light. "He's my teacher for drama class."
"Are you aware of the accusations he is making about you?" he said moving the light around.
"No!" Elsa replied quickly.
"Well then." The man said dropping the light, and picking up a sheet of paper. "He claims that you have ice magic. Is that true?"
"No."
"I SAID IS THAT TRUE!" He screamed, lunging over the table and getting right into Elsa's face.
Elsa felt ice cracking at her fingertips, as she took in a sharp intake of breath. His face was only inches away. "N-No it's not true." Elsa said with a shaky breath.
"Gooood. Dismissed."
"Wait, what? I-I mean that's it?"
"Just a formality Miss Arendelle. I mean c'mon, ice magic?" He started to laugh.
Elsa tried to join in with her own awkward laughter, as the man undid the door and gestured for her to go though.
The guard outside the door led her back through to the reception area, all her friends had already been questioned and were sat waiting. When Anna noticed Elsa was walking over she shot up and ran towards her. Almost knocking Elsa over with a hug.
"Oh Elsa."
"Anna?" Elsa said as the air was squoze out of her lungs.
The officer coughed into his hand. Making both girls stop and stand straight. "Alright. Seems like all your stories line up to me. Everything seems to be in order... Hans also failed a breath test so, drink driving is another thing to add to the list."
"List?" Elsa questioned.
"Yep. Looks like he's not all there. Mumbling to himself and all sorts now." The officer said. "But anyway. You're all free to go. I believe your principle has been after you."
The group piled out of the police station. "How the fuck are we going to get to uni from here?" Kristoff asked.
"Walking. It's not exactly far from here." Anna replied.
"T-Thanks everyone." Elsa said after minutes of walking down the busy road, the pathway was wide but the sound of cars passing made a little too much noise. "F-For being on my side. It means a lot."
"Any friend of Anna's is a friend of mine too." Kristoff said.
"Aww. See Elsa I told you he's not that bad."
"Friends?" Elsa said blankly.
"Yeah?" Kristoff said. "U-Unless the Ice Queen can't have friends?" He smirked.
Elsa felt her heart swell, and for the first time in a long time, she didn't hesitate. "No, I'd like that actually. I'd like that a lot." She finished, looking between Anna, Kristoff, Sven and Olaf.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
While Mafia III developer Hangar 13 is not ready to talk about exactly how many hours it will take you to complete the open-world crime game, studio director Haden Blackman has teased the game has "hours and hours and hours of content." Not only that, but the game's aims to be highly replayable.
Blackman mentioned that there are several sequences in Mafia III that you won't see on every playthrough. One of these involves a mob gang executing someone "in a pretty dramatic fashion." As such, he hopes players will re-play Mafia III after they finish a first playthrough.
"We're not talking about the exact hours yet, I'm a completionist too," Blackman told GameSpot. "It is hours and hours and hours of content. I hope that people are encouraged to replay and see things that they didn't see before. Hopefully people go back and look for those little hidden gems.
"I wanted to build games that really tried to push the notion that the players co-author in the experience," he added. "We have that tag line for Hanger 13, that every player's story is unique. That's definitely something we want to try and push for everything that we do."
Mafia III will be released for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 7.
The game is set in 1968 New Orleans, starring Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam War veteran who returns to find his home in ruin. The Italian mob now rules New Orleans, and it's up to Clay--with the help of the Irish mob and others--to bring down the organization from within.
Further reading:STAMFORD, Conn. -- Drivers aren't the only ones who could be fined for texting or talking, if some local officials have their way.
A proposal in the town of Stamford, Connecticut, aims to keep pedestrians safe and could help set a national trend cracking down on "distracted walking," CBS New York reports.
"I see mothers pushing their babies, they're texting and I'm like, 'How do y'all do all this at this intersection?' That scares me," Dawn Thompson said.
"There have been many times where I looked down on my phone and then notice that there's a car coming right at me, and I feel like a moron whenever that happens," Nicole Neurohr said.
Pedestrians crossing the street while texting or talking on an electronic device may soon be illegal in Stamford if a proposal to outlaw distracted walking is approved.
"They're oblivious to cars," Stamford City representative John Zelinsky said.
Zelinsky said the Pedestrian Safety Ordinance is modeled after one approved in Honolulu late last month, and would carry a $30 fine if police catch you in the act.
"I don't want any more injuries or deaths as a result of pedestrians getting hit. We've had about four or five within the past three or four years," he said.
Nationwide pedestrian fatalities jumped about 11 percent last year with nearly 6,000 people killed, according to the National Governors' Highway Safety Association.
One study found that the number of emergency room visits for distracted walking injuries doubled between 2005 and 2010 to more than 1,500, and some experts believe the problem is actually much bigger, because people are reluctant to admit what they were doing.
While many people in Stamford seemed to like the idea of the law, others asked, "Do you really need to legislate common sense?"
"I think that's ridiculous," Troy Latham said.
Latham certainly doesn't like the idea of a $30 fine or being forced to hang up the phone.
"If it's an important text message or call they're getting, like, what if it's too late, what if their mother's in the hospital and they need someone to call real quick," Latham said.
There would be an exception for 911 calls, and Zelinsky said the fines really aren't the point.
"This is not actually to raise money for the city, but to hopefully educate the public," he said.OUT-OF-CONTRACT Adelaide spearhead Josh Jenkins says his future may not be decided until the end of the Crows' 2016 season.
In Melbourne on Thursday to meet with agent Paul Connors during his mid-season bye, Jenkins is weighing up lucrative offers from rival clubs.
The 27-year-old is believed to have been tabled a six-year, $4million-plus deal from the Brisbane Lions, among a number of clubs interested in his services.
Richmond, with out of contract key forwards Tyrone Vickery and Ben Griffiths, is one other club understood to have shown interest.
Jenkins' value continues to rise – with 37 goals to his name in 12 matches – and he may wait until the end of the Crows' campaign to make a decision.
Who's on the move? Nick Bowen tracks 2016's free agents
"Maybe, you don't rule anything out," he told Channel Nine on the contract's timeline.
"Ideally, there's an intention to stay and hopefully the club wants me to be there.
"You'd like to move towards something. There's a lot of external factors that come into play so we'll just see how long it takes. I'm pretty comfortable while I'm still able to get a kick, there's no rush to do it."
Jenkins indicated he was looking for more than money to decide his future beyond 2016.
"Money doesn't guarantee happiness as well," he said.
"I'm really happy, as (well as) my partner in Adelaide at the moment. There's many things you've got to weigh up so, as I said, we'll see what happens."
Uncontracted Gold Coast midfielder Dion Prestia also spent the week in Melbourne, meeting with manager Marty Pask as he looks to decide his home for 2017.A sexual pervert who exposed himself to a female jogger in Melbourne's north may find his own identity exposed after the quick-thinking woman whipped out her mobile phone and snapped a photograph of him.
The image, which reveals the face of the flasher, has been released by police in a bid to track down the offender who is believed to have targeted another woman in similar circumstances on the same day.
Say cheese.... The woman snapped this picture after being flashed. Credit:Victoria Police
Police said the 38-year-old woman, from Coburg, was jogging along the Merri Creek Trail at the rear of the CERES Community Environment Park when she stopped to stretch about 1.35pm on Sunday.
A man rode past her on a red bicycle, before he turned around and rode past her a second time.Transgender people from across India recently took part in a sporting event in the central state of Chhattisgarh. (Text: Salman Ravi; Photos: Anwar Qureshi)
The All India Transgender Sports Meet was organised by the Right Turn Welfare Society, which includes well-known sportspeople from across India.
The event was held in the police parade ground in the state capital, Raipur.
The participants said they had been preparing for the event for days.
Some of them displayed exceptional sporting abilities.
The event included races and discuss throws.
This is the first time an event of this type was held for the transgender community in India.
It also included kabaddi - a field game in which two teams take turns to send a raider to the other's territory, tag members of the opposing team, and return "home" without being blocked by defenders on the other side. While he is "tagging" his opponents, the raider has to hold his breath and chant "kabaddi, kabaddi".
The event was inaugurated by Lakshmi Tripathi (c), a celebrity transgender.
Millions of transgender people live on the fringes of Indian society, ostracised because of their gender identity.Receiving this gift today was completely unexpected. I thought I had already gotten everything I ordered when I got a message saying that a package was waiting for me in my rental office. I still had no idea what it was until I got it home and looked at the shipping label. It had my username on it, so obviously this was my secret santa gift!
I didn't give a whole lot of information in my bio, but my Santa worked with what they had and it turned out wonderful :) Even better since I wasn't expecting it!
Everything came in cute little bags with cards attached to them that included a short message from my Santa.
There is a Lindt chocolate container that is also an ornament! (which will be on my tree once I finish what's inside). I looovvveee chocolate!
There is a package of two bottle openers that are shaped like the pin for the Hand of the King from Game of Thrones. One silver, one gold. I looovvveee Game of Thrones!
And the last gift is a slasher film collection that includes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Amusement (2007), and Friday the 13th (2009). I looooveee horror movies!
Altogether, I'm very happy with my gift! Santa, you did a great job. I hope yours makes you just as happy!Presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum warned this fall that movement "up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America," according to The Times. Wisconsin Congressman Paul D. Ryan, a leading House conservative, recently wrote that "mobility from the very bottom up" is "where the United States lags behind."
The story reported that at least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A Swedish research project found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. In Denmark, the number was 25 percent. In Britain, it was 30 percent. At the same time, only 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.
A Canadian study found that just 16 percent of Canadian men raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared with 22 percent of Americans, The Times reported. Similarly, 26 percent of American men raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of Canadians.
Economists argue that a central tool in reviving the middle class - and creating social mobility - is the creation of better-paying middle class jobs. Like so much else, that task is enormously complex. Scholars say the reduction in pay is the product of worldwide economic trends, from technological change to globalization, that are difficult to counter. Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University, tracked which parts of the economy featured high paying jobs over time. The percentage of well-paying jobs provided by the manufacturing sector fell by half - from roughly 27 percent in 1992 to 13.5 percent in 2003.
Holzer notes that the nature of business in the United States changed over the last several decades. In the past, large, capital-intensive manufacturing companies faced relatively little competition from overseas and depended on workers in the United States.
"Big, stable, highly profitable and not very competitive means a bigger pie," Holzer said in an interview. "The simplest thing to do is to cut a bigger slice of the pie for workers."
That business model has disappeared. Globalization caused American firms to face fiercer competition from foreign companies. And technological change allowed American firms to ship manufacturing overseas but still tightly monitor quality. Overall, companies have gained the upper hand on workers, who are increasingly easy to replace.
Paul Osterman, an MIT professor, agreed that those dynamics are irreversible. But he argued that some changes in American business norms unnecessarily accelerated the elimination of middle class jobs. Executives once praised for creating jobs are now rewarded for eliminating them.The San Diego Chargers today signed running back Shaun Draughn and linebackers Cordarro Law and Kevin Reddick. Chargers fans will already be familiar with the former CFL player Law as he was on the team throughout training camp before being cut and then signed to the practice squad.
Kevin Reddick is a bit more anonymous, but was a very good special teams player in New Orleans last year where he led the team in special teams tackles. He spent two weeks on the St. Louis Rams practice squad after the Saints waived him at the end of the preseason.
Shaun Draughn will become the third running back on the depth chart behind Branden Oliver and Donald Brown. He's a quick back with soft hands, but little top end speed. He has spent time on the Bears, Colts, and Ravens after playing a full season with the Chiefs in 2012. He wasn't a great player for Kansas City, but he also didn't embarrass himself. He can catch the ball out of the backfield if necessary and isn't bad between the tackles. Just don't ask him to beat anyone to the corner and he'll be fine. He also returned kicks for the Chiefs, so it's possible he'll see time there for the Chargers as well.
The Chargers were sitting at 51 players on the active roster prior to today, so to make room the Chargers had to release defensive end Lawrence Guy. Some had suggested he could displace Kendall Reyes. Obviously, that didn't happen.
A couple moves were also made to the practice squad with the Chargers signing linebacker Colton Underwood, running back D.J. Adams, and tight end Dave Paulson. Underwood and Adams are actually both re-signings as both spent time with the team this off season. They fill the spots vacated by Law (signed to the active roster), running back Marion Grice (signed by the Cardinals), and safety Adrian Phillips (released today).
These moves were largely made out of necessity with injuries being suffered by Ryan Mathews, Danny Woodhead, Melvin Ingram, and Manti Te'o. Hopefully it's enough to keep the team afloat while they're out.
Finally, the Chargers also cut ties with injured defensive back Marcus CromartieOnly three undefeated teams remain after three weeks of the NFL season: the Arizona Cardinals, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles? Well, you’ve probably heard of them. Chip Kelly, genius status, and all that on offense. Philadelphia hasn’t always been impressive, but they have been resilient. They came from behind against both Jacksonville and Indianapolis, and then survived a shootout (and plenty of hard feelings, more on that in a bit) against Washington.
The Cincinnati Bengals are the most statistically dominant team so far, and it’s made even more impressive considering they have been without starting WR Marvin Jones, star receiver A.J. Green missed most of the Week 2 game against Atlanta with a foot injury, and pro bowl LB Vontaze Burfict missed the game yesterday. Cincinnati has outscored opponents 44-3 in the first half of their three wins. Andy Dalton has more touchdown catches (1) than sacks taken (0), and as a result, Cincinnati is 1st in net yards per pass play so far, while also ranking 2nd in net yards per pass on defense. If you want to point to schedule – well, sure, they haven’t played the Broncos or Seahawks, though they do get the Patriots in week 5 off a bye – you might note that their opponents are 5-1 in their other games played.
Then, there are the Arizona Cardinals, probably the least talked about and respected 10-6 team in a while. Arizona’s defense lost Karlos Dansby in free agency, Daryl Washington to suspension, veteran stalwart Darnell Dockett to a season-ending injury, and has been without John Abraham since the first game. Oh, and they are also without their starting quarterback, Carson Palmer, who has been out the last two games.
[RELATED: 49ERS AND CARDINALS FANS BRAWL]
How many teams would have survived those kinds of losses and even been competitive, let alone 3-0 against the Chargers, Giants, and 49ers? Arizona has continued to roll despite those losses, with a defense that is a bear for anyone. It starts with having two stars, Patrick Peterson at lockdown corner, and Calais Campbell at defensive line, along with a deep defensive line and versatile safeties/defensive backs that cover and blitz from all angles.
On Sunday, the 49ers basically conceded that they could not run against the Cardinals front. Gore and Hyde ran only 9 times for 19 yards, while Colin Kaepernick had 53 combined runs, scrambles, and pass attempts. They did so against a team that was playing defensive backs in linebacker roles for a fair chunk of the game. Larry Foote played despite a shoulder injury, and had 6 tackles, but it was first round pick Deone Bucannon, drafted as a safety, and strong safety Tony Jefferson that really impressed me.
Throw the depth chart out the window, which lists Jefferson and Tyrann Mathieu as starters, and Rashad Johnson and Deone Bucannon as the backups. I’ll await a Pro Football Focus breakdown of snaps for all these players, but it felt like they were on the field a lot together. Bucannon was lined up in a linebacker slot on a sizable number of plays, including the first run play of the game. He was the one who tripped up Gore behind the line (though the announcer credited Cromartie, and the play-by-play lists Dan Williams, who fell on Gore as he was going down, with the tackle).
All of these safety/athlete types on the field at once–whether they are in a traditional nickel or with a “single high safety” look–allows for much versatility when it comes to disguising blitzes. The key blitz came near the end of the first half, as San Francisco had started 5 of 6 on third down and led 14-6. Arizona went with 7 blitzing players, leaving only four in coverage, but Kaepernick had to turn away from the side where Boldin broke open, and get rid of the ball under pressure.
Including the above 3rd down, San Francisco was only 1 of 6 for the rest of the game. The second half featured more diverse coverages and blitzes, and was aided by San Francisco penalties. Anquan Boldin had a costly unnecessary roughness penalty when he butted his helmet into Jefferson, moving San Francisco back to a long first and goal, in their one clear chance in the second half.
Bucannon then made one of the plays of the game on second down. San Francisco went with a read option. They were lined up trips to the right, with Arizona in man defense on all three. Kaepernick read the defensive end crashing and properly kept the ball for what could have been a big play. Bucannon, though, was lined up in the middle linebacker spot, and curled around the edge to mirror and shut down Kaepernick.
I’m not sure that’s a play many traditional middle linebackers make, and instead of a gain, it was a further loss. It was also Bucannon on the next play that drew the clipping penalty on Jonathan Martin, racing through the line as Martin was to deliver a cut block on the backside defender.
The final big play effectively ended San Francisco’s last chance to take the lead. Kaepernick had been under pressure all day but managed to slip back or past the line of scrimmage on scrambles, until this one. Again, it’s Bucannon and Jefferson coming on a blitz, with Jefferson getting the sack on the delay, after Bucannon comes up the middle and takes on the blocking back.
I’m not sure if it is intentional, but the four safeties for Arizona wear similar numbers: Jefferson (22), Johnson (26), Mathieu (32), and Bucannon (36). In fact, Mathieu got credit for that read option tackle on Kaepernick by Bucannon in the play-by-play, even though he was not near the play. If Seattle has the Legion of Boom, this group of versatile safeties (where only one is often traditionally in a deep zone role) is going to need its own nickname pretty soon. If only we had a President Matthew or Mathieu in our history, they could be the Presidents.
QUARTERBACK CATCHES GALORE
Quarterbacks can occasionally catch balls on tipped passes, and end up on blooper reels. Rarely, though, do teams actually throw passes to the signal caller. In 2013, only Geno Smith and Tyrod Taylor caught a pass for positive yards, and Taylor was not the starting quarterback. In 2012, Terrelle Pryor and Matthew Stafford were the only players to gain positive yards after a catch. In most years, you might get two passes all year for a big gain to a quarterback. Drew Brees, for example, was the only one to catch a pass of over 10 yards in the 2004 season.
Yesterday, we had two, with Dalton and Russell Wilson, and nearly had a third, when the sweetest of the bunch, to Johnny Manziel, was called back by penalty. Trend? I don’t expect Peyton Manning or Tom Brady to be running routes any time soon, but we’ll probably hit the golden age of quarterback catches by mid-season.
PHILLY VS. WASHINGTON GOT NASTY
Once upon a time, Philadelphia and Washington engaged in the “Body Bag Game” when Buddy Ryan was in Philly. This one may have been one of the most intense matchups since, and it was elevated emotionally by DeSean Jackson’s return to Philadelphia. You know about the ejections of Chris Baker and Jason Peters after Baker drilled Nick Foles on a would-be interception (that was eventually ruled incomplete). Baker got pelted on his way out of the stadium, as well.
But even before then, things had been building and that was just the final eruption. It had been emotional all game, but really shot up in intensity after Jackson’s touchdown and celebration.
After that, every pass play seemed to involve woofing and jawing among the players. Then, in the series right before Baker hit Foles, Cousins had gotten hit after the whistle had blown the play dead for a penalty. That one involved a sweet flop.
Baker’s hit was likely an escalation of those events just minutes earlier, and round two will likely need to be tightly refereed, or things could get heated again.The other day our very own morozgrafix shared some amazing long-exposure shots taken in the Bay Area. Immediately, we wanted to know more about how he achieved these nearly magical colors. It turned out he used a simple, easily reproducible technique: Instead of an ND filter, he put welding glass (which comes in a variety of tints) in front of his lens while shooting, making it possible to take the shot in broad daylight.
Above is only a small selection of the many great shots you have taken using the technique. If you want to give it a try, the Welding mask glass filter group and the pictures’ description provide a great wealth of tips and recommendations, as well as details on the glass color used.
Photos from Stephen Ozga, radarbrat photography, Tony Lasagne, phatneil, Chrisconphoto, BrightonPiers, and Alistair HaimesAlan Moore is appearing at this weekend's I'll Be Your Mirror festival. He and fellow editor Queen Calluz explain to John Doran why the global experiment has failed and why their local magazine, Dodgem Logic, is a step in the right direction
When I went up to Northampton last year to interview Alan Moore for a feature I confided to him that I only got nervous about interviews that happened outside of London. That if I had to travel somewhere away from the usual raft of record labels, cafes, pubs, hotels and restaurants in Zone One of the capital then it usually signified something out of the ordinary. For example, the nerves had hit me bad when I travelled to meet Mark E Smith in Manchester and Billy Childish in Chatham. Despite being a multi-million selling author of such singular works as Watchmen, From Hell and V For Vendetta Moore has never let commercial reasons take him from Northampton, let alone inspire a permanent move to a media-friendly metropolis like London or New York.
After the interview he walked the photographer Dave Ma and myself back to the train station, holding forth on local history in a most amusing manner. As we walked past the Northampton Guildhall he pointed out a crest belonging to Lawrence Washington, a local wool merchant whose family moved to the Americas and sired the first President of the United States. We passed a man sitting on the floor outside a boarded up shop with a plastic cup of coins next to him. Moore stopped to talk to him for a while before pressing something into his hand. As a journalist you can interpret such acts of largesse in many different ways but I do know that both men were on first name terms. He could be an ambassador for the town - or rather for the people of the town, for his warts and all view of it is one born out of a desire for improvement and would probably not sit easily with some of those elected to local office. Those with a duty first and foremost to party and commerce.
By his own admission his love for his home town and its people has grown over recent years. What was once mainly a handy way for him to remain anonymous and able to pursue his own singular path in life as a writer, magician, folk philosopher, psychedelic bon viveur and psychogeographer has blossomed into a desire to engage with the local community - not primarily as an act of hobbyism or philanthropy but as a radical political statement. Nowhere is this more clear than in his local underground magazine Dodgem Logic which was born out of a frustration with the way that his neighbours were being treated and a wish to give them a voice. People who only know him for his popular comics might at first be confused at the content of interviews, recipes, fiction, puzzles, counterculture and local news but the canny will recognize his maverick intent. Now eight issues old, the writing, photography, illustration and design is mainly provided by Northamptonshire's finest (citizens not policemen), although there have been a few contributing guests such as Michael Moorcock, Simon Munnery, Josie Long, David Quantick, Stewart Lee and Kevin O'Neill along the way.
Although all the issues have fantastic covers - the photography of burlesque dancers for issue two and a picture of two male lovers embracing, rendered as if by an LSD powered Aubrey Beardsley for issue four - my favourite is the one of Phil Barton, a former merchant seaman and resident of the Spring Boroughs wielding a hatchet and his pet ferret. The redoubtable Mr Barton spent years complaining to the local council about the lack of sufficient heating in his block of flats over the winter period and then, after his friend and neighbour died of hyperthermia and council officials broke into his flat, he paid a visit to their offices to make a very visceral protest.
If you're thinking that all of this has a vague whiff of Class War about it, then you wouldn't be completely wrong but you certainly won't be reading about "hospitalized coppers" in DL. The main point is it's probably fair enough to say that your local paper isn't running stories on these issues. In fact if you want to read stories about corruption or, let's say shady dealings, going on in local government you have to look for something as centralized and, relatively special interest, as Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs column. Or if you're lucky you'll have a dedicated blogger who covers local politics in detail. But given that very little light is shone in such areas by the local and national media in general this is where malpractice and corruption flourish. So hurrah for Dodgem Logic and shame on us for taking so long to get behind, this perversely out of step, but thunderously righteous venture. Look to the foot of the article for details on the current issue and how to get back issues.
Interview with Alan Moore
Alan, do you think on the quiet, you're a lot more of a traditional Englishman than people might presume?
Alan Moore: Well it depends on which English tradition you're talking about... I like to think of myself as a traditional Englishman, at least in so far as the traditions of Northampton go. But we have been on somebody or other's shit list since about |
his unhistorical tirade, he talks about how Hobbes created the ideal of socialism (the collective over the individual) in response to Adam Smith. Go ahead and take the time now to look up when Leviathan was written and The Wealth of Nations was written… or the fact that Hobbes died before Smith was even born! Of course, Leviathan was rather totalitarian. Hobbes also said that the default of mankind was “nasty, brutish, and short”… not that Capitalism was.
He ignores that fact that the free economic interaction of free human beings does not preclude a healthy social community, nor does it preclude altruism or caring about one’s community as a whole. This is the typical demonization that Marxists and other Leftists do: They mischaracterize non-Socialism as evil-oriented greed that necessarily includes oppression.
Their worldview is one of unintelligent design whereby society is designed by someone, be it feudal lord, capitalist, or the socialist will of the people. Thus everything is intentional in society. If things are bad, it is because bad people made it so. Leftism is one big conspiracy theory, with enemies at hand to blame, be they Kulaks, Jews, Capitalists, &c.
He states the assumption that “Capitalist and Proletariat” was simply another version of “Lord and Serf”. It is obvious to most sane people that this isn’t true. Lords had legal power over Serfs. Under the rule of law, “Capitalist” and “Proletariat” play by the same rules with neither having power over the other. But the Leftists are obsessed by some people having power over other people. Even the idea that “the people” as a collective having power over “the people” as a collective fits into this obsession of theirs.
He goes on to say that if one wants “liberty, equality, and fraternity” than the eeevil cabal of Capitalists should be replaced by the workers who create goods, because he assumes that the collective will (which does not actually exist, volonté générale being a faux dieu) will to right by the collective because the collective will would never oppress the collective! That no such thing exists explains why all Communist countries become completely hierarchical with a Nomenklatura or a strongman taking absolute control. In effect, the Left is just projecting.
He admits what Socialism is, though: Using the State to re-arrange society.
Ironically, he then goes on to say that the state is irrelevant to socialism.
BTW, Czarist Russia was hardly a paragon of “Capitalism”…
He also blames Capitalists for arresting Eugene V. Debs, ignoring that fact that he was arrested under the Presidency of Progressive hero Woodrow Wilson… which was commuted by “Capitalist” Warren G. Harding.
He then goes of about how eeevil Americans tried to invade Russia after the October Revolution to overthrow and oppress Russians by taking away the Soviet overlords… Yes, this man is defending Lenin and the murderous regime he established. Then he says the Soviets messed up because they didn’t create the true socialism, and even called Stalin the ultimate Capitalist! Pro-tip: State Capitalism is more akin to Mercantilism (which was opposed by Adam Smith) and not what the Soviet Union did.
Again, he does not understand that Communism can not work – that concentrating the power to fundamentally transform society will lead to a tiny minority of Nomenklatura grabbing that power. The “masses” can not, nor ever, freely manipulate society based on some shared and collective will.
He mentions that he only went to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. So there are three schools to never send your kid to.
If you survive repeatedly FacePalming yourself, there is a sequel wherein Prof. Wolff talks about state-less socialism.
TweetThere might not be presents under the tree or carolers going door to door, but for a lot of comics readers, it's once again the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: This Saturday marks the 10th Annual Free Comic Book Day!
For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's exactly like it sounds: On the first Saturday in May, you can walk into a comic book store and walk out with a stack of comics put out by publishers to showcase the best stuff and bring comics to the public, all for the price of on the house. Of course, this provides a minor dilemma to regular readers; while better shops will let you take one of each, it's always nice to leave something on the rack for the new readers to try out, but at the same time, you don't want to miss out on reading the best ones.
That's why today, we're giving readers old and new a rundown of The Best, Worst and Weirdest Free Comic Book Day Stories, from the ones everybody needs to the few that are overpriced even though they're giving 'em away!
Atomic Robo & Friends, from Red 5 Comics
It probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to FCBD veterans, but once again, Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener have stepped up with the single best story of Free Comic Book Day. Just like they did last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.
This time around, Robo and his team head to a school to be celebrity guest at judges at a science fair, and as often happens in the world of Atomic Robo, hilarity ensues with the arrival of a fan-favorite special guest villain. It's seriously great, and it's exactly what a Free Comic Book Day story should be: A clever story that's great for old fans and new readers alike that's packed full of action, comedy, adventure and pure fun that's going to leave readers wanting more. Of course, that's what Atomic Robo is in every issue, meaning that it actually is a comic that could only be better if it was free.
As for the "Friends" of the title, they're a bit of a mixed bag, which I have to think is partly because because they're previews lifted from full-length comics, rather than complete stories. The pages for Foster Broussard read like Pirates of the Caribbean with the piracy swapped out for the 1849 Gold Rush -- which isn't a bad thing -- but the Moon Girl pages that close it out are downright incomprehensible. Still, with that Robo story in there, everything else is gravy.
Captain America and Thor: the Mighty Fighting Avengers, from Marvel Comics
I know I just said that Atomic Robo was this year's best FCBD story, but man, Marvel's offering is a close second. Created by Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee -- the same team that brought you the sadly canceled Thor: The Mighty Avenger, for which this is more or less the lost 9th issue -- this one manages to tie into both of Marvel's summer movie offerings and still stand on its own as a great all ages story with a tale of how Captain America and Thor teamed up with King Arthur to stop Loki from stealing the Holy Grail.
I'm going to go ahead and go through that one more time, just so we're all on the same page here: This is a comic book where Captain America and Thor team up with King Arthur to stop Loki from stealing the Holy Grail. And it's free.
The only downside is that if you're like me, it brings back the sting of Thor: TMA getting canceled with a reminder of just how great that book was. At the same time, though, it's the perfect stepping stone for kids coming out of the Thor movie wanting to read more that could lead them right into the two TMA trades and the aforementioned Brian Clevinger's brilliant Captain America: The Fighting Avenger one-shot. It's a nice piece of marketing on Marvel's part that's also a genuinely great story in its own right, and again: That's what FCBD is all about.
Green Lantern/Flashpoint Special Edition, from DC Comics
DC, on the other hand, takes a shot at promoting their major summer film in a completely different way: With a reprint of a story that came out three years ago.
On the one hand, I totally get this strategy: DC's clearly banking on Green Lantern: Secret Origin being an easy sell for fans who want to get a slightly different take on the exact same events of the movie, and if the goal of Free Comic Book Day is to get comics in the hands of people who aren't already reading comics, then the target audience doesn't already have a copy of the Secret Origin trade sitting on a bookshelf at home. With the mass market primed for Green Lantern, it makes perfect sense that they'd want to push it to the forefront. In that respect, it's a no-brainer.
But at the same time, FCBD is a chance for publishers to put their best foot forward for all audiences and showcase their comics to people that they might not have the chance to reach again. And by putting out an FCBD book that doesn't have anything you can't get elsewhere, they're basically sending the message that the best thing they've got is a story from 2008. There's just no reason for anyone already reading comics to pick it up.
But again, it is a nice jumping on point for people excited about the movie, especially with GL being one of DC's biggest hits over the past few years.
Darkwing Duck & Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, from Boom! Studios
Speaking of reprints, Boom! is puting out a flip book featuring the first issues of their revival of the old "Disney Afternoon" programming blocks from the late '80s, early '90s. Like a lot of people my age, I was totally obsessed with this stuff back in the third grade -- I, uh, may have had an airbrushed t-shirt with Chip on it -- but I actually haven't read any of the comics until now.
As a result, I had no idea that the Darkwing Duck comic was a sequel to the cartoon that's set in a future where the former super-hero now has to work for an all-encompasing megacorporation that seems so much like RoboCop's Omni Consumer Products that I kept expecting Gizmoduck to show up and fight ED-209. The experience of reading is actually even weirder than that probably sounds: It's ostensibly a kid's book, but it relies a lot on having prior knowledge of a cartoon that last aired fifteen years ago, and involves a capitalist dystopia where people -- er, ducks -- are violently abducted to "detention camps." It's weird, and even with twenty years of reading comics, I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Which, when you think about it, is a testament to the magic of Free Comic Book Day.
Mickey Mouse by Floyd Gottfredson, from Fantagraphics
While we're on the subject of Disney characters, Fantagraphics has a reprint of Mickey Mouse strips by the legendary Floyd Gottfredson. Despite the fact that they've been recommended to me a dozen times -- mostly by Benito Cereno, who I'll get to in moment -- I've never read any of Gottfredson's stuff, because I figured there were only two camps when it came to Disney comics. You can either be a Mickey Mouse or a Scrooge McDuck, and I know which $ide I'm on.
But then I actually read this comic, and mark your calendars, because I don't say this often: I was wrong. They're amazing.
This book in particular reprints a run where Mickey Mouse enters Pluto in a dog race and ends up getting mixed up with a banker who wants to foreclose on a friendly old couple, snooty society types, high-stakes gamblers and the mob. The mob, people. It's really great stuff, with a ton of adventure and action balanced out with the humor I was expecting, which really holds up even here in the next century, right down to the fun Vaudeville-style wordplay. I would've devoured this thing if I was a kid, and while it's ostensibly a teaser for the bigger reprint volumes -- which, at $30 for 300 pages are looking like an even better deal than I thought -- it's awesome for all ages.
James Patterson's Witch & Wizard, from Yen Press
Another legitimate shocker came from Yen Press. I'd just assumed that since they'd picked up the rights to Yotsuba&!, the best all-ages manga ever, that they'd be using that for Free Comic Book Day. Instead, it looks like they're trying to draw in the same market they hooked with the Twilight graphic novel by banking on novelist James Patterson with an adaptation of Witch & Wizard.
The art comes from Svetlana Chmakova, whose work I'm mostly familiar with from an OEL series she did for Tokyopop called Dramacon, a sweeping soap opera set at an anime convention. It drew on every single cliche of romance manga, right down to the love interest being a hunky tough guy with a heart of gold who wore sunglasses to cover a scar that only made him hotter. It's a hoot.
Unfortunately, Chmakova's art, which is great, is saddled with a pretty generic-seeming story about secret witchery, which isn't. It's worth flipping through just to see her impressive, expressive art, though.
Pep Comics Featuring Betty & Veronica, from Archie Comics
The folks over at Archie always make a good attempt on FCBD. Considering the amount of mainstream attention that they've gotten over the past year, I'm legitimately surprised that they didn't go with a story about Kevin Keller, or something tying into the Life With Archie books that spun out of the alternate-future marriage.
Instead, Archie mainstay Dan Parent drops a solid story that's a great representation of the quantum leap in quality the Archie books have made lately. Seriously, I've been reading comics about Riverdale's favorite teenagers for years, and the past two years have seen some of their best stories in decades, with a rush of new, contemporary humor. Case in point: This one sees Veronica falling out of a treehouse, which Jughead records on his cell phone, autotunes, and remixes it with "a house beat" to make her a reluctant YouTube star, complete with downloadable ringtone.
That is fantastic, and it's another one that's perfect for the kids coming to the shop looking for something fun to read.
The Tick, from New England Comics
Remember a second ago when I was talking about Benito Cereno? Well, it turns out that he's not just a guy who has good taste in reading comics, but as readers of books like Guardians of the Globe and his sadly out of print Tales From The Bully Pulpit will attest, he's also pretty good at writing them. And as much as I like those, the work he's been doing on The Tick with Les McClaine -- of The Middleman -- has been the best stuff of his career.
In their bi-monthly series, Cereno and McClaine have been telling stories that perfectly capture the absurdst, half-parody, half-earnest-fun feeling that made the cartoon adaptation such a hit, and their seven-page story here where the Tick thinks a book deal will give him the ability to see the future is no exception.
Plus, there's an Official Handbook-style section detailing the characters that have been created over the course of the new series, including Desperadoe and my personal favorite, the villainous knitter Scarf Ace (and her trendy, whip-wielding minion, the Whipster). This is one you definitely want to grab -- and while you're at it, see if they've got any back issues of the ongoing, too.
Civil War Adventure, from History Graphics Press
We've been through a bunch of good ones, but if you're interested in picking up the absolute craziest comic you can find on Saturday, then I can strongly recommend Civil War Adventure, which is completely insane.
Coming from a publisher with a name like "History Graphics," I was expecting, well, a graphic adaptation of history, but that pretty much goes out the window right around the time the zombie shows up. Instead, veteran writer Chuck Dixon tells a tale that, thanks largely to some actually really good work from artist Gary Kwapisz, reads more like an EC horror comic, set in my home state of South Carolina and featuring a racist, moonshine-crazed axe murderer named, of all things, Levi Johnston.
But that's not all. Allow me to quote from the solicitation: "Check out the 'Battle Field Amputation' fact page!" And yep, there it is, two pages of gloriously gory illustrations detailing just how limbs were hacked off in the tents of Gettysburg. It's... well, it's certainly something.
The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Comics, from Gemstone Publishing
And then there's this thing. Ugh.
If memory serves, Gemstone -- a subsidiary of the monolithic Diamond Comics Distributors -- has been putting out a book like this every year for a while now, and they are, without fail, completely and utterly worthless. Billed as a guide on how to help readers get the most out of the world of comic books, they're essentially shameless promotion for the speculator mindset that created the huge boom and bust that nearly killed the industry in the '90s.
There's nominal lip service paid to the only actual "right" way to read comics -- read them and buy the ones you like -- but then it's a segue right into how once you're done with all that silly reading, you should totally grade them and then slab them in plastic forever because they're going to be worth millions of dollars -- and you'll only know just how many millions with the help of this year's Overstreet Price Guide! Plus an exciting four pages pages of definitions for official grading terms like "Gem Mint" and "Copper Age" and a thrilling list of Pedigree Collections!
The whole thing's a bill of goods that encourages the absolute worst aspects of the collector mentality, propping up a system that reduces art to a commodity, drawn up with friendly cartoons to be given to children. It should be avoided like the plague.
And those are just the tip of the iceberg. All told, publishers have offered up 37 different comics to be given out on Saturday, ranging from a new Spider-Man story by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos, an Elric comic by Chris Roberson, a pair of great Avatar: The Last Airbender stories from Dark Horse, and more! You can check out a full list of titles, read previews of each one and even find your local shop at the FCBD website!
Plus there are a lot of stores out there that make an event out of it with sales, in-store signings, and other fun stuff too. But like the best holidays, Free Comic Book Day comes but once a year, so this Saturday, get out to your local shop, get some comics and most of all, have some fun.White House chief of staff John Kelly could axe Steve Bannon
A decision on Steve Bannon's future is imminent with officials expecting him to be fired, according to a report from Axios that just landed.
"One senior White House said it seemed like Bannon was setting himself up to be a martyr - the nationalist hero fired by the 'globalists,'" the report says.
If he's fired, it might be seen as a shift by Trump's administration toward the center and that would be helpful on almost every front. USD/JPY is higher by 35 pips on the report.
The one thing that might temper the enthusiasm is that the content of the story doesn't really backup the headline "White House review nears end: Officials expect Bannon firing". The story itself only talks about the review and speculates on why or why not he could be fired.Technically, Robert Caro’s book The Power Broker is a biography of urban planner Robert Moses, but that description feels laughably inadequate on multiple counts. For more than four decades, this particular urban planner was the most powerful man in New York, an unelected emperor who dominated the mayors and governors who were supposedly in charge, and who physically reshaped the city through sheer force of will. Caro’s enormous book, meanwhile, is less a life story than an epic, meticulously detailed study of power in general: how it’s acquired, how it’s used to change history, how it ultimately corrupts those who get it.
First published in 1974 – Barack Obama read it aged 22, and was “mesmerised” – The Power Broker was released in the UK for the first time this year. But its themes are too timeless to seem dated. Like the multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson for which Caro is best known, you might call The Power Broker “unputdownable” – except that, at 1,300 pages, putting it down occasionally is the only way to avoid sore muscles.
You needn’t care especially about New York to be awed by the changes Moses wrought there: during a 44-year reign, he built nearly 700 miles of road, including the giant highways that snake out of the city into Long Island and upstate New York; 20,000 acres of parkland and public beaches, plus 658 playgrounds; seven new bridges; the UN headquarters, the Central Park zoo and the Lincoln Center arts complex, racking up expenditures of $27bn, dwarfing any previous run of construction in US history. “In the 20th century,” wrote Lewis Mumford, “the influence of Robert Moses on the cities of America was greater than that of any other person.” Around 500,000 people, who happened to find themselves in the way of Moses’s vision, were evicted from their homes. Did he drag New York into the modern age, forcing through much-needed public works and eradicating intolerable slums, against opposition from corrupt politicians and landowners? Or did he nearly destroy the city, subjugating its human inhabitants to the sovereignty of the car?
Caro, a former newspaper reporter, doesn’t pretend to be neutral: note the book’s subtitle. In Caro’s telling, Moses started out an idealist, inspired by his mother, a pillar of the New York German-Jewish community, whose zeal for helping the less fortunate was matched by the certainty that she knew, without asking them, what they needed. But Robert soon found that ruthless pragmatism got more things done. One early incident is emblematic: deep in the boring sub-clauses of a New York State bill, he buried a radical redefinition of the word “appropriation” – so that the law, once passed, gave the Long Island State Park Commission, which Moses controlled, the power “to write its own laws, hire its own policemen to enforce them and prosecutors to prosecute them”.
At the height of his powers, Moses’s innocuously named Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority functioned like a shadow government, with its own flag and police force, a private island headquarters in New York’s East River, staff with access to round-the-clock chauffeurs and, most importantly, its own tax revenue: the tolls that every driver paid to cross the city’s bridges and go through its tunnels. The land Moses controlled in New York State was half the size of New York City. He expanded his influence through a combination of coaxing and cajolery, backroom deal-making, relentlessly long hours, and threats: he retained “bloodhounds” who compiled dossiers on his rivals, documenting any hint of scandal, so a reputation could be swiftly smeared when someone stood in the way of Moses’s plans. (Meanwhile, he brazenly cultivated a public image as a man of total integrity, far above the dirty compromises of politics.) He soon occupied so many crucial government posts simultaneously that he held a trump card: if a mayor tried to restrain him in one area, he simply threatened to resign from all his jobs. He was too popular, and too essential, to be sacrificed; the mayors backed down.
Jane Jacobs was the seer of the modern city | Ben Rogers Read more
Masterfully, Caro shows how Moses transformed New York in ways both progressive and backward, benign and cruel. Many of the slums he removed were horrendous, and their residents got better homes; he really did break the power of Long Island’s robber-baron estate owners, finally permitting hundreds of thousands of cooped-up middle-income New Yorkers to drive to the beach at weekends. Then again, he so hated the idea of poor people lowering the tone at the seaside that he built bridges over his parkways with insufficient headroom for buses, so only cars could make the trip. Convinced that African Americans had a special dislike of cold water, Caro alleges, Moses kept temperatures in one Harlem pool deliberately low to keep them away. An exceptional chapter, entitled “One Mile”, charts the destruction of a close-knit community by a single, mile-long curve in Moses’s Cross Bronx Expressway – a curve added to the route, Caro strongly suggests, to steer clear of property owned by an influential acquaintance.
When accused of destroying communities, Moses responded, reasonably enough, that a vision like his inevitably meant displacing someone: heed the complaints, and you’d just find yourself facing a different group of naysayers. (“I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettoes without moving people,” he remarked, “as I hail the chef who can make omelettes without breaking eggs.”) Far less defensible, along with the racism, was the short-sightedness of his car-centric vision: Moses simply couldn’t comprehend a future in which mass transit, bicycles or walking might play a central role.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robert Moses with a model of the lower end of Manhattan and the bridge with which it is proposed to connect Battery Park with Brooklyn, March 1939. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
His reshaping of New York wasn’t too far advanced before city officials began to notice, with rising alarm, that his new bridges and highways weren’t solving the traffic problem: on the contrary, the creation of more road space seemed only to attract more cars. But Moses stubbornly refused to spend on subways, or to build roads a little wider, so train tracks could run down the middle. If he failed to grasp how hellish New York driving had become, perhaps that was because, for him, it wasn’t: the great evangelist of car culture never learned to drive, and was chauffeured everywhere he went, often on roads cleared in advance by the police.
And yet, despite Caro’s gloomy subtitle, New York didn’t “fall” in any permanent way. When The Power Broker was published, the city was on an accelerating slide toward epidemic levels of street crime, homicide, homelessness and crack addiction; Moses had built gorgeous parks, but you were crazy to visit them after dark. Today, it’s one of the safest big cities in the world, with a burgeoning bicycle culture, an unprecedented expanse of pedestrian zones, and a decent claim to still being the capital of the planet. (On the other hand, the traffic’s still terrible; the motorist-friendly police and prosecutors are still shockingly indulgent toward dangerous drivers.)
The question Caro’s book can’t answer is which of these factors came about despite or because of Robert Moses. Without him, would New York be a faded, economically stagnant ruin, or a big version of Copenhagen? Or perhaps it would be Houston: Moses may have forced through public projects in a high-handed manner, but at least they were public projects; far worse things happen, arguably, when private capital has free rein instead.
In the end, Caro probably overstates Moses’s influence, and understates the victories of his opponents: for instance, a chapter on Jane Jacobs, the urban activist who stopped his plan to drive freeways through Greenwich Village and downtown Manhattan, was removed for reasons of length. But as an account of how power and ambition shape the urban environment, The Power Broker has yet to be beaten. As a resident of New York, I’ve found that reading it changes the way you experience the place: it’s as if you sense the power struggles in every slab of concrete or span of steel. You see how the fixed, physical facts of the city might have been otherwise, had different personalities prevailed. Plus, now, when I’m cursing the lack of decent public transport from the airport, or waiting for a subway train that never comes, at least I have someone to blame.
• To order The Power Broker for £28 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.Conservative Senators from Atlantic Canada are mounting a renewed push for a Maritime Union, proposing the merger of the three East Coast provinces into a single political entity to rescue the region’s stumbling economy.
Stephen Greene of Nova Scotia, John Wallace of New Brunswick and Mike Duffy of Prince Edward Island have put together a detailed proposal for a union of their three provinces to be unveiled this weekend, including an idea for the name of the new province and the mechanics of power and representation.
Mr. Greene is set to deliver a written proposal and speech in Halifax this weekend.
“We’re hoping to move the ball forward and have the people in the Atlantic region, those who are thoughtful, talk about this. We need the public to demand that the political operatives here, the elected governments, start to co-operate,” said Mr. Duffy in an interview.
He compared it to retail economics — big-box stores can offer lower prices because they buy in large volume.
“In this highly competitive world, if we’re going to make headway, we have to be able to think big and see what we can do together, to ask, how can we put our small differences aside in order to help build a better Maritimes for our kids and their kids.
“For 1.8 million people we are terribly over-governed. But the bigger part of this is working in concert, together, to try to create economic development.
“How do we make our region more competitive, more attractive and more interesting? Stephen Greene is really going to lead this off,” said Mr. Duffy.
Calls to Mr. Greene and Mr. Wallace were not returned before deadline Tuesday.
However, even before their proposal is released, it’s generating criticism. After speaking publicly in favour of union, Mr. Duffy was criticized in the P.E.I. legislature.
“I have grave concerns that one of our government representatives in Ottawa, who should have the best interest of Islanders at the top of his mind, would say such a thing,” said Robert Mitchell in the provincial legislature on Tuesday.
George Webster, deputy premier, agreed, saying such comments “shocked and dismayed” him, adding: “I take great pride, and most Islanders do take great pride, in who we are as Prince Edward Islanders.”
The idea of a Maritime union, however, is not new. It predates Confederation: the Charlottetown Conference in 1864 was supposed to see representatives from the three Maritime colonies discuss a union but it was reworked to accommodate what is now Ontario and Quebec.
It became a grander union — Canada — and the more modest idea of a Maritime union never happened.
For 1.8 million people we are terribly over-governed. But the bigger part of this is working in concert … to create economic development
The idea periodically gets new wind in its sails.
In the 1960s a commission studied it, in the ’70s renewed debate over the Constitution sparked union talk anew. In 1996, at a conference on the idea by the Institute of Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward, it was referred to as the “always-the-bridesmaid of an idea.”
The concept is experiencing a wave of renewal, said Donald Savoie, a professor of government and public administration at the University of Moncton. He has been a proponent of a union for years.
“At times I have felt very lonely out there on this one. Not many were jumping on it,” he said.
“Whenever there is a force that threatens the Maritimes, it sparks new interest in it, and right now it is really generating new interest and attention.”
He attributes it to economic difficulties in the region.
Politically, it isn’t an easy sell, said Mr. Savoie.
“The three premiers are happy with their jobs. The political agenda is going to be very difficult to sell.”
The three premiers are happy with their jobs. The political agenda is going to be very difficult to sell
John Savage, the late former premier of Nova Scotia, once told Mr. Savoie that the biggest challenge he faced in promoting the province to the rest of Canada or abroad was competition from other Maritime provinces, particularly the energetic premier of neighbouring New Brunswick.
“Wherever I go to sell Nova Scotia, I find that Frank McKenna was there the week before,” the then premier told him.
“Can we have three premiers out hustling for three small provinces?” said Mr. Savoie.
National Post
• Email: ahumphreys@nationalpost.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys“Once a society gets to know something is unsafe, we forget there was a time that we didn’t,” he said.
Changing Attitudes
The way Jim Harris saw it, someone had to stand up and say something, even if people in this town of 25,000 that is a half-hour’s drive from the Louisiana border were not receptive.
After years of reading about medical studies, reports about former N.F.L. players with long-term brain damage and lawsuits alleging that the National Football League hid the dangers of repeated head trauma, Harris concluded that football, the heartbeat of every town in Texas, was doing more harm than good.
A retired doctor with no shortage of opinions and a compulsion to share them, Harris rejects the argument that football is no more dangerous than, say, lacrosse or hockey if it is played the right way. He has taken his case to the local Boys & Girls Clubs, the school board and almost anyone else who will listen.
“The pot needs stirring,” Harris said. “Someone has to start to say we don’t need to play football. If it’s harmful to kids, then it shouldn’t be done.”
Image Bryan Partee, the executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Big Pines, who expanded flag football to include 8- to 12-year-olds. Credit Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
Harris’s campaign has, at times, been a lonely one. But more and more people here seem to share his concerns. Some older parents regret having let their children play the game, while young couples are weighing whether, or when, to let their children begin participating in tackle football at all.
Clint Harper, the football coach and athletic director, said the move to drop seventh-grade tackle football was based mainly on the potential for injury that may result in not having adequate time to prepare 120 boys on the team to play games. He said he planned to focus on developing their skills for a year before they put on pads and helmets in eighth grade.The History channel's first original series,'Vikings,' certainly caught our attention last year, but at nine episodes, Ragnar and his brood came and went far too quickly. That all changes in February 2014, as History has officially set a premiere date for the 10 episodes of 'Vikings' season 2!
According to the network, 'Vikings' will return to pillage and plunder anew on Thursday, February 27 at 10:00 p.m. As revealed by the press release, this time around "season two brings crises of faith, of power, of relationships. Brothers rise up against one another. Loyalties shift from friend to foe, and unlikely alliances are formed in the name of supremacy. Ragnar’s indiscretions threaten his marriage to Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick), tearing him and his beloved son apart. Plots are hatched, scores are settled, blood is spilled…all under the watchful eyes of the gods."
Along with ‘ The Hunger Games ’ Star Alexander Ludwig ’s casting as an elder Bjorn, ‘ Batman Begins ‘ star Linus Roache was announced to play the regular role of King Ecbert of Wessex. Returning cast for ‘Vikings’ season 2 includes'World of Warcraft ''s Travis Fimmel as Ragnar, Clive Standen as his treacherous brother Rollo, George Blagden as Athelstan, ‘ Sons of Anarchy ’ star Donal Logue as King Horrik, Jessalyn Gilsig as Siggy (beautiful wife of the late Earl Haraldson), Alyssa Sutherland as Princess Aslaug, Katheryn Winnick as Lagertha and Gustaf Skarsgard as the ship-building Floki.
Check out a full sequence from the new season above, as well as the latest teaser below, and tell us in the comments if you'll join the 'Vikings' for the season 2 premiere on February 27!My boyfriend doesn’t like to use condoms and I have always tried be careful about using them when I might get pregnant. Not a foolproof method, obviously. He says that with his last girlfriend, they would never even have sex when she might be ovulating. Afterwards, I wonder about this, and why he is different with me.
When I tell him I was pregnant, he asks, “What do you want to do?”
I say, “I don’t want to have a baby.” And that’s true. We nearly broke up a month ago. I have chronic health problems. And he is only 26, still exploring and playing.
I live in Europe and my family is in America. Less then a year ago I moved countries to be with him. I am in a strange country, amongst strangers. I have friends but none close. In my mind’s eye I see myself alone, after he leaves, trying to care for an infant and manage a chronic illness. Or worse, moving back to America to live with my aging parents. Both seem like the end of my life.
Finally he says, “I guess having a baby isn’t the right lifestyle for us right now.”And that was it.
During the following weeks I am sick and exhausted; morning sickness starts as soon as three weeks after conception. He is solicitous and helpful. Often he puts his hand on my belly and talks about the baby. I say “don’t call it a baby. It’s just a cluster of cells. We’ll call it a jellyfish.” He doesn’t say much, but he keeps touching my belly.
One evening I tell him that I feel bad. Bad for not wanting this child. Bad that I am not the kind of person who wants to have a child, that I am too selfish to give up my life. Bad that I am scared of stepping into the unknown. There are people who have children, and it is the making of them. Their lives and their hearts blossom. “I’ve never felt so much love,” they say. Or “It’s the hardest thing in the world, but it’s the best thing.” And I believe that for them it’s true. I am not sure it would be true for me, and I do not think it’s the sort of |
of the things I would like to do is be one of the people responsible for getting Elizabeth Warren out of politics,” he said. "I think she’s a nightmare. The left is holding her up as the second coming of Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE, but Lord knows we don’t need the first one.”
Schilling also said that he was considering a political career “simply because I’ve never been somebody to sit around talking about getting stuff done without actually trying to help."
The Boston sports hero who previously backed Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE for president was an analyst at ESPN until he was fired for a controversial Facebook post about North Carolina's transgender bathroom law.
Schilling said he still hasn't made a final decision about whether to challenge Warren.
"And the end of the day it comes down to a conversation with the boss. The boss in my house is my wife," he said.Economic growth is a key topic at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2017. Watch the session on 'A Positive Narrative for the Global Community' here.
It’s been described as one of the most important numbers in economics. It’s also one of the most controversial.
For while gross domestic product is great at measuring the goods and services produced by a country, it does a pretty shoddy job of capturing the things that actually matter to most of us. After all, what good is a booming economy if very few people benefit from it?
But while most experts agree that GDP has its limitations, nobody quite knows what to replace it with. If GDP is a poor assessment of the things that matter, what could be a more accurate measure? How can we determine which countries are not only thriving, but also managing to convert this economic growth into well-being for their citizens?
A new way of measuring progress
Researchers at the Boston Consulting Group have found an alternative: the Sustainable Economic Development Assessment. The index tracks 160 countries across three elements: economics, sustainability and investment. These elements are made up of 10 dimensions, which include factors such as income equality, health, education and infrastructure.
By measuring how countries perform across all these dimensions, the SEDA establishes which countries are managing – or in some cases failing – to use both their absolute wealth and their economic growth to improve the lives of their citizens. The index not only ranks countries by current levels of well-being, it also looks at how much progress they have made between 2006 and 2014.
Image: Boston Consulting Group
So who comes out on top?
The countries featured at the top of the list that tracks current levels of well-being won’t come as a surprise. They include some of the richest nations in the world, such as Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Luxembourg. In fact, the entire top 10 is made up of countries from Western Europe.
But as Bloomberg points out in an analysis of the findings, when it comes to those countries that have been making the most progress since 2006, the results are much more interesting.
“There is an almost opposite result in the recent progress score, where many emerging markets in Asia and Africa have risen to the top, and the nations considered to be the wealthiest in terms of GDP are closer to the bottom.”
Almost certainly because of its recent economic woes, Greece was found to be the country that has made the least progress since 2006.
Understanding the findings
So what exactly is the secret to ensuring economic gains translate into well-being?
The first thing to note is that policies implemented by government can and do make a big difference. The report’s authors singled out places such as Serbia, Croatia and Romania – all either recent additions to the EU or in the process of joining – as examples of countries that have made enormous progress over the past decade. This is, they argue, largely down to EU policies.
“There is clear evidence that EU policies and governance standards drive real improvements in critical areas related to the well-being of citizens.”
Financial inclusion in particular was found to be one of the most important factors in ensuring economic growth positively transforms people’s lives.
But perhaps the most important lesson from this study is a point raised by one of the authors in an article for the Independent: “When we stop focusing solely on GDP as a measure of a country’s success, the world looks very different.”
Some of the biggest global economic powers have a lot to learn from their smaller neighbours.This article is about the goat in Norse mythology. For the Norwegian oil field, see Heidrun oil field
The goat Heiðrún consumes the foliage of the tree Læraðr, while her udders produce mead, collected in a pot below (1895) by Lorenz Frølich
Heiðrún consumes the leaves of Læraðr atop Valhalla in an illustration from an 18th-century Icelandic manuscript.
Heiðrún or Heidrun is a goat in Norse mythology, which consumes the foliage of the tree Læraðr and produces mead for the einherjar. She is described in the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda.
Prose Edda [ edit ]
Geit sú er Heiðrún heitir stendr uppi á Valhöll ok bítr barr af limum trés þess er mjök er nafnfrægt, er Léraðr heitir, en ór spenum hennar rennr mjöðr sá er hon fyllir skapker hvern dag. Þat er svá mikit at allir einherjar verða fulldruknir af. - [1] A goat called Heiðrún stands up [on its hind-legs] in Valhalla biting the buds off the branches of that very famous tree which is called Lærað. From her teats runs the mead with which every day she fills a cauldron, which is so big that all the Einherjar can drink their fill from it. - Young's translation
Poetic Edda [ edit ]
In the Poetic Edda Heiðrún is mentioned twice. She is described in the Grímnismál in a way similar to Snorri's description.
Heiðrún heitir geit, er stendr höllo á ok bítr af læraðs limom; skapker fylla hón skal ins skíra miaðar, knáat sú veig vanaz. Heithrún, the goat on the hall that stands, eateth off Læráth's limbs; the crocks she fills with clearest mead, will that drink not e'er be drained. - LMH's translation
Since Snorri quotes other strophes of Grímnismál it seems reasonable to assume that he knew this strophe too and used it as his source for his description of Heiðrún.
In the Hyndluljóð the giantess Hyndla (lit. bitch/she-dog) used the term "Heiðrún" to insult the goddess Freyja. Thorpe and some other translators translated the name straight to "she-goat".
Rannt at Óði ey þreyjandi, skutusk þér fleiri und fyrirskyrtu; hleypr þú, Óðs vina úti á náttum, sem með höfrum Heiðrún fari. To Oth didst thou run, who loved thee ever, And many under thy apron have crawled; My noble one, out in the night thou leapest, As Heithrun goes the goats among. - Bellows' translation
Etymology [ edit ]
The etymology of Heiðrún remains debatable.[2] Anatoly Liberman suggests that Heiðþyrnir, the name of the lowest heaven in Scandinavian mythology (from heið "bright sky"), was cut into two, and on the basis of those halves the names the heavenly goat Heiðrún and of the heavenly stag Eikþyrnir were formed (the element rún ~ run concealed several puns, but it is a common suffix of female names).[3] The etymology of the Modern German name Heidrun is also debatable.
Heiðrún's name is sometimes anglicized Heidrun, Heidhrun, Heithrun, Heidrún, Heithrún or Heidhrún.
See also [ edit ]
Auðumbla, a primeval cow in Norse mythology whose udders produce four rivers of milk, from which Ymir fed
List of people named Heidrun
Bibliography [ edit ]1.4k SHARES Share Tweet
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There is a worrying new trend in feminism: topless activism. Not men being topless. Women being topless because of course. Even more worrying is the number of women falling for it. The trendy #freethenipple campaign has gained ground when, in fact, it does nothing but mock the real struggle for equality. Amanda Foreman wrote an amazing piece on this for The Sunday Times. She starts off:
“New York last week was awash with nipples. Actually, it was a tiny corner of downtown Manhattan. And it wasn’t so much a sea of breasts, as a handful (or an eyeful) of women who went topless in support of a campaign to “free the nipple”. For the uninitiated, #FreeTheNipple, was the brainchild of 29-year-old Lina Esco, who felt it was unfair that men can show their nipples in public in all 50 states, whereas for women it’s a mere 13. Esco struggled in comparative obscurity until her protest was annexed recently by Scout Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. She is locked in an ongoing struggle with Instragram over the freedom to post naked selfies. The internet company maintains a blanket policy against nude photos as a way of deterring pornographers and paedophiles.”
She then goes on to point out that the previous week in Washington another struggle for women’s rights was happening, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and others were part of a task force to confront the increase in violence against female students on US Campuses. Up a shocking 20% this year. The White House is holding hearings and using Title IX, a 1972 civil rights law, to force universities to provide better protection for female students.
Foreman also goes on to say that “one does not necessarily fuel the other” and makes the good point that countries in which women are covered up are worse for violence against women and sexism but she has a problem with ‘the American tendency to confuse life and death struggles for personal freedom with exhibitionist demonstrations of myopic self-regard’. I think this is well said but I don’t think it is just an American thing.
When it comes to the nipple there is nothing to free. It is everywhere, in television shows, films, magazines, Page Three, online porn, even women’s magazines for god’s sake. I mean, why do fashion spreads in women’s magazines nearly always have a topless women in? It is just weird.
Thing is, I am not against nudity. Neither is Amanda. She posed nude for Tatler at one point. (no nipples though). I am not a prude. I wouldn’t go topless on a beach but I love Helmut Newton’s fashion photography. The women in those pictures are all sexy, strong and in charge. Nudity, as with most things in life, is about context.
Femen, the Ukrainian political group, is run by a man and all of the women are slim and gorgeous. When it was Femen member Inna Shevchenko’s birthday, Femen wrote: “Femen congratulates its most famous leader, real revolutionary, wunderkind of feminism and beauty Inna Shevchenko with her birthday!” The most important word there is ‘beauty’. Femen calls itself a feminist group but is just another organisation that has become famous through the exploitation of women and their bodies.
They may be put in the paper, but no one is listening to what they are saying. The most interesting thing about Femen’s coverage is how big the pictures are of near-naked beautiful women, compared to how small the print of whatever they are protesting against is. Anyone can get in the paper for getting their breasts out. It does not take talent or skill, women have been doing it for years and men have been exploiting them and selling magazines and newspapers off the back of that exploitation. When Vladimir Putin was protested against by a topless activist, his leering, pervy facial expression said it all.
They are called private parts for a reason. People may call me a prude and think I am a killjoy but, actually, it’s rude to try and make someone else live by your rules. Breasts may be ‘functional’ but so is my vagina. I don’t whip that out either.
Some women think that a women going topless is the same thing as a man going topless. Or at least should be. Unfortunately, that cannot happen now. Breasts have been too sexualised for too long. It isn’t fair but the world isn’t fair. Breasts are sexual. They always will be. A topless man is not the same as a topless women. It’s not fair, but it is a fact.
If you don’t believe me, do an experiment. Flash your breasts at a man and then ask him what you said after. If he knows what you said, let everyone know his name; he deserves a medal or something.
Topless activism gets publicity but that doesn’t mean it works. Sex sells and the world is full of perverts. People love boobs and will use any excuse to print them, as long as they are attached to an attractive women.
Even the daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Scout, has gotten in on the act. ‘Protesting’ against Instagram not letting her post topless pictures of herself on Instagram. She then said she was going to ‘move to Europe’. She seems sweetly unaware that in ‘Europe’ we all wear clothes and that walking around topless is called indecent exposure.
She tweeted
Scout LaRue Willis @Scout_Willis Follow
I’m moving to Europe, people’s victorian sensibilities need to calm the fuck down What @instagram won’t let you see #FreeTheNipple
Scout Willis walked around the streets of New York topless to make her point, but she could have chosen something more pressing to use her celebrity for. Like the fact women are stoned to death by their own families or teenagers being raped and then hung from trees in India.House of Night is a series of young adult vampire-themed fantasy novels by American author P. C. Cast and her daughter Kristin Cast. It follows the adventures of Zoey Redbird, a fifteen-year-old girl who has just become a "fledgling vampyre" and is required to attend the House of Night boarding school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Books in the series have been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 63 weeks[1] and have sold over seven million copies in North America,[2] and more than ten million books worldwide, in 39 countries.[3][4]
Novels [ edit ]
House of Night [ edit ]
Marked (May 2007) - ISBN 9780312360269 Betrayed (October 2007) - ISBN 9780312360283 Chosen (March 2008) - ISBN 9780312360306 Untamed (September 2008) - ISBN 9780312379834 Hunted (March 2009) - ISBN 9780312577995 Tempted (October 2009) - ISBN 9780312609382 Burned (April 2010) - ISBN 9780312387969 Awakened (January 2011) - ISBN 9780312650247 Destined (October 2011) - ISBN 9780312387983 Hidden (October 2012) - ISBN 9781250041746 Revealed (October 2013) - ISBN 9780312594435 Redeemed (October 2014) - ISBN 9780312594442
House of Night: Other World [ edit ]
Loved (October 2017) - ISBN 9781538431122 Lost (July 2018) - ISBN 9781538440742 Forgotten Found
Novellas [ edit ]
Other related books [ edit ]
The Vampyre World [ edit ]
Instead of vampire, the authors use the variant spelling vampyre throughout the book series. This convention is also applied to the words vampyric and vampyrism.
In the fictional world of House of Night, a small percentage of the world's teenagers are changed into vampires when adolescent hormones trigger a strand of what is otherwise junk DNA.[5] The change from human to vampyre takes four years, during which time the adolescents, known as "fledglings," must attend one of the "House of Night" boarding schools.[6] While there, they are required to take the Vampyre Sociology 101 course to learn the dangers they face.[7] If a fledgling is not in constant proximity to adult vampyres, the fledgling will die; so the fledglings rarely leave the school. About one in ten fledglings die anyway, since their bodies cannot tolerate the Change. For those who survive, there's a big reward: in the words of one of the authors, "Vampires are like Superman. They’re super-gorgeous. They’re super-talented. They’re super-men."[8] Vampyres are physically stronger than most adult humans, with accelerated reflexes, enhanced dexterity, life of more than five centuries, as well as heightened senses such as night vision.
Only vampyres and fledglings that have blue tattoos are not destroyed by sunlight, as in many vampire novels, but it is painful to them, so classes at the House of Night are held at night.[9] Fledglings are marked by a sapphire blue crescent-shaped outline on their foreheads; when they become full-fledged vampires, this mark becomes solid and they receive more 'tattoos' which extend over their cheeks (these usually represent some personality aspect; for instance, Zoey's equestrian teacher, Lenobia, has tattoos that look like horses.) Zoey is the only fledgling to receive a filled-in mark and tattoos. As she defeats evil, her tattoos extend over her shoulders, down to her lower back, around her waist, down her arms and palms, and across her chest. Older fledglings and adult vampires need to drink small quantities of human blood, but House of Night vampires do not attack humans to get it, instead getting it from blood banks. The taking of blood is pleasurable for both human and vampire, comparable to (and better than) sex and a drug rush, and may lead to a strong emotional bond, called "Imprinting" between the two. When an imprint is broken, either through death, Imprinting of another, or mystical means, it causes major anguish between the vampire and human. Like with Zoey and Heath.
Zoey and her friends also face the usual teenage issues. Zoey keeps some secrets from her friends and gets in trouble with them, forcing her to consider the nature of friendship. Kristin Cast said that these moral dilemmas were included because "those are issues teenagers deal with... We're not afraid to discuss things that are actually happening."[10] As with many contemporary vampire novels, exploration of human nature and social commentary forms a subtext.[11] and Tsi Sgili[12] are taken from real Cherokee legends.[13]
Outside in the human world, the "People of Faith" is a fictional Protestant religion that is highly intolerant of anything else but their own beliefs. (In an interview, P.C. Cast said that she modeled the People of Faith on the worst fanatics of all religions, not just Protestantism.[14]) Catholicism also plays an important role in the later novels, with the fledglings joining forces with Catholic nuns against Kalona.
The religious ambiance gives House of Night a strong moral perspective[15] as it is often enforced that Nyx gives vampyres and humans free will.[16] This theme takes special prominence in Tempted, where Zoey discovers that, although she is the reincarnation of a woman created to love Kalona, she has the power to choose whether she will follow her previous incarnation's path or reject it.[17] One of the characters dies because Zoey makes the wrong choice.[18] Also, in Burned, a Manichaen view of the Universe is presented, in which Good battles Evil: forces of Light combat forces of Darkness and characters must choose which side to be on. Also, the black and white bull are presented.[19] In Awakened, the theme of love is presented, in which love must battle Darkness, and life is really only, always, about love.
The Benedictine Abbey, Tulsa (In real life, St. Joseph Monastery.)
The Bulls [ edit ]
As noted above, a black bull, known as Light, and a white bull, Darkness, are introduced in Burned. The bulls were not accepted into vampyre society because this was too masculine, and vampyre society is heavily matriarchal.[20] Their counterintuitive colorings are said to signify that each possesses something that the other wants. The bulls often take a price, or a debt, from those who ask them for favors. When Stevie Rae accidentally calls the white bull forth, he answers her question, giving Stark passage to the Otherworld. In return, he drinks from her. When Stevie Rae calls the black bull forth to get rid of the white bull, the black bull makes her swear an oath that she will have a connection to Rephaim. It is noted by Aphrodite that if the white bull kills the black bull, the world will fall. The white bull has intervened many times in the series, always helping Neferet in her plans. He becomes her Consort, but his true plan is to destroy, and consume, the black bull. He will use anyone to do that, and destroy anyone as well.
The setting [ edit ]
Hunted, 14 inches of snow fell on Tulsa.[21] This photo was taken about 100 yards from the route Zoey used to flee the House of Night. In a blizzard similar to that described in, 14 inches of snow fell on Tulsa.This photo was taken about 100 yards from the route Zoey used to flee the House of Night.
The series is set in Tulsa, in a small and reclusive part of Midtown. The House of Night campus is in the real life campus of Cascia Hall, and the climactic scene of the first book in the series takes place in the extensive gardens of the Philbrook Museum. Zoey sometimes sneaks off-campus to the elegant shops of nearby Utica Square, and several important confrontations take place in Utica Square's Starbucks coffee shop. Some of the novels' most dramatic scenes take place in a catacomb-like network of tunnels under downtown Tulsa built by bootleggers during Prohibition; though a few such tunnels do indeed exist,[22] and can be visited,[23] they are far less extensive than the tunnels described by Cast. The abandoned Art Deco train depot where the tunnels begin, however, is real[24] and is slated to become a concert hall.[25] The location of Aphrodite's parents' mansion, South 27th Place, is a real street, though the mansion itself is fictional. Though Aphrodite's father, Mr. LaFont, the very rich and old mayor of Tulsa, has a name similar to the former, very rich, mayor of Tulsa Bill LaFortune, his character is very different, and the author has stressed that her fictional mayor is indeed fictional.[26] The Benedictine convent to which Zoey and her friends flee.[27] is real; it is called St. Joseph Monastery.[28] And the devastating ice storm through which they flee was based on a real ice storm that hit Tulsa in December 2007.[29] The climactic scene in Tempted takes place far from Tulsa, on San Clemente Island near Venice, which in real life called Isola di San Clemente and is part of the small island around Venice. The church at which the Vampyre High Council meets was built in 1131.[30]
Much of Burned takes place on the Inner Hebrides island of Skye, in the palace of Sgiach, the Vampyre queen. According to Scottish tradition, Sgiach (usually spelled Sgathach) was a princess many centuries ago who ran the best warrior training school in Scotland.[31] Princess Sgathach lived in Dunscaith Castle, which is today a ruin. (Seoras Wallace, the doughty Scottish historian who provided P.C. Cast with a background on Scottish mythology, became her boyfriend, and the Burned character of Sgiach's consort is modelled on him.[32])
Characters [ edit ]
The following lists a number of the characters in House of Night.[33]
Zoey Redbird: the main protagonist of the series. She has an affinity for all five elements (air, fire, water, earth and spirit), and is the only High Priestess to have ever been given that magnitude of power by the Goddess Nyx. Zoey is also the youngest High Priestess in vampyre history.
Neferet: Main antagonist and former High Priestess, now immortal Consort of Darkness and witch Queen of the Tsi Sgili. Neferet is initially introduced as a kind, loving mentor to Zoey, but is gradually revealed to be on the side of Darkness.
Aphrodite LaFont: Former "hag from hell" and Zoey's enemy in the first book. An Oracle and Prophetess, she gradually grows to trust Zoey and the rest of the nerd herd.
Stevie Rae Johnson: Zoey's best friend, and the first red vampyre High Priestess in history. She also has an affinity for earth, and is Rephaim's girlfriend later in the series.
Erin Bates: A fledgling and member of the nerd herd with an affinity for water before she left to be with the evil red fledgling Dallas. Her body eventually rejects the Change and she dies.
Shaunee Cole: A fledgling and member of the nerd herd with an affinity for fire. Girlfriend of Erik Night in Redeemed.
Damien Maslin: A fledgling, member of the nerd herd with an affinity for air and Jack's boyfriend.
Heath Luck: Zoey's human " almost boyfriend", who can't seem to stay away despite her best efforts. Their Imprint breaks twice: once when Zoey Imprints with Loren Blake, and again when Heath is killed by Kalona. Part of Heath's soul later returns in Aurox, the Vessel created by Neferet.
Nyx: The Goddess of the vampyres and former love of Kalona. Erebus is her Consort.
Erik Night: A former fledgling and Zoey's ex-boyfriend, now the vampyre Tracker for Tulsa's House of Night. Erik has a talent for acting, and once won an international House of Night monologue competition. He and Shaunee later start seeing each other.
Kalona: Erebus's brother and the fallen immortal Guardian of Nyx. Father of Rephaim and the Raven Mockers. He was once a glorious winged immortal of Nyx as well as her warrior and lover, but he grew jealous of his brother and was eventually deceived by Darkness, and was thus cast from the Otherworld by Nyx, an act that broke her heart. His wings turned black after this, reflecting the taint of Darkness in his soul.
Darius: A Son of Erebus tasked with guarding Zoey. He later becomes Aphrodite's Warrior.
Loren Blake: The vampyre Poet Laureate and a professor at the House of Night, he flirts with Zoey and later Imprints with her, but is revealed to be Neferet's lover and puppet. Neferet kills him in Chosen when he begins to show real concern for Zoey.
when he begins to show real concern for Zoey. Kramisha: A red fledgling with a gift for poetry who is named Zoey's Poet Laureate.
Dragon Lankford: Anastasia's husband, the fencing instructor.
Anastasia Lankford: Dragon's wife, the Spells and Rituals professor.
Sylvia Redbird: Zoey's grandmother, a Cherokee Wise Woman. She owns a lavender farm and is often on hand to give Zoey advice and reassurance in the fight against Darkness.
James Stark: A red vampyre who becomes Zoey's Warrior and Guardian and also has an affinity for archery (he can't miss what he aims at).
Jack Twist: Damien's boyfriend and a member of the nerd herd, who has an unofficial affinity for technology. In Awakened, Neferet, needing a sacrifice for the white bull, chose Jack because he refused to revoke Nyx in favor of evil, and killed him, making it seem like an accident.
Rephaim: Kalona's eldest and favorite Raven Mocker son. Later he becomes Stevie Rae's boyfriend and in Awakened he gets a normal body, but because of the mistakes he made in the past, is he only normal by night. By day he is a raven.
Shaylin Ruede: A blind girl who is the first fledgling to be Marked red. When Erik Marks her, she is gifted with an affinity for True Sight, and later for water.
Nisroc: Kalona's second eldest son and second most evolved, took care of his brothers while Kalona and Rephaim were away.
Adaptations [ edit ]
Film adaptation [ edit ]
In November 2011, it was announced that the film rights to House of Night had been acquired by producer Samuel Hadida's production company, Davis Films and will be distributed by Lionsgate. P.C. Cast also said through her live stream chat that she confirmed for five movies. Currently, an outline of the screenplay has been written. The authors, Kristen and P.C. Cast, have been unable to get in contact with the producer therefore there are no known future plans for the movies as of now.[34]
Comic book adaptation [ edit ]
P.C. Cast announced on her website that a graphic book adaptation of the House of Night series, titled House of Night: Legacy, would be published in monthly issues by Dark Horse Comics starting the November 9, 2011. The comic book spanned five issues, each relating to a different element. The action takes place between Marked and Betrayed concerning Zoey's struggle to become a good leader for the Dark Daughters. To help her learn, Nyx places five tests in her way, each dealing with a story from The Fledgling Handbook 101. The drawings were be done by Joëlle Jones, cover by Jenny Frison.[35]
Reception [ edit ]
The series has received generally good reviews, reaching 5th in the New York Times Children's Bestsellers list.[36]
Accolades [ edit ]
Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Marked ( Young Adult Novel ) [37]
for ( ) Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Tempted ( Best Young Adult Paranormal/Fantasy Novel ) [38]
for Tempted ( ) Goodreads Choice Award for Burned ( Favorite Book, Young Adult Fantasy, Favorite Heroine ) [39]
for ( ) A nomination for Teen Read Award for Best series in 2010.
The sixth novel in the series, Tempted, went on sale in October, 2009 with a first printing of a million copies,[40] entered the USA Today bestseller list that week at #1.[41] In January, 2010, Gezeichnet, a German translation of Marked, reached the #1 spot on the Der Spiegel bestseller list.[42] The seventh novel, Burned, was released on April 27, 2010,[43] and like Tempted, entered the USA Today bestseller list at #1.[44] Awakened, released in January, 2011, also entered the list at #1.[45]
Bans and challenges [ edit ]
In 2009 Henderson Junior High School in Stephenville, Texas, banned the entire series from its libraries, including the books that had yet to be written for "sexual content and nudity".[46]Remember that “Climate Change” commercial which reveled in blowing up children who question the proffered “truth” of “Climate Catastrophe”? Now we have a comic that revels in murdering Santa Claus to fight climate change.
“[Camille] opens fire and the Santas scream in death agonies as bullets rip into their bodies, with blood spattering. She continues firing as they start collapsing to the ground, while a stream of ejected shellcases tumble in the foreground and Cokes and Christmas parcels fly in the air. One Santa lifts his right hand as if to shield himself. “… “The book’s narrative is how [Santa murderer] Squarzoni educates himself about climate by interviewing nine experts, who broadly compete to push catastrophism. Three are IPCC sorts. Another three, for some reason, are all eco-economists associated at a high level with a French group called ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens). To only select three economists of that ilk is bizarre. Another of the artist’s talking heads is an eco-journalist with Le Monde, the author of European best-seller How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth. The eighth source is a French nuclear industry scientist (France gets three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear). The ninth source is a corker, Helene Gassin, who ran Greenpeace Energy campaigns in France for eight years. In 2001 her activists scaled the Exxon Mobil building in Paris during rush hour, and Gassin announced, ‘Greenpeace is going to give warnings in the entire world to companies who support this [anti-Kyoto] decision.'”
What’s worse is that this is targeted to children, and the published has even put out a “Teacher’s Guide” to the comic. For example:
“For your convenience, this guide is aligned with the Common Core [US] State Standards (CCSS), specifically the ‘Literacy in Science & Technical Subjects’ strand, and the framework of thematic standards of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). “… “‘Global warming causing 300,000 deaths per year… The victims of climate change die slowly, one after another – no drama, no media coverage – scattered over the whole year over the whole planet. If only they had the good sense all to die on the same day, like the victims of the 2004 tsunami, that would catch our attention.”
The full “Teacher’s Guide can be read below:
Teacher's Guid to "Climate Changed"
TweetWe finally have some new faces in the wormhole – a new corp has joined the alliance! They moved in overnight, setting up their POS and getting to grips with wormhole space.
The POS is setup. The modules online. The guys have moved in. Then downtime comes along and the POS Tower jumps 100km away from the modules. No, really.
The tower has abandoned its modules, obviously they were making it look fat. However, we’re now left in a bug-filled predicament.
We cannot offline the tower, since it has modules anchored. However the modules themselves, whilst they appear online, are actually offline and we cannot access them. We also cannot unanchor them, since they are too far from the POS.
Petitions have been sent to CCP. Hopefully it’s resolved by tonight.
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Roughly 10 years to the day after the release of Firefox 1.0, Mozilla on Monday announced an updated version of its open source browser complete with a new Forget button aimed at protecting users' privacy.
"Forget gives you an easy way to tell Firefox to clear out some of your recent activity," explained Firefox Vice President Johnathan Nightingale. "Instead of asking a lot of complex technical questions, Forget asks you only one: How much do you want to forget? Once you tell Firefox you want to forget the last five minutes, or two hours, or 24 hours, it takes care of the rest."
Also new in version 33.1 of Firefox is the inclusion of DuckDuckGo as a preinstalled search option. DuckDuckGo is best known for delivering search results without tracking users or what they search for.
Mozilla on Monday released a brand-new version of Firefox tailored for developers as well.
Off the Record
"I think the Forget button is tremendously important," John Simpson, privacy project director with Consumer Watchdog, told LinuxInsider.
"Many users share computers and don't want a list of the websites they've visited available to others," Simpson explained. "This lets users easily erase the record."
As for DuckDuckGo, it's "the search engine to use if you don't want the search engine to profile you," Simpson said. "It's an excellent, privacy-friendly addition to the search engines featured in the tool bar."
Working With Tor
Also as part of Mozilla's Monday suite of anniversary announcements, the nonprofit kicked off Polaris, a new privacy initiative that it's undertaking in partnership with the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Tor Project.
As part of Polaris, Mozilla launched two experiments. In one, Mozilla engineers are evaluating the Tor Project's changes to Firefox so as to determine if changes to Mozilla's code base could enable Tor to work more quickly and easily.
Mozilla also will soon begin hosting its own high-capacity Tor middle relays to make Tor's network more responsive and allow Tor to serve more users.
In the second Polaris experiment, Mozilla aims to explore how Firefox can offer a feature that protects users who want to avoid invasive tracking without penalizing advertisers and content sites that respect a user's preferences.
A Strong Need
"I think Mozilla is dealing with an important specific need -- a need that is probably quite strong amongst the type of user that uses Firefox," said Al Hilwa, program director for software development research with IDC.
"The use of DuckDuckGo is a great new |
Lets look at how we can use both of these tags.
If you have a small quote, use <q> :
<div class="big-banner"> <h2>Try our latest sandwich!</h2> <p>Come and try our latest, biggest and tastiest sandwich. John Smith told us <q>he hasn't eaten anything as good in his whole life!</q></p> </div>
If you have a longer quote, or something more complex you can wrap it inside <blockquote>
<div class="motivational-quote"> <blockquote cite="http://bit.ly/1pbvjsL"> Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth. <cite>Bradley Whitford - Author</cite> </blockquote> </div>
For the above example we’ve wrapped a long quote withing the <blockquote> tag and supplied both the cite attribute (the link to the resource) and the <cite> tag (explaining what this resource is).
Best Practices and Considerations
Both of these quote elements can support the cite attribute and the cite element.
The cite attribute specifies the URL of the related resource itself (e.g. a link to the website where this quote came from). The cite tag should be used to specify the title of the work. There is some debate as to how the cite attribute and the <cite> tag should be used but overall I’ve always found using them like this works just fine.
4 – Insertion, Deletion and Correction With <ins>, <del> and <s>
The <ins>, <del> and <s> tags are useful when you are using dealing with content that has been changed or whose relevance has been updated.
The <ins> tag defines text that has been recently added to a document — it represents new content. You would use this tag to mark text that has been added or whose relevance has been updated within your content.
The <del> tag defines text that has been removed from the document, it represents deleted content. Even though it signifies deleted content, it still physically exists in the document as a record of what has been removed.
These two tags support two optional attributes — the cite attribute for linking to a resource that explains this change and also the datetime attribute for when this occurred. The datetime must be a valid datetime string which unfortunately isn’t very easy to understand. You can cheat and use a timestamp generator if you’re in a rush.
These attributes are useful for when you want to provide context to your additions or deletions. You might see this within update logs and revision lists where an author lists all of their changes and provides details as to why these changes happened.
The <s> tag is similar but instead defines text that is no longer correct. This is used to signify to the browser that the wrapped text is not relevant anymore and is usually followed by its replacement text (for example, new content wrapped inside the <ins> tag). This tag often renders as strike-through text to show that it’s no longer relevant. You should not use this just for stylistic purposes though (you can do this easily enough with <span> instead).
Practical Examples
Imagine that you have a list of changes to a plugin you are developing. On your release log page you could outline your latest updates using the <ins> tag and attributes.
<h2>Latest Changes</h2> <p>Outlined below are the latest changes</p> <h3>Version 1.X branch</h3> <ins cite="http://www.johnsmithsblog/changes/1-0-1.html" timestamp="2012-08-09T15:15:00+00:00"> Version 1.0.1 - August 2012 </ins> <br/> <ins cite="http://www.johnsmithsblog/changes/1-0-2.html" timestamp="2012-11-15T06:15:00+00:00"> Version 1.0.2 - November 2012 </ins> <br/> <h3>Version 2.X branch</h3> <ins cite="http://www.johnsmithsblog/changes/2-0-0.html" timestamp="2013-01-17T02:50:00+00:00"> Version 2.0.0 - January 2013 </ins> <br/>
Another example that showcases how you can use the <del> tag is inside a note taking app. This tag should be used when content no longer exists at all (and isn’t being replaced).
<ul class="to-do-list"> <li> <del datetime="2015-12-03T13:21:32+00:00"> Pick up the groceries </del> </li> <li> <del datetime="2015-12-03T15:15:00+00:00"> Collect the kids from school </del> </li> <li> Cook dinner </li> <li> Work on fancy side projects </li> </ul>
See the Pen Del Tag Example by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.
You can see that two of our tasks have been completed so they have been wrapped with the <del> tag. This shows to the user (and the browser) that the content no longer exists. We supplied both with the datetime attribute as it is actually a handy piece of data to keep considering we are tracking task completion.
The <s> tag is best used for when content has been removed and then updated, for example when correcting documents:
<article class="news-item"> <h1>WordPress 4.4 Updates</h1> <section class="summary" aria-label="Summary"> WordPress 4.4 (code-named <s cite="https://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.4"> Bobby Brown </s> Clifford Brown) was released to the public on the 8th of December 2015. </section> <section class="main-content" aria-label="Main Content"> <p>There were several changes in V4.4 including the following</p> <ul> <li> New default theme - <s>Twenty Fifteen</s> Twenty Sixteen </li> <li> Responsive image support (image elements in the content now support display based rendering) </li> <li> Additional embed object support such as Cloudup, Reddit Comments etc </li> </ul> </section> </article>
See the Pen S Tag Example by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.
In the above example, we have corrected several pieces of information, citing a reference URL inside our <s> tag where possible.
5 – Organising Options With <optgroup>
This tag is one of the oldest, but oddly enough it’s still overlooked by developers.
The <optgroup> tag is used within the <select> form control tag to help categorize the various <options> elements.
If you have dozens (or hundreds) of options inside your select field, having the ability to categorize them into a local format is really handy.
The <optgroup> tag must be inside the <select> element and contains two attributes — label, which acts as the visible label seen when the list is opened and disabled which when used ensures none of the options inside of it can be selected.
The optgroup itself can’t be selected and can’t be styled (at least not in any cross browser compatible way).
Practical Example
The <optgroup> element works great in any situation when you’re using the <select> tag. For example consider a dropdown list of computer price ranges on an e-commerce site.
<label for="comp-price-filter"> Select the price range of your next computer </label> <select class="price-filter" name="comp-price-filter" id="comp-price-filter"> <optgroup label="Low End"> <option value="100-300">$100 - $300</option> <option value="301-500">$301 - $500</option> <option value="501-700">$501 - $700</option> </optgroup> <optgroup label="Middle Range"> <option value="701-1200">$701 - $1200</option> <option value="1201-1600">$1201 - $1600</option> </optgroup> <optgroup label="High End"> <option value="1600-2500">$1600 - $2500</option> <option value="2501-3200">$2501 - $3200</option> </optgroup> </select>
See the Pen pyzgJG by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.
Here’s an example where you can use the disabled attribute to disallow a range of options (though there’s nothing really stopping people from just removing this attribute from the <optgroup> so don’t rely on it for validation).
In the below example, you shouldn’t be able to select anything within the ‘West Coast – Australia’ optgroup.
<label for="vacation-dest">Vacation Destinations</label> <select name="vaction-dest" id="vacation-dest"> <optgroup label="East Coast - Australia"> <option value="NSW"> New South Wales </option> <option value="QLD"> Queensland </option> <option value="TAS"> Tasmania </option> <option value="ACT"> Australian Capital Territory </option> <option value="VIC"> Victoria </option> </optgroup> <optgroup disabled label="West Coast - Australia"> <option value="WA"> Western Australia </option> <option value="NT"> Northern Territory </option> <option value="SA"> South Australia </option> </optgroup> </select>
See the Pen Optgroup Tag Example 2 by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.
6 – Predefined Options With <datalist>
One of the great things about the <select> element, along with the radio / checkbox input types is that it restricts your users to a set of predefined choices.
You can now use the <datalist> element to define the list of valid choices for your various <input> tags. This component is slightly different on various browsers, but the common way it works is by showing a small drop-down arrow to the right of the field indicating that this field has options. When selected usually the options will fold down and show themselves. The user can start typing and the options will highlight if they partially match (for example, writing “Chr” inside a field that has “Chrome” as an option will narrow down the option list to show it).
This element is still emerging but overall it works well.
Practical Examples
If you wanted to provide a list of URL’s that the user could select from, you could create a <datalist> and connect it to your <input> as follows.
<label for="favourite-sites"> Select your favorite website! </label> <input type="url" name="favourite-sites" id="favourite-sites" list="site-list"/> <datalist id="site-list"> <option value="http://www.google.com.au"> <option value="http://www.reddit.com"> <option value="http://www.sitepoint.com"> </datalist>
This will let you constrict your inputs to just a few values.
See the Pen Datalist Tag Example by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.
Notes and Considerations
The datalist itself will perform validation based on the type attribute for the <input> element. For example, if you have chosen to use type="email" and then supply a <datalist> element to it, the options inside this list must conform to inputs of type “email”. It has a level of smart processing that should make it easier for you to control values automatically.
The <datalist> tag is fairly well supported, however Apple have decided not to support this element at all (on both desktop and on iOS). Microsoft supports this from IE10 onwards (with no support on mobile IE). When support isn’t available the <input> element should fall back to its normal input mode.
One word of warning — This component can be a bit buggy. For example, if you mark the input as required and do not enter a value, the form will stop any processing until you select a value (just as you expect). However, if you manually type in a value (even if it isn’t correct) and press submit this won’t trigger an error — nothing will happen (it does not flag an error as you may expect it to).
Wrapping It All Up!
Hopefully you’ve picked up a useful element or two from this article and going forward you can use them in your upcoming sites!
Overall, a lot of the semantics of using these elements are very much up in the air. Some groups will insist that you need to use X element in Z ways for it to be the ‘right way’. Several of these elements are still evolving and will require you to interpret how best to use them.
We’re always keen on input, so if you know of any infrequently used helpful tags we’d be keen to hear how you’ve used them.Bengaluru: When Cyclone Ockhi slammed Kerala’s coast on 30 November, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan asked the state’s inmates to generously donate to his disaster relief fund to help the victims.
He flexed the muscles of his Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, an organisation which has a firm grip over the state. Separately, government officers, trade union leaders, among others, met to discuss how they can help.
Nearly a month later, Vijayan’s aggressive campaign seems to have become a roaring success, cobbling together Rs120 crore, as per the finance department, a significant sum, considering that it is close to the entire grant extended by the centre so far.
The Union government has given about Rs133 crore so far and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 20 December said he will consider the requests for more funds, pending an ongoing assessment of the damages. However, last week the Union government moved an amendment to Union finance minister Arun Jaitley’s supplementary demand for grants, without including a major central compensation package for Ockhi victims, a move sharply criticised last week in Parliament by Kerala MPs such as Shashi Tharoor.
The relief, recovery and rehabilitation works, apart from safe-guarding against such cyclone impacts in future, would cost the state Rs7,340 crore, the Kerala government told the centre, while seeking a relief package this month.
The state’s coffers are severely short of money, as the shock from goods and services tax (GST) continues, according to Kerala finance minister Thomas Issac.
In the face of shortage of money, the Kerala government devised a rehabilitation package that goes far ahead in terms of scope and extent of coverage in the state’s history. The package includes awarding Rs20 lakh to the kin of 74 killed so far by the cyclone, handing out compensation for loss of equipment for affected fishermen, such as boats and nets, apart from promises to address re-employment, education and rehabilitation of the affected families.
For the first time, the government is paying every adult and child in an affected family who could not go out for work due to Cyclone Ockhi—they will be paid Rs65 and Rs40 per day, respectively, in December, in addition to a month-long free ration fishermen’s families.
Also, Vijayan and his cabinet colleagues, along with governor P. Sathasivam, have donated their one-month salary. Senior government officers have pledged their 2-3 days of salary, while junior officers have pledged a day’s salary. Money also poured in from opposition Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, public sector units, NGO Union (a pro-CPM union of state employees), among others.
“Initially, there was a bit of resistance from the officers to pledge salaries. But state government puts its foot down, and they obliged," said a government official, on the condition of anonymity.
Voluntary donations came generously from individuals too. For instance, 87-year-old Sheela Antony, who gave Rs50,000, which her children living overseas had given her to enjoy the Christmas holiday season.
“Government employees contribution shall be credited to the (relief) account during the first week of January. It may come to around Rs50-60 crore.Together, it will cross Rs120 crore by the 1st of the next month," said state finance department in an email, replying to a request by Mint to provide details.Ukrainian city unveils monument dedicated to those who died fighting in the Donbas Monday, March 21, 2016 6:28:00 PM
On Saturday, the first monument dedicated to Ukrainian soldiers who died during the hostilities in the Donbas region was unveiled in the city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The opening ceremony was attended by the city residents, combatants with their families and authorities.
As reported by the City Council of Kryvyi Rih, the demobilized fighters, relatives of military victims and volunteers initiated a monument to be built for the soldiers in the city.
The sketch of the monument was created by the sculptor Vladimir Turner, a resident of Kryvyi Rih. According to his draft, a monument in memory of the Soviet-Afghan War was built before in the district Oktyabrsky. According to the creator of the monument, the prototype of the monument had a real personality – the mortar-"cyborg", Evgeny Abrosimov, with the callsign "Apricot", who took part in the defense of the Donetsk Airport.
The sculpture "cyborg" is placed between two symbolic wings of the aircraft, which symbolize the tragedy of the Il-76 that was shot down by armed separatists near Luhansk in June of 2014. 49 Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Among them were people from Dnipropetrovsk and Kryvyi Rih. The names of the countrymen killed during the military operation in eastern Ukraine are carved on the monument. Kryvyi Rih has lost a hundred soldiers fighting in the Donbas region.
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.This high-end Apple Watch, with a casing in 18-karat gold, is one among the range of Apple watches available from April 24 in nine markets - excluding Switzerland, where the 'Apple Watch' trade mark is held by a watch company said to be owned by a Singaporean.
Singapore
THE Apple Watch is tipped to shake up the global watch industry when it is launched later this month, but it is likely to leave the heart of the watch industry untouched - at least for the moment - thanks to a Singapore businessman.
William Leong, the managing director of Leong Poh Kee, a regional distributor of luxury timepieces based in Singapore, is said to own the "Apple Watch" trademark in Switzerland, home of the luxury watch business.
The trademark's direct owner is Leonard Timepieces, a Swiss watch company which Swiss media has reported as being owned by "William Longe" - a mis-spelling of William Leong, a source close to Leong Poh Kee indicated.
sentifi.com Market voices on:
The trademark gives Leonard the exclusive rights to use the word "Apple" on jewellery, including watches; it also covers the use of of apple images on jewellery, precious stones, watches and timepieces of any kind, Swiss local TV media has reported.
When contacted, Mr Leong's son Ken said his father wished to "reserve comment" on the matter. Sources say this is because the matter is now in the hands of lawyers in Switzerland.
The US-based Apple is set to roll out the Apple Watch priced between US$349 and US$10,000 on April 24 in nine markets - Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US.
Switzerland is not one of them.
Customers reportedly flocked to Apple stores around the world last Friday for a peek at the smartwatch, which Apple expects will be its next runaway hit.
Switzerland, which has a population of eight million, is not a big market, but a presence there would be significant for any company aspiring to be a big player in the watch business.
The issue with Apple Watch in Switzerland would not have surfaced if Apple had called its smartwatch Apple iWatch, following the naming convention for its other products - the Apple iPhone, Apple iPad and Apple iPod.
But Apple did not use the iWatch name because a company called OMG Electronics had applied for the iWatch trademark in September 2012, said a report on Sunday.
OMG was trying to raise US$100,000 to produce a smartwatch through crowd funding, but managed to raise only US$1,434.
An earlier attempt by a New York-based company called M Z Berger & Co to file the iWatch trademark in Europe in 2007 was successfully shot down by Swiss watch-making giant Swatch on the grounds that the name would cause confusion with Swatch buyers.
Leonard Timepieces filed the trademark for watches and watch parts bearing an apple insignia in 1985 - long before Apple started toying with the thought of creating an intelligent watch.
The 30-year trademark expires this Dec 5, clearing the roadblock for Apple, and the speculation is that Leonard Timepieces could try and renew the trademark.
Intellectual property lawyers say, however, that Apple could challenge it, arguing that the mark has never been used in trade.
No Swiss watchmaker is known to have sold an "apple watch" since the trademark was granted - and companies cannot "squat" on trademarks indefinitely. If the case goes to court, lawyers think Apple is likely to prevail because it commands huge financial and legal resources.
Meanwhile, traditional watchmakers in Switzerland have more time to bring their own smartwatches to the market; many of them, including Swatch and Tag Heuer, unveiled smartwatch plans recently.
Apple has reportedly declined comment on the issue.
READ MORE: Profile of Leong Poh KeeChris Jordan has signed a deal with Big Bash side Adelaide Scorchers
Chris Jordan has been signed up by Adelaide Strikers for the start of the upcoming Big Bash League in Australia.
Jordan has joined for an initial two-game spell as cover for fellow England all-rounder Adil Rashid, who is part of the Test squad in India.
Rashid could yet miss more of the Strikers' T20 campaign if he is selected for England's limited-overs series in India in the New Year, but in the meantime Jordan will deputise for games against Brisbane Heat and Perth Scorchers later this month.
"Chris is an all-rounder who has represented England with distinction and we are delighted to have secured his services," Stikers coach Jason Gillespie said.
"He bowls very good pace, is renowned for taking early wickets and he is also known for his death bowling - and he's also one of the best fielders in the world.
Adil Rashid remains in India with England's Test squad
"He's a quality cricketer who has all three strings to his bow, and we're extremely excited to be welcoming here to the Adelaide Strikers."
Upgrade to Sky Sports now and get 12 months half price. Hurry, offer ends December 4th!Remember that legislation in Georgia that would have forbidden municipalities from building public broadband networks if just a single person in a census block already had access to a so-so DSL connection? The lawmakers have voted — and said thank but no thanks.
As originally written, the Municipal Broadband Investment Act — so called because it would actually stop municipal broadband investment — set the bar for “broadband” at 1 Mbps downstream, which may have been considered high-speed in the days when you had to download porn in 30-second chunks.
The bill was later revised to allow for 3Mbps downstream, which is still slower than the FCC’s most recent minimum standard for broadband as “4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.”
If just a single person in a census block had private internet access that meets this standard, the municipality would be prevented from building out a new broadband network in that area.
It’s believed that, like in the case for similar bills in North and South Carolina, this legislation was supported by both the large wireless companies — which pay lip service to serving rural and small communities but have done little about it thus far — and regional ISPs that don’t want to see their de facto monopolies broken up by municipalities who choose to provide a better option to residents.
The state legislator who crafted this bill claims it is unfair to allow cities to spend their huge tax coffers to compete against telecoms that only have a few billion dollars to invest. He also apparently resides in an alternate reality where local municipalities are flush with cash and unicorns grant wishes.
Another state representative who opposed the bill tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his town could not get a private ISP to set up a broadband network “because they knew they didn’t have to. They provided whatever crumbs from the table they wanted.”
In the end, the vote went 94-70 against the legislation.The Lamar Senior Activity Center raises money every year cracking pecans. For 50 cents a pound, you can get your pecans run through one of the center's four nut-cracking machines.
John Camden, who has volunteered to operate the machines for five years, says the service is usually one of the center's biggest fundraisers. Just not this year.
This year is “so slow it's boring,” he says. “We sit down there and wait for people to bring pecans in. It’s the worst year I've ever seen.”
KUT's Mose Buchele reports
It's not that people are taking their nuts elsewhere. At a time of year when it’s common to see people in front yards and city parks staring intently at the ground gathering nuts, the nuts – and by extension the gatherers – are strangely absent.
Why? Part of the reason is the way pecan trees work.
Wild or “unmanaged” pecan trees (and to a lesser extent farmed trees) take a year off from producing nuts in between productive years. It's an important rest that helps them build up energy to make more nuts, says Monte Nesbitt, a specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension.
“When [Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez] Cabeza de Vaca was stranded in Texas in the 1500s, he made the first written observations about pecans being alternate bearing,” Nesbitt says. “The native Americans knew they would not get two years in a row of a crop.”
That cycle gets amplified when pecan trees in different parts of the state sync up with each other, having good years together, then bad years, in response to the weather. So, if a year is too wet or too dry in Austin, local trees might wait till the next year to produce pecans. Then that cycle gets locked in locally.
“We can go back to 2011, to that drought year, that kind of threw areas within Texas out of cycle from one another,” Nesbitt says. “So that you have pockets of Texas that are on and pockets that are off.”
But that doesn’t fully explain why 2017 seems to be so bad in Austin even for an off year. One possible reason for that? Last year’s super warm winter could have discouraged the trees from growing
“Pecan trees [were] not as affected as an apple tree or peach tree,” Nesbitt says. “But [they were] affected.”
Looking for a silver lining? If we have a cooler winter and enough rain, that should mean a big harvest next year, when the trees are well rested.
“I think we will be. I think we’ll be back,” Camden says.
In the meantime, he points out, the senior center also sells nuts, in case you don’t have any to bring in for cracking.Earlier this week in Surrey, two male police officers slammed a 16-year old Black girl to the ground and handcuffed her. The officers (edit: one white, one South Asian) approached her while she was waiting for the bus, assuming she was someone else. When she told them they had the wrong person they threw her to the ground, handcuffed her, and one officer held her down with his knee in her back. Her response was one of absolute terror. When they finally realized she was not the person they were looking for they left the scene (after going through her belongings to check her ID), without ensuring she got home safely. This traumatized child was left at a bus stop after being assaulted by two police officers… and people continue to tell us that Black Lives Matter is not needed in Canada.
We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that Canada is a multicultural haven of peace and equality. It is not. We need to recognize how deeply embedded racism is within Canadian culture. “At least it’s not as bad as the US. At least it’s not as bad as Toronto,” people say. This is gaslighting. Any mistreatment of Black people by law enforcement is too much. In light of Jordan Edwards’ murder by Texas police this week, this is another painful reminder that Black people are targeted, criminalized, and oppressed by policing institutions across North America. We remain over-policed and under-protected. We will not stand silent; we demand accountability.
This is also not an isolated incident. Canada is an illegitimate state founded on white supremacy and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. Canada is actively continuing colonization. This shows up in how Black people and Indigenous people are surveilled, policed, and disproportionately incarcerated. Law enforcement is a necessary instrument of the prison-industrial complex that channels Black and Indigenous people into the prison system. The alarming rise in the percentage of incarcerated Black people and Indigenous people in Canada was the subject of a report in 2013. Howard Sapers, former federal Correctional Investigator for Canada, said the findings of the report reveal a “troubling pattern”.
“9.5% of federal inmates today are Black (an increase of 80% since 2003/04), yet Black Canadians account for less than 3% of the total Canadian population. Aboriginal people represent a staggering 23% of federal inmates yet comprise 4.3% of the total Canadian population. One-in-three women under federal sentence are Aboriginal. “These are disturbing trends that raise important questions about equality and our justice system in Canada,” added Sapers.” … A case study conducted by the Office in 2012-13 on the experiences of Black inmates under federal custody found that they are over-represented in maximum security and segregation, incur a disproportionate number of institutional charges, and are more likely to be involved in use of force incidents. –– “The Changing Face of Canada’s Prisons”, Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2013
This disturbing trend only continues when Black children are stereotyped, criminalized, assaulted and traumatized by Canadian law enforcement. This needs to stop. The two police officers should be investigated, charged, suspended without pay, and publicly named. The public has a right to know who these officers are. The investigation of police officers by other police officers is categorically biased and has proven inconsequential time and again.
We need meaningful pursuit of justice for this child and for everyone who experiences police violence. The parents have sought legal counsel and BLMV is in contact with the family. BLMV will be contacting the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) and the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) about racial profiling, community consultation processes by municipal police/RCMP, and police accountability.Almost 7 years ago when my former co-founder described Adam Ludwin (at RRE at the time, investor in companies including Vine, Kik, Slack, and Paperless Post, now CEO & Co-Founder of Chain.com, and one of the earliest to believe in the possibility of Turf Geography Club) as the next Fred Wilson, I was skeptical but curious.
Today, he's one of the clearest thinking crypto truth tellers, translating complicated new terrains to regulators, blockchain devs, crypto speculators, and new consumers entering the market.
“I think you have to look at it from the perspective of the buyer and the seller mentality,” Ludwin said of the current digital asset market. “In essence, it is currently rational to be irrational as a buyer [or] a seller in this market.”
If you’re not aware, more than $3 billion has been raised through ICOs since the beginning of 2017 (according to Coinschedule). For those who don’t know the first thing about ICOs, check out Laura Shin’s in-depth piece about this new financial phenomenon from earlier in the year.
The Buyers of ICOs
When discussing the kinds of people who are participating in ICOs and token crowdsales during his appearance at the public meeting, Ludwin was quick to point to those who have already made large sums of cash by speculating on the prices of bitcoin and ether over the past few years.
“On the buyer side, there are many, many people who invested early in bitcoin, made a tremendous amount of money and now have, effectively, a house money effect weighing on them where it’s found money — it’s a windfall — and they’re diversifying into every new project that comes along because: Why not?” explained Ludwin. “If you’ve made money, you might as well say, ‘I’ll keep going.’”
Ludwin also pointed to those who sat on the sidelines while bitcoin and ether went up a hundredfold or more because they didn’t understand the technology as probable buyers of new digital assets.
“Now, you almost have this inverted mindset where you tell yourself, ‘Alright, I have to look for things I don’t understand, and the more confusing it is, the better investment it probably is,’” said Ludwin. “It’s a very perverse mentality, obviously.”This weekend in Chicago, Lollapalooza is celebrating 25 years in existence with a bang: four days of music headlined by acts such as Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, J. Cole, Lana Del Rey, LCD Soundsystem, Future and Major Lazer. If you don't already have tickets, however, you're mostly out of luck: Four-day and individual day passes to the festival are sold out, and only VIP passes remain available. Back in April, festival staple Coachella, which takes place over two weekends, enjoyed similar success with a reunited Guns n' Roses, among others. In a Billboard story on mid-year tours, AEG Live CEO Jay Marciano characterized that fest as having a record year—impressive, since in 2015, Coachella grossed $84 million and drew nearly 200,000 people. Niche festivals have also enjoyed success: Coachella's classic rock-leaning Desert Trip sold out two weekends in mere hours, while the hard rock and metal extravaganza Rock On The Range sold out months in advance—as did the 2016 CMA Music Festival, which set attendance records in its 45th year.
Still, the 2016 outlook hasn't been as rosy for other festivals. Bonnaroo experienced a significant attendance drop this year, according to a report by The Tennessean: The camping-friendly event sold 45,537 tickets—28,156 fewer than 2015—which amounts to a 46 percent drop from the fest's best-selling 2011 year. The Sasquatch! music festival over Memorial Day weekend drew only 11,000 ticket-holders, according to the Oregonian, which quoted the Grant County Sheriff's Office as saying "that's about 50% of what normally attends."
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Other festivals faced similar woes: Levitation Festival in Austin was canceled the day before it started due to "safety concerns regarding dangerous weather"—after many out-of-town attendees had arrived already—while the Sunday of New York City's Governors Ball was also scotched due to weather. All Tomorrow's Parties nixed a weekend festival in Manchester, England, in the wake of financial uncertainties and "months of chaos," while the Colombia edition of Lollapalooza didn't happen due to a headliner dropping out. Just this week, the country-leaning Buckle Up Festival in Cincinnati was canceled due to what it termed "circumstances beyond our control."
Of course, severe weather is also something out of everyone's control. However, there are no easy answers or clear-cut reasons for the underperforming festivals, since the formula for festival success remains complex and elusive. For example, in Sasquatch!'s case, the Oregonian surmised that perhaps lineup challenges—including a lack of a strong hip-hop act—or even a "weak Canadian dollar" were contributing causes. There's something to that: Although certain acts strictly play festivals during the summer, others treat appearances as part of a tour—meaning it's not necessarily special or unique to see a band there. (Acts even play shorter sets at festivals, a minus for fans.) Although it can be argued that a festival is about the overall experience, not just the music, having strong, unique entertainment is one way to ensure someone buys a ticket.
In fact, the Oregonian noted that Sasquatch! was missing a reunited LCD Soundsystem, one of the bigger draws making the festival rounds in 2016. Still, even the carrot of a reunited band isn't quite as tantalizing as it once was. Coachella arguably kicked off the trend of high-profile reunions: Pixies, Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and the Stooges have all played gigs there. However, there's less of an incentive to see a long-time favorite act live and in person—especially since a broken-up group getting back together for a gig (or a tour) is expected, not a surprise, and chances are the show will be live-streamed (or posted to YouTube soon after).
But on some level, these festival stumbles could be corrective. Back in 2014, Wondering Sound published a piece called "Why The Summer Music Festival Bubble is About To Burst" that examined the burgeoning (and crowded) festival scene. Not only did a booking agent then note there were a staggering 847 North American festivals happening that year—pointing not just to saturation but also festival fatigue—but Pollstar founder Gary Bongiovanni pointed out how much worldwide competition that's created. "Everyone is pulling from the same talent,” he said. “And that is the problem: Everyone is chasing the same pool of talent, not just in the United States but globally. If they’re playing Yugoslavia, they’re not available in Arizona."
In addition, price can be a factor. This year, Bonnaroo's general admission tickets cost $324 and VIP tickets were nearly $1,600 for a pair. "I have had students pass on some festivals, telling me that they can go to Florida and see their favorite act in a one to two-day event, stay at a cheap hotel on the beach, drive back and spend less than most VIP packages," Belmont University music industry professor David Herrera told The Tennessean. Plus, national destination festivals now have plenty of competition |
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But because of their participation in the Neighboring Movement, Todd and Karla found out that Chris Crowe wasn’t just another messy neighbor—she was a longtime foster parent, who had adopted seven children through foster care. The bikes and toys outside were a function of “managed chaos,” as Chris put it, the reality of being a loving mom to a large and diverse family.
“In the midst of all that mess, Chris was investing in the lives of kids that nobody else wanted,” Karla remarked. The discovery prompted her and Todd to ask themselves: “Can we join her in that—in investing in those kids?”
In many ways, the Neighboring Movement presents a response to the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon, Americans’ well-documented and growing social alienation from each other. Where impersonal, social-media-based interactions and a divisive political discourse have pushed us further apart, the civic and religious leaders in the Neighboring Movement are trying to stitch us more closely together, one block at a time.
And it seems to be working. Word of the Neighboring Movement in Arvada began to spread to other communities, including Duluth, Wisconsin; Midland, Michigan; Lancaster, Ohio; and Modesto and Fresno, California. Churches and civic leaders are attracted to the simplicity of the program—mapping and learning names of folks right next door, forming relationships with those same people, and throwing parties—as well as the connection between the program and Christianity’s Great Commandment. Runyon and Pathak developed tools for leaders who want to start a Neighboring Movement, including the “Art of Neighboring” website, which has step-by-step instructions to get a Neighboring Movement going in a new community, and a book by the same title.
I asked Runyon what the primary barriers are to the Neighboring Movement’s growth, and he told me “time and fear.” “People have to be willing to give up a little bit of time in service of developing relationships,” Runyon said, “and get beyond the fear of folks who may be different from them. But if we can do that, the rewards are vast.”
Mitch Majeski, a pastor in Fort Collins, Colorado, wholeheartedly agrees: “This neighboring thing is amazing... It’s one of the hardest things I have ever done, and I don’t ever want to do anything else.”Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Cupertino, Calif. Photograph by: P Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, Canada.com
Today the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus is available for pre-order through a number of Canadian carriers including: Rogers, Bell, Virgin, Fido, Telus, Koodo, SaskTel and MTS.
The no term price for 16 GB iPhone 6 is $749, 64 GB $859 and 128 GB $969. iPhone 6 Plus prices are 16GB $859, 64GB $969 and 128GB $1,079. These prices are pulled from Apple’s official store, where the iPhone 6 is available for in-store pick-up and online pre-order.
Both smartphone will be sold by retailers like Best Buy, Future Shop and the Source. According to MobileSyrup, The Source will take pre-orders for the iPhone 6 at some point before its Sept. 19, 2014 release date.
All prices below require a 2-year contract.
Telus
With Telus the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus costs the following:
iPhone 6
16GB: $265
64GB: $375
128GB: $485
iPhone 6 Plus
16GB: $375
64GB: $485
128GB: $595
Telus also offers a trade-in program, allowing customers to receive a discount on their shinny new iPhone, depending on what model of smartphone they’re trading in. Telus also offers no activation fee and has free shipping. All iPhone 6 orders through Telus also require a two-year plan.
Bell and Virgin Mobile
The cost of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus with both Bell and Virgin Mobile is $5 cheaper than Telus’ pricing.
iPhone 6
16GB: $259
64GB: $369
128GB: $479
iPhone 6 Plus
16GB: $369
64GB: $479
128GB: $589
Bell charges an extra $15 activation fee but also allows people to trade-in their old smartphones for a discount. With Virgin, you’ll need to choose one of the provider’s $80 Platinum plans in order to get the subsidized 2-year discount on the iPhone 6. Virgin also offers the phone on its cheaper $40 a month plans but the iPhone 6 discount is considerably less, approximately only $300. Virgin will also wave the activation fee they typically charge if your purchase an iPhone 6 with one of the company’s silver or gold plans.
Rogers
Roger’s pricing seems to be a dollar cheaper than Telus and around four dollars more than Bell and Virgin Mobile.
iPhone 6
16GB: $264
64GB: $375
128GB: $485
iPhone 6 Plus
16GB: $375
64GB: $485
128GB: $595
Sasktel
All of Sasktel’s pricing is on a two year contract. Pricing for the iPhone 6 Plus has not been released yet.
iPhone 6
16GB: $264
64GB: $374
128GB: $484
All iPhone 6 pre-orders with Rogers currently come with a free Logixx Blue Piston wireless speaker. The company also offers an old smartphone trade-in program. Roger’s “budget” brand, Fido, has the exact same pricing as Rogers, only the iPhone 6 costs one cent more. Customers also have to choose a two-year contract with Fido’s Tab24 agreement on a Max plan.
MTS seems to have not listed their pricing for the iPhone 6 yet. Koodo also hasn’t released their iPhone 6 subsidized pricing yet. Futureshop will have the iPhone 6 available for pre-order ahead of launch as well.
Interestingly U.S. prices for on-contract iPhone 6 smartphones are priced considerably less than they are in Canada.
The iPhone 6 is set to be released on Sept. 17, 2014.
Follow @Patrick_ORourke.As a last push to help the UPA wade through the elections, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting employed the entire media machinery at its disposal, including Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR), to tom-tom the government’s welfare and development initiatives.
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Besides paying for direct advertising spots and advertorials aired on 18 DD channels and AIR, the ministry co-opted the entire production and news divisions of the two broadcast platforms to produce audio-visual dramas and serials and generate “success stories” and “discussion-based programmes” on the UPA’s various schemes and programmes.
“The exercise was set in motion in May ’13 but picked pace in August ’13, and the last push came in January ’14,” said a director general of one of the organisations under the ministry.
Sources in DD, AIR and Song and Drama Division said I&B Minister Manish Tewari spearheaded the exercise and convened nearly 15 meetings between August ’13 and February ’14 (some chaired by I&B secretaries) with director generals and additional director generals of PIB, DAVP, Films Division, NFDC, RNI, AIR, DD and even the CEO of Prasar Bharati to chart out the promotional strategy and follow up on it success.
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“Executives were flown in from places like Nagpur and Bhubaneswar to attend these meetings in New Delhi. Nearly 10 DGs and 20 ADGs along with Prasar Bharati CEO and all secretaries of the I&B ministry were asked to attend these meetings,” said a DG who attended the meetings.
By the end of February, all of AIR’s regional news units had aired 316 “stories” on the government’s flagship schemes like MGNREGA, minority and SC welfare, midday meal, Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana and National Rural Health Mission among others. It also held 163 “discussion-based” programmes on Aadhar, Food Security Bill, National Skill Development and other such initiatives. AIR’s New Delhi headquarters broadcast 126 “success stories” and 34 discussions.
DD was more involved in the exercise. Besides running “success stories”, DD News also aired “explanatory packages” giving details of various government schemes, duly peppered with interviews of related union ministers. The so-called autonomous broadcaster also ran guest discussions with experts and political leaders on these subjects. “While shows etc, were produced in Delhi, reporters in other parts of the country were asked to file reports on the success of various government schemes,” said the director general.
According to sources, nine hours of live bulletins in English, 12 hours in Hindi and three hours in Urdu were dedicated to the “project” and around 100 hours of non-news programmes were generated and aired on various regional stations by the end of 2013 alone.
As part of the paid advertorial, 18 DD centres broadcast dramas and serials like ‘Poorva Suhani Aayi Re’ in which a spirited village girl, Poorva, makes her fellow villagers aware of the government’s various welfare schemes. The show, produced in association with the Song and Drama division, had 52 episodes commissioned and the production cost of each episode was Rs 6 lakh. “The production cost was borne by DD itself out of the grants given to it by the government,” said a senior executive involved with the production.
DD News deployed close to 600 stringers and part-time reporters in 184 districts across 18 states to conduct surveys on the response these shows generated among the target audience.
According to the I&B ministry, DD and AIR were paid Rs 45.67 crore for advertisements and advertorials run under the campaign. Those involved in generating content within DD and AIR, however, say that their output was worth a lot more.
Tewari, meanwhile, said that as per the Transactional Business Rules, the ministry was well within its remit to employ the services of offices attached to it. “The rules clearly say that the ministry can use the services of attached and subordinate offices, of which DD and AIR are a part, to publicise its policies and programmes,” he said.
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He also said the exercise was part of the government’s flagship promotional Bharat Nirman campaign that was originally launched in 2007. “We issued advertisements and advertorials to all the media organisations along with DD and AIR. We also made available the success stories to everybody. While some publications and channels followed them up, some didn’t. DD and AIR followed up on the success stories of their own volition and there was no coercion, pressure or extraneous influence on them to do these news stories and discussions,” he said.An animal rights protest planned for this week in front of St. Margaret's Episcopal School has been downgraded in name to a demonstration and postponed at least a week, an organizer said.
Animal rights activists from across the internet have been gripped by the ongoing saga of the Olympic Animal Sanctuary in Forks, Wash., a home for dangerous dogs other organizations refuse to take, sheltered on land owned by St. Margaret's elementary teacher Diane Hawkins.
Hawkins has also served for many years as OAS's treasurer.
For months, protesters have claimed the sanctuary is really its own kind of hell, with the dogs confined to small crates with dirty bedding and little food to eat. The organizer of the protest – who asked that her name not be used because of personal threats she continues to receive – said she wanted Hawkins to be held accountable.
Initially, the protest was planned only if the dogs remained at Olympic. But since Patch first reported plans for the demonstration in San Juan Capistrano, there's been an unexpected turn of events.
According to many sources, including a newspaper and television news program from Washington, OAS operator Steve Markwell packed 124 dogs onto a climate-controlled tractor-trailer and headed for warmer climes.
Initially, Markwell did not have a destination, according to the rescue group, Guardians of Rescue of Smithtown, N. Y., which responded to his call for help. The Guardians set up a rescue site – whose location was at first kept secret – where the dogs could be transferred into its custody.
While the San Juan Capistrano protest organizer is relieved the dogs are out of Markwell's hands, there remain several troubling details, she said. First, when Forks police first started investigating OAS a year ago, there were more than 124 dogs, she said. She wants to find out what happened to as many as 100 other dogs.
Second, many of the dogs are not in great health, just as she suspected, the organizer said. The Arizona Humane Society has discovered many of the dogs, now living in the desert near the Arizona-Nevada states line but some already transferred out, to be underweight and suffering from muscle atrophy, among other ailments.
That fact alone has convinced her that Markwell was every bit the animal hoarder she was convinced he was, she said.
But perhaps the detail that has kept the demonstration in San Juan Capistrano on the activists' calendars is that Markwell continues to ask for donations, convincing her that history will repeat.
"Recidivism on this kind stuff is 100 percent," she said, citing a Tufts University study. "Unless people get help, they do it again."
As for Hawkins, reported to be Markwell's mom, "She was an active board member for years. She owned that warehouse. She was the treasurer," the organizer said. "How can she not go up there and see those 100-200 dogs and not say, 'This is not what we should be doing?' … She herself is not a hoarder, obviously, but she enabled this. Enablers are just as bad."
The demonstration is likely to attract 40-50 people and will be peaceful, she said.Looking for news you can trust?
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Just a day after Donald Trump officially became the Republican presidential nominee, a woman broke her silence on allegations that he sexually assaulted her. In an interview with the Guardian published today, Jill Harth detailed how Trump made numerous sexual advances toward her in 1993, culminating when she says he cornered and groped her in a bedroom. Harth attempted to press charges in 1997 but withdrew her lawsuit and has since remained quiet about the case. She says that since her allegations resurfaced in a May New York Times article about Trump’s treatment of women, the Trump campaign has continuously pressured her to recant her account.
Harth says she first met Trump in 1992 during a business presentation, when she was working with the American Dream beauty pageant festival. Harth was with her romantic partner, George Houraney, at the time, but Harth says that did not deter Trump from sexually pursuing her. Trump “stared at her” throughout her meeting, according to Harth, and then asked Houraney: “Are you sleeping with her or what?” When Houraney said yes, Trump asked if it was “for the weekend or what?”
In Harth’s 1997 lawsuit, she describes several instances in which Trump allegedly harassed her. In one instance, Harth says Trump groped her under the table during a dinner with beauty pageant contestants. Then in 1993, Harth says, Trump cornered her in a bedroom in his Florida mansion during a business visit, an incident described in the lawsuit as an “attempted ‘rape’.” Harth tells the Guardian:
“He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again,” Harth recalled, “and I had to physically say: ‘What are you doing? Stop it.’ It was a shocking thing to have him do this because he knew I was with George, he knew they were in the next room. And how could he be doing this when I’m there for business?”
Jill Harth’s 1997 lawsuit via the Guardian
Though Harth did not use the word “rape” in her interview with the Guardian, she says, “If I hadn’t pushed him away, I’m sure he would have just went for it. He was aggressive.”
In a response to the Guardian, Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump, said in a statement, “It is disheartening that one has to dignify a response to the below absurd query. Mr Trump denies each and every statement made by Ms Harth as these 24-year-old allegations lack any merit or veracity.”
Harth says she had resolved to not discuss the claims for years, but that after attempts by the Trump campaign to discredit her following the New York Times story, she is opening up now to demand an apology.
“His office—and I have it on my voicemails that he called, that they called—they asked me to recant everything when the New York Times article came out,” Harth tells the Guardian. “They were trying to get me to say it never happened and I made it up. And I said I’m not doing that.”
“Nobody was defending me, that’s why I’m talking,” Harth said. “You can believe it or not, but I went through hell and I still have to relive this again. And I just, I’m horrified that I have to think about this again.”christopher jarrell
Christopher Jarrell, taken into custody in Slidell
A man wanted in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on charges of molestation of a juvenile was arrested in Slidell Thursday (July 31), authorities said. After a brief struggle, Christopher Jarrell, 28, was taken into custody and is currently being held in the Slidell City Jail, the Slidell Police Department said.
A Slidell police detective assigned to the U.S. Marshal's Fugitive Task Force received information that Jarrell was in the Slidell area, the police department said. Jarrell is wanted in Tuscaloosa on charges of molestation and sodomy of a juvenile under the age of 12, the police department said.
Slidell police, U.S. Marshals and deputies from the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office located Jarrell Thursday afternoon hiding in a trailer at the Eagle Lake Trailer Park in Slidell, police said. He was taken into custody after a brief struggle, police said.
Jarrell will transferred to the St. Tammany Parish Jail and then extradited back to Tuscaloosa, Ala., authorities said.DARPA's Fred Kennedy: “Our savior is going to be the commercial sector."
WASHINGTON — The military space business is stuck in its old ways and missing a “golden opportunity” to capture the energy of a rejuvenated commercial industry, said a former White House space and aviation technology adviser who is now a top official at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
“In the national security space sector, we’re in dire need of new thinking and innovation,” said Fred Kennedy, director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. He assumed that post in September after serving as deputy director since January.
Speaking at a breakfast meeting of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation Nov. 15, Kennedy criticized the Pentagon’s methods for acquiring satellites and called for a “shakeup” in national security space programs.
In the Defense Department, Kennedy said, “We’ve gotten very good at building small numbers of extremely exquisite things, very expensive things on very long time schedules.” That culture that emphasizes high performance and low risk is now working against the military because its satellites have become huge targets for adversaries.
“Our savior is going to be the commercial sector,” said Kennedy. Some pockets within the military are moving in that direction but not soon enough. “We’re starting to see an influx of commercial technology, but we need more of it, and quick.”
Kennedy worries that the commercial space boom could turn out to be a fad that fades in a few years, so the Pentagon should be harnessing that energy now. “My biggest fear is that in a couple of years people will forget Matt Damon and ‘The Martian’ and be back where we were before.”
‘Other transactions’ contracting
DARPA’s weapon for capturing privately funded technology is an authority known as “other transactions,” or OTA, to sign contracts with vendors that bypasses some of the federal procurement red tape.
“We do that. It’s very effective and useful,” said Kennedy. “I can’t say it’s always quicker than the normal contracting process. But it is actually an effective way of teaming.”
The way it works with DARPA: The agency selects a commercial partner and the company is expected to help fund the venture. “Then we can go out and work on problems jointly,” Kennedy said.
He touted one of DARPA’s most ambitious space programs, the robotic servicing of geosynchronous satellites, or RSGS. It is a government-industry partnership with SSL MDA Holdings.
If the project is successful — a launch is planned for 2021 — it would elevate DARPA’s status as a disruptor, Kennedy said. He recalled that an earlier program called Orbital Express, designed to service spacecraft in low-Earth orbit, got off to a fast start but was deactivated in 2007 because there was no business case for it.
The RSGS effort is aimed at high-orbit satellites, most of which are in need of some type of service — new flight computers, more fuel, more propellant. Companies in the industry told DARPA that they would buy that service if available. “We have to get out of today’s culture of treating satellites like a Rolls Royce or Ferrari, that they have to work for 15 years, so you’d better test the hell out it, make sure it absolutely works,” said Kennedy. “Geosynchronous orbit is a natural place to go. … They all need to be refueled, repaired, moved or retired. There is a commercial interest and a national security need.”
The RSGS will be a “commercial transition and not something we push to the Air Force,” he said. Once the system is up and running, SSL will commercialize it.
Industry skeptical
Kennedy’s cheering words of encouragement, however, were met with skepticism from executives in the audience who argued that DARPA often funds the development of technologies that already are available in the private sector, creating government vs. industry competitions that undermine private efforts.
Kennedy only partially agreed. He said he hopes projects like the RSGS will result in a “shakeup” in how the space sector does business with the government. “I’d like to use RSGS and other systems to be some kind of a wedge to force people to think differently about the enterprise, in our case, about the ‘order of battle.’”
But he acknowledged that “culture is the biggest problem” in military programs. “I’d like to live in a world where we do not have to wait 10 years and spend $20 billion to get a capability,” he said. “I would like to see a change away from that.”
Executives in the audience pointed out that the Defense Department has not moved to capitalize on the small satellite revolution or “hosted payloads” as alternatives to custom-built military spacecraft. The industry had expected to see movement in that direction by now as the Pentagon considers future replacements for its constellations of missile-warning and classified communications satellites.
Rather than deploy hundreds of sensors in tiny satellites that are cheaper to replace, the Pentagon has preferred to buy large expensive systems, giving enemies richer targets, industry officials said.
“That is a problem,” said Kennedy. “The idea of having lots of something as a deterrent isn’t a bad thing. … It’s very difficult for DoD to see beyond the traditional model. But DARPA is well positioned to poke at that model.”
Kennedy defended DARPA’s decision to award BAE Systems a $12 million contract to develop a digital ”testbed” for space command-and-control technologies. Companies in the sector contend that such technology is commercially available.
The project, known as “Hallmark,” is more ambitious than it looks, said Kennedy, and DARPA believes it needs to invest in areas where there is no commercial capability. The testbed is not just to experiment with technology but also to do cognitive assessments of operators. “We want to measure how people are performing when they get new tools. We think that’s a unique place for us,” he said. “We thought we needed to invest in that.”
Space plane moving forward
DARPA also has come under criticism for rejecting commercial proposals for a military space plane in favor of a new development venture with Boeing Phantom Works.
Kennedy said the experimental space plane, dubbed XS-P, will help the military services launch satellites into space quickly and at less cost than traditional methods. DARPA reportedly invested $40 million in the project.
The space plane was initially named the XS-1 but it was relabeled once DARPA realized XS-1 also was the designation of the original rocket engine–powered aircraft, the Bell XS-1, designed and built in 1945.
The new XS-P uses an AR-22 engine built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. It would be reusable like a commercial airliner and DARPA wants it to be able to fly to space 10 times in 10 days.
An initial flight is scheduled for 2019, said Kennedy. The contract with Boeing is an “other transactions” deal so it will be up to the company to move it forward after the development is completed.
“That’s commercial transition,” he said. “I’m not here to sustain capability. I can’t afford that.” Boeing has a commercial business case for the space plane, he added. “They believe they can go off and launch capability and make money. DoD then can purchase those services.”Mirai is a piece of malware designed to hijack busybox systems (commonly used on IoT devices) in order to perform DDoS attacks, it’s also the bot used in the 620 Gbps DDoS attack on Brian Kreb’s blog and the 1.1 Tbps attack on OVH a few days later. Although Mirai isn’t even close to the biggest botnet ever, it is said to be responsible for the largest DDoS attack recorded, so we’ll have a look into the hows and whys.
What is IoT?
IoT stands for Internet of Things, essentially it’s a phrase used to describe the new generation of “smart” internet connected devices (fridges, toasters, CCTV). Although a lot of IoT devices don’t need to, and most definitely shouldn’t, be connected to the internet, user insist on putting them online without changing the default password provided by the manufacture making them easy pickings for hacker.
IoT in all its glory – Source @InternetOfShit
Mirai Mirai on the Wall, who’s the least secure of them all?
Mirai propagates by bruteforcing telnet servers with a list of 62 horribly insecure default passwords, starting with the infamous admin:admin. Although Mirai could technically infect any box upon successful login, it uses a busybox specific command which causes the infection to fail if busybox is not present. Once inside a box, the malware will attempt to kill and block anything running on ports 22, 23, and 80, essentially locking out the user from their own device and preventing infection by other malware. Despite Mirai killing most control panels, it is possibly to use Shodan to see which services the box was exposing prior to infection, giving us an idea of the type of boxes infected (we’ll get to that later).
How is Mirai Responsible for the Largest Ever DDoS?
Although this question can’t be answered with complete certainty, there are two very likely reasons for this, i’ll go into each reason in depth.
Conventional Botnets
Conventional botnets are made by leveraging methods such as malicious spam, exploits, executable infection, and social engineering to infect desktop computers with specially crafted software which gives the attacker control, but they’re very expensive to run. Although “Antivirus is dead” is the phrase all the cool kids are using these days, it’s a fact that the AV industry has put a significant dent in botnets and general malware propagation over the past decade. Nowadays hackers have to spend large amounts of time and money constantly modify their malware to evade AV detection, and although botnets still exist (spoiler: they always will), the number of notable botnets and their individual size has shrunk.
Despite there still being several botnets significantly larger that Mirai, with active infection numbers in the multi-millions, we’ve never seen DDoS attacks from them for a multitude of reason:
Profitability – At current the maintenance cost of desktop botnets has exceeded the revenue from DDoS attacks for most. Cheap anti-DDoS services make DDoS protection more affordable that paying ransoms to attackers, resulting in DDoS for hire or DDoS ransom based botnets slowly dying out. Although you’ve probably seen a lot of “stresser” services advertised, these are different from normal botnets in the sense they’re mostly run by scriptkiddies purchasing cheap Linux servers and executing DoS scripts on them (the small pool of unique addresses makes the attacks easy to block for most DDoS mitigation services and even your average sysadmin).
Noise – As we saw with Mirai, DDoS attacks are noisy and draw a lot of attention. Mirai, which was mostly ignored due to its unsophisticated telnet bruteforcing attacks, in the course of a week became the subject of worldwide media attention and multiple law enforcement investigation backed by multinational companies; nobody looking to make money wants that kind of attention.
Overblown Statistics – The few large desktop botnets which do perform DDoS usually end up being sinkholed; however, sinkholes often measure botnets by unique IPs over a few month period (keep in mind lots of infections will have dynamic IPs which change daily), resulting in infection numbers being hugely over-inflated. The largest Mariposa (butterfly) botnet consisted of around 400,000 infections but due to the authorities sinkholing multiple botnets run by different actors and then counted unique IPs over a 10 month period, the resulting estimate was a ridiculous 10 – 15 million.
IoT Botnets
IoT botnets don’t face some of the problems conventional botnets do: they’re cheap, easy to infect, and aren’t useful for much else other than DDoS (most sane people probably aren’t doing online banking from their IoT toaster), which is why we’re seeing larger and larger DDoS attacks despite the overall declining size of botnets.
If we take pretty much any conventional botnet and plot the number of bots online in any 1 hour time frame on a graph, it will form natural waves throughout the week with smaller ones during the weekend: these waves peak during the day and trough during the night for whichever timezone is most dominant. The difference in number of online bots throughout the day is because to normal people (or so I’m told) don’t leave their computers running all day, but do you know what they probably don’t turn off? Their fridge, CCTV or router.
The Sality3 Botnet (each point is an hour).
If you’re doing just about any kind of botnet operation it doesn’t really matter how many bots you have online at a single time or when they’re online, but for DDoS you’re going to want as many bots online during the attack as possible. Again going back to conventional botnets, we will see that even with botnets consisting of hundreds of thousands of infections very few bots are online at any one time, which really isn’t good for launching large scale DDoS attacks. ZeroAccess3 makes a good example due to the very short C&C check-in delay we can see exactly how many bots are online at any one time, whereas bots on larger botnets tend to only be programmed to check in every 20 minutes or more. Graphing out the number of online ZeroAccess3 bots over a 48h period, we can see numbers generally range from 75 to 350 bots (between 4% and 20% of the total infections).
ZeroAccess3 online count over a 48h period
For reference we deploy around 500 custom telnet servers designed to emulate vulnerable IoT devices; our code will simulate a real telnet server and await a command specific to the Mirai malware before passing the IP address to our database. Due to the fact Mirai self-propagates by scanning the entire internet (with the exception of a few reserved ranges), we are able to see every scanning bot as soon as it hits one of our 500 IP addresses. Unfortunately, scanning the entire internet takes quite a while when you’re using an IoT device with the processing power of a pocket calculator, which is why we made the decision to deploy hundreds of telnet servers to increase the rate of mapping, rather than just running a few for a couple of months.
We graphed the total number of Mirai hits on our sensors and as you can see the numbers remain stable through the day (until dropping to 0 for an unknown reason), lending credit to our theory that most IoT devices are online 24/7; however, it’s important to note that due to the time taken for each bot to scan the internet, we are not seeing the total number of bots online at any time, rather just a large enough sample set to compare the number of hits throughout the day.
Total Number of Mirai Infections
The number of hits against our sensor began sharply dropping after about 14 hours, which could be due to any number of reasons (though we think it was because the scan only scans each IP once). We were able to count a total of 72,000 unique IP addresses over a 12 hour period: with our sensors finding ~4,000 new IPs per hour: which would put the total 24h estimate at 120,000, which is fairly close to OVH’s numbers.
Some sources have been claiming numbers in the 1 – 1.5 million range, but according to motherboard Akamai disagrees: “McKeay, who declined to go into the details of the attacks citing company policies toward customers, said that “nothing” Akamai saw suggests those numbers are “possible.””. Although I do believe that 1.5 million is certainly possible, it doesn’t appear that anywhere near that number of devices were involved in the Krebs or OVH attack.
Other estimates I’ve seen were based on Shodan search for devices listening on port 48101, though there are a couple of issues with this:
The search doesn’t account for dynamic IPs in which case the same device could show up multiple times under different IPs.
Although the bot does listen on port 48101, it is bound to localhost; meaning it should only accept local connections from other processes running on the device, not boxes scanning the internet.
Other services use port 48101, including a brand of printer I found.
Furthermore, most of the IPs we logged were checked against Shodan and most were not shown as listening on port 48101 (as should be expected); however, a few did which could be explained by iptables forwarding, or the fact that the C&C server does listen for external connections on port 48101 and can be used to bruteforce boxes.
Infected Devices
From fingerprinting some of the devices we were able to determine what type of software they were running and came to the same conclusion as everyone else: that the botnet is made up mostly of CCTV cameras running Dahua firmware or a generic management interface called “NETSurveillance”. In a lot of cases the camera login panels or RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) feeds were exposed to the internet and could likely be remotely viewed using the same default passwords as were used by Mirai to infect the device.
Conclusion
It’s likely that significant DDoS attacks will become more common as hackers find more and new vulnerable IoT devices, or was to infect those vulnerable devices hidden behind NAT. It’s definitely time that manufactures stopped shipping devices with global default passwords and switch to randomly generated passwords displayed on the bottom of the device.
Shoutout to @2sec4u for his collaboration on this research.
Of course it wouldn’t be real research without a pew pew map:driving north on i5, had just passed cook rd exit, observed huge light hovering aboveat rock quarry off kelleher rd. It was a very bright white light like l.e.d. huge, big as a full moon appears when its fulll at like 10-15 degrees above horizon. biggest and brightest thing ive ever seen in sky, have had 4 other sightings 2 with witnesses but this was much bigger. as i looked at it i tried to rationalize what i was seeing, Maybe a helicopter with a new super bright searchlight of some kind? but no movement or flashing lights.. only saw it for about 30-45 sec.b4 i was going up bowhill and the object was out of sight. turned off at the next exit (bow hill) and drove south down hwy 99 till i got back to the flats so i could get another look at it. as i drove past where kelleher and 99 meet i noticed 2 parked police suvs door to door with no lights on and no one around outside of them. drove south on 99 bout another half mile to a bridge over the rail road tracks turned around and didnt see the object or anything in the area anymore, when i passed by kelleher rd again 2 police suv's were still there and with my headlights shinning on them this time i could see no one was in the vehicles. thought that was strange considering what i had seen and the proximity of the vehicles to the sighting location.Ketamine — or, as it is known in the rave scene, “Special K” — is proving to be an effective treatment for major depressive disorders that were once considered treatment-resistant, Nature reports.
The drug is a potent anesthetic, but a recent study in Translational Psychiatry suggests that it also increases the ability of neurons to bind with serotonin — the so-called “feel good neurotransmitter” — in the parts of the brain that regulate motivation.
Almost 40 percent of individuals suffering from depression do not respond to drugs like serotonin reuptake inhibitors, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and tricyclic antidepressants — and for those that do, it often sometimes takes weeks or months for the drugs to have an effect.
Ketamine, however, begins to lift depression in as little as two hours, making it an ideal drug to use for people in the throes of a suicidal episode.
Psychiatrist James Murrough at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City told Nature that this “blew the doors off what we thought we know about depression treatment.”
“The rapid therapeutic response of ketamine in treatment-resistant patients is the biggest breakthrough in depression research in a half century. It’s like a magic drug — one dose can work rapidly and last for seven to 10 days,” added Ronald D |
a necessary contortion to get in the phrase “new Russian-backed offensive,” which was the point of the piece. As journalism, this is so bad it belongs in a specimen jar.
Context, the stuff this kind of reporting does its best to keep from readers:
By mid-April, Washington was still at work trying to subvert the Minsk II ceasefire, an anti-Russian assassination campaign was under way in Kiev and the Poroshenko government, whether or not it approved of the campaign, was proving unable, unwilling or both to implement any of the constitutional revisions to which Minsk II committed it.
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A week before the April 22 report, 300 troops from the 173rd Airborne had arrived to begin training the Ukrainian national guard. The Times piece acknowledged this for the simple reason it was the elephant in the living room, but by heavy-handed implication it dismissed any thought of causality.
Given the context, I would not be at all surprised to learn that Moscow may have put air defense systems in place. And I am not at all sure what is so worrisome about them. Maybe it is the same reasoning Benjamin Netanyahu applied when Russia recently agreed to supply Iran with air defense technology: It will make it harder for us to attack them, the dangerous Israeli complained.
Neither am I sure what is so worrisome about Russians training eastern Ukrainian partisans—another charge Harf leveled—if it is supposed to be a mystery why American trainers at the other end of the country prompt alarm in Moscow.
Onward from April 22 the new theme flowed. On May 17 Kiev claimed that it had captured two uniformed Russian soldiers operating inside Ukraine. On May 21 came reports that European monitors had interviewed the two under unstated conditions and had ascertained they were indeed active-duty infantry. This gave “some credence” to Kiev’s claim, the Times noted, although at this point some is far short of enough when Kiev makes these kinds of assertions.
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On May 30—drum roll, please—came the absolute coup de grâce. The Atlantic Council, one of the Washington think tanks—its shtick seems to be some stripe of housebroken neoliberalism—published a report purporting to show that, in the Times’ language, “Russia is continuing to defy the West by conducting protracted military operations inside Ukraine.”
Read the report here. It’s first sentence: “Russia is at war with Ukraine.”
“Continuing to defy?” “At war with Ukraine?” If you refuse to accept the long, documented record of Moscow’s efforts to work toward a negotiated settlement with Europe—and around defiant Americans—and if you call the Ukraine conflict other than a civil war, well, someone is creating your reality for you.
Details. The Times described “Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine” as “an independent report.” I imagine Gordon—he seems to do all the blurry stuff these days—had a straight face when he wrote three paragraphs later that John Herbst, one of the Atlantic Council’s authors, is a former ambassador to Ukraine.
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I do not know what kind of a face Gordon wore when he reported later on that the Atlantic Council paper rests on research done by Bellingcat.com, “an investigative website.” Or when he let Herbst get away with calling Bellingcat, which appears to operate from a third-floor office in Leicester, a city in the English Midlands, “independent researchers.”
I wonder, honestly, if correspondents look sad when they write such things—sad their work has come to this.
One, Bellingcat did its work using Google, YouTube and other readily available social media technologies, and this we are supposed to think is the cleverest thing under the sun. Are you kidding?
Manipulating social media “evidence” has been a parlor game in Kiev; Washington; Langley, Virginia, and at NATO since the Ukraine crisis broke open. Look at the graphics included in the presentation. I do not think technical expertise is required to see that these images prove what all others offered as evidence since last year prove: nothing. It looks like the usual hocus-pocus.
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Two, examine the Bellingcat web site and try to figure out who runs it. I tried the about page and it was blank. The site consists of badly supported anti-Russian “reports”—no “investigation” aimed in any other direction.
I look at this stuff now and think, Well, there may be activity on Russia’s borders or inside Ukraine, but maybe not. Those two soldiers may be Russian and may be on active duty, but I cannot draw any conclusion.
I do not appreciate having to think this way—not as a reader and not as a former newsman. I do not like reading Times editorials, such as Tuesday’s, which institutionalizes “Putin’s war” and other such tropes, and having to say, Our most powerful newspaper is into the created reality game.
A few things can be made clear in all this. Straight off the top it is almost certain, despite a logical wariness of presented evidence, that Russia has personnel and weapons deployed along its border and in Ukraine.
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I greatly hope so, and whether they are on duty or otherwise interests me not at all.
First of all, it is a highly restrained approach to a geopolitical circumstance that Moscow recognizes as dangerous, Washington does not seem to and Kiev emphatically does not. In reversed circumstances, a troubled nation would have long back turned into an open conflict between two nuclear powers. Fig leafs have their place.
I have written before on the question of spheres of influence: They are to be observed if not honored. Stephen Cohen, the Russianist scholar, prefers “spheres of security,” and the phrase makes the point plainly. Russia cannot be expected to abandon its interests as Cohen defines them, and considering what is at issue for Moscow, the response is intelligently measured.
Equally, Moscow appears to recognize that without any equilibrium between the Russian-tilted east and the Western-tilted west, Ukraine will be a bloodbath. Irresponsible as it has proven, and with little or no control over armed extreme rightist factions, Kiev cannot be allowed even an attempt to resolve this crisis militarily.
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One has to consider how these things are conventionally done. I had a cousin who piloted helicopters in Vietnam long ago. When we spread the conflict to Laos and Cambodia he flew in blue jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers and without dog tags. “If you go down, we don’t know you,” was the O.D.
A directly germane case is Angola in the mid-1970s. When the Portuguese were forced to flee the old colony, the CIA began supplying right-wing opportunists in the north and south with weapons, money, and agency personnel. Only in response did Cuba send troops that quickly proved decisive. I remember well all the howls of “aggression”—all of them hypocritical rubbish: American efforts to subvert the movement that still governs Angola peaceably continued for a dozen more years.
The Times editorial just noted is headlined, “Vladimir Putin Hides the Truth.” This is upside-down-ism at its very worst.
It is not easy to put accounts of the Ukraine crisis side by side to compare them. Think of two bottles of unlabeled wine in a blind taste test. Now read on.
I do not see how there can be any question that Moscow’s take on Ukraine and the larger East-West confrontation is the more coherent. Read or listen to Putin’s speeches, notably that delivered at the Valdai Discussion Club, a Davos variant, in Sochi last October. It is historically informed, with a grasp of interests (common and opposing), the nature of the 21st century environment and how best outcomes are to be achieved in it.
Altogether, Moscow offers a vastly more sophisticated, coherent accounting of the Ukraine crisis than any American official has or ever will. This is for one simple reason: Neither Putin nor Lavrov bears the burden American officials do of having to sell people mythical renderings of how the world works or their place in it.
Russia’s interests are clear and can be stated clearly, to put the point another way. America’s—the expansion of opportunity for capital and the projection of power—must always remain shrouded.
The question of plausibility is a serious imbalance, critical in its implications. In my view it accounts for that probably unprecedented propaganda effort noted earlier. It has ensued apace since Andrew Lack, named in January as America’s first chief propaganda officer (CEO of the new Broadcasting Board of Governors), instantly declared information a field of battle. A war of the worldviews, we may call it.
This war grows feverish as we speak. In the current edition of The Nation, a journalist named James Carden publishes a remarkable piece detailing the extremes now approached. I rank it a must read, and you can find it here.
Carden’s piece is called “The New McCarthyism,” and any reader having a look will know well enough why our drift back toward the paranoid style of the 1950s is something we all ought to guard against. A great deal of this column would be banned as “disinformation.” Whatever your stripe, I urge you to recognize this as serious.
The focus here is on a report called “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money.” It is written by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss. It is published by an Internet magazine called The Intepreter, as a special report sponsored by the Institute for Modern Russia.
Credential problems galore. Weiss is an “expert” on flavors of the month, a main-chancer who sat at the late Christopher Hitchens’ feet and inhabited a think tank in London before taking the editor’s chair at The Interpreter. Pomersantsev was a TV producer in the most decadent corners of the Russian media circus, wheeling against it all only when he lost out. Now he is a darling of our media, naturally.
Both, most important, seem to carry water for Michail Khodorkovsky, the oligarchic crook whom Western media, from the Times on down, now lionize as a democrat because he and Putin are enemies. Khodorkovsky funds the Institute for Modern Russia, based in New York. The IMR, in turn, funds The Interpreter.
Got the fix? Ready to take this report seriously, are we?
Astonishingly enough, a lot of people are. As Carden reports, Weiss and Pomerantsev cut considerable mustard among the many members of Congress nursing the new Russophobia. Anne Applebaum, the prominent paranoid on all questions Russian; and Geoffrey Pyatt, Obama’s coup-cultivating ambassador in Kiev: Many weighty figures stand with these guys.
Carden lays out his thesis expertly. Putin’s weaponization of news makes him more dangerous than any communist ever was, “The Menace of Unreality” asserts, and he must be countered. How? With “an internationally recognized ratings system for disinformation.”
“Media organizations that practice conscious deception should be excluded from the community,” Weiss and Pomerantsev write—the community being those of approved thought.
No, Carden is not kidding.
It may seem odd, but I credit Weiss and Pomerantsev with one insight. The infection of ideology now debilitates us. Blindness spreads and has to be treated. But there agreement ends, as I consider their report to be among the more extreme cases of the disease so far to show itself.
You can follow the internal logic, but I would not spend too much time on it because there is none once you exit their bubble. There is only one truth, the argument runs, and it just so happens it is exactly what we think. There is no other way to see things. All is TINA, “there is no alternative.”
It would be easy to dismiss Weiss and Pomerantsev as supercilious hacks, and I do. But not the stance. They say too clumsily and bluntly what is actually the prevalent intellectual frame, a key aspect of the neoliberal stance. TINA, the argument Thatcher made famous, applies to all things.
To say “The Menace of Unreality” advocates a kind of intellectual protectionism is not strong enough. Their idea comes to the control of information, which is to say the control of the truth. And if you can think of a more efficient way to define the production of propaganda, use the comment box.
Fighting alleged propaganda with propaganda: This is upside down for you. It is what we get when people make up reality for us.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Traffic in all lanes was stopped on the busy Interstate 70 on Sunday, and all because a group of bikers wanted to do some tricks they could film and post on the Internet.
Police made multiple arrests in the incident.
A FOX 4 News crew happened to come up right behind the bikers heading east bound on I-70. They said before they knew it, a group of at least 30 to 40 bikers were stopped right by the stadiums.
The FOX 4 crew captured video of smoke being kicked up in the distance when some of the bikers did their stunts. But within five minutes, the sound of the law sent bikers and those following in trucks or cars, scrambling.
Not all were lucky enough to escape, as a biker was stopped right in front of our crew. When he was asked what he was doing, he simply replied, "I'm not with them, Ma'am." But our cameras caught him off his bike, rubbing elbows with the group right before he was apprehended.
Police arrested more riders on the side of the highway, and then one came directly to them on 40 Highway.
"One of the other bikes involved came over the hill couldn't get stopped and hit the back of his vehicle," Kansas City Police Sgt. Jay Atkinson said. He said the biker hit a squad car and then proceeded to try to fight off the officer. Atkinson said that biker is also being charged with assault.
Atkinson said these groups are starting to mobilize through social media.
"Riding wheelies and just coming back the wrong way onto incoming traffic after they've got it stopped, just whatever they think is cool, but it's pretty stupid, Atkinson said.
He said those involved videotape it all and then post it online. Atkinson said these arrests are important. He said it's the first time they've actually caught some of these suspects, and they have video.
"We're doing an investigation now and we've got video on both of them, so we've got some good leads to go after them and find out who they are and we're going to do what we can to find out who they are and get them charged," Atkinson said.
Police said the problem with this is, it's very dangerous. Atkinson said for example, a semi truck might not be able to stop as quickly in these situations and could hit other cars or bikers.
"You know people can get killed really quick doing it," he said.
Police said they're still working on charges for all the suspects, but might look into felony charges for shutting down the interstate and reckless endangerment.The road to German fluency is full of twists and turns.
Thanks to its lifelong love affair with compound nouns, the German language has smashed all manner of words together to form new, unique vocabulary.
It’s no small wonder that German boasts many unique, highly-specific words that have no literal English translation.
German learners have to slog through learning masculine and feminine words, challenging pronunciations, complex word order and curious vocabulary words.
It’s a lot of work.
You guy deserve some reward for all your hard work.
Luckily, you do have the special prize of learning fantastically creative new ways to express yourselves.
Many German words have no close translation in English. One of the greatest things about learning languages is to discover words which exist in one language but don’t have any equivalent in your own – or any other for that matter.
It’s always fun when you can express something in one perfect word, while others require a whole darn sentence.
Other languages sometimes get word-envy when comparing themselves to German.
Many German words have found their way into the English language, think Schadenfreude and Wanderlust.
However, there are many more beyond those two.
Below you can find some of the most entertaining examples including their literal translation and what they really mean.
18 Weird German Words You Won’t Believe Exist
A great way to remember hard-to-translate words like the ones below is to learn them in context. We’ll provide plenty of context and examples in our list, but for a memory boost, check out the authentic German videos on FluentU.
FluentU provides real-world videos, like movie trailers, music videos, inspiring talks and more, that’ve been transformed into a language learning experience. Each video comes with interactive captions so you can learn new words as you watch—just click for an instant definition and native pronunciation. FluentU will also show you other videos that use the word, so you understand how native speakers use it in different contexts.
Try the FluentU free trial to start learning German words, from the essentials to the weirdest ones, in an entertaining and immersive environment.
1. Ohrwurm (Ear worm)
Have you ever listened to a song on the radio while driving to work only to find yourself still humming the same tune by lunch time? Congratulations, you’ve had an ear worm. The beautiful German word Ohrwurm describes the fact of having a song stuck in your head as if it wriggled itself into your brain through your ear.
2. Fernweh (Distance pain)
This gem describes the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else. It’s kind of like a reverse homesickness (Heimweh in German), a longing for a place that isn’t where you are right now. Fernweh is also a frequent reason for people in Germany to go on holiday.
3. Kummerspeck (Grief bacon)
When a relationship ends or during other times of sadness, anger, or worry, it’s common to put on a few pounds of Kummerspeck. What it means is the excess weight put on by emotional overeating. So when you find yourself on the couch watching “Bridget Jones’ Diary” with a tub of ice cream, you are in fact feeding your grief bacon.
4. Innerer Schweinehund (Inner pig dog)
Can’t get up in the morning to be on time for work? Too lazy to go to the gym? Homework remains undone until the last minute? Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. The blame lies with your inner pig dog. That’s the tiny voice in the back of your head which is trying to convince you to live a life of inertia and which you will have to overcome to rid yourself of Kummerspeck.
5. Fremdschämen (Exterior shame)
For those of you who cringe in phantom pain when others make a fool of themselves, this is your word. It describes the feeling of shame when seeing someone else in an uncomfortable or embarrassing situation. It’s a real thing for the more empathetic folk and has kept more than one person from watching “the Office.”
6. Torschlusspanik (Closing-gate panic)
As people get older, some find themselves worrying about roads not taken or milestones they meant to achieve by a certain age but haven’t. Torschlusspanik is the feeling of urgency to accomplish them before some imaginary gate closes and “it’s all too late.” It’s mostly used for those who sense their biological clock is running out and feel the need to settle with a partner or have children immediately.
7. Treppenwitz (Staircase joke)
Have you ever noticed how when you have a chance encounter with an attractive person of the opposite sex or get into an argument with someone, the best jokes, lines, and comebacks always occur to you afterwards? That’s the so-called Treppenwitz. It’s the joke that comes to your mind on the way down the stairs after talking to your neighbor in the hallway two floors up.
8. Lebensmüde (Life tired)
This word literally means being tired of life and was used to describe the dramatic and soul-crushing emotional agony of young Romantic poets (see also Weltschmerz and Weichei). Nowadays lebensmüde is what you call your friends when they are attempting something especially stupid and possibly life threatening. Most people in fail videos on YouTube suffer from latent Lebensmüdigkeit.
9. Weltschmerz (World pain)
The world isn’t perfect. More often than not it fails to live up to what we wish it was. Weltschmerz describes the pain we feel at this discrepancy. It can be one of the main drivers for Kummerspeck.
10. Weichei (Soft egg)
No, Weichei isn’t what you order in the hotel when you want a three-minute egg for breakfast. In fact the waiter might look at you slightly disconcerted for accusing him of being a wuss. A soft egg, in German, means someone who is weak and cowardly. The same is also conveyed by calling someone Würstchen, the diminutive of sausage. Apparently Germans like to name wimps after foodstuffs.
11. Backpfeifengesicht (Slap face)
Have you ever heard the joke “Some people just need a high five – in the face – with a chair?” Backpfeifengesicht kind of goes in the same direction. It describes someone who you feel needs a slap in the face. Disclaimer: we’re telling you this for informational purposes only and do not in any way condone violence.
12. Erklärungsnot (Explanation poverty)
Erklärungsnot is a state shared by cheating spouses, lying politicians, and school children without their homework alike. It’s what you find yourself in when put on the spot without a sufficient explanation or excuse for something you have done or failed to do. Most often used in the form of in Erklärungsnot geraten or in Erklärungsnot sein.
13. Sitzfleisch (Sit or seat meat)
As much as it sounds like it, Sitzfleisch isn’t a recipe of German Hausfrauen that involves tenderizing meat by placing it under your buttocks. Instead, it describes a character trait. Those who possess a lot of seat meat are able to sit through and weather something incredibly hard or boring. It’s like carrying your own personal cushion around with you.
14. Purzelbaum (Tumble tree)
This tree is so common in Germany that every child knows it. However, if you are about to take out your big German botanical dictionary, let me stop you right there. Fespite the name, a Purzelbaum isn’t part of the kingdom of plants. Instead, it describes a somersault on the ground, a favorite way of children to get their clothes dirty.
15. Dreikäsehoch (Three cheeses high)
This sounds like it would make a great name for a pizza. However, what it describes is a person who is vertically challenged, implying they’re only as tall as three wheels of cheese placed on top of each other. Usually this label is reserved for small children, together with Zwerg or Pimpf.
16. Zungenbrecher (Tongue breaker)
While it sounds like a medieval torture instrument, the nature of the Zungenbrecher is much less gruesome. It is the German equivalent of tongue twister, a phrase that’s very hard to pronounce even for native speakers due to its sequence of letters. A very common one in German is Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid. Yeah, practice that for a while and say it 10 times fast.
17. Schattenparker (Shadow parker)
This word is part of a series of insults for men which accuse them of unmanly behavior. In this case, of parking their car in the shadow to avoid heating up the interior. These kinds of derogatory terms were something of a meme some years back and whole lists of them exist on the internet. Alternatives include Warmduscher (someone who showers with warm water), Sitzpinkler (a man who urinates while sitting down), or Turnbeutelvergesser (someone who used to forget their gym bag in cardio class).
18. Kuddelmuddel (???)
I know, great final word right? Don’t even start guessing its English meaning. Kuddelmuddel describes an unstructured mess, chaos, or hodgepodge. Alternatives which are equally awesome include Tohuwabohu, Wirrwarr, Mischmasch, and Kladderadatsch.
I know, some of these just sound too far-fetched to be true. Well, they are far-fetched – gathered in the distant land of Germany. If you’re still convinced I’m making up words, go ahead and look them up in the dictionary!
And One More Thing
If you liked these words, then you’ll love FluentU. FluentU takes real-world videos like music videos, commercials, news, and inspiring talks and turns them into language learning experiences. It uses a natural approach that helps you ease into a foreign language and culture over time. You’ll learn a language as it’s spoken in real life. FluentU has a variety of videos – like movies, TV shows – as shown here:
FluentU is available for learning German, English, and several other languages. Native language content is manageable with interactive transcripts. You can tap on any word and look it up instantly. Every definition has carefully-written examples that help you understand how the word is used. If you see a word you’d like to review later, you can also add this to a vocab list.
And there is a personalized review mode that lets you swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning. The best part? FluentU keeps track of the vocabulary you’re learning, and it recommends videos and examples based on the words you’ve already learned. You’ll have a truly personalized experience.
Start using FluentU on the website with your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play stores.Clinton dodges Keystone pipeline question
NASHUA, N.H. — Days after unveiling the first plank of her energy and climate platform, Hillary Clinton again refused to commit to approving or rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline were she to win the White House — and her hedge on the topic is not sitting well with progressives or Republicans, both of whom are criticizing her hesitancy to take a position.
“This is President Obama’s decision, and I am not going to second-guess him,” she told an audience member here who implored her to “please” commit to either approving or vetoing the pipeline. Clinton explained that while she helped start the process of reviewing the pipeline during her tenure as secretary of state, she doesn’t want to interfere with the White House or current Secretary of State John Kerry.
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“If it’s undecided when I become president, I will answer your question,” she said.
When asked by reporters to clarify her position after the town hall, Clinton doubled down.
“I was involved in this process and my assessment is that it is not appropriate, nor fair, for me to prejudge in a public arena what Secretary Kerry and President Obama eventually have to decide, and therefore I will not do it,” she said.
“And I’m sorry if people want me to. I have been very clear: I will not express an opinion until they have made a decision, and then I will do so.”
Clinton has steadfastly refused to come down on either side of the pipeline, even as environmental groups have made it a key component of their agenda. While climate activists largely cheered Clinton’s climate proposal that landed on Sunday night, many have long seen Keystone as a litmus test.
Liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s main Democratic challenger and a longstanding opponent of the pipeline, did not mince words after hearing of the front-runner’s answers in New Hampshire.
“It is hard for me to understand how one can be concerned about climate change but not vigorously oppose the Keystone pipeline,” he said in a statement that also highlighted his own environmental work.
Influential climate activist Bill McKibben — who has appeared with Sanders — was scathing in his criticism.
“More Americans have commented on this than any other infrastructure project in history, it’s not alright to be coy with her opinion,” he said. “In the largest sense, it’s her hedging-of-bets that makes the rest of us so wary. Dealing with climate change in a serious way will take enormous commitment in the face of many strong opponents: we need strong signals that our president would be resolute in this crucial task.”
Earlier in the day, the Republican National Committee’s Michael Short was similarly skeptical of Clinton’s commitment to the environment: “With her second dodge on Keystone in as many days, Hillary Clinton is making it abundantly clear she’ll say or do anything to get elected.”
The blow-up comes at an uncomfortable time for the former secretary of state: her campaign unveiled the new details of her energy policies on Sunday night after a weekend of answering questions about her use of a private email address during her time at the State Department. She wants the country to produce enough clean renewable energy to power every American home by 2027, her team says, and to install over 500 million solar panels by 2021.
Her political team had been focused on calling out Republican skepticism of climate change — but her refusal to take a position Tuesday has turned the spotlight squarely back to Clinton herself.
Some climate activists viewed Clinton with a wary eye prior to her policy roll-out, primarily due to her longstanding silence on Keystone: Her town hall in front of over 450 Granite Staters at the Amherst Street Elementary School was her first such event since climate-focused protesters interrupted her last one in mid-July. And her refusal to take a stand on the pipeline has cast a shadow over her candidacy since before she was even a declared candidate, as the debate reached Obama and the White House earlier this year.
Clinton’s campaign apparatus includes noted Keystone skeptics — including campaign chairman John Podesta, who was more outspoken about his opposition to it prior to joining the White House in 2014 — and she attended a fundraiser at the northern California home of billionaire donor Tom Steyer, a pipeline opponent.
But the pipeline joins the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement as an issue where Clinton has consistently refused to be pinned down due, she says, to ongoing conversations within the administration.
Still, both of Clinton’s primary Democratic challengers, Sanders — whose poll numbers are approaching Clinton’s in New Hampshire, according to recent surveys — and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, have been outspoken about their opposition to approval of the pipeline, which they assert would be harmful to the environment.
Clinton said on Tuesday that her perspective and restraints are distinct from theirs because of her experience in the Obama administration.
“I’m in a different position from any other candidate. I was there. I put this process together. I oversaw it for four years,” she said. “I know what the president’s standard is to make sure it does not increase greenhouse gas emissions.”
Nonetheless, Clinton’s skeptics refused to buy this argument.
“Saying ‘I’ll tell you my position if I’m elected president’ can’t be the real answer,” said McKibben. “I mean, in that case why bother with campaigns and so forth? And it’s not like this is a small issue: it generated more public comments than any infrastructure project in U.S. history, sent more people to jail than any issue in many years, and so forth. It really does seem wrong to duck it.”Decker Towers is an eleven-floor apartment building located at 230 St. Paul Street in Burlington, Vermont.[4] At 124 feet (38 m) tall, it is the tallest building in the U.S. state of Vermont,.[nb 1] It is currently the shortest of any of the US states' tallest buildings, in part because Burlington is the smallest of the US states' biggest cities. Decker Towers was built as a turnkey project. After it was built by Pizzagalli Construction Company in 1971, it was purchased by the city of Burlington.[5] It is owned and managed as public housing by the Burlington Housing Authority.[3][6] The assessed value of Decker Towers is $11,104,000, with the building, land, and yard items valued at $10,224,700; $712,900; and $166,400, respectively.[3]
Features [ edit ]
Decker Towers has a small community garden.[7] Decker Towers has 161 apartments for seniors and people with disabilities. The apartments are either one bedroom or efficiency apartments; six apartments are wheelchair accessible. There is also a dining area, a library, and an 11th floor sitting area. The tenant organization hosts monthly dinners, holiday events and bingo.[8]
The Burlington Housing Authority's Neighborhood Networks Technology Center is located within Decker Towers. It has computers for use by all residents of subsidized housing in the Burlington area.[9]
History [ edit ]
When it opened on August 31, 1971, Decker Towers was called 230 St. Paul Street (its official address then and now). It was the fourth property owned by the Burlington Housing Authority. It was built on top of the old Burlington ravine sewer route.[10]
In late 1971, the administrative offices of the Burlington Housing Authority were moved to the first floor of 230 St. Paul Street. The offices were there until July 2002. The building was dedicated as Decker Towers on May 9, 2003 ( ).
Renovations [ edit ]
Detail of Decker Towers Renovation
Decker Towers was built with an orange brick exterior. In 1984, exterior insulation was added over the brick as well as pastel swatches designed by Rolf Kielman.[11]
Prior to 2010, the building's exterior had degraded: there were cracks, moisture in the insulation, and window seals were no longer fully functional.[2]
In 2009, money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was used at Decker Towers to replace hallway floors as well as resurface the parking lot. Additional funding for renovations also came from Capital Fund Grants.[12]
Other renovations included weatherproofing, a thorough power-wash, reinforcement of stucco, application of a waterproof membrane, a fiberglass mesh layer, and new caulk. The dust barriers were also replaced.[2]
More than 550 windows were removed and replaced with energy-efficient windows, and 33,000 sq ft (3,066 m2) of exterior insulation finishing system was improved by increasing the thickness of the insulation and re-painting the building.[13]
Decker Towers was fully occupied and functioning during the renovations. The project was finished ahead of schedule.[13]
Smoking policy [ edit ]
Decker Towers caught on fire on February 17, 2010, due to careless smoking. Water from the building's fire sprinkler system caused $100,000 damage.[14]
Decker Towers are smoke-free as of November 1, 2010. The new policy was encouraged by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The change was motivated by concerns about the effects of second-hand smoke and by safety concerns. The policy will require resident smokers to leave the property, and violating the policy will result in terminating tenancy.[14] Smoking cessation programs were made available at little to no cost.[15]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Works cited [ edit ]After limping across the line to claim sixth place on his Ducati MotoGP debut, Cal Crutchlow immediately parked up at the side of the Losail track.
It may have looked like a lack of fuel, but in fact the Englishman had battled an unusual technical problem for much of the Qatar race.
A fault with the transponder on Crutchlow's Factory Desmosedici meant the electronic settings were out of sync with his real location.
Although GPS is banned, other means of location are used so that the likes of power delivery, traction control and wheelie control can be optimised for each part of the circuit.
"We didn't run out of fuel, we had a load of fuel left at the end, but something broke with the transponder after five laps," said Crutchlow, whose team has reverted to its bespoke Magneti Marelli-built ECU after a late MotoGP rule change allowed Ducati to remain in the Factory class.
"It was a Magneti Marelli problem. The bike was completely out of sync. At the last corner it thought I was at the first corner, and every lap it changed throughout. So every time I crossed the start/finish it thought I was in a different place.
"The electronics were completely wrong after lap five until the end of the race, so I was quite surprised to still be competitive for the next six or seven laps.
"At the last corner of the race the bike decided to completely stop. It ended up restarting and I managed to limp it home but it was like riding down the straight on the pit lane limiter so it was a good job I had a gap behind me.
"It's not our fault and it's not a Ducati part, so we can take the positives from riding well and being competitive with Andrea until the problem and then I had to nurse the bike home and that it was it."
After initially holding pace with team-mate Andrea Dovizioso, Crutchlow fell back into no man's land between the lead group and midfield. Both Ducati riders then benefited from accidents ahead to reach fifth and sixth at the flag.
"I think that we could have been competitive in the race, not with the lead battle, but we would have been a lot closer and ahead of [fourth place] Espargaro at least.
"Riding around with a bike that thinks you're in sixth gear when you're actually in second isn't easy!
"I made sure that we got to the finish and we benefited from other people's mistakes but you have to be there to get the points. We can take encouragement from Andrea's result because we were riding around together until the problem."
A similar location problem hampered Ducati predecessor Nicky Hayden at the 2012 Portuguese Grand Prix, when radio interference was blamed.
Qatar was a strange weekend for Crutchlow with a morning warm-up fall adding to a practice accident. When asked by Crash.net about the morning crash the Englishman admitted that it was simply an error on a dirty track surface:
"I was a little wider and the track was a little but dusty but it was my own fault and I crashed the bike. It wasn't ideal to give the guys a load of work before the race but they worked hard. They've worked hard all weekend with my settings and I was really competitive in the race once we got going."In late July, Congress actually agreed on something: House and Senate committees announced plans to add $82 million for Tomahawk cruise missile production in 2015. The venerable cruise missile is coming back, and coming back smarter and stronger.
In the decade following 9/11, missiles mostly sat on the sidelines while the United States engaged mostly in battles |
aged bunkers were a well-kept military secret in Switzerland and many Swiss residents had no idea that there were weapons compounds sitting in the middle of the villages where they grew up until Schwager’s book of photographs went public.
Christian estimates there are at least 250 bunkers hiding behind well-disguised facades that have gone unnoticed for years, sometimes sitting right on the main streets of town. He has visited photographed over a hundred of them, mainly from World War II when aerial reconnaissance and espionage was rife and the government began dressing up their not-so-subtle concrete bunkers.
It was also handy in maintaining that picture-perfect image of Swiss landscapes for tourism. Theatre set designers and artists were hired to give the bunkers their make-overs to help them fit in with the local surrounding chalets. They were required to ensure the concrete “chalets” could deceive the human eye at a minimum distance of 20 meters with realistic shutters, precise imitations of wood grain and even the sun’s reflection.
These pretty pastel chalets were built near Geneva as part of Switzerland’s WWII line of defense called the “Promenthouse Line”, or more locally known as the “Toblerone Line” because of the concrete blocks that were installed which resembled the famous chocolate bar. Twelve military fortresses were built along the line but these two were camouflaged to look more like they were housing Heidi than a bevy of weaponry.
The 7 foot thick walls of Villa Rose and Villa Verte are masterfully disguised like the perfectly manicured chalets that characterise the picturesque countryside. Fully fortified and militarised, the villas are even said to have been equipped with toilets that had holes in the walls for grenade-throwing.
Following the publishing of Christian Schwager’s book when Switzerland’s fake chalets became an open secret, Villa Rose was restored and opened to the public in 2006 as part of the European Heritage Days celebration.
With many of the publicly-known bunkers being no longer in use, the army has left a good number of them to decay or be demolished. Schwager sees the fake chalets as works of art however, and hopes more can be saved and preserved.
Here’s another WWII bunker chalet I found through Flickr in Valais Switzerland which looks to have somewhat opened up access to the public…
In the same realm of Swish architectural fakery, I then stumbled upon the photographs of Leo Fabrizio, taken between 1999 and 2006.
From faux chalets to bat caves, Bond lairs and some rather more bizarre fakeries, here’s a few more to round up our look at the Swiss masters of disguise.
You can get Christian Schwager’s fascinating coffee table book on Fake Chalets here and Leo Fabrizio’s book “Bunkers” here.Brewing giant Coors, which makes Carling and Grolsch, will trial the drink in pubs this summer.The beer, which has not yet been named, will have an alcohol strength of 4%. The development is part of a multi-million pound project to boost the number of women who drink ale.The clear drink is put through an extreme filtering process that removes its colour and it can be flavoured with green tea and exotic fruits.No major brewer sells a clear beer in the UK, although Beck’s has one in Germany.Coors drafted in TV stars Janet Street-Porter, 62, and Carol McGiffin, 49, to find out why Brit girls drink less beer than their European neighbours.They found that half of British women prefer wine to any other alcoholic drink. Fewer than 10% chose beer.Almost half of women shun ale because they think it will make them put on weight.And a third opt for drinks that are served in attractive glasses, have the right image or are popular with their friends.I’m A Celeb star Janet said: “Beer has had a male image for too long and it’s hard to think of another business where 50% of the population is ignored.”Women make up just 13% of UK beer sales, compared to 25% in the US and 36% in Ireland.A third of women do enjoy ale but mostly at music or sports events. Kristy McCready, of Coors, said: “We know what turns some women off beer is the colour and the head, although they like the refreshing taste.”But the plan could be controversial in light of concerns over Britain’s binge-drinking ladettes.Last week the Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said he wanted to tax alcohol by a minimum of 50p per unit.Design Upload
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Steve Lohr at the New York Times tries to get his head around just how successful Apple is at this moment. The once “60 days from bankruptcy” company now introduces products that are bigger, by themselves, than most companies could ever hope to be. iPad, the latest Apple creation is on track to deliver almost $20 billion in revenues in its first year.
How does Apple do this? Well, Lohr goes into an “Apple as a platform” theory…
“Apple has hit that magical combination of gradually shifting from a product to a platform strategy,” says Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. and author of “Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World” (Oxford University Press, 2010).
..which is kind of the “halo effect” on steroids. You buy an iPhone and you want an iPad, and then you want a MacBook. Then you want to buy your wife an iPod touch and your kid a nano and because you are a fanboy, your friends get into it.
I think Apple would simply argue that it makes great products.Voter surveys by both major parties indicate European Union reform treaty may win approval of Ireland
Ireland is on course to ratify the Lisbon treaty, with early tallies showing a strong surge for a yes vote this morning.
The outcome of yesterday's referendum, which will be known later today, is set to put the European Union reform project back on track.
As early as 9.30am at the ballot count in Dublin's RDS centre, tallies were showing constituencies across the Irish capital voting 2 to 1 in favour of the treaty.
One prominent opponent, Richard Green from the Coir movement, accepted that the vote was moving in favour of yes.
Green said the expected yes vote was "a bad day for Irish workers and a good day for big business". He and his pressure group have been arguing that endorsing Lisbon would lead to a greater influx of cheap foreign labour to Ireland.
In June 2008, 53.4% of the Irish Republic voted down the Lisbon treaty and threw the entire EU project into chaos. Today many constituencies in Dublin – Ireland's key electoral battleground – which voted against the treaty 17 months ago appeared to be switching to the yes camp.
Tally returns from Dublin Mid West showed that 65% of the constituency had voted yes this time. In the 2008 poll a majority voted no.
Even in Cavan/Monaghan, a stronghold for Sinn Féin which was the only party in the Irish parliament to call for a no vote, 61% were in the yes camp.
The Republic's main opposition party, Fine Gael, said the tally returns backed up the party's private exit poll which was released last night and indicated support for Lisbon running between 55% to 60%.
Fine Gael had polled a sample of 1,000 voters in 33 locations around Ireland. The party's director of elections, Billy Timmons, said the results were good for the yes camp.
Ireland's foreign minister, Michael Martin, said the yes vote would be a boost for the Republic.
"I am delighted for the country. It looks like a convincing win for the yes side on this occasion," Martin said.
Irish government sources said that at present the vote appeared to be around 57% in favour of Lisbon and 33% against.
The result will also be a boost to Brian Cowen, Ireland's embattled taoiseach. Cowen became the Irish leader in May 2008, just one month before Ireland decisively rejected Lisbon in the first referendum. Since then his government's popularity has plunged to an historic low in the opinion polls due to the recession, the country's banking crisis and rising unemployment.
"This is Brian Cowen's first victory as taoiseach," one Irish government adviser said today. "This is Brian's first break since he took up office."
The treaty is a 2007 reform package designed to modernise EU institutions and decision-making in line with the bloc's rapid expansion eastward. It cannot become law unless all members ratify it, and Ireland is the only one subjecting it to a national vote.
If the Irish endorse the treaty this time, the turnaround would reflect both incentives from Brussels and Ireland's economic tailspin.
Following last year's vote, European leaders offered Ireland reassurances and concessions designed to undercut the anti-EU arguments of treaty opponents.
They reversed a plan that would have cost Ireland its automatic seat on the European commission, a particular vote-loser, and pledged no EU interference in the country's tax rates, military commitments and abortion ban. Some voters said those commitments persuaded them to switch their vote to a yes.
Ireland's current economic crisis has underscored the country's dependence on European goodwill when times are bad.
The prime minister, Brian Cowen, and opposition chiefs argued to wavering voters that the nation could not afford to be seen as anti-EU when the European Central Bank was underwriting a planned €54bn (£49.4bn) bailout of Irish banks, and US investors in Ireland were emphasising the chill factor of a second no vote.
"The investment community value certainty, and uncertainty is something they really dislike. A yes vote will underline Ireland's commitment to be a central player in European affairs, something that has proven to be a real national asset," said Jim O'Hara, general manager of microchip giant Intel's operations in Ireland.
Intel, like most other major employers in Ireland, played no role in the 2008 campaign but appealed strongly this time for the treaty's approval.
If the treaty becomes law, more policy decisions would be permitted by majority rather than unanimous votes in European summits and in the European commission, the EU's executive branch. Those policies, in turn, would increasingly be shaped by the elected parliaments of each nation and the European parliament, which currently has little say.
Projecting this more decisive EU abroad would be a new fixed-term president in place of a decades-old system that rotates the presidency among governments every six months and a new foreign minister.
But if Ireland rejects Lisbon again, the EU would find itself in uncharted diplomatic waters. An alliance built on the principle of unanimous consent for key decisions would be faced with the reality that, under current rules, a country of barely 4 million can repeatedly block reforms designed to improve the lives of a continent of 500 million.A West Virginia state official told legislators on Wednesday that he “can guarantee” some residents are breathing in a cancer-causing substance due to the chemical spill that occurred earlier in January.
In a recent meeting with a state legislative committee on water resources, Scott Simonton of the West Virginia Environmental Quality Board said that his tests have detected formaldehyde in water samples contaminated by the recent Elk River chemical spill.
"I can guarantee that citizens in this valley are, at least in some instances, breathing formaldehyde," Simonton said, according to the Associated Press. "They're taking a hot shower. This stuff is breaking down into formaldehyde in the shower or in the water system, and they're inhaling it."
As Simonton noted, the chemical mixture that leaked into the Kanawha Valley’s water supply – a combination of seven substances used to wash coal that’s called “Crude MCHM” – is partly composed of methanol. When this chemical breaks down, it turns into formaldehyde, a carcinogen linked to diseases such as respiratory cancer.
"It's frightening, it really is frightening," the Charleston Gazette quoted Simonton telling state lawmakers. "What we know scares us, and we know there's a lot more we don't know."
The news also comes just a few days after it was revealed that a second, previously undisclosed chemical known as PPH also leaked into the Kanawha Valley’s water supply.
Despite the fact that state officials lifted local “do not use” orders on January 18, Simonton added that the potential presence of other chemicals means it’s too soon to declare the water supply safe.
"We know that (crude MCHM) turns into other things, and these other things are bad," Simonton told reporters Wednesday. "And we haven't been looking for those other things. So we can't say the water is safe yet. We just absolutely cannot."
As RT reported previously, the safety standards set by the Centers for Disease Control are based off of a pure form of MCHM, not the multi-chemical cocktail that is Crude MCHM. As a result, the tests declaring West Virginia’s water safe may not properly account for the other chemicals in the mixture.
In the week after the “do not use” orders were lifted, hospital admissions related to the chemical spill doubled, as did calls to West Virginia’s Poison Control Center.
About 300,000 West Virginians across nine counties were affected by the January 9 spill, which dumped about 10,000 gallons of chemicals into the Elk River. The company responsible for maintaining the storage tanks, Freedom Industries, has been hit with at least 20 lawsuits related to the spill and has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.SHARE
By of the
Madison— The Legislature's budget committee will vote Wednesday on Gov. Scott Walker's proposed restructuring of Wisconsin's first-in-the-nation worker's compensation system, but one coalition of stakeholders is calling on lawmakers to slow that down.
A group of lawyers representing workers, employers and insurers says the state is already a national model for worker's compensation insurance, which pays for lost wages and disability as well as medical bills for those hurt on the job.
They point to studies showing that the overall costs in Wisconsin's more than $1 billion system are lower than those of its peer states, that injured workers here spend less time away from their jobs and that premiums in the state are about 4% higher than the national average.
"Wisconsin's Worker's Comp system is one of the best, most efficient, and cost effective in the nation," said J. Patrick Condon, a Milwaukee attorney who represents employers and insurers in worker's compensation cases. "Efforts to dismantle this nationally recognized model, which avoids costly litigation, does not make any sense from a policy or political perspective."
As part of the state budget, Walker has proposed splitting up the program, housed in the state labor department, and shifting parts of it to two different agencies to make it more efficient.
State Workforce Development Secretary Reggie Newson said the proposal would help settle worker's compensation claims more quickly for workers and employers and leave his labor agency free to focus on other issues.
"(Walker's) proposal also helps DWD sharpen its focus on developing Wisconsin's talent with nimble, demand-driven strategies that provide employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy," Newson said.
In 2011, employers in the state paid $1.69 billion in worker's compensation premiums, according to the Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureau.
Some business groups support Walker's proposal, saying it could lead to more efficiencies but shouldn't affect the working of the program itself, noting that no changes are being proposed to the worker's compensation rules.
"So let's stop with the false narrative, scare tactics, and call the budget proposal for what it truly is — a simple governmental transfer. Nothing more, nothing less," Matthew Banaszynski, a lobbyist for the Independent Insurance Agents of Wisconsin, said in a recent statement.
Adopted in 1911
In 1911, Wisconsin adopted the Workmen's Compensation Act, the first of its kind in the country, to end the then-growing practice of injured workers being forced to sue their employers. The law provides for universal coverage for workers. Nearly all employers are required to pay for worker's compensation insurance, and the state also provides a fund for uninsured workers by penalizing businesses that are illegally operating without insurance.
Walker's proposal did not go through the Worker's Compensation Advisory Council, a group made up of workers and employers with additional input from insurers. That council has traditionally vetted changes to the program and reached a consensus on them before submitting a bill to lawmakers.
The governor's budget bill would move the administration of the worker's compensation system from the state Department of Workforce Development to the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. In addition, the handling of disputed claims through a process similar to a court will move from the workforce agency to the Department of Administration, which handles other quasi-judicial disputes.
The group of attorneys opposed to the budget change said they feel the work of both administering worker's compensation and resolving disputed claims is done efficiently now because the entire program is housed in the same agency, making it easy to get answers and certain results from the system.
Reshaping that existing system puts those results at risk and so any proposed changes need to be handled carefully outside the state budget bill, they said.Win-Win with E-Commerce
Jennifer Alterman Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 17, 2016
Did anyone notice the lack of retail store participation on Black Friday this past year? Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like there were fewer people out than I remember for the busiest shopping day of the year. It must have been the 2.2 billion spent on Cyber Monday online that made the 1.6 billion spent on Black Friday in retail stores seem like just another idle Tuesday proving more and more shoppers are making their purchases online. Statista.com reports currently, 70% of Americans are spending $85-$120 per month online or via mobile device.
What is it people are buying and why the transition to online? According to Amazon and www.upstreamcommerce.com, consumers are purchasing books and e-books, electronics, CD/DVD’s, toys and video games, personal care products, vitamins/supplements and cosmetics. Consumers are enjoying the many benefits of online shopping such as convenience, price comparison, variety, less crowds, discreet shopping and the reduction of impulse shopping. New technology is making it easy for a shopper to find exactly what they are looking for quickly, making the transaction simple, and leaving the customer satisfied with the process.
Today’s customers are of a new breed and e-commerce has changed the rules on how businesses reach out to them. Millennials (ages 15–30) are now the largest demographic in the workforce, spending millions in the e-commerce industry, and they are using mobile devices as their mode of interacting with the world. Messaging, blogging, social media, apps and on demand entertainment has provided businesses new methods of reaching out to the millennials and connecting with them. Utilizing their smart phones to assist in research for pricing, online reviews, texting friends for advice, and making the final decision to purchase with the touch of a button, today’s customer is more informed and connected than ever before. These customers crave to be heard by retailers and will go out of their way by using social media by making video reviews and blog comments about their like or dislike of a product or service. Today’s tech happy shoppers search shopping apps looking for an electronic coupon for an item a social media celebrity was just reviewing on their video blog that they can purchase with free shipping from another country using bitcoins as currency. (If you have no idea what that means, you’re not alone!) Emarketer.com predicts for 2016 that internet trends are moving towards services such as surveys, social messaging, mobile payment systems, apps and exclusive memberships communities (Netflix, Airbnb, Schwan’s, and Bonvera).
Earn money sharing your extra space with travelers.
Some of the best trending business models that have sprung out of the information age are businesses that help its consumers not only fill a need in their life, but also help people financially prosper in their own business. Businesses like Uber and Airbnb help connect customers with service providers and allow the independent operator to prosper using the tools (car or house) they already own. These business models give people the opportunity to become self-employed. Other new start up companies are leading the trend on the consumers behalf, such as Bonvera. Recently reported, Bonvera is the next thing that will give Amazon a run for their money all the while offering shoppers discounted everyday products and at the same time giving consumers the opportunity to own their own business working in communities with other entrepreneurs and profit with their conceptualization age business model. These businesses are very attractive to Millennials as well as Gen X in that the corporate environment is no longer a safe place for either generation. Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, states “people clinging to job security, savings, retirement plans, and other relics will be the ones financially-ravaged from 2010–2020, the most volatile world-changing decade in history.”
Compensated Marketplaces changing e-commerce.
Looking to the future, businesses that are service driven, utilizing the many benefits of online e-commerce, using crowd-sourcing marketing strategies and accepting payments through mobile devices and giving customers the opportunity to grow a business from their home or smartphone will have no limits beyond the information age. Additionally, as businesses improve their strategies, missions and operations, customers will have more choices, better prices and a pleasant digital experience all the while having open dialog with their chosen online community. Not only will customers be satisfied, independent business owners will be doing what they love and making money, thereby creating a win-win for everyone in the future of e-commerce.
https://vimeo.com/151960154
#bonverarocksEvery day Google processes more than a million takedown requests, sent in by dozens of specialized anti-piracy outfits. While most of these companies play by the rules, some insiders believe that a few intentionally submit bogus notices to boost their numbers.
Four years ago Google decided to publish detailed statistics of all the takedown notices it receives for its search engine.
Since then, the number of requests have skyrocketed. The increase in notices is partly the result of their public nature, with anti-piracy groups proudly revealing how many URLs they have removed.
Over the past several years TF has spoken to insiders on condition of anonymity, and several mentioned that this PR-angle is hurting the validity of the requests. Some anti-piracy outfits are more concerned with the volume of requests than their accuracy.
“There are a number of automated services sending endless duplicate DMCA Notices to Google,” said ‘Jack,’ the owner of a boutique takedown company.
These duplicate requests include many URLs which have been removed previously (e.g. 1, 2, 3). This means that they don’t add anything in terms of effectiveness. However, Google does add them to the overall statistics.
“Consequently, anti-piracy companies can make it look like they’re doing far more work than they actually are and thus improve their business development, sales or PR story,” Jack added.
Whether the duplicate notices are intentional or just the result of a shoddy system will be hard to prove conclusively. But they do stand out, together with other dubious issues that boost the numbers.
Earlier this week the operator of popular MP3 search engine MP3Juices.is alerted us to an increasing number of fake notices, listing URLs that were never indexed by Google at all.
Instead of finding pages in Google’s search engine they list search terms such as the following from a recent takedown request:
http://mp3juices.is/search?q=Kay+One+Intro&hash=2accae5374d2477fnprt4f
These search pages are not indexed by Google, so can’t be removed. Also, MP3juices generates a unique hash for each search, but in the notices the same hash is used over and over again for different search terms.
This means that the search URLs are generated through a simple script instead of being the result of actual searches. In addition, the same keywords are used across different sites, as the image below shows.
“MUSO is the main offender, they’re sending dynamically generated (fake) URLs created by their poorly written script. They don’t even verify if the page exists,” MP3Juices informed TF.
In addition, and this is the case for many outfits, most notices sent to Google are not sent to the site which actually hosts or links to the content.
“Only a minority of the notices are directly sent to us, the vast majority are sent to Google even though we remove reported URLs quicker than Google does. We also replace the page with a message encouraging users to use Amazon MP3 as a legal alternative,” MP3Juices said.
MP3Juices is not happy with the bogus takedown notices and plans to report the false claims to Google, not least since Google uses the takedown numbers to downrank websites in its search results.
MUSO didn’t answer any of our specific questions regarding the non-existing pages and search results, but provided a generic statement.
“We analyse over 12 million pages of content daily, across thousands of different hosting, streaming, P2P or search sites,” a MUSO spokesperson said.
“We are focused on providing a fast, efficient and transparent solution, and we welcome correspondence with all sites with whom we work to remove content, including MP3Juices.”The EU executive raised its growth projections across the Union to 1.6 percent for 2014, while its forecasts for the eurozone remain unchanged at 1.2 percent.
Neighbouring Baltic states Latvia and Lithuania are forecast to be the top-performing economies this year, achieving growth rates of 3.8 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. Lithuania will become the 19th country to join the eurozone in January.
Siim Kallas, who is covering Olli Rehn's economic affairs portfolio while Rehn is on the European Parliament campaign trail, said that the figures showed the EU's economic recovery is "gaining traction" and becoming more "broad-based' across the bloc.
"The policies implemented in recent years are bearing fruit. Investment is rebounding. While unemployment remains high in many member states, the labour market has stabilised and we expect some improvement in the next two years".
Cyprus and Croatia, who joined the EU last summer, are expected to be the only countries in recession in 2014.
Meanwhile, the figures confirm that the Greek economy will expand slightly by 0.6 percent this year and will reach an impressive 2.9 percent growth rate in 2015. This will bring an end to six consecutive years of recession, which have wiped out more than 25 percent of Greece's economic output.
Kallas commented that financial market confidence was returning in Greece, noting that "the large amounts of private equity capital raised by Greek banks in recent weeks have exceeded market expectations".
But Veronica Nilsson, Confederal Secretary of the European Trade union Confederation described the bloc's unemployment rate of 10.5 percent as "a disgrace" which "should be worrying the European Commission far more than they seem to.”
The commission believes that the EU's jobless rate will fall to 10.1 percent next year and from 11.8 percent to 11.4 percent in the eurozone, with larger decreases of 2 percent and 1.5 percent respectively, expected in Greece and Spain, the countries with the highest unemployment rates.
But officials are becoming increasingly concerned that the EU's already sluggish recovery could be hit by low inflation.
Forecasts for price inflation have been revised down to 0.8 percent this year and 1.2 percent in 2015, well below the European Central Bank's (ECB's) target of 2 percent. A prolonged period of low inflation risks further subduing consumer demand, making it harder for businesses to create new jobs and make headway into the EU's large jobless total.
With the ECB's main interest rates already at a record low of 0.25 per cent since November, while the main rate on deposits has been at zero since July 2012, the Frankfurt-based bank, headed by Mario Draghi, is pondering whether to introduce negative interest rates or print money to stimulate more demand.
Meanwhile, Kallas said that the ongoing crisis in the Ukraine posed one of the greatest risks to the stability of the EU economy.
"The one main risk is clearly the external tensions and uncertainty which surrounds us, especially related to the crisis in Ukraine,” he said.The Ellis County fire chief and assistant chief have been arrested, along with five volunteer firefighters and a woman, after allegations of hazing surfaced. The two fire chiefs are charged with a felony of tampering with a witness when it was discovered the pair tried to quiet a new recruit over allegations of sexual assault. Five other firefighters, along with a woman, were arrested for the hazing incident in which the trainee claims he was sodomized by a chorizo sausage.
Fox News reports that 31-year-old Chief Gavin Satterfield and 34-year-old Assistant Chief Billy Getzendaner have been suspended from their positions and arrested following a police investigation that indicates the pair tried to keep the trainee from reporting the sexual assault. Police allege that both chiefs learned of a horrific hazing incident involving a new trainee but instead of reporting the incident, the chiefs told everyone in the department to “keep their mouths shut.”
The report indicates that the police chief called in the five firefighters and the trainee into a private meeting, at which point they told everyone to keep their mouths shut or the police would be involved because it would be viewed as a sexual assault. Therefore, police claim that the two chiefs knew exactly what they were doing when they tried to quiet the witness and that their words are proof that they knew the gravity of the situation. The police report also indicates that when Assistant Chief Getzendaner watched a video of the assault, which was captured on tape, he laughed.
Following the initial investigation, five firefighters were arrested along with a woman who allegedly filmed the sexual assault. Those arrested on sex assault charges include Keith Edward Wisakowsky, 26, Casey Joe Stafford, 30, Preston Thomas Peyrot, 19, Alec Chase Miller, 28, and Blake Jerold Tucker, 19. Brittany Leanne Parten, 23, was arrested on a charge of improper photography or visual recording.
My San Antonio reports the horrific incident was caught on tape in which the men allegedly “bent the unidentified victim over a couch, pinned him face down and attempted to assault him with a broomstick before penetrating him with a chorizo sausage.” They also report that the video was watched in the presence of the five assaulting firemen and the victim, at which point the assistant chief laughed and called the video “funny sh**.” He noted during the meeting that the victim could “do something to us” but turned to the victim and said “but you won’t.”
As a result of the incident, the board voted to suspend both fire chiefs while they wait for their court date.
[Image Credit: Getty Images/ Scott Barbour][Related: In favor of Romney]
In debates over which candidate, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, most supports Israel, many have made the case, including in the Journal, that the president’s staunchly pro-Israel policies speak for themselves. This debate must also include a broader point: Israel needs more than America’s military, economic and political support. It needs a United States engaged in global diplomacy, with high standing worldwide, capable of advancing our shared objectives.
On these counts, President Obama has succeeded: Among other things, American troops are out of Iraq; al-Qaeda is a threat but in tatters, its leader dead; Libya, with U.S. help, rid itself of Muammar Gadhafi; the United States won a seat on the Human Rights Council, where it stands against lopsided anti-Israel resolutions; and the list goes on, whether looking at U.S. policy in Asia, Europe, Latin America, the U.N., Africa or elsewhere. The crushing sanctions now imposed on Iran exist only because of effective Obama administration diplomacy.
What about Mitt Romney? Like many previous candidates, Gov. Romney has almost no foreign-policy experience. But last week he gave a speech on foreign policy that should give pause to those who worry about Israel’s security and quest for peace. He talked tough and sounded reassuring, but the actual policy prescriptions — like those of George W. Bush before him — would undermine Israel’s long-term strategic needs.
At one level, the speech was riddled with deceit about the Obama record, as Tom Friedman pointed out in The New York Times. Yet the fate of American foreign policy, and its implications for Israel, will rest more on Romney’s worldview than his posturing as a candidate. Two areas in particular should raise deep concern: Romney’s positions on the use of force and unilateralism, the signature postures of the Bush doctrine.
Bush felt strongly supportive toward Israel. But his policies backfired: The go-it-alone war in Iraq opened strategic space for Iran. The inhumane treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib left deeply negative impressions on people already prepared to see the United States as a bully in the region. The failure to engage world opinion left the United States unable to defend Israel in key international forums.
Romney seemed unaware that the broader foreign policy choices would, like Bush’s, undermine America’s ability to advance its own and Israel’s objectives.
First, the speech suggests a Bush-like attraction to the language of force. Pressing for a change of course in the Middle East, Romney argues that Americans must have “resolve in our might.” To hit the point home, he adds that we cannot “defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds, when our defense spending is being arbitrarily and deeply cut” (which, incidentally, President Obama has not done). Presidents must “use America’s great power to shape history.”
Romney sees “might” as more central than right. But a Middle East policy that rests on the power of arms to effect change is not only bound to fail, it can foster the same problems we seek to avoid.
Consider Iraq, a “war of choice” (in the words of former Bush administration official Richard Haass) that enhanced the position of Iran in the Middle East, brought al-Qaeda and sectarian conflict to play, and ultimately left thousands of Americans and Iraqis dead and many more thousands injured, and millions displaced from their homes. Romney did not seem to understand the scars that our military engagement in Iraq has left on the broader region, including negative consequences for the security of Israel.
Would he attack Iran if the nuclear issue is not resolved? Despite his martial rhetoric, the answer isn’t clear. He might. So might a second-term Obama administration. But the speech gave the impression that he would use force precipitously and without doing the hard diplomacy to build international support.
Of course, the United States needs a strong defense strategy. And this is an area where even some of President Obama’s progressive supporters complain, as President Obama has used drones to kill suspected terrorists (even American citizens) in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Yet the Obama administration understands that force alone cannot stand as the central pillar of U.S. policy.
Second, Romney seemed to prefer unilateralism to multilateralism, much as President Bush did. Romney revels in suggesting that the United States cannot “lead from behind,” something the Obama administration has never embraced. Instead, there is a unilateralist hum throughout Romney’s speech. “I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions,” he claimed, though unilateral sanctions would be the most likely to destroy the harsh and far more effective multilateral ones the Obama administration has put in place against Iran, even managing to win over countries such as Russia and China. Romney sees Russia and China as adversaries to confront, not convert.
One may have disagreed with Obama’s willingness to engage adversaries, but he emphasized it when running for president in 2008. He tried it with Iran when he took office, and now, because the administration pursued a multilateral approach and attempted diplomacy with Iran, the United States is in a much better position to use forceful measures against a recalcitrant adversary if need be. Romney gives no indication that he has the kind of strategic foresight Obama had as a candidate and deploys as president.
Romney’s unilateralist bent is out of sync with a world where diplomacy and coalition-building are more critical than ever. The speech showed him committed to the rhetoric and centrality of military force in the aftermath of a disastrous American war in the region. Neither of these stances would advance American objectives in the region: the security of Israel at peace with the Palestinians, a nuclear-free Iran, a transition to rights-respecting democratic governance throughout the Arab world, a stable region of developing free-market economies. To the contrary, unilateralism and force undermine the United States’ ability to persuade others to follow our lead.
Romney showed that he would be much more like George W. Bush than Barack Obama in his conduct of foreign affairs. And for those worried about the long-term security of Israel, that has to be a concern.
David Kaye is a law professor at UC Irvine School of Law and a former lawyer with the U.S. Department of State.Print This Page Email This Page See Most Sent
Kidnapped Reporter Killed on Tape Sex Abuse in the Church Moms Can Make Their Kids Too Fat There were no alerts, no increased security, no warnings. An ABCNEWS investigation of the failure of intelligence on Sept. 11 has found a trail of missed signals, missed opportunities, and warnings ignored. There were warnings about the possibility of an airborne terrorist attack on U.S. targets as early as 1994, when terrorism expert Marvin Cetron underlined the threat in a report to the Pentagon. "We saw Osama bin Laden. We spelled it out and we said the United States was very vulnerable," Cetron told ABCNEWS. "You could make a left turn at the Washington Monument and take out the White House. And you could make a right turn and take out the Pentagon." Cetron said he warned the Pentagon that two events earlier that year the crash-landing of a small airplane at the White House by an apparently unstable man, and French authorities' storming of a hijacked airliner that Algerian terrorists had planned to fly into the Eiffel Tower made |
, of course, how easy things are for women, whom they hate and deeply resent for not sleeping with them. They express anger towards “normies,” aka people with functional personal and professional lives; “Chad Thundercocks,” a stand-in for the sort of alpha male/normie men who have lots of self-confidence and are popular with the ladies; and “Stacies,” the sort of shallow “normie” ladies who prefer “Chad Thundercock” and pass right over beta males like themselves. Particularly angry posts are often decorated with a picture of “Angry Pepe”—a variation on the “Pepe the Frog” character from the comic book series Boy’s Club—that has become something of a 4chan mascot.
They blame feminism—and its encouragement of women to work outside the home, embrace sexual freedom, and reject patriarchial beauty standards—for their lack of access to young, thin, submissive, virgin-supermodel wives
The other message board where talk of a “beta uprising” is most active is SlutHate. com—which changed its name from PUA-Hate.com after one of its active posters, Elliot Rodger, went on a killing spree in 2014 in Isla Vista, California. Prior to his rampage—in which 22-year-old Rodger stabbed three men to death in his apartment, shot three female students outside a sorority house (killing two), then killed a male student inside a deli before speeding through Isla Vista shooting and wounding several pedestrians and striking several others with his car before committing suicide—Rodger published his manifesto and uploaded a video to YouTube explicitly stating that he was motivated to kill people due to his lack of success with women.
Although the original intent of PUAHate was to be a message board for men burned by the advice of so-called “Pick Up Artists,” (aka PUAs), it had a reputation as one of the most misogynist sites on the Internet, even before Rodger’s spree. Today, many posters in the forum consider him a hero, and use a picture of him as an avatar. They credit him for bringing the issue of “involuntary celibacy” and what it can do to a man to light. Others lament the fact that he killed his roommates rather than 200 sorority girls. That, they say, would have really taught those women a lesson for not sleeping with men like them.
George Sodini, who shot up an L.A. Fitness Center in Pennsylvania after spending months writing a blog about his “involuntary celibacy” and lack of success with women, is also admired and sympathized with on SlutHate, as is Cho Seung-Hui, who went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech after being rejected by a woman.
Most of the posters on the /r9k/ forum and Sluthate refer to themselves as “incels” (involuntary celibates), “beta males,” and “NEETs” (Not in Education, Employment, or Training—in other words, neither working, nor studying, nor preparing to work or study). Many identify as having Asperger’s or as being somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but are primarily self-diagnosed. This feeds into their collective self-image as socially awkward, misunderstood geniuses—although when you actually start reading through their posts, it’s pretty clear that they are vastly overestimating the “genius” part of the equation.
Talk of a beta uprising frequently appears on /r9k/ and Sluthate, as well as in certain other parts of the “manosphere,” with a casual regularity, and is usually intended as a joke. But, behind every joke, there’s an ounce of truth. A truth that reflects a rising tide of anger echoed throughout many little man-niches across the Internet. That anger stems from the fact that these forum posters honestly believe that society drove the incel gunmen to do what they did. Again and again, these men say, “I don’t agree with killing people, but what does society expect when they’ve left [us] with nothing?” Unsurprisingly, this same sentiment was echoed by Christopher Harper-Mercer himself in a blog post he wrote about Vester Flanagan, the man who shot reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward on live television in Virginia this past August. “People like him have nothing else to live for,” wrote Harper-Mercer, “and the only thing left to do is lash out at a society that has abandoned them.”
When these men discuss killers like Harper-Mercer, they suggest that these tragedies wouldn't have "had" to happen, if only some woman would have stepped up to the plate, taken one for the team, and simply "given them sex."
To fully understand where these men are coming from, you have to understand their bizarrely skewed worldview. Incels believe that prior to the sexual revolution and feminism, women were “distributed” more evenly among men. Now, they claim, alpha males get multiple sexual partners throughout their lives, while betas end up with none.
They pine longingly for a time when women, due to having to rely on men for economic support, got married earlier and were looking to settle down more quickly. Betas are particularly embittered over the idea that attractive women will spend their 20s having sex with alpha males, and will only be ready to settle down with beta males (like themselves) once they are, in beta parlance, “all used up.”
Essentially, they blame feminism—and its encouragement of women to work outside the home, embrace sexual freedom, and reject patriarchal beauty standards—for their lack of access to young, thin, submissive, virgin-supermodel wives who are eager to wait on them hand and foot. They also, rather oddly, believe that women are only interested in having sex with physically abusive alpha males, which is their way of framing themselves as the heroes of their own bizarre narratives. What it boils down to, really, is, “I’m great and girls don’t like me—so obviously they prefer men who are terrible.” The fol-lowing is an excerpt from the very first description of a “Beta Uprising” sce-nario posted to /r9k/ in 2013:
“A 9/10 blonde, big titted attention whore was teaching a class at Beta University.
‘Before the class begins you should get on your laptops and like my Facebook updates and 50 new party and beach photos despite me never acknowledging your existence.’
At this moment a robotic, NEET, virgin, who was out of his house for the first time in a week, and fully comprehended the scale of female privilege and the easiness of their lives, stood up and held a rock. ‘What does this rock feel like?’
The ego inflated lecturer smirked quite Jewishly and enthusiastically replied, ‘It feels rough. It hurts my hand just by holding it!’
‘Wrong. If it hurts you and treats you roughly...then why haven’t you let it cum
on your face yet?'"
The lecturer was visibly shaken and dropped her chalk and copy of 50 Shades of Grey. She stormed out of the room crying those white knight summoning tears. The betas applauded and realized that if 20% of the men get all of the women, then they outnumber [alphas] 4 to 1. After one week all women were enslaved by the beta uprising and distributed equally among the male population.
The lecturer lost her tenure and was fired the next day. She committed suicide after realizing that none of the hundreds of men that offered to marry her were millionaires, and that her life was too hard.”
"Normie" via KnowYourMeme.com
The kind of commiseration that happens over social media tends to have a normalizing effect, even on bizarre opinions like those expressed in the post above. Views that would be considered absurd, horrific, and frightening in real life are commonplace in these groups, helping like-minded individuals to develop a shared delusional view of the world. Despite their deep disdain for the political left (which they blame for giving women more independence from men), their posts have evolved into a twisted, sexualized rehashing of Marxist rhetoric. Except instead of workers and the poor rising up to demand a redistribution of wealth, betas are dateless men who believe they are rising up against women and alpha males and demanding a redistribution of sex.
On Sluthate, this ideology gets hashed out even further, as members like Omega-KV go so far as to justify rape in the name of a more equal distribution of sex:
“Rape is wrong because it violates a girl’s chastity,” he writes. “If a woman is married to another man, it’s wrong to rape her because it taints her sexual bond with her husband. Similarly, raping a virgin girl taints her sexual bond with her future husband.
But when some slut gets raped, there is no chastity to violate. Rape is merely a discomfort for her. Someone incel enough to commit rape would have gone through much more pain from being incel than would his ‘rape victim’ as a result of the rape. As long as the girl getting raped is an unwed non-virgin, a man raping her would be comparable to a starving man stealing a loaf of bread.”
Along these same lines, many participants in these forums complain about how
unfair it is that they can’t legally have sex with women under the age of 18. They also talk about how “shallow” it is when women reject men whom they find “creepy.” It’s an echo chamber of extreme toxicity that only gets more toxic the more time posters spend in these closed communities.
Psychologist Kristin J. Anderson, author of Modern Misogyny: Anti-Feminism in a Post-Feminist Era, notes that some of this may be a reaction to the more disastrous economic changes that America has gone through in the last 35 years. Although it’s actually the one percent that these middle-and-working-class forum posters are legitimately losing out to, they’d rather see themselves as losing out to women, causing them to wonder, “What has feminism done to the world I was promised?”
Anderson also notes that many psychological studies show that men and women have very different ideas regarding entitlement. “When women determine how much they should get paid for a task they complete,” she says, “they take into account their performance on the task—if they did well they believe they deserve more than if they did poorly. On the other hand, men tend to believe they deserve good pay regardless of their performance—they just think they are deserving. In other words, women base their perceived rewards on their actual work, men base their perceived rewards on their perceived worth.”
These studies may begin to explain why these men believe they are entitled to have access to women. By simply existing, they deem themselves worthy. And they perceive women as things to be had rather than as individual people with thoughts, feelings, and preferences of their own. They’ve been taught this through television, film, and most other media. If they can’t obtain a girlfriend, then something is wrong with the system, not with them.
When the men in these forums discuss killers like Harper-Mercer and Rodger, they repeatedly suggest that these tragedies wouldn’t have “had” to happen, if only some woman would have stepped up to the plate, taken one for the team, and simply “given them sex.” Women, they rationalize, have brought these tragedies on themselves by cruelly denying these men what they believe they were justly owed.
In an oft-quoted post on Sluthate, user NewGenious119 explains why he believes he is entitled to sex with attractive women:
“This idea that nobody owes anyone anything completely goes against the entire point of even having a society in the first place. If society doesn’t owe an individual person anything, then the individual owes society nothing either, so don’t be surprised when they take their frustration out on the world.
There is absolutely NO GOOD reason why, in the 21st century, every person shouldn’t have their basic needs met. That means food, shelter, clothing, and transportation for all. And, yes, if you are a male, sexual access to attractive females as that is considered a basic need for men as well.”
While the world at large doesn’t have to become paranoid about a literal, coordinated “Beta Uprising” taking over the earth and enslaving all women, there is definitely reason for concern on a more individual basis. It is a fact that the toxic way the men in these communities are teaching each other to perceive intimacy has real-world consequences. As these attitudes proliferate, women do have to worry about a culture that validates male entitlement to sex. We do have to worry about acts of violence committed by those who take these beliefs too far.
There is no perfect solution to this—no real way of determining which men are just venting and which are likely to resort to violence. Ironically, however, if the real source of all this discomfort is the inability of beta males to conform to a hyper-masculine alpha-male ideal, then they should know there already is an established movement trying to dismantle those exact gender stereotypes in the name of a more equitable world for everyone. It’s called feminism—and it might just save us all.
---
By Robyn Pennacchia
Illustration by Daniel Zender
This article originally appeared in the February/March 2016 print edition of BUST Magazine. Subscribe today!
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'The Affair': A Celebration of White Male Privilege in the Literary WorldNote: please consider tweeting this article to #bringbackourgirls and/or a relevant hashtag, such as #stopkillingourboys.
The extremist Muslim group Boko Haram has a long history of attacking villages in Nigeria. The world has known about this for a long time.
And yet all of a sudden – seemingly without precedent – the media, the Obama administration, and online social justice crowd are eating up a recent story of Boko Haram abducting 200+ girls. Indeed, they are as frenzied about this as a school of starved piranhas tasting blood in the water. They weren’t really that animated before. But hey, they’ve been busy like everyone else.
The story is a tragedy, to be sure. But like so many stories we hear concerning the perpetual persecution of women by a pervasively pernicious Patriarchy™, there is more to this than meets the eye. And, as you may have guessed, I will show you in this very article.
Change.org has a petition to bring back 200+ girls that were recently kidnapped by Boko Haram (which I support, don’t get me wrong). As of right now it has ~400,000 signatories. It says:
[su_quote]In Nigeria, over 200 girls were recently abducted from their boarding school and plans are reported of them being selling them as brides for $12 each. I am calling on the world to unite and save them.
The abducted young girls are being affected by a conflict they did not create, and their voices need to be heard. I can only imagine what these 200 girls have been through, and their government is not doing nearly enough to save them.
The group Boko Haram has repeatedly said girls should not be educated. I am a young Nigerian woman pursuing my education in Germany. I believe the Nigerian government must do more to ensure the safe return of these girls.[/su_quote]
An interesting claim by Change.org in the last paragraph. Is it really true that Boko Haram believes that only girls should be denied an education? I belabor this because we’ll come back to it very soon.
Hence it’s name, Change.org is all about changing the status quo when it comes to social justice issues – sex/gender, in this case. They do this because – as we are told – the status quo is anti-woman. From this it would of course logically follow that mainstream media institutions would not report on the issue of girls being abducted thousands of miles away because they wouldn’t care.
And the male-dominated government also wouldn’t care. And so on, and so forth. That’s how it goes, right? Well, no. According to TIME magazine:
[su_quote]President Barack Obama said the U.S. has already sent a team to aid in efforts to recover more than 250 kidnapped girls in Nigeria, who were captured by the Boko Haram militant group. The team is ‘trying to identify where in fact these girls might be and provide them help,’ he said.
The United States is preparing to deploy a team of military, law enforcement and hostage negotiators to Nigeria, officials said Tuesday, to help with the ongoing effort to recover more than 250 kidnapped schoolgirls whose plight has captured global attention. [/su_quote]
And here I thought our Patriarchal™ society really didn’t care about women. What have they been teaching me in school? More, this time according to CNN:
[su_quote]With a World Economic Forum gathering set to begin Wednesday in Abuja, the Nigerian government came under mounting pressure to save the girls abducted in the country’s remote northeast and threatened with being sold into slavery.
On a trip to Africa, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States “will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice.”[/su_quote]
Looks like a lot of mobilization and rallying under the banner of saving the girls. Which is fine and dandy and all. Just one little question:
What happened to the schoolboys? I mean, if we take Change.org’s word for it and assume that Boko Haram only wanted women to be without an education, that would mean that they left the boys alone, right?
Actually, they’re all dead. They were butchered by Boko Haram like cattle, down to the least and the last. I reported on it almost two months ago (in March) before this media frenzy, but it was reported elsewhere in the online press as far back as February [1], and Boko Haram has been killing schoolboys en masse as far back as September of 2013.
But strangely, unlike the fight for girls, somehow these human rights abuses never made it near the top of the to-do list of your mainstream social justice warriors. Let’s review that Associated Press article from February of this year about the attack at Buni Yadi:
[su_quote]Islamic militants set fire to a locked dormitory at a school in northern Nigeria, then shot and slit the throats of students who tried to escape through windows during a pre-dawn attack Tuesday. At least 58 students were killed, including many who were burned alive.
They ‘slaughtered them like sheep’ with machetes, and gunned down those who ran away, said one teacher, Adamu Garba. Soldiers guarding a checkpoint near the coed government school were mysteriously withdrawn hours before it was targeted by the militants, said the spokesman for the governor of northeastern Yobe state.
Female students were spared in the attack, said the spokesman, Abdullahi Bego, though girls and women have been abducted in the past by militants of the Boko Haram movement, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden.'[/su_quote]
Ah, so Boko Haram isn’t just against girls’ education, like Change.org erroneously claimed. They are against western secular education in general. And unlike what seems to be the preferred narrative, it looks like the boys weren’t exactly partaking in the perpetual privilege proffered them by a pervasively pernicious Patriarchy™ when they were being gutted like fish.
I suppose having all your human guts intact only matters when those guts belong to girls.
Twitter was set on fire over this one. The hashtag #bringbackourgirls was the locus of so many Tweets that TIME Magazine created an animated map showing the explosion of Twitter activism over time and by geographic region.
The use of the hashtag #bringbackourgirls is an interesting one, and not just because it is being used as a rallying point for those who believe that women are oppressed in a Patriarchal™ world that regards their vulnerabilities as secondary, all the while oblivious (or apathetic) to the plight of boys.
It’s also ironic because, unfortunately, there can be no #bringbackourboys campaign. You can bring back the abducted, but you can’t bring back the dead. Death is one of those things that you can’t make up for, that you can’t “correct.” You can only try to prevent it.
So how might we prevent men and boys from being regarded as disposable, as they so often are in the workplace, in war, and so forth? Well, a good first step is finding the courage to care about them as much as we care about women and girls. If we start from there, good things are bound to follow.
Wouldn’t that be a great change?
Standing up to Boko Haram now won’t just help bring back our girls. It will also help prevent the deaths of boys in the future. That is why the plight of boys deserves to be a part of our call to action.
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[1] ABC News also reported on the massacre but took down their link. The article is preserved via The Wayback Machine. Also, if AP isn’t your cup of tea, you can read a report by NBC News about the same attack.Two German students have infuriated Egyptian authorities by vandalising a Pharaoh's tomb. Of course, there is a conspiracy theory involved...
WE know they're there: King Thutmose. Rameses VIII. A handful of queens. Now, archaeologists have a good idea where they are.
The hidden tombs - and hopefully their treasures - have been the subject of a ground-penetrating radar search in Egypt's famous Valley of the Kings.
And while they've found a few "contacts", the survey is not yet complete.
RELATED: Students vandalise pyramid to prove 'lost civilisation' theory
Ground-penetrating radar is where high-frequency radio waves are directed into the earth and their reflections measured and analysed. The signals can paint a picture of hidden structures and cavities - potentially leading archaeologists directly to a lost-tomb's 'front door'.
But it's not all easy going.
Despite rapid advances in the technology, the windswept Valley of the Kings still refuses to give up its secrets easily.
"There are many faults and natural features that can look like walls and tombs," project field director Afifi Ghonim told LiveScience.
But hopes remain high of finding new locations in which to focus excavation efforts.
"The consensus is that there are probably several smaller tombs yet to be found. But there is still the possibility of finding a royal tomb," Ghonim said.
RELATED: 'Hell's guardians' rise from the dead
"The queens of the late Eighteenth Dynasty are missing, as are some pharaohs of the New Kingdom … "It is not impossible for one or more to be intact."
The project is one of the most extensive mapping and exercising efforts inside the Valley of the Kings since Howard Carter discovered the famous boy-king Tutankhamun's tomb there in 1922.
###Aperture was on the brink of the imminent 3.0 release, and Lightroom was edging out its bold next generation version. But there was a moment of long pause before the two made headlines with the the subsequent releases of the photographer’s favorite tool.
A few years ago, Jim Christian made news with Noise Ninja, a coherent tool at the time where noise was a bigger problem than they are today. But he believes that we are just at the beginning, the dawn of the next generation of image processing technology. As Apple and Adobe were gearing up for their next versions of tools, Jim also had something under his sleeves.
Armed with a passion for photographic excellence, and a software engineering prowess, Jim sets himself out to retool Noise Ninja. But as he dived in, he thought he could do more. He wants to explore the realms of the other (bigger) problems in image processing today: highlight treatment, which not coincidentally, is the noises’ alter-ego. And two years later, Photo Ninja came to light.
The problem we have today in digital photography is bigger than one man can handle. Digital evolution is also faster than analog were. Companies like Adobe, Apple, even Canon or Nikon have an arsenal of scientists, developers… and more money, to make digital photography better. But Jim’s engineering capacity, along with his determination and passion in photography had not only taken a concept into a reality, but he was also able to create something that can be compared to — even on some level, exceeded — what bigger companies produce. Photographers and tech critics have praised Photo Ninja’s abilities to render images unlike any other available tool today.
So I asked Jim if he wants to chat about his new app, and more about his approaches to be published here. We managed to exchanged over 2 dozen emails between September and October 2012, and I have chronologically presented them in its entirety below for your reading pleasure.
You are known as the man behind Noise Ninja, an indispensable noise reduction tool to many photographers and publishing agencies. What was the key formula to Noise Ninja’s popularity, and eventually, PictureCode’s success as a software & technology provider.
Jim: One key is the fact that I had no background in image processing when I set out to develop Noise Ninja, so I avoided the conventional solutions. I have a pretty deep and broad background in other areas of computer science, artificial intelligence, finance, and so on, and I was able to draw on a lot of experience to develop a new solution to the basic problem of discriminating detail from noise. However, the math was only half the story. Working photographers care about image quality and productivity. I spent a lot of effort tuning the algorithms to make the results look “right” without a lot of tweaking. Many users remarked about how natural or “photographic” the images look after filtering. They also appreciated how the default settings get them close to a final result. Another key is that we have a lot of interactions with our customers. Whether it’s a support issue or feedback or an inquiry of some sort, we try to learn from those interactions, and we try to be responsive and helpful and create a positive impression of PictureCode. People notice this, and word gets around. With Photo Ninja, the story is largely the same, but with an order-of-magnitude increase in scope (and effort). And, I’m happy to say that early users are reacting to Photo Ninja much the same way they did to Noise Ninja — they’re telling me that the results are natural-looking, they are getting results quickly and easily, and it’s setting a new benchmark for image quality.
© Jim Christian I’ve learned that you are also a photography enthusiast. Was your involvement in coding born out of your passion in photography, or vice versa? How did it shape Photo Ninja as a feature product?
Jim: Photography became a serious hobby of mine after my daughter was born in 1999 — something clicked, and before I knew it I was building up a collection of lenses, shooting whenever I got the chance, experimenting with studio lights, scanning film, making prints, and generally spending too much time with it. I switched from film to digital when the Canon D30 came out, and I could see that was the future. Since the pixels were now in the computational domain — where I had a lot of expertise — I figured I ought to be able to add value with some kind of software product. I noticed a lot of people in forums asking “hey, how do I get rid of this nasty stuff that I see when I shoot at high ISO?” I realized noise was a problem with every digital camera on the market, and serious photographers were hitting a wall with it. There weren’t a lot of compelling solutions at the time, so I decided to give it a try. The result was Noise Ninja. For Photo Ninja, having an understanding of photography has been indispensable, not only for guiding the engineering, but also for interpreting the feedback from photographers who worked with early versions of the product.
There are aspects of Photo Ninja that seems so obvious but other apps miss, like the out-of-this-world highlight recovery tool and the groundbreaking imaging algorithm. Would you mind telling more about the beginning and how did you grow an idea to a shippable product? What was the major challenges in creating a workflow-based raw image development app amidst competition from camera manufactures and developers like Apple and Adobe?
Jim: The problems might be apparent, but the solutions are far from obvious. This is hard stuff. The idea for Photo Ninja came about for a couple of reasons. Based on what we were hearing from our Noise Ninja customers and seeing in the marketplace, we felt that the raw conversion problem wasn’t entirely “solved” with respect to image quality, and there was an opportunity to add value. I also felt constrained working outside of the RAW pipeline; we really needed to get directly inside it to achieve the best processing results. The biggest challenge was simply time. It took much longer than I had intended. Partly our own fault, partly due to things beyond our control. But it was worth the wait; I think we’ve developed a differentiated and effective tool.
Let’s go back for a bit before we get a little more technical. Tell us more about how you grew up and how you ended up writing software.
Jim: I moved around a bit as a kid, but more or less grew up in Idaho in a town full of potato farmers and nuclear scientists. I started building computers in my basement when I was around 12 years old. (Remember the 8080 microprocessor? I used to know the pin-out and timing specs in my head.) At Harvard, I majored in computer science, so ended up on the software path from that point on. Did a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in a formal subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with the mechanization of mathematical reasoning.
Did your C.S or mathematical reasoning background helped you built Photo Ninja’s algorithm? You also have a business degree, correct? How — in practice — do you switch from programming, fine art, and business, let alone family? Understandably, that takes some struggling at the beginning?
Jim: Everything helped. I find that having depth in a lot of areas has a multiplying effect over time — you have more frameworks to draw on for understanding new things, and knowledge in one field can cross-fertilize with another. If you’re looking for the secret to achieving balance in life while pursuing something like the development Photo Ninja, I’m absolutely the wrong guy to ask. It has required a ridiculous amount of work, and my life has not exactly been balanced. My family understands what I’m trying to accomplish, however, so they’ve given me a lot of leeway. But I owe my wife a few more vacations — and I think she’s expecting to collect with interest.
Photo Ninja is the successor to Noise Ninja, but much more than just a feature upgrade. Also, camera sensors have advanced significantly since you first release Noise Ninja, can you share us some technical insights on what kind of improvements, changes in raw image quality parallel to image sensor improvements? Have we tap the maximum potential or there are still rooms for software innovations?
Jim: One key area of change is in the handling of the camera dynamic range. Dynamic range has increased a lot in some models. To really get the most out of it now, you need to be able to compress and manipulate global contrast without making the detail look flat or unnatural. This encompasses a range of things, including opening up shadows to reveal detail, taming aggressive highlights, and compensating for backlighting. These things are generally impossible to do well with conventional tone curve adjustments. You need more sophisticated adaptive algorithms. The noise reduction problem doesn’t seem to be going away. As the sensors yield cleaner results at a particular ISO, photographers just push up to a higher ISO. And as the dynamic range of the camera increases, they shoot in higher contrast lighting and then even it out in postprocessing, but this bring up the noise in the shadows. So, ironically, good noise reduction has actually become more necessary rather than less as the cameras have improved. There is still room for improvement in the algorithms. I don’t think I’ve written my last noise reduction algorithm. And I’d like to try a few more things with highlight recovery and demosaicing. Also, if you increased computing power by 10X or 100X, I might try some entirely different approaches to some problems. By the way, I’m not advocating shooting in mid-day sunlight and trying to fix everything in post. I think too many people are starting to rely on postprocessing as a repair process instead of as an enhancement process. I still believe the best images result when you capture nice lighting at exposure time. You can’t effectively enhance color or light that wasn’t in the image in the first place. Look at the photos someone gets by carefully choosing his lighting conditions. Of course, if you’re a photojournalist or event photographer, or if you’re on vacation with your family, you don’t always have the luxury.
© Jim Christian Photo Ninja seems to have been developed with a code-once-built-for-all coding platform. Any OS specific advantage that Photo Ninja has on one platform but not the other? On the other hand, what kind of disadvantages you encountered in not using a platform-specific coding tool to build native versions?
Jim: We used a cross-platform GUI toolkit called Qt. I don’t think there’s any particular advantage on one OS or the other. The main disadvantage of the cross-platform approach is that the UI doesn’t look “native”, particularly on the Mac. But for most users this doesn’t seem to be a problem as long as they can get the results they want from their images.
Speaking of interfaces, what would be the pros and cons of using Photo Ninja as a plugin to existing apps? Will it follow Noise Ninja’s footstep and ship it both as a standalone and plugin?
Jim: We’re planning to deliver a Photoshop plug-in module in the V1.1 release of Photo Ninja. It’s already under development. It works in two modes: As a “format plug-in” it allows you to invoke Photo Ninja as an alternative to ACR for opening and processing RAW files. You do you your raw conversion in Photo Ninja, then hand-off to Photoshop for spot retouching or layer manipulations or whatever. As a “filter plug-in” you can invoke Photo Ninja in the middle of your Photoshop workflow to apply, say, noise reduction or detail enhancement, similar to the way the current Noise Ninja plug-in works. I expect the combination of Photo Ninja + Photoshop will be convenient and effective for a lot of professional photographers. Photo Ninja can also be used as an external editor for other platforms like Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, and Aperture. I personally find the fit with Photo Mechanic to be the most natural and flexible — it works off the file system just like we do, so there isn’t a catalog or library to get in the middle of things. You can send raw files directly to Photo Ninja — there’s no intermediate TIFF file — and you can save your work to XMP or to a JPEG or TIFF and Photo Mechanic is happy any way you do it.
So there won’t be Lightroom & Aperture plugins?
Jim: Lightroom doesn’t have a true plug-in interface for editor/filter apps like Photo Ninja. Instead, it has an “External Editor” facility that you configure, where you can invoke the other app (in this case, Photo Ninja) with a menu command in Lightroom. It’s not as seamless as, say, the plug-in approach in Photoshop, but it works. (A lot of people seem to think that Lightroom supports Photoshop-style plug-ins, but in reality it doesn’t. There is an API, but it is more limited in scope, e.g. for uploading to photo websites and things like that.) Aperture has both an external editor facility and a plug-in API, but the plug-in API is actually just an in-process version of the external editor mechanism. It creates largely the same net experience for the user, but, technically, you are not leaving the Aperture process. But from my view that’s mostly a superficial distinction. The reality is, it still creates an intermediate TIFF, and you still have to interrupt Aperture’s nondestructive flow to accommodate a “foreign” editor or filter. We have an Aperture plug-in for Noise Ninja. We might create one for Photo Ninja, but not sure yet — Photo Mechanic, Photoshop, and Lightroom seem to be a lot more popular in the user base at this point.
Prior to developing Photo Ninja, did you study other apps and how it works? Was any particular feature or deliberation from other apps were an inspiration to Photo Ninja. I found there’s a large UX gap with Photo Ninja’s Qt-based user interface and its lack of workflow-friendly feature such as batch processing or queue support to be used as a standalone image processing app, yet the pricing, and Photo Ninja’s end-to-end approach suggests otherwise.
Jim: Didn’t really study other apps very closely, I was more focused on the image processing problems. When I did try some of the others, I usually felt overwhelmed by the clutter and density of the UIs, so I wanted to avoid replicating the same thing. Batch processing will be coming soon, it’s one of top dev priorities (along with Photoshop plug-in integration). Originally it was intended to be in V1.0, but we decided to ship without it to avoid further delay. A number of the beta testers were telling me that we had reached a critical mass of functionality and that we should just get it out there so people can start benefiting from the image quality. And, as for the pricing, what we’re hearing from customers (and seeing in sales) is that the value is there in the image quality. I realize that the UI is a highly subjective area and some people have strong opinions about particular UI styles. We’re listening to feedback and we’ll probably make adjustments as we go along. We followed a similar approach with Noise Ninja — releasing once it was stable and there was enough functionality that a meaningful number of photographers could get work done with it, even if some things were missing, and then continue building on it and delivering updates fairly often. Customers responded well to that.
Does Photo Ninja uses manufacturer’s raw decoder to read raw files, or is it future-proof to read original camera raw files? What’s your thought on manufacturers raw file format? Did you learn any particular company whose raw format is superior to others?
Jim: We are currently using Dave Coffin’s DCRaw decoder for the decompression step when we open a file. (But we do everything else with our own stuff — demosaicing, etc.) I don’t think of the raw formats as “better” or “worse” than each other. They’re all a pain to work with because the manufacturers won’t document them.
Let’s talk about gears. What is your camera setup & workflow like? What computer hardware & software you use to code Photo Ninja, your website, and manage your photographs |
a promise to abolish the tax.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce on Monday again called on Scott to support a tax on Internet sales that would be offset by other tax cuts.
Scott's top aide, chief of staff Adam Hollingsworth, dismissed the idea that Scott is playing politics and said the focus is on lowering the cost of living for families.
"It's responsible governing," Hollingsworth said.
The tour opens with stops in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale today, followed by Jacksonville on Wednesday, Tampa on Thursday and Orlando on Friday. Details about the Tampa stop have yet to be released.
Aides said Scott would use Twitter to solicit suggestions from voters.
Former Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, an announced Democratic candidate for governor, tweeted this about Scott's travels: "Instead of embarking on a 4 day're-election' tour, Scott should stay home & prepare a budget that invests in & funds quality education!"
Contact Steve Bousquet at bo[email protected] or (850) 224-7263.To mark the centennial celebrations of this country, we banned vehicles from Sparks Street, turning it into this city’s premier pedestrian mall. Now, as we approach our sesquicentennial in 2017, some are musing that we should let the cars back on it.
The idea of nixing the pedestrian mall was most recently floated by a National Capital Commission advisory committee. As reported by the Citizen’s Don Butler, the committee’s thoughts on returning vehicles to the street were part of the feedback for a long-term development plan that Public Works and Government Services Canada is developing for the north side of Sparks, between Elgin and Bank streets.
What to do about Sparks has long been a discussion of debate, and every few years or so, someone invariably suggests allowing cars back the road. Those in favour of returning vehicles often point to State Street in Chicago, which ended its 17-year pedestrian-only experiment in 1996 and has been booming ever since.
Of course, State Street is home to the historic Chicago Theatre and flagship stores of some the country’s most popular national retail chains, spanning the shopping gamut from Old Navy to Anthropologie. Are cars part of what sparked State Street’s rebirth?
If so, what to make of cars being banned from Times Square? Barring vehicles from arguably the world’s most famous piazza met with plenty of skepticism (especially from cab drivers) when it was first tried in 2009. Naturally, it was an instant hit.
The reason that these projects were successful — one adding cars, one taking them away — is that both locations offer visitors plenty to do and see.
Sparks Street used to do that. According to Alain Miguelez, author of A Theatre Near You, Sparks boasted a number of cinemas, including the Regent and the Centre, both of which closed in the early 1970s. Until the mid-’90s, Place de Ville on the west end of Sparks had movie theatres. Now you can’t find a single theatre in the downtown district west of the canal (unless you count Lansdowne Park and Old Ottawa South as downtown), let alone on Sparks Street.
Another factor in the Chicago and New York wins in redeveloping their respective cities was they each had a mayor with a vision and the determination to make it happen. But with Sparks Street, it’s hard to know who should be stepping up to the plate. The city is only responsible for the actual roadway. Public Works department and the NCC own most of the actual buildings. With three different government entities involved, coming up with a bold plan becomes that much harder.
We know all the arguments. We’ve heard all the complaints. The government isn’t exactly the ideal landlord, with renovations going on sometimes for years. Rents are too high. Planning errors were made: three banks on the street make for wide swaths of deadzones on the street level, offering no evening action. The CBC headquarters has no entrance onto Sparks, providing zero-street level activity.
So what’s the solution?
More people. As the area councillor, Catherine McKenney, points out, “if you want a place to be livable, then you need people to live there.”
And people are moving into the area. The Cathedral Hill condos on the west end of Sparks are nearing completion, Ashcroft is building a boutique hotel and condos at Sparks and Metcalfe that will be open in 2018, and 35 furnished lofts and flats are available at 126 Sparks Street.
These developments will help. But if we want Sparks to be the sort of lively place that residents and visitors want to visit, we need even more people living in the downtown core so that Sparks becomes a more integral part of the city community, as opposed to a service avenue that largely keeps bankers hours.
One way to do that would be for Public Works and the NCC to turn some of their office space into rental units, although there’s no evidence that they’re interested in being in the housing game. The feds refused to entertain the idea of mixing office and residential space when considering the Tunney’s Pasture redevelopment plan.
Or the federal government could sell some of its buildings to private developers. That would certainly be controversial but a way to get more people on Sparks. The city might offer incentives to convert downtown office space to residential units.
It would take years, decades even, to get enough people living downtown to help the Sparks situation. And we seem to be trying to revitalize every part of town at once — from the ByWard Market to the old Domtar lands, to Rideau Street, to Lansdowne — while shopping centres expand and new big-box malls pop up. What if there just aren’t enough of us to rejuvenate every corner of the city that wants spiffing up?
All this to say, there’s no clear path to solving our Sparks Street woes. But it’s hard to believe that when we’re digging a trench one block south of Sparks Street as part of a $2.1-billion light-rail plan, we should encourage more people to get into their cars.
jchianello@ottawacitizen.comAuthorities say twin 97-year-old sisters apparently froze to death after falling down outside a Rhode Island home, one of them while coming to the rescue of the other. Barrington Police say Jean Haley, of Barrington, and Martha Williams, of East Providence, died Saturday. Police say the twins had returned to Haley's home with their 89-year-old sister, who is also from Barrington, Friday night after they had dinner together. Some time after the younger sister left, Williams was going to her car. Police say she fell in the driveway. When Haley went to call for help, authorities say, she tripped on a rug in her garage. The sisters were found by a neighbor Saturday morning. They were rushed to the hospital in critical condition and later died.
Authorities say twin 97-year-old sisters apparently froze to death after falling down outside a Rhode Island home, one of them while coming to the rescue of the other.
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Barrington Police say Jean Haley, of Barrington, and Martha Williams, of East Providence, died Saturday.
Police say the twins had returned to Haley's home with their 89-year-old sister, who is also from Barrington, Friday night after they had dinner together. Some time after the younger sister left, Williams was going to her car. Police say she fell in the driveway.
When Haley went to call for help, authorities say, she tripped on a rug in her garage.
The sisters were found by a neighbor Saturday morning.
They were rushed to the hospital in critical condition and later died.Surprise findings in sexual abuse victim study
Updated
A landmark Australian study has found the vast majority of people who are sexually abused as children do not become offenders themselves.
But the study finds that overall they are five times more likely than other members of the population to be charged with some sort of offence.
The researchers say the findings suggest the victims of childhood sexual abuse need more help to recover, especially during their teenage years.
The study looked at more than 2,500 cases of child sexual abuse in Victoria between 1964 and 1995.
The names and birthdates of the victims were then cross-matched with crime databases.
Author, Dr Margaret Cuttajar, is a clinical and forensic psychologist and researcher at Monash University.
She says the study is one of the largest of its kind in the world and has huge significance.
"Whilst the majority of child sexual abuse victims don't go on to commit an offence, so it's 77 per cent in this case when we compare it to the general population, we found that being a victim of child sexual abuse does increase the risk for committing offence," she said.
The study did not examine why some people who were abused as children went on to commit crimes themselves.
But Dr Cuttajar has some theories.
"One of the main questions is do the abused become the abuser? And what we found was that sexual offending was largely attributed to adolescent males," she said.
"So what we theorise adolescence is a period of psycho-sexual development, a pretty critical period where there is that heightened sexual arousal and it could be paired with cognitive distortions relating to sexual relations and even the aberrant sexual urges.
"It might be something like being attracted to a child or what the general population would consider a deviant sexual interest.
"This might come out of their own type of sexual offending where they are mirroring that later in life where they have the belief systems that might suggest that this is normal."
Dr Cuttajar says the study's findings suggest that victims of childhood sexual abuse need more help from psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, especially during adolescence.
"Not just focusing on the trauma of the sexual abuse but also teaching them about positive sexuality," she said.
"Just in terms of developing the healthier ideas of what a sexual relationship is and respect."
The study has been published on the website of the Australian Institute of Criminology.
Topics: sexual-offences, law-crime-and-justice, child-abuse, australia
First postedFrozen Lobsters Brought Back To Life
BOSTON -- Call it cryonics for crustaceans. A Connecticut company says its frozen lobsters sometimes come back to life when thawed.
Trufresh began freezing lobsters with a technique it used for years on salmon after an offhand suggestion by some workers. It found that some lobsters revived after their subzero sojourns.
Now, Trufresh is looking for partners to begin selling the lobsters commercially. The company was scheduled to attend the International Boston Seafood Show, which began Sunday, armed with video showing two undead lobsters squirming around after being frozen stiff in a minus-40 degree chemical brine for several minutes.
Company chairman Barnet L. Liberman acknowledged that its lobster testing is limited and only about 12 of roughly 200 healthy, hard shell lobsters survived the freezing. In addition, the company hasn't researched how long a frozen lobster can survive -- overnight is the longest period so far.
Liberman emphasized the company's goal isn't to provide customers with lobsters that always come back to life. He just wants to supply tasty lobsters.
But frozen lobster can't be much fresher than "still alive" and Trufresh hasn't hesitated to tout their lobsters' restorative qualities. For instance, the company plans to ship the lobsters with rubber bands on the claws, as a consumer protection measure.
"I wouldn't remove the rubber bands," Liberman said. "It's not worth the risk."
Bonnie Spinazzola of the Offshore Lobstermen's Association in Candia, N.H, had her doubts about Lazarus-like lobsters entering the existing frozen lobster market.
"I've never heard of it and I don't know if I believe it," she said. "It might be a robo-lobster."
Trufresh is based in Suffield, Conn., but has salmon operations in Lubec, Maine, a community on the Bay of Fundy that's the easternmost town in the United States. A few years ago, some workers with lobstering experience suggested freezing lobsters the same way they froze their salmon, which are far too dead (and filleted) to ever be revived.
First, the lobster's metabolism is slowed in below-freezing sea water and then it's immersed in the minus-40 degree brine. Liberman said the lobster freezes so quickly that damage to muscle tissue cells from the formation of ice crystals is minimized.
The lobsters are then thawed in 28-degree sea water. A marketing video from the company shows the lobsters freely wriggling around after about two and a half hours.
The first time they tried it, Trufresh froze about 30 lobsters and two came back to life, Liberman said. But the company wasn't in the lobster business and never pursued it.
Now, Trufresh is trying to expand its product line as it launches a retail business on the Internet. If it can find partners to catch the lobster and process it, Liberman said Trufresh can be selling them within months.
Robert Bayer of the University of Maine's Lobster Institute said he was intrigued about the Trufresh process, but dubious. Seafood freezing methods similar to Trufresh's have existed for years, but there have been no reports of undead lobsters, he said.
"I'm guess I am skeptical about a lobster being brought back to life," Bayer said. "But I'm willing to be shown."During his third trip to Hy-Vee in a week, Ben Passer finally found what he was looking for.
On an end cap in the frozen-meals aisle, two boxes of limited-edition gingerbread spice Life cereal sat inconspicuously on the top shelf. Passer grabbed a box and photographed his find right in the middle of the store. Later, he shared it on his junk food-fueled Instagram account.
“Edy’s has a new pumpkin spice latte flavor that might be here, too,” he said, glancing at notes on his iPhone. “The fun but maddening thing is if I don’t find it, I’ll go to two or three more stores until I do.”
Best known as @snackcellar to his 26,000 followers on Instagram, Passer has created what he calls a “classy place for not-so-classy food.”
The 28-year-old lawyer works out religiously, then eats ice cream, chips, Oreos, Ding Dongs, M&Ms — basically all of the foods that many people try to avoid — so that he can review them for his thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and his website snackcellar.com.
This would make Passer, in Instagram terms, a “micro-influencer.” Because his posts theoretically influence his audience to buy the latest flavor of Pop-Tarts and Doritos, Passer has earned a seat at the snack food industry table. Food brands are increasingly relying on people like him to satisfy the internet’s constant craving for more flavors of their favorite junk foods.
“[Influencers] play a key role in cultural relevance and consumers’ consideration process,” said Brad Hiranaga, General Mills vice president of marketing. “The value of working with influencers is that their followers trust their opinions and see the information and experiences they share as personally relevant.”
Ben Passe found a new Life cereal at Hy-Vee to share on his website snackcellar.com and Instagram account @snackcellar.
Recently, Passer posted a photo of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites that received 2,972 “likes” and 297 comments from followers expressing excitement and asking where they can find the product.
It’s no wonder food companies and their PR firms court people like Passer. The payout is small, but the payoff is priceless.
“It’s a unique and goofy niche that a lot of people get enjoyment from,” Passer said. “Snacks are having a moment right now.”
Freezer full of Oreos
Reviewing junk food might seem like an unusual hobby, but updating a website with hundreds of reviews and an Instagram account with thousands of fans is serious business.
The kitchen cabinets of Passer’s upper-level St. Paul duplex are stocked with the latest snack creations: Dunkin’ Donuts mocha Oreos, pumpkin spice Nutri-Grain Bars, cheeseburger Cheez-It crackers and Hostess Butterfinger brownies.
“We didn’t always have 14 packages of Oreos in our freezer,” said Passer’s wife, Hailey. “In our old apartment, he started allocating room in our closet for the special-edition Oreos.”
The dining room table serves as a makeshift photo studio, where Passer photographs new snack products and limited-edition flavors with an old Nikon point-and-shoot camera and a desk lamp he’s had since college.
Ben Passer takes photos of pumpkin pie Rice Krispies Treats for his website snackcellar.com and Instagram account @snackcellar.
After taking photos of a 40-count box of pumpkin pie flavor Rice Krispies Treats, Passer peels back the foil wrapper and takes a bite.
“It’s decent,” he says. “To me, this tastes like a Rice Krispies Treat. The spice comes in at the end.”
In a review to come later, Passer will go into greater detail about the snack’s flavor, texture, price and nutritional content.
A sample: “These Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites are salty. Like, ‘Auntie Anne’s pretzels that you buy at the mall because you’re not gonna fit in that pair of jeans you want anyway salty,’ ” Passer wrote in one of his most popular reviews. He went on: “The fleeting sweetness from the filling almost instantly gives way to the overpowering saltiness of the dough, which has minimal cinnamon sugar flavor despite its outer coating.”
Passer insists he isn’t schlepping snacks (and calories) just for the social media “likes”; he’s driven by the thrill of the hunt for something new, an excitement he can’t explain, but one that he remembers from his childhood.
“I was always drawn to new ad campaigns,” he said. “I remember in my teens there were new cleaning products that would come out. I was like ‘Whoa, I have to get this new Spray ’n Wash.’ ”
The thrill of the hunt
For Passer, this journey into junk food Nirvana started with special-edition Oreos.
When he heard about Oreo Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies a few years ago, he obsessively tracked them down. That excitement led to more quests for other new junk foods and eventually sharing his findings on Instagram.
Passer admits the indulgence factor of the high-calorie foods was a welcome diversion from his career as a lawyer at a local energy policy nonprofit and a way to offset the daily grind of working out and eating healthy.
“I needed more balance in my life,” he said. “It’s a point of enjoyment for me and a lot of other people.”
In less than two years, Passer’s Instagram account has grown to 26,000 followers who look to him for the latest junk food news. And with followers come freebies. Pillsbury, Keebler, Hostess and Ben and Jerry’s send product samples for Passer to review.
“We know it’s critical to reach people where they’re at, which is often on social platforms,” Hiranaga said. “Influencers can help uniquely build and amplify our brand stories, particularly if we work with influencers who are genuine fans of our brands.”
A fan, he is. Passer insists he won’t partner with a brand if he doesn’t think the products align with what his followers want — new, unusual, exciting, gluttonous junk food. And if he knows he’s biased against a particular food (he can’t stand candy corn) he won’t review that, either.
To keep his followers happy, Passer tries to find new products as soon as they hit stores. But because his @snackcellar Instagram account is relatively new (he created it in 2016 with a post about Taco Bell’s street tacos), he doesn’t yet have any insiders to tip him off on new product arrivals.
Instead, after he’s done working — and working out — Passer spends evenings and weekends snack-hunting. A few times a week, he makes the rounds to Walmart, Target, Cub Foods and Hy-Vee. He also signs up for company news releases and checks store websites daily, which will sometimes list items before they’re on shelves. Other times he follows the lead of bigger junk food influencers, such as @junkbanter, another snack-obsessed Instagram account with 138,000 followers.
“There’s a level of friendly competition when it comes to reviewing these products,” Passer said. “We want to help each other grow our followings, but if you’re first, people see you as the person to follow for information about their favorite snacks.”
Late-night snack hunting is paying off. In May, Passer landed a big-time food sponsorship with Ben and Jerry’s and a trip to the company’s headquarters in Vermont, where he had dinner with co-founder Ben Cohen.
“That was an incredible experience,” Passer said. “If you’d told me two years ago I’d be sitting down with the CEO of Ben and Jerry’s at dinner, I would’ve laughed at you.”
Passer hasn’t given much thought to where he might want to take his newfound “instafame,” but says he won’t be leaving his legal job anytime soon.
“It’s been a fun ride,” he said. “Where it goes from here I don’t really know.”
@aimeeblanchetteWhen Michael Moore appeared with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday, he repeatedly confounded the conservative interviewer by invoking a religious basis for his positions while laughing openly at Hannity’s fear of al Qaeda.
Hannity began by charging Moore with being “an unapologetic socialist,” to which Moore replied, “Christian. … I believe in what Jesus said. … Jesus is very clear about the rich man is going to have a very hard time getting into Heaven.”
“I’m a Christian,” Hannity insisted. “I’m very generous.”
“Did you go to mass this past Sunday?” Moore asked. “What was the sermon about?”
“I don’t remember,” Hannity confessed, as Moore chortled, “You didn’t go!”
Hannity, however, did his best to shrug this off. “Well, you’re rich,” he jabbed. “The capitalist system allowed you to get here. … Do you think Fidel Castro would allow you to produce a movie and make millions of dollars trashing his system? … You’d be killed.”
“You’re still following that line?” Moore asked incredulously. “What about the murder that’s been done in our name in the last decade? … That’s the real issue, isn’t is? What’s been done in our name, in our Christian name, to Iraq, in Afghanistan, these other places?”
“They were at war with us!” Hannity insisted, pointing to “the terrorists that attacked the World Trade Center.”
“The terrorists are criminal thugs,” Moore replied firmly. “They’re not warriors. … You’re making them out to be such a big thing, like they’re equal to us. Are you kidding me? Only a wuss would be afraid of that?”
“If they ever get the bomb…” Hannity began, but Moore just laughed at him.
“Why do we invade another country that did nothing to us, that wasn’t a threat?” Moore charged, speaking of the invasion of Iraq. “This is all going to come out. … I hope there’ll be trials within the Obama administration. I hope the Justice Department will go down that road.”
Moore then returned to the subject of al Qaeda, asking Hannity, “How many of them are there, by the way? … We’re the United States of America, man! Come on! You’re afraid of a few hundred guys on monkey bars?”
“Millions,” Hannity insisted. “Millions that buy into Islamic fanaticism.”
“All religions have their fanatics,” Moore replied.
“Are you one?” Hannity asked.
“Yes,” Moore laughed. “I believe that when Jesus said that you’re to love your neighbor as yourself… you’re to love your enemy. Do you love your enemy? … You love al Qaeda, then?”
“I love them in the sense that I want to destroy them,” Hannity replied.
“I don’t think that’s the love Jesus was talking about,” Moore concluded.
This video is from Fox News’ Hannity, broadcast Oct. 6, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.comNot at home? Amazon Key would let people walk in to drop off packages
Another tech heavyweight has established a Pittsburgh presence.
Seattle-based Amazon officially opened a small corporate office Tuesday in South Side Works.
The 50 Amazon employees will work on machine translation and in departments like Alexa, the digital assistant in Amazon’s Echo device, and Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing arm, said Bill Kaper, general manager of the new Pittsburgh office and a Butler County native.
“Pittsburgh is a city of phenomenal tech talent. Both CMU and the University of Pittsburgh are training some of the best and brightest software engineers and research scientists,” Kaper said.
Alon Lavie, an adjunct faculty member at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and senior manager at Amazon’s Pittsburgh office in charge of the machine translation research and development group, said his group is developing technology that will help Amazon business groups translate their products and services into all the languages in which the company operates.
Amazon acquired in September 2015 a CMU spin-off company founded by Lavie and a fellow professor, Robert Olszewski. Safaba Translation Solutions developed automated translation products for large companies like Dell and PayPal.
Cubicles filled most of the workspace. There is a lounge with a pingpong table and checkerboard and a kitchen. A poster of a cat floating in outer space with lasers coming out of its eyes and grasping at a slice of pepperoni pizza hung on a pillar in the office. Kaper said the office culture would be similar to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, where employees can take their dog to work and wear shorts and flip-flops. The office first opened in August.
Tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Google, Facebook and others have offices scattered throughout Pittsburgh. Amazon operates a sort center in the West End neighborhood of Fairywood that employs hundreds, but its South Side office is the first to tap into Pittsburgh’s tech talent pool.
Andrew Moore, dean of CMU’s School of Computer Science, said Amazon locating its translation work in Pittsburgh makes sense. Amazon’s technology relies on artificial intelligence to translate. Pittsburgh, Moore said, is the birthplace of AI.
“As that history has carried along, it has been wonderful to see how it affected the economic development of Pittsburgh with wonderful opportunities such as the one Amazon is beginning today to bring in whole new revolutionary technologies into the world and introduce them from Pittsburgh,” Moore said.
Amazon also gave a $10,000 donation to Community Human Services, where some of its employees have volunteered since coming to Pittsburgh. Jon Hoffmann, COO of Community Human Services, said the money will operate the organization’s food pantry for a month and will service 2,000 and provide 24,000 pounds of produce.
Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach Aupperlee at aaupperlee@tribweb.com or 412-336-8448.
Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff reporter. You can contact Aaron at 412-320-7986, aaupperlee@tribweb.com or via Twitter.Republican lawmakers have kept their distance from the National Rifle Association (NRA) during the debate over gun laws in Congress, even as many have echoed the powerful lobby’s arguments against President Obama’s agenda.
While polls suggest more than half the country approves of the NRA, the aggressive approach by its outspoken vice president, Wayne LaPierre, has led to some criticism of the group — and claims by some Republicans that they could be hurt by association.
“The NRA has made it more difficult for members to vote with them based on their statements,” said former Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), a centrist Republican who received an “F” rating from the group when he served in the House. “They look so stubborn, so out of touch with the mood of the country.”
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Yet the NRA's approach has also been effective: Obama has struggled to win GOP support for legislation to expand background checks on gun purchases and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Republicans leading the charge against the president’s gun-control proposals are not touting their alliance with the NRA, and they have not endorsed LaPierre’s call for Congress to appropriate funds to put armed guards in schools across the country. But they have built a bulwark against efforts by gun-control advocates to win far-reaching changes to gun laws, despite the national shock of the Newtown, Conn. elementary school killings that left 20 six- and seven-year-olds dead.
Sen. Mike Lee Michael (Mike) Shumway LeePush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times MORE (R-Utah) last week won majority support in the Senate for his non-binding budget amendment calling for any gun legislation to require a two-thirds majority for passage. He received the NRA’s endorsement in 2010 and, along with Sens. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE (R-Texas), he is vowing to try to block gun legislation from even coming to the Senate floor.
“While they certainly wind up on the same side of the aisle a lot of the time, the senator comes at this from both a constitutional and public safety perspective,” Lee spokesman Brian Phillips said. “It’s not like he’s been sitting down and reading NRA materials to determine what he believes. He knows what he believes.”
Phillips said he did not know whether Lee backed LaPierre’s proposal for federally funded guards in every school. “To the extent that they can drive attention to an issue, that’s helpful,” he said.
The NRA is a popular ally for Republicans and many Democrats during campaign season, when candidates in rural and conservative districts vie for the endorsement of the organization’s political arm. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-Nev.) appeared with LaPierre at an event touting the opening of a new shooting range in Nevada during his reelection campaign in 2010. The gun group contributed about $650,000 to 261 House and Senate candidates in 2012, with 90 percent going to Republicans, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
The organization has taken a public relations hit, however, in the months since the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. LaPierre drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for a defiant speech he delivered weeks after the shooting, during which he rejected calls for new gun restrictions, made his proposal for armed guards in schools and blamed the media and Hollywood for violence in American culture.
Polls taken since the shooting and after LaPierre’s public statement have shown a dip in the NRA’s public image, although a majority of respondents, 54 percent, still held a favorable opinion of the group in a late-December Gallup survey.
Vice President Biden has argued that the politics of gun control have changed in the nearly two decades since Congress passed an assault weapons ban, which was blamed in part for the Democrats’ loss of their majorities in the House and Senate in 1994. Yet with the passage of any new gun restrictions in doubt, Biden’s analysis could prove erroneous.
“If it’s changed, it’s changed slightly,” said Shays, who is now at the University of New Haven after losing a bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in Connecticut last year.
While Democrats will eye the fallout in a general election matchup, Republicans now worry about a primary challenge if they support gun-control measures, Shays said. “In the end, I think members will do real calculation on whether this vote will cost them the election,” he said.
Although Republicans are not lining up to stand shoulder to shoulder with LaPierre, the NRA’s vaunted lobbying influence, now being tested by a group financed by billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), has always been strongest behind the scenes.
The chief argument from Republicans opposed to a universal background check system — that it would lead to a national gun registry — is the same one the NRA has made in its public statements and advertisements.
Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) received an endorsement and $9,900 in total donations from the NRA in 2012, tied for the most the group gave to any House Republican in that election. In a statement to The Hill, Renacci made no mention of the NRA. He said he was “heartbroken” by the tragedy at Sandy Hook, but that when it came to gun legislation, “any restrictions on our Second Amendment rights must be narrowly tailored and meet the strictest standard of scrutiny our judiciary can apply.”
Renacci spokesman Shawn Ryan noted that the NRA endorsed his opponent during a congressional race in 2010 but that the congressman’s views on the Second Amendment are the same now as then. “While Jim is proud to have earned the support of the NRA in 2012, his strong belief in the Second Amendment is clearly independent of the decisions made by the NRA,” Ryan said. “Jim’s lawmaking decisions are guided by the Constitution, his conscience and his constituents – not by special interest groups.”
A spokesman for the NRA did not respond to a request for comment.HD Mining International says it hired workers from China because the Canadians who applied for the jobs weren't qualified. (iStock)
The Federal Court of Canada has dismissed a challenge launched by two unions against a company that hired more than 200 temporary workers from China for its coal mine in northeastern B.C.
The International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 115, and the Construction and Specialized Workers Union have claimed HD Mining was granted permits to bring 201 temporary foreign workers from China after it rejected multiple Canadian applicants with exemplary qualifications.
But the court upheld an immigration officer’s decision to allow the temporary foreign mining workers into B.C., saying the officer’s assessment was not unreasonable.
HD Mining International issued a statement applauding the decision.
"This is a complete vindication of our company, but it has come at a great cost and has raised significant questions in the international investment community," said a statement issued by the company.
"During these months of litigation, the unions made many allegations – both in court and the media – which we frankly found appalling," said the statement.
"We knew this litigation was driven by a political agenda and we knew we needed to wait for a Canadian court to reject these claims. It has taken a long time, but today is that day."
The office of the federal Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Diane Finley issued a brief statement saying the government respects the court's decision.
"Our government is taking decisive action for Canadian workers by reforming the temporary foreign worker program and making sure that Canadians workers are always put first," said the statement issued by the minister's press secretary Jan O'Driscoll.
Federal officer did not err, judge ruled
In his decision, Justice Russel Zinn concluded that the federal officer who approved the temporary foreign work permits made a reasonable assessment, based on the labour market conditions and the company's efforts to hire Canadians.
"The real question is whether there was anything before the officer from which he should reasonably have concluded that the applicant had failed to make reasonable efforts to hire Canadians.
"In approaching that question, one must keep in mind that there was a labour shortage in the mining industry, that CDI’s application had been approved only 12 months earlier for the same project, and that CDI and HD Mining both did recruitment.
"The [unions'] submission is that the few persons interviewed from those who applied ought to have raised the officer’s suspicion that the recruitment was not genuine. I find nothing to support that view given the background described and particularly given that the decision was being made by an experienced program officer.
"Further, despite the submissions made by counsel, I do not share the view that the low number of interviews alone would have reasonably raised a concern that the recruitment process was not genuine or sincere."
No qualified Canadians found
HD Mining International says it hired 201 workers from China for its coal mine in Tumbler Ridge because the 300 Canadians who applied for the jobs weren't qualified.
The company claims no other mine in Canada uses a method it plans to employ at its Murray River project in Tumbler Ridge.
The technique is called long-wall mining — coal is extracted along a wall in large blocks and then carried out on a conveyor belt.
The federal government, which approved the plan to bring the miners in on temporary work permits, is reviewing the whole temporary worker program.AL MUKALLA, Yemen — Maj. Mortada al-Youssefi has more to worry about as commander of a government military unit in Yemen than the enemy. He has also had to figure out how to stop hundreds of his own men from walking off the battlefield over not being paid.
He is one of the many Yemeni officials who have been struggling to contain the growing anger of pro-government fighters over payment delays from the Saudi-led Arab coalition that has been propping up the divided country’s president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and for the past 18 months fighting his main opponents, the Houthi militias that rule much of the country.
The Saudis may be well financed in their campaign against the Houthis, who come from the north of Yemen, but they are very slow to pay, according to the Yemenis.
Speaking by telephone from the embattled city of Taiz, Major Youssefi recalled how he had calmed down his fighters. “We told them it would negatively impact our image,” he said. “And we agreed to give the married soldiers a week or two off to go work to feed their children.” The soldiers immediately accepted the deal and took turns leaving their posts in small groups to find temporary employment elsewhere, he said.IN THE LEGO MOVIE, an epiphany transforms Emmet, the everyman hero, into a master builder. Seeing Lego part numbers superimposed on every brick in his universe, he realizes that, for the first time, he can build incredible designs from his imagination, with no instructions.
This scene triggered my own epiphany. I realized what sets master builders apart: They dive deep. They can name every piece of what they’re building. Suddenly, it seemed inevitable. That database must actually exist. Ninety seconds of web searching later, I found Rebrickable.
Using a list of Lego sets you own, Rebrickable can generate a list of other sets you can build (including brilliant hobbyist designs), with links to instructions. This list is ranked by the percentage of pieces |
and chemical signals to communicate, explains Kevin Bennet, the lead engineer on the project, monitoring each type of data could provide more complete information about what is going on. The group intends to test Harmoni first in patients with movement disorders. But, ultimately, the scientists hope to extend combined chemical and electrical monitoring to psychiatric disorders. “Those will be the most difficult to treat,” says Bennet. “The symptoms are harder to detect and quantify.”
Bronte-Stewart projects that testing might begin in about five years for the first implantable, closed-loop DBS devices for Parkinson's disease, with psychiatric applications following close behind. It is not clear whether Donobedian and other current research volunteers could be easily upgraded to those systems; much depends on the precise design of the devices. But even if he does not benefit directly from the data he is generating, Donobedian is glad to participate.
“Somebody had to give to me, to get this far,” he says. “If there's a chance for me to give something back without too much effort, I'd like to help.”Senator Leahy Wants To Give At Least $5 Million To State Department To 'Combat Piracy'
from the spread-the-money-around dept
CIVILIAN JUDICIAL AND SECURITY PROGRAMS.—$899,600,000 for assistance for rule of law, justice, corrections, anti-crime, cyber crime, civilian police, and security sector reform programs, of which not less than $5,000,000 shall be made available to combat piracy of United States copyright materials, consistent with the requirements of section 688 (a) and (b) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2008
Last week, we wrote about a proposal in Congress to give ICE (part of Homeland Security) at least another $10 million for the next year to continue its program of censoring websites in the name of "stopping piracy." Of course, when Congress and Hollywood get together, they never put all their eggs in just one basket. So, it should come as no surprise that in another appropriations bill, this time for the State Department, and put forth by Senator Patrick Leahy -- who also introduced PIPA -- there's another chunk of "anti-piracy" cash. The bill sets forth $899,600,000 for "civil judicial and security programs." But, amazingly, the only program that is specifically called out with a specific amount is to "combat piracy."If you're curious about sections 688 (a) and (b) as mentioned in this bill, you can see them here. They just authorize the State Department to "provide training" to foreign judges and prosecutors on intellectual property law. That is, it's part of the US's official IP propaganda program to convince foreign judges and prosecutors that strict interpretations of IP laws are the only way to go.A couple years ago, we wrote in more detail about how the State Department spends these funds, and it's not pretty. Basically, we send copyright maximalist lawyers to other countries -- countries that have their own copyright laws -- and tell judges and federal prosecutors there that they need to enforce US-style copyright maximalist laws.I'm really not sure how that's an appropriate use of taxpayer money.
Filed Under: homeland security, ice, patrick leahy, pipa, propaganda, state departmentGeorgian College ranks first in overall international student satisfaction among 11 Ontario colleges and sixth globally among 182 institutions that participated in the 2016 International Student Barometer (ISB) autumn wave survey. The ISB survey is the largest and most extensive survey of international students globally.
The survey covers four categories, spanning arrival experience, learning, living and support. Georgian’s highest scores included such key areas as program content, expert lecturers, quality housing, learning support, online and physical libraries, arrival support, visa advice, safety, campus environment and orientation.
The survey included almost 160,000 students from 182 institutions in 17 countries. More than 700 Georgian students responded to the survey. It was administered online by the International Graduate Insight Group to students attending postsecondary institutions outside their home country.
“Our faculty and staff are very proud of this high praise from our international students,” said Georgian President and CEO MaryLynn West-Moynes. “We don’t do this alone – we are fortunate to have the support of the Segal family, who funded the Segal International Centre, as well as strong partners such as local school boards, Lakehead University, CFB Borden, Simcoe County, Barrie, Orillia and Grey/Bruce County. All of them help us recruit students to this great part of the world and provide them with amazing experiences.
“I am particularly grateful to our Homestay hosts who welcome international students into their homes so they can experience life with a Canadian family. It’s a win-win. Our entire Georgian community benefits from the cross-cultural experience of having international students in the classroom and hopefully many of our stellar international graduates will stay and help us meet the workforce shortages we are facing.”
Georgian has been growing in popularity with international students over the past several years. In 2013, the college’s international student population was almost 700 students from over 40 countries. In 2017, that number has swelled to more than 1,500 international students from over 65 different countries.
Leslie Palson, Georgian’s dean of International Education and Development, said the results of the ISB survey are a true indicator of how satisfied international students are to be studying at Georgian.
“The survey findings reflect how valuable our international students are to the communities in which Georgian serves,” she said. “Georgian’s dedication to the success of all students is what sets us apart and it is apparent that our international study body benefits from the valuable services and supports. We will continually strive to surpass their expectations.”
Gabriele Dibenedetto, an Italian citizen who is studying computer programming at the Barrie Campus, said Georgian is truly a place he can call home.
“My first stop was the International Centre, which has been a fundamental part of my experience in Canada. Other services, such as Student Success and First Year Experience services have also been invaluable,” Dibenedetto said. “I have learned many things during my stay at Georgian; not just academically, but also things that I’m sure will help me in life. I learned the value of volunteering and work, which ultimately made me a better person. It has been a very edifying experience and I hope current and future Georgian students will experience the same.”This newly released Denver jail video shows a sheriff's deputy provoking a fight with an inmate by throwing taekwondo kicks and punches at him.A Denver sheriff's deputy who provoked a fight with an inmate by using taekwondo kicks and punches has been suspended for 90 days.Deputy Roberto Roena received his suspension July 29 for the fight that occurred in April 2013, according to his disciplinary letter obtained by The Denver Post. Roena was punished for using excessive force and making inaccurate and misleading statements about the incident, the letter said.The 15 months it took to discipline Roena supports a common complaint that it takes too long for deputies to be punished after they break a department policy. A recent Post analysis of disciplinary records from January 2012 to mid-July 2014 found that it takes longer than 10 months for the typical case to be adjudicated.Sheriff's department internal investigators determined that Roena had provoked a fight with inmate John Cardenas, who had a reputation as a violent inmate.According to Roena's disciplinary letter, Cardenas was angry because he and other inmates were told they only had a 30-minute break outside their cells rather than an hour. Cardenas had been making threats, but the deputies guarding the cell appeared to ignore him and had left a sliding security door open.Roena, a 15-year department veteran, was on court duty the day of the fight but had gone to a cell block at the Downtown Detention Center to visit other deputies. He spoke to the other deputies about his fitness and exercise routine, which included martial arts.Roena was a taekwondo instructor and, in 2012, had been invited to Cuba to teach a class on the martial art, the disciplinary letter said.After the fight, Roena wrote in a mandatory use-of-force report that Cardenas was the aggressor.Roena said he responded with defensive tactics, including the side kick, to protect himself.However, the video told a different story, the letter said.A United Nations climate report is being slammed by climate scientists as “alarmist,” but that hasn’t stopped environmental groups from fundraising off it.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the latest update to its fifth climate assessment, laying out the dangers the world faces from rising global temperatures.
“The stark warning: There isn’t a place on earth that isn’t already feeling the effects of climate change,” the Environmental Defense Fund wrote in an email to supporters. “Even if we slash emissions immediately, societies around the globe will have to take major steps to adapt to warming we’re already seeing. And it will get worse.”
“Over the next few days, we’ll have more to say about this report and what it means in our fight to avoid climate catastrophe,” the EDF email continued. “For now, your donation today to our 2014 Annual Fund is the most important step you can take to support our all-out effort to fight for climate action here in the U.S. and around the world.”
The IPCC’s report doubles down on claims that global warming poses a huge risk to future generations. The report says that warming has been felt “on all continents and across the ocean” and that countries could see their lands shrink and natural resources become more scarce as the world warms.
“We’re all sitting ducks,” Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer, one of the report’s main authors, told the Associated Press.
But the IPCC report has been called “too alarmist” by one of the report’s authors who pulled out of drafting the document. Richard Tol, an economist at Sussex University said that the report downplayed any potential benefits of global warming, including fewer deaths in winter and increased crop production in some areas of the world.
“The drafts became too alarmist,” Tol told Reuters, adding that other authors of the report “strongly disagree with me.”
“It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them,” he added.
Tol is not the only UN expert tasked with drafting its comprehensive climate report. In the past, other experts have had some strong words for the UN IPCC report and the integrity of its scientific studies.
“I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors,” climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who served as a lead author on the UN IPCC’s third 3rd assessment report in 2001, told CNN in May 2007.
“And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol,” Christy added.
Christopher Landsea, a hurricane expert at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, resigned from working on the UN IPCC’s fourth climate report after working on the group’s 1995 report and 2001 report. Landsea wrote a public letter in January 2005 saying he was withdrawing from the UN because “I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized.”
“In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns,” Landsea wrote. “I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.”
Regardless of what scientists have said in the past about the IPCC’s review process, environmentalists are still playing up the dire predictions of the panel’s latest report.
“This is a serious moment and, as today’s IPCC report underscores, time is running out,” the EDF told supporters. “What we do together in the coming days, weeks and months could make a huge difference in this fight. I hope we can count on your Annual Fund support today to help us respond the growing climate threat.”
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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.17 Pages Posted: 19 Jun 2014 Last revised: 8 May 2017
Date Written: June 17, 2014
Abstract
We use the classes of systematized ethics in Deirdre McCloskey's "The Bourgeois Virtues" to understand characters in HBO’s "The Wire" and the story of "The Wire" to understand the bourgeois ethics of the marketplace. McCloskey argues that the introduction of a new system of bourgeois ethics, distinct from the age-old ethical systems of the aristocrat, peasant, and priest classes, is responsible for the exponential growth in world GDP per capita since 1800. We explore the difference in ethical systems present in both "The Wire’s" West Baltimore drug economy in the 2000s and the world economy around 1800, aristocratic and bourgeois, and the challenge in transitioning from the broad poverty maintenance of the former system to the wealth-creating potential of the latter. The story of "The Wire" provides a rich case study in this clash.Sixty-five years ago, when post-war austerity was at its grimmest, Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, whose aim as a publisher was to make the best available to the many at a price they could afford, launched Penguin Classics, which embodied his ideal. Its first title – a new translation of Homer’s Odyssey – went on to sell over three million copies, confirming Lane’s reputation for combining the mercenary and the missionary.
Lane was not the first to publish cheap editions of the classics, but he pioneered the up-market paperback.
He also took particular care about the design of his books. Masterminded by the great typographer Jan Tschichold, the early Penguin Classics have become collectors’ items. Lane was an early proponent of colour coding, and the borders for the jackets were printed in different colours – red for translations from Russian, green for French, and so on.
By the early Sixties, Penguin was facing competition from rival paperback publishers, and booksellers began to tire of their uniform lettering jackets; and when, in 1961, it launched its Modern Classics list, drawings and paintings by artists such as David Gentleman and Quentin Blake were beautifully combined with the elegant typography and layouts provided by Hans Schmoller and Romek Marber.
The opening salvo of titles included The Great Gatsby, Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise. The list went on to include such writers as Evelyn Waugh, Robert Graves, Albert Camus and Thomas Mann.
Penguin Modern Classics have been subjected to several facelifts in the 50 years since they were launched: current strong sellers include Hans Fallada’s cult novel Alone in Berlin, as well as old favourites such as 1984 and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The elegant typography endures, as does the long-standing livery of grey and white.
Penguin has produced 50 new books, each containing an outstanding short story, to celebrate its anniversary. Allen Lane would surely approve.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Penguin Modern Classics, the Telegraph is giving away two Mini Modern Classics. On Saturday, readers will receive a copy of Babylon Revisited by F Scott Fitzgerald and on Sunday The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James.The Danish capital is considering permanent solutions for increased safety in the city centre following the Friday terror attack in Stockholm, said Frank Jensen, the lord mayor of Copenhagen.
Concrete barrier blocks that were temporarily installed in the pedestrian zone after the truck terror attack on Christmas market in Berlin may become a permanent feature of the city – decorated with flowerpots or replaced by trees.
The national police have also increased their focus on suspicious vehicles.
READ MORE: Denmark boosts security following Berlin truck attack
Meanwhile, the Danish security intelligence agency (PET) has announced the current threat level in Denmark remains unchanged at ‘severe’.
On Saturday, the Swedish police arrested a 39-year-old man who they suspect was responsible for the attack in Stockholm, which left four dead and 15 injured.
The suspect, who is reportedly from Uzbekistan, hijacked a truck and crashed into the front of Ahlens department store on the pedestrian street of Drottninggatan in the city centre.
To signal solidarity with the victims of the attack, Danish flags will fly at half-mast today on Christiansborg, the Copenhagen City Hall and on the buildings of the Ministry of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Defense.Concerns around the SegWit2x Hardfork
SegWit2x Overview
Anyone can create a chain fork of Bitcoin at any time. The SegWit2x hardfork (B2X) is structured in such a way that we consider it potentially dangerous, therefore we feel compelled to clarify our position.
SegWit2x (B2X) is a proposal to double Bitcoin’s transaction capacity limit. More precisely, it is an increase in the maximum block weight, to 8MB from 4MB. This is very similar to the recent Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hardfork (also an increase to 8MB), which occurred in August. However SegWit2x does not include crucial safety features, which Bitcoin Cash included.
The SegWit2x hardfork is expected to occur on around 16th November 2017 (Block number 494,784). The change is incompatible with the current Bitcoin ruleset and therefore a new coin may be created.
The Hong Kong Bitcoin Community - Stance
Hong Kong has a diverse and lively Bitcoin community. While enthusiasts, developers, entrepreneurs and traders might have diverging views and opinions on how to scale Bitcoin and eventual hard forks, we are united by our commitment to Bitcoin.
In our personal conversations at meetups and events as well as through a formal poll conducted in mid-October, we found that the vast majority of the Hong Kong Bitcoin community does not support the Segwit2X hard fork. While many have voiced clear and stark opposition to Segwit2X, the lack of enthusiastic support for this fork among the community is striking.
Below you can find an overview over some Hong Kong Bitcoin companies and their declared Segwit2X policies and contingency plans. If you would like to add your Hong Kong firm, feel free to make a pull request.
Signatories of the New York Agreement
ANX & Octagon Strategy [Statement]
Will shut down deposits/withdrawals during the fork, will NOT be supporting the Segwit2X fork in the near term.
BitClub Network
No statement or policy available.
BTCC [Statement]
Bitcoin is chain with most Proof-of-work, B2X will be allocated to each user
Genesis Mining
No statement or policy available.
Non-signatories of the New York Agreement
Bitfinex [Statement]
Original chain is Bitcoin, B2X will be allocated to each user
BitMEX [Statement]
Original chain is Bitcoin, B2X will not be allocated to each user
Bitspark
Will decide in mutual agreement with each remittance partner based on liquidity and reliability of each chain
Cryptomover [Statement]
Original chain is Bitcoin, B2X will be allocated to each user
Gatecoin [Statement]
Original chain is Bitcoin, B2X will not be allocated to each user
Genesis Block
ATMs will only dispense BTC as defined by Bitfinex
HKBitcoinATM
ATMs will only dispense BTC as defined by the legacy chain
OKCoin [Statement]
Original chain is Bitcoin, B2X will be allocated to each user
Tidebit
Original chain is Bitcoin, B2X will be allocated to each user
Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong - Stance
Given its possible harm to Bitcoin users and the unclarity about its outcome, we resolutely oppose the Segwit2X hard fork proposal.
Proponents of B2X hope the new coin becomes known as Bitcoin, however which coin is known as Bitcoin is not up to the proponents of any particular new token. Should anyone want to conduct a hardfork and for the new token to be regarded as Bitcoin, the proponents of the hardfork should kindly ask the Bitcoin community to support them and then only proceed with the hardfork if there is widespread community support. With respect to SegWit2x, this was not done.
In the event that the proponents of a hardfork wish to proceed anyway, due to a dispute about whether or not there exists widespread community support for the hardfork, investors and traders may decide which coin has the highest value. In order for this market process to work smoothly, without causing chaos and confusion, strong two way transaction replay protection is considered absolutely necessary.
SegWit2x does not include strong transaction replay protection, nor does it have widespread consensus across the community. Due to the combination of both a lack of consensus across the community and a lack of strong replay protection, we consider SegWit2x a reckless endeavor that will cause disruption and harm to the ecosystem. We therefore strongly oppose SegWit2x. This remains true even if the SegWit2x chain has the majority hashrate or a higher price.
For the AssociationGetty Images
A new Nas verse is always an exciting event -- we don't get them that often, and when we do, Nasty is sure to rip the mic to shreds. And he does just that on the remix to Schoolboy Q and BJ the Chicago Kid's "Studio," but he also drops a bomb right as the track opens.
"Finished up my new album, single 'bout to be dropping/ Last album on Def Jam and I got so many options," he raps to open his verse.
Word?
It's been over two years since Esco's last album, Life Is Good (that's not counting this year's Illmatic XX, a reboot of his classic debut). God's Son spoke to us last year about this new album, which he at the time thought would drop in 2013, but the year came and went without a release. So it's safe to say we're ready for this LP.
As for his post Def Jam options? Well, he's Nas, so, he's definitely got a ton. But maybe he'll sign himself to Mass Appeal, his recently-launched imprint, where he's already signed Boldy James and Fashawn.
But seriously, Nas, how soon for this album and single? How about single this week, album later this year? Is that too much to ask?All 26 players were present at the press conference after Argentina’s 3-0 win.
The team held a press conference after the win where Lionel MESSI lead it and with a microphone in hand, had this to say:
“We’re here to let you know that we will no longer be communicating with the press. The accusations that were made towards LAVEZZI were huge. We regret that it has to be this way but we have no other choice. We know that many of you don’t play that game.”
“We were accused a lot. No respect was being shown and we never said anything. But this accusation against LAVEZZI was it. If we don’t stop it today, we’ll never stop it. We know that you will continue to criticize us, that’s fine. However, some got into our personal lives.”
“We wanted to say this in front of everyone and not release a statement. We didn’t want to hide from anyone. These past two weeks were filled with personal aggression, not football criticism. You can criticize us for winning or losing, but when you get personal we will draw the line.”
What happened was some in the media accused LAVEZZI of smoking marijuana yesterday and stated that as the reason why he did not make the bench.Three days before Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, an advice column in The Village Voice went viral. A man who called himself “Son of a Right Winger” had written in with a problem: “I just can’t deal with my father anymore. He’s a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who has basically turned into a total asshole intent on ruining our relationship and our planet with his politics.” The man explained that arguing didn’t get anywhere, but silence wasn’t a solution either: “When I try to spend time with him without talking politics or discussing any current events, there’s still an underlying tension that makes it really uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I love him no matter what, but how do I explain to him that his politics are turning him into a monster, destroying the environment, and pushing away the people who care about him?”
The musician and advice columnist Andrew W.K. wrote a simple, earnest reply that has been shared on Facebook 218,000 times. After admonishing the man to see his father as a human being, he asserted that the real problem was not human-made global warming but political disagreement itself: “The world isn’t being destroyed by Democrats or Republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist—the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world.” He pointed out the pointlessness of politics: “even the most noble efforts to organize the world are essentially futile.” He warned that “unrest, disagreement, resentment, and anger” are a dangerous distraction. And he cautioned against political self-confidence: “Have the strength to doubt and question what you believe as easily as you’re so quick to doubt his beliefs. … Don’t feel the need to always pick a side.”
I hated Andrew W.K.’s response, even though (like the almost quarter of a million people who shared it) I found a lot to agree with in it. I have a 63-year-old father with whom I deeply disagree about LGBT issues and abortion, and I still love him, respect him, and learn from him. My friendships with people across the political spectrum are important to me. And it’s hard to argue with Andrew W.K. when he says that that no one is perfect; politics are complicated; we should see each other as persons, not monsters; and love should be able to bridge barriers.
More than anything, though, what struck me about Andrew W.K.’s response was how white it was.
I don’t know anything about Andrew W.K.’s background beyond what an Internet search can tell me, but as a white American I do know this: It is a privilege to experience political differences as differences of opinion rather than differences of power. It is a privilege to be able to view all political issues in indistinguishable shades of gray. And, as I’ve been realizing in the month since Michael Brown’s death: It is a privilege when loving your political enemy means loving your father, not loving the man who killed your son—or the man who killed someone who might have been your son, or who might have been you.
I teach Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” four times a year to my students at Yale. I’ve taught it seventeen times now, and at this point certain passages live in my memory. When I first read the Village Voice column on my Facebook feed I couldn’t help but hear Andrew W.K. as one of King’s interlocutors—the well-meaning white moderates who said “settle down!” and “wait.” I imagined what Andrew W.K. might have written to King, who was an avowed believer in creating crises and fostering tension, and who was in the midst of a bitter conflict that both argument and silence had failed to resolve. And I wondered how he would respond to the furious people in Ferguson as they lifted their voices and faced tear gas and tanks to protest the latest instance of an unarmed black person killed by a white cop who would likely never be brought to justice. Maybe, like the white clergy King was responding to in 1963, Andrew W.K. would see the real problem as the “unrest” of the controversial protestors themselves, not the systemic injustice they were protesting. Maybe he would advise protestors in Birmingham or Ferguson, “The world isn’t being destroyed by racism—the world is being destroyed by non-violent protestors believing that racism is destroying the world.” Or, “Even the most noble efforts to organize the world are essentially futile.” Or, “Don’t feel the need to always pick a side.”
Of course, “Son of a Right Winger” is not Martin Luther King, Jr. Neither is he a teenager who needs to navigate his own neighborhood in a constant state of hyper-vigilance. He is merely a private person with political opinions and family problems. The stakes are different for him. Yes, he feels that the fate of the planet is hanging in the balance, but in his everyday life political issues impinge on him because they affect his relationship with his dad, not because they threaten his personal safety or access to jobs or justice. But this discrepancy is exactly my point.
The enthusiastic response to Andrew W.K.’s article doubtless speaks to some likeable qualities in the citizens of Facebook: our recognition of our common humanity with people who disagree with us (or at least with people who disagree with us and are also related to us), and our desire for closer relationships with them. But it also speaks to the desire of so many of us privileged people to avoid all tension and conflict while still feeling like we are a force for good in the world. It’s a way of letting ourselves off the hook; of lulling ourselves into inaction by making neutrality into a positive good.
According to Andrew W.K., we don’t need to challenge our friends and family on the things that matter to the planet or to our less privileged neighbors: In fact, we probably shouldn’t. We can even label this evasion “love.” And we don’t need to sacrifice anything for our political beliefs—not our lives, not our time, not even a peaceful family dinner.
***
This summer, the summer of Ferguson, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It also marked almost fifty years since the filming of A Time for Burning, a cinéma vérité documentary about white people trying and failing to rise to the challenges of the Civil Rights Movement. It chronicles a burning time like ours: a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to mourn, and a time to speak.
The film follows the story of Reverend Bill Youngdahl, a young liberal pastor at the all-white Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, who attempts to pursue better race relations in his community by partnering with nearby black churches to organize a series of voluntary interracial visits in church members’ homes.
Most of the film takes place in a bureaucratic world of weak coffee, metal folding chairs, and tense, interminable meetings. Heated conversations provide the drama as members of Augustana’s social ministry committee try to persuade the rest of the church to support the program. As committee member Ray Christensen says, pulling out all the stops, “If we don’t start now as a church, the world is going to pass us by on the biggest issue of our lifetime!” Getting a grudging go-ahead, the members then meet with their counterparts at the black churches to plan the proposed exchanges. But many members of Augustana are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of fraught interracial conversations, asking “Why be so revolutionary?” and muttering about bad timing. Congregational drama ensues, expressed through the passive aggressive conventions of Lutheran niceness. A frustrated Christensen asks: “A hundred years of preaching and where has it gone? Where has it gone?”
Although the film was initially commissioned by Lutheran Film Associates to provide an uplifting example of church-sponsored interracial dialogue, reality failed to cooperate. The interracial visits never happen, and Youngdahl is forced to resign. The film ends with ironic intercut images of black and white Christians receiving Holy Communion separately at their segregated churches—the opposite of communion.
A Time for Burning was nominated for an Academy Award, called “a glowing beauty” by the New York Times, and turned down by three television networks, presumably because of its unsettling message. Set in a city that was soon to be rocked by the so-called race riots of 1966, 1968, and 1969, the film raises some of the same questions that were posed in the Village Voice and driven home by the uprising in Ferguson: What, if anything, should privileged people do about political problems that they have the option to ignore? Should they challenge each other about their political sins and responsibilities, or should they keep the peace? Are discomfort and disagreement always bad? Are other things worse?
But unlike the advice in the Village Voice piece, the answers the film offers are anything but easy. This is partly because from the beginning, A Time for Burning puts privileged people’s political disagreements in the context of the lived experience and searing systemic analysis of oppressed people of color. Prompted by the filmmakers Bill Jersey and Barbara Connell, Youngdahl crosses color and class lines to meet with black people on their home turf, and Jersey and Connell consistently juxtapose the white people’s evasive arguments about race with the rigorous critiques of informed, exasperated African Americans. As a result, the desire of many white congregants for an unruffled peace comes to seem more and more dangerous. Uncomfortable conversations take on a new urgency.
We are all familiar with movies about black people starring white people: The Help, The Blind Side, and others too numerous to name. A Time for Burning is perhaps unique as a movie about white people that stars black people. Yes, it follows the familiar story of a well-meaning white liberal, the generous, brave, and sometimes naively optimistic Reverend Youngdahl. We get to know and care about him and his staunchest allies in the church, matter-of-fact Ted and open-hearted Ray, and we meet many other white people along the way—the conflict-averse bishop who tells Youngdahl that “I don’t think it’s dishonest to be to be diplomatic—what I call diplomatic, some other people might call it cowardice”; the Great Society mayor concerned about ghettos and white flight; the radical woman who has been crusading for civil rights for years and has lost friends and hope in the process; the mildly militant members of the social ministry committee who have never had a real conversation with a black person before and would rather like to have the chance; the reactionary church council members who keep repeating “it’s not the right time.”
But the analysis, the conscience, the charisma, and the context for the white church’s story are all provided by black people. The precocious members of the black church youth group diagnose white people’s problems with the crystal clarity of youth—young women and men talking excitedly over each other in bursts of feeling as they deconstruct religious hypocrisy with the gospel. The leaders of local black churches try to make the case for why now is the time, or why it might already be too late: Earl says, “We’re at the point now where demonstrations don’t work anymore. You have only one choice. Race riots, or forget it.” And then there is the unforgettable black nationalist barber Ernie Chambers and the working-class men who convene in his barbershop to discuss white folks’ self-deception and the connections between racism in Omaha and wars in Korea and Vietnam. A young boy getting a haircut looks on quietly and absorbs the best political education available in America.
I keep coming back to the early scene when Youngdahl first ventures out of his comfort zone to visit Chambers, who has decorated the walls of his barbershop with newspaper pictures of the black dead in Mississippi and Alabama, of white cops in sunglasses that erase their eyes, and white men with chaw in their cheeks rejoicing in a courtroom as lynchers go free. Chambers welcomes Youngdahl with a virtuosic verbal indictment that is also an appeal, an economic and religious analysis, a warning, and a declaration of despair. He speaks with a measured calmness, fluid and cool, casually snipping his customer’s hair and occasionally gesturing with a comb, but his words burn slow like a hot coal as the sweat pours down Youngdahl’s face:
I can’t solve the problem. You guys pull the strings that close schools. You guys drop the bombs that keep our kids restricted to the ghetto. You guys write up the restricted covenants that keep us out of houses. So it’s up to you to talk to your brothers and your sisters and persuade them that they have a responsibility. We’ve assumed ours for over four hundred years and we’re tired of this kind of stuff now. We’re not going to suffer patiently anymore. No more turning the other cheek. No more blessing our enemies. No more praying for those who despitefully use us. … You’re treaty-breakers, you’re liars, you’re thieves, you rape entire continents and races of people. Then you wonder why these very people don’t have any confidence and trust in you. Your religion means nothing, your law is a farce and we see it everyday. You demonstrated it in Alabama. And I can say “you” because you’re part of the whole system. You profit from it. In fact you make your living from it. … As far as we’re concerned, your Jesus is contaminated, just like everything else you’ve tried to force upon us is contaminated. So you can have him. … I think the problem is so bad that we can have no understanding at all. … You talk about justice and it means something to you, we talk about it and it means something else to us. And it will always be that way.
Even as Chambers disavows the possibility of racial reconciliation, even as he denies a shared language of justice, he states an inconvenient truth: in a nation in which white people control the wealth and the real estate and the education system and the government, black people can’t solve their problems on their own.
It is this speech that prompts Youngdahl to reflect, “Doggone it, we did this. We did do it. We’re all guilty, terribly guilty. But what do we do now? Do we sit around and despair? If we do, then let’s all knock ourselves off and get the heck off the earth. Or do we try to live together and work out a better life?”
***
Since the protests began last month, there have been lists circulating about what white people can do. The Huffington Post suggested one thing; Dame Magazine suggested ten; The Root suggested twelve. They are good lists, though they remind me a little of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s list at the end of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, where she asks “But, what can any individual do?” (Her answers were “feel right”; pray; and make “some effort at reparation.”) The problem is that these lists have been circulating for hundreds of years. To quote A Time for Burning: “A hundred years of preaching, and where has it gone?” Or, to |
car was then pulled forward to the next track gauge and the procedure repeated.
The track went forward at the rate of almost a mile an hour. A correspondent for the Alta, another San Francisco newspaper, timed the track layers. He wrote: "I timed the movement twice and found the speed to be as follows: The first time 240 feet of rail was laid in one minute and twenty seconds; the second time 240 feet was laid in one minute and fifteen seconds. This is about as fast as a leisurely walk and as fast as the early ox teams used to travel over the plains."
At the Front
But the rail handlers were only eight of several hundred men at the front, everyone of whom was an important cog in the smooth-working machinery. Ahead were three "pioneers," the most advanced men, who, with shovel and by hand, butted the ties to a rope line measured from the track-center spikes set by the surveyors. About half the regulation number of ties were placed at first to insure having sufficient for the ten miles.
Just behind the rail layers came the spikers, bolters, and those who distributed the materials. Then came the gang that surfaced the track by raising the ends of the ties and shoveling enough ballast to hold them firm. Immediately following was a "reverend looking old gentleman" who sighted the line of the rails and, by motion of his hands, directed the track straighteners. Then the tampers, 400 strong, with shovels and tamping bars.
Mile an Hour
The scene was an animated one. From the first "pioneer" to the last tamper, about two miles, there was a line of men advancing a mile an hour; iron cars with their load of rails and humans dashed up and down the newly-laid track; foremen on horseback were galloping back and forth. Keeping pace with the track layers was the telegraph construction party. Alongside the moving force, teams were hauling tool and water wagons. Chinamen with pails dangling from poles balanced over their shoulders were moving among the men with water and tea.
Farther back, locomotives were waiting with their cars of materials. Five train loads were used on that day. When one section was completed, the next material train was moved up as far as possible on the new track and materials for another two miles unloaded. In the rear of all this was the boarding house train and quarters of officers, a long line of wood houses built on flat cars, looking like a small town stretched out. In the valley below, continuous trains of wagons and mounted work shops moved along in parallel lines. It could only be compared to the advance of an army.
Railroad Camp near Victory.
When a halt was called for the midday meal, six miles of track had been laid and the men were confident they would reach their goal. A number of Union Pacific officers had lunch with Stanford, Crocker, and others of the Central Pacific. They were ready to extend congratulations. "Victory" was the name given the spot where lunch was taken. The station is now called Rozel.
Grades and Curves
After lunch the work went on, but not so rapidly. The ascending grade on the west slope of Promontory Mountain was more difficult than the section covered during the morning and there were many curves. Considerable time was lost in bending rails, which was done by placing the rail on two blocks and forcing it into the desired curve by blows of a heavy hammer.
When the forward march was halted at 7 o'clock, ten miles and 56 feet of new track had been added to the Central Pacific. Jim Campbell, boarding boss and later superintendent of the division, jumped into a locomotive and ran it back over the new line at a clip of 40 miles an hour just to prove that the job had been well done.
If the roadway had been perfectly level and straight, these men could have laid fifteen miles of track. The task had involved bringing up and putting into position 25,800 ties, 3520 rails averaging 560 pounds each, 55,000 spikes, 14,080 bolts, and other material making a total of 4,462,000 pounds.
"Site where the Central Pacific completed laying ten miles of track in one day."
Postcard by Intermountain Tourist Supply, Salt Lake City.
Workers Acclaimed
Each of the rail handlers lifted 125 tons of iron during the day, in addition to carrying the weight of their heavy rail tongs. They walked many feet more than the ten miles forward, Their's was a wonderful exhibition of skill and strength, and they richly deserved the acclaim showered on them when they proudly rode in a wagon as a feature of Sacramento's railroad celebration a few days later. When the parade was over, their wagon was filled with flowers thrown to them by men and women, boys and girls.
Ten miles of railroad track laying in one day! It is a record that will probably never be challenged. It is not likely there will ever again be such a spirited race for railroad supremacy as the one that inspired the Central Pacific and Union Pacific to such marvelous feats in those early days. Never will there be assembled such an army of railroad workers.
With the eight sons of Erin and the sons of "John Chinaman" rest the palms of a great track-laying victory.
Courtesy G.J. "Chris" Graves and Carol Graves."Edens Collection" would house 15 businesses, including "a nice offering of sit-down restaurants," developer Michael Jaffe said. View Full Caption Camburas & Theodore Architects
NORTH MAYFAIR — A proposed $60 million strip mall, dubbed "Edens Collection," would bring retailers and restaurants to a nine-acre abandoned factory site in North Mayfair.
But that plan depends in part on an unspecified amount of funding to come from the creation of a new Tax Increment Financing district, the Foster/Edens TIF.
TIF districts have become an increasingly hot-button issue: Opponents of the financing tool claim that TIFs are little more than "slush funds" designed to line the pockets of political cronies; proponents argue that TIFs goose economic development in areas where it wouldn't otherwise occur.
With a proposal for a new TIF district on the table, here's a simplified look at how they work and the steps Foster/Edens will need to take on its road to approval.
What Is a TIF District?
A TIF district is a designated redevelopment area with highly specified boundaries.
Once a district has been created, all properties within its boundaries are assessed in order to determine a base amount of property tax revenue. For Foster/Edens, this base has been pegged at $26.5 million.
Over the next 23 years — the lifespan of a TIF — all property tax revenue above that established base is diverted from its usual recipients, like Chicago Public Schools and the Park District, and is funneled instead into the TIF district's "account."
These funds can then be allocated to subsidize public and private projects within the district that meet the guidelines of the TIF's redevelopment plan (which can be changed at any time), ranging from school annexes to basketball arenas.
If no significant redevelopment occurs within a district's first seven years, a repeal process is automatically triggered.
A TIF can also be terminated early if the district achieves its goals before the 23 years are up, assuming all outstanding commitments have been met.
A Quick History of TIF
California was the first state to make use of TIF districts, back in the 1950s.
Chicago didn't join the party until decades later. Its first TIF district — the Central Loop TIF — was created in 1984 with the aim of revitalizing the city's economic center. The infusion of public dollars spurred investment in new hotels and the rehabilitation of theaters and cultural venues.
There are now 145 active TIF districts in Chicago, including two created in 2016. Dozens more have either expired or been terminated or repealed. According to the Cook County Clerk's office, more than one in four properties in Chicago lie within a TIF district.
How is a new district created? Here's the checklist:
• Identify an area lacking growth and development. Foster/Edens: Check.
The area in question broadly encompasses 232 acres bounded by the North Branch of the Chicago River; Pulaski Road; Cicero, Foster and Lawrence Avenues; and the Edens Expressway.
Gompers Park is situated within the proposed TIF's boundaries, but the primary target of redevelopment is a property formerly occupied by Sunstar Americas, a dental products manufacturer that moved to Schaumburg.
Sunstar's factory was demolished in 2016 and the site, in the 4600 block of West Foster Avenue, had the potential to sit vacant indefinitely.
Sunstar still owns the land, with the sale to developers pending actions including the creation of the TIF district. The property is being monitored and maintained in the interim by Sunstar, according to a spokesman for Ald. Margaret Laurino's (39th) office.
The boundaries, in red, of the proposed Foster/Edens TIF district. [Provided]
• Commission a redevelopment plan. Foster/Edens: Check.
According to a definition provided by the city: A redevelopment plan includes the area’s history, current land uses and the factors that qualify the area as eligible for tax increment financing. The plan also states the goals and objectives for the TIF and outlines the redevelopment budget.
Laube Consulting Group drafted the Foster/Edens redevelopment plan after surveying the area's infrastructure and assessing other conditions including the state of existing commercial and residential properties. (See complete document below.)
Among the group's observations: Facilities at Gompers Park are in need of "significant repair and replacement," and bridges and overpasses in the area are "severely dilapidated."
The consultant's report also factored in the likely need for environmental remediation of the Sunstar site, which is not uncommon when former manufacturing sites are redeveloped, according to Ald. Laurino's office.
Sunstar, Laurino's spokesman noted, passed all inspections conduction by the Environmental Protection Agency.
In summary, the report concluded: "The area is not reasonably anticipated to be developed" without the use of TIF.
• Inform the public. Foster/Edens: Check.
Laurino hosted a community forum Sept. 28, at which the Foster/Edens TIF proposal was introduced to attendees.
• Present plan to the city's Community Development Commission. Foster/Edens: Check.
This 15-member group is appointed by the mayor and reviews and recommends action on all things TIF-related.
The Foster/Edens redevelopment plan was presented on Oct. 10 to the commission, which accepted the proposal for review.
At that same meeting, the commission also set the dates for the next two steps in the process: a public meeting of the Joint Review Board and a public hearing.
• The Joint Review Board includes representatives of taxing bodies affected by TIF — the Chicago Board of Education, the Chicago Park District, Cook County, etc. The board's recommendation regarding the TIF, whether in favor of or against, is strictly advisory and non-binding.
The board will consider the Foster/Edens TIF at 10 a.m. Nov. 3, City Hall, Room 1003.
• A public hearing allows for comment from taxpayers who own properties within the proposed district.
The Foster/Edens hearing has been scheduled for 1 p.m. Dec. 12, in City Council chambers, 121 N. LaSalle St. Property owners will be notified via regular and certified mail.
Finally the TIF will be introduced to City Council at a date still to be determined. Final approval resides with council members.
Foster/Edens TIF Redevelopment Plan by DNAinfo Chicago on Scribd
Foster/Edens TIF Report to Community Development Commission by DNAinfo Chicago on ScribdThe snubbing of California’s most prominent Latino leader, Antonio Villaraigosa, by Democratic party bosses in his bid for outgoing Senator Boxer’s seat proves that Democrats boast of championing Latino rights but, come election time, they look the other way.
Right now, in the United States, you can count on one finger the number of Democratic Latino senators and governors holding office. Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey is the only one. Ironically, even the much maligned, allegedly white-centric Republicans have four Latino senators and governors.
Former Mayor of Los Angeles Villaraigosa has expressed a desire to run, but is being pushed aside in favor of African American California Attorney General Kamala Harris. He has the resumé, explains National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar, but his constituency of Hispanics and Los Angelinos have a penchant for not showing up to the polls on election day. Consequently, that might be the reason national party leaders are looking past him.
Certainly money isn’t a problem for Villaraigosa, given his many connections to rich Hollywood donors. Although he knocked heads with the teachers union, he still maintains close ties to big labor.
According to Kraushaar, the enthusiasm for Kamala Harris demonstrates that the Democratic Party prioritizes “identity politics over tangible achievements.” He writes:
In a heavily Democratic state, she barely won her first election, prevailing by only 0.8 percent of the vote, but was already hyped as a future Democratic star. It’s as much a response to her biography as her agenda; she’s multiracial, charismatic, and sports an accomplished resume.
The hype over Harris has gotten so over the top, Kraushaar said, that one Democrat strategist told him that Harris may be a future presidential candidate. Yet, he couldn’t cite any of her AG accomplishments and admitted, “To be honest, I just started learning specifics about her.” Kraushaar believes that, if her name was Katherine Harris, she wouldn’t be getting all the attention.
Villaraigosa, on the other hand, lacks attention partly because of his age (he’s 61) and partly because he hasn’t held office in two years. Veteran GOP strategist Dan Schnur contends that “He’s not being overlooked, but underestimated. He’s been underestimated for most of his political career, and he tends to win.”
Schnur believes that Villaraigosa, although a progressive in many ways, has “put in good time on education reform [and] public-employee pensions in ways that could give him bipartisan appeal.”
Kraushaar suspects that, beyond Harris being an upcoming political star, party leaders believe that her pull of progressives in the Bay Area and her potential to attract women voters give her the party’s tacit endorsement. Yet, he points out, Villaraigosa could bring Latino voters to the polls in a presidential year when Hispanic turnout will be crucial to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.Last week I started telling card-by-card design stories about Aether Revolt. I got up to D, which means I'm not done yet. So without further ado, let's continue.
Deadeye Harpooner
One of the cool things we like to do in design is to sneak in functionality that isn't necessarily obvious at first, so players get to discover it. The reason this is so important is that players are more emotionally attached to things that they feel personally connected to, and one way to help forge that bond is create opportunities for the players to discover things. That way it becomes something they have found rather than something that we made. I do understand that me explaining how we do this on this particular card undermines our goal, but part of a magician showing you his tricks is letting you peek behind the scenes.
We wanted a lot of the revolt cards, especially at lower rarities, to be "one and done." That is, to be an effect that just happens once and then you can stop worrying about it. An easy way to do this is as an enters-the-battlefield effect. Meanwhile, we also wanted to find ways for different colors to interact with revolt. One means we found for white and blue was to do flicker effects (exiling a permanent and then bringing it back to the battlefield).
The fun comes when you combine these two things—a revolt enters-the-battlefield trigger and a flicker effect. Let's take Deadeye Harpooner as the example. Your opponent has a tapped creature that you'd really like to get rid of. You have a flicker effect. You exile Deadeye Harpooner and then return it to the battlefield. As it's entering the battlefield and something has left the battlefield this turn (itself), its trigger happens and you can destroy the creature.
During playtest, we actively think about trying to create moments of discovery and then carefully weave them into the design. The rest of the examples you'll have to find on your own.
Disallow
There are a lot of cards that can counter spells, but much fewer cards that can counter abilities, especially triggered abilities. Interestingly, it all started in a place you might not have guessed—green.
The first card to do it was Rust from Legends. I'm pretty sure this card was a top-down design. If I Rust your artifact, what would happen to it? It would stop working. Stopping continuous effects is tricky (and I don't think triggers worked the same then as they do now), so the card just stopped activated abilities of artifacts. As was often the case in early Magic, when a card does something for the first time, it staked the claim for the ability in its color.
Brown Ouphe (Ice Age), Bind (Invasion), and Ouphe Vandals (Fifth Dawn) all put the activation countering in green. The one exception during that time was the card Interdict (from Tempest), which put the ability in blue, the color that has traditionally countered things. Then in Dissension, we made the card Voidslime, which was a Simic card (green-blue) that countered a spell or an activated or triggered ability. The idea at the time was that blue countered the spell and green countered the ability.
This issue came to a head in Time Spiral. Was green really supposed to be the ability-countering color? We traced it back to Rust. Of the monocolored green cards, only Bind countered abilities that weren't from artifacts. It had really started as another way to demonstrate green's anti-artifact bias. We had a meeting about the issue and decided that ability-countering just made more sense in blue. It's been strictly a blue thing ever since.
This is an elaborate way of explaining why Disallow is a reprint of Voidslime without any green in it.
Dispersal Technician
Richard Garfield came up with so many good ideas when he created Magic that it's easy to miss some of the subtler ones. One of my favorite creations is the concept and word "target." Richard was trying to make a game with a lot of modularity. He wanted all the various pieces to click together in cool ways. One of the many tricks to doing this was to make the spells themselves very flexible. The idea of targeting took what might have been a wordy, complex idea and narrowed it down to a single word. Your spells will often have targets—that is, you need to choose what you're using your spell on.
Targeting does wonderful things to enable the rules and help simplify how spells are processed, but that's not my favorite part. My favorite part is that it enables a very cool Magic moment. You see, when people read "target," they get to fill in what they think the spell is about. For example, let's take Giant Growth.
The card gives target creature +3/+3 until end of turn. Give this card to a newer player and what they will read is "I can give my creature +3/+3 until end of turn." The looseness of the language allows them to just accept whatever subset they think the spell is supposed to be about. This is important because it makes the spell very lenticular. That is, it hides some of the complexity from less experienced players while still leaving it available for more experienced players.
Then one day, they are going to find themselves in a situation where Giant Growthing their opponent's creature is going to be the right play. Let's say they have Smite the Monstrous that can only destroy a creature with power 4 or greater. They'll read the card to make sure that they can do it and realize that "target" doesn't restrict them as much as they had assumed. They can use it on an opponent's creature.
Using a card in a way differing from how you feel it was intended is a very empowering moment. The player gets this sense as if they've taken control of the game and forced it to do something it's not normally supposed to do. They feel clever, and it opens up their eyes that Magic has a lot more discoveries for them to find. It's the kind of moment that bonds a player to the game.
Dispersal Technician is a perfect example of "target" used in this manner. On the surface, the card seems to be a tempo card. I get a creature and force my opponent to have to replay an artifact. But the more you play with it, the more you start to understand that it has a lot of other functions, many of which require you to bounce your own artifact. Dispersal Technician isn't just a knife, it's a Swiss Army knife with many different functions. The fact that we can do that with such a simple-looking card is a testament to Richard, the wonderful craftsmanship he put into creating Magic, and the awesomeness of the word (and concept) "target."
Embraal Gear-Smasher
Aether Revolt had a few goals mechanically. One, it wanted to capture the essence of the story. Kaladesh was about the celebration of invention, of how it can be used to build things up. Aether Revolt is the flip side of the coin, looking at how invention can also be used to tear things down. Two, it wanted to play nicely with Kaladesh. Yes, the story took a turn, but it's still all one block, and we needed to design both sets to mechanically synergize with one another. Three, while we were happy with Kaladesh, the one thing we felt we ended up a bit light on was the "artifact matters" theme. We were hoping that Aether Revolt could help nudge us a bit more in that direction.
Embraal Gear-Smasher was like these three ideas got together and had a baby. It sacrifices artifacts and deals damage to the opponent. It's hard to capture the feel of a revolt more than that. Kaladesh has a lot of artifacts and produces a lot of artifact creature tokens, both of which play nicely with Embraal Gear-Smasher. Finally, the card pushes you toward playing an artifact-heavy deck where Embraal Gear-Smasher is the win condition. Deal as much damage as you can with artifacts, and then Embraal Gear-Smasher throws them at the opponent to finish them off.
Finally, I like how the flavor text implies that after you use the wrench to destroy the gears, you get to also throw it at your opponent.
Exquisite Archangel
Most of the time, we don't figure out what a card is going to look like until after we've designed it. Every once in a while, though, we get a cool idea in our head for an image and have an artist draw it before we know what it's going to do. Platinum Angel, from original Mirrodin, was one such card.
The Mirrodin design team liked the idea of an artifact Angel. Angels are one of the iconic creatures of Magic (plus Angels are second in popularity of creature types behind Dragons), and we'd never made an artifact version before. Well, we were now in a metal world and it seemed like time to finally make one, so we commissioned an artifact Angel with the promise that we'd design something cool for it. The art came back and it was great (illustrated by Brom). Now the pressure was on for us to come up with something awesome. We tried a lot of different things, but once we saw "You can't lose the game," we knew we had our winner.
Platinum Angel was an instant hit. The Spikes liked it because it was powerful. The Timmies and Tammies liked it because it had such a potent ability. The Johnnies and Jennies liked it because you could combine it with cards that would normally make you lose the game and explore brand-new space. When anything is this popular, it makes us designers look for ways to do something similar.
Angel's Grace from Time Spiral was a nod to Platinum Angel as an instant that granted the ability but just for one turn. Ken Nagle turned Platinum Angel on its head in Worldwake to make Abyssal Persecutor, a 6/6 for 2BB that gave you the negative that you couldn't win the game while it was on the battlefield.
Exquisite Archangel is our latest take on Platinum Angel. Still an Angel, it saves you from losing, but just once. It does reset your life total on its way out to keep you safe a little while longer. Note that we say "starting life total" to be kind to formats like Commander that start with more than 20 life.
Gonti's Aether Heart
One of the things that often happens in the first set is that you play around with your new mechanics to figure out what you can do with them. You stretch them to help you get a sense of what's possible. Then once you get a sense of that, you draw a line and save things over the line for the next set. Gonti's Aether Heart is one of these cards.
We were playing around with big energy effects. An obvious one was to gain an extra turn. The problem with this ability, as we've learned time and again over the years, is that cards capable of taking multiple turns are dangerous. Energy was a resource though, so we felt if we charged enough, we could do it.
The other piece of the puzzle was we wanted the card to stand on its own. We wanted you to have the dream that this card alone could get you an extra turn. We tried a lot of different triggers to gain energy in Kaladesh design and we definitely had this trigger (it's an artifact block after all), but I'm not sure if this trigger was put with this effect. This is a good example of a card that I'm not sure if it got pushed off whole cloth from Kaladesh design or if the Aether Revolt team designed it in parallel following the same impulses that created it the first time.
The one change I know for sure that Aether Revolt development made was changing this to a legendary artifact. I'm not sure if we went to the creative team wanting this legendary for developmental reasons or if they came to us asking for us to make Gonti's Heart. Nonetheless, it's a wonderful marriage of mechanics and flavor.
Greenbelt Rampager
Of all the evolutions of energy in Aether Revolt, this one's my favorite. We managed to not only make a modal card that hides that it's a modal card, but also a 3/4 for one green mana. One of the rules we made for ourselves when creating energy was that we wanted every card that used Energy to also be able to generate it. (We did have a handful of cards that produced energy without giving you a way to spend it, but we kept those cards to a minimum.) That made using energy as an additional mana cost hard to do.
Greenbelt Rampager was our clever solution to be able to do this. If you didn't have the energy, you didn't get the creature but you did get one energy. This way you could save up to eventually be able to cast the creature. The cool part though is that if you're able to get energy through other cards, you can cast this creature faster. Also, because it can produce energy, it has a function in the late game after a 3/4 without evasion is less practical.
This is one of those designs that seems obvious only after it's designed. If you had asked us earlier in the process if we could stick to our rule and have a creature which (essentially) required energy to cast, we probably would have said it was impossible. So I use this card as a plea to all the amateur designers out there. Never take it for granted that something can't be done. Some of the most elegant designs have come about when we asked ourselves how else might we be able to solve the problem at hand.
Heart of Kiran
This was a daunting card to design because it was a top-down request from the creative team. In the story, our heroes fought back against the Consulate with a special airship. In a block with Vehicles, how could we not make that ship into a card? The problem was that we wanted to make something that felt extra special. Obviously it would be legendary, but we wanted something mechanical about it that set it apart from the other Vehicles.
We started by trying to come up with a lot of different things the Vehicle could do. We talked with the creative team and used the story as inspiration for new functions, but nothing was clicking. We then asked ourselves if there was a way to hit the flavor from a different angle. The Gatewatch uses the Heart of Kiran (named after Chandra's dad, for those who might not know); was there a way to have the Vehicle interact with the Gatewatch members in card form?
The problem was that Vehicles are crewed by creatures, not planeswalkers. This, of course, led us to the idea of finding a way to let planeswalkers crew a Vehicle. I don't remember everything that was tried, but I believe there were several different stabs at letting a planeswalker crew it. In the end, we went with the simple use of a loyalty counter, as it was elegant, flavorful, and easy to write.
Ice Over
During Kaladesh design, we came up with a joke that we had invented a new tool—the "or artifact" tool. Here's how it works. Take any card that affects a permanent other than an artifact, usually a creature. Then add "or artifact" to the text. I'll give an example. "Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand."
Poof.
"Return target creature or artifact card from your graveyard to your hand."
Technically artifact comes first as we list the permanents types in alphabetical order, but you get the gist. In an artifact block, you can make new cards by simply taking things you normally do and letting them also affect artifacts. Ice Over is just one of many examples. In particular, we got a lot of mileage out of "Enchant artifact or creature."
The Implement Cycle
This cycle is all artifacts with a colored activation and a sacrifice cost to generate an in-color ability. They also all draw you a card when they're put into the graveyard from the battlefield. This cycle exists because it manages to fulfill multiple functions all at once:
We wanted to support improvise. To do that, we need a threshold of artifacts, especially ones that can be tapped with minimal cost. (Artifact creatures, in contrast, lose their ability to attack or block if tapped). Note that each card in the cycle costs three mana or less to help you get them out early. We wanted to support revolt. This required having cards that you can make leave the battlefield at the time of your choosing. To help our "artifacts matter" theme, we wanted more color integration into our artifacts to allow us to up the as-fan (the percentage of the theme showing up in booster packs) without mucking too much with the color pie. We wanted ways to help with deck smoothing.
As a designer, I'm always really happy when I can fulfill multiple functions with a single card or cycle, and the Implements are a great example of doing this elegantly and efficiently.
Aether Lore
That's all the time I've got for today. As always, I'm eager for feedback, so you can write to me through my email or contact me through any of my social media accounts (Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and Instagram).
As I'm only up to the letter I, join me next week for Part 3.
Until then, may you have a fun revolt.
"Drive to Work #402—Color Pie Conflicts"
There are five conflicts between the five colors. In this podcast, I discuss them all.
"Drive to Work #403—Color Pie Alliances"
There are also five alliances between the five colors. In this podcast, I discuss them all.392 SHARES Share Tweet Email *
Yo, I write Other one SBS. Born and raised in Olympia, WA, I began writing back in 98′. When I was younger a few friends and I discovered what is known as the “double tunnels”. This is where I was able to take influence from local writers and artist that came in to town. The artists / crews who stick out in my mind were the local crews 4DC with Menes, Slaer, Buz and Rine plus KYT with Diar, Rain and Chris. Other artists that made a huge impact on me were Awe2 TCI and Heat TCI. I was also heavily influenced when I picked up the magazine Urban Autograph. This is where I became exposed to freight train graffiti. Looking at these magazines spawned my desire to paint freight and once I did, my style began to develop even more. Till this day in my graffiti I like to have a strong classic letter base with a mix of my own twist and tricks I have learned over the past years.
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For more of OTHER’s work click here
Follow OTHER on instagramThis is the capstone analysis on Wealthy Yield missions and the prices to buy them at or below on the GTN to ensure either (1) unit cost parity with running Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions or (2) align with current GTN average low offer prices on the GTN for the materials involved. The article builds on the modeling framework that was introduced in Wealthy Yield Missions (Part 2): What is “Fair Value” on GTN? and on some of the high-level concepts covered in Wealthy Yield Missions (Part 1): Unit Cost of Mission Discovery Item so you may want to check those out first if you haven’t already. This capstone will be the finishing touch on a more than week long project to understand the economics of this part of the crew skills better, but even so there are small sample sizes in play here due to the limitations of my slicing mission returns and the Mission Discovery items available on the GTN, so if you have additional information that would clarify or contradict my conclusions I’d love to hear about your information to refine these models.
Underworld Trading
What is the fair value of each Mission Discovery that creates parity with Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions based on blended unit cost? I decided that this was the most logical starting point for the analysis, but it took much longer than expected to get from that question to this analysis of the answer. The first crew skill will be Underworld Trading since it was the trial run for the model in the previous post in this series. The mission has a 15% critical chance which includes the assumption of a max affection companion in addition to the base 10% critical chance of the Wealthy Yield mission since it is an orange/hard difficulty at Underworld Trading (500). The charts below list the materials returned by a successful and critical Wealthy Yield mission in the main section, along with their quantities, vendor liquidation prices, and the proceeds of such a liquidation.
The successful mission yields 3 Doonium while the critical mission yields 5 Doonium. The quantity of Doonium is then multiple by its blended unit cost from running Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions in a 1:1 ratio over time, which is 3,139 credits per Doonium. The subtotal of the liquidation proceeds is added to the value of the Doonium at parity with the blended unit cost and this sum then has the cost of sending a companion on the Wealthy Yield mission subtracted from it. The critical chance is then applied to the respective implied fair values by outcome to complete the model.
As the first post about Wealthy Yield missions outlined, the unit cost of Mission Discovery items from running slicing missions is zero, so this aspect is only relevant to the decision to buy Wealthy Yield missions from the GTN. If you buy a Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading from the GTN for 10,026 credits the expected value of the Doonium unit cost is equivalent to running the Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions already available. This provides a baseline for the fair value because anytime you have the chance to buy the item for less than this amount you should do so immediately because it is the cheapest unit cost for Doonium available. There are at least two economically valid reasons that come to mind to pay more than 10,026 for Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading on the GTN, but there could certainly be others as well.
First, the Wealthy Yield mission can be run in addition to running the Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions as you normally would, so you can generate additional Doonium per hour by having three missions running simultaneously. Even though paying above the parity price would knowingly increase your unit cost, the same is true of running the Bountiful Yield mission instead of only the Rich Yield mission. The logic is the same in this case, which is that the additional Doonium can be sold at such a high multiple to its unit cost that the additional marginal unit cost is far outweighed by the increase is total revenue that can be realized by sacrificing some profit margin here. In addition to the first reason of the increased rate of obtaining Doonium, this price multiple effect is the second reason and provides the ceiling to the fair value estimate, which is the reasonable price at which Doonium can be sold on the GTN. The average low offer price of Doonium across Jedi Covenant and The Harbinger is fairly consistent and stable at about 17,000 credits per unit. This is about 5.4 times the blended unit cost used above, so if the same fair value model is adjusted to the unit cost that would be expected to break even selling the Doonium on the GTN later is below.
So we now have a viable range of GTN prices for Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading to be bought and sold. Any price below 10,000 credits would be better used by the seller to obtain Doonium for sale on the GTN and liquidate the other proceeds at a vendor. Everyone should be a buyer below this level whenever it is available. The upper limit is more flexible because it is dependent on the GTN price that Doonium can reasonably be sold for later, but at current levels this puts an implied fair value ceiling on Mission |
abir is the only Ahmadiyya community in Israel. Since the sect is threatened by both Sunni and Shi’ite Moslems their world center is in London. Members of the community refrain from making the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, because of the animosity of the other Moslem sects.
Ahmadiyya Mosque
The double-minaret Mahmood Mosque in Kababir is named after the second Khalifa the son of the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Group visits by reservation only. Contact Muad Oudeh 04-8385002; 052-5113710 muad.od@gmail.com
Ahmadiyya Video Studio
Modern video is utilized by the Ahmadiyya to explain their beliefs.
Ahmadiyya Koran Translation Project
According to Islam it is forbidden to translate the Koran. However the Ahmadiyya believe in spreading their sect by peaceful translation of the Koran.
Ahmadiyya Koran Translation Ahmadiyya Koran Translation Ahmadiyya Koran Translation Ahmadiyya Koran Translation Ahmadiyya Koran Translation Ahmadiyya Koran Translation Ahmadiyya Koran Translation
Ahmadiyya in the World
See also:
Faith in the Holy Land – the Ahmadiyya sectOne of Dalia’s friends recommended we meet her at an art exhibition opening this weekend. It was of an artist her friend knows, on Granville Street, where Vancouver’s art galleries are concentrated. We planned to go and I was looking forward to it all week. When we arrived, we were met with stairs. No problem, we thought – this is Vancouver; almost everything is accessible here.
Dalia went up to inquire how I could get in. There was no other way.
I really don’t enjoy being an advocate. It is not very pleasant to complain and bring attention to troublesome realities. It is especially bitter when irksome issues are not anyone’s direct fault.
I am not sure if Elissa Cristall Gallery, where the exhibition was held, rents or owns their gallery space. From what I saw from the sidewalk, the second level space is quite stylish. In Vancouver’s property market, I am sure it is a valuable spot.
I am not sure what the BC Building Code has to say about accessibility. Access to the Code document is not cheap – behind a pay wall like that, perhaps not everyone who needs to consult it can.
[UPDATE – If a building was constructed before accessibility provisions in the BC Building Code came into effect, it is only required to become accessible when there is a transfer in ownership, or a major renovation AND to become accessible is “practical.” These are very weak regulations.]
The gallery we wanted to go to should not take all the blame though. Sadly, the two galleries beside it, Master Gallery Ltd. and the prolific Heffel, that proclaims itself to be “Canada’s National Fine Arts Auction House,” were not accessible either from what I could tell.
So, I did what I had to do. I waited outside, while Dalia went up and met her friend and listened to the artist speak. They came down afterwards and it was a nice chat. I didn’t get to meet the artist, or see her work in person, but saw some of the photos on the Internet and my phone, taken by Dalia.
Most disabled people and their families have to fight for their whole lives. We call it being an effective self-advocate. My parents had to fight to allow me to go to a French immersion elementary school instead of an essentially segregated one when I was small. Then they had to fight for me to have an assistant.
As an adult, I am ready to assert what I need, and go after it. It won’t always be easy as I go forward. A good advocate always needs to ask for what they want though. If we don’t ask, how can we get?
So what should I ask for here? Should I travel around with a lawyer on retainer to write threatening demand letters to force public places to become physically accessible? Should I launch claims in the Human Rights Tribunal? I won’t make many friends if I take that approach.
I don’t have all the answers. I know making spaces accessible costs money and can be a logistical challenge. I know that I might have bought some artwork this weekend if I could have gotten into the galleries. These galleries don’t know how many sales they are missing out on.
I don’t know what the best outcome for this type of situation is. If I do not talk about it when I am explicitly denied access to a part of my community, it will not be dealt with, and others will be excluded too. I am not sure what I want to happen in the specific case of these galleries.
I do know that I wish I did not have to write this article. Being excluded from something that I really wanted to participate in hurt.Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, publicly endorsed basic income at least as early as March 2014. Has been increasingly talking about it lately. In a blog on the upsurge in uncertain employment, published on August 24, 2015, Reich concluded, “Ultimately, we’ll need a guaranteed minimum basic income. But I’ll save this for another column.”
It turns out that that other column was his Labor Day message. The entire post is reproduced below in full:
Labor Day 2028 When more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, profits go to an ever-smaller circle of executives and owner-investors. WhatsApp’s young co-founder and CEO, Jan Koum, got $6.8 billion in the deal. What to do? We might try to levy a gigantic tax on the incomes of the billionaire winners and redistribute their winnings to everyone else. But even if politically feasible, the winners will be tempted to store their winnings abroad – or expatriate. In effect, this would be a basic minimum income for everyone. This outcome would also be good for the handful of billionaire executives and owner-investors, because it would ensure they have customers with enough money to buy their labor-saving gadgets. Happy Labor Day.
Reich’s focus on Basic Income is important for U.S. politics, because, although a significant grassroots movement for it is growing in the United States, and public support for the idea is increasing, it is still far outside the centers of power. Reich is the first major U.S. politician in decades to make such a strong endorsement of Basic Income. He has linked basic income to labor market uncertainty, to climate change strategy, and to automation. His choice to make it the focus of his Labor Day column indicates that he believes this policy is a central strategy to supporting workers in a difficult labor market.
The column quoted in full is taken from:
Robert Reich, “Labor Day 2028,” Robert Reich.org, August 31, 2015
He’s earlier column previewing his comments on basic income is:
Robert Reich, “The Upsurge in Uncertain Work,” Robert Reich.org, August 23, 2015
For additional info about Reich and the basic income see these two articles:
Basic Income News, “Former Labor Secretary Endorses BIG, calling it “almost inevitable,” Basic Income News, March 14, 2014
Basic Income News, “Former Secretary of Labor endorses introducing a carbon tax and using the revenue to support BIG,” Basic Income News, June 17, 2014bitcoin (Photo: nevarpp Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Florida Gulf Coast University is using Bitcoin to support students' education.
Atilus, a Bonita Springs-based Web design and Internet marketing company, pledged to donate $25,000 to the university through the Atilus Bitcoin Scholarship Fund. Half of this will be paid in Bitcoin, which is like digital cash.
The initial deposit on April 11 included $2,500 worth of Bitcoin (roughly 5.9 coins at the time). The entire endowment will be funded over the next five years, with plans to pay it faster if possible.
"We thought it would provide positive publicity for the university and help simplify some of the process around accepting donations," said Zach Katkin, president and CEO of Atilus.
Katkin said the scholarship will become available once the full endowment is paid. However, Katkin made a personal Bitcoin donation to make sure a student can receive a scholarship this fall semester.
The scholarship will be awarded to rising juniors or seniors at FGCU with a grade point average of at least 2.75, who demonstrates leadership in student clubs and organizations; who have completed, or are enrolled in, a university sanctioned internship by the first day of classes; and who demonstrate financial need.
Both Katkin and Harry Casimir, director of operations for Atilus, are alumni from FGCU – as well as five other Atilus employees. They were looking to give back to the university and thought Bitcoin would be a good way to donate.
Read or Share this story: http://newspr.es/1ghfKtSA pilot project to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into pellets that can either be used as fuel or stored underground for later has been launched by a Vancouver-based start-up called Carbon Engineering.
While the test facility has so far only extracted 10 tonnes of CO2 since its launch back in June, its operations will help inform the construction of a $200 million commercial plant in 2017, which is expected to extract 1 million tonnes per day - the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road every year. It plans to start selling CO2-based synthetic fuels by 2018.
"It's now possible to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, and use it as a feed stock, with hydrogen, to produce net zero emission fuels," company chief executive Adrian Corless told the AFP.
Funded by private investors, including billionaires Bill Gates and oil sands financier Murray Edwards, Carbon Engineering is not the only company in the world intent on solving our carbon dioxide problems, but it claims to be the first to demonstrate how its technology can be scaled up to have both an actual environmental impact and commercial potential.
Instead of tackling the CO2 that pours out of factory smokestacks - because there are existing machines that do this pretty well - the Carbon Engineering 'direct air capture plant' will deal with everyday carbon emissions from buildings, transportation, and agriculture. "Emissions from sources you just can't otherwise capture," Corless says.
"It's still a pilot-scale plant," he told CBC News. "But it's very important, because it's the first time that anyone's demonstrated a technology that captures CO2 that has the potential to be scaled up to be large enough to be relevant from an environmental or climate point of view."
As we reported back at the time of the test plant launch, direct air capture works just like these new solar cells that split water into a hydrogen fuel. The recycling plant extracts CO2 from the air using a giant complex of fans and a liquid hydroxide solution that reacts with the air to form a carbonate mineral. This carbonate pellet is processed inside a locked vessel and converted back into carbon dioxide and water vapour, which can be used as fuel, or stored for later.
Carbon Engineering
According to CBC News, the larger plant should be able to produce up to 400 litres of gasoline or diesel per day using this method. One of the main things it has going for it is that because it turns the CO2 into fuel, no change in infrastructure will be needed to power big fuel-guzzlers such as ships, planes, and long-haulage trucks. Even existing petrol pumps can work with the fuel. A major limitation of solar and wind technologies, on the other hand, is that they require specific technologies to capture and disperse energy.
"The nice thing about the technology is that there are no real limitations for it to ultimately, in theory, displace all of the existing fossil-based transportation fuels," Corless said.
Going forward, the most important thing for Carbon Engineering to figure out is how to be commercially viable. As Kesavan Unnikrishnan points out at Digital Journal, carbon can cost anything from $1/tonne (Mexico and Poland) to $130/tonne (Sweden) around the world, and Carbon Engineering will need to sell its product at around $100/tonne to support itself commercially.
We'll have to wait and see how things go for direct air capture in the future, but we're so excited by its potential. Watch the video below to find out more about how it works:CLOSE Take a look at the proposed design for the Las Vegas Raiders' new home which looks like it'll be one of the best in the NFL. USA TODAY Sports
Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker James Harrison is in Las Vegas this weekend for an arm-wrestling event. (Photo11: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sport)
Nearly three dozen NFL players are in Las Vegas this weekend for a competition that classically captures the macho spirit of football: Arm wrestling.
Dubbed the inaugural “Pro Football Arm Wrestling Championship” — with heavyweight and light heavyweight crowns in play — it’s a made-for-TV deal, to air on CBS over two weekends later this spring.
But arm wrestlers beware. Roger Goodell and Co, lurk for a strong-arm takedown.
That the event is being staged at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino has captured the attention of the suits at NFL headquarters on Park Avenue. The NFL’s gambling policy, of course, prohibits players from appearing at casinos as part of promotional events.
According to the NFL, players participating in this specific event — without pre-approval — are in violation of the gambling policy and subject to discipline.
MORE NFL:
“Had we been asked in advance if this was acceptable, we would have indicated that it was in direct violation of the gambling policy,” Joe Lockhart, the NFL’s executive vice president for communications and public affairs, told USA TODAY Sports. “No one sought pre-approval.”
Uh-oh.
With discipline perhaps coming in the form of a fine, the stage may be set for another skirmish between flamboyant Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison and his friends in New York.
Harrison, a vocal critic of Goodell who has had a series of differences with the NFL over a range of issues, is coaching one of the teams in the event. His counterpart is Marshawn Lynch, the free-spirited running back who received permission from the Seattle Seahawks this week to visit the Oakland Raiders as he contemplates coming out of retirement.
Other notable participants: Miami Dolphins receiver Kenny Stills, San Francisco 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman, Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey, Raiders punter Marquette King and defensive end Mario Edwards, and New England Patriots safety Patrick Chung.
And what event at a casino would be complete without the presence of a guy nicknamed, “Lucky,” as in Dallas Cowboys receiver Lucky Whitehead.
“This is great exposure for all involved,” said Alan Brickman, co-owner of the California-based company, Encinal Entertainment, that is putting on the show.
In addition to funneling half of the $100,000 in first-place prize money to charity, with the Give Back Foundation charged to support foundations in the players’ names, Brickman sells the TV package as a chance “to get to know the players behind the scenes.”
Interestingly, Brickman disputes the contention that pre-approval wasn’t sought from the NFL. He told USA TODAY Sports that, beginning in January, he engaged with two different departments within the league and tried to strike a deal to include the NFL as a partner with the event.
Obviously, the NFL didn’t sign up. Yet Brickman maintains that during communication with the league, guidelines were suggested that included showing no images during the broadcast of any gambling-related activities or any alcohol. He said the power was turned off on gambling machines in the vicinity of the events being taped.
“With a team coming here, I’m sure they’re branding it as a family destination,” Brickman said from Las Vegas on Friday night.
In the big picture, the arm wrestling event is a fresh test of the mettle of the NFL’s gambling policy.
Remember, two years ago the league essentially shut down a fantasy football convention that was connected to then-Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, warning players of fines and/or suspensions if they participated in the event in Las Vegas that wasn’t even to be actually held at a casino — although it was to be staged at a venue owned by a casino, Sands.
It would have been consistent with the Romo case for the NFL to try to squash the arm wrestling, too. But apparently, there was some communication breakdown as league officials insist that they were unaware of the event until the middle of this week.
In any event, as it stands now, even with the Oakland Raiders formally approved last month for a move to Las Vegas in 2020, the NFL is hardly relaxing a gambling policy that prohibits association with casinos or other gambling establishments.
“We did not change any of our gambling policies in the context of the Raiders relocation,” Goodell said in late March, as the NFL owners meetings wrapped up in Phoenix. “It wasn’t necessary and the Raiders didn’t ask us to do that. We don’t see changing our current policies.”
The NFL has a long history of opposing gambling, particularly sports books, which is why any association with casinos is frowned upon. Yet there’s seemingly a much grayer area in play now, with the Raiders headed to Las Vegas.
A few years ago, the NFL would have never dreamed of putting franchise in the gambling capital of the USA. But times change, and the Raiders move is fueled by the type of cash that always gets the NFL’s attention — $750 million in public funds to build a stadium.
As the Raiders situation progressed, several NFL owners told me that they were not concerned about gambling influences in Las Vegas, given how technology and the spread of casinos has many teams in proximity to such establishments. The league, after all, stages games in London, which has casinos.
Las Vegas, though, is gambling on steroids, so to speak. Moving into a market where gambling is the major industry could force the NFL to constantly re-establish its resolve against such a backdrop.
As Goodell acknowledged, “That is a major risk for us. We have to make sure that we continue to stay focused on making sure that everyone has full confidence that what you see on the field is not influenced by any outside factors. That is our No. 1 concern. That goes to what I consider the integrity of the game. We will not relent on that.”
It might be a stretch to associate an event such as the arm wrestling competition as a threat to the integrity of NFL games, but this is about optics.
Yet with the NFL planting a flag in Las Vegas, there will surely be more events like the arm wrestling championships at casinos and related properties, looking to connect with the NFL.
For example, shortly after the Raiders move was approved, a Nevada brothel owner revealed a plan to open a Raiders-themed brothel. That prompted a question to Goodell about whether special policies will be needed for the Raiders in Las Vegas. He seemed to have an open mind. Sort of.
“We have policies in place now and obviously we’ll continue to evaluate those policies,” he said. “If we think something specific needs to be done in Las Vegas, or any changes to our policy, we obviously retain the right to do that. We will continue to look at that.”
In other words, what happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas. It resonates on Park Avenue, too.Puerto Ricans, such as those who live in Old San Juan, pictured, use less energy per capita than mainland Americans, but get it from sources that make no sense. Photo by Christopher Gregory/Getty
PREPA, the troubled Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, is having difficulty coming up with the money to pay for its latest petroleum delivery. As Caribbean Business reported, the utility last week decided to take cash from its capital works fund—up to $100 million—to buy oil. Usually, PREPA would use existing lines of credit to make such purchases. But the recent downgrades of Puerto Rico’s public debt have made that more challenging.
Puerto Rico has a host of problems. Its economy has been in recession since 2006, and investors are fretting that it may not be able to make good on its $70 billion in municipal bonds. A goodly chunk of its population has decamped to Florida. In the scheme of things, borrowing from an infrastructure fund to pay for fuel oil seems like a drop in a very large bucket.
Nonetheless, WTF? Why is Puerto Rico buying $100-per-barrel oil to make electricity?
There are lots of ways to generate electricity. You can burn fossil fuels like coal, or natural gas, or oil. You can harness the power of rushing water, or the light of the sun, or the wind. You can burn biomass, or garbage waste. Or you can tap landfills for methane gas.
Among these many options, none possesses the lethal combination of high costs and deleterious environmental impact that torching petroleum does. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, burning oil to create electricity emits about 50 percent more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than natural gas and only about 25 percent less than coal, while producing nearly as much sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides as coal does. Meanwhile, with oil at $100 a barrel, shipping in oil over a long distance and then burning it is an extremely costly way of generating electricity.
That’s why America has pretty much given up on petroleum as an electricity-generating fuel. According to the Energy Information Administration, petroleum liquids accounted for about 2.5 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2004, or 100,391 thousand megawatt-hours. By last year, that amount had fallen by 86 percent, and petroleum liquids accounted for just 0.3 percent of total electricity generation. In general, the U.S. electricity fleet has swapped in cleaner-burning natural gas and renewables for coal and oil.
Not so much in Puerto Rico. As the Energy Information Administration notes, in 2012, “65% of Puerto Rico’s electricity came from petroleum, 18% from natural gas, 16% from coal, and 1% from renewable energy.” As PREPA’s list of major power plants shows, many of its biggest plants use either fuel oil No. 6 (the heavy, dirty version that New York City has banned), or Fuel Oil No. 2, which costs about $3 per gallon. (Here’s a long-term chart of heating oil No. 2.) Would it surprise you to learn that Puerto Rico’s electricity costs—at about 27 cents per kilowatt-hour—are about twice what they are on the mainland? The continued reliance on oil is both a symptom and a cause of Puerto Rico’s woes. The high electricity cost functions as a tax on business and industry and as a pernicious regressive tax on consumers.
Historically, island states, such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii, that lack their own supplies of natural gas and coal haven’t had much choice but to rely on petroleum. And to its credit, Puerto Rico is trying to pump up its use of natural gas. One of the biggest plants on the island, the 540-megawatt EcoEléctrica facility, runs on fuel that arrives by ship as liquefied natural gas from Trinidad and Tobago and is processed at the Peñuelas terminal. The same terminal, on Puerto Rico’s southern coast, also feeds the nearby Costa Sur station in Guayanilla, which has been converted from oil to run on natural gas. But Puerto Rico lacks the expensive infrastructure (new terminals, pipeline networks) to convert all its oil-fueled plants quickly. Worse, it lacks the capital and borrowing capacity to build this infrastructure.
Pumping up renewables would help, too. Renewables can’t be relied upon for what’s known as base load—the sun doesn’t shine at night, and the wind doesn’t always blow. But sun and wind can be a significant part of generation—wind farms planted strategically on mountain ridges, or solar panels arrayed on unused farmland or on the tops of big-box stores, schools, and homes. In Texas, wind alone accounts for about 10 percent of electricity generation. On a weekend day in March, solar alone accounted for about 18 percent of California’s electricity. As this cool, daily, real-time chart from Hawaii’s biggest utility shows, during the middle of the day, renewables can easily supply up to 20 percent of Hawaii’s electricity needs.
But Puerto Rico, where the typical person uses only about 40 percent of the amount of energy of a typical American, is behind the curve when it comes to renewables. As EIA notes, “Only about 1% of Puerto Rico’s electricity has been coming from renewable energy sources, all from hydroelectricity.” Building more solar and wind projects isn’t just smart energy policy for a tropical island state like Puerto Rico; it’s smart economic development policy. Doing so would create jobs, help incubate new industries, and provide cheaper electricity, which would be a boon to consumers and businesses.
Law 82, passed in 2010, stipulates Puerto Rico should get 12 percent of its energy from renewable sources by the end of next year. But that seems like a pipe dream. Yes, a few wind farms are up and running, and the first large-scale solar plant went live in 2012. And there’s now a 24-megawatt solar plant at Guayama, a 26-megawatt solar PV plant at Loiza, and a new 5-megawatt installation atop a convention center. NRG is working on a 52-megawatt project in Juncos, spread over 500 acres, and earlier this year, it was reported that half a dozen companies were given the green light to proceed with new solar plants.
But to gain critical mass, Puerto Rico needs all these and dozens of other plans to get approved, financed, built, and connected quickly. And that requires the active cooperation of PREPA, the dysfunctional, struggling power authority. In an article in Caribbean Business earlier this week, Julian Herencia, executive director of the Puerto Rico Renewable Energy Producers Association, accused PREPA of reopening solar agreements that were struck under the prior administration, holding up projects, and generally dragging its feet.
Puerto Rico is stuck on oil in large part because it lacks the funds and capacity to build new distribution and finance the rapid rollout of renewables. And it lacks the funds and capacity in part because it is stuck paying such a high price for electricity due to its dependence on oil. Catch veinte-dos.He also earned renown for downloading nearly 20 million pages of court documents for a project that put them free online. That brought Mr. Swartz under federal investigation. He was not indicted but later published the resulting F.B.I. file online.
He faces up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for charges related to wire fraud, computer fraud and unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer. He surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday morning, was arraigned in Federal District Court and pleaded not guilty to all counts. He was released on $100,000 unsecured bond.
Institutions like colleges and libraries pay for access to JSTOR, which is then available free to their users. Supporters were quick to defend Mr. Swartz. David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, an activist group that Mr. Swartz founded, said in a statement that the arrest “makes no sense,” comparing the indictment to “trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.” An online petition gathered 15,000 signatures in just a few hours.
In an interview, Mr. Segal said that his comments went to the principle, not to anything Mr. Swartz might have done in obtaining the documents.
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“I know him as a person who cares deeply about matters of ethics and government,” Mr. Segal said. “I don’t know about the matter of what has been alleged.”
Beginning in September of last year, according to the indictment, Mr. Swartz used several methods to grab articles, even breaking into a computer-wiring closet on the M.I.T. campus and setting up a laptop with a false identity on the school network for free JSTOR access under the name Gary Host — or when shortened for the e-mail address, “ghost.” When retrieving the computer, he hid his face behind a bicycle helmet, peeking out through the ventilation holes.
The flood of downloads was so great that it crashed some JSTOR servers, the indictment stated, and JSTOR blocked access to the network from M.I.T. and its users for several days.
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Ultimately Mr. Swartz returned the hard drives containing the articles to JSTOR and promised that the material would not be disseminated.
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“We are not pursuing further action,” the organization’s general counsel, Nancy Kopans, said; the organization said in a statement that the criminal case “has been directed by the United States Attorney’s Office.”
As for the comments from Mr. Swartz’s supporters that he had done nothing wrong, however, Ms. Kopans said, “It’s an unfortunate situation, but I think the facts speak for themselves.”
Mr. Swartz recently completed a 10-month fellowship at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. “Aaron has never done anything in this context for personal gain — this isn’t a hacking case, in the sense of someone trying to steal credit cards,” said Lawrence Lessig, the center’s director. “That’s something JSTOR saw, and the government obviously didn’t.”
In a statement announcing the charges, a United States attorney, Carmen M. Ortiz, said: “Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away.”
Carl Malamud, an online activist who worked with Mr. Swartz on the court-documents project, called Mr. Swartz “one of the Internet’s most talented programmers,” but said that “the JSTOR situation is very disturbing.”
In an e-mail exchange with a reporter, Mr. Malamud, who is engaged in a project intended to put all laws and government documents online, said: “My style, when I see a gate barring entry and that gate is sanctioned by the law, is to go up to that gate and pound on it hard and force them to open up. Others sometimes look for a back door.”
He added, “I’m not convinced that style is always effective, and it is certainly often dangerous.”My top ten favourite historical nations. Inspired by: anycent.deviantart.com/art/My-…, made by1. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland: Not only do I love it as a historical nation, I support bringing it back!2. Rhodesia: The great rebel state of southern Africa, fighting Marxism and anti-imperialism.3. Union of South Africa: Though we may have fought them, valiant South Africans took German South-West Africa, for the British Empire. Boers and Britons died side by side in the trenches of Europe.4. First French Empire: We may have fought it, but Napoleon was a worthy adversary. Glad he lost though.5. German Empire: Another worthy adversary6. Kingdom of Yugoslavia: I don't know why I love this one, I just do.7. Denmark-Norway: As above, I just think it's a pretty interesting former nation.8. Oranje-Vrystaat: Translated as "Orange Free State", this was one of the Boer Republics that took on the British Empire, and damn near won.9. Grand Duchy of Warsaw: Becuase I think Polands an amazing country.10. Kingdom of Spain: Even though I have no love for Spain, the Kingdom has an interesting and glorious history.Feel free to share some of your favourites with me.The B.C. premier's attempt to host an International Day of Yoga event on Vancouver's Burrard Bridge has fallen apart as the "Om the Bridge" sponsors have cancelled the celebration and say they are looking to host a "more meaningful" event somewhere else in the city.
Lululemon, YYoga and Altagas all confirmed Friday morning they had withdrawn their support from the event that had faced an intense backlash due to the amount of money being spent (estimated at $150,000), the closure of the bridge, and a perceived lack of respect for National Aboriginal Day, which also falls on June 21.
Responding to a protest tweet calling for a boycott of their company — as well as the other sponsors — Lululemon Athletica replied it had decided to withdraw their support.
<a href="https://twitter.com/stromkonsult">@stromkonsult</a> After much feedback, we've decided not to participate. We'll be reimagining a way to honour the spirit and tradition of yoga. —@lululemon
YYoga posted a statement to their website by founder Terry McBride.
"We hoped that our intentions would shine through, but that has not been the case," McBride's statement reads. "We have heard that the event that was presented was not what [the community] wanted."
He said there would be further news coming about a different event that would be more meaningful.
AltaGas — who had promised $10,000 of sponsorship — are also considering their position.
President John Lowe told CBC News the company would likely follow suit, but had yet to talk to the province.
In a statement Friday afternoon, B.C. Premier Christy Clark said "Om the Bridge" had been created with "the very best of intentions" but those had been overshadowed by politics.
"Unfortunately, the focus of the proposed Burrard Street Bridge event has drifted towards politics — getting in the way of the spirit of community and inner reflection," the statement reads.
Earlier Friday, Clark had said she would not attend the event.
The day after she made a joke on Twitter about "yoga haters", the premier turned once again to social media.
"Yoga Day is a great opportunity to celebrate peace and harmony — it's not about politics. I don't intend to participate," Clark tweeted on Friday morning.President Obama’s plan to reduce carbon gas coming from the nation’s coal plants is to be announced Monday. Cue the predictable attacks from Congress’ rightwing.
Already The New York Times reports that Republicans “say that Mr. Obama will be using his executive authority as a back door to force through an inflammatory cap-and-trade policy he could not get through Congress.”
The new Environmental Protection Agency regulations come weeks after the Senate defeat of a much smaller effort at passing a bill to spur the use of energy efficient, “smart meter” heating and cooling systems.
Republicans refused to vote for that simple idea unless they could use it as a springboard to open a debate on the Keystone XL pipeline. They hoped to open a split between some conservative Senate Democrats and the president. They also wanted a separate debate on halting the president from using his executive powers to limit carbon emissions.
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The defeated energy bill had bipartisan support with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) as co-sponsors. Portman described the inability to pass the bill as “another disappointing example of Washington’s dysfunction.”
Other Republicans blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-Nev.). They complained he did not allow amendments to be attached to the bill, closing the door for debate in the Senate.
The critics are exactly wrong.
Even in this politically polarized Senate, Reid indicated he would have allowed a separate vote on Keystone. But it would have come after a clean vote on the Portman-Shaheen bill. He rightly wanted to avoid opening the door to potential political games such as poison pill amendments preventing the President from taking executive action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Last month, both the president and Reid condemned news reporters for parroting the GOP line that both political parties are to blame for the failure to get anything done on Capitol Hill.
Reid told MSNBC that Congressional reporters “won’t call things the way they actually exist,” which is that “the Republicans have stopped everything from happening…We [the Democrat majority] want to legislate.”
President Obama recently delivered a similar message. He told a fundraising audience that, contrary to news reports, Democrats and Republicans are not equally to blame for Congressional gridlock.
“The truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific,” said the president. “We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid…who deny the science of climate change."
He added that his party was not “overly ideological” and went on:
“So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it’s not true. What’s broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says ‘No’ to time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people.”
That presidential diagnosis also applies to 2010, when Senate Republicans killed another energy bill. That one was based on the same ‘cap-and-trade’ theory that the president is putting in place by executive action Monday.
The opposition then was fed by Tea Party complaints that the bill was a “war on coal.” They ignored the fact that cap-and-trade is a pro-business approach historically embraced by Republican leaders from President George H.W. Bush to Mitt Romney.
Now Tea Party types threaten political doom for any renegade Republican not inveighing against big government and costly regulation. They also claim more regulation on burning coal is sure to raise consumer energy prices but would do little to limit greenhouse gas emissions because the world’s other major polluting nations have not agreed to reduce their pollution.
But as The New York Times reported last week, “a number of officials at electric utilities say they welcome cap-and-trade programs because they offer an affordable and flexible way to comply with the new regulation.” In addition, Chinese officials say they are looking to the United States for solutions and leadership on the issue.
Yet Republicans and sadly much of the news media will present the president’s action to limit carbon emissions as the actions of an imperial president who is quick to use executive orders. Of course, the hidden fact is that President Obama has issued fewer executive orders than his recent predecessors.
What is not-so-hidden is that with six months of its lifespan remaining, the 113th Congress is on track to set the record as the least productive Congress in American history. So far GOP obstruction on energy and other issues has resulted in this Congress passing only 104 laws. The |
ings truly are.
The other thing that separates Squall and a person who thinks it’s perfectly ok to scream ‘I WISH I’D NEVER BEEN BORN’ before slamming the door is the willingness to take action. Check out the opening clip to FFVIII:
https://youtu.be/MoyEBlNafnQ
This is not a guy who thinks he’s hard done by and whines at the first sign of adversity. This is a guy who gets his face cut open and decides that he’s going to repay the favour in kind — not exactly your usual emo fare.
Further, in spite of the fact that a lot of the dialogue in the game takes place inside Squall’s head, he’s a leader — during the later stages of the game, he’s given command of the entire academy. And in this clip (around 56 minutes in), he’s commanding his friend to put a bullet between the eyes of the Sorceress.
https://youtu.be/lbDdLvdP_Nc
That’s bad-arse.
Oh, and he gets tortured. If you play the game, you’ll notice that he doesn’t retreat to his room and weep to Good Charlotte.
The thing is, I have no idea how it seeped into the collective gaming conscious that this was ‘emo’ (and negatively so), whereas the constant narrative of the moral ‘grey area’ of modern gaming hasn’t yet received a collective sigh and a universal rolling of eyes. Being morally dubious for the sake of being morally dubious isn’t interesting. It makes characters look bi-polar, and it makes decisions look arbitrary. Even if Squall was as infuriating as a North Shore poet whose works concerned how terrible it was to drive a second-hand car, it would still make for a stronger character than ‘omg guys war is bad yet we’re doing it but srsly I actually am very nice :)’.
I’d like to hear your thoughts though — do FFVIII fans agree? What have non-players heard about him? Let me know in the comments.The Tor Project is joining forces with Home Assistant, and The Guardian to create a newer security system to funnel all the data traffic for the device to the end user via Tor, not public internet. The new system is the Home Assistant platform, only it’s running a special Tor Onion Service Configuration.
You only need a device that’s Raspberry-Pi or close to it, to run Home Assistants software. The software will run a Tor configuration that sets up a special Onion site on the device. For remote access to IoT simply need the Onion link to the Home assistant software, then the connection will then rely from the remote device, to the actual IoT device, acting like a proxy.
Using this new system, there will be no need to set up difficult SSL/TLS certificates to support HTTPS connections, since Tor is encrypted by default. Users won’t need to open firewall ports or use VPNs to access the connected IoT device. All connections are routed through Tor so nobody will be able to see the users traffic. This means that nobody will be able to tell if it’s a marketplace or a surveillance camera.
The scanning of Tor protected devices is very, very hard. There will be no need to search for vulnerabilities in IoT devices.
“To many things in our homes, at our hospitals, in our businesses and through our lives are exposed to the public internet without the ability to protect their communication. Tor provides this, for free, with real world hard ended, open source software and strong, state of the art cryptography,” Executive director of the Guardian Project, Nathan Freitas explained.The YES Network gave out a fascinating stat during yesterday’s broadcast. Coming into yesterday’s game with the Rays, the New York Yankees had a record of 1-32 this season when they allow five or more runs. True to form, the Yanks promptly lost 6-3 and dropped below.500 to 41-42. They have lost their last five games and nine of their last eleven, and sport a run differential (runs scored minus runs allowed) of -37.
The main culprit in the struggle of the Bronx Bombers has been because, well, they haven’t been the Bombers at the plate. The Yankees as a group are hitting.251/.316/.381 as a group, with a 92 wRC+ (100 is league average). The biggest problem is that their two biggest offensive offseason acquisitions, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann, have been simply atrocious. Beltran has missed time after tumbling over a wall at Tropicana Field and nursing bone spurs in his elbow. Before the injuries reared their ugly heads, Beltran had been struggling. Apparently trying to play through bone spurs in your elbow is a bad idea, who knew?
McCann unfortunately (fortunately?) doesn’t have that kind of crutch to fall back on. He’s just been underperforming, plain and simple. In nearly 300 plate appearances, McCann has posted a.224/.285/.373 line. Yikes. Part of that can be chalked up to the ever-increasing usage of defensive shifts, which McCann has seen pretty much every time he’s come up to bat. As the below spray chart from BrooksBaseball shows, McCann is highly susceptible to pulling grounders to the first base side of the infield. The shift gobbles those up, and if you were an opposing manager why wouldn’t you shift on McCann? As a curious side note, McCann’s ground ball percentage is actually down from his career rate. What is up his infield fly ball percentage. A 9.8% clip in 2013 has turned into an ugly 13.7%, which is going right into the shift. McCann is also walking three points below his career average. This points to a lot of hacking at bad pitches and producing weak contact. All of that leads to an awful 80 wRC+.
2013 holdover Alfonso Soriano is also absent at the dish. Soriano is sitting at.225/.248/.374 (an abysmal 64 wRC+) after lighting the world on fire in the second half of last season upon his trade to New York. Soriano’s problem is relatively simple, in that he’s striking out nearly 30% of the time while only walking 2.6% of the time. That will put anyone in trouble. But it gets worse. Soriano is only hitting.209 off of right-handers, and a barely serviceable.250 off lefties. That’s about as bad a platoon bat as exists in the majors. With runners in scoring position he actually gets worse, with a.185 batting average. He’s also a total disaster in the field with -6 defensive runs saved to his name, and a -4.1 UZR.
Those are only the three main culprits. Kelly Johnson, Yangervis Solarte (despite a scorching start), Francisco Cervelli (in limited time) and Brian Roberts all have been utter failures on offense. Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki have failed to be more than glorified singles hitters, with Jeter losing 20 points off his batting average when men are on base (he hits second behind OBP machine Brett Gardner).
Indeed, Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury and Mark Teixeira have been the only trustworthy hitters that the Yankees have sent out all season. Ellsbury and Teixeira are being their normal selves, but Gardner is quietly having the best season of his life. Batting leadoff and sitting on a.288/.359/.434 line (121 wRC+), he’s hit eight homers. That matches his total for all of last year. He also regularly forces pitchers to throw a mountain of pitches to him by fouling off pitch after pitch. This not only displays the pitcher’s repertoire to the bench, but also wears out the pitcher both mentally and physically. His value to the team is immense and it’s troubling to think where the Yankees would be without both his bat and outstanding glove work.
The question the Yankees have to face themselves with is a philosophical one. Do they plod on with this lineup and reinforce the pitching rotation, which has been wracked with unfortunate injuries? Do they bolster the offense and pray C.C. Sabathia can return to ace form when he returns from the Disabled List? Or do they resign themselves to a lost season and trade off pieces to bolster the farm system (one that just got a massive shot in the arm with a surplus of international prospect spending)? Do they fire hitting coach Kevin Long?
Calls for Long’s head have surfaced recently, and they’re not entirely without reason. Long’s philosophy seems to have been one of power and lots of it. The classic example of his tutelage would be Curtis Granderson. Upon his arrival in the Bronx, Granderson morphed into an all-or-nothing type of hitter and saw both his strikeouts and home run total shoot through the roof. While that’s a very tempting prospect for lefty hitters who play half their games listening to the call of the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium, is it a truly productive way to hit? By shooting his OBP in the foot for the sake of home runs, Granderson forsook his excellent baserunning and stolen base potential.
It’s possible the Kevin Long effect is now sinking its fangs into Brian McCann. All the hubbub upon McCann’s signing in the offseason was about his 30-homer potential because of the short porch. Did Long exacerbate those expectations with McCann? I’m not in the Yankee clubhouse, so I can’t say for sure. But it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing in the world.
It’s also not surprising to see that Beltran came back to play through the bone spurs rather than take a two-month furlough and get surgery to repair the issue. Nobody on the outside knows whether that was his decision or the team’s. But would anyone be surprised if it was encouraged by Yankee brass? After spending so much money on players like Beltran, McCann, Ellsbury and Masahiro Tanaka, there’s an expectation of a World Series win in the New York fan base (and more importantly, the New York media). There’s also the matter of making that money back. The Yankees are the Yankees, and will never have to worry about not turning a profit. Yet more and more, with every bad at-bat Beltran has, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the New York front office cares more about the names on the back of t-shirts and jerseys than the product on the field. If the Yankees are serious about making a run at the division title, Beltran should have been carted off for surgery on his elbow a long time ago.
Clearly, the “play through the pain” experiment has been a dismal failure. Brian Cashman seems to be waiting for some magical wave of a wand that will fix his offensive core’s problems, and it just simply isn’t going to happen by itself. Could McCann actually make adjustments at the plate to not be so pull-happy? Sure. But Soriano has clearly gone over the hill, and bone spurs don’t get wished away. The team has too many holes and too few good prospects to fix everything with trade deadline maneuvering, so Cashman has to focus on rebuilding offense from within while fixing pitching externally.
The pieces to partially alleviate the Yankee offense may exist in-system already. The first step may have already happened, as rumors are circulating Zelous Wheeler got the call late last night. A career minor-leaguer, Wheeler has torn up Triple-A pitching and plays roughly the same defensive positions as the beleaguered Solarte. Also stashed at Triple-A are Jose Pirela, an All-Star this year, and the rapidly ascending Rob Refsnyder. Those two may be vast improvements over Soriano and Roberts, respectively. Yet those three cannot do all the work themselves, and the odds of all three hitting effectively at the Major League level are slim. Beltran has to be healed, McCann needs to wake himself up and realize that pulling the ball every time won’t work in 2014.
Until that happens, the Yankees may as well pack it in right now. Even in a terrible Al East, the Yanks are going nowhere fast with the current group of batters. Recently asked by a reporter about how he plans to switch up the struggling offense, Girardi responded by telling the reporter there really isn’t anyone on the roster to switch it up with. It’s a sad truth that the Yankees have taken far too long to notice and respond to. This is the latest in the season the Bombers have been under.500 since 2007. That team finished with more than 90 wins, but that team also had strong hitters like the MVP-winning Alex Rodriguez. It’s hard to see this team having that kind of turnaround anytime soon.
For more on sports injuries, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert.
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Main Photo by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty ImagesThe search warrants used by police to raid the New Zealand home of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom have been ruled illegal. In addition, the data that was sent to the FBI was ruled to be unlawfully obtained. The decision by the High Court is the latest in a series of setbacks for prosecutors on both sides of the Pacific. Could this be the beginning of the end for the Megaupload trial?
A case that seemed, just 5 months ago, to be a veritable David and Goliath fight is certainly living up to its billing.
The battle between Megaupload (David) and the US Government and the MPAA (Goliath) started out with a flurry of blows against the New Zealand based site staff, but in recent weeks the blows have all been falling stateside.
Today, the New Zealand High Court ruled that the search warrants used to raid Dotcom’s mansion were illegal, casting uncertainty over the entire ‘Mega Conspiracy’ case.
An earlier ruling by High Court Justice Judith Potter concluded that a previous search and seizure order was invalid because of improper paperwork. The documents were later corrected.
In the ruling, Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann declared the warrants illegal, noting that they were not adequately descriptive of the offenses Dotcom was accused of.
“Indeed they fell well short of that. They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid,” she said.
In addition, the data removed from New Zealand by the FBI (which they claim was ‘not stolen’, since it was ‘only data’) was also ruled to be illegally obtained, and should not have been taken out the country.
“…the release of cloned hard drives to the FBI for shipping to the United States was contrary to the February 16 direction under section 49 (2) of the MACMA [Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act] that the items seized were to remain in custody and control of the Commissioner of Police. This dealing with the cloned hard drives was therefore in breach of s49(3) of the MACMA.”
Winkelmann also voiced concerns over police conduct, questioning if their actions in January amounted to unreasonable search and seizure, with a preliminary view that they did. Along with these concerns came a note that the raid could be considered trespass by the police, not something the elite anti-terrorist team used for the raid will want on their record.
Perhaps the biggest setback for any prosecution relates to what evidence was collected. An independent, and appropriately experienced High Court lawyer will now conduct a review of the evidence to determine what is and is not relevant to the charges Dotcom faces.
Anything deemed not relevant will be returned to Dotcom, and not provided to the US. Anything deemed relevant will be copied to both Dotcom and US authorities for use in court.
While the ruling does not amount to the unequivocal quashing of the search warrants and the invalidation of any evidence collected through them, it is a significant win for Dotcom. Meanwhile a request for the cloned hard drives to be returned (presumably without being copied) has been made to US authorities. The amount of respect for the New Zealand legal system held by US authorities may be inferred by the time it takes to comply with the request.
As for the extradition hearing? That’s still going ahead.Conservative group demands removal of statue of Ancient Greek philosopher in Turkey’s Sinop
SİNOP
A local religious conservative foundation staged a protest in the Black Sea province of Sinop on Aug. 22, demanding the removal of a statue of Ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes.The Erbakan Foundation said it was protesting the fact that the Greek ideology being attached to the province rather than arts.“We are not against arts and sculptures. We are against the fact that they are attaching Greek ideology to Sinop under the cover of the statue. We want the Diogenes statue to be taken from the entrance of Sinop and moved to Balatlar [a local Byzantine church]. We will put in effort for this. We will struggle to the end, whether a petition or a permanent press statement here is required,” said İsmail Teziç, the foundation’s Sinop provincial representative.Born in Sinope, modern-day Sinop, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC, Diogenes is known as one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. He was also noted for having publicly mocked Alexander the Great.After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth, Greece, where he died in 323 BC.In the Church of Scientology, auditing is a process wherein the auditor takes an individual, known as a "preclear", through times in their life and gets rid of any hold negative situations have on them. Auditing began as an integral part of the Dianetics movement and has since, with the E-meter, become a core practice in Scientology. Auditing is defined by the Church as "the application of Dianetics or Scientology processes and procedures to someone by a trained auditor. One formal definition of auditing is the action of asking a person a question (which he can understand and answer), getting an answer to that question and acknowledging him or her for that answer."[1] Auditing is considered "a technical measure," that according to the Church, "lifts the burdened individual, the 'preclear,' from a level of spiritual distress to a level of insight and inner self-realization." The process is meant to bring the individual to clear status.
According to scholar Eric Roux, auditing is one of the "core practices" of Scientology. The primary aim of auditing in Scientology doctrine is to rediscover an individual's natural abilities, while understanding that one is a spiritual being.
Some auditing actions use commands, for example "Recall a time you knew you understood someone," and some auditing actions use questions such as, "What are you willing for me to talk to others about?"[2]
Description [ edit ]
In the context of Dianetics or Scientology, auditing is an activity where an auditor, trained in the task of communication, listens and gives auditing commands to a subject, who is referred to as a "preclear", or more often as a "pc". While auditing sessions are confidential, the notes taken by the auditor during auditing sessions. Preclears never see their own pc folders. Scientology does not agree with evaluation of a PC. Having a PC observe their own folder might bring an evaluation into his/her universe making it harder for him/her to spot the actual core of a current situation.
Auditing involves the use of "processes," which are sets of questions asked or directions given by an auditor. When the specific objective of any one process is achieved, the process is ended and another can then be started. Through auditing, the subjects are said to free themselves from barriers that inhibit their natural abilities. Outlining the auditing process, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard explained:
Charge is that which prevents the pc from thinking on a subject. Prevents him from thinking on a subject or getting rid of a subject or approaching a subject. Sum it up to handling a subject. Charged.[3]
Scientologists the person being audited is completely aware of everything that happens and becomes even more alert as auditing progresses. As Hubbard wrote,
One of the great truths of Scientology is that INCREASED AWARENESS IS THE ONLY FACTOR WHICH OFFERS ANY ROAD OUT.[4]
The auditor is obliged by the Church's doctrine to maintain a strict code of conduct, called the Auditor's Code.[5] Auditing is said to be successful only when the auditor conducts himself in accordance with the Code.[6] A violation of the Auditor's Code is considered a high crime under Scientology policy.
The code outlines a series of 29 promises, which include pledges such as:[7]
Not to evaluate for the preclear or tell him what he should think about his case in session
Not to invalidate the preclear's case or gains in or out of session
Never to use the secrets of a preclear divulged in session for punishment or personal gain
The main intention of an auditing session is to remove "charted incidents" that have caused trauma, which are believed in Scientology to be stored in the reactive mind. These incidents must then be eliminated for proper functioning, in accordance with the Church's belief.[8]
According to the religion researcher Hugh B. Urban, both current Scientologists and people who have become disaffected with Scientology generally agree that auditing can trigger personal insights and cause dramatic changes in one's psychological state.[9] The recalling and expression of old hurts in response to the auditor's questions may feel like an unburdening, followed by a period of elation, as though a weight has been lifted off the practitioner's shoulders.[9]
Scientology makes a distinction between auditors, those who practice auditing, and publics, those who receive the prosses but do not receive training to perform the practice on others until they wish to do so. Auditors are deemed in Scientology as higher state individuals as they are regarded as more focused in achieving the goals of the religion, or "clearing the planet," in Scientological terminology.[10]
In 1952, auditing techniques "began to focus on the goal of exteriorizing the thetan" in order to provide one with a complete awareness of one's spiritual nature. According to Eric Roux, "many auditing techniques were designed towards gaining spiritual freedom by way of increasing communication of the thetan with the physical universe, in order to develop freedom from the physical universe." Scientologists believe that the thetan "can exist separately from the body, with a full awareness of being out of it, a phenomenon which Scientologists call 'exteriorization.' (Hubbard 1952)[11]
Mark Super VII Quantum E-meter
Most auditing sessions employ a device called the Hubbard Electropsychometer or E-meter. This device is a custom electrodermal activity measurement device. It measures changes in the electrical resistance of the preclear by passing a small electric current (typically in the range from 50 µA to 120 µA) through the preclear's body by means of a pair of tin-plated tubes originally much like empty soup cans, attached to the meter by wires and held by the preclear during auditing. These changes in electrical resistance are believed by Scientologists to be a reliable and a precise indication of changes in the reactive mind of the preclear.
According to Scientologist doctrine, the development of the E-meter enabled auditing techniques and made it more precise. Later, the E-meter was used to identify which processes should (and could) be run[12] and equally crucially, to determine when to stop running a particular action. As a repair tool, the E-meter reacts to a list of possible difficulties and relevant phrases called out by the auditor, helping to guide the auditor to the difficulty.[13] Hubbard clarified how the E-Meter should be used in conjunction with auditing:
HCO Bulletin 3 December 1978 One of the governing laws of auditing is that you don't run unreading items. It doesn't matter what you are auditing. You don't run unreading items. And you don't run unreading flows. You don't run an unreading anything. Ever. For any reason. Auditing is aimed at reactivity. You run what reacts on the meter because it reacts and is therefore part of the reactive mind. A read means there is charge present and available to run. Running reading items, flows and questions is the only way to make a pc better. This is our purpose in auditing. L Ron Hubbard
Hubbard claimed that the device also has such sensitivity that it can measure whether or not fruits can experience pain, claiming in 1968 that tomatoes "scream when sliced."[14][15][16]
Scientology teaches that individuals are immortal souls or spirits (called thetans by Scientology) and are not limited to a single lifetime. The E-meter is believed to aid the auditor in locating subliminal memories ("engrams", "incidents", and "implants") of past events in a thetan's current life and in previous ones. In such Scientology publications as Have You Lived Before This Life, Hubbard wrote about past life experiences dating back billions and even trillions of years.[17]
When various foundations of Dianetics were formed in the 1950s, auditing sessions were a hybrid of confession, counseling and psychotherapy. According to Passas and Castillo, the e-meter was believed to be used to "disclose truth to the individual who is being processed and thus free him spiritually."[18]
Bridge [ edit ]
Back in 1950, at the very end of his book, Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard talks about a bridge from one plateau of existence to another, higher plateau.
Hubbard wanted to make the processes structured in such a way that one could take a new person and walk them through standardized steps, one after another, to cross this hypothesized "Bridge". This intent led to the development of the Standard Operating Procedure for Theta Clearing by 1952.[19] Standard Operating Procedure for the Church of Scientology changed rapidly, meaning that when somebody was trained as an auditor they were almost immediately out of date with the latest procedures.[citation needed]
In 1970, the Standard Operating Procedure was used to create the Classification and Gradation Chart. This chart, first published in 1965 and revised in 1966, 1968 and 1969, had the steps of the bridge plotted out from a beginner at the bottom to the highest states attainable at the top.[20] The left-hand side of the chart contains auditor skill levels, while the right-hand side contains pre-clear grades and OT (Operating Thetan) levels.
The 1970 version of the chart is entitled "Classification Gradation and Awareness Chart of Levels and Certificates". By 1974 the above title had slipped down a little to make way for "THE BRIDGE" as the top line, with "TO A NEW WORLD" underneath in a smaller font. A more recent (circa 2016) chart is entitled "THE BRIDGE TO TOTAL FREEDOM" and subtitled "SCIENTOLOGY CLASSIFICATION GRADATION AND AWARENESS CHART."[21]
Procedure [ edit ]
Each Grade on the Bridge has a list of processes that auditors should run. Below are sample commands from processes run in each Grade.
ARC Straightwire: "Recall a communication." [22]
Grade 0: "Recall a place from which you have communicated to another." [23]
Grade I: "Recall a problem you have had with another." [24]
Grade II: "Recall a secret." [25]
Grade III: "Can you recall a time of change?" [26]
Grade IV: "What about a victim could you be responsible for?" [27]
Each Grade is targeted at a specific area of potential difficulty a person might have. The working hypothesis is that if the subject matter is not "charged"; in other words, if it is not causing any difficulty, then it will not read on the E-meter, and therefore will not be run.[citation needed]
The above processes demonstrate a key aspect of Scientology processes. The question or command can be quite general. It is absolutely forbidden (by the Auditor's Code) for the auditor to interpret the preclear's answer or discuss it in any way.[citation needed]
A possible audit could be performed like this:
Auditor: "Recall a secret." Preclear: "I deliberately broke the window in the hall with my ball." Auditor: "Thank you.. Recall a secret." Preclear: "I saw my sister kissing the postman." Auditor: "Ok.. Recall a secret." Preclear: "I hate my mum's apple pie, but my dad told me not to tell her." Auditor: "Thank you. Recall a secret."
Controversy [ edit ]
Preclear folders [ edit ]
The Scientology and Dianetics auditing process has raised concerns from a number of quarters, as auditing sessions are permanently recorded in the form of handwritten notes in preclear folders, which are supposed to be kept private. Judge Paul Breckenridge, in Church of Scientology of California vs. Gerald Armstrong, noted that Mary Sue Hubbard (the plaintiff in that case) "authored the infamous order 'GO 121669', which directed culling of supposedly confidential P.C. [Preclear] files/folders for the purposes of internal security". This directive was later canceled because it was not part of Scientology as written by L. Ron Hubbard. Bruce Hines has noted in an interview with Hoda Kotb that Scientology's collecting of personal and private information through auditing can possibly leave an adherent vulnerable to potential "blackmail" should they ever consider disaffecting from the church.[28] A number of sources have claimed that preclear folders have indeed been used for intimidation and harassment.[29][30][31][32]
Anderson Report [ edit ]
In 1965 the Anderson Report, an official inquiry conducted for the state of Victoria, Australia, found that auditing involved a form of "authoritative" or "command" hypnosis, in which the hypnotist assumes "positive authoritative control" over the subject. "It is the firm conclusion of this Board that most scientology and dianetic techniques are those of authoritative hypnosis and as such are dangerous.... the scientific evidence which the Board heard from several expert witnesses of the highest repute... which was virtually unchallenged - leads to the inescapable conclusion that it is only in name that there is any difference between authoritative hypnosis and most of the techniques of scientology. "[33]
As a result of the Anderson Report, a number of restrictive laws were passed in Australia against Scientology, but in the ensuing years, all were repealed. As of 2011 auditing is considered a spiritual practice by the government of Australia.
Claims [ edit ]
L. Ron Hubbard claimed benefits from auditing including improved IQ, improved ability to communicate, enhanced memory and alleviation of issues such as psychosis, dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.[34][35] Some people have alleged that auditing amounts to medical treatment without a license, and in the 1950s, some auditors were arrested on the charge.[36] The Church disputes that it is practicing medicine, and it has successfully established in United States courts of law that auditing addresses only spiritual relief.[37] According to the Church, the psychotherapist treats mental health and the Church treats the spiritual being. Hubbard clarified the difference between the two:
If we processed a specific type of aberration, we of course would be in the field of mental healing, and so forth. But long ago we actually discovered that we must not process specific aberrations, which takes us out of the field of mental healing. It is quite fatal to do this because in the first place it's an evaluation for the case. In the second place, it's a negative type process; you're condemning the individual for hitting girls. Doesn't validate the individual at all. Do you follow? And if carried on very long, does not result in the betterment of an individual. All we're interested in is the spiritual betterment of the individual...[38]
In 1971, a ruling of the United States District Court, District of Columbia (333 F. Supp. 357), specifically stated that the E-meter "has no proven usefulness in the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease, nor is it medically or scientifically capable of improving any bodily function."[39] As a result of this ruling, Scientology now publishes disclaimers in its books and publications declaring that the E-meter "by itself does nothing" and that it is used specifically for spiritual purposes.[39]
Child auditors [ edit ]
Dutch investigative reporter Rinke Verkerk reported that she was given an auditing session by an 11-year-old in the Netherlands.[40] This has been criticized by clinical psychologists and child psychologists, on the grounds that secondary stress can affect children more strongly than adults.[41] The fact that the child was working full days for a whole weekend was also considered to be problematic.[41]
Notes [ edit ]
Note: HCOB refers to "Hubbard Communications Office Bulletins", HCOPL refers to "Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letters", and SHSBC refers to "Saint Hill Special Briefing Courses". All have been made publicly available by the Church of Scientology in the past, both as individual documents or in bound volumes.What Inspires Ray Gastil's Careful Plan for Pittsburgh's Future
How will the city’s new planning director stoke Pittsburgh’s next generation of developments?
by Patrick Doyle
Don’t follow the planning director,” Ray Gastil warns, shouting over his shoulder, “because he’s a reckless bicyclist!”
We’re barreling down Grant Street past the City-County Building, bicycles rattling on the brick pavers. We swing onto Sixth Avenue, headed toward Mellon Square. Confronted with a city bus straddling both lanes, we split; Gastil darts to the right, trying to beat the bus to the next intersection. The bus driver, who hasn’t seen him, keeps moving to the right. From my angle, it looks as if the city planner of Pittsburgh has just been crushed against the curb.
We’re not even a half-mile into our planned bike ride across the city, a 25-mile ramble Gastil charted to explore neighborhoods both established and in transition, to look at bike lanes and the riverfront, bridges and buildings, and developments both in-progress and just on paper. The goal: to see Pittsburgh through the eyes of its planning director, the person charged with mapping out the future of the city. “For what I do, biking is a great way to see a city,” says Gastil, who has been at the helm of the Planning Department for a little more than a year. “Walking is great, but if you want to cover some territory, biking is the only way to go.”
Walking is beginning to appear the better option when Gastil finally emerges from behind the bus, intact and laughing nervously at the near miss. We pause for a breath, and he begins praising the newly overhauled Mellon Square (“an amazing entity”) before moving down the street past the Smithfield United Church of Christ (home, he points out, to “the first structural aluminum steeple in the world”).
It’s here that he turns — bus forgotten, eyes sparkling.
“Have you ever ridden under the convention center?” he asks. “No? OK, we’re doing it. It’s so fun!” He turns back to the street, and he’s off.
PHOTOS BY RENEE ROSENSTEEL
Forty minutes later, Gastil is perched high above downtown on a Mount Washington overlook after a ride on the Monongahela Incline. Gastil, a trim 56-year-old with curly graying hair, surveys the city — his canvas — below. “What do you see?” he asks. “What do you see?”
He exudes a professorial air, speaking not so much in sentences or even paragraphs but in entire graduate seminars — a holdover from his days in academia. As when he is on two wheels, once he gets going, he’s difficult to stop.
The planner points to the building at 700 Grant St. that houses the U.S. District Court and the downtown post office. “We have some great early-20th-century Beaux Arts buildings that have a very high standard, are well-made and preserved and brilliant,” he says. “We also have some ’20s stuff, [such as] that beautiful one with the green Huntington [bank] sign. The PNC [Firstside Center] building: I wish it didn’t block Ross Street at the end. It’s a little frustrating urbanistically, but it’s a serious building. PNC has consistently built quality architecture again and again and again, even the new one that it’s building today.
“Then we have this charming historic stuff, in that funny leftover space, I believe in the ’50s [and] ’60s legacy of the Gateway Renaissance,” he adds. With admiration, he looks at the towering glass spires of PPG Place. “And of course, there’s Philip Johnson in the middle of it all.”
He moves on, pointing out areas of the city that he’s most excited about helping to shape — expanding trails along the river; putting together the Mon Wharf switchback bike ramp below the Smithfield Street Bridge; building on parking lots east of Station Square on the South Side; getting the Almono development in Hazelwood up and running; and working on redevelopment in the Hill District and Uptown.
He notes the Bakery Square complex, off in the distance in East Liberty/Larimer. “It’s good-looking architecture,” he says. “It’s not going to set the world on fire, but it’s good-looking. What I admire most about it is that it’s about the relationship between where you work, where you live, where you shop. There’s actually a big planning idea there that I appreciate.”
Gastil arrived in Pittsburgh in April 2014 from Seattle — his resume plucked out of The Pittsburgh Foundation’s “Talent City” application pool for work in Mayor Bill Peduto’s administration — with a loose understanding of the challenges that awaited him here. In the time that he’s been here, however, he says he’s begun clarifying his vision. He’s beginning to consider tweaks to the city’s zoning plan — as appropriate — in order to streamline both commercial and residential developments by dialing back rules that seem to require a variance for just about everything. In the planning department, he’s filled vacant neighborhood-level positions so that communities now have a point person with the city.
Most of all, though, he’s working on making stronger connections between neighborhoods and the riverfronts, increasing development around transit-oriented hubs and increasing both the bike- and pedestrian-friendliness of the city. He’s intricately involved with a pair of initiatives that Peduto announced in March — the $32 million “complete streets” Envision Downtown program and The Heinz Endowments-funded p4, for “People, Planet, Place, Performance,” program for sustainable urban growth.
All of these steps are meant to keep |
once they are no longer necessary. With the dawn of television, we came to recognise that cinema was not just about moving pictures, but an opportunity to have a night out in public. With the dawn of email, we now see that letter-writing is not just about conveying information, but a way of demonstrating greater affection or respect for the recipient.
So it is with money. If a zero price really is “the future of business”, then now might be the time to appreciate what is culturally and ethically important about money. This is more than a little ironic, at a time when Hayek, Friedman and their valorisation of homo economicus are roundly dismissed as having led us to the brink of financial ruin. And yet the liberal defence of money needn’t be the neo-liberal one, which seeks to implant calculation to the heart of all social and political relations. What’s needed is a culturally attuned understanding of the precise areas where money needs to be conserved.
Page 1 of 2 Next >“One does not execute a purge of this magnitude without long and careful planning, without preparing the forces involved (the police) to jump into action and quickly. This purge has been long in the making,” said Rob Prince, Senior Lecturer (Retired) University of Denver Korbel School of International Studies.
In an interview with Muslim Press, Rob Prince maintains that U.S-Turkish relations have not changed despite appearances after an attempted coup in Turkey.
He goes on to say, 'Any notion that Turkey has somehow crossed the "red lines" dictated by Washington and is seeking new strategic alliances with the Russians, Iranians are utter nonsense.'
Following is the full text of the interview:
Muslim Press: Where do you think the post-coup Turkey is headed?
Rob Prince: To give the situation a regional context of sorts, my starting point for the events in Turkey, the “so-called” coup, is the deteriorating situation of U.S.-Turkish (and other) allies fighting in Syria in the hopes of bringing down the government of Bashar al-Assad. Since the aid to Assad from Iran, Russia and Hezbollah has stepped up, the situation on the ground has increasingly isolated the so-called rebels (some of them are rebels, most of them are outside mercenaries from Tunisia, Libya, ISIS, etc.) This has created a political crisis for Turkey which has been one of the main, if not the main conduit for troops, supplies arms to the rebels. As the Syrian situation deteriorated, events boomeranged in Turkey itself - the bombings, etc.
Add to this that Turkey’s economic situation, which had greatly benefitted from the US-European sanctions against Iran. Now that those sanctions have been, at least in part lifted, investment flows are dramatically shifting away from Turkey to Iran creating economic tensions for Ankara. As the combination of the political and economic tensions continued to mount, Turkey’s President Erdogan found himself increasingly cornered and in need of some kind of dramatic action. So like the Saudis and Israelis of late, Erdogan’s Turkey is falling back on a kind of xenophobic nationalism as a way to consolidate his base of support.
The short answer, now that some of the dust has cleared and it is possible to evaluate the “tango” of President Erdogan’s maneuvers more soberly, I would say, that despite appearance, Post-coup Turkey is essentially, with a few minor adjustments on the same course it was regionally prior to the coup. Little has changed in terms of regional policy. There was a brief visit by Vice President Joe Biden after which, probably not accidently, Turkish forces entered northern Syria. It is possible that to some degree Erdogan has improved economic relations with Russia and Iran - his natural regional trading partners, but politically, deep fissures remain over Syria policy. Whatever, these improved Turkish-Russian-Iranian relations are something far less than a strategic shift. In fact there is none, none at all.
In terms of the Turkish domestic situation of course, what the world is seeing is one of the most extensive and nasty purges in the entire post World War II period, most of whose seemier, more oppressive aspects have disappeared from the mainstream media here in the United States and Europe. 80,000 (some reports say 100,000) people purged from their jobs, tens of thousands arrested, hundreds already executed and, after the first week or so, hardly a peek from the New York Times or CBS, CNN. Curious, no?
To elaborate: Turkey remains an important U.S. - NATO ally committed to supporting the over-arching U.S. strategic policy in the Middle East. That has not and probably will not change. Despite Erdogan’s political gymnastics - protests at the NATO - Incirlik military base, publicly accusing U.S. (C.I.A.) complicity in a so-called coup attempt in late August, Erdogan’s trips to Russia and Iran, it is surprising how little in Turkish policy has actually changed. Impressive even, how little has changed!
Muslim Press: To what extent has Turkey distanced itself from Washington since the failed coup?
Rob Prince: As suggested above, the answer to this question is: hardly at all, despite appearances.
There is a “move” in American basketball, where the player appears to go one way when he (or she) actually intends to go the other way - faking to the left while moving to the right. That is essentially what I make out Erdogan’s apparent open criticisms of Washington. True enough, it is unusual to see an American ally - one of long-standing at that - publicly and harshly criticize Washington, going so far as to blame a well-known (and hardly respected) American institution, the Central Intelligence Agency, for helping plot the “so-called coup.”
I am sure it gave some members of Congress and the U.S. military upset stomachs when the idea of closing down the Incirlik military base, with its arsenal of nuclear weapons. They did take notice in Washington. But there really wasn’t that much concern, evidenced by whom the Obama Administration sent to Turkey both to get an explanation and to offer Mr. Erdogan a bone (a go-ahead to invade N. Syria)...Vice President Joe Biden. No disrespect to the vice president, but his weight and influence in the administration is lighter than a feather.
I would add here, that the tensions between the United States and its regional allies in the Middle East and North Africa are “par for the course.” The personal relations, tensions if you like, between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu could not be greater, no love lost between the two as Netanyahu brazenly tries to intervene in the U.S. congressional discussion over the Iran deal. But did that affect the overall relations between the U.S. and Israel? The recent announcement of the largest U.S. aid package to Israel in American history - some $38 billion over ten years suggests that however much Obama and Netanyahu might dislike or even despise one another that the strategic relations between the two countries remain as strong as ever.
The same goes for US-Saudi relations. The Saudi royal family is livid over the Obama Administration’s insistence on pushing ahead with the Iran nuclear deal (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) but this has had no - absolutely no impact on U.S. Saudi arms purchases and Obama Administration’s support for the Saudi cruel war against Yemen.
So viewed from this context, how different are Turkish - U.S. tensions? Not very different at all from where I am sitting. In fact, we are in a new era of sorts where in exchange for giving regional allies a bit of what might be called “horizontal latitude,” a Washington nod for the expression of a narrow, expansionist nationalism in all three countries (Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia), these allies will continue to support the overall U.S. strategic goals. Any notion that Turkey has somehow crossed the “red lines” dictated by Washington and is seeking new strategic alliances with the Russians, Iranians are utter nonsense.
Muslim Press: How has Turkey’s relations with countries in the region changed?
Rob Prince: There is a slight change within the overall continued strategic partnership with Washington. For some time now Turkey has hoped to extend its influence and trade relations both west and east, west with the European Union and east, especially with the now independent republics with strong Turkic-speaking populations of Central Asia. As is well known, Turkey’s efforts to enter the European Union, which could have been mutually beneficial to both parties, have been stymied at every turn. It is hard to conclude that it is anything but anti-Islamic racism on the part of Turkey’s European partners that has led to the roadblock here.
And so to a certain degree, Turkey has, economically anyhow, turned east, which makes sense from a regional perspective. In the end Iran, Turkey, Russia, Iraq, Syria share a certain geographic space, not shared either by Washington at all nor by most of Turkey’s European partners, other than a few Balkan states. But there are limits to this economic cooperation...and Turkey finds itself caught in the middle of regional “pipeline politics.”
In the same light, Turkey’s recent improved relations with Netanyahu’s Israel should not come as much of a surprise, if a surprise at all. As you recalled those relationships were public strained in 2010, when a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, attempting to bring medical supplies to besieged Palestinians in Gaza, was attacked by Israeli commandos killing ten Turkish citizens aboard (one of whom had dual citizenship with the US). At that time, Erdogan trying to act as the Muslim vanguard in support of Palestinian rights, got his hands burnt, although he did gain some regional prestige. At the time, there was talk of Turkey breaking relations with Israel, of another attempted shipment, etc. etc. But the fact of the matter is that despite the political media ping pong in which the two sides threw insults and threats at one another, on the more fundamental level of strategic, military and economic contacts, virtually nothing changed. And so here they are six years later, “making nice” to one another, patching things up. No surprise here, really.
Muslim Press: Do you think Erdogan will change his position regarding the Syrian conflict?
Rob Prince: No, not at all. As is well known, Turkey has territorial ambitions in Syria dating back to the 1920s when sections of the old Ottoman Empire were torn away from Istanbul and given to Syria and Iraq. Those territorial disputes were long settled, or should have been. But like most xenophobic nationalists, Erdogan has two maps concerning Turkey’s border with Syria: there is the map on the wall which represents borders based on international law and agreements, and then there is “the map in his drawer,” a map of an expansionist Turkey that includes northern Syria. (The Israelis and Saudis have similar “maps in the drawer” by the way).
The collapse of the Cold War, and the changing national boundaries and instability in both Central Asia and the Middle East has wetted Turkish expansionist appetite. Erdogan probably spends as much time looking at the “map in his drawer” as he does praying. Turkish expansionist thinking coincides with Washington’s plan to dismember Syria (as shown in the Doha Protocols and in the recent and failed U.S. diplomatic initiatives over Syria rejected by the Russians, Iranians and Syrians themselves). As the military situation on the ground for the so-called rebels, Turkish allies, continued to deteriorate and as the Kurds continued to make progress in recouping territory from ISIS and like elements, Turkey was forced to move.
With very minor moderations, Turkey continues to be a steadfast ally of the United States in Syria, nothing short of that. That it has been forced to close the flow of arms, money into Syria, or cut back on these activities, is simply a result of the shifting military situation on the ground. It has nothing to do with a Turkish shift in its alliances or its attempts to bring down the Assad government, a prospect which becomes dimmer each day.
Muslim Press: What’s your take on Erdogan’s crackdown on his critics in recent months? Has he gained what he wanted?
Rob Prince: Erdogan’s crackdown is one of the most massive violations of human rights in the modern era, the full extent of which, as noted above, remains to be seen. As for the causes of it, I admit that I don’t know. There is much confusion and not much evidence to support the two main hypotheses - i.e., that it was a C.I.A. operation in collusion with the Gulen Movement or on the other hand, that it was actually something fabricated by Erdogan himself, a “false-flag” operation, a pretext for a massive purge.
I admit that at this point I simply do not know who or what is behind the coup, but expect, as has happened elsewhere, that in time the whole dirty story will become known, and known in some detail. So rather than waste my time and the time of your readers in developing the arguments for both cases, I prefer to look at the consequences of the so-called coup. And here several rather salient points emerge rather quickly:
1. One does not execute a purge of this magnitude without long and careful planning, without preparing the forces involved (the police) to jump into action and quickly. This purge has been long in the making.
2. Prior to the coup-purge, Erdogan spent more than a year, eliminating or neutralizing his critics and opponents in the left of the political spectrum, human rights groups concerned with the fate of Turkey’s Kurds, journalists, professors, etc. So he has already largely eliminated his opposition “to the left” of him, prior to “the big sweep.” After the coup, his targets tended to come from the political center and right, including the many supporters of the Gulen Movement in Turkey as is well known.
3. The domestic purge and orchestrated demonstrations (like those at the Incirlik base) were meant to give his supporters the appearance of being radical nationalists, to consolidate his base, eliminate all opposition so that he can in the future maneuver regionally precisely in the manner he has done. I think it is a mistake to view Erdogan as either some kind of Muslim or even Turkish nationalist. He is little more than a supremely narcissistic demagogue who has no policy, beyond staying in power. With this coup, in the short run, he has won the day, in the long run, my sense is he has just placed the first nail in his political coffin for as powerful as position might seem at present.
Muslim Press: Did Fethullah Gulen play a role in the attempted coup? What about the Obama administration and the CIA?
Rob Prince: As mentioned above, at this point it is impossible (for me) to tell who was behind the coup, nor the role that Fethullah Gulen played, or that of the C.I.A. My commentary on the American role at this point: I would be surprised if at this venture with Syria, Iraq and Libya such a mess, messes largely caused by U.S. military intervention (or U.S. directed intervention by others), that the United States, the C.I.A. would want to overthrow Erdogan. Believe me, the more serious analysts in Washington have his number. Not all of American analysts are as stupid as Donald Trump. Those at the high levels of the State Department, C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies are well informed and savvy (unfortunately). They are thinking long term about U.S. interests in the region...and for some time in the future, regardless of how the Syrian drama plays out, Washington needs a stable (and not necessarily democratic) Turkey, in the same way it needs, Israel, the Saudis, Egypt and more and more in N. Africa, Algeria - all with “strong records” of human rights violations.
But when did the violation of human rights, Obama’s rhetoric aside, ever have much to do with U.S. Middle East policy?
Rob Prince is a senior lecturer (Retired) of International Studies at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies where he has helped build that program’s undergraduate major in International Studies.IDEA is very very slow
Hi guys, good evening.
I have a AMD FX-8350, 32 GB RAM, Fedora Core 20 development machine for work. It has a R9 290 video card.
I don't understand why the performance in IDEA is so slow. I have tried giving it 8, 12 gigabytes of RAM via the vm settings file, it only improves marginally.
I have disabled every single plugin except Scala, html and javascript which is what I'm working on.
It is still so painfully slow. I've turned off syntax highlighting and even used "mark as plaintext" (!!!!) and it still is slow!
Something is definitely wrong here.
I've decided to post only after I tried all the tricks found on Google for "intellij idea is slow", so I think I've covered the basics.....nothing worked.
IntelliJ IDEA 2016.2.4
Build #IU-162.2032.8, built on September 9, 2016
JRE: 1.8.0_112-release-b343 amd64
JVM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o
I'm using the Oracle VM, does this cause troubles with OpenJDK?
Linux kernel 3.19.8-100.fc20.x86_64 #1 SMP
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
top - 22:32:41 up 1 day, 5:46, 11 users, load average: 2.75, 2.86, 2.69
Tasks: 323 total, 1 running, 322 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 5.4 us, 9.7 sy, 0.1 ni, 83.4 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 1.3 si, 0.0 st
CPU is cool, system has less than 2 concurrent tasks avg for 8 cores....it's definitely not a hardware issue.
Any tips appreciated. Thank you.Hi everyone! Mikatan here! (・ω・)ノ
Once again, a big thank you to everyone who watched the WonFes Live Broadcast!! It was certainly a tiring day, but it only comes around once a year so I hope everyone who watched was able to enjoy themselves!
I spent the whole day sleeping yesterday and I’m still a little tired out.
As announced during the evening section of the WonHobby broadcast, I’ll be moving on from my position at Good Smile Company. There is no major reason for this, I simply know that the company will do great without me, and I wish to push on with my own strength. Of course I’ve always been doing the best I can, but the reason I’ve been able to do so is all the support I’ve received from those around me. I was always able to look ahead without any worries as I knew others would pick up the pieces. But I’ve decided the time has come for me to start running alone – I actually feel bad for all those that have watched over me all this time!
I wanted to write this final blog with nothing more than a ‘Thanks to everyone!’ kind of message but I decided that just wouldn’t be me, so let me write go on as if this was any other blog instead!!
This was the very first photo on the blog!
Who would have thought the first photo on the blog of a figure company would have been food? :P The blog was originally planned to go on for just half a year, but it ended up going on for so much longer!
The first product I ever reviewed!
Nendoroid Saber Alter! All the way back at Nendoroid #13!! (((ﾟДﾟ)))
By the way, the first WonFes that I took part in was the one where Neko-Arc (Nendoroid #00) was first sold! The debut of the Nendoroid series!! To be there at the very start and then see the series all the way through to #358 is such an amazing feeling… （*´∀｀*）
The very last product I reviewed!
The 1/8th scale Rin Shibuya! Up for preorder now!! (My last bit of advertising!) Looking at the difference of the two photos here shows just how much figures have improved… as well as how much my photography skills have improved! It’s been six years since the blog started… I can hardly believe it myself! (((ﾟДﾟ)))
As my final blog, I wish to leave behind messages to various people. They’re all personal messages unrelated to the company, but I figure my last post would allow for this selfish post!
To all the publishers:
A big thank you for watching over me all these years. I’m sure that you’ve been upset with some of my raunchy photos, spelling errors and other mistakes a number of times – but you were always kind enough to let these things slide, and I can’t show my appreciation enough for that. Whenever I saw requests like ‘Please put this on Mikatan Blog’ or ‘Don’t worry about having us check it, we trust you!’ I was always more happy than you can possibly imagine! I am very, very grateful to every single one of you. Thank you.
Twotop-san & Miura-san:
GSC participates in a lot of events, and you are always there supporting the events no matter what! (and I know you will continue to do so!). In fact, you were even with us all the way back when we had no idea what we were doing at the first WonHobby broadcast ever. Thank you so much for all the help you’ve given over the years! You’re both friends and reliable teammates and I thank you for taking care of me whenever things got tough. Jyunichi-san, thank you for always smiling and giving us playful jokes whenever they were needed most – I truly admire you. Kegasawa-san, you were always there watching from the recording booth, and I’ve been saved by your gentle smile a number of times. I know you’ll continue to support GSC events for many years to come!
To all the staff:
I’ve asked the impossible of everyone so many times, and every single time I’ve always been told ‘Let’s do it.’, filling my heart with happiness. Asking something as simple as “Do you think I can do this on the blog?” was more often than not met with a simple “Go for it! If there’s a problem we’ll just apologize!” – those conversations really gave me a confidence boost. Not to mention all the help that goes on behind the scenes of the live broadcasts! Back when I joined the company there were hardly any staff members, and as I’ve seen the numbers grow I’ve also seen the possibilities grow. I hope you’ll all continue to challenge yourselves and know that I’ll be one of Good Smile’s biggest fans for many years to come, watching over all the latest developments!
To all the blog readers and broadcast watchers:
Thank you. There really is nothing more for me to say. Thank you all so, so much!
I wish there was some sort of test for just how grateful I am – something like a litmus test, but instead the color changes based on how thankful you are – I know it would show the highest level of thankfulness from me!!
This blog has made a lot of errors and used some rather improper language at times, but everyone has always simply laughed it off with a ‘She did it again!’ and told me it was nothing to worry about. I’ve been saved by everyone’s kind words a number of times. Even in times when I’ve felt down, simply reading through the comments on Twitter were often enough to cheer me up and get me through the day. Just reading through some comments have literally made me shed tears of happiness in the past.
Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me to the very end… but it’s time for me to move on! Tomorrow the blog will be taken over by Kahotan, and I trust that everyone will show her the same love you’ve always shown me! She’s a wonderful hardworking person and she deserves the same warm treatment I was lucky enough to receive from everyone reading this! （*´∀｀*）
But that’s all for today!
I’m sure that someday, sometime we shall meet again!! (・∀・)ノ゛Waffle House has planted their flag in the soil and proclaimed loudly "NO BELGIAN WAFFLES!"
It's a good old fashioned waffle-off with Waffle House proclaiming its love for the red, white and blue by shunning all others and preaching American waffles over their fruit and cream covered cousins. Thankfully most restaurants specialize in the American variety, so you should be okay -- but here are some helpful tips to ensure you're not a traitor on Tuesday.
If the waffle is made with yeast, not baking powder, you have a BELGIAN WAFFLE If the grid pattern is deep and the pockets are large, you have a BELGIAN WAFFLE If an eagle delivered the waffle to you by air drop, winked, then flew away in a cloud of stars and Sousa music, you have an AMERICAN WAFFLE (also you're high) If it's covered in syrup you probably have an AMERICAN WAFFLE but it could be a BELGIAN WAFFLE in disguise, posing as a mole. Question it first before consumption It is fine to eat EGGS BENEDICT because they weren't named after Benedict Arnold. This could be a decent breakfast route if you want to avoid the whole waffle thing
Of course if the prospect of eating a traitor waffle is freaking you out and giving you anxiety there's another chain restaurant who's got you covered (sadly not smothered).Antonio Di Natale scored a goal in his last appearance for Udinese - a 2-1 loss to Carpi - and subsequently announced he was deferring any decisions about his future until after a holiday with his family. The 38-year-old striker is out of contract, and is assumed to be weighing offers to play on for another club with whatever role Udinese might be willing to offer one of its all-time greats.
Most recently, reports out of Italy suggest Di Natale has been approached by Spezia Calcio, an ambitious Serie B outfit which represents a chance for the forward to keep playing, stay in Italy, but not have to face Udinese (a Serie A club).
Fantagazzetta.com shoehorns this news alongside the suggestion Di Natale has turned down offers from clubs in MLS and China.
Fair enough, he has been linked to MLS in the past. There was even a somewhat surprising suggestion that "New York" might have offered him something like a $9 million contract. But that was back in the 2015 off-season, before RBNY's RalfBall imperatives became clear - and it still seemed unlikely that "New York" meant the Red Bulls.
In 2016? Well, signing a proven but ageing goal scorer is not the craziest thing a soccer club has ever done, but it doesn't seem to fit with RBNY's transfer objectives these days.
Nor indeed, did Di Natale seem all that interested in MLS as recently as March, when he said "MLS is not for me".
Nonetheless, Fantagazzetta suggests the New York Red Bulls are among the clubs Di Natale has turned down. Perhaps they were referring to last year's rumor?Last week Apple sucked up most of the air in the tech press with its newest gadgets, which included a long-awaited, new Apple TV. This week, Amazon has some TV box news of its own.
Read next: The Amazon Fire TV 2 review.
The e-commerce giant just announced a variety of updates to its Fire TV product line. The newest Fire TV set-top box, a flat, plastic box that plugs into your TV and offers a variety of internet video content, now supports 4K Ultra HD video, a claim that Apple can't make with its own set-top box. (You'll have to be watching 4K content, on a 4K TV, to really reap the benefits of this, but at least the option is there.)
Amazon has also brought "Alexa," the popular cloud-based assistant found in the enigmatic Echo speaker, to the Fire TV through its voice-enabled remote control. Amazon previously supported voice search in its Fire TV remotes, but it didn't include Alexa.
Alexa can queue up music through the TV, and in the future, will power simple searches — "Alexa, play episode three of 'Transparent'". Eventually, she'll let you reorder Amazon.com items through your TV set. But Alexa on Fire TV won't do everything she does on the Echo speaker, like set timers or alarms.
There are some notable performance enhancements to the box as well. It has a 64-bit quad-core MediaTek processor and a GPU that's twice as fast as the first-generation box. It supports 802.11 AC Wi-Fi with MIMO, which is supposed to offer faster, more reliable Wi-Fi video streaming. And the new remote, which is aesthetically almost identical to last year's, offers 20 percent lower latency than the last remote, something that's key for voice searches.
This new box costs $99.99. That includes the new voice-controlled, Alexa-take-over-my-entire-living-room remote, and is less than the announced price of the new Apple TV. It's more expensive, however, than Chromecast, Roku 3, and Amazon's own streaming media stick.
Oh, right, the Fire TV stick! That's not getting an "update," per se — the hardware is exactly the same. But Amazon is updating the software on the stick and throwing the new remote in for a $50 bundle, compared with $40 for the same stick with a non-voice-enabled remote.
Both the box and the stick run on Fire OS, a forked version of Android. The box has 8 gigabytes of internal storage, but is expandable up to 128 gigabytes through a microSD slot.
Finally, Amazon is taking casual gamers seriously: the company is also putting out a gaming-specific edition of the new box, which comes with a redesigned gaming controller, a 32-gigabyte microSD card, and two free game downloads, for $140. All of these open up for preorder today and will ship in October.
Amazon still won't share exactly how many Fire TV units it has sold
A lot of this may seem like a clever repackaging of products and obvious hardware updates — and to some extent, that's what it is. But Amazon has also been pretty vocal in recent weeks about what it says is the "largest and fastest-growing selection of content," which is what matters most to many consumers, rather than voice assistants and processors. Stuff like Netflix, Showtime, WatchESPN, HBO Go, Hulu, Vevo, and of course, Amazon's own original content, can be streamed on the boxes, and it's adding a bunch more by year-end.
Amazon also says that its Fire TV devices were the best selling media-streaming devices in the US over the summer, a claim that's somewhat difficult to corroborate due to the fact that the famously secretive company doesn't share info on its unit sales. One thing's certain: This holiday video-streaming season just got a lot more interesting.
Photography by Vjeran PavicWhether you call it a huge privacy flaw or just an annoyance, Google Buzz can put the contacts you automatically follow—a.k.a. those you most frequently email or chat—on a public profile page. Here's how to undo that.
Google Blogoscoped's Philipp Lenssen felt he had to avoid following certain Buzz contacts, as he didn't want to expose his social circle to the wider net. He's right—if you have a Google Profile, once you set up Buzz, those you're following, and those following you, are shown on your profile page in a right-hand link list.
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Update: This might not apply if you haven't touched much inside Buzz, or haven't set up a Google Profile, or that Profile is set to be hidden from the public. If so, you're mostly in the clear. But keep in mind that, once you post to Buzz, your profile will likely be created, and you'll want to know what's getting put up on the web.
To turn this off, sign into your Google account (via Gmail or elsewhere) and head to your Google profile—that link should work if you're signed in. Look for the two links showing "Following X people" and "X people following me." There's a gray note underneath those numbers, indicating whether they're visible to just you or to everyone.
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If they're visible to everyone, hit the "Edit Profile" link on the right-hand edge of the blue bar in the middle of the page, to the right of "About me," "Buzz," and "Contact info." In the third column of options there, there are checkboxes that control privacy features, and one of them is labeled "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me." Un-check that box, and now your list of followers and followees is private—or at least seen only by those you're following, perhaps.
Want Google Buzz gone entirely? Log into Gmail, then look at the bottom of your inbox page for a "Turn off Buzz" link. If you're mainly annoyed at Buzz's constant, um, buzzing, read up on removing Buzz updates from your inbox.
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This tip came courtesy of Contributing Editor Lisa, who was similarly shocked to see Google dropping everyone's frequently-contacted names on the net. If you've found a similarly crucial privacy tweak for Buzz, tell us about it in the comments.An illegal immigrant is fingerprinted by Border Patrol on Feb. 8, 2007, in Yuma, Ariz. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images)
A planned visit by President Donald Trump to an Arizona town at the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday is sending a strong signal he is not backing down from one of his central campaign promises.
Trump is scheduled to visit a Border Patrol station in Yuma – a city that sits in proximity to the California and Mexico borders and in an area that was once a hotbed of illegal immigration, but which administration officials say saw a steep drop-off after the expansion of border barriers roughly a decade ago.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have framed Trump's Tuesday visit as an attempt to highlight how walls and other infrastructure such as sensors and lighting can slow illegal immigration, and as an opportunity to tout the steep decline in illegal crossings since Trump took office.
Yuma previously had only about 5 miles of fencing, and it once saw as many as 800 people a day attempt to cross the border illegally, a senior DHS official said during a background call Tuesday. However, after President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in 2006 – leading to the construction of another 55 miles of barrier walls and barrier fences – the number of crossings dropped precipitously.
"In Yuma, it's a prime example of having that right mix of technology, agents, as well as the infrastructure," a DHS official said during the call. "Within a couple of years, the bottom fell out as it related to the number of arrests that were being made in that location."
The president is not scheduled to visit the wall, as had been initially reported. Instead, he is set to stop at a hangar where he will see agency equipment, including a Predator drone; meet with Border Patrol agents and U.S. Marines; and get a briefing from senior officials.
Immigration officials have recorded a sharp decline in apprehensions at the Southwest border this year, with Border Patrol apprehending 126,472 people who were attempting to illegally enter the U.S. between January and the end of July – a roughly 45 percent drop from the same seven-month period last year.
Of those who were apprehended, officials say the number of unaccompanied children and the number of people from countries other than Mexico also have seen major declines, falling 54 and 47 percent from last year, respectively.
"It provides a good example of how securing the border through the use of [a] wall, technology and people can have a large impact," a senior DHS official said on Tuesday's call. Pointing to the "dangerous journeys" that many migrants take to reach the U.S., the official continued, "We're hopeful, again, that these measures are ultimately saving lives."
Corrected on Aug. 22, 2017 : This article has been updated to correct a description of the president's plans.It's December, and ESPN NFL draft experts Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay have been following the 2018 draft since, well, the 2017 draft ended.
Now that we're less than 150 days from seeing next year's first-round class take the stage in Arlington, Texas, McShay and Kiper are here to catch you up on the best 2018 prospects, lingering questions and more.
So in what has become an annual tradition, they're here with a 25-question primer to help you out. If you really don't care much about this quarterback class, skip ahead to question No. 8.
1. Everyone wants to know about the quarterbacks in this class. We're putting you on the spot: How many will go in Round 1?
McShay: I think we'll see four: USC's Sam Darnold, UCLA's Josh Rosen, Wyoming's Josh Allen and Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield.
Darnold and Rosen are on a separate tier than the other two. Darnold has better intangibles and a higher ceiling, but Rosen can make every throw with ease. Allen is a physical freak who didn't play as well this season as I had hoped, but he should dominate the postseason process. Mayfield has elite leadership abilities that make up for his physical shortcomings and has improved his draft stock tremendously.
2. Which QB is most ready to start right away in the NFL?
Kiper: It's Rosen, who has played under former NFL offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch and has elite physical tools.
3. Darnold's still in the mix at No. 1 overall, right?
McShay: Yes, but this is the least confident I've been since the start of the season. I've been his biggest supporter over the past year, but it was eye-opening to watch him on the same field as Rosen. Right now, Rosen is superior going through progressions; and Darnold has had a huge problem with turnovers -- his 19 combined interceptions and lost fumbles this season led the FBS. I think if he can be more consistent in his footwork, he'll be OK down the line. But remember: Darnold is a third-year sophomore and could still return to USC.
4. Fill in the blank: Allen will be selected among the first __ picks.
Kiper: Ten. Yes, I know his numbers aren't great, but NFL teams are drafting on projection. Scouts and front-office folks love what he can be. And there are a bunch of teams that will need quarterbacks in 2018 -- in the draft or free agency. At 6-foot-5 and 233 pounds, Allen is a physical specimen, and I think he's going to impress at the combine. I |
62 Francisco Liriano 2013 161 50.5 3.02 2.92 Jeff Locke 2014 131.1 50.5 3.91 4.37 Edinson Volquez 2014 192.2 50.4 3.04 4.15
Among these player seasons, the average FIP is 3.49, and the average ERA is 3.01. Relievers and starters, veterans and young guns, the shift helped out all Pirates pitchers who were able to induce enough ground balls.
This is in line with the Pirates out-performing their FIP in both 2013 (3.27 ERA v. 3.42 FIP) and even more so in 2014, as they increased their use of the shift (3.49 ERA v. 3.80 FIP). The Houston Astros led the MLB in total shifts last season with 1,341, more than double the Pirates’ total. But because the Astros were simply above-average in GB% (their 46.4% was seventh-best in MLB), they could not out-perform their FIP: 4.14 ERA v. 3.93 FIP.
The Pirates are not doing this with Andrelton Simmons out there. Looking at the infields they’ve used to get to this place, there aren’t a lot of impressive individual defensive talents. Clint Barmes and Josh Harrison have really set the standard here. So Jung-Ho Kang doesn’t need to be Simmons. If next season goes anything like the last two, the Pirates will induce heaps of outs as a team, instead of relying on fantastic individual performances.
And, in the meantime, there’s the possibility that Kang could have one of the league’s most powerful shortstops’ bats in the game, providing slugging at a spot in the lineup that other teams have basically conceded for defensive purposes. It certainly seems like a valid experiment to try conducting.Flying under the radar, but not to us, a new Bloomberg poll on the Tea Party movement confirms everything that David and I wrote in our book, Over the Cliff: Tea Party activists are an extension of the most extreme, far-right John Birch Society values, with the added bonus of funding from the corporate right. They are Grover Norquist's wet dream. Think South African apartheid, baby. The right-wing extremists once ousted by conservatives like William Buckley now rule the roost. The "Free Markets" reign unimpeded, led by "Christian values", for those white and 55 and over.
Bloomberg:
Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Oct. 15 issue: Respondents who identify with the Tea Party are almost unanimous in saying it stands for lower taxes, smaller government and personal responsibility. More than six in 10 say it advocates government based on Christian principles.
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Tea Party supporters are more likely than other voters to be white, married, 55 and older, and call themselves born-again Christians.
During the HCR debate, tea partiers were able to keep their Ralph Reed beliefs bottled up because they were able to target their rage away from social issues and into the health care debate. Are you surprised that there was so much violent rhetoric used by their members while toting guns in their belts? It wasn't until the end of the HCR debate that the abortion issue came up and suddenly members of Congress were yelling the term "baby killers" on the floor of Congress. The Ron Paul influence is also evident by their hatred of the Federal Reserve, which has been the subject of many conspiracy theories by the supposed libertarians that have joined him.
They also are more likely to be suspicious of the Federal Reserve, which sets monetary policy. Six out of 10 Tea Party supporters who plan to vote say they want to overhaul or abolish the Fed, compared with 45 percent of all likely voters.
They are as passionate about the deficit as the Birchers were worried that Communists had infiltrated the White House. Here's how out of the mainstream they are:
Half of the Tea Party voters consider the federal debt -- estimated at $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010 by the Congressional Budget Office -- to be the most important issue facing the country, compared with 27 percent of all likely voters. And they are willing to make hard choices to cut the costs.
And it gets worse from there:
Fifty-three percent would consider raising the age for Medicare benefits and 58 percent would consider raising the age for Social Security benefits. That compares with 47 percent of all likely voters who would consider Medicare changes and 49 percent who would change Social Security law.
Of course, they don't care about the bridges and roads they drive on because they don't feel obligated to pay for anything that they use. And please, don't get sick.
Two-thirds of Tea Party supporters also would consider cutting spending on roads and bridges; 63 percent say they would be willing to reduce research funds for Alzheimer’s and other diseases to narrow the deficit.
There is one thing they absolutely do not want cut from the government though, can you name it?
One exception: Few want to abandon the Bush-era tax cuts, due to expire in December, that give breaks to high and middle-income Americans.
And as much as they say they stand for the Constitution, there's this:
Those who identify with the Tea Party also take a harder line on illegal immigration: 54 percent of Tea Party backers say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports a proposal to change the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to prevent the children of non-citizens born in the U.S. from automatically becoming citizens, compared with 48 percent of all likely voters.
You knew they hated brown people already. These results are in line with many of the many polls that have been conducted already.American actress
Nichelle Nichols (born Grace Dell Nichols; December 28, 1932)[3] is an American actress, singer, and voice artist. She sang with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before turning to acting. Nichols played communications officer Lieutenant (later, Commander) Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek television series (1966–1969), as well as the succeeding motion pictures. Nichols's role was groundbreaking as one of the first African American female characters on American television not portrayed as a servant.[4] She also worked to recruit diverse astronauts to NASA, including women and ethnic minorities.
Early life [ edit ]
Grace Dell Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois, near Chicago, to Samuel Earl Nichols, a factory worker who was elected both town mayor of Robbins and its chief magistrate, and his wife, Lishia (Parks) Nichols.[5] Later, the family moved into an apartment in Chicago. She studied in Chicago as well as New York and Los Angeles. Her break came in an appearance in Kicks and Co., Oscar Brown's highly touted, but ill-fated 1961 musical.[6] In a thinly veiled satire of Playboy magazine, she played Hazel Sharpe, a voluptuous campus queen who was being tempted by the devil and Orgy Magazine to become "Orgy Maiden of the Month". Although the play closed after its brief try-out in Chicago, in an ironic twist, she attracted the attention of Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, who booked her for his Chicago Playboy Club.[7][8] While still in Chicago, she performed at the "Blue Angel", and in New York, Nichols appeared at that city's Blue Angel as a dancer and singer.[citation needed] She also appeared in the role of Carmen for a Chicago stock company production of Carmen Jones and performed in a New York production of Porgy and Bess. Between acting and singing engagements, Nichols did occasional modeling work.
In January 1967, Nichols also was featured on the cover of Ebony magazine,[9] and had two feature articles in the publication in five years. Nichols toured the United States, Canada and Europe as a singer with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands.[10] On the West Coast, she appeared in The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, For My People, and garnered high praise for her performance in the James Baldwin play Blues for Mister Charlie. Prior to being cast as Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, Nichols was a guest actress on television producer Gene Roddenberry's first series The Lieutenant (1964) in an episode, "To Set It Right", which dealt with racial prejudice.[11]
Career [ edit ]
Star Trek [ edit ]
Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, 1967.
On Star Trek, Nichols was one of the first black women featured in a major television series not portraying a servant[4]; her prominent supporting role as a bridge officer was unprecedented. During the first year of the series, Nichols was tempted to leave the series, as she wanted to pursue a Broadway career; however, a conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. changed her mind. She has said that King personally encouraged her to stay on the series, telling her that he was a big fan of Star Trek. He said she "could not give up" because she was playing a vital role model for black children and young women across the country, as well as for other children who would see blacks appearing as equals.[4][12][13][14] In an interview, she said that the day after she told Roddenberry she planned to leave the show, she was at a fundraiser at the NAACP and was told there was a big fan who wanted to meet her. Nichols said:
I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, 'Sure.' I looked across the room, and there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, 'Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.' He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, 'You can't. You're part of history.'
When she told Roddenberry what King had said, he cried.[15] Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison has cited Nichols' role of Lieutenant Uhura as her inspiration for wanting to become an astronaut and Whoopi Goldberg has also spoken of Nichols' influence.[16] Goldberg asked for a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation,[17] and the character Guinan was specially created, while Jemison appeared on an episode of the series.
In her role as Lieutenant Uhura, Nichols kissed white actor William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in the November 22, 1968, Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren". The episode is cited as the first example of an interracial kiss on U.S. television.[18][19][20] The Shatner/Nichols kiss was seen as groundbreaking, even though it was portrayed as having been forced by alien telekinesis. There was some praise and some protest. On page 197 of her 1994 autobiography Beyond Uhura, Star Trek and Other Memories, Nichols cites a letter from a white Southerner who wrote, "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it." During the Comedy Central Roast of Shatner on August 20, 2006, Nichols jokingly referred to the kiss and said, "what do you say, let's make a little more TV history... and kiss my black ass!"[21] Despite the cancellation of the series in 1969, Star Trek lived on in other ways, and continued to play a part in Nichols' life. She again provided the voice of Uhura in Star Trek: The Animated Series; in one episode, "The Lorelei Signal", Uhura assumes command of the Enterprise. Nichols noted in her autobiography her frustration that this never happened on the original series. Nichols has co-starred in six Star Trek films, the last one being Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Other acting roles [ edit ]
In 1994, Nichols published her autobiography Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories. In it, she claimed that the role of Peggy Fair in the television series Mannix was offered to her during the final season of Star Trek, but producer Gene Roddenberry refused to release her from her contract. Between the end of the original series and the Star Trek animated series and feature films, Nichols appeared in small television and film roles. She briefly appeared as a secretary in Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967), and portrayed a foul-mouthed madam in Truck Turner (1974) opposite Isaac Hayes, her only appearance in a blaxploitation film.
Nichols appeared in animated form as one of Al Gore's Vice Presidential Action Rangers in the "Anthology of Interest I" episode of Futurama, and she provided the voice of her own head in a glass jar in the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before". She voiced the recurring role of Elisa Maza's mother Diane Maza in the animated series Gargoyles, and played Thoth-Kopeira in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. In 2004, she provided the voice for herself in The Simpsons episode "Simple Simpson". In the comedy film Snow Dogs (2002), Nichols appeared as the mother of the male lead, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. In 2006, she appeared as the title character in the film Lady Magdalene's, the madam of a legal Nevada brothel in tax default. She also served as executive producer and choreographer, and sang three songs in the film, two of which she composed. In addition to her acting skills, Nichols is an accomplished dancer and singer. She has twice been nominated for the Chicago theatrical Sarah Siddons Award for Best Actress. The first nomination was for her portrayal of Hazel Sharpe in Kicks and Co.; the second for her performance in The Blacks.
Nichols in September 2012.
Nichols played a recurring role on the second season of the NBC drama Heroes. Her first appearance was on the episode "Kindred", which aired October 8, 2007. She portrayed Nana Dawson, the matriarch of a New Orleans family financially and personally devastated by Hurricane Katrina, who cares for her orphaned grandchildren and her great-nephew, series regular Micah Sanders. In 2008, Nichols starred in the film The Torturer, playing the role of a psychiatrist. In 2009, she joined the cast of The Cabonauts, a sci-fi musical comedy that debuted on the Internet. Playing CJ, the CEO of the Cabonauts Inc, Nichols is also featured singing and dancing. On August 30, 2016, she was introduced as the aging mother of Neil Winters on the long-standing soap opera The Young and the Restless. She received her first Daytime Emmy nomination in the "Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series" category for this role March 22, 2017.[22]
Music [ edit ]
Nichols has released two music albums. Down to Earth is a collection of standards released in 1967, during the original run of Star Trek.[23] Out of This World, released in 1991, is more rock oriented and is themed around Star Trek and space exploration.
As mentioned earlier, she sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Lionel Hampton. In her role as Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, she sang two songs in the episode Charlie X.
NASA work [ edit ]
After the cancellation of Star Trek, Nichols volunteered her time in a special project with NASA to recruit minority and female personnel for the space agency.[24] She began this work by making an affiliation between NASA and a company which she helped to run, Women in Motion.[25][26][27][28][29][30]
The program was a success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. Recruits also included Charles Bolden, the former NASA administrator and veteran of four shuttle missions, Frederick D. Gregory, former deputy administrator and a veteran of three shuttle missions and Lori Garver, former deputy administrator. An enthusiastic advocate of space exploration, Nichols has served since the mid-1980s on the board of governors of the National Space Society, a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher von Braun.[28]
In late 2015, Nichols flew aboard NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Boeing 747SP, which analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn on an eight-hour, high-altitude mission. She was also a special guest at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on July 17, 1976, to view the Viking 1 soft landing on Mars. Along with the other cast members from the original Star Trek series, she attended the christening of the first space shuttle, Enterprise, at the North American Rockwell assembly facility in Palmdale, California. On July 14, 2010, she toured the space shuttle simulator and Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.[31]
Personal life [ edit ]
Nichols' brother, Thomas, was a member of the Heaven's Gate cult. He died on March 26, 1997 in the cult's mass suicide that purposely coincided with the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet.[32] A member for 20 years,[33] he identified himself as the brother of Nichols in the group videotape (after leader Marshall Applewhite brought it up) prior to the event and left a final message saying: "I'm the happiest person in the world."[34]
In her autobiography, Nichols stated that she was romantically involved with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry for several years in the 1960s. She said the affair ended well before Star Trek began, when she and Roddenberry realized he was in love with Majel Hudec, who was an acquaintance of Nichols'.[35] When Roddenberry's health was fading, Nichols co-wrote a song for him, entitled "Gene", which she sang at his funeral. Nichols has been married twice, first to dancer Foster Johnson (1917–1981). They were married in 1951 and divorced that same year. Johnson and Nichols had one child together, Kyle Johnson, who was born August 14, 1951. She married Duke Mondy in 1968 and they were divorced in 1972.
On February 29, 2012, Nichols met with President Barack Obama in the White House Oval Office. She later Tweeted about the meeting, "Months ago, Pres Obama was quoted as saying that he'd had a crush on me when he was younger," Nichols also wrote. "I asked about that and he proudly confirmed it! President Obama also confirmed for me that he was definitely a Trekker! How wonderful is that?!"[36]
On June 4, 2015, Nichols' booking agency announced that she had suffered a mild stroke at her Los Angeles home and had been admitted to a Los Angeles-area hospital. This was barely three months after the death of her friend and Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy. Doctors were conducting tests to determine the severity of the stroke. Nichols was reportedly awake and resting comfortably.[37][38] An online news article by Frazier Moore of the Associated Press, which cited news updates from the actress's Facebook page, stated that, four days afterward, the hospitalized actress was feeling much better and was improving, remaining cheerful and alert and taking the time to read the messages from fans and well-wishers on her Facebook page, of which there were many. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan did reveal a small stroke but she was able to begin inpatient therapy on June 5, 2015, for rehabilitation and recovery and to further evaluate her condition and determine the prognosis. Her fellow Star Trek actor George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu, wished her well on his Twitter account page.
In May 2018, Nichols' son, Kyle Johnson, announced that she was suffering from "severe" short-term memory loss as a complication of advanced dementia.[39][40] Johnson officially filed legal documents nominating four fiduciaries to become Nichols' conservators, giving them executive control over her financial and health-related decisions.[39] A 2013 video shows Nichols revealing that her son has tried to stop her from working and attending Trekkie conventions.[41][42]
Recognition [ edit ]
Nichols is an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his novel Friday (1982) to her.[43] On June 8, 2010, Nichols received an honorary degree from Los Angeles Mission College. Asteroid 68410 Nichols is named in her honor.[44] In 2016, she received The Life Career Award, from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films and it was presented as part of the 42nd Saturn Awards ceremony.
Filmography [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
Video games [ edit ]
Year Title Role Notes 1992 Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Enhanced Lt. Uhura 1994 Star Trek: Judgment Rites Lt. Uhura
Bibliography [ edit ]Eating Canned Soup Makes BPA Levels Soar
toggle caption Maggie Starbard/NPR
If you read the ingredient list on a can of soup, you're likely to see items like carrots, wild rice, perhaps some noodles. What you won't see listed: the industrial chemical BPA, or bisphenol A.
But a little canned soup for lunch can dramatically increase exposure to the chemical, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study confirms that canned food is a source of BPA exposure. But it does nothing to clear up the question of whether this sort of exposure to BPA has health consequences.
BPA is found in some plastic bottles and in the epoxy resins used to coat the inside of many food and beverage cans. Previous studies have shown that some BPA from can linings does get into the foods they hold.
Some scientists are concerned about BPA exposure because the chemical can act like the hormone estrogen, and studies show that high levels can affect sexual development in animals.
But people are exposed to much lower levels. And agencies including the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency haven't found evidence that this exposure is causing problems.
In the new study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health compared people who were given canned vegetable soup for lunch each day with people who got vegetable soup made without any canned ingredients.
And they found that a couple hours after eating, the people who had canned soup had BPA levels in their urine that were about 12 times higher than the people who didn't.
The levels were still within the range that government agencies consider safe.
Even so, "We were surprised by the magnitude of the elevation," says Karin Michels, senior author of the paper. Michels says previous studies have found much less dramatic increases after people drank from polycarbonate bottles.
It's unlikely that soup caused BPA levels to remain high very long, Michels says, because the body tends to excrete most BPA within a few hours. But she says levels could stay high for people who regularly consume foods and beverages from cans.
Michels says she can't comment on the health implications of the finding because that wasn't part of the study. Even so, she says, food makers might want to consider eliminating BPA from can linings.
But industry groups say it's not easy to find a safe, affordable and effective substitute for BPA in can linings. An analysis by the North American Metal Packaging Alliance (NAMPA) found that epoxy resins had significant advantages over the alternatives.
And without some sort of coating, metal cans can corrode, allowing bacteria to contaminate the food and putting consumers at risk for food poisoning.
"Consumers need to remember that BPA-based epoxy coatings are used to keep food safe," said NAMPA Chairman John Rost in a statement issued by the group.The idea that Russia has a favorite in the US election was deliberately created by the media, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, adding that Moscow is “largely unconcerned” about the outcome of the vote and is ready to work with any future president.
“The image [that Russia supports a candidate in the US presidential election] was created by the media,” Putin said at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on Thursday, adding that it was done deliberately and on purpose.
Read more
“This idea was planted into the US public consciousness… with only one goal… to protect the interests of the Democratic candidate in her competition with the candidate of the Republicans, in this case – with Mr. Trump,” the Russian president stressed.
The US media “first portrayed Russia as an enemy and then said that Trump is our [Russia’s] favorite,” Putin said, denouncing these tactics as “absolute nonsense.”
“This is complete and utter rubbish, and it is just a method of internal political struggle, as well as a way of manipulating the public consciousness ahead of the US presidential elections,” he added.
He went on to say that Russia is not interested in a victory of any particular candidate and is ready to cooperate with any of them. “Generally speaking, we are more or less unconcerned about it,” the Russian leader said.
At the same time, he stressed that Russia welcomes words and intentions concerning normalization of relations between the US and Russia, “whoever expresses them.”
He also said that it is “hard” to work with the current US administration as it does not fulfill its obligations under any agreements, adding that Russia is ready to start working with a new US president.
“The ‘Russian card’ has been used to demonize one particular candidate – to tie him with Russia, which is not particularly popular in the US at the moment and therefore to diminish his prospects,” former British diplomat Alastair Crooke told RT.
He also warned that the deliberate “demonization of Russia in every aspect” used as a political tool during the US presidential campaign will have “a substantive long-term effect on the relations, whoever will be president.”
“It will make it very, very difficult for [the future US president] to start a new relationship with the Russian president afterwards,” Crooke stressed.
His words were partly echoed by writer John Wight, who told RT that accusing Russia of meddling with the US election process on behalf of Donald Trump is “reckless and very dangerous because whoever will be the next president, he or she is going to deal with Russia.”
At the same time, Wight stressed, “it is in the interest of the US people as well as of the people of the whole world that the US reset relations with Russia.”
Trump’s extravagant behavior is thought-out political strategy
Donald Trump “has chosen his own method to get through to voters' hearts," Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, adding that the Republican candidate must have a reason behind his extravagant behavior.
Read more
“He [Trump] just represents ordinary people and portrays himself as an ordinary guy, who criticizes those who have been in power for decades,” Putin said, adding that only voting will show if this strategy is effective.
At the same time, Putin stressed once again that Moscow will work with every US president who is chosen by the US people and is willing to cooperate with Russia.
Earlier, Putin also dismissed all accusations concerning Moscow’s alleged meddling in the US presidential elections, saying that the ‘Russian card’ was used during the election campaign to distract voters from the real internal problems of the US.
He also sharply criticized the US and the EU for attempts to portray Moscow as an enemy and stressed that “Russia is not going to attack anybody.”
Putin and Russia have often been mentioned during the US presidential race. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has not only accused Donald Trump of being actively supported by Moscow, but also claimed that WikiLeaks, which repeatedly released documents hacked from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and the Democratic National Convention, of working for the Kremlin.Washington, March 23 (ANI): A new study on juvenile delinquency has found that participation in extra-curricular activities can definitely minimize the risky behaviors in young men and women.
However, the study also showed that there is a tipping point where too much involvement can have a counter-effect.
Researchers at the Northeastern University separately examined delinquency and risky behaviors for both young men and young women in a suburban high school and how involvement in outside activities influenced those behaviors.
The team found that participation in extra-curricular activities certainly seemed to lessen the risky behaviors.
But, the researchers also discovered that there seemed to be a tipping point where excessive involvement had a counter-effect.
They also found that nontraditional activities for each gender, such as sports for girls and church for boys, provided a greater protection from delinquency.
The researchers believe that extracurricular involvement helps dissuade delinquency by reducing unstructured time, providing incentives to conform, and creating avenues for attachments with other pro-social peers and adults.
Young people who participate in sports and both community and church activities report significantly less serious delinquency as well as less problem drinking and risky sexual behavior, said co-author Sean P. Varano, Ph.D.
A healthy and measured dose of involvement in extracurricular activities is good for young people, Varano added.
The article, Social Control, Serious Delinquency, and Risky Behavior: A Gendered Analysis, is published by SAGE in Crime & Delinquency. (ANI)tomorrow
on Friday
April 7-8
January 16th
Tomorrow
Good afternoon, Idiots!I’ve switcheroo’d the lineup for my posts today and, because I wanted to write about something happy, and didn’t want this one festering over the weekend.My post today is about Peter Vessenes’ company, CoinLab, and the curious bankruptcy dismissal of its first (and, I believe, only) bitcoin investment. For once, I’ve made an effort to keep my opinion out of the article and pretend to be objective until the clear break. Decide for yourself whether this dude should be the Bitcoin Foundation’s chairman for one more single day.[TBI Note: I don’t think that such a thing as “objective” journalism is possible.]Also, I’ll be attending the Inside Bitcoins Conference & Expo in New York onto learn more about bitcoin (I’ve been told I "don’t know sh*t") and what lies ahead. A great lineup of speakers has been confirmed, including Nicolas Cary, the CEO of Blockchain and Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle. Session topics will include everything from bringing trust to the market, to funding the next bitcoin startup. If you’re interested in attending too, you can register here Now for the main Bit:Peter Vessenes has likely had much more on his mind than his board seat at the Bitcoin Foundation lately. Two weeks ago, he and his colleagues at CoinLab suffered a setback in court when their bankruptcy filing for Alydian was dismissed by a Seattle judge, exposing them to a potentially lengthy legal battle surrounding millions of dollars’ worth of unpaid bitcoins to customers.The woes of Alydian, an outsourced bitcoin mining company incubated by CoinLab, have been well-documented. After proudly announcing the deal in early August, CoinLab’s first investment filed for bankruptcy less than three months later. According to the filings, the company had less than $50,000 in assets and over $3 million in liabilities on its books in November.Since then, CoinLab’s attempts to auction off Alydian’s mining rigs as part of that bankruptcy process have proven unsuccessful.In fact, a scheduled auction was blocked on January 10th by Judge Karen Overstreet, who threatened to dismiss the bankruptcy outright, and voiced concern with the company’s leadership, where Peter Vessenes had seemingly taken the reigns of the company from former CEO, Hans Olson. In particular, Judge Overstreet expressed skepticism that Alydian (rather than its majority owner CoinLab) actually owned the assets that had been slated for auction, given that Alydian had no employees or office space at the time.The company’s skeletal operating structure suggested Alydian had “absolutely zero existence” and Judge Overstreet said she “wanted to make sure that when we do this world-wide advertising [of a bankruptcy auction] we are not misrepresenting to the world what we have to sell, because the integrity of the bankruptcy process is at stake.”In addition, as the Wall Street Journal's Katy Stech reported on“Judge Overstreet also questioned whether Alydian lawyers were filing accurate financial statements, and she warned Alydian officials that she would be watching to see whether they would try to buy the bitcoin mining rigs if they were put up for sale. ‘I’m not satisfied that there isn’t some hiding of information,’ she said.”It now appears that Judge Overstreet stayed true to her word to dismiss the bankruptcy.Following the dismissal, Vessenes sent private emails to a number of investors gauging their interest in acquiring the Alydian mining clusters, which he claimed were currently mining over 30 bitcoins per day as part of the BTC Guild mining pool. He expressed interest in selling up to 218 TH of mining capacity (including replacement parts for the rigs), as well as an additional ~150 TH of additional ASIC chips, including system designs and rights to the wafers.Vessenes did not respond to repeated requests for comment.***Ok, now for the unadulterated opinion: it’s not very often you see a company go bankrupt in less than three months. Yet Peter Vessenes and CoinLab either invested in a company which proved colossally inept, inappropriately attempted to exploit the existing bankruptcy process in the US or both. Don’t take my word for it. Take Judge Overstreet’s.That, my friends, is who remains at the helm of our industry’s leading advocacy group.Perseus, Atlas Launch Global Bitcoin Trading PlatformBitcoin: The future of M&A deals?What happens to bitcoin if the internet goes down?Inside North America’s $8m a Month Bitcoin Mining OperationBank of Mexico Restricts Banks from Bitcoin Use, Reports SuggestBitBeat: Coindesk Index Finds a Mt. Gox ReplacementA Simple Way Bitcoin Businesses Can Cut Compliance Costs, why I’m starting to get bullish again on bitcoin, the currency. I’m still terrified of over-regulation, but impressed at the restraint shown by figures like Ben Lawsky in the wake of Mt. Gox.Cheers,TBIHubblecast Hubblecast HD The latest news about astronomy, space and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope presented in High Definition is only for devices that play High Definition video (not iPhone or iPod). To watch the Hubblecast on your iPod and/or iPhone, please download the Standard Definition version also available on iTunes.
Hubblecast 116: Henrietta Leavitt — ahead of her time
Posted on:
Born in 1868, Henrietta Leavitt was an astronomer ahead of her time, whose work helped to revolutionise our understanding of the Universe. While working at Harvard Observatory, she began to study stars of fluctuating brightness. She made a crucial observation about these objects, which gave astronomers a new way to measure distances, ultimately leading to such impactful discoveries as the expansion of the Universe. Born in 1868, Henrietta Leavitt was an astronomer ahead of her time, whose work helped to revolutionise our understanding of the Universe. While working at Harvard Observatory, she began to study stars of fluctuating brightness. She made a crucial observation about these objects, which gave astronomers a new way to measure distances, ultimately leading to such impactful discoveries as the expansion of the Universe.
The latest news about astronomy, space and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope presented in High Definition is only for devices that play High Definition video (not iPhone or iPod). To watch the Hubblecast on your iPod and/or iPhone, please download the Standard Definition version also available on iTunes.A new ‘anti-Russian propaganda’ bill is to be signed into law which will make it illegal to run an alternative media website in the United States.
Under the guise of combatting “Russian propaganda,” the House of Representatives passed the H.R.6393 bill, also known as ‘Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017‘.
The bill is an attempt to counteract “measures by Russia to exert covert influence” in America. Worryingly, the definition of what constitutes “Russian influence” includes references to so-called ‘fake news’ websites and any site deemed anti-establishment.
Activistpost.com reports:
Definitions include media manipulation, covert broadcasting, disinformation and forgeries, and “funding agents of influence.”
It’s easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, could be used against “fake news” websites.
On November 24, The Washington Post published an article citing “experts” who claim Russian propaganda helped Donald Trump get elected.
“Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem,” the Post reported.
The newspaper cited PropOrNot, an anonymous website that posted a hit list of alternative media websites, including Drudge Report, Zero Hedge, Activist Post, Blacklisted News, and many others.
PropOrNot attempts to make the case the websites are either used directly or covertly by the Russians to spread propaganda.
At this point it is unknown if the bill will work its way through the Senate and become law and if it will be used to shut down or curtail websites anonymously characterized as useful idiots or willing participants in disseminating supposed Russian propaganda.Source: Donall Farmer/INPHO
Updated at 19.55
THE NATIONAL U17 League is just four months away.
Over recent weeks, a number of clubs have advertised management opportunities as well as trials for potential players but most interesting has been the Radio Kerry report that the Kerry District Schoolboys League (KDSL) received an FAI invitation to participate in the league, so the net has been cast beyond SSE Airtricity League clubs.
The KDSL will have expressed interest last year when the FAI opened up the process. Many schoolboy clubs will also have applied. Interest in the U17 league is greater than seen previously for the U19 league. Why the greater interest? Money plays a huge role.
There will be other reasons given, e.g. a desire to play at higher levels, but elite level schoolboy football in Ireland is influenced hugely by money and driven by agents, clubs and parents.
A schoolboy club can earn €20,000 training compensation from a UK transfer for each year a player was on their books. The U17 league would allow a club already moving players to the UK to retain elite players for an |
copy.
Now, he can mail them a link again.
Since we’ve moved online, we’ve built up the technical debt of having to move old content into something that’s currently accessible, McCain said.
“That costs money.”
He’s working on a Sustainability Preservation Pilot Project to see if smaller papers can build systems that can preserve born-digital content while making it easily accessible and marketable.
“If we can find an economic incentive to drive or to attract people to the idea, that has a better chance of flying than just saying well you really oughta do this.”
Of course there’s the human benefit of having an authoritative and accurate record, he said, but for individual reporters, right now saving that work is a personal task.
Vaughan went from saving everything he wrote to just the things that mattered to him the most. He’s still doing that now. And he knows that if he wants to see his work again someday, he’ll have to keep it up.
“I feel like we’re in this very temporary world in a certain sense,” Vaughan said. “The Rocky Mountain News was 150 years old and it folded. People need to be thinking all the time, is this something I want to save the way it is? And if it is, they need to take those steps now.”
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PrintFor GIS users who haven’t heard of PostGIS:
PostGIS is a spatial database extender for PostgreSQL object-relational database. It adds support for geographic objects allowing location queries to be run in SQL.
In this tutorial post we’ll cover how to install and run a PostGIS database on Windows using Docker, a popular containerization platform. We’ll then connect to the database and use it in both QGIS and ArcGIS Pro.
Why PostGIS?
If, up until this point in time you have only used flat-files to store your spatial data, such as shapefiles, file geodatabases, or SpatiaLite databases you might not know what the use case would be for using software like PostGIS. In short, PostgreSQL (or postgres, for short) is a database server, meaning it is a program that accepts connections from one or more clients, and allows them to interact with the data the server manages. PostGIS is an extension that is installed on top of PostgreSQL and gives the database server the means to store and manipulate spatial data, as well as perform spatial calculations and analysis. PostGIS can perform spatial operations on both vector and raster data.
A more comprehensive comparison of PostGIS vs flat-file databases can be found here.
Why Docker?
Docker is a beast, it can be a bit intimidating for new users who aren’t familiar with the command-line, but it provides you with a means to build and run software in a very consistent and controlled way by building upon a technology called LXC containers.
What does that mean for the average GIS’er? It means that you can download and run software like Postgres + PostGIS on any machine with minimal configuration very quickly. For anyone who has tried to install Postgres + PostGIS on Windows before that’s kind of a big deal, because it can be a giant pain in the ass. That’s not to say that using Docker can’t be frustrating, but I’ve found it to be very quick and intuitive once I got the hang of it.
Install Docker Toolbox
Now, I wish this step could be as easy as saying “go here and download installer X”, but unfortunately it’s not that simple. Docker, being an enterprise-grade containerization software has many different versions you can install, depending on your host operating system.
Docker for Windows requires Windows 10 with Hyper-V virtualization enabled, which is only available on Windows 10 Professional or Enterprise 64 bit versions. I will not be using this software in this tutorial, and can’t confirm that the steps will be the same, although the will most likely be very similar.
Docker Toolbox is available for other versions of Windows as well as Mac, and is the version I will be using for this tutorial. It uses VirtualBox to run your containers in conjunction with Docker.
After you have downloaded and installed Docker Toolbox, you should now be able to launch the Docker Quickstart Terminal from the Windows start menu.
Running a Docker Container
Note the IP address in the welcome text at the top.
When you installed Docker Toolbox, it installed and configured a Linux virtual machine on VirtualBox, where your containers will actually run. Lets test out our installation by running a container running the NGINX web server. This will not only prove that our container is running, but that we can access it through the network abstrations created by VirtualBox and Docker.
In the terminal, type the following command:
docker run --name=nginx -d -p 80:80 nginx
Lets disect this command bit by bit:
docker run is the command to tell Docker you want to run a container. There are loads of other commands, simply type docker to see them all. We’ll cover some other commands shortly.
--name=nginx Specifies the name of the container we’re about to create. When working with Docker you can refer to a container either by its name, or its ID, which is a random alpha-numeric string. If you don’t specify a name, it will be generated out of two randomly selected words separated by an underscore.
-d tells Docker to run this container in a detached state (i.e. in the background)
-p 80:80 tells Docker to map the host’s port 80 to the containers port 80. This is important, as containers will not automatically expose their ports to the outside. As we’re running a web server, which serves HTTP requests over port 80, this command allows requests from outside the container to reach the web server. We’ll expose a port in a similar way when we run our PostgreSQL database later.
nginx is the container we would like to run. Docker includes the ability to pull containers from Docker Hub, which is a site with a collection of official and user-generated containers that are ready to use.
After you’ve ran the command you should get an output similar to this:
$ docker run --name=nginx -d -p 80:80 nginx Unable to find image 'nginx:latest' locally latest: Pulling from library/nginx bc95e04b23c0: Pull complete aee0c172e58a: Pull complete c2a5d8ccfabc: Pull complete Digest: sha256:adea4f68096fded167603ba6663ed615a80e090da68eb3c9e2508c15c8368401 Status: Downloaded newer image for nginx:latest 1743234776d03e8a39cd851324e68f93919d0ba13672d6a7d60b80c4558ee90f
Docker downloads the necessary images in order to run the NGINX container, then creates a new container called nginx. The last line is the container ID. As mentioned in the welcome text when you started the terminal, the containers will be running on a VM with a specific IP address, in my case it is 192.168.99.100 (yours may be different, it might be worthwhile to check).
Another way to get the IP address of your Docker VM is to run the command:
docker-machine ip
In your web browser, navigate to the IP address of your Docker VM. You should see the NGINX welcome screen, which demonstrates that the container is running and serving requests on the port we exposed.
Navigate to the IP.
Listing running containers
With Docker you can have many containers running at the same time. To list them you can use the command docker ps. It should output something similar to this:
$ docker ps CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 99fa53dffb90 nginx "nginx -g 'daemon..." 5 minutes ago Up 2 minutes 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp nginx
Stopping & Deleting The Container
To stop and remove the NGINX container you use the docker stop and docker rm command. Containers must be stopped before they can be removed.
Run the command:
$ docker stop nginx
It will then print the name of the container that was stopped. Next, if you run docker ps again you will see that the nginx container is no longer running. If you’d like to list all containers, including the ones that have stopped, you can run the command docker ps -a to include stopped containers. It should output something similar to the following. Note the STATUS field to see when the container exited:
$ docker ps -a CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 99fa53dffb90 nginx "nginx -g 'daemon..." 9 minutes ago Exited (0) About a minute ago nginx
Lastly, you can delete the stopped container by using the docker rm command. It will print the name of the container after it has been deleted.
docker rm nginx
Running PostGIS
Congratulations! You’ve ran and managed your first Docker container! The next step is to get our spatial database running.
One of the advantages of Docker I mentioned before is the ability to leverage both official and community built containers to get your software running quickly no matter what machine you’re running it on. If you look through Docker Hub there are a few PostGIS containers available for you to use. For this example I will be using the Dockerfile (a set of instructions used to create a finished container) provided by the kartoza/postgis repository.
Persisting Your Data
Before we create the database we need to think about how our database info will be stored within Docker. Normally when you create a Docker container, you are not meant to be able to enter the containers filesystem to copy or modify data. This means that unless we specify what’s called a volume in Docker, our database data will be saved inside the container, making it difficult or impossible to perform backups or upgrades to the database software without losing all your data.
What we’re going to do is create a volume container that will be used to persist PostgreSQL database files outside of the the container that runs the database process:
docker volume create pg_data
If you wish to read more about using volumes with Docker you can read the documentation here.
Creating the Database Container
Next we’ll use docker run to create the PostGIS container:
docker run --name=postgis -d -e POSTGRES_USER=alex -e POSTGRES_PASS=password -e POSTGRES_DBNAME=gis -e ALLOW_IP_RANGE=0.0.0.0/0 -p 5432:5432 -v pg_data:/var/lib/postgresql --restart=always kartoza/postgis:9.6-2.4
Lets break down this command part-by-part. More examples of how you can run this container can be found on Docker Hub
docker run --name=postgis tells Docker our new container will be named postgis
tells Docker our new container will be named -d run the container in the background (detached mode)
run the container in the background (detached mode) -e POSTGRES_USER=alex the -e flag sets an environment variable inside the container. This one is used to configure name of a login role in PostgreSQL that will have superuser (admin) priviliges in the database. You can rename this to whatever you want.
the flag sets an environment variable inside the container. This one is used to configure name of a login role in PostgreSQL that will have superuser (admin) priviliges in the database. You can rename this to whatever you want. -e POSTGRES_PASS=password sets an environment variable that will set the password of the login role to `password. You can set this to whatever you want.
sets an environment variable that will set the password of the login role to `password. You can set this to whatever you want. -e POSTGRES_DBNAME=gis much like you can guess, the environment variable tells the container to create a new database on the server with the name gis. After the database is created then the PostGIS extension will be enabled on it.
much like you can guess, the environment variable tells the container to create a new database on the server with the name. After the database is created then the PostGIS extension will be enabled on it. -e ALLOW_IP_RANGE=0.0.0.0/0 tells the container to configure PostgreSQL to accept connections from anyone. If you did not set this then the database would only accept connections from addresses using the Docker networking subnet.
tells the container to configure PostgreSQL to accept connections from anyone. If you did not set this then the database would only accept connections from addresses using the Docker networking subnet. -p 5432:5432 maps the port 5432 on the host VM to port 5432 on the container. This is required because the database server listens for connections on port 5432 by default.
maps the port 5432 on the host VM to port 5432 on the container. This is required because the database server listens for connections on port 5432 by default. -v pg_data:/var/lib/postgresql tells the container filesystem to mount the pg_data volume we just created to the path /var/lib/postgresql. This means that any data that the container saves or creates in that directory will instead be saved in the pg_data volume.
tells the container filesystem to mount the volume we just created to the path. This means that any data that the container saves or creates in that directory will instead be saved in the volume. --restart=always creates a restart policy for your container. Now your container will start every time the Docker virtual machine starts. If this was not set, you would have to manually start the container every time the VM booted up with docker start postgis
creates a restart policy for your container. Now your container will start every time the Docker virtual machine starts. If this was not set, you would have to manually start the container every time the VM booted up with kartoza/postgis:9.6-2.4 tells Docker to pull the kartoza/postgis repository from Docker Hub, using PostgreSQL version 9.6 and PostGIS version 2.4. You can see other versions that are available on Docker Hub
That command is definitely a mouthful. Once the images have downloaded you should then see that the container has started by using docker ps :
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 748ba3fabd31 kartoza/postgis:9.6-2.4 "/bin/sh -c /start..." About an hour ago Up About an hour 0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp postgis
If you want to see log output from your container you can do so by using docker logs
$ docker logs postgis PostgreSQL stand-alone backend 9.6.5 2017-10-29 19:10:41.256 UTC [24] LOG: could not bind IPv6 socket: Cannot assign requested address 2017-10-29 19:10:41.256 UTC [24] HINT: Is another postmaster already running on port 5432? If not, wait a few seconds and retry. 2017-10-29 19:10:41.256 UTC [24] WARNING: could not create listen socket for "::1" backend> backend> postgres ready 2017-10-29 19:10:41.277 UTC [27] LOG: database system was shut down at 2017-10-29 19:10:41 UTC 2017-10-29 19:10:41.278 UTC [28] [unknown]@[unknown] LOG: incomplete startup packet 2017-10-29 19:10:41.279 UTC [27] LOG: MultiXact member wraparound protections are now enabled 2017-10-29 19:10:41.285 UTC [24] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections 2017-10-29 19:10:41.285 UTC [32] LOG: autovacuum launcher started Postgis is missing, installing now Creating template postgis Enabling template_postgis as a template UPDATE 1 Loading postgis extension CREATE EXTENSION Enabling hstore in the template CREATE EXTENSION Enabling topology in the template CREATE EXTENSION List of databases Name | Owner | Encoding | Collate | Ctype | Access privileges ------------------+----------+----------+---------+---------+----------------------- gis | alex | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 | postgres | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 | template0 | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 | =c/postgres + | | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres template1 | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 | =c/postgres + | | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres template_postgis | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 | (5 rows) 2017-10-29 19:10:43.514 UTC [24] LOG: received smart shutdown request 2017-10-29 19:10:43.514 UTC [32] LOG: autovacuum launcher shutting down 2017-10-29 19:10:43.517 UTC [29] LOG: shutting down 2017-10-29 19:10:43.524 UTC [24] LOG: database system is shut down Postgres initialisation process completed.... restarting in foreground 2017-10-29 19:10:43.564 UTC [126] LOG: database system was shut down at 2017-10-29 19:10:43 UTC 2017-10-29 19:10:43.566 UTC [126] LOG: MultiXact member wraparound protections are now enabled 2017-10-29 19:10:43.568 UTC [123] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections 2017-10-29 19:10:43.568 UTC [130] LOG: autovacuum launcher started
Connecting In QGIS
You should now be able to add the connection to PostGIS in the browser panel in QGIS. Right click the PostgreSQL icon and click “Create New Connection”, and enter the database connection parameters you used in the docker run command. The “Host” parameter will the the IP of your Docker VM (you can get it by running docker-machine ip in the terminal window)
Creating Or Importing Geometry
QGIS has a geo algorithm called “Import into PostGIS” that can load layers from various sources into your PostGIS database.
You can also use the DB Manager plugin to create new database schemas, as well as import and export files from the database. In the screenshot below I have loaded an extract from OpenStreetMap of roads in the Ottawa area.
Connecting In ArcGIS Pro
You can also perform visualization and analysis on your data in ArcGIS Desktop. There are, however, some limitations on what kinds of operations you can perform. During my limited testing using ArcGIS Pro 2.0 I was not able to perform feature editing, or data management tasks such as modifying tables (adding/dropping fields, etc). I was able to load and visualize the data, as well as run geoprocessing tools on the data. I was able to export the geometry to a file geodatabase, as well as delete entire tables. I think this is either a licensing issue, or I have to install some extra shared libraries into PostgreSQL in order to use the ST_Geometry type.
Creating A New Database Connection
Connecting to your database is as simple as adding a new database connection in either ArcCatalog, or in the Catalog pane in ArcGIS Pro. You can use the same credentials and connection information you used in the environment variables when you created the container. The “Host” parameter is set to the IP of your Docker VM (you can get it by running docker-machine ip in the terminal window, if you don’t have it).
Creating A New Schema
When I first tried to view the road data I had loaded into the database in ArcGIS Pro, I was unable to find it in the catalog pane. I later discovered this is because by default ArcGIS looks into a database schema with the same name as the currently connected database user. In my case the login name for PostgreSQL is alex, so ArcPro is looking for tables in the schema alex. Creating a new schema is easyily accomplished using the DB Manager plugin in QGIS, however if you don’t have QGIS installed on your machine you can run a SQL query using Docker to create it.
To create a new schema in your PostGIS database, run the following command in the quickstart terminal. Make sure to replace the <PASSWORD>, <DBNAME> and <USERNAME> parameters with the ones you used when you created the container.
docker exec -it postgis /bin/bash -c "PGPASSWORD=<PASSWORD> psql -d <DBNAME> -U <USERNAME> -h localhost -c \"create schema <USERNAME>;\""
What this command does is execute a command inside the postgis container. In this case, it is executing a SQL command using psql, a command-line PostgreSQL client that will create the schema you need.
Viewing Data
In this state utilizing ArcGIS with PostGIS is kind of a chicken and the egg type of situation, as I was not able to create new data in the database, although I was able to view and analyze already existing data. After the new schema was created, and a roads shapefile was imported into that schema using QGIS, I was then able to successfully bring the data in and view it in ArcGIS Pro
Notice the layer is named with the database name, schema name, then the table name.
Conclusion
In this over-arching tutorial we went over the basics of how to use a spatial database server, and how to deploy one using Docker. There’s a lot more you can accomplish using container-based software in your projects, and I hope to write about them later. Some things I have been experimenting with is deploying Geoserver alongside PostGIS using Docker. I’m also interested in exploring if there’s an easy way to gain more functionality on the Esri side of the house, as well as seeing if I can get volume mount-points outside of the VirtualBox VM and into the host OS.7.2
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Quick: An Introduction to Racket with Pictures
Matthew Flatt
This tutorial provides a brief introduction to the Racket programming language by using one of its picture-drawing libraries. Even if you don’t intend to use Racket for your artistic endeavours, the picture library supports interesting and enlightening examples. After all, a picture is worth five hundred “hello world”s.
Along the same lines, we assume that you will run the examples using DrRacket. Using DrRacket is the fastest way to get a sense of what the language and system feels like, even if you eventually use Racket with Emacs, vi, or some other editor.
1 Ready...
Download Racket, install, and then start DrRacket.
2 Set...
See the DrRacket documentation for a brief overview of the DrRacket IDE.
To draw pictures, we must first load some picture functions, which are part of a library for creating slide presentations. Copy the following into the definitions area, which is the top text area that you see in DrRacket:
Then click the Run button. You’ll see the text caret move to the bottom text area, which is the interactions area.
If you’ve used DrRacket before, you might need to reset DrRacket to use the language declared in the source via the Language|Choose Language... menu item before clicking Run.
3 Go!
When you type an expression after the > in the interactions window and hit Enter, DrRacket evaluates the expression and prints its result. An expression can be just a value, such as the number 5 or the string "art gallery":
> 5 5 > "art gallery" "art gallery"
An expression can also be a function call. To call a function, put an open parenthesis before the function name, then expressions for the function arguments, and then a close parenthesis, like this:
> ( circle 10 )
A result from the circle function is a picture value, which prints as an expression result in much the same way that numbers or strings print. The argument to circle determines the circle’s size in pixels. As you might guess, there’s a rectangle function that takes two arguments instead of one:
> ( rectangle 10 20 )
Try giving circle the wrong number of arguments, just to see what happens:
> ( circle 10 20 ) circle: arity mismatch; the expected number of arguments does not match the given number expected: 1 plus optional arguments with keywords #:border-color and #:border-width given: 2 arguments...: 10 20
Note that DrRacket highlights in pink the expression that triggered the error (but pink highlighting is not shown in this documentation).
In addition to basic picture constructors like circle and rectangle, there’s a hc-append function that combines pictures. When you start composing function calls in Racket, it looks like this:
> ( hc-append ( circle 10 ) ( rectangle 10 20 ) )
The hyphen in the name hc-append is just a part of the identifier; it’s not hc minus append. The function name starts with h because it combines pictures horizontally, and the next letter is c because the pictures are centered vertically.
If you wonder what other functions exist— perhaps a way to stack pictures vertically and left-aligned?— move the text caret to the name hc-append and press the F1 key in DrRacket. A browser window will open, and it will give you a link to the documentation for hc-append. Click the link, and you’ll see lots of other functions.
If you’re reading this in HTML form, you can also just click on hc-append or any other imported identifier that is used in this tutorial.
4 Definitions
To use a particular circle and rectangle picture many times, it’s simpler to give them names. Move back to the definitions area (the top area) and add two definitions, so that the complete content of the definitions area looks like this:
#lang slideshow ( define c ( circle 10 ) ) ( define r ( rectangle 10 20 ) )
Then click Run again. Now, you can just type c or r:
> r > ( hc-append c r ) > ( hc-append 20 c r c )
As you can see, the hc-append function accepts an optional number argument before the picture arguments, and it accepts any number of picture arguments. When a number is provided, it specifies the amount of space to add between pictures.
We could have evaluated the define forms for c and r in the interactions area instead of the definitions area. In practice, though, the definitions area is where your program lives— it’s the file that you save— while the interaction area is for transient explorations and debugging tasks.
Let’s add a function definition to the program. A function definition uses define, just like our shape definitions, but with an open parenthesis before the function name, and names for the function arguments before the matching close parenthesis:
( define ( square n ) ; A semi-colon starts a line comment. ; The expression below is the function body. ( filled-rectangle n n ) )
The syntax of the definition mirrors the syntax of a function call:
> ( square 10 )
In the same way that definitions can be evaluated in the interactions area, expressions can be included in the definitions area. When a program is run, expression results from the definition area are shown in the interaction area. From now on, we’ll write our example definitions and expressions together, and you can put them in whichever area you prefer. The examples will build on each other, however, so it’s best to put at least the definitions in the definition area.
5 Local Binding
The define form can be used in some places to create local bindings. For example, it can be used inside a function body:
( define ( four p ) ( define two-p ( hc-append p p ) ) ( vc-append two-p two-p ) ) > ( four ( circle 10 ) )
More typically, Racketeers use the let or let* form for local binding. An advantage of let is that it can be used in any expression position. Also, it binds many identifiers at once, instead of requiring a separate define for each identifier:
( define ( checker p1 p2 ) ( let ( [ p12 ( hc-append p1 p2 ) ] [ p21 ( hc-append p2 p1 ) ] ) ( vc-append p12 p21 ) ) ) > ( checker ( colorize ( square 10 ) "red" ) ( colorize ( square 10 ) "black" ) )
A let form binds many identifiers at the same time, so the bindings cannot refer to each other. The let* form, in contrast, allows later bindings to use earlier bindings:
( define ( checkerboard p ) ( let* ( [ rp ( colorize p "red" ) ] [ bp ( colorize p "black" ) ] [ c ( checker rp bp ) ] [ c4 ( four c ) ] ) ( four c4 ) ) ) > ( checkerboard ( square 10 ) )
6 Functions are Values
Instead of calling circle as a function, try evaluating just circle as an expression:
That is, the identifier circle is bound to a function (a.k.a. “procedure”), just like c is bound to a circle. Unlike a circle picture, there’s not a simple way of completely printing the function, so DrRacket just prints #<procedure:circle>.
This example shows that functions are values, just like numbers and pictures (even if they don’t print as nicely). Since functions are values, you can define functions that accept other functions as arguments:
( define ( series mk ) ( hc-append 4 ( mk 5 ) ( mk 10 ) ( mk 20 ) ) ) > ( series circle ) > ( series square )
When calling a function that accepts a function argument, the argument function often isn’t needed anywhere else. Having to write down the function via define would be a hassle, because you have to make up a name and find a place to put the function definition. The alternative is to use lambda, which creates an anonymous function:
> ( series ( lambda ( size ) ( checkerboard ( square size ) ) ) )
The parenthesized names after a lambda are the arguments to the function, and the expression after the argument names is the function body. Using the word “lambda” instead of “function” or “procedure” is part of Racket’s history and culture.
A define form for a function is really a shorthand for a simple define using lambda as the value. For example, the series definition could be written as
( define series ( lambda ( mk ) ( hc-append 4 ( mk 5 ) ( mk 10 ) ( mk 20 ) ) ) )
Most Racketeers prefer to use the shorthand function form with define instead of expanding to lambda.
7 Lexical Scope
Racket is a lexically scoped language, which means that whenever an identifier is used as an expression, something in the textual environment of the expression determines the identifier’s binding. This rule applies to identifiers in a lambda body as well as anywhere else.
In the following rgb-series function, the uses of mk in each lambda form refer to the argument of rgb-series, since that’s the binding that is textually in scope:
( define ( rgb-series mk ) ( vc-append ( series ( lambda ( sz ) ( colorize ( mk sz ) "red" ) ) ) ( series ( lambda ( sz ) ( colorize ( mk sz ) "green" ) ) ) ( series ( lambda ( sz ) ( colorize ( mk sz ) "blue" ) ) ) ) ) > ( rgb-series circle ) > ( rgb-series square )
Here’s another example, where rgb-maker takes a function and returns a new one that remembers and uses the original function.
( define ( rgb-maker mk ) ( lambda ( sz ) ( vc-append ( colorize ( mk sz ) "red" ) ( colorize ( mk sz ) "green" ) ( colorize ( mk sz ) "blue" ) ) ) ) > ( series ( rgb-maker circle ) ) > ( series ( rgb-maker square ) )
Note how composing functions via rgb-maker creates a different alignment of objects within the picture compared to using rgb-series.
8 Lists
Racket inherits much of its style from the language Lisp, whose name originally stood for “LISt Processor,” and lists remain an important part of Racket.
The list function takes any number of arguments and returns a list containing the given values:
> ( list "red" "green" "blue" ) '("red" "green" "blue") > ( list ( circle 10 ) ( square 10 ) ) '( )
As you can see, a list prints as a single quote and then pair of parentheses wrapped around the printed form of the list elements. There’s room for confusion here, because parentheses are used for both expressions, such as (circle 10), and printed results, such as '("red" "green" "blue"). The quote is the key difference, as discussed elsewhere. To help emphasize the difference, in the documentation and in DrRacket, result parentheses are printed in blue, unlike expression parentheses.
If you have a list, then you’ll eventually want to do something with each of the elements. The map function takes a list and a function to apply to each element of the list; it returns a new list to combine the function’s results:
( define ( rainbow p ) ( map ( lambda ( color ) ( colorize p color ) ) ( list "red" "orange" "yellow" "green" "blue" "purple" ) ) ) > ( rainbow ( square 5 ) ) '( )
Another function that works with lists is apply. Like map, it takes a function and a list, but a function given to apply should take all of the arguments at once, instead of each one individually. The apply function is especially useful with functions that take any number of arguments, such as vc-append:
> ( apply vc-append ( rainbow ( square 5 ) ) )
Note that (vc-append (rainbow (square 5))) would not work, because vc-append does not want a list as an argument; it wants a picture as an argument, and it is willing to accept any number of them. The apply function bridges the gap between a function that wants many arguments and a list of those arguments as a single value.
9 Modules
Since your program in the definitions window starts with
all of the code that you put in the definitions window is inside a module. Furthermore, the module initially imports everything from the module designated by slideshow, which exports picture-making functions as well as more commonly used functions such as list and map.
To import additional libraries, use the require form. For example, the library pict/flash provides a filled-flash function:
( require pict/flash ) > ( filled-flash 40 30 )
Modules are named and distributed in various ways:
Some modules are packaged in the Racket distribution or otherwise installed into a hierarchy of collections. For example, the module name pict/flash means “the module implemented in the file "flash.rkt" that is located in the "pict" collection.” When a module name includes no slash, then it refers to a "main.rkt" file.
Some collections of modules are distributed as packages. Packages can be installed using the Install Package... menu item in DrRacket’s File menu, or they can be installed using the raco pkg command-line tool. For example, installing the "avl" package makes the avl module available. Packages can be registered at https://pkgs.racket-lang.org/, or they can be installed directly from a Git repository, web site, file, or directory. See Package Management in Racket for more information about packages.
To save your definitions, use DrRacket’s Save Definitions menu item. Some modules live relative to other modules, without necessarily belonging to any particular collection or package. For example, in DrRacket, if you save your definitions so far in a file "quick.rkt" and add the line (provide rainbow square) then you can open a new tab or window in DrRacket, type the new program "use.rkt" in the same directory as "quick.rkt": #lang racket ( require "quick.rkt" ) ( rainbow ( square 5 ) ) and when you run "use.rkt", a rainbow list of squares is the output. Note that "use.rkt" is written using the initial import racket, which does not supply any picture-making functions itself— but does provide require and the function-calling syntax.
Racketeers typically write new programs and libraries as modules that import each other through relative paths and collection-based paths. When a program or library developed this way seems useful to others, it can be registered as a package, especially if the implementation is hosted in a Git repository.
10 Macros
Here’s another library to try:
( require slideshow/code ) > ( code ( circle 10 ) )
Instead of a circle, the result is a picture of the code that, if it were used as an expression, would produce a circle. In other words, code is not a function, but instead a new syntactic form for creating pictures; the bit between the opening parenthesis with code is not an expression, but instead manipulated by the code syntactic form.
This helps explain what we meant in the previous section when we said that racket provides require and the function-calling syntax. Libraries are not restricted to exporting values, such as functions; they can also define new syntactic forms. In this sense, Racket isn’t exactly a language at all; it’s more of an idea for how to structure a language so that you can extend it or create entirely new languages.
One way to introduce a new syntactic form is through define-syntax with syntax-rules:
( define-syntax pict+code ( syntax-rules ( ) [ ( pict+code expr ) ( hc-append 10 expr ( code expr ) ) ] ) ) > ( pict+code ( circle 10 ) )
This kind of definition is a macro. The (pict+code expr) part is a pattern for uses of the macro; instances of the pattern in a program are replaced by instances of the corresponding template, which is (hc-append 10 expr (code expr)). In particular, (pict+code (circle 10)) matches the pattern with (circle 10) as expr, so it is replaced with (hc-append 10 (circle 10) (code (circle 10))).
Of course, this sort of syntactic extension cuts both ways: inventing a new language can make it easier to say what you want, but harder for others to understand. As it happens, the developers of Racket are constantly giving talks and writing papers that involve Racket code, and it’s worthwhile for everyone who works on those products to know about code.
In fact, you might want to take a look at the source of this document. You’ll see that it starts with #lang, but otherwise doesn’t look a lot like |
we have to, isn't often a campaign topic," Santangelo said. "It's an uncomfortable conversation to have, and one we're not seeing as much nationally now, though we're seeing it around issues with the criminal justice program."
The 2016 campaign cycle has, instead, been routinely hijacked by non-policy concerns, especially as Donald Trump's demeanor continues to dominate Internet headlines and TV talk shows. The issues receiving the most lip service this year are things like immigration, foreign policy, police-community relations and middle class jobs.
For America's poor, however, housing remains one of the most critical issues, along with things like education and health care, Santangelo said. There have been few (if any) big speeches on those topics.
Santangelo said many fair housing advocates were hopeful the topic would get some attention when Hillary Clinton added Sen. Tim Kaine to the Democratic ticket. Kaine was a fair housing attorney for 20 years in Virginia and won a $100 million verdict in a red-lining case against Nationwide Insurance.
"That's a perfect person to hopefully help inject this conversation and it will be interesting to see in the VP debates if it comes up as an issue," she said.
So far, however, Kaine has been mostly kept out of the spotlight.
'Poor people don't vote'
On the whole, campaigns tend not to dwell on poverty. Former candidate Bernie Sanders acknowledged the lack of attention on the poor in an interview following the New York primary. He told NBC's Chuck Todd that "poor people don't vote."
"That's a sad reality of American society," Sanders said. "And that's why we have to transform one, as you know, one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major society of Earth. We have done a good job of bringing young people. But in America today, the last election in 2014, 80 percent of poor people did not vote."
NPR found that claim to be somewhat true, though it was hard to precisely measure voter rates for the poor.
Sanders made income inequality one of the key issues of his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination. His message resonated with young people and liberals, but he couldn't garner enough mass appeal to win the nomination.
"The middle class is always the place to campaign," Santangelo said. "That's a reality we're not going to see change."Image caption Jeremy Hunt wants net firms to do more to prevent access to pirate sites
UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has delivered a hard-hitting speech, calling on net firms, advertisers and credit card companies to cut ties with websites that link to unlawful content.
In a speech to the Royal Television Society, he said he wanted to make it harder for such sites to prosper.
Ideally the government would like to see Google remove pirate sites from its search engine completely.
But Google's response suggested this was unlikely.
"Without a court order, any copyright owner can already use our removals process to inform us of copyright infringing content and have it removed from Google Search," the firm said in a statement.
More difficult
It may not be enough for Mr Hunt, who appeared to be on an anti-piracy crusade.
In his speech, he denied that blocking access to pirated content was an attack on net neutrality.
"Unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft - and a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly for their efforts," he said.
"We do not allow certain products to be sold in the shops on the High Street, nor do we allow shops to be set up purely to sell counterfeited products. Likewise we should be entitled to make it more difficult to access sites that are dedicated to the infringement of copyright," he added.
Many of the changes mooted by Mr Hunt are destined for the new Communications Act which is due to become law towards the end of the current Parliament in 2015.
Suggested measures include:
A cross-industry body, perhaps modelled on the Internet Watch Foundation, to be charged with identifying infringing websites against which action could be taken
A streamlined legal process to make it possible for the courts to act quickly
A responsibility on search engines and ISPs to take reasonable steps to make it harder to access sites that a court has deemed contain unlawful content or promote unlawful distribution of content
A responsibility on advertisers to take reasonable steps to remove their advertisements from these sites
A responsibility on credit card companies and banks to remove their services from these sites.
The hope is that the tough new measures will sit alongside the already controversial anti-piracy legislation outlined in the Digital Economy Act (DEA).
The DEA remains in a state of suspended animation as the government waits for the European Parliament to approve changes to it.
For its part, Google said that it felt that its current anti-piracy policies were sufficient.
It operates a takedown process in which it removes links identified as infringing copyright. Last year it removed three million items from its search engine.
The company said that it had improved takedown times with an average response of four hours. It is also set to change its auto-complete tool to eradicate terms associated with piracy.
Expensive nightmare
Jim Killock, chief executive of the Open Rights Group, said the proposals set a dangerous precedent.
"It is pretty dangerous to ask credit card companies or Google to decide who is guilty," he said.
"Once again Mr Hunt has listened to the lobbyists and has made no attempt to work out the scale of the problem. We are back where we were with the DEA, which is proving unworkable and an expensive nightmare," he said.
Other measures announced in Mr Hunt's speech included a promise to establish a new regulatory framework for the newspaper industry.
He said a cross-media approach to regulation was vital, as broadcasters, newspapers and internet companies developed new products for smartphones, tablet computers and web TV.
In the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, the public would demand a "robust" solution and he called on the industry to come up with one.
"Our free press has served us incredibly well. So we don't want any changes to result in the back-door imposition of statutory broadcast-style regulation. But if we are to avoid this, the public will insist on a system of robust, independent regulation with credible sanction-making power," he said.
He also spoke about the broadband landscape. He said the government's ambition to make the UK the best place for broadband in Europe by 2015 was on track. But, with countries such as Singapore introducing speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second as standard, it wasn't enough.
He said that plans for other firms to share BT's poles and ducts were "taking too long" and pledged to speed up the process.Sen. Elizabeth Warren now says that last year's government shutdown was about birth control.
Warren did not make the remark in an off-the-cuff setting. She made it in a prepared speech.
Warren said it on the floor of the Senate while supporting a bill that she knows has absolutely zero chance of becoming law.
“Remember last year's government shutdown that nearly tanked our economy?” Warren asked. “That fight started with a GOP effort to hold the whole operation of the federal government hostage in order to try to force Democrats and the president to let employers deny workers access to birth control.”
Warren is not lying about some distant event for which there is no extant living memory. The government shutdown was last year.
Spoiler alert: That shutdown was not over birth control. That shutdown was over the budget and the entirety of Obamacare. The whole law (which hardly any Democrat read before passing it into law). Not birth control.
There is, in fact, no national controversy over birth control as such. There is a controversy over how the Obama administration used regulatory powers written into the unpopular Obamacare law to impose even abortifacient drugs on Americans who object to the use of such drugs. The controversy is over whether Americans retain the right to live out our religious values once we own businesses.
Spoiler alert: The Supreme Court ruled that we do.
Warren is not merely delivering spin. Saying that the shutdown was about birth control is a Godzilla-sized lie, told intentionally, in order to be provocative. It won't advance the bill she is supporting. That bill stands no chance of passing in the House, supposing that it even comes up for a vote in the Senate, which it probably won't, because Democrats do not want to be taking pro-Obamacare votes leading up to the mid-terms. The bill and speaking out in favor of it is nothing more or less than base political theater. Warren is just lying to score points with the Democrat base, who also mostly know that Warren is lying, yet they will repeat the lie themselves until the end of time.George Washington’s hairstyle is iconic and simple enough that most Americans can probably recall it in an instant — or they can at least refresh their memory by pulling out a dollar bill or a quarter. It was pulled back from his forehead and puffy on the sides, colored grey-white perhaps like many wigs of the day. But Washington never wore a wig. At National Geographic, Robert Krulwich writes that he was stunned to learn this fact from Ron Chernow’s book Washington: A Life. Krulwich explains:
Turns out, that hair was his. All of it—the pigtail, the poofy part in the back, that roll of perfect curls near his neck. What’s more (though you probably already guessed this), he wasn’t white-haired. There’s a painting of him as a young man, with Martha and her two children, that shows his hair as reddish brown, which Chernow says was his true color.
The painting, The Courtship of Washington by John C. McRae, was painted in 1860, long after Washington’s death in 1799. But a project out of the University of Virginia called The Papers of George Washington also confirms that the first president’s natural hair color was light brown. The style he favored wasn’t fancy, though it may appear so to modern eyes. It was a military style called a queue, "the 18th-century equivalent of a marine buzz cut," Krulwich writes. With charming illustrations, artist Wendy MacNaughton brings to life Washington’s routine — the gathering, enthusiastic yank back to try and broaden the forehead, fluffing of the hair on the side and the powdering.
Even if Washington didn’t wear a wig — as some of his contemporaries sported — he did powder his hair to get that white look. It may also have been the fashion in America to wear less elaborate wig styles, if one wore a wig at all. By the late 18th century, wigs were starting to go out of style. So Washington could have been fashion-forward in his military simplicity. Still, the powdering was a chore involving a robe to protect clothes, a cone to protect the face and sometimes special bellows to puff the powder evenly. But Washington’s use of powder raises the question, how did he avoid the look of permanent dandruff? Krulwich writes:
[Betty Myers, a master wigmaker at Colonial Williamsburg in Vierginia], says that’s why Washington bunched his ponytail into a silk bag, to keep from leaving a white windshield wiper splay of powder on his back when he was dancing with the ladies (which he liked to do). As for keeping the powder off one’s shoulders, how Washington did that—if he did do that—nobody could tell me. Probably every powder-wearing guy in the 1760s knew the secret, but after a couple of centuries, whatever Washington did to stay spotless is lost to us.
It’s possible that the same solution that helped Washington’s hair rolls stay fluffy also kept the powder sticking — greasy hair and lots of pomade. Bathing and washing hair frequently wasn’t a popular activity, so powders also solved the problem of smelly unwashed heads — they were perfumed. It’s a good thing fashions change.The attacks of 9/11 weren’t the decisive break in the relationship between jihadists and journalists. It was the decision made by a set of extremists in Pakistan to kidnap the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002 that represented a shift in jihadist thought. To his kidnappers, Pearl was not a messenger to the outside world, but a scapegoat to be sacrificed for the sins of his fellow infidels. Murder was becoming their message.
Danny Pearl was the reporter who first gave me telephone numbers for important figures in Pakistani extremist circles. Danny was generous, Danny was careful, but Danny was unlucky. Even after his murder, I convinced myself that this horrible moment was the exception that proved the rule. Non-Jewish reporters, meanwhile, could tell themselves that Danny’s death had more to do with his religion than his profession.
“It just seemed to me like a freakish anomaly,” Dexter said. “I went to the tribal areas in Pakistan, to Wana, by taxi, after he was killed. It used to be pretty easy. You could go into situations that were very dangerous, and the chances of being hurt were very small.”
Today, of course, Western journalists who seek out jihadists are courting death. The beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff by ISIS, the Islamic State terror group, are persuasive arguments for prudence.
Why have some groups rejected the notion of journalistic neutrality? For one thing, the extremists have become more extreme. Look at the fractious relationship between al-Qaeda and ISIS, which is an offshoot of al-Qaeda but which has rejected criticism from Qaeda leaders about its particularly baroque application of violence.
Another, more important, reason relates to the mechanisms of publicity itself. The extremists don’t need us anymore. Fourteen years ago, while I was staying at the Taliban madrasa, its administrators were launching a Web site. I remember being amused by this. I shouldn’t have been. There is no need for a middleman now. Journalists have been replaced by YouTube and Twitter. And when there is no need for us, we become targets.
Three years ago, Dexter and I both found ourselves in Pakistan again, staying in the same anonymous guesthouse in Islamabad, which seemed safer than any alternative. Especially after the killing of Osama bin Laden, when so many people in Pakistan were contemplating revenge, the large hotels had become irresistible targets for terrorists. They were also infested with agents of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, the handmaiden of many of the terrorist groups.
I was reporting on the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons; Dexter was investigating the murder of a Pakistani journalist who was killed, apparently, by agents of the ISI. Both topics were dangerous territory, and we came under harassment. I was followed; Dexter’s phone was tapped. Each time I returned to the guesthouse, I could tell that strangers had been in my room. One day, I got a call from someone who identified himself as a reporter for a major Urdu daily newspaper. “We understand that you’re a prominent Zionist, and we want to write about you on the front page,” he said.Social tipping service ChangeTip has announced a new “decentralised” wallet service, citing demand from the bitcoin community.
Called ChangeTip Wallet, the service is said to let customers more easily use the platform’s social media integrations to send funds, while allowing users better controls over their account and funds.
For example, users of the wallet will hold their own private keys, and be able to initiate and approve payments using web-based and mobile apps.
“We’re really excited to launch something that’s pure bitcoin,” said Nick Sullivan, Founder and CEO of San Francisco-based ChangeCoin – the company behind the ChangeTip platform.
He explained:
“Many in our community like ChangeTip, but shy away from the service because it’s centralized. We talked for a while about creating this product, and ultimately, we decided it was something we really wanted to build.”
ChangeTip Wallet is currently in closed beta and is available by invitation only.
Shift from centralisation
Until recently, customers were required to store their funds with ChangeTip to use the service. However, the firm said, bitcoin users have been requesting that the platform move to a more decentralised model.
As a result, the team decided to work on the new ChangeTip wallet, allowing users to manage their own private keys and to more “fully experience the benefits that bitcoin offers”.
The firm’s new product is a “regular” bitcoin wallet with ChangeTip services tied in, said Sullivan. “Your private keys never leave your phone and you can still send tips on Twitter.”
“Listening to users’ feedback and making changes that the majority of your user base wants to see is always a good idea for business,” he said, adding:
“We listened to feedback, learned lessons, and now we really want to build and deliver something valuable that people feel good about using.”
Users will enjoy more financial freedom compared with the standard ChangeTip service, the firm said, since account sizes, transaction amounts and user locations are “unrestricted and unlimited”.
“Now we are [launching] an API that enables any wallet to pair with ChangeTip and receive payment requests (initiated by you from a social network),” Sullivan said. “This will be an open API, so ChangeTip social services can empower other wallets as well.”
The company also explained it is still exploring the feasibility of launching on a Lightning Network payment channel or a sidechain – other technology options that would make its platform less centralized, and that it would “continue to explore” these options.
Rekindling growth
Launched in 2013, ChangeTip raised more than $3.5m for its social tipping service on the strength of strong growth in user metrics. However, the company soon found itself embroiled in controversies surrounding its business practices, with community members questioning its use of customer data, reliance on off-blockchain micropayments and ability to restrict user transactions in line with relevant regulations.
Since then, ChangeTip has shown a willingness to experiment with its offerings in an attempt to rekindle the user growth that turned it into one of the industry’s hottest startups at the beginning of 2015.
ChangeTip introduced the ability for users to tip US dollars in September of last year, a move that coincided with the launch of Tipworthy, a news aggregator designed to inspire tipping’s use case in content monetization.
Earlier this month, it also launched a new product called ChangeTip Contribute that makes it possible for publishers to charge micro-payments for ad-free access to articles and other content.
Reaffirming the firm’s belief in the technology, Sullivan said:
“If you have 200k people sharing bitcoin everyday, that’s not just ‘good for business’, it’s good for other people, and, we believe, ultimately good for the world.”
Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group which has an investment stake in ChangeTip.
Tip jar image via ShutterstockReact is a component based JavaScript framework that provides a one-way reactive data binding. This is achieved via a virtual DOM implementation that React reconciles with the real DOM when updates are necessary. A great React tutorial can be found here. I am just going to provide the TL;DR here in order to understand our demo app.
Components
React components can be written in either plain JavaScript or in a format that the React team calls JSX. JSX is a mixture of JavaScript and markup. Anyone who dealt with technologies that allow you to mix markup with logic would tell you that these solutions are powerful but often dangerous and care should be given to maintain encapsulation. Why the tradeoff then? Turns out, logic, when combined with markup, can define complex UI components very well which components are isolated but at the same time, can be easily woven together.
Lifecycle
Each component is hooked into React's event system and lifecycle. You can execute functions before/when/and after a component is rendered.
state
A component's mutable state is maintained by its state (which is private to each component). state is also highly reactive: every single time you call this.setState() the component re-renders itself and while doing so, the underlying UI component(s) can take advantage of the freshly set state. All this magic is handled by the virtual DOM that React maintains.
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props
Parent-children components can communicate via props. props, unlike state, are completely immutable (i.e. you would get a runtime Error if you tried to modify them). But would not be nice to treat state as immutable too? That's where immutable comes into the picture!
immutable
immutable is a javascript library that implements persistent data structures in JavaScript (if you are curious, I added a few missing methods in this branch). The benefit of using immutable data structures is well documented online. I would just mention three main properties: better data consistency, improved code quality and easier concurrent programming. Now let's get to the actual demo!
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Wikipedia autocomplete demo using ReactJS and immutable together
(you can find the whole demo project on github here)
Conclusion
React provides a brand new programming model to build complex web based UI components. Its truly reactive design makes DOM updates finally sane and when combined with persistent data structures one can experience JavaScript development like it was never done before.Oliver Davis reviews East of West #10…
“Death finally tracks down someone who knows where his son has been hidden, right as the Ranger finds that exact same man. Someone shoots, someone gets shot, and someone dies.“
East of West #10’s synopsis above hints at a frustrating trait of the series so far: “Death finally tracks down someone.” Which roughly translates as: Good grief, this has been going on for a bit. After three months of painfully slow story progression, with Jonathan Hickman introducing new characters and profiling facets of the book’s increasingly complex backstory, issue 10 finally gets back to the good stuff.
The opening scene is paced rather well, a three page sequence that ends with Death leaving the Oracle after she had yanked his eye out from its socket. Then comes a two-page spread containing the comic’s name and chapter title: ‘A Sea of Bones’ (the only issue thus far that could also be a nautical-themed porno). Few books devote as much space to itself as East of West, but, once you get past the solipsism, the double-page title does make for a nice piece of grandiosity. It’s paced exactly like the opening credits of a television episode.
Death’s ocular extraction was the price he paid the Oracle to find the son he never knew he had, commonly referred to by everyone else as The Great Beast, echoing the old adage, ‘an eye for…an-important-piece-of-plot-development.’ With his skinchanging buddies, Wolf and Crow, in tow, Death tracks down the former’s father to a grave where the next piece of the puzzle resides. But it isn’t just any grave – keeping with East of West’s obsession with the definite article, this is The Grave, where, like, loads of things go to die. It’s a lovely idea, but is lost among The Oracles, The Message, The Ham and Cheese Baguette, and all the other things of which there are only one.
The quest to find Death’s son is intercut with The Great Beast himself, some pasty kid hooked up to a multitude of cables and wires, living in a virtual reality designed to simultaneously teach and control him. The visual-style is very much informed by Akira’s Espers. The Three Horsemen reckon they might have to kill it soon, introducing an element of tension that will hopefully propel the story forward more urgently than in recent months.
The previous issues of East of West haven’t been bad, they’ve just been stagnant. Realms or characters are explored to issue-long length, distracting the story from the main narrative. After three months of waiting, Hickman here gives the central line centre stage again. And – what a surprise – it’s the most enjoyable issue in ages.
Oliver Davis is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors. You can follow him on Twitter @OliDavis.Bob Ross. The artist with the voice of a babbling brook and the hair of a filigree bush. Who, coincidentally, mostly paints babbling brooks and filigree bushes. Despite Mitt Romney's attempts to crush it, PBS remains at the forefront of cutting edge public television, and I'm sure once sales of Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting DVD set skyrocket, they're going to be rolling in enough dough that when I settle in to watch Celtic Woman specials I won't have to deal with constant interruptions by overweight middle aged women talking about how powerful and moving Celtic Woman is (like I don't already know) and grubbing for donations. Hopefully Bob Ross will get some of the kickbacks too. Oh, nope, he died in 1995. I just Googled it.
But his memory, his brushstrokes, and his Wet-on-Wet technique of laying down the paint aren't just living, but thriving, in The Joy of Painting set of 10 DVDs. Nine, one-hour instructional sessions cover subjects such as Peace Offerings of Summer, Winter Glory, Grandeur of Summer, Autumn Stream, Winter Harmony, Winter Nocturne, Seascape with Lighthouse, Times Past, and Summer Reflections. The tenth DVD includes a Getting Started session that teaches aspiring artists how to hold their brushes (hint: just like chopsticks) and squirt their paints in perfectly rotund blobs onto their Bob Ross-style palette. Yah. Tzee. Ladies, gentlemen, I'll tell you one thing for sure: anyone who gifts a Joy of Painting series to their s.o. today is getting laid tonight.
English and German tracks are included. Slightly surprising given that Bob Ross is famous for his warm and patient style, and Germans...aren't.
Bob Ross vs. Mr. Rogers in the ring. Who wins?API hooking methods for programmers by using DLL libraries forwarding mechanism (DLL proxy). Sometimes we need to intercept certain DLL library calls, we might discovered an application bug or we want to add an extra feature to the application or to log the invoked functions and its parameters. In normal conditions we have access to the source codes and function modification is just a matter of source code editing, but sometimes we just don't have access to the source code of the library or the software, like in many cases isn't distributed with the source code. What to do in this case? In this article you can read about popular API hooking solutions, and there will be presented slightly different approach to this topic.
API Hooking The most common solution that probably most of you know is called API Hooking, a technique which consists in the fact that the libraries function calls redirect to your code. Most popular API hooking libraries are Microsoft Detours (usef frequently for game hacks), but the price tag on this commercial library is set to 9,999.95 USD (around 31737 PLN!), for Delphi we can find madCodeHook library, its price is € 349 for commercial usage. Beside mentioned libraries, there are many other and free libraries. API hooking for loaded DLL libraries and their functions works by patching (overwriting) first bytes of the function prologue code we want to hook with a JMP NEAR instruction to our code, encoded in hex as E9 xx xx xx xx ). It looks like this: Image 1. Function before and after setting the hook. After the control is passed back to our function, usually we can run our own code, run the original function and return back to the code that invoked the original function from the DLL library. API Hooking can cause several problems, it's all related to the structure of the compiled applications and the structure of its code, problem occurs when we would like to invoke original function from the hook itself (usually this would end as an infinite loop), in those cases it's necessary to create a special code chunk aka trampoline that allows to invoke original function code, despite the hook itself in the function body. API Hooking technique is practically impossible to use in case of protected DLL libraries, when every change to the library code on the disk or in the memory is not possible when for example CRC checks are present etc. Classic API Hooking is also not suitable for intercepting pseudofunctions exported by the DLL libraries, I'm talking about exported variables, class pointers etc., because in this type of exports there's no way to create a classic code hook between the original function and our intercepting code (there's no function to hook at all). This kind of problems can be solved with PE (Portable Executable) export table modification, but its less popular solution and very few hooking libraries even supports it.
DLL Forwarding One of the creative and more troublesome ways of API hooking in DLL libraries is using internal Windows mechanism called DLL Forwarding, basically it means forwarding DLL calls to another module. This technique is based on using replacement library, so called proxy DLL, it exports all of the original library functions and passes all of the calls to the original library except for the functions we want to hook. Function calls are passed to the original library by using barely known Windows mechanism, that lets to use other library functions like they were stored in the hooking library, but in fact their code is located in other library, that's why the name DLL forwarding - from forwarding, redirection.
Function calling convention Function calling convention is a low level way of passing parameters to the functions and stack handling mechanism before the function return. Mostly it depends on the compiler settings and in most of the high level programming languages it's possible to change the calling convention to whatever you want, either by changing the compiler settings or by using special programming language constructs (pragmas etc.). In order for our hooking library to work correctly, its hooking functions has to use the same calling convention as the hooked functions, they just have to be binary compatible in other case it might end with an exception caused by stack damage etc. Table 1.Function calling conventions. Name In C code Parameters Return values Modified registers Info cdecl cdecl stored on the stack, stack pointer is not corrected by the function eax, 8 bytes: eax:edx eax, ecx, edx, st(0), st(7), mm0, mm7, xmm0, xmm7 Calling convention from the C librarie, introduced by Microsoft, all Linux system functions are also using this standard fastcall __fastcall ecx,edx, other parameters passed on the stack eax, 8 bytes: eax:edx eax, ecx, edx, st(0), st(7), mm0, mm7, xmm0, xmm7 Microsoft introduced this calling convention, but later on it was replaced with cdecl in their products watcom __declspec (wcall) eax, ebx, ecx, edx eax, 8 bytes: eax:edx eax Calling convention used by the Watcom company and their C++ compiler stdcall __stdcall stored on the stack, stack pointer is corrected by the function code itself before the return eax, 8 bytes: eax:edx eax, ecx, edx, st(0) st(7), mm0, mm7, xmm0, xmm7 Default calling convention for the WinAPI calls and DLL libraries register n/a eax, edx, ecx, other parameters stored on the stack eax eax, ecx, edx, st(0), st(7), mm0, mm7, xmm0, xmm7 Calling convention used in Delphi compiler from Borland company Calling conventions highly depends on the compiler default settings, and for example Delphi uses register calling convention by default, for the C programming language cdecl is the default calling convention. WinApi functions (Windows system functions) uses stdcall calling convention, so before the call, the parameters are stored on the stack using push instructions, then the call instruction is executed, after the call there's no need to correct the stack pointer ESP, because in stdcall convention the stack is automatically corrected just before the function returns. It's interesting that some of the WinApi functions aren't using stdcall calling convention but the cdecl, where the parameters are stored on the stack, but the stack correction has to be done after the call by the compiler, based on the number of the parameters passed to the function. One function that uses this convention is wsprintfA() from the Windows system library USER32.dll (its counterpart in C libraries is sprintf() ), this way of calling functions was probably introduced, because it's impossible to tell how many parameters were actually used by the function itself (only compiler knows this).
API hooking example As an example we are going to use our test library BlackBox.dll, it exports only two, sample functions Sum() and Divide(), as you can guess the first function adds two numbers and the second function divides two numbers. Lets assume we have a full documentation of this library and we know what the calling convention is used for those two functions (assume we have header files for this library) and we know what parameters are used. In other cases we would have to use reverse engineering to obtain this kind of low level information. Listing 1.Functions description from BlackBox.dll library // this function adds two numbers and stores the result // in „Result” variable and returns TRUE on success // FALSE is returned on error BOOL __stdcall Sum(int Number1, int Number2, int * Result); // this function divides two integer numbers and stores the result // in „Result” variable and returns TRUE on success // FALSE is returned on error BOOL __stdcall Divide(int Number1, int Number2, int * Result); In our example library, the Divide() function is buggy, and dividing by zero causes an exception and our application crashes (lets assume our application doesn't handle exception handling). Our goal is to fix this problem.
Proxy DLL To fix the buggy function in BlackBox.dll library, we're going to create intermediary library, with valid Divide() function implemented, that can handle division by zero without causing an exception. Implementation will be coded using 32 bit assembler, using FASM compiler (polish assembler compiler, created by mr Tomasza Grysztar). Below you will find sample library template with precise code structures comments. Listing 2.Beginning of our library. ;------------------------------------------------- ; DLL output file format ;------------------------------------------------- format PE GUI 4.0 DLL ; DLL entry point function name in our library entry DllEntryPoint ; include file with Windows functions and constants include '%fasm%\include\win32a.inc' Here you can find output file declaration type, at the beginning of the source code also header files can be placed as well as the name of the entry point function for the DLL library. Listing 3.Uninitialized data section ;------------------------------------------------- ; uninitialized data section ;------------------------------------------------- section '.bss' readable writeable ; uchwyt HMODULE oryginalnej biblioteki hLibOrg dd? Executable files as well as DLL libraries are divided in sections, one of them is a section with uninitialized data, it doesn't take any space on the disk, but only holds the information about the total size of the uninitialized variables application is using. Section names in executable files doesn't matter (it's only limited to 8 chars), usually contractual names are used and in the section declaration access rights has to be defined (read, write, executable), but in FASM compiler case.bss section declaration, creates an uninitialized section for the variables. Listing 4.Data section ;------------------------------------------------- ; initialized data section ;------------------------------------------------- section '.data' data readable writeable ; name of the original library szDllOrg db 'BlackBox_org.dll',0 Here we have a name of the original library, that was renamed to BlackBox_org.dll (it's stored in the source code in ASCIIz format, null terminated), it's going to be used in the further code so it can be loaded. Listing 5.Code section with DLL entry point. ;------------------------------------------------- ; library code section ;------------------------------------------------- section '.text' code readable executable ;------------------------------------------------- ; DLL library entry point (DllMain) ;------------------------------------------------- proc DllEntryPoint hinstDLL, fdwReason, lpvReserved mov eax,[fdwReason] ; event send right after the DLL library is loaded cmp eax,DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH je _dll_attach jmp _dll_exit ; library was loaded _dll_attach: ; get the handle to the original DLL library, it can ; be used if we wish to call the original functions push szDllOrg call [GetModuleHandleA] mov [hLibOrg],eax ; return 1, that means our library initialization ; was successful mov eax,1 _dll_exit: ret Code section contains all of the library functions and the DLL entrypoint function, this is a special function that is called by the Windows operating system, after the library is loaded. Code section has to be marked with executable flags, this is an information to the operating system, that this memory area contains the executable code, if it wasn't marked as executable any code execution attempt from this memory area would end up as an exception on the CPU processors with DEP (Data Execution Prevention) memory protection mechanism. Inside the initialization function (DllMain), after receiving the DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH event we are using original DLL library name to get its handle, so called HMODULE (so it can be used later on to call the original functions etc.). Listing 6.Over-optimalization protection ; call any original library ; BlackBox_org.dll function, without it, FASM compiler ; removes the reference to the library and it won't be ; automatically loaded call dummy Our library uses the original library, but if we don't put any reference to it in the source code, FASM compiler will remove any reference to it (optimization) and it won't be automatically loaded, that's why here we put a fake call to any of its function, directly after the ret instruction (so it won't be executed at any point). Listing 7.Valid Divide() function code ;------------------------------------------------- ; our implementation of Divide() function with ; fixed division by zero handling ;------------------------------------------------- proc Divide Number1, Number2, Result ; check the divisor for 0 value, if so ; return with the error code mov ecx,[Number2] test ecx,ecx je DivisionError ; load first number into EAX register mov eax,[Number1] ;extend EDX register by the number's sign +/-) cdq ; now EDX:EAX pair holds the 64 bit number ; perform division of EDX:EAX / ECX, division is ; executed on the pair of registers EDX:EAX, which ; are treated like a 64 bit number, the result ; of division is stored in EAX registed, the remainder ; is saved in EDX register idiv ecx ; check for the valid pointer to the result value ; if it's not provided, return with an error code mov edx,[Result] test edx,edx je DivisionError ; store result of division under the provided value address mov [edx],eax ; return with exit code TRUE (1) mov eax,1 jmp DivisionExit ; division error, return FALSE (0) DivisionError: sub eax,eax DivisionExit: ; return from the division function ; exit code of BOOL type is set in the EAX register ret endp Our Divide() function implementation checks for the division by zero condition and if the divisor is set to zero, function returns the error code FALSE, additionally the pointer to the result variable is extra checked for NULL values and if its an empty pointer, error code is returned as well. Also please notice the calling convention of the function is exactly the same as the calling convention used by the original function, and in our case stdcall convention is used, so the parameters are passed on the stack, function return value is stored in the E |
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For more, visit Springfield-Armory.com, and take a few minutes to watch this video.× Students surprise teacher who says he can’t remember last time he had a birthday cake
BURLESON, Texas — A teacher at a high school in Texas told his students he couldn’t remember the last time he had a birthday cake — so the students surprised him and the video is going viral.
Kyle Simpler, 56, an English teacher at Burleson High School, had to wipe back tears this week when he walked into his classroom and heard students singing “Happy Birthday!” Students also decorated the room with balloons and a birthday banner.
“Oh my god!” Simpler shouts after walking into his decorated classroom. David Tubig, one of Simpler’s students, is shown in the video giving him a birthday gift.
The video was shared on Twitter by @Saeya8 and has been retweeted over 30,000 times.
Earlier this week, Simpler said he couldn’t remember his last birthday cake. In a second video of the birthday party, Simpler said it has been at least 10 years since he last had a birthday cake.
At the end of the video, an emotional Simpler can heard telling the students: “Thank you!”
happy birthday Mr. Simpler 🎈🎂 pic.twitter.com/gqz1nwG3ph — april 10th (@karlie_3194) February 11, 2016Our latest guest post comes from Peter Wright and Eleanor Browne, students of Imperial College London. They have started their own organisation aimed at trying to avoid the imminent crisis heading for biomedical research due to the restrictions on animal transport. We urge you to support their efforts to Keep research afloat – an issue we have posted guest posts before.
Keep research afloat!
Vital medical research in the UK is threatened by a crisis in the transport of animals for research. A campaign of lobbying by the BUAV (British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) and other animal rights activists against firms transporting animals for medical research has resulted in ALL ferry companies refusing to carry animals for research into the UK. Most airline companies are also refusing to transport animals internationally with others being targeted.
The current transport crisis is a lose-lose situation for drug discovery (which both needs and legally requires animal research), the economy (as pharmaceutical companies will move overseas in order to continue their drug discovery efforts) and most importantly animal welfare (as the animals spend longer in transit at airports, and more animals will be required to set up additional breeding centres if they cannot be acquired from breeders overseas).
In response to this crisis, an e-petition has been set up on the UK government website, to start building some political pressure and ensure that the transport of animals into the UK for vital medical research is not entirely halted. If the animal rights movement succeeds in totally stopping the transport of animals into the UK for medical research, it will be much harder to re-establish it, so scientists and the public must respond to the threat now. Please sign if you are a British citizen or are based in the UK. If none of the above, then please create some publicity for this cause (for example alerting UK based twitter followers to this crisis) or tell a friend or colleague based in the UK.
This is the link for the e-petition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/40111
The aim of this petition is to act as a central voice for all those who recognise the importance of protecting the transport of animals for research into the UK, including academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, societies, charities and the public. We need to convince the government and the ferry companies that science is worth saving – it’s going to take a lot of signatures. It’s completely confidential and only takes a minute to fill in your details and signature, so add yours.
Crucially, this crisis in the UK will only embolden the activists elsewhere. This is an issue that is already beginning to affect the US and it will only be a matter of time before it has an impact on global research. In the last month animal rights activists left thousands of message on Air India’s Facebook wall urging them to stop transporting animals. Their activities work and we must all act before it’s too late. Scientists like us need support to keep research afloat – we all need to stand up for science and get our voices heard through this petition.
Keep up to date by following us on twitter and spread the word, to stop the activists activities from slipping under the radar. This is one battle science cannot afford to lose.
Eleanor Browne and Peter Wright
twitter: @keeprsrchafloat
web: keepresearchafloat.org
e-mail: keepresearchafloat@gmail.com
petition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/40111
petition tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/saveresearch
Additional Information:
http://www.nature.com/news/activists-ground-primate-flights-1.10255
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/03/stena-lines-wont-ferry-animals.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/14/laboratories-animals-anti-vivisection-campaign
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/economics-and-statistics/docs/10-541-bis-economics-paper-02.pdfA massive, 60-page omnibus bill that drastically limits abortion access and could shut down all abortion clinics in the state is being rushed through the Michigan State House of Representatives on Thursday.
The bill was introduced just last week, but lawmakers held a hearing for it on Thursday morning and are sending it to a full House vote on Thursday afternoon. A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan said about 90 people showed up at the Health Policy Committee hearing to testify against the bill, but Committee Chair Gail Haines (R-Waterford) abruptly ended the hearing and cut off all testimony after a Michigan Right to Life spokesperson and only a few others were able to speak.
"We had a lot of doctors there and members of the committee asking questions about what the full ramifications of a lot of these provisions could be, and quite frankly a lot of folks couldn't answer them," said Meghan Groen, a spokesperson for PPMSM.
Specifically, the omnibus bill would criminalize all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, without exceptions for rape victims, the health of the woman or in cases where there is a severe fetal anomaly; a narrow exception is permitted when the mother's life is at risk, as determined by a physician. It would require health centers that provide abortions to have surgery rooms, even when they don't provide surgical abortions. It would require doctors to be present for medication abortions and to screen women for "coercion" before providing an abortion, and it would create new regulations for the disposal of fetal remains.
The bill would also ban "telemedicine" abortions, or the use of technology to prescribe medication for abortion services and the morning-after pill.
"It could shut down most reproductive health centers in the state of Michigan," said Groen. "It's the most extreme legislation we're seeing anywhere in the country."
State Rep. Mike Shirkey (R-Clark Lake) told a local television station on Wednesday that he supports the bill and hopes it will end abortion in Michigan. "This [abortion] is nothing short of infanticide. Until we completely eliminate abortions in Michigan and completely defund Planned Parenthood, we have work to do," he said.
State Rep. Bruce Rendon (R-Lake City), the sponsor of the bill, and House Speaker Jase Bolger (R-Marshall) did not return calls for comment.
The bill is expected to pass the Republican-dominated House on Thursday afternoon.
Clarification: Language has been added to the article to indicate that the bill stipulates a narrow exception for abortions after 20 weeks only when the mother's life at risk.
Below, songs help explain the GOP war on women:After winning the Nobel Prize, philosopher Albert Camus thought to thank his mother first and an elementary school teacher second. Camus wrote this letter of gratitude (below) to his teacher Louis Germain who, according to Letters of Note, “fostered the potential he saw and steered young Camus on a path that would eventually see him write some hugely respected, award-winning novels and essays.”
Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in 1957 for Literature. He is most well-known for his book “The Stranger,” and won the award the same year he published the essay “Reflections on the Guillotine.”
Camus’ father was killed during World War I when Camus was still an infant, and his mother was “partially deaf and illiterate.”
While Camus is labeled by many to be an existentialist philosopher and writer, he detested the term. He once said in an interview, “No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked. We have even thought of publishing a short statement in which the undersigned declare that they have nothing in common with each other…”
Read the letter below.
19 November 1957 Dear Monsieur Germain, I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened. I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart. Albert Camus
[H/T Open Culture, Letters of Note]From the game’s first-ever overtime to the 25-point comeback to the two two-point conversions, Super Bowl 51 will already go down in history for its incredible ending. And yet, Bill Belichick passed up on an opportunity to end the game in an even more remarkable — and spectacularly bizarre — way, as only the Patriots coach could.
After New England’s defense halted the Atlanta Falcons’ attempted last-minute drive, Julian Edelman fair caught a short punt from Matt Bosher on the Patriots’ own 35-yard line.
With just three seconds left in regulation, it set up an opportunity for one of most obscure plays in the NFL rulebook: The fair catch free kick. Given the Patriots coach’s affinity for the most esoteric rules and game scenarios, a Stephen Gostkowski game-winning free kick would have arguably been the most Belichickian ending to Super Bowl LI.
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Several observers on Twitter, including yours truly, detected the opportunity with glee:
BILL BELICHICK THIS IS YOUR MOMENT
DO THE FAIR CATCH KICK — Rodger Sherman (@rodger_sherman) February 6, 2017
FREE KICK TIME — Andy Glockner (@AndyGlockner) February 6, 2017
the most perfect moment in NFL history for a fair catch free kick and they aren't gonna do it — Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) February 6, 2017
Instead, the Patriots opted for a fake kneel play — a respectively weird call — which resulted in a 13-yard Dion Lewis run (and injury), sending the game into overtime.
For those not familiar with the little-known quirk, the fair catch free kick is a play teams can run only after making a fair catch. It allows the receiving team to effectively attempt a field goal from the spot of the catch, but in a kickoff-like format (i.e. the kicker can take a long run-up and the defense must stand ten yards back from the line of scrimmage).
But the defense also can catch and receive the kick if it comes up short, which it often does.
The most recent time the “buried” rule was seen in the NFL was a 71-yard attempt by San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson in 2013. The last time it was tried in the playoffs was by 49ers kicker Mike Cofer in 1988 game, in which announcer John Madden presciently called the possibility.
There hasn’t been a successful NFL free kick in more than four decades (though the Green Packers’ Mason Crosby got close from 69 yards in 2008).
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In Sunday night’s scenario, Gostowski would have been allowed to try a 75-yard attempt from same distance the he would take a kickoff. As former kicker Jay Feely noted, it would certainly be a long attempt, but not unreachable for Gostowski. The Patriots kicker was tied for the most touchbacks in the league in 2015, before the league changed its touchback rules.
Gostkowski has kicked off through the uprights many times from that exact spot — Jay Feely (@jayfeely) February 6, 2017
As rare as free kicks are in the league — there have only been four recorded attempts since 1984 — Belichick was of course keenly aware of the opportunity. In fact, the Patriots coach talked about the “unusual” rule last week, after the Dallas Cowboys passed up a free kick opportunity in an earlier playoff game.
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“Those kind of plays come up sometimes once in a career,” he told reporters in a press conference Wednesday, later adding, “Things like that that you don’t see or haven’t seen in a long time.”
Nevertheless, Belichick — a preparation maven and master of football’s obscurities — said the team regularly refreshes players and coaches of such chicanery, but noted how specific the situation must be to make a free kick a worthwhile strategy.
“If you just add or subtract a second from the situation or add or subtract a few yards and put a timeout into that equation, with or without it, you get a pretty dramatic shift on what the strategy would be,” he said.
As Yahoo Sports reported, the only time Belichick was involved in a free kick was as a special teams coach in 1979 when the New York Giants kicker Mark Moseley tried a 74-yard attempt. It reportedly came up short.
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For Belichick, the potential of Gostkowski coming up short and a big Falcons return was apparently too much of a risk Sunday night — as he told reporters after the game.
Bill Belichick confirms he wanted to go with the fair catch free kick but it was just too far. — Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) February 6, 2017
Of course, the decision ultimately worked out for Belichick and the Patriots. And for fans of NFL weirdness, the fake kneel probably sufficed.Invited sellers ("Sellers") who activate the offer and then create a listing in the fixed price format, pursuant to the terms and conditions set forth herein ("Qualifying Listing"), will pay no insertion fee per item ("Promotion") for up to 500 listings during the Promotion Period (as defined below). All existing selling limits on your account (as well as category and item limits) still apply, and may prevent you from creating the maximum number of listings in this Promotion. The Promotion is in addition to the free listings per month as part of the everyday rate plan.
The Promotion only applies to listings with 30-day and Good 'Til Cancelled duration, and does not apply to final value fees or optional advanced listing upgrade and supplemental service fees. Final value fees will be applied to the total amount of the sale, including the cost of the item, shipping, and any other fees a seller may charge—excluding any sales tax. Fees for optional listing upgrades (such as reserve price, Gallery Plus, listing in 2 categories, etc.) still apply. For listing in 2 categories, you will be charged at standard rates for the second category.LOGANSPORT, IN—Area music enthusiast Curt Webber, 22, is completely open to enjoying "all kinds" of metal, the self-described eclectic iconoclast said Monday. "Some people are so narrow-minded and uptight about music, but I'm into a wide variety of bands—everything from Sabbath to Disturbed," Webber said. "Whether it's the old stuff, like vintage Maiden or Priest; new stuff, like Mastodon or the Sword; the virtuosic neoclassicism of DragonForce; the unpolished rawness of, say, Motörhead; a multiplatinum band like the Crüe; an alternative act like Clutch; or just a local outfit like Soldiers of Carnage here in town—power metal, speed metal, glam metal, thrash metal, death metal, nü metal, metal-core, or even Norwegian black metal—it's all music to me, man." Webber conceded that the one musical style he simply cannot abide is rap metal.
AdvertisementThe Long Beach Police Department is defending its actions after a viral video posted this week showed officers with batons beating a man whose family later said they would file a lawsuit.
In the video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Monday, a man identified as 46-year-old Porfirio Santos-Lopez is seen lying on his back as four police officers stand over him.
As a witness records the incident with her cell phone, the officers repeatedly strike Santos-Lopez with their batons and a Taser.
The woman who recorded the video declined to be identified.
“In the beginning, he was not fighting back. He was just laying there, taking the Tase and the baton hits,” she told KTLA. “I guess it’s just a typical reaction that anybody would have — just start kicking around.”
Long Beach police later released surveillance video that, according to officials, shows Santos-Lopez shortly before his arrest.
“That individual seemed to be irrational. He was combative,” Long Beach police Sgt. Aaron Eaton said Tuesday. “In the video that is on YouTube, he can be seen kicking at the officers.”
Police were called to the scene to break up a fight to which Santos-Lopez was a party, authorities said. Surveillance video taken outside a liquor store showed Santos-Lopez fist-fighting with two other men, police said.
He was drunk and out of control when police arrived on scene, authorities said. Santos-Lopez kicked an officer in the face and kicked the baton out of an officer’s hand during the arrest, Eaton said.
Family members said Santos-Lopez was recovering from surgery in the hospital. The family plans to sue Long Beach Police Department, according to Santos-Lopez’s wife, Lee Ann Hernandez.
“They broke two of his bones in his right arm around his elbow. They broke it so bad that he needed surgery,” Hernandez said.
Several cuts required stitches, and one of Santos-Lopez’s lungs was collapsed, his wife said.
Lopez-Santos had a history of mental illness and police had been called to help him in past, Hernandez said.
“He needs help because he hears people talking and he sees people, and he knows that,” she said.
The officers involved in Santos-Lopez’s arrest remained on active duty as an investigation was underway, authorities said.We live in an almost stupefying world of proliferating choices and options that reflect and express our most important and our most banal impulses. On Facebook, we can choose from 50-something gender identities, and on the Internet we can produce and consume any media we choose. Astroglide offers 10 “flavors” of personal lubricant and Pop-Tarts come in more than three-dozen varieties that are constantly changing. Starbucks literally offers an almost infinite number of excrutiatingly personalized coffee drinks.
And yet when the first presidential debate takes place next Monday, the only people on the stage will be the two most reviled nominees in modern memory, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. A third candidate, former two-term New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, will not be on the stage despite being on the ballot in all 50 states and polling at double digits in 42 states. In 15 states, he’s at 15 percent or better. But tough luck.
If you care about expanding choices and discussion when it comes to politics (and you should), the only proper reaction is outrage. But this glaringly shriveled choice is a feature not a bug of American politics.
Democrats and Republicans may disagree when it comes to abortion, spending, and taxes, but they are thick as thieves when it comes to maintaining an electoral duopoly (go check out your state’s ballot-access laws sometime). Nowhere is this collusion more flagrant than in the machinations of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the “nonpartisan” nonprofit that operates the debates and was created 29 years ago by the Democratic and Republican Parties with the goal of excluding third-party candidates.
“By jointly sponsoring these debates,” reads the 1987 press release (PDF) announcing the formation of the CPD, “we will better fulfill our party responsibilities to inform and educate the electorate, strengthen the role of political parties in the electoral process and, most important of all, we can institutionalize the debates, making them an integral and permanent part of the presidential debate process.”
I spoke by phone with one of the authors of that press release, former Democratic National Committee press secretary Terry Michael, to get a stronger sense of how the CPD was conceived and how it was, in his words, a “power play to confine the debates to a conversation between Republicans and Democrats.”
Once a “true believer in the two-party system,” Michael is now a “senior media advisor” to Gary Johnson’s campaign, so you can take his analysis with as much or as little salt as your blood pressure allows (full disclosure: Michael, who defines himself as a “libertarian Democrat,” has written for Reason.com, the website I edit). I also called the longtime head of the CPD, Janet Brown, but neither she nor anyone at her group was willing to speak on the record.
Although we take presidential debates for granted, there was a long stretches when they didn’t happen and were marred by technical screw-ups or obstinate participants. The first televised debate was held in 1960, but four years later Lyndon Johnson saw no reason to appear with lost-cause challenger Barry Goldwater. The next debate, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, didn’t take place until 1976, between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. It was denounced by media theorist Marshall McLuhan as “the most stupid arrangement of any debate in the history of debating,” and resulted in some of the most memorable dead air in TV history. In 1980, President Carter refused to participate in the first debate of the election because independent candidate John Anderson was on the stage.
That surprisingly sketchy history laid the groundwork for the CPD, says Michael, who adds that “political journalists had great disdain” for the League of Women Voters, which was seen as “school-marmish” and “prissy” in the way it organized and operated the debates. As important, he says, Democratic and Republican “party chairs didn’t want their candidates sullied by the inclusion of third-party candidates.” So the duopoly booted the League and took the debates in-house. If they could have kept Ross Perot out in 1992, they would have, says Michael, but the Texas tycoon was actually leading the polls in the middle of 1992 before unexpectedly and temporarily dropping out in mid-July (Perot bizarrely suggested that the Republican operatives were planning to disrupt his daughter’s wedding). Perot did get into the race in October and was invited to participate in the debates despite polling at 8 percent. The CPD couldn’t deny Perot because, says Michael, “even a crazy person should get on the stage if they had led in the polls.” Yet the commission would ignore Perot four years later, denying him a podium despite his winning 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992.
In 2000, with Green Party candidate Ralph Nader polling as high as 6 percent as late as June, the CPD announced for the first time that debate participants must garner at least 15 percent in five national polls selected by the commission. That rule remains in place and in 2016, it’s been supplemented with a requirement that a candidate appear on enough state ballots to theoretically win enough electoral votes to become president. On its site, the CPD says the 15 percent threshold comes from its “analysis of the results of presidential elections over the modern era,” is consistent with the precedents set by the League of Women Voters and “found by the FEC and the courts to comply with federal election law.” In 2012, John Anderson offered a different take, telling CBS News that the debates are designed to lock in “the maintenance of a two-party system.” George Farah, author of No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates, called the 15 percent number “absurdly high,” noting that candidates qualify for federal matching funds at 5 percent.
Unsurprisingly, Terry Michael concurs with such sentiments and offers up his own set of arguments for why Gary Johnson should join the stage with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. For starters, he stresses that the former governor is “on every voter’s ballot. That in itself should be the case.” Beyond that, he says the electorate is becoming increasingly restive, pointing to polls showing that independents are now the single largest bloc of voters. Michael says that the choice to include a given candidate can’t always be reduced to simple metrics. “They should consider who has developed enough of a following to merit being on the same stage with the Democrat and the Republican,” he says, adding that Johnson has “clearly” done that.
To be sure, Johnson didn’t cover himself in glory with his “What is Aleppo?” gaffe, but if spacing out during a morning talk show is a disqualifying offense, the debate stage would be emptier than a Lincoln Chafee meet-and-greet.
Certainly the point that Johnson is on the ballot (either as a Libertarian or an independent) in every state is worth lingering over. That means that the former two-term governor’s name will be in front of all of us who vote. Green Party candidate Jill Stein will be a choice for voters in 48 states, more than enough places to have real impact on electoral votes. It simply beggars credulity that any commission that claims its function is to “inform and educate the electorate” would keep such options off the stage.
Interestingly, Johnson is currently polling at 8.6 percent in Real Clear Politics’ aggregated results of seven national polls. Stein is at 3.1 percent, which may seem low until you realize that the spread between Clinton and Trump is 0.7 percent. Back in October 1992, when Ross Perot re-entered the race and was invited to join the debate with George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, he was at just 8 percent in the polls.
But that was then and this is now…when 60 percent of Americans keep telling pollsters that the “Republican and Democratic parties…do such a poor job [of representing the American people] that a third major party is needed.” It seems the last thing the two major parties and their Commission on Presidential Debates would want to see is a flowering of political options that approach the number of choices we take for granted in far less-important parts of our life.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The security situation in Afghanistan will further deteriorate even if there is a modest increase in U.S. military support for the war-torn country, the top U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump’s administration weighs sending more forces to Afghanistan.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testifies before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
Afghan army units are pulling back, and in some cases have been forced to abandon more scattered and rural bases, and the government can claim to control or influence only 57 percent of the country, according to U.S. military estimates from earlier this year.
“The intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in (the)military assistance by the United States and its partners,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a Senate hearing.
In February, Army General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said he needs several thousand more international troops to break a stalemate with the Taliban.
Reuters reported in late April that Trump’s administration was carrying out a review of Afghanistan and conversations are revolving around sending between 3,000 and 5,000 U.S. and coalition troops to Afghanistan.
Deliberations include giving more authorities to forces on the ground and taking more aggressive action against Taliban fighters. This could allow U.S. advisers to work with Afghan troops below the corps level, potentially putting them closer to fighting, a U.S. official said.
In the same hearing, the head of the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency said the situation would worsen unless U.S. trainers worked with Afghan soldiers closer to the front line, their numbers increased and there was greater intelligence and surveillance.
Trump has not been formally presented with the options yet.
Some U.S. officials said they questioned the benefit of sending more troops to Afghanistan because any politically palatable number would not be enough to turn the tide, much less create stability and security. To date, more than 2,300 Americans have been killed and over 17,000 wounded.
President Ashraf Ghani’s U.S.-backed government remains plagued by corruption and divided by factions loyal to political strongmen whose armed supporters often are motivated by ethnic, family, and regional loyalties.
Coats said that Afghanistan would struggle to decrease its reliance on the international community “until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban.”The legacy of former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva has multiple layers.
His incredible and incomparable rise from UFC newcomer to one of, if not the greatest MMA fighter of all time is a story that will be documented for years and years to come. This Saturday night at UFC 168, Silva (33-5 MMA, 16-1 UFC) will have the chance to add yet another layer to his tremendous career when he attempts to avenge his one and only UFC defeat to current 185-pound titleholder Chris Weidman (10-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC).
UFC champions have come and gone in almost every weight class during the organization’s brief existence, but the true legends of the sport are those who have come back to regain a title after losing it. With a win over Weidman inside Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena, “The Spider” would become just the sixth fighter in UFC history to become a two-time champion in a single weight class, joining the likes of Georges St-Pierre, Matt Hughes, Randy Couture, Tim Sylvia and Cain Velasquez.
Silva knows what it takes to win inside the cage, and beyond that, he knows what it takes to win in a spectacular, jaw-dropping fashion. He is capable of pulling off moves in competition that most wouldn’t even risk attempting in sparring, and he does it effortlessly.
Every time the legendary ex-champion steps in the cage it is a monumental occasion for the sport, and with the most significant bout of his UFC career just around the corner, what better time than now to take a closer look at all the achievements Silva has under his belt thus far.
GENERAL STATISTICS
Currently ranked as the No. 2 middleweight in the world and the No. 3 pound-for-pound fighter in the world, according to the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie.com MMA rankings.
At 38, is the second oldest active fighter in the UFC middleweight division behind Cung Le (41).
Including UFC 168, will have fought in the main event in 16 of his 17 UFC appearances.
His 16 career UFC victories are tied with Chuck Liddell and Couture for the third most wins in UFC history behind Hughes (18) and St-Pierre (19).
Holds the UFC record for most consecutive victories with 16.
His 13 UFC middleweight victories are tied with Yushin Okami for the most in UFC history.
His 11 UFC knockout victories are the most of any fighter in organizational history.
His 12 post-fight bonuses are tied with Joe Lauzon for the most in UFC history and his six “Knockout of the Night” awards are the most in history.
Holds victories over six former UFC, PRIDE or Strikeforce champions (Vitor Belfort, Forrest Griffin, Dan Henderson, Rich Franklin, Nate Marquardt, Carlos Newton).
CHAMPIONSHIP STATISTICS
At 38, will become the second oldest fighter to compete in a UFC championship bout behind Couture, who fought for UFC gold at 45 years old.
His 13th UFC title fight will move him into third place all time behind St-Pierre (14) and Couture (15).
His 11 victories in UFC championship fights are second to St-Pierre, who has won 12 UFC title fights.
Holds the UFC record for consecutive title defenses with 10.
His 2,457-day middleweight title reign between Oct, 14, 2006 and June 6, 2013 stands as the longest championship run of any fighter in UFC history.
IN-FIGHT STATISTICS
His 67.5 percent significant striking accuracy is the highest rate of any fighter in UFC history.
His 78.9 percent takedown defense accuracy is the fifth highest in middleweight history.
Of his 16 UFC victories, has defeated his opponents by 12 different methods.
His 17 knockdowns landed in UFC competition are the most by any fighter in UFC history.
His seven knockdowns landed from the clinch position are the most for any fighter in UFC history.
One of just two fighters in UFC history to earn three knockdowns in a fight on two separate occasions. The other is flyweight John Lineker.
He is the only fighter in UFC history to force his opponent to submit to strikes from the bottom position. He accomplished the feat against Travis Lutter at UFC 67.
Has only fought past the second round four times in his UFC career and has only fought to a decision on two occasions.
Has only suffered one knockout loss in his 38-fight career.
For more on UFC 168, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.We are ranchers. And as ranchers in Northern California, we are intimately familiar with the impact of a drought as extreme as the one we are enduring right now – and how it affects the food you eat.
You’ve heard about the shorter showers, the intermittent toilet flushing. You’ve heard less about the expensive hay, being fed to fewer animals. But have you heard about the innovations that could reverse it all?
Indeed, how familiar are you with California’s water crisis, the worst in recorded history since 1894?
How much do you care about a state where 75% of the water is dedicated to agriculture – a state that produces nearly half of America’s fruits, vegetables and nuts?
Because you should. Because this drought is already making food less available and more expensive, and because there is opportunity to make changes now that are desperately needed if we want future generations to be able to feed themselves – especially before global warming kicks in even harder.
“We live in a geography of hope,” says Mas Masumoto, an organic fruit farmer friend who is drilling deeper wells to sustain his trees. “Hope for adequate rain and snow, hope for a short-term drought, hope our groundwater will last long enough to weather this thirst.”
Here’s the reason for hope: the great California drought of 2014 presents a long-awaited chance to assess root causes of our dwindling water supply and consider some radically new ideas for the future of food production. Only then will farmers and ranchers be able to produce food while creating a natural environment that can survive – and even reduce – the extreme weather conditions that are sure to lie ahead.
Agricultural operations have increasingly pursued water-saving innovations: drip irrigation systems are now standard in many areas, along with numerous other water saving technologies and practices. But more sprinkler and drip systems, more precise timing and less water in drought-tolerant growth stages could revolutionize irrigation and reduce agricultural water use by 17%.
And that’s just the start of the future of water on the American farm, which will be in for even more severe dry spells ahead due to climate change.
In the long term, California must dramatically alter the way it farms. It’s politically thorny, but unavoidable: treating water and soil as inexhaustible resources is no longer an option. Future agriculture must be restorative, not extractive; conservative, not wasteful; perennial, not annual.
Today, some 8m acres of California cropland depend on irrigation. Thousands of acres of grassland have been converted to almond orchards, as demand for almonds has skyrocketed and acreage has doubled. The water, of course, has not.
This is an untenable situation.
Looking at California’s desert-like farm areas, it’s hard to picture the land as it was before being plowed. Early Europeans reported endless carpets of wildflowers and “tall grasses up to the bellies of the horses”. In the mid-1800s, the wild flora was stripped away and huge fields of wheat were planted. When crop yields declined, fields were abandoned or converted to rangelands.
It’s a vicious cycle that has been the curse of destructive agriculture for thousands of years: remove native vegetation, continuously grow crops, don’t rest the land or return nutrients. Erode and exhaust soils. Move on. Repeat.
And it’s not just California: a society’s inability to feed its people from local resources has contributed to the collapse of civilizations throughout history. “We remain on track to repeat their stories,” warns the professor David Montgomery in his fascinating book Dirt. “Only this time, we are doing it on a global scale.”
But Montgomery also urges that we can choose another fate: understand the land, take care of the soil. We need to farm as nature does – with diverse crops, and plants and animals together – rather than the so-called “monocultural” school of farming that grows huge fields of annual crops. Natural ecosystems are complex, and dominated by perennials, a dense mat of fibrous roots that exists in the soil year-round, tightly holding |
normal. Maybe for an outside observer, from the west it might seem bizarre or comical but not here. They're respected and revered in some ways as well."
With names like Demon and Gunsmoke it would be easy to dismiss the rockers as thugs. But in fact, the titles come with a strong awareness of social responsibility.
"We try to portray a good figure. We're trying to be role models. I know rock used to be a hardcore thing but actually it's something in our heart too," heavy metal head Gunsmoke said.
"It's all about brothers in arms. Brothers in metal -- we're there for each other. That's the way we identify ourselves."
The leather-clad rockers share a similar aesthetic to notorious motorcycle gang the Hell's Angels. But that's where the likeness ends. According to Gunsmoke, the African head bangers are seen as a type of guardian angel, rather than the Hell's variety.
"Kids follow us around. Parents approach us. We're there for a good cause actually. We help people on the streets at night," he said.
And for the hardcore fans, heavy metal is more than just a scene -- it's part of the national identity.
Even the Botswana president Ian Khama is a fan. Or at least that's according to Gunsmoke.
"We want to make him proud. He made us proud with one man like him leading the nation. Why should we be scared when our president is a rocker?" Gunsmoke argued.
"Bots is known as a small country. People used to think it was a province of south Africa.
"But if we can stand tall on this family then we can be known as much as the country was unknown."
It's a uniquely African movement, and one that celebrates a special spiritual connection to the land.
Gunsmoke pointed to the use of animal horns in fashion, as a representation of Africa.
"Most of us are in a tribe. The totems are animals. We've got the crocodile, lion, hare, rabbit. You name it. It's part of your culture," he added.
African mythology and folklore loom large in the lyrics of Botswana band Skinflint. CNN caught up with lead singer Giuseppe at a gig just outside the capital Gaborone.
"We have a lot of ancestral beliefs - back in the day they used to believe that if someone dies and you touch the dead person then Gauna will come and take your soul," he said.
"Gauna was created on a 7-inch vinyl and it was distributed by Legion of Death Records in France. We're the first ever African heavy metal band to release something on vinyl."
The white singer also pointed to the unifying powers of heavy metal, saying: "The metal nation knows no racial boundaries. We're all one. We all speak one common language and it's called heavy metal.
"Metal is a music about power, independence and freedom. That's what I believe in --fighting for what you believe in no matter the consequences. Standing up for what you believe in and showing individuality."Summer's over, and arctic researchers have another bad report from up North: The Arctic sea ice dwindled to its second lowest level. We are still losing ice at a rate of 10% per decade, quite an increase from 5 years ago. We are still heading toward an ice cover that is going to melt completely in the summertime in the Arctic.
Cannibals
It is so bad that some polar bears are even resorting to cannibalism.
"[Polar bears] are dependent on the Arctic sea ice for all of their essential behaviors, and as the ice melts and global warming transforms the Arctic, polar bears are starving, drowning, even resorting to cannibalism because they don't have access to their usual food sources," said Kassie Siegel, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Scientists have noticed increasing reports of starving Arctic polar bears attacking and feeding on one another in recent years. In one documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female's den and killed her.
Less than three decades ago, there would be 7 million square kilometers (2.5 million square miles) of ice at the end of the summer. That's down about 40%.
Walt Meier, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado: "Seven million square kilometers roughly corresponds to an area of the lower 48 United States. So back in the early 1980s, the lower 48 states would be covered in sea ice in the summer. Now we've essentially lost sea ice east of the Mississippi River and even beyond. So that's a significant amount of area."
Feedback Loop
Via CNN:
Arctic ice helps regulate and temper the climate in many other parts of the world. The less ice there is, the more dramatic the impact. Huge sheets of ice reflect solar radiation, keeping our planet cool. When that ice melts, huge expanses of darker, open ocean water absorb the heat instead, warming things up.
Via CNN
Polar Bears
"Please, Global Warming, can I at least have this?"
A Picture is Worth... Polar Bear Knut is 1 Year Old
Global Warming Effects
Global Warming to Cause More... Kidney Stones
Help Protect Great Tits, Fight Global Warming, Scientists Say (With Pictures)Local 6 | May 27, 2008
CLERMONT, Fla. — A Central Florida war veteran faces a lawsuit for flying the American flag on a pole in his front yard.
"I don’t understand why it would bring down the values of our homes by flying the American flag from a pole in my front yard," homeowner Jimmie Watkins said.
Watkins and his wife, Ria, received a final notice from the Sussex homeowners’ association in Clermont that they must remove the flag or face legal action.
The former retired U.S. Navy communications officer said he refuses to back down for the American flag.
"Our people are serving today to give us freedom to do as we like here within the law of America," Watkins said. "It is my right to fly my flag from my pole and until a court of law tells me to haul that down, I will not haul it down. I think about all of the people who have served our nation and all of the lives that it’s cost and all of the friends that I’ve lost."
Local 6 reported that all surrounding subdivisions in Kings Ridge allow a flag pole display in a person’s front yard.
Jim Hart, who handles property management for 1,500 properties, including Sussex, said it is the association’s call and not his.
"Each sub-association has its own set of documents and they can differ," Hart said. "The rationale for that only exists within the minds of the folks that are doing it. I can’t sit here and tell you why."
The homeowner’s association is not commenting about their rules. But state law said anyone can display a flag in a "respectful manner" as long as it is removable, Local 6 reported.From the mayors of Lancaster and Pittsburgh to groups invested in local or national politics — endorsements are beginning to flow in for Democrats running for Congress in Lancaster County.
Four potential candidates are hoping to win their party’s nomination in May to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker during his first re-election campaign.
The district, which covers most of Lancaster County and parts of Berks and Chester counties, is historically Republican. The GOP currently holds a 6-point edge over Democrats in registered voters, and Smucker, a former two-term state senator from West Lampeter Township, notched an 11-point victory in 2016.
But with a wave of enthusiasm among progressives nationwide, two of the Democratic candidates here — Christina Hartman and Jess King — are adding endorsements to a significant early fundraising haul in their quests to win the nomination and take on the incumbent.
Local political scientists say the pair of Lancaster city residents are making the May 2018 primary possibly the most competitive ever among Democrats for this seat.
“I don’t think it’s ever been quite like this in recent memory,” said Kyle Kopko, an Elizabethtown College political science professor and Republican committeeman.
I don’t think it’s ever been quite like this in recent memory "I don’t think it’s ever been quite like this in recent memory."
Franklin & Marshall College political scientist Stephen Medvic said he also couldn’t remember a competitive Democratic primary, noting that the party’s nominee has typically “been kind of a sacrificial lamb” because of the huge GOP margins of victory.
“That race is going to be really interesting to watch,” he said.
The two other Democratic candidates, Reading dentist Gary Wegman and Lancaster resident Richard Griffiths Smith Jr., have not announced endorsements or shown signs of significant fundraising.
Meanwhile, Bill Neff, a locksmith who ran an independent write-in campaign last year, has said he will seek a spot on the Republican primary ballot against Smucker.
Hartman’s endorsements
Building on her failed 2016 campaign against Smucker, Hartman, a 40-year-old nonprofits consultant, announced a string of early endorsements from local and statewide Democratic officials.
The locals included most of Lancaster city council, outgoing Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray and incoming Mayor Danene Sorace, state Rep. Mike Sturla, county Commissioner Craig Lehman and some Manheim and Lancaster township Democrats.
Others were former Gov. Ed Rendell, U.S. House members from Pennsylvania, statewide row officers and former U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty.
She also announced endorsements from national organizations such as Emily’s List, which supports Democratic women running for office, and End Citizens United, which is committed to ending big money in politics.
King’s endorsements
King, a 43-year-old Lancaster nonprofit director and first-time candidate, has secured endorsements from new city council members Chris Ballentine and Ismail Smith-Wade-El, School District of Lancaster board members David Parry and Mara McGrann and an incoming Millersville Borough Council member Dianne Bates.
Also backing King are Tom Houghton, who ran for the 16th Congressional District seat in 2014, and Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh, where King lived for a decade. Peduto got national attention this year for combatting President Donald Trump’s actions regarding climate change.
Three national groups support her: Justice Democrats, which promotes candidates who don’t take donations from corporations, a progressive group called Blue America PAC, and Demand Universal Healthcare, which supports Medicare-for-all.
King’s campaign also got the backing this week from the area’s growing progressive group, Lancaster Stands Up.
The group, which emerged in the aftermath of Trump’s election, has held numerous events and protests against him and Smucker. Its organizers say they plan to have hundreds of its members canvassing on behalf of candidates this year, which could give King a boost in help outside her campaign team.
Decision in February
The Lancaster County Democratic Committee will hold its endorsement convention in February.
In the last congressional race, committee members were divided among Hartman, Wegman and stem cell researcher Raj Kittappa, and ultimately decided not to endorse a candidate.
Nonetheless, Wegman and Kittappa dropped out before primary day and Hartman remained the sole candidate.
Endorsements are important in races like this, not necessarily because they grab the attention of average voters, but because they unlock resources like fundraising help and volunteers, Medvic said.
Through just a few months ending in September, Hartman and King had already each raised more than a typical Democrat in the district raises throughout the entire campaign. Hartman’s team brought in more than $200,000 and King’s raised more than $100,000.
The outlook
Observers agree that Hartman — who recruited support from national Democrats and raised more than $1 million in 2016 — will likely have advantages in fundraising and name recognition.
But those aren’t insurmountable obstacles for a campaign like King’s, Kopko said. With Lancaster Stands Up’s endorsement, it’s unclear how support from that group and others —including the Lancaster County Democratic Committee — will mobilize voters for both candidates.
If King’s new grassroots effort “catches fire” when campaigns typically ramp up in the months before the primary, “it could very well be that Jess King wins this thing,” Medvic said.
It’s big enough to close the gap in this district but... the key question is going to be: Does this district perform again on average? "It’s big enough to close the gap in this district but... the key question is going to be: Does this district perform again on average?"
No matter who wins, the nominee will face an uphill battle against Smucker in a district that is roughly 45 percent Republican, 39 percent Democratic and 16 percent independent or third party.
But with Democrats nationwide expected to show up at the polls in big numbers next November, the race will be one to watch, Medvic said.
“Special elections so far (this year) have shown there is a big swing in the Democratic direction on average,” he said. “It’s big enough to close the gap in this district but... the key question is going to be: Does this district perform again on average?”Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade is an expansion pack for Stardock's popular 4X space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations III. Crusade is a top-to-bottom update of the entire game. This article will walk you through what's new, what's changed and try to explain it for those who may not be familiar with the series.
The Specs
Title : Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade
: Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade Platform : Windows PC, 64-bit
: Windows PC, 64-bit Price : $19.99 if you already have Galactic Civilizations III, $39.99 for new players.
: $19.99 if you already have Galactic Civilizations III, $39.99 for new players. Release Date: May 4 at www.galciv3.com or at Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle and elsewhere.
Overview
The premise of the game is what happens when our civilization finally leaves its home world and begins exploring the galaxy? It's a gigantic sandbox in which the fate of your civilization is in your hands.
Players explore the galaxy, colonize new worlds, research new technologies, design ships, trade, negotiate and war with alien civilizations to see if their civilization can pass the test of time.
Features List
When Galactic Civilizations III first shipped, we released a feature comparison to show what was new over previous versions. Since I'm a bit of a cynic, I'll use the same chart (so that we can't pad it up since it's using the same one). For features that got additional attention I've placed an extra checkbox.
Click to enlarge (really!)
As you can see, Crusade is a massive expansion to the series.
NEW FEATURE: Civilization Builder
Have you ever seen a game get a "total conversion" so that it took place in a different universe? Crusade makes it easy for people to create their own civilizations and share them with others right from the main menu.
Choose what you want your civilization to look like.
Define what makes their species unique.
Assign what colors and materials their ships will have and what their UI will look like when you play as them.
Choose what the default ship classes they will use will look like (when you play against them, the AI will use them).
Can't find the ship you want? Press the "Get more ships" button and subscribe to your favorite creators works and bring them into the game.
Decide how the AI will play like, what they will say.
You can even decide what your citizens will look like and what their names will be.
When you're done, you can then share your new civ with others (note, it's considered rude to use other people's ship designs in your civ without their permission if you plan to upload it -- you can specify only your Steam friends can see it however).
NEW FEATURE: Global Ship Designer
GalCiv games have had ship design since 1993. However, Crusade brings the Ship Designer to the main menu to allow people to create design templates to share with others or modify. All the hulls parts and even starbase designs are accessible.
Choose what your ships will look like by default
Design starbases
Your ships don't have to look like space ships...
Ship parts can be animated, resized, rotated, etc.
When completed they can be uploaded to Steam.
NEW CIVILIZATIONS
While Crusade doesn't include any story-driven campaigns or scenarios, it does introduce new civilizations, each with its own history. Each civilization also includes its own unique ship parts that can be used for future designs.
The silicon-based Onyx are master spies. Their ship components are made of rocks.
The gelatinous Slyne rely on technology for even the most basic of things.
The Terran Resistance is an off-shoot of the humans from Earth
Jenna Casey, the leader of the Terran Resistance, was first introduced in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (2008). Now, she gets an entire set of ships, technologies and other goodies to play with.
NEW FEATURE: CITIZENS
The Citizen feature is the most obvious and far-reaching change to Crusade. Your civilization is made up of billions of beings. Every so often, one of them will rise to become a true Galactic Citizen. How you choose to use your citizens shapes the way your civilization evolves.
Every so many turns, a citizen is born. Each race gets its own citizens.
Players can then specialize those citizens based on what technologies and traits they have.
There are many different types of specializations you can train your citizens into and which ones are available at any given time depends on what traits your civilization has and what technologies you have.
Citizens aren't just a bundle of stats or modifiers. They can also have special abilities that unlock new game features. For example, Spies unlock the espionage feature. Generals unlock the invasion system. Commanders unlock the Privateer system and so on.
What a citizen can do also depends on where they are located. For example, you can assign a Scientist to your government and he will boost your research for your entire civilization. However, you can also send that same Scientist to live on a key research world to greatly boost just that single planet's research.
By contrast, a Diplomat can boost your civilization's influence overall or be sent to a foreign power to boost your relations with them or be sent to a specific world to boost that planet's influence.
An Administrator lets you build more starbases and colonies but can also be promoted into a Mobster (if you're evil) or into a Minister if you have enough resources.
A scientist can be promoted to instantly discover a technology, be recalled from the planet or (if you play as malevolent) worked to death.
Celebrities can be sent on a galactic tour making your civilization ever more popular.
Needless to say, modders will probably do some crazy things with this feature.
NEW FEATURE: Interactive Invasions
For the first time, Galactic Civilizations is separating civilians and soldiers.
Previously, a player would construct an invasion transport and then transfer millions of civilians from the planet's population onto the transport. Then, the player would travel to a planet whose orbital defenses had been taken out and invade the planet with those conscripted civilians.
[Trivia: This system was originally developed to show off the AI in GalCiv as the system required a lot of pre-planning and coordination which couldn't realistically be done back in 1993 on a single threaded game].
In Crusade, by contrast, the player first has to specialize a citizen as a General who, in turn, can train up to 5 legions. Players can then load up their legions onto a transport and take it to the planet and invade.
However, there are some key gameplay changes:
If the defending planet has no defending legions, the planet is instantly conquered. Thus, players can decide which planets matter the most. The transport is no longer consumed. That means, in theory, a single transport could conquer an entire civilization. This vastly reduces the late-game grind of conquering (and to be honest, we should have thought of this 10 years ago).
When the player arrives at the planet, they decide which tiles to land on. A planet is conquered when all the cities are taken.
Any planetary improvements a legion traverses over is automatically destroyed unless defended. Hence, a player can use a single legion to try to raid a well defended planet.
The statistical reality of a world-wide invasion is presented to the player.
NEW FEATURE: Missions and Deliverables
While not a specifically called out "feature", a big emphasis in Crusade has been to squash late game tedium. Strategy games are notoriously for having a late-game grind. The question is, how do you solve that?
Galactic Civilizations has always had civilizations surrender when they knew their cause was lost. That helped move the game along. But one gigantic area that still needed to be addressed is what to do about your colonies (the space 4X version of cities) late game when they are largely built out?
The most common solution is to create some type of "governor" to automate what planets are doing. The problem with that is that governors frequently do things that are contrary to the player's goals.
The solution that Crusade delivers comes in the form of Missions and Deliverables.
Shipyards can be queued up with various missions that can bring in more money, influence, technology and more. Since the player is essentially leader of the government, missions essentially turn a shipyard over to the private sector for a period of time in exchange for a piece of the action. For instance, the player can agree to let Treasure Hunters run the Shipyard for 12 turns in exchange for a cut of whatever treasure they find. At the end of the 12 turns, a small vessel, not controlled by the player, leaves port and travels to an unknown destination (the player can follow the ship, however).
Depending on what resources and technologies the player has, many different missions can be chosen from. What matters, however, is that the player doesn't have to queue up junk or turn it over to a "governor" or have their shipyard stand by idly.
Players can queue up missions for private citizens in their civilization to go on in exchange for a piece of the action. This gives the shipyard something to do late game without the micromanagement and with a tangible, controllable benefit to the player.
Deliverables are the planet based equivalent to missions. Instead of turning over the planet to a governor (which the player can still do if they really want) they can queue up a series of long-term projects for the planet to engage in that deliver a specific result. This way, a player could, for instance, ask a planet to try to recruit more citizens. It may take many turns but it provides a benefit and keeps the planet in use, under player control, long after the planet has been built up.
Planets can be assigned projects that deliver a specific result after a certain number of turns.
Different civilizations have different projects. For example, the robotic Yor increase their population this way while the humans might use it to station garrisons on the planet.
NEW FEATURE: ESPIONAGE
Espionage wasn't in the base game of Galactic Civilizations III and was, by far, the most requested feature. The challenge with espionage has always been, how do you make it meaningful without it overwhelming the entire game?
The answer returns to the Citizen system. Once the player researches Espionage, the Spy specialization becomes available.
Train Spies
Since citizens are so special, spies, therefore are also rare but also powerful.
Place spies on alien civilizations to find out who they hate, who they may attack, and gain vital intelligence.
Players can also cripple a particular planet's economy with a spy by placing it on a specific tile on the planet. Doing so reduces the planet's overall production as well as shuts down whatever improvement it is on/
A well placed spy can hamper the growth of a competitor.
NEW FEATURE: Resource based economic system
Galactic Civilizations III's economy, like the previous games in the series, was based on the triad of research, manufacturing and wealth. Players used a global (or planetary) production wheel to focus their civilization.
The production wheel system worked well for small civilizations but became a frustrating (and often gamey) late game feature because the player felt they had to find the perfect balance every single turn across their entire empire (and that's without even considering the local production wheel on every planet).
The other weakness of the old system is that no economy is that simple. For starters, isn't there a big difference between military manufacturing and social construction? How about programs to make your people happy? How about farming? What about cultural development?
Crusade starts over with a new system that allows the player to control their economy by how they use their citizens.
For example, food is now a global resource. One planet can grow the food and other planets can consume them by building cities. This, in turn, creates the need for farmers who can accelerate that food production.
Players can have citizens specialize and work globally, ideal for large empires.
OR
Citizens can be sent to a particular planet and give a large boost to that planet's economy. Over time, they level up.
In a 200 turn game, the player might only have 20 citizens, not an overwhelming number of units to manage and yet powerful tools for the player to control their economy.
Keep your citizens on your key worlds for tall empires or keep them centralized for wide empires.
NEW FEATURE: Commanders & Privateers
Another challenge of strategy games that involve diplomacy is that peace can be...well...boring. Many strategy games resolve this by basically forcing players into war. This can be frustrating for players who have really tried to be peaceful.
While espionage does provide one covert way to help and harm players without going to war, there is another way as well: Privateers.
Players can specialize a citizen to be a Commander. Once assigned to a fleet, a Commander can be promoted into a Privateer.
With some resources your Commander can be given a new, less public job.
A Privateer takes the best ship you can currently build and constructs it as an anonymous ship of war that players can use to wreak havoc on their competitors without officially going to war.
Enemy freighters, Civilian transports or even unprotected Transports can be brought low by a Privateer or two.
The Privateer feature opens the door for a civilization with a relatively weak military to keep stronger opponents off balance without actually engaging in direct confrontation.
To put this feature into perspective, beta testers have argued that the Commander / Privateer feature on its own could have been an expansion pack (GalCiv III: Mercenaries added Mercenaries, that was the thrust of that entire expansion).
NEW FEATURE: AI-Driven Diplomacy
Diplomacy in strategy games is hard. Computer players almost never do it well.
The Thalan, for example, are a time-traveling civilization and they remember how it was.
The Thalan remember you. Yes. YOU.
Crusade adds an entire background trade simulator. As a result, the trades it makes with you are complex, fair and useful. Because the simulator operates all the time, it can constantly look at what they want, what other players want (or should want) and offer it to them.
The AI is almost uncanny in its ability to predict what you would want for it and how much you would be willing to pay.
In addition, a value bar is now present on the trade screen to make trade much easier to engage in. Because resources are now central to the game, it was important to make it very easy to trade small quantities of various resources with minimal effort.
[[more to come]]The special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, said Friday that the Obama administration would be trying to find out whether the army was simply “dispersing” the militants or “destroying” them, as the United States would like.
From the number of troops in South Waziristan, it was not clear that the army wanted to “finish the task,” said a Western military attaché, who spoke on the condition of anonymity according to diplomatic protocol.
The army would not take over South Waziristan as it had the Swat Valley, where the military is now an occupying force after conducting a campaign in the spring and summer that pushed the Taliban out, the officials said.
It remains to be seen how the campaign will play out in a region where the army has failed in the past, analysts said. The army has sent about 28,000 soldiers to South Waziristan to take on about 10,000 guerrillas, a relatively low ratio, according to military specialists.
In all, of the roughly 28,000 soldiers, there are probably about 11,000 army infantrymen, said Javed Hussain, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier. Instead of a ratio of one to one, he said, the ratio should be at least five to one.
The army appeared to have no plans to occupy South Waziristan, but rather to cut the militants “to size,” said Tariq Fatemi, who served briefly as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States in 1999.
With the uncertainty of American plans in Afghanistan, and the strong sentiment in Pakistan that India was “up to no good” in the restive province of Baluchistan and the tribal areas, Mr. Fatemi said, the army would not abandon the militant groups that it has relied on to fight as proxies in Afghanistan and in Kashmir against India.
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The goal in South Waziristan, Mr. Fatemi said, was to eliminate the leadership that had become “too big of their boots” with the attacks on Pakistan’s cities. The army would like to find more pliant replacements as leaders, he said.
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The militants’ war against the cities in the past three weeks had produced a wave of fear that shored up support for the army to fight back in South Waziristan, many Pakistanis said.
But the terror has also amplified complaints that the unpopular civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is seen as slavishly pro-American, is unable to cope with the onslaught.
Mr. Zardari, whose relations with the Pakistani military appear increasingly strained, has not addressed the nation since the militants unfurled their attacks or since the army launched the offensive in South Waziristan.
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Interior Minister Rehman Malik was pelted with stones last week when he visited the International Islamic University after two suicide bomb attacks on the campus killed six students, including women.
After the attack at the university, the government ordered all schools and universities closed in Punjab, the most populous province, a move that affected Pakistani families like never before.
“The impact is being felt in every home, before it was just the North-West Frontier Province,” said Jahangir Tareen, a member of Parliament and a member of the cabinet under President Pervez Musharraf.
When schools were ordered re-opened Monday, parents were still unhappy.
“The mood is as bleak as I remember,” said a well-to-do parent in Lahore who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “The government says the private schools must open, but security is up to the schools. Where is the government?”
The range and different style of attacks in the urban areas, particularly in Islamabad, the capital, and the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi, surprised Pakistani security officials, said a Western diplomat who is in frequent contact with them.
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The Pakistani security services knew that sleeper cells had been put in place in both cities in the past six months, but their strength was unknown, the diplomat said. “These were not your scared suicide bomber boys from the villages, these were well trained commandos,” the diplomat said.
The assassination of an army brigadier as he drove through Islamabad last week further unnerved people, demonstrating that the militants had a cadre of spotters or observers probably marshaled from the increasing number of students attending radical religious schools in the capital, the diplomat said.
Whatever President Obama decides about troop levels in Afghanistan, Pakistan sees the United States and NATO headed for the exits, an outcome that encourages Pakistan to hang onto the militants that it has used as proxies, the Western diplomat said.
The fact that the United States had so far failed to persuade India to restart talks with Pakistan and that it was doing little to curb what Pakistan sees as the undue influence of India in Afghanistan was unsettling for Pakistan, Mr. Fatemi, the former ambassador, said.
On top of everything else, that feeling was driving a surge of anti-American sentiment, even among the elite, some Pakistanis said, increasing the challenges ahead.
“There is a general perception in the educated class that Pakistan is paying a very heavy price for fighting alongside the United States,” said Ashfaq Khan, a prominent economist and dean of the business school at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad.If you've watched as many Disney movies as I have, you've probably thought about the connection between the different films.
Whether it's Aladdin's magic carpet making an appearance in "Beauty And The Beast" or his lamp showing up in "The Princess And The Frog," there are little clues that hint there is a deeper underlying connection.
Well, one specific fan theory about the relationship between "Tarzan" and "Frozen" has essentially been proven true.
Are you ready for it? Because it's big.
Tarzan is Elsa and Anna's younger brother.
Giphy
DON'T EX OUT YET -- THE DIRECTOR CONFIRMED IT.
Let me quickly set the scene for those who need a refresher on the films.
In "Frozen," Anna and Elsa's parents are thought to be killed during an awful shipwreck at the beginning of the movie. The two sisters end up being orphans and taking over the castle together.
BUTTTTTT, how do we know their mother and father really died? What if the couple made it to land, built a tree house, had a baby and named him Tarzan?
Disney
Don't believe me? Well, "Frozen's" director Chris Buck BASICALLY confirmed the theory. He told MTV,
I think Jen [Lee, his co-director] and I were walking to a meeting, and I just started to tell her the entire story.
He continued,
I said, 'Of course Anna and Elsa's parents didn't die. Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas.'
Mic drop. You heard it from the man himself.
Buck actually spoke about the films' connection in 2015, but the theory has resurfaced and people are going crazy on Twitter.
Twitter
Twitter
Yup, mind = blown.
Citations: Tarzan And Frozen Connection (Metro)Sauber could be on the cusp of becoming the second Honda-powered team in F1.
The Swiss team's Swedish driver Marcus Ericsson on Thursday said Sauber has been surprised by the disadvantage of using a year-old Ferrari power unit so far in 2017.
But team figures have ruled out a mid-season engine switch.
However, the big rumour in Bahrain is that talks are rapidly progressing with Honda about making the switch for 2018.
But contractually, Honda's works engine partner McLaren can veto the Japanese marque's moves to supply customer power to other teams.
"For years, Ron Dennis prevented Honda from working with another team," a source close to Honda told Speed Week. "But Ron is no longer there."
However, Sauber is denying that a decision to go with Honda for 2018 is imminent.
"We are negotiating with several manufacturers," the Hinwil based team said.
A second team for struggling Honda would have several advantages, including doubling the feedback and data about its power unit.
Secondly, it is known that Honda is looking for a route into F1 for its junior drivers Nobuharu Matsushita and Tadasuke Makino.
A source told Speed Week: "There is no room for a Japanese in 2018. But if Tadasuke does a good F3 season, he will do Formula 2 in 2018 and in an ideal world be in F1 by 2019-2020.
"This would also fit with the timing with Pascal Wehrlein, who by 2019 will either go to Mercedes or be pushed to a Mercedes customer team like Williams."
(GMM)A bitcoin start-up has launched a service that will allow people to carry out foreign exchange transactions for free, dodging the expensive commission often charged by major financial institutions.
Bitreserve, a company founded last year by CNET and salesforce.com co-founder Halsey Minor, allows people to convert bitcoin into normal currencies and precious metals. The start-up used to charge a 0.45 percent commission for bitcoin-to-dollar transactions, but has now cut its fees entirely.
The move is likely to give it an edge in the hotly contested "fintech" market where a number of companies such as U.K.-based Transferwise are contesting the currency transfer and mobile payments space.
Users of the platform will be able to make currency exchanges in eight major currencies: euros, dollars, pounds, yuan, yen, pesos, rupees, swiss francs. People will also have the ability to convert the currencies into gold, silver, platinum and palladium, depending on the market price. Bitreserve offers the mid-market rate for currencies.
"Those in society who can least afford it have to spend so much for things that are so commonplace," Anthony Watson, president and chief operating officer of Bitreserve, told CNBC by phone.
"If you look at a Mexican immigrants, they send approximately $30 billion home every year and they pay just under $3 billion for the privilege of sending that money home. That is 10 percent and that is disgusting."A pack of tobacco-free American Indian brand herbal cigarettes
Herbal cigarettes (also called tobacco-free cigarettes or nicotine-free cigarettes) are cigarettes that usually do not contain any tobacco, instead being composed of a mixture of various herbs and/or other plant material.[1] However, Chinese herbal cigarettes contain tobacco and nicotine with herbs added, unlike European and North American herbal cigarettes which have tobacco and nicotine omitted.[2] Like herbal smokeless tobacco, they are often used as a substitute for standard tobacco products (primarily cigarettes).[citation needed] Herbal cigarettes are considered a "non-smoking aid."[3] European countries advertise herbal cigarettes |
they always do; the only question is whether it turns out to be somewhat effective or extremely effective. Unless Clinton’s rather sudden elevation into the ranks of the super-wealthy actually made her change her policy positions and what should would do as president — in other words, unless getting rich turned her into a Republican — there’s no reason to believe her wealth will have any serious impact at all. *Vox: “5 reasons Hillary Clinton's weaknesses are greatly exaggerated” <http://www.vox.com/2014/7/20/5916383/hillary-clinton-running-for-president-2016>* By Andrew Prokop July 20, 2014, 4:00 p.m. EDT If you've been reading political coverage lately, you will have learned that Hillary Clinton is currently on a gaffe-laden book tour where she has proven how out of touch she is with ordinary Americans, while Elizabeth Warren is getting a rapturous reception from progressive activists yearning for her candidacy. This is an entertaining narrative, but it's missing a few key facts about what's going on in advance of the Democratic presidential primary right now — facts indicating that Clinton remains the overwhelming favorite. 1) Clinton's lead in polling is much larger than it was in 2008 Yes, Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner in 2008 and then lost the nomination. But back in early 2007, she reached only 30 to 40 percent in polls of Democratic voters — indicating that a majority of Democrats weren't yet on board with a Clinton candidacy. Now, she regularly tops 60 percent in polls, and sometimes even breaks 70 percent, as you can see on RealClearPolitics. In particular, her position in Iowa, where she lost to Obama in 2008, is now enormously stronger, as Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight points out: *FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten* @ForecasterEnten: At this point in the 2008 cycle, Clinton was at 26% in Iowa Caucus polling http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2006/06/the_first_iowa_.html … <http://t.co/umrNSvVBlv> Right now? 70% http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/what-we-learned-about-christie-clinton-rand-paul-week-n158281 … <http://t.co/XtBdvS6241> [7/18/14,12:53 p.m. EDT <https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/statuses/490177603362648065>] With clear majorities of Democrats nationally and in the two major early states already saying they'll back Clinton, it's difficult to see an opportunity for a challenger. 2) Democrats don't actually want a more liberal nominee The assumption among people who talk to a lot of very progressive activists is that the Democratic base is yearning for a much more liberal nominee. But according to a poll from CNN and ORC International, that's not the case at all. Only 11 percent of Democrats would prefer a nominee who's more liberal than Clinton — compared to 20 percent who'd like a more conservative nominee. Once again, it's difficult to see the opening for a progressive challenger here. 3) The experience of Obama's presidency has discredited the main anti-Clinton argument In 2008, Obama ran on an inspirational platform of bringing hope and change to America and transcending partisan politics. Of course, this didn't happen. Therefore, any Democratic candidate sounding similar themes in 2016 will face serious skepticism from the party's voters. TNR's Noam Scheiber made this point in a recent article — he found support for Clinton among many progressive activists, and expounded on why in an interview with Vox. "When you pressed further it was about disappointment in President Obama," Scheiber said. "Watching the system not change really made an impact on these people. I don't think they want to get burned again." 4) Inequality is not Iraq In 2008, Obama and Clinton were quite similar in most policy areas. But he always had one issue on which he could draw a very clear contrast with Clinton — her vote to authorize the war in Iraq. "Most of you know I opposed this war from the start. I thought it was a tragic mistake," Obama said in his February 2007 announcement speech. He continued to emphasize this contrast throughout the primary campaign, and capitalized on serious resentment from party activists against Clinton and other Democratic leaders who had authorized the war. Some commentators have argued that Clinton could be similarly vulnerable on issues of economic inequality in 2012. But every major figure in the party, including Clinton, now agrees that inequality is a serious concern. The rhetoric Clinton uses on the issue sounds quite a lot like Warren's, as you can see in the video above, and in this video mashup of the two by the Huffington Post. Now, on the narrower issue of banking regulation, there are some serious rhetorical and substantive differences between Clinton and Warren. But there's no real indication that that issue has enough national resonance to dislodge a front-runner — especially considering the above poll results that indicate there's little desire among Democrats for a more liberal candidate. 5) There's no credible challenger who can amass broad party support A recent article by Phil Rucker and Robert Costa of the Washington Post lists many examples of potential Democratic candidates purportedly "making moves" to "position themselves" as an alternative to Clinton. Martin O'Malley has been giving speeches to Democrats all over the country. Amy Klobuchar is visiting Iowa. Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Governor Andrew Cuomo are releasing books. Vice President Biden even called some of his former aides, "ostensibly to say hello"! Yet while all this happens, Clinton has been racking up actual endorsements from Democrats — even though she's not yet running. These include figures who endorsed Obama last time around, like Tim Kaine and Claire McCaskill. Indeed, several of the potential contenders mentioned in the Post article — including Warren — actually signed a private letter urging Clinton to run for president. (Warren has said she hopes Clinton runs and that "Hillary is terrific," but hasn't publicly endorsed so far.) It's more plausible that the politicians mentioned by the Post are positioning themselves so they can jump in if Clinton doesn't run. It's prudent for them to prepare for that possibility, however small, since the nomination really would be up for grabs, as Amy Walter lays out here. Plus, for the younger potential candidates, building a national network now might help prepare them for 2020 (if Clinton loses) or 2024 elections. But serious challenges to Clinton still seem extremely unlikely — except, perhaps, for the most quixotic of contenders. *Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Benghazi, and Hillary Clinton’s misunderstood record as secretary of state” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/07/21/benghazi-and-hillary-clintons-misunderstood-record-as-secretary-of-state/>* By Aaron Blake July 21, 2014, 10:47 a.m. EDT There's something of a bombshell headline this morning at Politico: "Dim views of Hillary Clinton’s time at State." The story, which is based on a new poll conducted by GfK, has quite a different take than previous polling on Clinton's record as secretary of state, which has regularly shown that people view her as a success. In fact, a Washington Post poll just last month showed 59 percent of people approved of her tenure. Here are a few sample headlines for similar polls: NBC/WSJ poll: Nearly 70% approve of Hillary Clinton’s job Hillary Clinton remains popular for her time as secretary of state, viewed apart from Obama Hillary Clinton’s Strengths: Record at State, Toughness, Honesty So why the disconnect? Are people suddenly rethinking one of Clinton's biggest qualifications for running for president? Is Benghazi having the impact Republicans always thought it would? Not completely. But the poll does lend us some valuable perspective on what has been a widely misunderstood portion of Clinton's resume. The big reason for the disparate results: While most polls ask whether people approve or disapprove of Clinton's time as secretary of state, the new poll asked people to rate it as "excellent," "good," "fair" or "poor." We generally dislike this type of question -- mostly because those writing about such polls lump "fair" together with "poor" to suggest people in both camps disapprove of the person in question. We see "fair" as a much more neutral response. (The great Maggie Haberman, who wrote the story, did not make this conflation, but others undoubtedly will.) One person might look at this poll and see that a majority of people (53 percent) rate Clinton as either "fair" or "poor," while another could make a credible argument that it shows more people think she did well (42 percent said "excellent" or "good") than poorly (32 percent). Both are okay arguments, as long as they are in the correct context. But in this case, we actually like this question, because it exposes the casual nature of support for Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. Secretary of state is a great resume-builder, and the vast majority of the United States' top diplomats have emerged from the job quite popular (proof here). It's a job that sets you up for success. But just because people say they approve of their secretary of state doesn't mean they are huge fans. Perhaps she did well enough to earn people's "approval" but not necessarily enough to get positive marks -- hence "fair." But part of the new poll is also that the bloom is off the rose. Clinton's numbers in general have dropped pretty significantly, to the point where she's not really all that popular anymore. Her numbers as secretary of state have remained a little better, but it's not surprising to see scrutiny of Clinton -- including on Benghazi -- to prompt even those numbers to drop. The biggest takeaway from this poll is that Clinton's time as secretary of state might not be the feather in the cap that many thought it was. But people shouldn't look at this poll and suddenly see it as a liability. *Slate blog: Weigel: “The Poll That Will Make Democrats Panic About Hillary Clinton” <http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/07/21/the_poll_that_will_make_democrats_panic_about_hillary_clinton.html>* By David Weigel July 21, 2014, 8:22 a.m. EDT At the moment I'm wrapping up a piece about progressive activists and Netroots Nation, having found (as most reporters found) young party activists pretty much satisfied by the promise of Hillary 2016 campaign. Other candidates, like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have their adherents who want to shift the party's stances on banks, on student loans, on inequality. But few doubt that Hillary is the most electable, most Republican-infuriating candidate on the horizon. Comes now this Politico poll: [GRAPHIC OF POLITICO POLL “HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE JOB THAT HILLARY CLINTON DID AS SECRETARY OF STATE?] As Maggie Haberman writes in her summary of the poll, Clinton left Foggy Bottom with a favorable rating well above 60 percent. Profiles of her tenure took for granted that she was a "rock star," a historic figure, a success. The decline is undoubtedly, as Haberman writes, tied in part to 18 months of no-end-in-sight Benghazi investigations; I wish the Politico pollster had asked voters to think of a single word to describe Clinton, because surely "Benghazi" would have erupted from most Republicans and led the list. What else might explain the swoon? Well, turn your eyes north from Libya, up to Russia. In a piece subtly titled "Is Hillary Clinton imploding?" Jonathan Last asked readers to look at what Hillary Clinton told the BBC about the administration's Russia stance. Was it untenable? Well, according to Hillary, the thoughtful observer had to look at the situation when she arrived at State. “Medvedev is President, Putin is Prime Minister, and there were jobs that we wanted to get done. We wanted to get Russia on board with tough sanctions against Iran. We wanted to have a new START Treaty to limit nuclear weapons. We wanted to get their help in transiting across through huge country to get things we needed into Afghanistan. We got all that done. Putin comes back. Look where we are now. He invaded another country, so yes, but while we had that moment, we seized it, we used it, and succeeded.” "He invaded another country, so..." is, to my ears, a more face-palm-worthy quote than "we were dead broke" (which was basically true) and "what difference does it make?" (which was about the Republican focus on September 2012 talking points, not a callous dismissal of dead heroes). Is there some way for Hillary to run as the person who was at the wheel before the Obama administration's policy failures? Maybe. But her re-emergence happened to concede with a run of major setbacks, and that's complicating the storyline of Clinton as a "rock star" secretary. It follows months and months of Republicans chortling at the inability of Clinton allies to name a major accomplishment. (In this interview she cites START, but her allies are really lost at sea in discussing this stuff). So it should be interesting to see if the criticism of Clinton is turned back by an aggressive left -- by David Brock's groups like Correct the Record and Media Matters, for example -- or if it emboldens one of the junior Democrats to criticize her and raise speculation about primary challenges. So far, there's a little of the former and none of the latter. *Christian Science Monitor blog: DC Decoder: “Hillary Clinton's $12 million problem: Will focus on her wealth persist?” <http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Buzz/2014/0721/Hillary-Clinton-s-12-million-problem-Will-focus-on-her-wealth-persist>* By Peter Grier July 21, 2014 [Subtitle:] Hillary Clinton has earned $12 million since leaving the State Department in early 2013, says a Bloomberg News report. Though GOP officials are gleefully sharing this story on social media, here's why the issue of her wealth is likely to fade. Hillary Clinton’s wealth problem isn’t fading. It began in June when she said she and husband, Bill, were “dead broke” when they left the White House – a comment she later publicly labeled “inartful.” It has continued through July as media reports document the Clintons' wealth and Republicans bash the former secretary of State as a closet 1 percenter. The latest episode in this political soap opera is Monday’s Bloomberg News report that, since resigning as secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton has earned at least $12 million by giving speeches and selling books. “Her earnings represent a fraction of the Clinton family’s total income and yet were large enough to rank her not only in the top 1 percent of the nation’s earners but in the top one-hundredth of the 1 percent,” write Bloomberg’s Lisa Lerer and Lauren Streib. Republican Party officials have gleefully disseminated this story on social media. They’re using it as a means to promote their latest anti-Hillary website, poorhillaryclinton.com. “How out of touch is Hillary?... We’ve documented it,” tweeted the Republican National Committee on Monday morning. Will mocking Clinton for her “hard knock life” help the GOP in the long run? Maybe – that’s the sort of political trend line it’s impossible to precisely predict. Perhaps Republican strategists hope to simply increase vague negative feelings about Clinton in the months prior to her expected 2016 presidential run. But there are some problems with the tactic of attacking Clinton for her cash, per se. Presumably Democratic voters are the ones most concerned with the issue of inequality and concentration of US wealth. However, they don’t appear at all concerned about charges of Clinton buck-raking. As we reported last week, polls show Clinton rolling full throttle toward the Democratic 2016 nomination, if she wants it. She’s crushing all potential intraparty challengers. That stuff about a challenge from the left by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts? Basically it’s bored journalists looking for ways to inject drama into a foreordained race. Republican voters will be happy to tut-tut about Clinton’s perceived hypocrisy on money. But there’s a twist: What will they feel about their own party attacking someone for making money? Kind of a role reversal, no? That’s what Politico’s Dylan Byers opines Monday in his post about Bloomberg’s new Clinton numbers. “Wouldn’t it be rich if the same Republicans who complain about the demonization of wealth decided to turn this into a talking point? Oh wait,” writes Byers. It’s likely the focus on wealth will fade at some point. It has persisted partly because Clinton is an unusual presidential precandidate, writes Bloomberg View political pundit Jonathan Bernstein. At this point in a campaign the media are generally busy filling in the life story and political background of potential candidates. But everybody knows Clinton, so instead they’re picking at holes in her story. When she switches into a more overtly political mode, she will begin making policy proposals and speaking more directly about the national situation. Then the media focus will move from Clinton wealth gaffes and book sales to the newer, more substantive material. “None of the [current media] attention appears to be obstructing her path to the nomination, and it will be long forgotten by fall 2016. Except, perhaps, by those who aren’t going to vote for her anyway,” writes Mr. Bernstein. *Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “Payback: Republicans Paint ‘Millionaire’ Democrats as Out of Touch” <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/07/21/payback-republicans-paint-millionaire-democrats-as-out-of-touch/>* By Reid J. Epstein July 21, 2014, 1:18 p.m. EDT When Democrats in 2012 tarred Mitt Romney as so wealthy he was out of touch, the Republican pushback was to assert that there’s no shame in being rich. “Republicans come here and say everyone should live like this,” Mr. Romney said at one fundraiser held at a supporter’s mansion. Back then it worked, as President Barack Obama and his allied Democrats launched a full-scale campaign to tag Mr. Romney as the candidate of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. By and large, that worked, with a handful of assists from Mr. Romney himself. Two years later, it’s Republicans who are using their opponents’ wealth as a campaign cudgel. In Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania and Georgia, GOP candidates have taken shots at their opponents for being wealthy – usually as part of trying to build a larger case that the foe is out of touch. And of course there is the nonstop Republican smirking about Hillary Clinton‘s wealth — virtually all of it emanating from Mrs. Clinton’s book tour statement that she and Bill Clinton were “dead broke” upon leaving the White House 13 years ago. On Monday morning the Republican National Committee launched a website called poorhillaryclinton.com. Almost every attack Republicans are throwing at Democrats on their wealth could have been made against Mr. Romney – some of them were, almost verbatim. Starting last fall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker branded his Democratic opponent Mary Burke “Millionaire Mary.” The Walker-controlled Wisconsin GOP mocked her for owning a “swanky second home valued at nearly $600,000.” And last week Mr. Walker’s campaign released a new TV ad called “Fortune” in which it accused Ms. Burke of “making millions of dollars” when her family’s bicycle company moved some of its manufacturing operations to China. (That whether the company actually did outsource jobs to China is in debate mirrors the Romney campaign’s insistence it did not offshore jobs.) On Friday Allysia Finley of the Journal’s editorial page criticized Mr. Walker’s attacks on Ms. Burke’s business record. “Economic populism is usually the province of Democrats who don’t understand how free markets work or who cynically hope to exploit voters’ insecurities,” she wrote. But Mr. Walker is hardly the only Republican attacking a Democratic opponent’s wealth. In Pennsylvania, GOP Gov. Tom Corbett‘s campaign dubbed his Democratic self-funding opponent “Millionaire Tom Wolf.” And in New York, Republicans are trying to tar Democratic House candidate Sean Eldridge as wealthy and out of touch. Virtually every missive the National Republican Campaign Committee blasts about Mr. Eldridge – the husband of Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes who has spent more than $1 million of his own funds in his campaign against GOP Rep. Chris Gibson in an upstate New York district – replaces the first letter of his first name with a dollar sign. “After repeatedly ignoring the media, refusing to answer questions about the stunning hypocrisy of his multimillion dollar investment portfolio, and putting voters off by using his dark money group to try and buy an election, the only thing Eldridge is going to gain on Election Day is some much needed humility,” NRCC spokesman Ian Prior said in one representative missive. Obama campaign aide David Axelrod, in a plea for campaign donations in October 2012, wrote: “I’ll be blunt: They are trying to buy this election.” And in Georgia – where Republicans will vote Tuesday in a run-off election between Rep. Jack Kingston and David Perdue – the highlight of the final debate was Mr. Kingston laying into the wealth of Mr. Perdue, the former CEO of Reebok and Dollar General. “Your whole lifestyle is based in a different way,” Mr. Kingston snapped at Mr. Perdue, the Associated Press reported. “You live inside a gate inside a gated community with a gate on your house.” Mr. Perdue responded much the same way Mr. Romney did in 2012: “I’m not going to apologize for my success.” *Salon column: Joan Walsh: “GOP’s ’16 consolation vanishes: Suddenly, Democrats have the deep bench!” <http://www.salon.com/2014/07/21/gops_16_consolation_vanishes_suddenly_democrats_have_the_deep_bench/>* By Joan Walsh July 21, 2014, 1:10 p.m. EDT [Subtitle:] After Romney’s 2012 loss, pundits raved about the GOP’s new leaders. But two years later, Democrats have the edge In the wake of President Obama’s re-election in 2012, reporters found one soothing source of solace for the GOP. “One race the Republicans appear to be winning is the one for the deepest bench of rising stars,” wrote the Washington Post, and plenty of folks followed up. Democrats, meanwhile, had nobody on the bench but Hillary Clinton – a formidable candidate if she were to run, but that wasn’t even certain. Beyond Clinton, there seemed to be a wasteland populated by ambitious governors no one had ever heard of (Martin O’Malley), some who were well known but not widely liked (Andrew Cuomo). Oh, and Brian Schweitzer. The Republican list, meanwhile, seemed almost infinite: blue and purple state governors like New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and Virginia’s Bob McConnell, and Tea Party senators like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Romney’s ambitious, “wonky” running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, had his fans, as did former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Even Texas Gov. Rick Perry, recovered from back surgery and sporting hot new glasses, could have another life in 2016. But in two years, the situation has almost reversed itself. Promising GOP governors – McDonnell, Christie, Walker – find themselves dogged by scandal. The Tea Party trio of Paul, Cruz and Rubio still vies for media attention and right wing adoration, but Rubio’s immigration reform work doomed him on the right. Unbelievably, Paul is widely labeled the frontrunner (but don’t tell that to Cruz), while the party establishment and neocon hawks search for an alternative. Despite all that impressive talent, Mitt Romney leads the pack in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, in what’s widely being reported as trouble for Hillary Clinton, because that’s the narrative the media know best, it turns out there are a bunch of popular and maybe even formidable Democrats. Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren wowed the crowd at Netroots Nation. (Check out this great New Yorker Biden profile if you want to know how the VP is keeping his options open). The Netroots buzz inspired the Washington Post’s Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa to survey the landscape of Democrats who’ve put a toe or more in the water for 2016. We learned that Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar is visiting Iowa (it is only one state away), while New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has a book coming out. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is said to be huddling with donors, believing the party could use a dose of red state common sense. This is all framed as mildly ominous news for Hillary Clinton – the headline is “With liberals pining for a Clinton challenger, ambitious Democrats get in position” — but Klobuchar, Gillibrand and Nixon have all endorsed Clinton, and Warren has encouraged Clinton to run while insisting she won’t do so herself. The only Democrats listed who may still run even if Clinton does too are O’Malley and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. Regardless of the intent of the framing, the Rucker-Costa story actually pointed up the vitality in the Democratic Party, where lively debates over income inequality and foreign policy have so far fallen short of creating bitter divisions and factions, at least so far. Again, contrast that with the GOP, where Ted Cruz seems to be staking his 2016 hopes on his ability to humiliate every party leader and make sure Republicans will never make inroads with the Latino population. He’s blocking bipartisan emergency legislation to deal with the border crisis, and pushing to reverse President Obama’s deferred action on deportation for young people brought here by their parents. Meanwhile Warren, the progressive elected the same time as Cruz, is touring the country campaigning for Democratic Senate candidates, even some who are more centrist than she is, like Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes and West Virginia’s Natalie Tennant. She’s focused on growing the Democratic Party, not cutting down colleagues who are less progressive. So: the GOP’s right wing firebrand is a loose cannon who is completely out for himself, while the Democrats’ left wing firebrand is working amiably with party leaders and deflecting talk of a primary challenge to Clinton. In the end, the rising number of possible alternatives to Hillary Clinton is a sign of Democratic strength, even if the media tends to bill it as weakness. *Twitter: “Today at Twitter: Ask @HillaryClinton your questions” <https://blog.twitter.com/2014/today-at-twitter-ask-hillaryclinton-your-questions>* By Katie Stanton July 21, 2014, 15:57 UTC We’re thrilled to welcome Secretary Hillary Clinton to Twitter headquarters in San Francisco today. We frequently welcome delightful and inspiring people in to meet our employees and talk about their careers, their passions and how they use Twitter to connect with the world. Given the impact Secretary Clinton’s work throughout her career has had on the world—much of which she documents in her new book about her time as America’s chief diplomat, “Hard Choices“—we want to open her visit to you too. At about 5:20 p.m. PT, I will join the Secretary on stage in front of our employees to hear from her about the challenges she faced and the lessons she learned during her time as America’s 67th Secretary of State. We’ll explore how those experiences have shaped her views on human rights, domestic policy and other topics. And of course I’m curious to learn the backstory of Tweets like this: *Sec. Hillary Rodham Clinton* @HillaryClinton: It’s so much more fun to watch FOX when it’s someone else being blitzed & sacked! #SuperBowl <https://twitter.com/hashtag/SuperBowl?src=hash> [2/2/13, 8:44 p.m. EDT <https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/statuses/430154695860953088>] You can tune in live at about 5:20 p.m. PT by visiting Secretary Clinton’s Twitter profile at Twitter.com/@HillaryClinton; we’ll stream the event from a Tweet pinned to the top of her page. You can also send the Secretary questions that I will do my best to ask her by using the hashtag #AskHillary. I’ll be checking Twitter throughout the day so feel free to start sending your questions now. We look forward to sharing this special event with all of you. See you later this afternoon! *Politico: “Bill Clinton: Hillary 'wants time'” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-wants-time-109175.html>* By Katie Glueck July 21, 2014, 11:30 a.m. EDT Hillary Clinton still needs “time” to think through her message ahead of a possible presidential run, according to her husband, former President Bill Clinton. In an interview with CNN published Monday, he said that the former secretary of state — and presumptive Democratic frontrunner if she gets in — needs space to “work through” that. His comments come as Clinton continues on her book tour to promote her new memoir, “Hard Choices,” amid questions of what her case would be for 2016. “We’ve reached a point in our life when we think you really shouldn’t run for office if you don’t have a clear idea of what you can do and a unique contribution you can make and you can outline that,” Clinton told CNN, according to the news organization’s write-up. “Now that the book is done, she wants time to think about that and work through it. “ He added that Clinton “hasn’t asked me yet” about his advice on 2016, but called her the “ablest public servant” with whom he’s ever worked. *Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Joe Biden is the most interesting politician that has no chance of becoming president” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/07/21/joe-biden-is-the-most-interesting-politician-that-has-no-chance-of-becoming-president/>* By Jaime Fuller July 21, 2014, 12:43 p.m. EDT The New Yorker's Evan Osnos has been working on a profile about Vice President Biden for months, and it finally published this week -- with a big focus on the vice president's role in the Ukraine crisis. Osnos conducted many interviews with Biden -- and even talked to President Obama. You should read the whole thing -- especially since the New Yorker archives are now open for browsing this summer -- but here's a look at some of the most interesting tidbits. *Obama: "In the foreign-policy front, I think Joe’s biggest influence was in the Afghanistan debate."* As the wars in the Middle East have ended, Biden has shifted to smaller foreign policy priorities, although his relationships in Ukraine have also proved invaluable. Osnos sums up his foreign policy role now as "big assignments that may not have a huge political upside" especially for someone who may be eying another presidential bid. Obama adds, “You know, when I sent him to Ukraine for the recent inauguration of Poroshenko, and he’s there, a world figure that people know, and he’s signifying the importance that we place on the Ukrainian election,” Obama went on. “And then world leaders can transmit directly to him their thoughts about how we proceed. That’s not necessarily helping him in Iowa. ” However, his political schmoozing skills have proved invaluable in international affairs throughout his career -- and continue to come in handy. Osnos writes, "After so many years, he has an arsenal of opening lines that he can deploy in Baghdad, Beijing, or Wilmington. One of his favorites: 'If I had hair like yours, I’d be President.'" George Mitchell, the Maine Senator who helped bring about the Good Friday Agreement, told Osnos that he "remembers welcoming visiting heads of state to Capitol Hill. 'I’d say, ‘Here’s Senator Smith, here’s Senator Jones.’ When I got to Joe, the leader would look out and say, 'Hi, Joe.' " *Joe Biden and Robert Gates do not like each other at all.* In his memoir, "Duty," former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Biden was "impossible not to like” but he was also “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” When Osnos asked Biden about Gates, the vice president called him “a really decent guy,” but... he went on to add, "You go back, and everything in the last forty years, there’s nothing that I can think of, major fundamental decisions relative to foreign policy, that I can think he’s been right about!" Biden ended his soliloquy on Gates by later saying, “I can hardly wait — either in a Presidential campaign or when I’m out of here — to debate Bob Gates. Oh, Jesus.” *While we're on the topic of presidential campaigns, Biden's obviously thinking about one.* As you might have already noticed. He talks about it a lot. But only if Hillary Clinton decides not to start her own campaign. When Osnos "asked John McCain, who is one of Biden’s close friends, if Biden would run without Clinton in the race, McCain said,'In a New York minute.' " Obama doesn't get why either Clinton or Biden would ever want to run again. “I think that, for both Joe and for Hillary, they’ve already accomplished an awful lot in their lives. The question is, do they, at this phase in their lives, want to go through the pretty undignifying process of running all over again.” *Biden and Obama are pretty surprised they get along so well.* Osnos writes, “The trials facing the President and the Vice-President, who are separated by nineteen years and a canyon in style, have brought them closer than many expected — not least of all themselves. John Marttila, one of Biden’s political advisers, told me, ‘Joe and Barack were having lunch, and Obama said to Biden, ‘You and I are becoming good friends! I find that very surprising.’ And Joe says, ‘You’re [f***ing] surprised!’” However, Biden adds that if he ever had a "fundamental moral disagreement" with Obama,"I’d announce I had prostate cancer and I had to leave.” *Bush once said he had gotten "a sense of his soul" after staring into the eyes of Vladimir Putin. Biden later told Putin, "I don’t think you have a soul."* Borrowing comedic tactics from "Arrested Development," Biden turned an immortal line from the Bush presidency into a callback. “To illustrate his emphasis on personality as a factor in foreign affairs, Biden recalled visiting Putin at the Kremlin in 2011: ‘I had an interpreter, and when he was showing me his office I said, ‘It’s amazing what capitalism will do, won’t it? A magnificent office!’ And he laughed. As I turned, I was this close to him.’ Biden held his hand a few inches from his nose. ‘I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’ ‘ “‘You said that?’ I asked. It sounded like a movie line. “‘Absolutely, positively,’ Biden said, and continued, ‘And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, ‘We understand one another.’ ‘ Biden sat back, and said, ‘This is who this guy is!’” Biden isn't a fan of the more rebellious additions to the Senate. He told Osnos, "I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone on the floor of the Senate refer to the President as Bubba." The profile also notes that "Biden’s friendships were so varied that he was the only senator who was asked to speak at funerals for both Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist, and Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat, who called Biden 'the only Catholic Jew.' " *There are lots of wonderful descriptions of Biden's inherent Biden-ness.* *To wit:* "When he was thirty years old, he became one of the youngest senators in history, and he has parted with youth begrudgingly. His smile has been rejuvenated to such a gleam that it inspired a popular tweet during the last campaign: 'Biden’s teeth are so white they’re voting for Romney.' At seventy-one, with his hairline reforested and his forehead looking becalmed, Biden projects the glow of a grandfather just back from the gym, which is often the case." "Biden likes to be candid in such settings. In 1979, on one of his first trips to the Soviet Union, he listened to an argument from his Soviet counterpart, and replied, 'Where I come from, we have a saying: You can’t [sh** a sh**ter.]' Bill Bradley, then a fellow-senator on the delegation, later asked the American interpreter how he had translated Biden’s comment into Russian. 'Not literally,' the interpreter said." "The full package — the Ray-Ban aviators, the shameless schmalz, the echoes of the Fonz — has never endeared him to the establishment, but it lends him an air of authenticity that is rare in his profession. It has also produced a whiff of cult appeal, such that his image now has more in common with Betty White than with John Boehner." "Biden rule No. 1: No funny hats." "Biden held on to his locker at the Senate gym, where he liked to kibbitz." "Biden is such a close talker that he occasionally bumps his forehead into you mid-chat, a gesture so minor that it’s notable only when you try to picture Barack Obama doing the same thing." *Daily Caller: “Republicans Launch New Hillary Attack: PoorHillaryClinton.com” <http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/21/republicans-launch-new-hillary-attack-poorhillaryclinton-com/>* By Sarah Hurtubise July 21, 2014, 12:12 p.m. EDT The Republican National Committee launched PoorHillaryClinton.com Monday to attack the Democrat for claiming that she and Bill struggled financially after leaving the White House. The website features claims by the Clintons downplaying their wealth and reports on their current earnings, which make Hillary one of the richest individuals in the country. Clinton claimed recently that she and Bill are not “truly well off,” and were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2000. Clinton has already earned $12 million in speaking fees since leaving the State Department just 16 months ago, according to a Bloomberg analysis out Monday; President Bill Clinton has |
, will end up as an embarrassing footnote rather than a landmark achievement.
Well yes dear journalist that has been the narrative you've just presented to us readers.
Then along comes Gary Latham.
How entertaining a plot twist! Or maybe a journalist is writing a story about out of a confusing process where academia tries to take account of a confusing array of new evidence. Of course that's me telling a story right there. Agggh bad brain bad!
Latham, an organizational psychologist in the management school at the University of Toronto, thought the research Bargh and others did was crap. That's the word he used. He told one of his graduate students, Amanda Shantz, that if she tried to apply Bargh's principles it would be a win-win. If it failed, they could publish a useful takedown. If it succeeded... well, that would be interesting. They performed a pilot study, which involved showing subjects a photo of a woman winning a race before the subjects took part in a brainstorming task. As Bargh's research would predict, the photo made them perform better at the brainstorming task. Or seemed to. Latham performed the experiment again in cooperation with another lab. This time the study involved employees in a university fund-raising call center. They were divided into three groups. Each group was given a fact sheet that would be visible while they made phone calls. In the upper left-hand corner of the fact sheet was either a photo of a woman winning a race, a generic photo of employees at a call center, or no photo. Again, consistent with Bargh, the subjects who were primed raised more money. Those with the photo of call-center employees raised the most, while those with the race-winner photo came in second, both outpacing the photo-less control. This was true even though, when questioned afterward, the subjects said they had been too busy to notice the photos. Latham didn't want Bargh to be right. "I couldn't have been more skeptical or more disbelieving when I started the research," he says. "I nearly fell off my chair when my data" supported Bargh's findings. That experiment has changed Latham's opinion of priming and has him wondering now about the applications for unconscious primes in our daily lives. Are there photos that would make people be safer at work? Are there photos that undermine performance? How should we be fine-tuning the images that surround us? "It's almost scary in lots of ways that these primes in these environments can affect us without us being aware," he says. Latham hasn't stopped there. He's continued to try experiments using Bargh's ideas, and those results have only strengthened his confidence in priming. "I've got two more that are just mind-blowing," he says. "And I know John Bargh doesn't know about them, but he'll be a happy guy when he sees them." Latham doesn't know why others have had trouble. He only knows what he's found, and he's certain about his own data. In the end, Latham thinks Bargh will be vindicated as a pioneer in understanding unconscious motivations. "I'm like a converted Christian," he says. "I started out as a devout atheist, and now I'm a believer." Following his come-to-Jesus transformation, Latham sent an e-mail to Bargh to let him know about the call-center experiment. When I brought this up with Bargh, his face brightened slightly for the first time in our conversation. "You can imagine how that helped me," he says. He had been feeling isolated, under siege, worried that his legacy was becoming a cautionary tale. "You feel like you're on an island," he says. Though Latham is now a believer, he remains the exception. With more failed replications in the pipeline, Dijksterhuis believes that Kahneman's looming-train-wreck letter, though well meaning, may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, helping to sink the field rather than save it. Perhaps the perception has already become so negative that further replications, regardless of what they find, won't matter much. For his part, Bargh is trying to take the long view. "We have to think about 50 or 100 years from now—are people going to believe the same theories?" he says. "Maybe it's not true. Let's see if it is or isn't."
Admirable that he's come to the latter attitude after the early angry blog posts prompted by what he was going through. That wasn't sarcasm, scientists are only human after all, there are easier things to do than this.Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is organizing an effort by governors, mayors, business leaders and other private citizens to make sure that Americans play an active role in the Paris Agreement — with or without the federal government.
Bloomberg, the founder and CEO of the media and financial company Bloomberg LP, announced late Thursday that he will lead a group in supporting the efforts of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to help countries fulfill their commitments to the Paris climate accord.
“Americans are not walking away from the Paris Climate Agreement,” he said in a statement. “Just the opposite — we are forging ahead. Mayors, governors, and business leaders from both political parties are signing onto a statement of support that we will submit to the UN — and together, we will reach the emission reduction goals the U.S. made in Paris in 2015.”
If successful, this will be the first time U.S. citizens, local and state officials circumvented the federal government to negotiate an agreement with the United Nations.
As part of this effort, Bloomberg Philanthropies and other groups plan to donate up to $15 million to the U.N.’s Climate Secretariat to account for the funding it stands to lose as a result of President Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from Paris Agreement.
Bloomberg recently co-authored a book with former Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope titled “Climate of Hope” about their belief that cities, businesses and citizens can win the climate change battle, with or without help from Washington.
Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (Photo: Christophe Ena/AP) More
Pope says this kind of effort, enlisting nongovernment groups in international discussions alongside diplomats from nation-states, has not taken place in more than 350 years, since the treaty of Westphalia was signed in the 17th century.
“In 1648, the nations of Europe decided that from now on diplomacy would be entirely and exclusively the business of sovereign nation-states — nobody else got to play. This [the new climate change initiative] is a conscious attempt to reopen diplomacy to multiple stakeholders,” Pope told Yahoo News on Friday.
This nascent project has already attracted the support of 100 companies, 30 mayors and four governors. Many companies have already made individual statements condemning Trump but were waiting for him to finally make a decision before deciding what to do collaboratively.
“We’re still signing people up. We’re going to spend the weekend doing a lot more recruiting,” Pope said. “I think we will have at least 10 and maybe as many as 20 states and hundreds of cities.”
Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a commercial hoax cooked up by China, argued that the landmark climate agreement disadvantaged Americans. Withdrawing from the agreement would also cut the United States’ promised contributions to the Green Climate Fund, which is intended to help developing countries prepare for climate change and move to clean energy. The fund has raised about $10 billion from advanced economies, including $3 billion from the U.S.
Trump’s announcement elicited widespread condemnation by heads of state, scientists, concerned citizens and U.S. politicians from both parties.
Mike Bloomberg and Carl Pope on “CBS This Morning.” (Photo: CBS News) More
To critics, Trump was reneging on promises made only two years ago and forfeiting the United States’ position as a leader in shaping the clean energy economy of the future. Leaving the Paris Agreement, they contend, will make other countries — even close allies — skeptical of the United States’ ability to keep its word.Venezuelan opposition deputy Amelia Belisario (2nd-R) scuffles with National Guard during a protest in front of the Supreme Court in Caracas (AFP Photo/JUAN BARRETO)
Caracas (AFP) - International powers voiced alarm at the Venezuelan Supreme Court's move to seize power from the opposition-led legislature, in what several officials and analysts branded a "coup."
The court's move tightened socialist President Nicolas Maduro's grip on power after more than a year locked in a political struggle with the center-right opposition.
Critics said it was an authoritarian turn for the South American oil giant, where an economic crisis has caused food shortages, riots and an epidemic of violent crime.
The crisis has raised concerns about stability in Venezuela, which has undergone three attempted military coups since 1992.
The US State Department called the court's move "a serious setback for democracy."
Regional powers Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Chile and others also warned it was a threat to democracy in Venezuela.
Brazil's foreign ministry said it was "a clear break with constitutional order."
But the hardest line came from the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, who in a statement echoed Maduro's opponents' claims of an internal "coup d'etat."
Maduro had yet to comment publicly about the outcry late Thursday.
Protesting lawmakers scuffled with riot police outside the court. Opposition groups called for wider street protests on Saturday.
- Lawmakers passed over -
The judges' move strips Maduro's opponents in the National Assembly legislature of what little grip they had over a key pillar of government.
The high court (TSJ) has consistently backed the leftist president in his power struggle with the legislature.
It had on Tuesday also stripped parliamentary immunity from lawmakers in the assembly.
"The unconstitutional decisions by the TSJ to strip parliamentary immunity from the members of the National Assembly and assume the legislative function are the latest actions taken by the authoritarian regime to subvert the constitutional order in Venezuela and eliminate all semblance of democracy," Almagro's statement said.
He said he "denounces the self-inflicted coup d'etat perpetrated by the Venezuelan regime against the National Assembly, the last branch of government to be legitimized by the will of the people of Venezuela," the OAS statement said.
- Army urged to act -
The court based its latest decision on an earlier ruling that the opposition majority was in contempt of court.
"As long as the National Assembly's contempt of court and invalidity persist, parliamentary powers shall be exercised directly by (the Supreme Court's) constitutional chamber or by the body it designates to safeguard the rule of law," it said late Wednesday night.
The speaker of the National Assembly, Julio Borges, urged the army, which has thus far supported Maduro, to take a stand.
"The Venezuelan armed forces cannot remain silent as the constitution is breached," he said, appealing to soldiers who are also suffering through what he called the "chaos" of the economic crisis.
With the public support of the military and control of most state institutions, Maduro has been resisting opposition calls for early elections.
A European Union spokesman in a statement urged Venezuela "to establish a clear electoral calendar and to respect the National Assembly and all its members, as foreseen in the Constitution."
- Contempt of court -
The court said the National Assembly leadership was in contempt for swearing in three lawmakers who were banned over alleged electoral fraud.
The opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) condemns the fraud charges as a trumped-up bid to curb its power after it won a landslide in legislative elections in December 2015 with a promise to oust Maduro.
The court has overturned every law passed by the opposition-led legislature.
"To legally overtake the functions of a branch of government is a coup," said Latin America specialist Christopher Sabatini of Columbia University in New York.
- Oil deals at stake -
The court's expansion of its own powers came as part of a ruling on an oil law. It enables the government to launch joint ventures with private oil companies without legislative approval.
Venezuela has the world's biggest oil reserves but the collapse in prices has sapped its revenues, prompting shortages of food, medicine and basic goods like toilet paper.Tesla needn't be furious with New Jersey anymore after a new bill has passed that could lift of a ban on direct-to-customer sales in the state. After Governor Chris Christie assisted the Motor Vehicle Commission in putting the kibosh on its electric cars over two months ago, NJ.com reports that a review committee has done something about the decades-old law that allowed them to do so. In a unanimous vote, the state's Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee passed a bill that not only gives Tesla the right to resume sales in its two existing New Jersey showrooms, but also allow it to open two more. It's a big win for electric car makers in general, as it allows any company that sells zero-emission vehicles directly to customers to open up to four stores in the Garden State. It effectively puts the 1970 law that requires cars to be sold through dealerships on notice, but there were also calls for the state to better protect the dealer "status quo." The FTC has already said such amendments hurt competition, but has no real power to enact change. It must rely on lawmakers, like those in New Jersey, to draw their own conclusions and restore the sales rights Tesla believes it deserves. The bill will need to pass a few more of New Jersey's legislative processes to become law, but things are looking up for Tesla.Danny Cohen, head of the BBC's television output, has promised viewers that the corporation will not make any more all-male comedy panel shows.
Following recommendations made by the BBC Trust last year, Cohen has underlined his determination to see women appearing in the habitually macho environment of panel shows such as QI and Mock the Week. Talking to the Observer about his plans for better representing his audiences on screen, Cohen said: "We're not going to have any more panel shows with no women on them. It's not acceptable."
Cohen, who ran BBC1 until last spring and before that was the controller of digital channel BBC3, also said he had work to do to make sure there are more older women featuring in the corporation's television programmes.
"We are getting better," he said, pointing to the high-profile example of historian Mary Beard. "But we need to do more."
A BBC spokesman said that while it is possible that some panel shows recorded several months ago may still appear without a female team member or chairperson, every episode recorded from now on will include at least one woman.
"There may be very rare occasions where shows that were already recorded – or whose panels were already booked ahead of the order – still have all-male line-ups, but hopefully the change should really become apparent," the spokesman said.
In December, BBC management told programme producers there was "no excuse" for not having women on comedy panel shows after new sex-representation objectives were set by the BBC Trust. In July last year, the Trust asked BBC director general Tony Hall to get more women on air "as a matter of urgency" throughout 2013-14.
Panel shows were immediately chosen by Cohen as a priority and a problem that would be relatively straightforward to address. In-house and external producers were told to ensure that panel shows and quizzes involved at least one woman.
The BBC's entertainment controller, Mark Linsey, said that such programmes would be improved by the mix of sexes. "I'm making it clear to production teams that there's just no excuse for delivering all-male guest lists," he said.
The initiative followed the publication of a document commissioned for the Cultural Diversity Network in 2012 which had singled out the panel shows QI and Mock The Week for "rarely having women represented".
Attention focused on the issue in 2009, when Victoria Wood complained to the Radio Times about the "testosterone-fuelled nature" of such shows. "A lot of programmes are very male-dominated, because they rely on men topping each other, which is not a very female thing," she said.
Wood's words were echoed by Jo Brand, who said she no longer considered appearing on Mock The Week. "And neither do some male stand-ups I know," she said. "We didn't like the prospect of having to bite someone's foot off before they let us say something."
Television producers have argued that women often turn down the more competitive shows and Brand agreed that there are hefty disincentives, including the fears that they might not get a word in or may be edited to look stupid.
Brand said that QI, the general knowledge quiz show on BBC2, gave contributors more time to think and was less aggressive, but added that women were used as "window dressing" on shows such as Never Mind the Buzzcocks and were frequently ridiculed on They Think It's All Over and Have I Got News For You.
Kate Kinninmont, chief executive of Women in Film and Television, a group for women working in the industry, said last year that several of these shows had made progress: "People said for years there are no funny women and it was a struggle to get women on shows like Have I Got News for You. But that has improved, as has the number of women on Question Time."
Mock The Week is repeatedly cited as the worst offender. The topical show has an all-male line-up of regulars and series 12 managed to fill only five of 38 guest spots with female guests. Katherine Ryan and Holly Walsh appeared twice each, and Ava Vidal appeared once. Among other women to have braved the so-called bearpit of BBC panel shows are Ronni Ancona, Nina Conti and Sarah Millican.
Hugh Dennis, a Mock The Week regular, spoke recently about the armoury required by potential women guests. Millican, he said, had a kind of quiet confidence that allowed her to rise above the boyish banter. "She kind of happily sits there sometimes and doesn't bother fighting fire with fire. She looks as if she is thinking, 'Oh you get on with it'. And then, when she says something, she does it brilliantly," he said.
While television sitcoms starring women are enduringly popular – even if, in the case of Mrs Brown's Boys, the woman is a man – Armando Iannucci recently called for more women to write comedy scripts.
But Brand highlighted a "practical problem" of supply and demand early on: "There are far more male comics than women. When I started, there were about 200 male stand-ups and about 20 female – roughly one woman for every two-and-a-half panel shows."THE future of the Schoolboys FAI (SFAI) as an entity could be in jeopardy after their council defied the FAI's wishes on Saturday by throwing the Dublin and District Schoolboys League (DDSL) out of their national cups.
THE future of the Schoolboys FAI (SFAI) as an entity could be in jeopardy after their council defied the FAI's wishes on Saturday by throwing the Dublin and District Schoolboys League (DDSL) out of their national cups.
Last week, the governing body had tabled a proposal to broker peace between the SFAI and DDSL in an ongoing dispute that has left 3,000 players without participation in the illustrious SFAI All-Ireland Cup competitions from U-12 to U-16.
The resolution -- which involved the DDSL supplying the four qualifiers from their region into the main competition by February as well as quashing a €30,000 fine -- was accompanied by a promise of action in January from the FAI if the issue remained unresolved.
There was no explanation given to delegates as to how the DDSL would supply the four teams, arousing suspicion that they would deviate from the rule decreeing that it is conducted through an unseeded system.
Although this document was agreed to by the DDSL board within 24 hours, their affiliation body, the SFAI, awaited direction from the members of their council at Saturday's meeting in Wexford.
REPERCUSSIONS
The FAI's delegate, Terry McAuley, cautioned his fellow members on the repercussions of such a course of action. His pleadings were ignored as the proposal was flatly rejected in a vote with 30 votes in favour and none against. There were four abstentions.
Saturday was the juncture in the national cup competitions where qualifiers from the eight regions are drawn to play each other at the last-32 stage.
Due to the vote, that format was dispensed with and instead a draw comprising of 28 teams, without the DDSL qualifiers, was staged instead. A motion to persevere with the competitions until the final, irrespective of any intervention from the FAI, received overwhelming support.
"This is a landmark day because, for too long, the DDSL board of directors have tried to derail the SFAI Cups," said one league secretary present at the Talbot Hotel who didn't wish to be named.
Still, with 180 teams in the DDSL being left on the shelf due to a mess they had no part in creating, the onus is on the FAI to intervene.
One of the options possibly under consideration by the FAI is suspending the SFAI and instead running the competition themselves in-house with a new draw including the DDSL teams.
If the FAI hierarchy choose this route, however, it would appear extremely risky based upon the mood of defiance on Saturday.
Efforts yesterday afternoon by the Irish Independent to procure a reaction from the FAI proved unsuccessful.
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Irish IndependentImage copyright Thinkstock Image caption The airline said its in-flight software systems were not part of the bug bounty programme
US airline United has launched a reward programme for security experts who find bugs in the software on its websites.
Programmers can earn up to one million air miles for finding the most serious vulnerabilities.
The bug bounty programme does not cover software used in the jets in United's fleet of aircraft.
The reward programme comes soon after the US government warned about the security of software used on in-flight systems.
Legal threat
While many technology firms, such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, reward programmers who find security bugs in their code, United is the first airline to set up and run such a system.
In a blog post announcing the programme, United said it was interested in hearing from researchers who had found issues that affect the "confidentiality, integrity and/or availability of customer or company information".
Rewards would be given for finding a wide variety of bugs. These include vulnerabilities in its mobile apps or bugs that let attackers bypass security controls or run their own code on the airline's websites to steal data.
It warned entrants against trying their attacks against its "live" systems and said any submission that used attack data would be disqualified and might result in legal action.
Anyone wishing to take part must already be a member of the airlines MileagePlus programme through which travellers accrue rewards for flying with the company.
"This is a really smart move by United Airlines," said Jason Steer, chief security strategist from FireEye. "Crowdsource testing for security weaknesses can be hugely valuable to organisations."
Mr Steer added that rewarding people with air miles was a "novel" way to motivate ethical hackers to join in.
Last month, the US Government Accountability Office warned that aircraft avionics could be put at risk by growing use of in-flight internet connections. Bugs in firewalls used on software that supported in-flight entertainment could give attackers a way to get at control systems, it warned.The National Secular Society has written to the Charity Commission urging it to investigate a religious charity behind the sale of an alcoholic drink widely associated with criminal activity in Scotland.
Buckfast Abbey Trust made £8.8 million in the past year, largely through the sale of the controversial tonic wine Buckfast, colloquially known as "Wreck the Hoose Juice" and "Commotion Lotion" in parts of Scotland.
Buckfast Abbey does not pay tax on its income from the wine because it is a charity. The NSS argues that this amounts to an "abuse of the charitable system".
The drink has been associated with violence and other anti-social behaviour in the area east of Glasgow and multiple attempts have been made by the Scottish authorities to limit sale of the drink. In 2015, the Scottish Prison Service found that 43.4% of inmates had consumed Buckfast before their last offence.
The trust justifies its existence as a charity in its annual report, stating its aim is the "advancement of the Roman Catholic religion".
In a letter to the Commission, the National Secular Society says the charity's activities "fall short of the requirement to act in the Public's Benefit".
Stephen Evans, NSS campaigns director, commented: "Charitable status and the accompanying tax benefits should only be granted to organisations that deliver a demonstrable public benefit. In the case of Buckfast Abbey, the social harm caused appears to outweigh any public good. Where this happens, or where the good is simply not good enough, public confidence in supporting charities risks being undermined".
The NSS has also raised concerns about the charity and associated companies being run for "considerable private benefit running to millions of pounds a year". In 2016, the charity's trading arm, J Chandler (Buckfast) Ltd, employed just 28 people yet paid an average of £144,984 to each person. Directors fees exceeded £2.5million in 2013. Directors and past directors include those described in formal documents as ministers of religion.
NSS research, passed on to the Charity Commission, also reveals another possible source of private gain for staff and fellow colleagues of the charity trustees in the form of property loans and developments.
A further concern relates to the excessive retention of reserves, which is heavily discouraged by the Charity Commission so that funds are used for the intended charitable purposes. Buckfast and an associated company have reserves totalling around £87 million, a figure described by secularists as "excessive".
In its letter to the Commission, the NSS said: "Excessive director pay, commercial loans to companies run by religious colleagues and charity staff allowed to profit privately from property investments all point to an abuse of the charity system."
Until 2006 the public benefit of religious organisations was automatically presumed by the law. The Charities Act 2006 removed the presumption of public benefit from religious charities and now requires every charity to explicitly demonstrate that their purposes are for the public benefit.
The Charity Commission's guidance on 'the advancement of religion for the public benefit' is currently under review.The EU will give Ukraine €600 million to bolster government finances, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said today (10 February), as Kiev faces an upsurge in fighting with pro-Russian rebels.
Juncker, speaking after talks with Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, said the country had pressed ahead with reforms despite difficult conditions and the EU should now make good its aid pledges.
“This will be done in the next coming weeks because I think that after having watched the reform effort of Ukraine, Ukrainians have the right to see something in return,” he told reporters.
“We are supporting Ukraine, not only in its conflict with Russia, but more generally… We have a strategic partnership with Ukraine and our future relations will develop along these lines.”
Military situation in eastern Ukraine worsens The foreign ministry of Ukraine expressed deep concern Monday night (30 January) over the “intensification of the Russian-terrorist forces in Donbas”. Other reports, however, speak of a “creeping offensive” of Ukrainian forces in an attempt to create “new facts on the ground”.
Groysman said it was very important to send a strong signal to citizens that the tie-up with the EU was “a positive result and would improve their lives.”
Juncker added that he expected visa liberalisation for citizens of Ukraine, long sought by Kiev, would be in place by the middle of the year.
In recent weeks, the government has faced a very sharp spike in fighting with rebels in the east amid speculation Russia was stoking the conflict to test how new US President Donald Trump would react after he said he favoured improving links with Moscow.
Pro-European Union protests in early 2014 ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and his successor Petro Poroshenko turned his back on Moscow in favour of a future with the EU.
Belarus in energy and border fracas with big brother Russia Russia and Belarus remained allies after the collapse of the Soviet Union but their relationship has soured lately. The main point of contention appears to be energy supply. Euractiv Germany reports.
The two sides signed an association agreement, and a free trade deal, to bolster Ukraine’s struggling economy, with Brussels offering €3.4 billion in loans to help Kiev balance the public finances.
The EU has so far handed over €2.2 billion, with disbursements tied to progress on political and economic reforms meant to end corruption and put Ukraine, a Soviet-era satellite, on a par with European norms.Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes that the US should “follow the law” and let the Bush tax cuts lapse. He disagreed Sunday with Republicans who say that tax cuts pay for themselves.
“I am very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money,” Greenspan said during an appearance on NBC.
“The problem that we’ve gotten into in recent years is that spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous and my view is I don’t think we can play subtle policy here,” said Greenspan.
“You don’t agree with Republican leaders who say tax cuts pay for themselves?” asked NBC’s David Gregory.
“They do not,” Greenspan replied firmly.
Greenspan’s position will likely undermine effforts by congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts, a move that would cost the US anywhere from $2.2 trillion to $3.8 trillion over 10 years, depending on whose estimate you believe. The tax cuts expire at the end of this year.
Greenspan has been a hero to some conservative economic policymakers, who have in the past praised him for his work as Federal Reserve chairman, where he oversaw US fiscal policy from the Reagan era through the tech boom of the ’90s. But many economists now fault Greenspan for his use of aggressively low interest rates after the 2001 recession. They say his fiscal policies created the asset bubble that caused the recent economic crisis.
Greenspan also warned Sunday that the US risks falling into a “double-dip” recession if the housing market weakens further.
“If home prices stay stable, then I think we will skirt the worst of the housing problem,†Greenspan said. “But right under this current price level, mainly 5, 7 or 8 percent below, is a very large block of mortgages, which are under water, so to speak, or could be under water. And that would induce a major increase in foreclosures, foreclosures would feed on the weakness in prices, and it would create a problem.â€Â
This video is from NBC’s Meet the Press, broadcast Aug. 1, 2010.SANAA (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a German security guard employed by the German embassy in Yemen’s capital on Sunday as he was leaving a supermarket, Yemeni security officials said, in an attack they said bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
The man was gunned down in Sanaa’s Hadda district, where the embassy is located. It was the latest in a series of attacks on foreign and local officials in the U.S.-allied state, which is battling one of the most active branches of al Qaeda.
“We believe that al Qaeda was behind the killing,” a Yemeni police source said. Another source said that the guard was killed as he was leaving the store to go to his car.
Pan-Arab news channel al-Arabiya reported that the guard had been shot dead as the assailants tried to kidnap the German ambassador Carola Mueller-Holtkemper, who escaped.
Two Yemeni officials said they were unable to confirm the report of the attempted kidnap. Embassy employees in Sanaa and the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin declined to comment.
Mueller-Holtkemper had only recently arrived in Yemen and presented her credentials to Yemeni authorities less than a week ago, a statement on the embassy’s website showed.
In a separate attack on Sunday, kidnappers seized an African employee of the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF as he was travelling from the Sanaa to the Red Sea coastal town of Hudaidah, a UNICEF official in Sanaa said.
Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has attacked several Western targets, including airliners, and is believed to have been behind a series of killings of foreign and local officials in the country since 2011.
In November last year gunmen shot dead a Saudi diplomat and his Yemeni bodyguard in Sanaa in an attack believed to be the work of the group. A month earlier, masked gunmen shot dead a Yemeni man who worked in the security office of the U.S. Embassy.
Germany was one of several Western countries which shut their Yemen embassies in early August after a U.S. warning of a possible major militant attack in the Middle East. The mission reopened after a two-week closure.
The U.S. embassy in Yemen was attacked in September 2012 by demonstrators angry at a film they said was blasphemous to Islam. Hundreds of Yemenis broke through the main gate of the heavily fortified compound, smashed windows of security offices outside the embassy and burned cars.
Slideshow (2 Images)
On Sunday AQAP said in a statement it was behind an attack on an army base in the southeast of the country last week in protest at the army’s cooperation with the United States and vowed to continue its “holy war” against Yemeni forces.
Militants took advantage of political chaos in Yemen during the Arab Spring uprising in 2011 to seize control of some towns and surrounding areas in the south of the country.
They were beaten back by Yemeni forces with assistance from the United States and dispersed into smaller groups spread across the south of the country.Since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, E! News correspondent Ken Baker has appeared on the air expressing disgust at the shamed mogul’s behavior. But two women who have worked with Baker told TheWrap he has his own history of sexual harassment.
One former E! News employee said that in 2012, he called her into his dimly lit office and, after a few minutes, invited her to sit on his lap. Another woman, a former E! News intern, said he kissed her without her consent in 2011, propositioned her for sex repeatedly over several years, and, in 2015, texted her that he wanted to give her “a Tiffany dildo with ‘Ken Baker’ engraved on the shaft.” (See image below.)
“I am very disturbed by these anonymous allegations, which make my heart ache. I take them very seriously,” Baker said in a statement to TheWrap. “I care deeply for people’s feelings and sincerely live in a way that treats people with dignity and respect.”
Also Read: Tyler Grasham Fired From APA Agency After Sexual Assault Accusation
The ex-intern’s version of events was corroborated by both the former employee and a career coach who says she complained to her years ago about inappropriate texts from Baker. All three spoke to TheWrap on condition of anonymity.
The coach told TheWrap she was “furious” when the ex-intern showed her the texts.
“I wanted to report that day, but I had to respect her wishes. She did not want me to do anything. She said I’ll handle it,” the coach told TheWrap. “I tried to convince her. I really did.”
None of the women accused Baker of making threats, but the intern worried that if she came forward, she might lose career opportunities. So, she said, she tried to brush Baker off jokingly, without offending him.
Baker continued sending inappropriate texts more than four years after the internship ended, the intern said, so she finally sent him a text saying, in no uncertain terms, that the texts had to stop. He apologized, she said, and the next day got her a meeting with a casting director. She took that as an admission from Baker that he had crossed the line.
“E! has a longstanding commitment to providing a safe working environment in which everyone is treated with respect and dignity,” the network said in a statement to TheWrap. “We take all complaints of misconduct seriously, and thoroughly investigate all allegations of harassment.”
Baker will not appear on the air while E! investigates.
Baker, a 47-year-old former hockey player, has written extensively about what he calls a “hormonal health crisis” in his late teens and twenties. His 2001 memoir, which inspired last year’s comedy film “The Late Bloomer,” describes how a benign brain tumor “flooded” his body with “massive amounts” of a hormone that diminished his sex drive, softened his muscle tone, sometimes caused impotence, and gave him swollen, sore nipples that leaked milky fluid. He wrote that after the tumor’s removal in 1998, he became a “hormonally healthy man.”
Also Read: How Fabrizio Lombardo Became Harvey Weinstein's Hustler
He has been accused of crossing lines before. A 2007 lawsuit, filed against Baker when he was West Coast bureau chief of Us Weekly, said he hired his children’s nanny as a reporter and texted her, “I want to have sex with you,” and “I want to see you pregnant with pigtails.” He was hired by E! News a year later, and a year after that, the lawsuit was dismissed.
The former employee who shared the “lap” story said he often made inappropriate comments, or touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable.
“He makes physical comments like, ‘That’s a really cute outfit’ or ‘That’s a really tight shirt.’ … He would put his hand on my waist and leave it there too long,” she told TheWrap. “I almost feel like it’s a power trip. It’s like, ‘I can do these things.'”
At one point, in 2012, Baker asked her to look at a script in his office, she said. There was no one else nearby, and she needed to lean across him to see the screen, she said. Baker didn’t move to make it easier, and then he suggested, “Or you could just sit on my lap,” she said.
Also Read: Ashley Judd on Her Silence About Harvey Weinstein: 'I Don't Know That I Would Have Been Believed'
Like many of his comments, she said, it could have been taken as a joke. But she said he then “kind of pushed back in his chair a little bit,” so she could actually sit on his lap.
She said she would make a point after that to try to prevent other young women from having to be alone with Baker.
The ex-intern said she first met Baker in 2011, in an elevator. “He kind of looked at me and I could see in his eyes he thought I was cute,” she said.
At some point, they began having talks in |
has always stuck to the position that it is unaware of nuclear weapons being deployed on the vessels. Now, however, former high-ranking officials from the German Defense Ministry, including former State Secretary Lothar Rühl and former chief of the planning staff Hans Rühle, have told SPIEGEL that they had always assumed that Israel would deploy nuclear weapons on the submarines. Rühl had even discussed the issue with the military in Tel Aviv.
Israel has a policy of not commenting officially on its nuclear weapons program. Documents from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry make it clear, however, that the German government has known about the program since 1961. The last discussion for which there is evidence took place in 1977, when then-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt spoke to then-Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan about the issue.
The submarines are built by the German shipyard HDW in Kiel. Three submarines have already been delivered to Israel, and three more will be delivered by 2017. In addition, Israel is considering ordering its seventh, eighth and ninth submarines from Germany.
The German government recently signed the contract for the delivery of the sixth vessel. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, Chancellor Angela Merkel made substantial concessions to the Israelis. Not only is Berlin financing one-third of the cost of the submarine, around 135 million ($168 million), but it is also allowing Israel to defer its payment until 2015.
Merkel had tied the delivery of the sixth submarine to a number of conditions, including a demand that Israel stop its expansionist settlement policy and allow the completion of a sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip, which is partially financed with German money. So far, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met none of the terms.
Check back on SPIEGEL International on Monday for the full English-language version of SPIEGEL's cover story on Germany's cooperation with Israel over its submarine program.In 2006, the Bush administration sent five of the Uighurs to Albania, but destinations for the rest remained elusive. In 2008, a federal district court judge ordered the remaining 17 be brought into the United States. But in February 2009, the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia overturned that ruling, saying the judiciary could not order the executive branch to admit a foreigner into the country. The Supreme Court declined to review the matter.
Meanwhile, in the spring of 2009, the Obama administration nearly resettled two of the men in the care of a Uighur community in Northern Virginia, as a test case and in hopes of inducing other countries to take detainees. But a congressional backlash scuttled the plan and helped foster an atmosphere in which lawmakers imposed transfer restrictions on detainees.
Greg Craig, who was Mr. Obama’s White House counsel in the first year of the administration and was closely involved in efforts to resolve the Uighurs’ fate, celebrated the departure of the last Uighurs from Guantánamo.
“From the beginning, we knew that one test of our determination to close Guantánamo would be measured by what happened to the Uighurs,” Mr. Craig said of the final transfers. “That the last of the Uighurs has now left Guantánamo is an important milestone. They didn’t belong there in the first place.”
Amid intense lobbying by the United States, in 2009 four were sent to Bermuda and six to Palau, and in 2010 two went to Switzerland. In a twist, however, releasing the rest became a problem because the remaining five detainees refused offers to go to certain countries, extending their imprisonment for years.
All five rejected offers to go to Palau or the Maldives, officials said. Last year, El Salvador offered to take them in, and two accepted that offer while the final three are said to have rejected that opportunity, too, and held out for something they liked better.
Last summer, according to an American official familiar with the matter, Costa Rica offered to take the remaining three, and the deal advanced enough that in September the Obama administration notified Congress that it intended to transfer them. But China pressured Costa Rica to withdraw its offer, and it did so.How Chocolate Might Save The Planet
When you unwrap it, break off a piece and stick it in your mouth, it doesn't remind you of the pyramids, a suspension bridge or a skyscraper; but chocolate, says materials scientist Mark Miodownik, "is one of our greatest engineering creations."
True, it begins with a cocoa bean plucked from a tree. But no one would eat a raw cocoa bean. "It tastes revolting," Miodownik says in his new book, Stuff Matters.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
But cut it, leave it, roast it, tinker with it for a couple of centuries (and add sugar)...
Robert Krulwich/NPR
... and cocoa beans can be totally transformed. Chocolate now melts in our mouths, floods our senses with flavor, and might — just might — Miodownik suggests, get us to have fewer babies (and thereby save the planet). Let's start with the bean.
Chocolate's Secret
Chocolate bars have a circus trick, an "Oh, my" moment: They're solid when you unwrap them. They make a satisfying snap when you break off a piece. But then, when you put that piece into your mouth, when it's resting on your tongue, it turns liquid. A chocolate bar, Miodownik says, jumps states so quickly, it is, in effect, a paradox: "a solid drink... made possible by engineering."
The secret ingredient is cocoa butter, stored in the form of large molecules called triglycerides that come with three (thus the "tri") prongs. Inside the chocolate, these fat molecules are jammed together but sensitive to temperature. They can sit very loosely, like this...
Robert Krulwich/NPR
... or more tightly, like this...
Robert Krulwich/NPR
... or ( I'm redrawing this from Mark's book) more richly intermeshed, like this:
Robert Krulwich/NPR
The denser the package, the harder the chocolate. So when you break off a piece, it's more interlocked, like the third drawing. If you've left it out on a table in the sun, and it's gotten gooey and melty, it's more like the top drawings.
If the candy company has been careful, your candy bar should not have experienced temperatures higher than 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit).
Robert Krulwich/NPR
"Now, in your mouth," Mark writes, "they experience higher temperatures for the first time. This is the moment they have been created for. It is their first and last performance. As they warm up and reach the threshold of [your body temperature, 98.6 degrees F], they start to melt. This frees them to move around as a liquid."
Once it starts to flow, says Miodownik, chocolate is soothing and comforting, but it is also exciting and — not to put too fine a point on it — seems to satisfy more than a physical hunger.
Is Chocolate Better Than Kissing?
People (it's no secret) really like chocolate. The signs are everywhere. Chocolate billionaires proliferate on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world (Michele Ferrero of Italy, who makes Nutella, is worth $27 billion; Forrest Mars, Jacqueline Mars and John Mars, who make Milky Ways, Snickers and M&Ms, are collectively worth about $60 billion).
Then there's the science. In 2007, David Lewis, a psychologist now at Mindlab International in Britain, recruited a small number of couples, all in their 20s, attached electrodes to their scalps, monitored their hearts and asked them to suck on pieces of dark chocolate. Which they did.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
Next he asked them to kiss. Which they did.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
Then he compared the effect on their bodies — kissing versus tasting chocolate. It wasn't a big study (six couples) and it hasn't been repeated as far as I know, and it may have been sponsored by food companies. But his findings, according to a BBC report, were very pronounced:
Both kissing and chocolate raised heart rates. But chocolate's effect was longer lasting and more powerful. The buzz from chocolate, Lewis told the BBC, "in many cases lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss." Even with its caffeine, sugar and stimulants, "chocolate's power really surprised us," Lewis said.
"The study also found that as the chocolate started melting, all regions of the brain received a boost far more intense and longer lasting than the excitement seen with the kissing," according to the BBC.
Is Chocolate Better Than Sex?
These findings, Mark Miodownik writes, "point to a genuine truth about chocolate: For many, it is better than sex."
He then looks up the countries with the highest consumption of chocolate. Sixteen of the top 20, he notices, are located in Northern Europe. Switzerland is the leader; then there's Ireland, the U.K., Austria, Belgium, Germany.
Just for fun, I looked up the fertility rates in these countries and found that, with two exceptions (Ireland and France), women in chocolate-loving countries happen to have fewer than two babies — that's below the replacement rate. If that continues, these countries will get decidedly smaller.
Is chocolate sometimes a substitute for baby-making? Possibly. Or maybe it's just the cold. Notice, there's no tropical country on the Love-Chocolate List. Chocolate doesn't taste as good when it's warm. Either the candy bars melt on the shelves or get put in the fridge (where they are gobbled before they are ready to melt, spoiling the solid-to-liquid experience.) "This problem may explain, perhaps," Mark writes, "why the Mesoamericans, who first invented chocolate in the tropics, never created a solid bar but consumed it only as a drink."
OK, there are, of course, many other things that affect a country's fertility rate. But still, maybe, just maybe, it would be worthwhile to think about trying this: a worldwide chocolate experiment. We rejigger chocolate one more time, so it is less temperature sensitive. Then we take these new, dark, melt-in-your-mouth bars and make them available to young people all over the world — for free. Wait a generation, and see what happens.
If the world starts to have fewer babies, if the population boom subsides, freeing up resources, allowing for cleaner air, more wild spaces, more butterflies, more panthers, more trees, more beauty, we can then turn together to those little brown bars, and say (just before we swallow), "Thank you, chocolate."Dave Mustaine says that Chris Adler "has nothing to do" with MEGADETH anymore and will apparently not be rejoining the band on the road again, despite the group's previous announcement to the contrary.
Adler played drums on MEGADETH's latest album, "Dystopia", and took part in most of the band's live shows in support of the CD between January and May. On those shows in late 2015 and early 2016 where Adler was unable to play with MEGADETH, he was temporarily replaced by Tony Laureano (ex-DIMMU BORGIR, NILE, ANGELCORPSE), the veteran extreme-metal skinsman who has worked as the band's drum tech since 2011.
Since May 20, MEGADETH has utilized the services of Dirk Verbeuren, the 40-year-old Belgian-born-and-now-Los-Angeles-based drummer who has been playing with SOILWORK for more than a decade.
During a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel on July 1 — the day before MEGADETH's performance in the city — Mustaine was asked by Ron Ben-Tovim of the Machine Music web site what considerations he takes into account when welcoming new musicians, like Adler and Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro, into the band. Mustaine responded: "Well, I think that if you're in the presence of greatness, it would be shameful not to allow that person to be great. But let me back up, though. Chris Adler is not with MEGADETH; he's in LAMB OF GOD. He was a session guy. It was what you could call 'work for hire.' And he has nothing to do with us anymore, and he is with his band, which… I'm very grateful for his contributions. I'm grateful for him introducing us to Dirk. We still haven't announced who our new drummer is gonna be. [But] it won't be Chris Adler, because he's in LAMB OF GOD."
In a May 20 Facebook posting, MEGADETH welcomed Verbeuren to the band's touring lineup and announced that the SOILWORK drummer would be "filling in at all shows until Chris rejoins on June 28th." It appears now, however, that Dirk will continue to play drums for MEGADETH on the road for the foreseeable future, with Adler not returning to the band at all.
During a March 2016 interview with the South Orange, New Jersey radio station WSOU, Mustaine talked about the possibility of Adler playing on the next MEGADETH studio album. "I think it's too early to say that, but my hunch is that the answer would probably be yes," he said. "I think Chris wants to do it. I have no reason not to have him do it. I thought it was really inspiring being around him and his positive energy and really optimistic outlook towards life and music in general. It was good for me, it was good for the band, and, yeah, if he wants to do the next record… I mean, the drum position is his if he wants it until we get into a position where we have to make a decision otherwise."
Dirk was recommended for the MEGADETH job by Adler, who called Verbeuren "probably [one of the] top three drummers in the world." Chris told Banger TV's "Lock Horns" how the connection came about. "MEGADETH is on tour now doing a couple of festivals — same festivals that LAMB OF GOD is," he said. "We tried as much as we could with all the promoters and all the festivals to have us coincide and play on the same day. I've done double duty with LAMB and MEGADETH across the U.K. and just done five shows with them along this tour that we're currently on right now, because we were able to collide and make those things happen. As we go in different reactions and play different things, MEGADETH has a drummer to be able to play those shows. Dave [Mustaine] would certainly prefer to have me there, and I love playing with those guys and I would love to be there, but obviously I cannot be in two places at once."
He continued: "Dave asked me… He said, 'As we're doing this, and if you're not able to be there… I understand you wanna fulfill your commitment with LAMB OF GOD. And we're planning on going over to Europe while LAMB OF GOD is still touring. Help me find… Who would you want to drum for us?' And I said, 'First of all, the drum tech you currently have, Tony, who was the drummer for DIMMU BORGIR and ANGELCORPSE, [he's an] amazing drummer, so you have someone on staff that can easily do this.' But then he asked, 'Well, if there was someone out there that you would personally recommend, personality-wise and playing-wise?' And [Dirk] began the job [at Rock On The Range]."
Jesus! Why can't you understand Chris is in LOG. Every interview said he was a session drummer & that he was in LOG. https://t.co/kpfIAoE53w — Dave Mustaine (@DaveMustaine) July 3, 2016
I know. But as you say, I made it clear that he was not in Megadeth https://t.co/fIlCI7zVR5 — Dave Mustaine (@DaveMustaine) July 3, 2016In 2014, when Emma Watson stood up in front of the U.N. to deliver a galvanizing speech on the state of gender equality around the globe, she drew fire from both sides of the aisle. As she fielded a coordinated attack from online users who considered her feminism to be “a growing cancer,” Watson was also hammered on the left by those who felt her stance on gender equality wasn’t inclusive enough. But Watson—who is taking a year off from acting to grow her understanding about global gender equality—has some sharp words for her critics.
“We are not supposed to talk about money, because people will think you’re ‘difficult’ or a ‘diva,’” she told Esquire echoing Jennifer Lawrence’s recent comments on the wage gap in Hollywood. “But there’s a willingness now to be like, ‘Fine. Call me a ‘diva,’ call me a ‘feminazi,’ call me ‘difficult,’ call me a ‘First World feminist,’ call me whatever you want, it’s not going to stop me from trying to do the right thing and make sure that the right thing happens.”
You may think that the million-dollar stakes of the Hollywood wage gap alone would be enough to make Watson’s message not very universal, but she argues, “It doesn’t just affect me. It affects all the other women who are in this with me, and it affects all the other men who are in this with me, too. Hollywood is just a small piece of a gigantic puzzle but it’s in the spotlight. Whether you are a woman on a tea plantation in Kenya, or a stockbroker on Wall Street, or a Hollywood actress, no one is being paid equally.”
And Watson revealed to Esquire that her status as the beloved star of the Harry Potter franchise hasn’t shielded her from the nastier sides of gender inequality. Yes, even Hermione gets harassed. “I’ve had my arse slapped as I’ve left a room,” she says. “I’ve felt scared walking home. I’ve had people following me. I don’t talk about these experiences much, because coming from me they’ll sound like a huge deal and I don’t want this to be about me, but most women I know have experienced it and worse.”
One of the biggest criticisms levied against Watson’s U.N. speech was that her words on gender equality weren’t inclusive of non-white, non-straight women. But recently Watson has hitched her star to non-white feminist author and intersectionality expert, bell hooks. Watson sat down with hooks for a recent interview in Paper magazine and, when speaking to Esquire, casually dropped a reference to hooks: “Women want to be women. We just want to be treated equally. It’s not about man hating. bell hooks says, ‘Patriarchy has no gender.’”
But hooks isn’t the only author Watson has been studying. She also dropped heavy names like Gloria Steinem and Rebecca Solnit in her Esquire chat, and it’s clear that those who thought Watson was just another celebrity dilettante activist were sorely mistaken. “Feminism isn’t about being perfect,” Watson says, citing Steinem. But it’s clear that Watson—a Brown graduate and poster child for bright, young women everywhere—is determined to get as close to perfect as she can.
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD Newsletter Sign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood. E-mail Address SubscribeOur discussion begins by presenting a basic typology of meditation-induced light experiences based upon the data derived from the coded interviews from our subject pool. Data from these first-person reports of meditation-induced light experiences are then compared to typologies of related phenomena derived from traditional Buddhist literary sources. We also present traditional Buddhist interpretations of their significance in terms of the practitioner’s progress in meditation.
The second main subsection discusses the neurobiology of light-related experiences according to scientific research on sensory deprivation, perceptual isolation, and clinical disorders of the visual system. We draw upon this literature both to posit the possible underlying mechanisms of meditation-induced light experiences and in order to suggest a novel interpretation of meditation that calls attention to its structural similarities with sensory deprivation and perceptual isolation.
We end our discussion with the implications of our findings for the scientific study and clinical application of meditation.
A TYPOLOGY OF MEDITATION-INDUCED LIGHT EXPERIENCES BASED UPON QUALITATIVE DATA AND TEXTUAL SOURCES
Class one: discrete lightforms Four practitioners reported discrete lightforms appearing as either “globes,” “jewels,” or “spots.” These lights appeared in various colors and were also described as being “very vivid” or “very distinct.” Discrete lightforms could be either singular or multiple in number and were generally small, being described as “little stars” or “small radiant bursts.” Some of these bright, luminous shapes were characterized by some practitioners as being stable, or as “hanging out in space,” whereas for others they were more animated. For example, one practitioner described spots of lights as floating “together in a wave, sort of like a group of birds migrating.” Small lights – singular or multiple – that appear as generally round points of colored light are the first group of phenomena that can be linked with accounts derived from traditional Buddhist literature. Literature throughout the Therav Open in a separate window da Buddhist tradition describes a particular mental phenomenon called a nimitta. The nimitta arises once a preliminary mastery of concentration has been established, and especially through developing concentration by focusing attention on the inhalation and exhalation of the breath (Ledi Sayadaw, 1999). Although the particular mental image or form of the nimitta varies across practitioners and depends upon the object of concentration, the most common Buddhist meditation practice involves taking the breath as a primary object of attention. A fifth century treatise entitled The Path of Purification (Buddhaghosa, 1999, p. 277) describes the nimitta that arises through concentration on the breath as follows: It appears to some as a star or cluster of gems or a cluster of pearls, […] to others like a long braid string or a wreath of flowers or a puff of smoke, to others like a stretched-out cobweb or a film of cloud or a lotus flower or a chariot wheel or the moon’s disk or the sun’s disk. Many of these initial descriptions of the nimitta are consonant with the reports of small points of light described as “globes,” “jewels,” or “stars” discussed above. One practitioner from our study also described a white light that appeared to be the size of moon as seen in the night sky. While Buddhaghosa suggests that the different lightforms of the nimitta are idiosyncratic, Buddhist sources from other traditions present similar phenomena to the “cluster of gems,” “puff of smoke,” and “film of cloud” as arising in a progressive sequence. Extensive presentations of light-related signs of attainment can be found in the Buddhist tantras – a vast body of literature associated with ritual and contemplative practices that developed and flourished in India between the seventh and the eleventh century (Samuel, 2008). According to a traditional commentary on the tantras, a typical trajectory for the lightforms is as follows: The first is described as being “like seeing a mirage,” the second as a “smoke-like vision,” the third a “vision like flickering fireflies,” the fourth is like “the glow of a butterlamp,” and the fifth is “like a clear autumn sky pervaded by the light of the full moon” (Dondrup, 1997, p. 85). Various tantras present the progressive sequence of mental images in different orders; Gyatso (2004) explains that this is due to the different techniques that can be used to induce the involuntary mental images. While the reference in the tantras to lights “like flickering fireflies” closely resembles the reports of “Christmas lights” and “small radiant bursts” discussed in the first class of light-related phenomena, the depictions of a mirage-like light and an illuminated autumn sky more closely correspond to phenomena we include in the second class of meditation-induced light experiences.On January 3, 2017, I once again swore to protect and defend the constitution. Our constitution calls for the impeachment of a president who has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
Obstruction of justice is a felony under the United States criminal code. See § 1512 (b)(3) of the U.S. criminal code. It applies when anyone uses threats to hinder a federal criminal investigation. While this section is commonly applied to witness intimidation, the courts have consistently ruled that it is also applicable when one threatens an FBI agent or other law enforcement official.
On June 8, I heard every word of FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee given under oath and penalty of perjury. Comey is a credible witness, well-respected in the law enforcement community nationwide, and he testified on the basis of contemporaneous notes. Director Comey is not a Berniecrat hostile to the Trump Agenda; he served in the Trump Administration, and wished to continue to do so.
Comey testified that in February the president threatened him in order to get him to curtail the investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Threatening an FBI director in order to curtail an ongoing FBI investigation constitutes a felony under § 1512.
In May, President Trump fired Director Comey and indicated that his purpose was to thwart the Russian collusion investigation. A president is free to fire an FBI director if he feels that it is in the national interest, but firing the FBI director for the purpose of thwarting an ongoing FBI investigation involving the president himself, constitutes a second violation of § 1512. As to this second felony there are no evidentiary questions, as the critical evidence is the president’s own voice on video tape in an interview by Lester Holt.
In July, President Trump made comments to the “New York Times,” on the record and on audio tape, that were interpreted by many as threatening Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the purpose of preventing him from looking at Trump’s financial dealings. This may well be a third violation of § 1512.
In each case, the president’s efforts to obstruct justice were ill-advised and ineffectual. But the court cases are clear ― one can be convicted of obstruction of justice even for an inept and unsuccessful attempt. Or in this case, perhaps three inept and unsuccessful attempts.
I believe that filing articles of impeachment was necessary for me to fully comply with my oath to defend the constitution.
I believe that filing articles of impeachment was necessary for me to fully comply with my oath to defend the constitution. This is why I filed H.Res.438 on July 12. But no one believes that this Congress is likely to impeach and remove President Trump anytime soon. So, what is the practical effect?
One possibility, and this is a faint hope, is that the actual filing of articles of impeachment, combined with other factors, will cause the White House staff to stage an “intervention.” Already Republican senators are publicly and privately warning President Trump that he needs to restrain his behavior or impeachment will become real. Recently, Senator Lindsey Graham warned the president that if he fires Attorney General Jeff Sessions “all hell would break loose.” This was a clear reference to impeachment, a warning made more tangible by the filing of articles of impeachment. Perhaps, Republicans and White House staff can convince President Trump to exercise impulse control and to govern competently. Maybe they can persuade him that never again should he impulsively blurt out highly sensitive intelligence to a Russian foreign minister.
What seems more likely is that Trump will continue to provide reckless and incoherent governance, even after the appointment of his new Chief of Staff, General Kelly. If this continues into next year unabated, Republicans will eventually join in the impeachment effort, and a few will thank me for getting the ball rolling in July of 2017.
I did not file articles of impeachment to further the interests of my political party or the political values I have fought for all my life.
I did not file articles of impeachment to further the interests of my political party or the political values I have fought for all my life. I served with Mike Pence in the House for twelve years and disagree with him on almost every issue. I never dreamed I would author a measure that would put him in the White House. If Trump were removed, Pence would provide constitutional, law-abiding, and relatively competent leadership devoted to implementing a deplorable agenda. I took an oath to protect the country and the Constitution, not an oath to seek advantage for my political party.
The parallels to Watergate are striking. In 1972, Republican burglars stole files from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters. Back then files were sheets of paper in manila folders. In 2016, Russian cyber burglars stole files from DNC headquarters. Today, “files” are electrons on hard drives.
The Watergate break-in was discovered in June 1972. About a year later, Articles of Impeachment were filed against Richard Nixon. The cyber burglary of the DNC was discovered last Spring. About a year later, I filed Articles of Impeachment against Donald Trump.
It took about a year after the Articles of Impeachment were filed against Nixon until the House Judiciary Committee voted to report such Articles to the House floor. (At that point, Richard Nixon resigned.) As things are now proceeding, it wouldn’t surprise me if roughly a year after I filed Articles of Impeachment there was a vote to impeach President Trump in the House Judiciary Committee. But how the future unfolds depends chiefly on whether Trump provides capable, competent leadership—his fate is in his own hands.
There are some differences between Watergate and the present case. Nixon faced a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives while Trump enjoys a Republican majority. So a higher level of public concern will be necessary to initiate impeachment hearings. On the other hand, Nixon was competent, careful, and not a Russian stooge. If Trump remains the opposite, then within a year, we may see the level of public concern necessary to force impeachment hearings.
A final similarity to Watergate: It was never proven that Nixon colluded with the Watergate burglars. It was not the initial crime that doomed Nixon, it was the cover-up, the obstruction of justice. We may never know whether president Trump colluded with the Russian cyber burglars. If Trump is impeached, it will not be for the initial crime, but for the cover-up, the obstruction of justice.
We need not wait until all the various investigations give us a complete catalog of all of Trump’s possible wrongdoings. We have the sworn testimony of a credible and percipient witness and Trump’s own words on videotape (Lester Holt) and audiotape (The New York Times). We have clear and convincing evidence that President Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice. It is time now for the House Judiciary Committee to begin hearings on impeachment.Concept Design by Matt Bell © DXLab
Long-Haul Revolution of 2025 A story about the effect of autonomous trucks on social and economic structure Kevin Fishner Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 28, 2017 I. Displacement The front page of the New York Times read in tall, lean letters, “A Dangerous Precedent.” The Long-Haul Revolution of 2025 is the most transformative global event since September 11th, 2001. In the United States private enterprise has replaced government in providing support for the economically displaced.
Concept Design by Matt Bell © DXLab
Esro v. American Trucking Associations set the economic structure of the 21st Century. The judge ordered Esro, a private enterprise, to provide unemployment compensation for the four million freight workers that were displaced by self-driving trucks. This set a new precedent for corporations to replace government in providing social support for the populace. Instead of selling self-driving trucks to existing freight companies, Esro started its own freight division. The margins were significantly better and no company could compete with the pricing. The machines never made mistakes, got into accidents, or got pulled over. Delays were infrequent. Customer service was perfect. The company joked about putting a “How’s my driving?” sticker on the back of each truck. Of course they knew how the driving quality was, it was a programmed machine tracked per millisecond. The trucks were perfect, and as a result Esro’s operating costs were a fraction of existing freight companies’ operating costs. Esro undercut the market with reduced pricing and put the major trucking companies out of business. Of the eight million out of a job, only half were able to find replacement positions elsewhere in the economy. It was the first mass triumph of machine over man.
Concept Design by Matt Bell © DXLab
And then the riots happened. And the court case. And the political idealist rants. Esro changed the structure of the economy. Man was replaced by machine at scale. Deep Blue defeating Kasparov cracked the ice. It showed mankind that human intelligence was not supreme. But man versus machine never hit so close to home and at this scale — machines never affected human survival by taking their place in the marketplace and society. “Am I next?” became the question heard at the dinner table. On September 3rd, 2023 the American Trucking Associations filed a class-action lawsuit against Esro on behalf of the four million unemployed trucking employees. The outcome of the suit would go beyond setting a legal precedent. It would determine the political and economic structure of an automation-driven society. II. Riots The government was forced into unfamiliar territory when four million Americans were put out of a job in less than a year. As tax-paying Americans, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) members expected unemployment benefits. With average trucking salaries at $40,000 the workers should receive $400/week in unemployment benefits for 26 weeks. Spread across four million displaced workers, that’s $41.6 billion added to the already stretched-thin $100 billion paid out each year in unemployment benefits. The government couldn’t afford the cost, and decided to pay out less than half the amount instead, just $200/week. That’s the equivalent of being paid $5.00 an hour, an amount challenging to raise a family on, or even support oneself. The millions of unemployed workers had plenty of time on their hands. Protests organized all over the country criticizing the Administration for negligence, for leaving workers and their families on the street.
Concept Design by Matt Bell © DXLab
News outlets made the protests the obsession of the nation, yet again pitting the classes against each other. The conflict reached a boiling point on CNN one night as Jack Patterson, a recently displaced trucker, and Margaret White, senator from Virginia, got into a debate on the government’s responsibility in supporting its citizens in duress. Rich O’Connell, the news anchor started the debate with a question innocuous on the surface, but clearly intended to build emotional support for the ATA. “Jack, how are you and your family doing?” “It’s been tough,” Jack replied while avoiding eye contact with the camera. “Living on $200 a week with no end in sight can wear you down. I’ve been looking for a job ever since getting laid off, but as you know the job market isn’t booming. Certainly not booming enough to find spots for four million people, and I’m just one of four million right now.”
Concept Design by Matt Bell © DXLab
Shifting focus to the Senator, O’Connell asked, “Senator White, how do you and Congress plan to help the Patterson family and the other families struggling to get by?” “Well, we’re confident that the job market will find homes for these fine Americans. Until then, we’re happy to support the families with unemployment benefits.” “Senator White, what new jobs do you expect us to take?” Patterson interrupted. “America has proven time and time again that ingenuity drives the economy. Burgeoning industries like solar energy and software development are seeing huge growth in the U.S.” “Sure that sounds great in a few years, but what about right now? How can I put food on the table now? What happens when I’m out of the workforce for two years and don’t have the skills necessary to be placed in the new economy?”
Concept Design by Matt Bell © DXLabLOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sony is getting into the roller-coaster theme park business... sort of.
Sony Pictures Animation has pre-emptively picked up rights to the Atari video game “Rollercoaster Tycoon,” and is developing the project as a live-action/CGI hybrid.
The “Tycoon” franchise, created by Chris Sawyer, is a popular series of computer games that simulate a combination of designing roller coasters and amusement park management. Each game challenges players with open-ended amusement park management and development while allowing them to construct and customize their own unique roller coasters.
The games are popular in the PC world, generating more than $300 million in sales and giving Atari bragging rights for having the third-best-selling PC title of all time in the U.S.
Harald Zwart is spearheading the development of the big-screen adaptation as a possible directing project and will executive produce. He directed Sony’s “The Karate Kid,” the upcoming remake of the 1980s classic that is produced by Will Smith and stars his son Jaden Smith.King County prosecutors say a group of friends were determined to get back items stolen from a woman’s house near Auburn. One of them is now in jail, charged with breaking into a man’s trailer and shooting him.
King County prosecutors say an Auburn-area woman became so frustrated that deputies hadn’t recovered items stolen from her house a few weeks ago that she enlisted a group of friends to help her retrieve her Xbox and 55-inch flat-screen TV from a man’s home.
One of those friends, Asotoetu Atiulagi, 18, of Auburn, is accused of shooting the man early on Jan. 13. He has been charged with first-degree assault and first-degree burglary and is being held in jail in lieu of $250,000 bail, jail records show.
According to the charges, the woman learned from a relative that items stolen from her home were inside a man’s trailer near Enumclaw. The relative had been inside and took photos, which were then sent to the woman, the charges say.
The woman passed along the information to the King County Sheriff’s Office but didn’t have an exact address, though she knew the man’s name, the charges say.
“Frustrated with the slow police response to the investigation,” the woman and five friends, including Atiulagi, armed themselves with baseball bats, two BB guns and at least one gun and drove to the man’s home, according to the charges.
Around 1:30 a.m., they knocked on the door but got no response, so Atiulagi crawled through a window, then opened the door for a male accomplice, charging papers say.
The resident, who had been asleep with his girlfriend, heard a noise and on his surveillance monitor spotted people surrounding his trailer. He armed himself with a handgun, threw open his bedroom door and saw two men in his living room, say the charges. When he yelled at the men |
cover the actual II AC rail fare and local conveyance as applicable. Reimbursement will be made on production of tickets.
Value
The award shall consist of a bronze medal of the following specifications:
(i) Size : 6.35 cm in diameter
(ii) Weight : About 114 grams
(iii)Design
Obverse : Name of Medal (in Devanagari character), Name of the recipient (in Devanagari characters), Year (in International numerals)
Reverse : Seal of the Academy
Each awardee will be presented a Medal, a certificate and cash prize of Rs. 25,000/.
As part of their career development, those young scientists who have been unable to obtain suitable placement, may be considered for an interim Fellowship (amount depending on the qualification and research experience) and contingency of Rs. 25,000/ per year. To avail of this Fellowship, the awardee should be attached to some research/ academic institution. The tenure of the Fellowship will be for a maximum period of three years.
Appropriate steps will be taken by the Academy to maintain the relevant information in respect of the career development of all young awardees.Now that over 480,000 vocabulary tests have been completed, we can have a look at some of the findings. For instance, which words are not known at all in English? The following are the words of which less than 3% of the participants in our test indicated they were English words. For comparison, the fake words were endorsed by 8.3% of the participants on average. So, these are words not only unknown to everyone but also unlikely to be ‘mistaken’ for a true English word. The funny thing is that they often have interesting meanings, including a weapon, a precious stone, animals, several descriptions of people, and so on.
Here they are, the 20 least known words of English, also the least liked words, cast aside by everyone!
genipap (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/genipap)
futhorc (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/futhorc)
witenagemot (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/witenagemot)
gossypol (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/gossypol)
chaulmoogra (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/chaulmoogra)
brummagem (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/brummagem)
alsike (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/alsike)
chersonese (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/chersonese)
cacomistle (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/cacomistle)
yogh (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/yogh)
smaragd (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/smaragd)
duvetyn (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/duvetyn)
pyknic (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/pyknic)
fylfot (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/fylfot)
yataghan (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/yataghan)
dasyure (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/dasyure)
simoom (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/simoom)
stibnite (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/stibnite)
kalian (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/kalian)
didapper (http://www NULL.thefreedictionary NULL.com/didapper)
You can still take part in our vocabulary test and contribute data.In an election season filled with vitriol and hateful language, a 1993 letter from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton is getting renewed attention for the dignity and respect with which an outgoing president addressed his successor even after a hard-fought race.
The Inauguration Day letter is from Bush’s presidential library and is mentioned in both presidents' autobiographies. Back in June, the letter resurfaced on social media, and Hillary Clinton posted it on her Instagram.
It went viral once again when a Twitter user posted it with a wistful message:
A long, long time ago, in a land far far away, politics had grace. George H.W. Bush's letter to Bill Clinton on leaving office: pic.twitter.com/bJn6ojWRS4 — Saba Gul (@sabagl) October 16, 2016
Others agreed that politics has fallen far from the standard set by Bush in the letter:
@sabagl This to the guy of beat him. It feels like something written a million years ago... — MiguelClarkMallet (@mar_de_palabras) October 19, 2016
@sabagl @snickerfritz04 I so miss the integrity of former real Presidential races. — Susan Beck (@susanbeck101) October 19, 2016
@sabagl top class from a guy I never had a high opinion of, puts the current candidate to shame 👏👏 — Cat in the Hat (@Ollymcw) October 17, 2016
@sabagl @AriFleischer Thank you for sharing the letter. I hope those days aren't gone for good. Perhaps they will come back — Heidi (@heidiponyrider) October 19, 2016The Communists of Russia, a relatively young leftist party, is demanding that the authorities ban a computer game in which the player can perform an autopsy on Vladimir Lenin’s body and extract the organs of the late Bolshevik leader.
The secretary of the Krasnodar regional committee of the Communists of Russia party, Mikhail Abramyan, has addressed the state internet watchdog Roskomnadzor with a request to ban the game titled ‘What happened to Lenin in the morgue’, distributed through the App Store on iOS devices.
The politician wrote that the gameplay of the controversial application included an autopsy of Vladimir Lenin’s body and the removal of internal organs. “This is a monstrosity and requires an immediate reaction from state regulators and law enforcers,” Abramyan wrote.
READ MORE: Seeing red: Russian communists to seek international copyright of star symbol
The party members also filed a request with the Prosecutor General’s Office, asking for the author of the game to be identified and held responsible for insulting Lenin’s memory.
The Communists of Russia is a minor project that should not be confused with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) – a major opposition party with parliamentary representation and the official heir to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The former cannot claim any significant public support but are very good at establishing media presence, both by reacting to latest fads and sensations and by creating news through various bizarre suggestions.
Their recent stunts include: a threat to launch mass protests if US actor Leonardo Di Caprio gets to play Vladimir Lenin; a proposal to ban handheld monopods, aka ‘selfie sticks’ at street celebrations on Victory Day; an initiative to bar US athletes from participating in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and a plea to the Central Bank to restrict sales of foreign currency to citizens.
However, the KPRF has proved that it holds the image of Vladimir Lenin equally dear. In January this year, the Communists warned President Vladimir Putin that “history won’t forgive” him for comments he made concerning Bolshevik leader Lenin’s concept of the Soviet state, comparing it to an “atomic bomb planted under Russia.”
READ MORE: ‘Won’t forgive’: Communists lash out at Putin for comparing Lenin’s policies to ‘bomb under Russia’Superjail! is one of the most unusual shows on Adult Swim — which is really saying something. The crazy quarter-hour comedy returns Sunday at 11:45 p.m. ET/PT with the first of six new episodes comprising the show’s fourth season.
Created by Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick and Ben Gruber, the fourth season was produced at Titmouse in New York and will feature what Adult Swim describes as “countless animated atrocities — from hellfire to space sickness; from spiteful skies to rampaging redneck lizards; from frightening fairy tales to the terrors of tobacco withdrawal — and every possible act of ultra-violence in between.”
Here’s an advance look at the new season:
Karacas, who also voices characters including Alice and Jacknife, says the fourth season felt like it was continuing the comfortable groove it found in the third season.
“I think this show took a little bit of time to find its legs because it’s obviously a very animated-gag driven show,” says Karacas. “This season was really fun because I think when we started we felt very comfortable.”
The nature of the show makes the writing process as free form as the final product appears to be. “The thing with this show is, depending on who’s writing it or what the story might be, sometimes there’s a lot of room for interpretation,” says Karacas. “We might have a script that feels a little light storywise but we know we’ll fill in the blanks when we board it. Or we might have another one that’s very plot heavy but we try to know where the major action scenes are going to happen.”
Often, episodes end up looking very different from the script. “When we do the board stage we try to add as many gags and kind of jokey things, and then we have a lot of freedom with a lot of the characters,” says Karacas. “Like, the Warden can morph around and usually morphs into stuff that he’s talking about or we usually try to have transitions that have nothing to do with the story but have a kind of psychedelic feel to get us from place to place. That’s something that I think even in the third season we didn’t do that much but this season we really tried to get back to what we did a lot of in the first season, like having as little cuts as possible so it really flows and you follow this thing to this thing and watching the story but it kind of unfolds in real visual way.”
The fourth season is denser than any of the previous ones though the look remains very similar.
“We’re just always trying our best to keep it looking — we make it in the computer, obviously — but to make it looks as hand drawn as possible and like a classic, traditional animation,” he says. “We don’t have model sheets, so you can watch the same episode and the characters are drawn slightly different but it’s one of those things where i think it keeps it looking kind of lively.”
The voice cast, headed by comedian David Wain as The Warden, returns intact and the season will see a number of returning side characters such as Stingray, PeeDee and The Mistress for fans to look forward to.
With it having been a year and a half since the last episode of season three premiered, Karacas is excited for the fourth season to see the light of day and hopes a fifth season is in the cards.
“I’d love to do one,” he says. “I don’t think it’s that far-fetched we’d get another season some day, but I don’t know for sure.”
The fourth season of Superjail! premieres Sunday, June 15, at 11:45 p.m. ET/PT on Adult Swim.The trouble with discard
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Traditionally, storage devices have managed the blocks of data given to them without being concerned about how the system used those blocks. Increasingly, though, there is value in making more information available to storage devices; in particular, there can be advantages to telling the device when specific blocks no longer contain data of interest to the host system. The "discard" concept was added to the kernel one year ago to communicate this information to storage devices. One year later, it seems that the original discard idea will not survive contact with real hardware - especially solid-state storage devices.
There are a number of use cases for the discard functionality. Large, "enterprise-class" storage arrays can implement virtual devices with a much larger storage capacity than is actually installed in the cabinet; these arrays can use information about unneeded blocks to reuse the physical storage for other data. The compcache compressed in-memory swapping mechanism needs to know when specific swap slots are no longer needed to be able to free the memory used for those slots. Arguably, the strongest pressure driving the discard concept comes from solid-state storage devices (SSDs). These devices must move data around on the underlying flash storage to implement their wear-leveling algorithms. In the absence of discard-like functionality, an SSD will end up shuffling around data that the host system has long since stopped caring about; telling the device about unneeded blocks should result in better performance.
The sad truth of the matter, though, is that this improved performance does not actually happen on SSDs. There are two reasons for this:
At the ATA protocol level, a discard request is implemented by a "TRIM" command sent to the device. For reasons unknown to your editor, the protocol committee designed TRIM as a non-queued command. That means that, before sending a TRIM command to the device, the block layer must first wait for all outstanding I/O operations on that device to complete; no further operations can be started until the TRIM command completes. So every TRIM operation stalls the request queue. Even if TRIM were completely free, its non-queued nature would impose a significant I/O performance cost. (It's worth noting that the SCSI equivalent to TRIM is a tagged command which doesn't suffer from this problem).
With current SSDs, TRIM appears to be anything but free. Mark Lord has measured regular delays of hundreds of milliseconds. Delays on that scale would be most unwelcome on a rotating storage device. On an SSD, hundred-millisecond latencies are simply intolerable.
One would assume that the second problem will eventually go away as the firmware running in SSDs gets smarter. But the first problem can only be fixed by changing the protocol specification, so any possible fix would be years in the future. It's a fact of life that we will simply have to live with.
There are a few proposals out there for how we might live with the performance problems associated with discard operations. Matthew Wilcox has a plan to reimplement the whole discard concept using a cache in the block layer. Rather than sending discard operations directly to the device, the block layer will remember them in its own cache. Any new write operations will then be compared against the discard cache; whenever an operation overwrites a sector marked for discard, the block layer will know that the discard operation is no longer necessary and can, itself, be discarded. That, by itself, would reduce the number of TRIM operations which must be sent to the device. But if the kernel can work to increase locality on block devices, performance should improve even more. One relatively easy-to-implement example would be actively reusing recently-emptied swap slots instead of scattering swapped pages across the swap device. As Matthew puts it: "there's a better way for the drive to find out that the contents of a block no longer matter -- write some new data to it."
In Matthew's scheme, the block layer would occasionally flush the discard cache, sending the actual operations to the device. The caching should allow the coalescing of many operations, further improving performance. Greg Freemyer, instead, suggests that flushing the discard cache could be done by a user-space process. Greg says:
Assuming we have a persistent bitmap in place, have a background scanner that kicks in when the cpu / disk is idle. It just continuously scans the bitmap looking for contiguous blocks of unused sectors. Each time it finds one, it sends the largest possible unmap down the block stack and eventually to the device. When normal cpu / disk activity kicks in, this process goes to sleep.
A variant of this approach was posted by Christoph Hellwig, who has implemented batched discard support in XFS. Christoph's patch adds a new ioctl() which wanders through the filesystem's free-space map and issues large discard operations on each of the free extents. The advantage of doing things at the filesystem level is that the filesystem already knows which blocks are uninteresting; there is no additional accounting required to obtain that information. This approach will also naturally generate large operations; larger discards tend to suit the needs of the hardware better. On the other hand, regularly discarding all of the free space in a filesystem makes it likely that some time will be spent telling the device to discard sectors which it already knows to be free.
It is far too soon to hazard a guess as to which of these approaches - if any - will be merged into the mainline. There is a fair amount of coding and benchmarking work to be done still. But it is clear that the code which is in current mainline kernels is not up to the task of getting the best performance out of near-future hardware.
Your editor feels the need to point out one possibly-overlooked aspect of this problem. An SSD is not just a dumb storage device; it is, instead, a reasonably powerful computer in its own right, running complex software, and connected via what is, essentially, a high-speed, point-to-point network. Some of the more enterprise-oriented devices are more explicitly organized this way; they are separate boxes which hook into an IP-based local net. Increasingly, the value in these devices is not in the relatively mundane pile of flash storage found inside; it's in the clever firmware which causes the device to look like a traditional disk and, one hopes, causes it to perform well. Competition in this area has brought about some improvements in this firmware, but we should see a modern SSD for what it is: a computer running proprietary software that we put at the core of our systems.
It does not have to be that way; Linux does not need to talk to flash storage through a fancy translation layer. We have our own translation layer code (UBI), and a few filesystems which can work with bare flash. It would be most interesting to see what would happen if some manufacturer were to make competitive, bare-flash devices available as separate components. The kernel could then take over the flash management task, and our developers could turn their attention toward solving the problem correctly instead of working around problems in vendor solutions. Kernel developers made an explicit choice to avoid offloading much of the network stack onto interface hardware; it would be nice to have a similar choice regarding the offloading of low-level storage management.
In the absence of that choice, we'll have no option but to deal with the translation layers offered by hardware vendors. The results look unlikely to be optimal in the near future, but they should still end up being better than what we have today.Scout Performance Gear Motorbike Riding Gloves Motorcycle Road Rider Gloves in Black & Blue Color. Made of top quality Cowhide Leather, Flexible 4-way Fabric and Polyester for better protection and durability. Compare our Motocross Gloves with other Top Expensive Brands. in Black & Blue Color. Made of top quality Cowhide Leather, Flexible 4-way Fabric and Polyester for better protection and durability. Compare ourwith other Top Expensive Brands.
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— David McNally, Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global CapitalismHomo erectus was not alone in ancient Africa. Newly discovered fossil evidence, detailed in the latest issue of Nature, strongly suggests that no fewer than three distinct species of early humans from the genus Homo co-existed on the continent between 1.7 and 2 million years ago.
The findings, which run counter to the hypothesis that modern humans evolved linearly out of H. erectus, provide some of the most compelling evidence to date that there were multiple, parallel lines of evolution early in our genus' history.
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This groundbreaking find came in the form of three fossils: a well preserved skull, complete with a flat face; an almost complete lower jaw, perhaps the most well-preserved specimen of its kind ever discovered; and a fragment of another lower jaw, all discovered in the deserts of Northern Kenya. Together, the specimens complement a mysterious cranium fossil first discovered all the way back in 1972. At the time, the specimen (which was large, and featured a flat face unlike any associated with H. erectus) was determined to belong to an entirely different species, Homo rudolfensis, but the absence of a lower jaw that matches with that of the specimen has made justifying this taxonomical distinction somewhat difficult.
The three newly discovered fossils have made that task much more manageable. The skull, thought to belong to a juvenile, bears what first author Meave Leakey and her colleagues believe is a strong anatomical resemblance to the one discovered in 1972, as do the lower jaws. The more complete of the two jaws is pictured here, and above in combination with the cranium fossil from 1972.
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Taken together, Leakey writes that the newly discovered trio of specimens "clarify the anatomy and taxonomic status of" the 1972 cranium, classified as Homo rudolfensis, and "confirm the presence of two contemporary species of early Homo [i.e. H. rudolfensis and H. habilis], in addition to Homo erectus, in the early Pleistocene of eastern Africa."
By extension, these specimens play a critical role in settling a long-standing debate over modern humans' evolutionary origins.
"This new material certainly substantiates the idea, long gathering ground, that multiple lineages of early Homo are present in the record at Koobi Fora," explained Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in an interview with the New York Times. He continues:
"And it supports the view that the early history of Homo involved vigorous experimentation with the biological and behavioral potential of the new genus, instead of a slow process of refinement in a central lineage."
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"In a nutshell," echoes paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood in a companion article to the study in Nature, "the anatomy of the specimens supports the hypothesis of multiple early Homo species."
The researchers' findings are published in the latest issue of Nature.EXETER, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU)- A developing story after charges of racism and racial profiling are being leveled against a mayor in Luzerne County.
Those allegations are being made by current and former police officers in Exeter.
Exeter Mayor Herman Castellani is accused of ordering his police officers to target what, in written allegations, he calls "colored people."
Former Exeter Police Sergeant Len Galli told Eyewitness News Castellani basically wanted officers to investigate "the coloreds." Galli claims Castellani made those comments to him and other police officers.
"He didn't want coloreds in the town," says Galli. "He wanted us to remove them from the town, so to speak."
Galli filed a complaint with the borough solicitor last month citing several alleged incidents dating back to 2015, in which he claims the mayor made racist comments and profiled African Americans.
Galli was fired just this week, says other officers, including the former Police Chief Josh McNeil, who heard the comments.
"Initially when somebody tells you that, it sounds nuts, especially in 2017," says Galli. "It's water cooler talk in the beginning, but then as it started festering other people were hearing it, other officers and other reports started coming in."
Galli showed Eyewitness News police reports filed by another officer when someone broke into the mayor's home last month. The officer says Castellani told him his home was broken into, in the mayor's words, "by those drug dealing colored people two doors down, and colored girls moved in and they had to go."
Galli has been on the Exeter Police Force for 32 years and has had run ins with the mayor and the council, including getting fired several years ago and then taking the borough to court to get his job back.
The borough solicitor tells Eyewitness News Galli was fired this week for alleged conduct unbecoming of a police officer. He would not elaborate.
The I-Team asked if the situation is Galli versus the borough.
"I can understand why you would say that how it would look like that," says Galli. "Here's the problem: it's not just me. I'm the union rep., the officer came to me with complaints."
But the mayor is firing back.
"I never said nothing about colored people, the black people moving out of town," says Castellani. "That is a complete lie, this is a piece of garbage he put out."
Galli says he wants an outside law enforcement agency, such as the FBI, to investigate Exeter Borough.
The borough solicitor says he will conduct an investigation into these allegations and forward the results to the borough council for them to decide what to do next.I’m guessing this question is in reference to George Orwell’s 1984. The first line of that book is:
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.”
Orwell was referencing an old expression, best defined by Thomas Hardy in his novel Far From the Madding Crowd, with the following line:
“This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel ears like the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it.”
Clocks don’t strike thirteen. They strike twelve and then start over at one strike. So, if one hears a clock strike thirteen times, it should indicate something is wrong with the clock and that not only can it not be trusted now, but who knows how long before it struck thirteen it became untrustworthy.
In 1984, Orwell tells the tale of a time in which government has lost all respect for truth. Lies become truth if it serves their purposes. There is even a scene in which the main character is tortured to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, because the state says it does.
Orwell’s message in 1984 is that truth can only exist if we defend it. We cannot allow authority to devalue truth - to normalize the lie.
If you’ve just come across the use of “the clock struck 13” recently, it may well have been in regard to the concern in America, right now, that the Trump administration is doing exactly that of which 1984 warns us. Donald Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not have a respect for the truth and is content to propagate lies to further his own purposes. The fear is that not only is he doing that, but we are allowing it to be normalized - the very thing Orwell tells us to prevent.
A case in point. Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly stated that the employment numbers were a fraud, a hoax, and phony. Then, when the exact same metric, measured the exact same way, is determined for his first month in office and is favorable, he says the metric is true. At a White House press briefing, a reporter asked about that hypocrisy. The Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, responded:
“I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly: 'They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.'"
Spicer then laughed and so did many of the reporters in the room. They are normalizing lying. The clock has struck 13.Personal Reponse by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel
Generally, organizations that operate through a paid-ministry model differ from that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church) in several ways. In a paid-ministry model, a person often decides to obtain training (a degree) and then applies for a job as a minister. His or her salary generally depends on the congregation (if it is a large church it can be generous, and if it is a small rural church it can be very modest).
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The Mormon Church operates through a lay priesthood model with a few exceptions. Church officers call members to serve in a leadership position without compensation for a specific period of time and without any special training or degrees. These members continue their employment and serve in the Mormon Church while not working. These individuals accept callings and do so as part of their commitment to the Jesus Christ, knowing that at some point they will be released from their leadership role and that another local member will be called to take their position. One day a person can serve as a bishop (a leader in a local unit) and the next day be released and called to teach children.
However, a small number of Mormon Church leaders who are called to full-time service receive a “living allowance.” They did not obtain any special training or degrees and did not apply for a position. When called by Mormon Church officers they leave their full-time employment and generally move to a new location to fulfill their new assignment as directed by their leaders. Those called to full-time service include about 350 mission presidents, who serve for a three-year period and, about 100 General Authorities, who serve full-time from Mormon Church headquarters for various lengths of time. Of this last group, fifteen prophets, seers, and revelators serve until they die. Some General Authorities are independently well-off financially and do not need an allowance. The current practice of providing an allowance to a limited number of individuals for a specific period allows the Church to call people from a larger pool than those who are well-off financially. Once mission presidents and some General Authorities are released from their callings, they return to their employment or move wherever they choose. Upon their return, they are often called to serve as lay leaders in the local Mormon Church organization.
Money for living allowances comes from the income produced by businesses in which the Mormon Church has an ownership interest. To this point, at least, tithing has not been used for this purpose. The amount of mission presidents’ stipends depends on needs and circumstances (missions in New York City and London are more expensive than other places). Interestingly, all General Authorities receive the same allowance: the President of the Mormon Church receives the same as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. That said, there is a little extra for the few who have dependent children (x dollars per child). The living allowance is intended to permit a comfortable but modest lifestyle.
The Church’s living-allowance model is based on various scriptural references to “the laborer being worthy of his hire,” a principle that applies both to spiritual and temporal matters (see Doctrine and Covenants 24:3, 7,9; 41:7; and 42:70-73).
Additional Scriptures
D&C 106:3
And devote his whole time to this high and holy calling, which I now give unto him, seeking diligently the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all things necessary shall be added thereunto; for the laborer is worthy of his hire.
Mosiah 18: 26
And the priests were not to depend upon the people for their support; but for their labor they were to receive the grace of God, that they might wax strong in the Spirit, having the knowledge of God, that they might teach with power and authority from God.Wednesday, 13 Aug, 2008 Offbeat
After discovering a home which was very easy to break into, a burglar decided to leave a note to the house's owners. The note called the residents of the house "dumb arse" because they didn't turn on their alarm system.
The home was located in the Christchurch suburb of Avonhead. It was robbed on Monday. After the house's owners came back home, they discovered the note, which read "Put your cat out and turn your alarm on dumb arse."
For the first time the Christchurch police's inspector Gary Knowles mentioned that police agreed with the burglar.
"Please use whatever security you have - and it may be as simple as locking the back door or remembering to activate the alarm when you go out," he said.
Mr Knowles outlined that a lot of people did not use their alarm system. He mentioned that the alarm should be turned on and people should never forget to use it.
"When you are off to bed, or just watching television, remember to lock the back door! Take the hint and remember Fred Flintstone and the TVNZ cat; when you've put the cat out, lock the door," he said.
The police inspector said that although the burglaries often take place when there is a spate, the current crime in Christchurch happened when people where at home leaving several entries in the house completely insecure.
"Recent files read: Entry via unlocked rear door; Entry via unlocked garage window; Entry via lounge window... the list goes on."
Mr Knowles said that in one case when the burglars were unable to get the television they decided to take lunches from the fridge. According to statistics almost 70 percent of burglaries occurred during the day on weekdays and at night on weekend.
"Make things difficult for burglars. They like to make easy money," outlined the police inspector.
Source: The New Zealan HeraldApparently people in South Philly take their meatballs very seriously, as one chef learned after receiving death threats for entering vegan meatballs into a recent contest, Philly Mag reported.
Jennifer “Fear” Zavala, a food truck owner, made chickpea meatballs for the Fourth Annual Meatballs & Gravy contest earlier this month. But despite meeting all the competition requirements, not everyone was pleased with her meatless dish.
WOMAN'S APOLOGY CAKE TO POLICE OFFICER GOES VIRAL
Both judges and attendees alike had strong opinions about Zavala’s creation, which were technically an old Sicilian dish known as panelle, according to Victor Fiorillo of Philly Mag, who served as one of the judges for the contest.
“It’s not a f---ing vegan competition,” one judge was overheard saying.
“They’re called meatballs,” said another.
Things got even more heated when rumors Zavala won the contest made their way around the event.
“The tattooed b---- won!” one woman told another.
People were fuming that Zavala’s meatballs, which “didn’t even have meat," earned the top prize. The anger continued on event’s Facebook page, where people took to the comments to express their frustration, Philly Mag reports.
“How does a non-meat meatball win at a south Philly meatball contest? I feel sad for people that took the time to make a real meatball and lost to a gluten free chickpea rolled ball,” one person wrote.
“That should not have even been allowed. That will be the first and last time I attend that contest there. The yuppies are taking over South Philly,” commented another.
The “meatball controversy” even resulted in threatening messages sent to Zavala directly.
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“I may not make it out of Monday alive!! Apparently making a non-meat, meat-a-ball.. gets one death threats,” she wrote on Facebook, according to Philly Mag.
As it turns out, it was all a big misunderstanding and Zavala didn’t win the competition. The real winning meatballs were made of made of veal, pork and beef.Anne Holton, Tim Kaine's wife, resigned as Virginia's education secretary. | Getty Kaine's wife resigns Virginia state position, joins campaign
Vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine’s wife has resigned her post as Virginia’s education secretary — just as Kaine gets ready to formally accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for vice president.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced Anne Holton's resignation on Tuesday. In a statement, the governor hailed Holton as a “tireless advocate” for students and “an essential leader in securing historic investments in public education.”
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“During her tenure, Anne has been a constant and powerful voice for students, teachers and schools, and her lifelong dedication to serving Virginia’s young people, especially the children at the margins, has had a lasting impact in the Commonwealth,” McAuliffe said.
Kaine's wife, Anne Holton, is a political heavyweight in Virginia in her own right, with a profile that extends well beyond her recent position as education secretary.
She has even been talked up as |
have this entire volume planned out still.
Now, I'm not gonna make any note of the hints I left here, I'm sure you all can pick them up on your own. You'll just have to wait for the next chapter for confirmation.
Well, thanks all for sticking with me on this story, and for supporting the PERL girls still! Noticed a review from Nicodemus Cain from the last chapter, thanks for picking up yet another of my stories, friend! Reviews are always appreciated! Until next month!
Stay shiny!It takes years of practice and intense concentration to master the art of painting, or if you’re a welding robot, just some really good programming. In a studio at the University of Konztanz in Germany just such a robot is dabbing its brush in paint as it works. The robot is called e-David, and it can reproduce any work of art it’s shown.
A welding robot is actually a good choice for a makeshift artist. These robot arms have three degrees of freedom in order to precisely aim a torch at bits of metal. It can just as easily be programmed to point a paintbrush at canvases as an arc welder at car doors. Researchers have given e-David a palette of 24 colors to work with, and it does okay for a robot.
The process of reproducing a work of art begins with e-David taking a picture. It processes the image and estimates which brushstrokes will be best to recreate the original. The robot makes tiny, almost hesitant lines with the brush, but it’s just the meticulous nature of the approach. Every few minutes, e-David takes a picture of what it has so far. That image is compared to the original, and the program determines which brushstrokes will minimize the difference.
There are some limitations to e-David’s reproductions, though. It can only work in acrylic paint right now because it dries quickly, which is essential to the layered, corrective brushstrokes the robot uses. It also needs to have the same amount of paint on the brush at all times for the algorithms to properly estimate what changes to make. As a result, e-David has to make a stroke off to the side each time it dips the brush. That’s the grid of lines you see on the right of the canvas in parts of the video.
The team is interested in improving e-David’s programming, especially when it comes to color. Predicting in code how two pigments will mix on a canvas is tough. Maybe one day a welding robot will be showing at an art gallery, but not yet.In a large stockpot heat half of the corn oil over medium heat. Add half of the tortilla strips. Cook until they have absorbed most of the oil. This should take about 2 to 3 minutes.
Stir in the onion puree and cook for 3 minutes.
Add the garlic, epazote, jalapeno chiles, chipotle chile, tomato puree, cumin, bay leaf, chicken broth, and bring to a boil.
Add the chicken breasts. Cover and cook for 40 minutes over low heat.
Using a sauté pan heat the remaining corn oil over medium heat. Fry the remaining tortilla strips and place on a plate covered with paper towels to absorb the excess oil.
Remove the cooked chicken from the soup and allow to cool. When it has cooled shred the chicken.
To the soup add the salt, chili powder, and cayenne pepper to taste.
Ladle the soup into a blender and puree.Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, the newest game from Ninja Theory, was released on PC and PS4 today — and though several reviews have now hit, there weren't any pre-launch notices available. This has come to matter because the game, deliberately clouded in secrecy and ambiguity right up until launch, was well-received for a total of about five minutes before social media started tearing into it.
Here's the thing: Hellblade says that it deletes your entire save game if you die too many times. This information is given to the player about 20 minutes into the game, following a beautiful introduction, after they face combat for the first time and, at the end, are killed. You die, creepy black tentacles ooze up your arm and, the game claims, if they reach Senua's head your save is erased. The game tells you this in a 'lore-y' style with voiceovers and visuals, before explicitly saying in text form what's going on. It really couldn't be clearer:
That seems as straight-up as you're going to get, though what exactly 'progress' means is ambiguous. We haven't played far enough to know if this is some kind of permadeath system but, if so, that's Ninja Theory's choice and one that seems to be thematically appropriate for the game. But the prospect also has some early buyers up in arms.
The reason for the anger is that, basically, people are claiming they pre-ordered the game without knowing this was a feature. Hellblade's save system and permadeath was mentioned to the press during the few preview events, however, it just wasn't highlighted by the developer and though some noticed it, many didn't. The official marketing materials or store pages for the game don't mention the save deletion threat either. Add to this the fact that reviews for the game hit after the game was already on sale, and it means some buyers felt they'd purchased the game without a vital piece of information.
I can understand the frustration. My time to play games for fun is limited and the idea of putting a few hours in, and then having to start again, infuriates me. Knowing that I might have to replay the game over from the beginning does make me think twice about picking Hellblade up.
But with that said, we don't yet know that that is the case here. And even if it is, we should be open-minded about Ninja Theory trying to do something original, and consider how it works for this particular title. Some estimates put a full playthrough of Hellblade at 5-6 hours, so we're not talking about losing hundreds of hours of progress here.
Players being miffed about not knowing is understandable, especially when it might have led to them not purchasing the game, but this furore feels like an overreaction. If this is anything, it's a failure of communication: perhaps Ninja Theory should have been more explicit, and explained what they were going for, and perhaps the media should have done more to flag this feature before release. Or perhaps there's more holistic reasons for this aspect of the game's presentation than we yet understand — many of the claims and counter-claims are coming from sources that haven't played the game firsthand. We have, but not yet enough to know what's going on with this side of it.
The truly sad thing is, Hellblade's save system is far from the most interesting thing about the game. Keep an eye on Kotaku UK this week for our more considered thoughts.
Update: Whether Hellblade will truly delete your save or not has been left ambiguous. To discuss it in more detail would be unfair to the experience. We'll be playing more tonight and covering other aspects of the game later this week.Exogenous cannabinoids such as marijuana exert their influence through cannabinoid receptors. Endogenous cannabinoids such as anandamide (AEA) function through the same receptors, and their physiological roles are a subject of intense study. Here, we show that AEA plays a pivotal role in maintaining immunological health in the gut. The immune system in the gut actively tolerates the foreign antigens present in the gut through mechanisms that are only partially understood. We show that AEA contributes to this critical process by promoting the presence of CX3CR1 hi macrophages, which are immunosuppressive. These results uncover a major conversation between the immune and nervous systems. In addition, with the increasing prevalence of ingestion of exogenous marijuana, our study has significant implications for public health.
Endogenous cannabinoids (endocannabinoids) are small molecules biosynthesized from membrane glycerophospholipid. Anandamide (AEA) is an endogenous intestinal cannabinoid that controls appetite and energy balance by engagement of the enteric nervous system through cannabinoid receptors. Here, we uncover a role for AEA and its receptor, cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2), in the regulation of immune tolerance in the gut and the pancreas. This work demonstrates a major immunological role for an endocannabinoid. The pungent molecule capsaicin (CP) has a similar effect as AEA; however, CP acts by engagement of the vanilloid receptor TRPV1, causing local production of AEA, which acts through CB2. We show that the engagement of the cannabinoid/vanilloid receptors augments the number and immune suppressive function of the regulatory CX3CR1 hi macrophages (Mϕ), which express the highest levels of such receptors among the gut immune cells. Additionally, TRPV1 −/− or CB2 −/− mice have fewer CX3CR1 hi Mϕ in the gut. Treatment of mice with CP also leads to differentiation of a regulatory subset of CD4 + cells, the Tr1 cells, in an IL-27–dependent manner in vitro and in vivo. In a functional demonstration, tolerance elicited by engagement of TRPV1 can be transferred to naïve nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice [model of type 1 diabetes (T1D)] by transfer of CD4 + T cells. Further, oral administration of AEA to NOD mice provides protection from T1D. Our study unveils a role for the endocannabinoid system in maintaining immune homeostasis in the gut/pancreas and reveals a conversation between the nervous and immune systems using distinct receptors.
The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is highly conserved in evolution dating back to at least 600 million years (1). It consists of (i) lipid endocannabinoids; (ii) their receptors such as the G protein-coupled receptors, cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1), cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2), and a ligand-gated cation channel vanilloid receptor 1 (i.e., TRPV1); and (iii) the enzymes such as fatty acid amide hydrolyase (FAAH) that regulate the levels of endocannabinoids in vivo (2). The ECS impacts several aspects of mammalian physiology, particularly in the gut. Endogenous cannabinoids such as anandamide (AEA) belong to the N-acylethanolamine family and are synthesized from membrane glycerophospholipids (3, 4). AEA is an intestinal endocannabinoid, which engages its cognate receptors on the enteric nervous system and contributes to control of appetite and energy balance (5). Here, we have unraveled a role of the ECS in regulating immune homeostasis in the gut–pancreas axis.
The intestinal immune system is continuously exposed to a variety of antigens. An effective immune response must be launched against pathogenic insults; however, it must maintain tolerance to the vast amount of antigens such as those in commensal flora, endogenous metabolites, and food components. Mononuclear phagocytes (MNPs) such as CX3CR1hi macrophage (Mϕ) and CD103+ dendritic cells (DCs), which are present abundantly in the small intestinal lamina propria (siLP), play an instrumental role in maintaining this exquisite balance between inflammation and tolerance (6).
On the basis of expression level of the chemokine receptor CX3CR1, two functionally and phenotypically distinct populations of MNPs in the gut have been identified. Although both populations differentiate from blood derived monocytes, CX3CR1hi Mϕ are regulatory in nature, whereas CX3CR1lo cells are perpetuators of inflammation (7). Adoptive transfer of CX3CR1hi Mϕ provide protection from inflammatory diseases like colitis in mouse models (8). However, the microenvironment signal that “educates” the monocytes and promotes differentiation into CX3CR1hi (as opposed to CX3CR1lo) Mϕ still remains elusive. It is increasingly appreciated that the MNPs play a crucial role in gut equilibrium. Identifying key elements that condition the siLP MNPs to become tolerogenic will enable exploration of strategies that can be helpful in providing protection from inflammatory diseases.
The studies described here connect the nervous system (responsible for sensing exogenous cannabinoids such as marijuana, as well as endogenous ones) to one of the most fundamental properties of the immune system, i.e., maintenance of an immune tolerant environment in the gut. These studies have a bearing on marijuana use and abuse, particularly with respect to the formulations meant for ingestion, and very significantly, for new avenues of understanding and treating human diseases.
Results
CX3CR1hi Mϕ Express the Highest Levels of ECS Receptors CB2 and TRPV1. siLP cells were isolated after removing the Peyer’s patches (PPs), and cell suspensions obtained were analyzed. Fig. S1A depicts the gating strategy to identify the different cell populations. The SSChi cells were gated for CD11b+SiglecF+ cells (i.e., eosinophils) and the SSClo cells for lymphocytes (B220+ and CD3+) and the MNPs. Phenotypic characterization of the MNPs was based on the expression of integrins CD11b (αM), CD11c (αX), CD103 (αE), and the chemokine receptor CX3CR1. Special attention was paid to the CX3CR1 phenotype because CX3CR1hi Mϕ but not the CX3CR1lo cells play a significant role in immune homeostasis (7). To facilitate the identification of CX3CR1hi and CX3CR1lo cells, we used the CX3CR1+/gfp reporter mice in which GFP expression is a marker for CX3CR1 expression (9). As a quality-control measure, cell suspensions derived from siLP of these mice were stained with antibody against CX3CR1 and also checked for GFP by flow cytometry. The two patterns were consistent (Fig. S1B). We classified the MNPs as R1 (CD11b+CD11c+) and R2 (CD11b−CD11c+). R1 was further subclassified into CD11b+CD11c+CX3CR1hi, CD11b+CD11c+CX3CR1lo, and CD11b+CD11c+CD103+, and, in the R2, we looked for CD11b−CD11chiCD103+ (Fig. S1A, Bottom). Selected populations were analyzed for the expression level of TRPV1 (Fig. S1C) and CB2 (Fig. S1D). Of note, the MNPs expressed higher levels of TRPV1 and CB2 compared with the lymphocytes and eosinophils. Strikingly, CX3CR1hi cells expressed higher levels of TRPV1 and CB2 compared with the other cells analyzed (Fig. 1A). This finding was corroborated by quantitative PCR (qPCR) analysis of mRNA levels of TRPV1 and Cnr2 (gene encoding CB2) on the various gut immune populations (Fig. S1E). Because of the substantial overlap in surface phenotype of intestinal DCs and Mϕ, designation of CX3CR1hi cells as DCs or Mϕ is debatable. However, Tamoutounour et al. have shown that expression of CD64 (the high-affinity FcγR1) and absence of CD103 can be used in combination with CD11c and MHCII to definitively define functionally distinct Mϕ in intestine of mice (10). The population predominantly expressing TRPV1 and CB2 was found to meet these criteria (Fig. 1B, Top). Consistent with Tamoutounour et al., we show that CX3CR1lo cells are a heterogeneous population comprising of Mϕ (CD64+) and DCs (CD64−; Fig. S2A). Previous reports demonstrate that CX3CR1hi Mϕ make IL-10 ex vivo without stimulation (7). The IL-10–producing capacity of the CX3CR1hi Mϕ was tested ex vivo without any stimulation by using the IL-10–GFP reporter mice (11); it was observed that CX3CR1hi Mϕ express high levels of IL-10 (Fig. 1B, Bottom). Thus, TRPV1 and CB2, which are integral components of the ECS, are preferentially expressed by the CX3CR1hi regulatory Mϕ. Fig. 1. The ECS influences the siLP CX3CR1hi Mϕ at steady state. (A) Bar graph represents geometric mean fluorescence intensity (GMFI) of TRPV1 and CB2 on indicated siLP cells (asterisk and degree symbol represent statistical comparison of TRPV1 and CB2 expression, respectively, of each indicated cell type with expression of these receptors by CD11b+CX3CR1hi cells). (B) Phenotype of CD11b+CX3CR1hi cells (Top). Expression of IL-10 by CD11b+CX3CR1hi Mϕ (Q1, red) and CD11b+CX3CR1lo and CD11b+CX3CR1− cells (Q2, green; Bottom). (C) Representative FACS plots and column scatter plots represent the frequency (n = 7–8 mice per group), and bar graphs represent the absolute number (n = 5 mice per group) of CD11b+CX3CR1hi Mϕ (Middle) and CD11b+CX3CR1lo cells (Bottom) in the siLP of CX3CR1gfp/+ TRPV1+/+ and CX3CR1gfp/+ TRPV1−/− mice. (D) Representative FACS plots and column scatter plots represent the frequency, and bar graphs represent the absolute number of CD11b+CX3CR1hi Mϕ (Middle) and CD11b+CX3CR1lo cells (Bottom), in the siLP cells of CB2+/+ and CB2−/− mice (n = 5 mice per group). (ns, not significant; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, and °°P < 0.01, unpaired Student’s t test; data represent mean ± SEM). Fig. S1. (A) Gating strategy for siLP cells of CX3CR1gfp/+ mice. SSChi and SSClo cells were gated. CD11b+SiglecF+ cells were analyzed in the SSChi population. SSClo cells were gated for CD3+ and B220+ cells and mononuclear phagocytes comprising R1 (CD11b+CD11c+) and R2 (CD11b−CD11c+) cells. R1 and R2 were further analyzed for expression of CX3CR1 and/or CD103. (B) CX3CR1-antibody staining correlates with CX3CR1-GFP expression in CX3CR1gfp/+ mice. Dot plot represents three different populations shown by gates in distinct colors: CD11b+CX3CR1hi Mφ (red), CD11b+CX3CR1lo (green), and CD11b+CX3CR1− cells (blue) among live SSClo siLP cells of CX3CR1gfp/+ mice gated based on staining with CX3CR1 antibody (Left). Histograms represent expression of CX3CR1-GFP by each of the gated populations in distinct colors (Right), showing the correlation between CX3CR1− antibody staining and CX3CR1-GFP among live SSCloCD11b+ siLP cells of CX3CR1gfp/+. (C and D) Histogram with the normal serum (control) is shown in gray, and the histogram of expression of TRPV1 (C) or CB2 (D) by the selected population from A is shown in distinct colors. The number inside each box represents the GMFI, numbers in gray represent the GMFI of control, and the numbers in distinct colors represent GMFI of anti-TRPV1 or anti-CB2 antibody for the given population. (E) Total RNA was extracted from various immune cell populations sorted from siLP of mice, and expression levels of TRPV1 and CB2 (encoded by Cnr2) were evaluated by qPCR. Fig. S2. (A) Contour plot shows the expression of CD64 and CD103 by CD11b+CX3CR1lo cells (Top) and CD11c+CD103+ DCs (Bottom). (B) Genotype of the CX3CR1gfp/+TRPV1−/− mice constructed (C) siLP cells were purified from TRPV1+/+ and TRPV1−/− mice and were analyzed by flow cytometry by using antibody staining for CX3CR1. Bar graph represents the frequency of CX3CR1hi Mφ among live SSClo siLP cells of the TRPV1+/+ and TRPV1−/− mice. (D) Frequency and absolute number of CD11c+CD103+ DCs in the siLP of TRPV1+/+ and TRPV1−/− mice (n = 7–8 mice per group). (E) Frequency and absolute number of B220+ and CD3+ in the siLP of TRPV1+/+ and TRPV1−/− mice (n = 7–8 mice per group). (ns, not significant; n = 3; *P < 0.05, unpaired Student’s t test; data represent mean ± SEM).
ECS Receptors Regulate CX3CR1hi Mϕ Homeostasis in the Gut. Given the high expression of TRPV1 and CB2 on CX3CR1hi Mϕ, we analyzed the role of each receptor. For TRPV1, we back-crossed TRPV1−/− mice (12) with CX3CR1gfp/gfp reporter mice to obtain CX3CR1gfp/+ TRPV1−/− mice. We validated the expression of functional (i.e., WT) allele and GFP allele for CX3CR1 and the absence of TRPV1 by PCR (Fig. S2B). Introduction of GFP disrupts the expression of endogenous CX3CR1 such that a homozygous mice does not express functional CX3CR1 protein whereas heterozygous mice do, and the expression of CX3CR1 in them can be followed through GFP. By analyzing the siLP cells of the CX3CR1gfp/+TRPV1−/− mice, we observed that the absence of TRPV1 influences the frequency and number of CX3CR1+ cells differently: the frequency and number of CX3CR1hi Mϕ are reduced significantly (Fig. 1C, Middle), whereas, in case of the CX3CR1lo cells, there is a trend of decreasing number and frequency but the difference is not statistically significant (Fig. 1C, Bottom). These results in CX3CR1gfp/+TRPV1−/− mice were also reproduced in TRPV1−/− mice in which CX3CR1 was identified with antibody staining (Fig. S2C). The frequency and number of the other cells such as CD103+ DCs and CD3+ and B220+ cells remain unaffected in the absence of TRPV1 (Fig. S2 D and E). Next, we tested the importance of CB2 on the homeostasis of CX3CR1hi Mϕ by using mice genetically lacking CB2: the frequency and absolute number of CX3CR1hi Mϕ was significantly reduced in CB2-deficient mice (Fig. 1D, Middle). As in TRPV1−/− mice, there is a trend of decreasing number and frequency among the CX3CR1lo cells in CB2−/− mice as well, but the difference is not statistically significant (Fig. 1D, Bottom).
Stimulation of the ECS Leads to Expansion of CX3CR1hi Mϕ Population. CX3CR1gfp/+TRPV1−/− mice underwent oral gavage with 10 μg capsaicin (CP) or vehicle, and the siLP cells were isolated 24 h after treatment. CP-elicited changes in the MNPs were analyzed. CP significantly increased the frequency of the regulatory CX3CR1hi Mϕ but not the frequency and number of the CX3CR1lo cells (Fig. 2A). CP did not affect the frequency of CD11c+CD103+ DCs (Fig. S3A). To test if CP-mediated increase in CX3CR1hi Mϕ frequency was caused by enhanced proliferation, an in vivo BrdU incorporation assay was performed in mice that had undergone oral gavage with CP: feeding of CP did not result in incorporation of BrdU in CX3CR1hi Mϕ (Fig. S3B). We performed RNA sequencing and IsoEM/IsoDE analysis (13, 14) (as described in SI Materials and Methods) on the total MNPs of siLP to study the changes mediated by treatment with CP; the heat map for hierarchical clustering of the top 1,200 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) shows a clear presence of genes that are significantly up- or down-regulated by CP treatment (Fig. S3C). We used Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) Bioinformatic Resource, version 6.8, to study the functional-related gene groups and pathways. We found that CP treatment significantly enhances the cytokine/chemokine-mediated signaling pathways such as CCL2, CXCL12, CSF1, and IL-10 (Table S1). Thus, the increase in the frequency of CX3CR1hi Mϕ must derive from augmented migration or differentiation or a combination of both processes. Fig. 2. CP and AEA expand the CX3CR1hi Mϕ population in vivo. (A) CP-elicited changes (24 h after feeding) in the frequency (Middle and Bottom Left) and absolute numbers (Middle and Bottom Right) of CX3CR1hi Mϕ and CX3CR1lo cells in the siLP of CX3CR1gfp/+ mice (n = 4 mice per group). Veh, vehicle-treated mice. (B) TRPV1−/− mice (n = 4 mice per group) were lethally irradiated and, 24 h later, received CD45.1 C57BL/6 BM as described in Materials and Methods. After reconstitution (6 wk), TRPV1−/− BM chimeras were orally gavaged with CP or vehicle. Graph indicates CP-mediated changes in the frequency of CX3CR1hi Mϕ. (C) FACS plots and column scatter plots represent changes in the frequency (24 h after feeding) of siLP CX3CR1hi Mϕ elicited by AEA (data are pooled from three independent experiments testing different doses of AEA; n = 4–5 mice per group). (D) Changes in the frequency (24 h after feeding) of siLP CX3CR1hi Mϕ elicited by PF3845 (n = 4–5 mice per group). (ns, not significant; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, and ***P < 0.001, unpaired Student’s t test or one-way ANOVA; data represent mean ± SEM). Fig. S3. (A) Contour plots and column scatter plots represent frequency of CD11c+CD103+ DCs among live siLP cells 24 h after oral administration of CP (n = 4 mice per group). (B) Histogram and bar graph represent frequency of CX3CR1hi Mφ among live siLP cells that incorporated BrdU after oral administration of CP. (C) Hierarchical clustering heat map displaying the statistical overrepresentation of the top 1,200 up- or down-regulated DEGs in siLP MNPs after CP treatment (Left). (ns, not significant; data represent mean ± SEM). Table S1. RNA-Seq of MNPs sorted from the siLP of CP- or vehicle-treated mice To distinguish between the contribution of TRPV1-expressing neurons vs. immune cells to the phenomenon shown in Fig. 2A, TRPV1−/− mice reconstituted with bone marrow (BM) from TRPV1+/+ mice were treated with CP. The siLP CX3CR1hi Mϕ populations in all groups were monitored: CP-fed BM chimeric (BMC) mice behaved like the WT mice, indicating that TRPV1 expression on the hematopoietic cells was sufficient for activity. There was a notable, albeit statistically insignificant, difference between the expansion observed in the WT mice compared with the BMC mice, suggesting a possible, though not definitive, contribution from the neuronal TRPV1 in the process (Fig. 2B). The effect of oral administration of AEA, an endogenous compound capable of activating vanilloid and cannabinoid receptors, on CX3CR1hi Mϕ of siLP was examined. Oral administration of AEA led to a significant increase in the frequency of CX3CR1hi Mϕ (Fig. 2C, Bottom Left). As expected, we did not observe a difference in the frequency of CX3CR1lo cells after treatment with AEA (Fig. 2C, Bottom Right). We reasoned that, if administering exogenous AEA can affect the CX3CR1hi Mϕ, increasing the endogenous levels of AEA by inhibiting the enzyme that catabolizes it should yield similar results. Endogenous levels of AEA are controlled by the enzyme FAAH, which catabolizes AEA into arachidonic acid and ethanolamine (Fig. 2D, Top). Inhibition of FAAH, the enzyme that catabolizes AEA, increases the levels of AEA in the brain and peripheral tissues (15). Massa et al. demonstrated that mice genetically deficient in FAAH are protected from 2,4-dinitrobenzene sulfonic acid-induced colitis, highlighting the antiinflammatory role of AEA in the gut (16). Mice underwent gavage with an orally viable, irreversible FAAH inhibitor, PF3845, and the effect of this treatment on CX3CR1hi Mϕ in LP was examined 24 h after feeding. Treatment of mice with PF3845 increased the frequency of the regulatory Mϕ demonstrating that endogenous AEA can profoundly influence the homeostasis of CX3CR1hi Mϕ (Fig. 2D, Bottom).
CP Induces AEA Production in Myeloid Cells. As shown here earlier, CP and AEA influence CX3CR1hi Mϕ in a similar manner. The potential of cross-talk between the two was investigated. AEA biosynthesis involves hydrolysis of a membrane phospholipid precursor N-arachidonoyl phosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE) by a phospholipase C to yield phospho-AEA (pAEA), which is then dephosphorylated by phosphatases such as the tyrosine phosphatase PTPN22; this process in Mϕ is associated with an increase of the level of PTPN22 (17) and a decrease in the level of phospholipase D NAPE-PLD (17). Consistent with this pattern, analysis of the transcriptome of siLP MNPs from CP-treated mice revealed that CP leads to increase in the expression of PTPN22 with a concomitant decrease in the level of NAPE-PLD (Fig. 3A, Top Left). Fig. 3. The relationship between CP, AEA, and the tolerogenic properties of siLP MNPs. (A) Heat map of RNA sequencing shows changes in enzymes involved in AEA biosynthesis after CP treatment in siLP MNPs (Top Left) and in RAW 264.7 cells (Top Right). Bar graph shows qPCR of enzymes involved in AEA biosynthesis in RAW 264.7 cells 2 h (Middle) and 4 h (Bottom) after CP treatment in vitro. (B) CP- or AEA-elicited changes (24 h after feeding) in the frequency of CX3CR1hi Mϕ in the siLP of TRPV1−/− mice (Top) and CB2−/− mice (Bottom; n = 4 mice per group). (C) CP-elicited changes in the expression (GMFI) of IL-10 (n = 4 mice per group). (D–G) Mice underwent oral gavage with vehicle (Veh) or CP (10 μg) or AEA (500 μg), and siLP MNPs (CD11b+CD11c+ and CD11b−CD11c+) were sorted after 24 h (D and G) and 48 h (E). (D) MNPs were sorted from CP-treated or vehicle-treated mice and cocultured (1:1) with naïve splenic CD4+CD25−CD62L+ T cells derived from WT (IL-27RA+/+) or IL-27RA−/− mice for 4 d. Expression of IL-10 and IFN-γ among the CD4+ cells was analyzed by flow cytometry. Bar graphs represent the frequency of CD4+IL-10+ and CD4+IL-10+IFN-γ+ (Tr1) cells. (Data are representative of two independent experiments and show mean values ± SEM of duplicate or triplicate determinations in which MNPs were sorted from 12 pooled mice per group). (E) Total RNA was extracted from MNPs sorted from CP-treated or vehicle-treated mice, and expression levels of IL-27-p28 were evaluated by qPCR. (Data represent duplicate determinations from 12 pooled mice per group). Bar graph represents fold increase in expression of IL-27–p28 in CP-treated samples with respect to vehicle-treated samples. (F) Frequency of CP-elicited CD4+IL-10+IFN-γ+ (Tr1) cells among live SSClo siLP cells 2 wk after treatment (n = 4 mice per group). (G) MNPs were sorted from AEA-treated or vehicle-treated mice and cocultured with WT T cells as described in D. Bar graphs represent the frequency of CD4+IL-10+ and CD4+IL-10+IFN-γ+ (Tr1) cells. (Data show mean values ± SEM of triplicate determinations in which MNPs were sorted from 10 pooled mice per group.) (H) Female NOD mice were orally administered AEA or vehicle at 9th and 10th weeks of age, and urine glucose was monitored to study disease progression. (ns, not significant; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, and ****P < 0.0001, unpaired Student’s t test; data represent mean ± SEM; Mantel–Cox test was used for survival curve). To explore this phenomenon mechanistically in a pure myeloid population (as opposed to in vivo, in which the effects could be indirect), the Mϕ cell line RAW264.7, which expresses TRPV1 (Fig. S4A), was used. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis of CP-treated cells shows that treatment with CP activates the AEA biosynthesis pathway as described earlier (Fig. 3A, Top Right). The changes in the expression levels of PTPN22 and NAPE-PLD in CP-treated RAW264.7 cells were validated by a qPCR analysis (Fig. 3A, Middle and Bottom). Fig. S4. (A) Histogram showing TRPV1 expression in RAW 264.7 cells. (B) IL-10–GFP reporter mice underwent oral gavage with vehicle or CP (10 μg). siLP cells were isolated after 24 h, and CP-elicited changes in IL-10 expression among siLP CD11c+CD103+ DCs were analyzed by flow cytometry. Column scatter graphs represent GMFI of IL-10 among siLP CD11c+CD103+ DCs (n = 4 mice per group). (C) Gating strategy for sorting siLP MNPs. siLP cells were harvested, and SSClo live cells were sorted on the basis of the expression of CD11b and CD11c after exclusion of doublets. (*P < 0.05, unpaired Student’s t test; data represent mean ± SEM).
AEA Is the Central Molecule in Expansion of CX3CR1hi Mϕ Population. As shown in Fig. 2 A and C, oral administration of CP or AEA leads to expansion of the CX3CR1hi population in the siLP. This phenomenon was now tested in TRPV1−/− and CB2−/− mice. In TRPV1−/− mice, CP failed to mediate expansion of CX3CR1hi cells, but AEA still did so (Fig. 3B, Top). As AEA has a higher binding affinity for CB2 than for TRPV1 (18), the same phenomenon was tested in CB2−/− mice as well. Neither CP nor AEA mediated expansion of the CX3CR1hi population in the CB2−/− mice (Fig. 3B, Bottom). These results (Fig. 3 A and B) indicate that AEA, through its interaction with CB2, is the final mediator of the expansion of the CX3CR1hi population in siLP upon oral administration of CP or AEA. The effect of CP is mediated through two steps: one, generation of AEA upon its interaction with TRPV1; and two, interaction of AEA with CB2.
Stimulation of ECS by AEA or CP Enhances the Tolerogenic Properties of MNPs and Provides Protection from Autoimmune Diabetes. IL-10 is a cytokine with potent tolerogenic and antiinflammatory properties (19, 20). It is particularly important in the gut, as it has been demonstrated that mice deficient in IL-10 develop spontaneous enterocolitis (21). We looked at IL-10 production as a measure of tolerogenicity in the CX3CR1hi Mϕ and CD103+ DCs 24 h after treatment with CP by using the IL-10 GFP-reporter mice. Compared with vehicle-treated mice, the CX3 |
, they said that their support for Mrs. Clinton did not mean they disliked Mr. Sanders. “We love Bernie and we’ve kind of been shunned by some of our more liberal friends, but the breadth of Hillary’s experience on the issues is more important than sort of, the one note message that Bernie gives,” Mr. Bailey said.
“She can get things done,” added Ms. Bailey. “This is her rodeo.”NASHVILLE, TN – After years of hard work, Rutherford County Sheriff Bob Darnold has moved his work station to the Davidson County Jail, securing a rent-free office as an inmate being held against his will.
Darnold has spent years working to obtain a rent-free jail cell, using such methods as the repeated commission of flagrant and public misconduct. Initially, Darnold simply allowed his officers to act inappropriately. However, Darnold soon realized that he would have to blend public corruption and private incompetency if he wanted to lock down a rent-free office in a local jail cell.
“The office of County Sheriff has a number of administrative functions,” Darnold told the media Wednesday, reading off a card to make sure he pronounces the big words right. “One part of my job is a budget, and I’ll tell you that moving my office to the jail will save this county some money.”
Darnold tried to move his office in May of this year after being indicted in federal court for fourteen counts of some pretty obvious criminal conduct. However, some do-gooder posted a bond so that he could not unpack in the jail. Now, after Darnold and his wife played truth or dare with a purple nurple double dare, a judge has finally seen enough and said that he should go to jail like any normal person in his same position would be forced to do.
“It’s a bold strategy to move his office to the jail,” said Murfreesboro resident John Doe, a Darnold supporter who was too embarrassed to release his true identity. “But Bob has made a habit of good decisions, as long as you don’t count the decisions that other people can see.”
Darnold’s new office is six feet wide and eight feet deep, with a rustic steel door and room for a small milk crate desk. The office also features a private restroom where others can just stand nearby and watch you poop.
While the office lacks natural light, there is alternate lighting available, which provides enough of a faint glow to remind those who use the office that it also serves as the jailhouse library and a place where dreams go to die.
The public reaction to the move has received a mixed response from the public. Some noted the reduced cost at the Davidson County Jail. Others pointed out that this man likely a fucking criminal so why the fuck are we still paying him a salary to be in jail?
Darnold informed the media that he intends to move the remainder of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office into the C-Block, where he is currently housed. When reached for comment, Sheriff’s Office employees said “Fuck Off, Bob! If you got a problem, come get us! Oh, that’s right. You can’t!”Coming to a theater near you: Amazon plans to start producing “close to twelve” movies a year. The films will “premiere on Prime Instant Video in the U.S. just 4 to 8 weeks after their theatrical debut,” so Prime members won’t need to shell out to see them in theaters. Ted Hope, who produced films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is leading the effort.
Speaking of Crouching Tiger, Prime Instant Video competitor [company]Netflix[/company] is, ironically, producing a sequel to that movie, which it will begin streaming the same day it premieres in IMAX theaters. Netflix also announced in October that it had acquired exclusive rights to four upcoming Adam Sandler movies.
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“[company]Amazon[/company] Original Movies will be synonymous with films that amaze, excite, and move our fans, wherever customers watch,” Hope said in a statement.Last year, Bobby Jindal signed a law that allows Louisiana teachers and school boards across the state to present non-scientific alternatives to evolution. Now the rules designed to implement that law have been proposed and they’re a solid victory for the creationists:
The state’s top school board Wednesday approved procedures for residents who object to materials that challenge the teaching of evolution in public school science classes.
The rules, which were praised by evolution critics, stem from a law approved last year by the Legislature.
Backers say the law is needed to give science teachers more freedom to challenge traditional theories, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Critics contend the measure, called the Louisiana Science Education Act, is aimed at injecting religious themes into public schools.
The statute allows science teachers to use supplemental materials, in addition to state-issued textbooks, to teach evolution and other topics.
(…)
Gene Mills, president of the Louisiana Family Forum Action, praised the rules and said Bayard’s plan was better than the department’s recommendation.
“Arguably this is the closest thing that would mimic due process,” Mills said in a telephone interview after the meeting. “That seems equitable to me.”
The Louisiana Family Forum, a key backer of the law, says it promotes traditional values.The spin machine about the banks' stress test is already in full motion. Some banking regulators have already served up--to The New York Times--their spin that all 19 banks that are subject to the stress test will pass it. In other words, not one will fail.
But let's look at the actual data. The macro data for the first quarter on the three variables used in the stress tests--growth rate, unemployment rate and home-price depreciation--are already worse than those in the U.S. government baseline scenario for 2009. They are, in fact, even worse than those for the stressed scenario for 2009.
The government used assumptions for the macro variables in 2009 and 2010 that are so optimistic that the actual data for 2009 are already worse than the adverse scenario. As for some crucial variables, such as the unemployment rate--key to proper estimates of default and recovery rates for residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans and other banks loans--the current trend shows that by the end of 2009 the unemployment rate will be higher than the average unemployment rate assumed in the more adverse scenario for 2010, not for 2009. Put plainly, the results of the stress test--even before they are published--are not worth the paper on which they are written.
Let us look at how the stress tests are done. According to the U.S. government, there are two scenarios: a more optimistic "baseline scenario" for 2009 and 2010 for the three macro variables (gross domestic product, unemployment and home prices); and a more pessimistic "alternative adverse scenario."
The baseline scenario assumes--based on the average of the forecasts by the consensus of macro forecasters at the time when the stress tests were announced--that GDP growth will be -2.1% in 2009 and 2% in 2010; that the unemployment rate will average 8.4% in 2009 and 8.8% in 2010; and that home prices will fall 14% in 2009 and 4% in 2010. In the alternative adverse scenario, GDP growth is assumed to be -3.3% in 2009 and 0.5% in 2010; the unemployment rate is assumed to average 8.9% in 2009 and 10.3% in 2010; and home prices are assumed to fall 20% in 2009 and 7% in 2010.
The description provided by the government of the stress test also shows graphs--but not actual figures--for the quarterly behavior of the three macro variables in 2009 and 2010 for both scenarios. Based on these quarterly graphs, in the first quarter of 2009 the unemployment rate would approximately average 7.7% in the baseline scenario and 7.8% in the adverse scenario; the GDP growth rate would be -1.9% in the baseline scenario and -2.1 in the adverse scenario; and home prices would fall 4% in the baseline scenario and by 7% in the adverse scenario.
How do these scenarios actually stack against actual figures for the first quarter of 2009, with current consensus forecasts and with current likely paths for these macro variables?
1. Take unemployment: In March of this year the actual unemployment rate was already--at 8.5%--much higher than the baseline scenario for the first quarter (7.7%) and higher even than the adverse scenario's 7.8%. Even the average unemployment rate in the first quarter--8.1%--is well above both the baseline and adverse scenarios.
Based on current trends in employment and initial claims, Ted Wieseman, U.S. fixed-income economist for Morgan Stanley and a very mainstream analyst, has recently argued that the unemployment rate could reach 10% by June of 2009. As he put it:
The key round of early March economic news was weak, with another disastrous employment report again standing out. Non-farm payrolls plunged 663,000 in March, bringing the average drop over the past five months to 667,000, an unprecedented run of job losses in absolute terms and the worst in percentage terms over such a period since the 1973-1975 recession... The past week's jobless claims report showed substantial deterioration as we move toward the survey period for the April employment report, so at this point there is no reason to expect the extremely weak recent trend in the jobs report to show any improvement next month. Indeed, at the rate jobs are disappearing, the unemployment rate could be into double-digits as early as June (my emphasis).
Indeed with per-month job losses well above 600,000 for several months in a row, and with initial claims still averaging 650,000 per week for the last few weeks, there is no chance that job losses will be any less than 600,000 for the next two months.
Even if the economy were to turn to positive growth by the third quarter--as the consensus forecasts expect--the unemployment rate would rise for at least another 12 months, as job market data are lagging indicators of economic activity. For example, in 2001 the recession was short and shallow--only eight months long--and over by November, but job losses continued for another 19 months until August 2003. So based on current trends--and even heroically assuming that the economy recovers positive growth by the third quarter of 2009--it is almost certain that the unemployment rate will be 10.5% by December of this year (and would thus average about 9.5% for the year). In a more adverse--but more realistic--scenario, the unemployment rate would reach 11% by December of 2009 and average 9.8% for the year.
So based on current actual data, the unemployment rate is already well above the values that the U.S. government had for them in the first quarter of 2009 in both the baseline and stress scenarios. And given current trends in the unemployment rate and initial claims for unemployment benefits, the average unemployment rate in 2009 would be 9.5%. That is not only well above the baseline scenario of 8.4% for 2009, but also well above the average unemployment rate for 2010 in that baseline scenario. In fact, 9.5% would be even worse than the average unemployment rate (8.9%) that is assumed by the government for 2009 in the adverse scenario. (Actually, based on current data for initial claims, it is highly likely that by April 2009 (this month) the unemployment rate will reach 9% and thus be higher already at this early part of 2009 than the average of 8.9% that the government assumes it will be for the average of 2009.)
But, more important, the actual unemployment rate by the end of 2009 will be higher--at 10.5%--than the average unemployment rate assumed by the government in the adverse scenario for 2010, not 2009.
2. Now let's look at GDP. A similar analysis suggests that the U.S. government assumptions for GDP growth are already worse than the adverse scenario--let alone the baseline scenario--for the first quarter of 2009.
A first estimate of first-quarter 2009 GDP growth will be out only at the end of April 2009, but the current consensus is that it will be around -5% for the seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) figure in the first quarter (i.e., the growth rate of the economy in Q1 2009 relative to Q4 of 2008, seasonally adjusted at the annual rate), with a number of reputable forecasters putting that figure at -6% or even worse.
Now, based on the government graphs, the GDP growth rate would be -1.9% in the baseline scenario and -2.1% in the adverse scenario. If we plug the current consensus estimate of Q1 GDP growth and then compute the year-on-year four-quarter percentage change, we get a figure of -2.3%. Thus, based on consensus estimates of GDP for Q1 2009, the four-quarter contraction of GDP will be--in the first quarter of this year--already worse than both the baseline scenario figure (-1.9%) and the more adverse scenario figure (-2.1%). And if, as is possible, the GDP contraction in the first quarter is -6% (SAAR), the Q1 2009 vs. Q1 2008 percentage change in GDP will be -2.5%, an even worse figure. So by the first quarter of this year, both the unemployment rate and the GDP growth rate are (or will likely be) worse than the government figures for both the baseline and more adverse scenarios.
Moreover, relative to the time in December when consensus forecasts for 2009 were used by the U.S. government to derive its baseline scenario for 2009, such consensus forecasts have significantly worsened. Based on the latest March figures, the consensus is now projecting that 2009 GDP growth will be -3.2%, rather than the -2% in the original government baseline. And mainstream sell-side research from Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley--houses that have had a better-than-average track record in forecasting the current downturn--are now forecasting a 2009 GDP contraction of about 3.5% on average. Our forecast at Roubini Global Economics is even worse, at 3.7%.
Also, while the current consensus forecast for 2010 growth (2%) is practically identical to the baseline scenario for 2010 GDP growth (2.1%), a number of sources are predicting a much weaker scenario for 2010: Goldman Sachs, for example, has a current forecast of 1.2% for 2010 GDP growth, as opposed to the baseline scenario figure of 2%.
3. Let us now consider the outlook for home prices. Unfortunately, the Case-Shiller 10-City Composite figures are available only up to January 2009, with the February figures due to be published at the end of April. The government baseline assumes that home prices will fall--December 2009 vs. December 2008--by 14%, while its more adverse scenario sees home prices falling by 22% during 2009. The fall in home prices in January 2009 relative to December 2008 was 1.9%, a rate that--if continuing for all of 2009--compounds to an annual rate of 25.3%, well above the 14% of the baseline scenario and also above the adverse scenario of 22%.
One month does not make a trend, and the 12-month percentage change in home prices was -19% in January 2009 and December and November 2008, up from the 18% drop in August-September-October 2008 and the 17% drop in the May-June-July 2008 period. So in the last year the rate of home-price depreciation has accelerated from 17% to 18% to 19%--and, most recently, to 25%.
It is possible that the rate at which home prices will fall for the rest of 2009 will be lower than the latest 25% rate. But even the more recent optimistic data for the housing sector--a possible stabilization of housing starts, building permits, new home sales and existing home sales--do not imply that the rate of fall of home prices will be significantly lower in the months to come. The reason is that, while home sales and housing starts and completions are now showing signs of stabilization after falling from their peak by more than 70%, the excess supply of new and existing homes is still huge, both in absolute terms and as a ratio of sales, thus a significant downward pressure on prices.
Even if housing starts and completions were to go to zero--from their current 500,000 level--it would take about 11 months until the current supply of new homes is depleted by the current demand. And since a recovery of both supply and demand from current depressed levels would reduce the excess inventory only if new-home sales are well above new completions, there is no reason to believe that home prices will fall at a much slower rate for the rest of 2009. In other words, even if quantities in housing were to stabilize and then recover in the next few months, prices will keep falling for all of 2009 and 2010 at a very rapid rate.
In summary, home prices have been falling in recent months at a rate that is much higher than the 14% assumed in the government baseline for 2009. They are also running currently at an annual rate that is higher than the 22% in the more adverse scenario. Even considering actual figures for the last few months--that show an accelerated rate of fall in homes prices between the spring of 2008 and the most recent data--home prices have been falling in the last few months at rates of about 20% with an upward trend in the data. So the actual and trend figures are well above the baseline figure of 14% and closer to the 22% of more adverse scenario.
In conclusion, recent data and trends for the unemployment rate, GDP growth and home prices show that, as of Q1 of 2009, actual macro data are much worse than the baseline scenario of the stress tests and even worse than the more adverse scenario of the stress tests. So the results of the stress tests--even before they are published--are useless.
The stress-test exercise was already flawed from the start; it took as its baseline scenario the consensus forecast for the economy for 2009 and 2010, a consensus that, for the last two years, had gotten the growth rate of the economy totally wrong. And the more adverse scenario of the stress test was not really a truly adverse scenario: It assumed positive growth for 2010 (rather than additional negative growth) and assumed an average unemployment rate for 2010 that, based on current data and trends, is likely to be reached at the earliest by the third quarter, and at the latest by the fourth, of 2009. How can anyone take seriously stress tests that are blatantly rigged from the outset with scenarios that make little economic sense and that are already obsolete?
This financial crisis was due to opacity and lack of transparency in financial markets and regulators who were asleep at the wheel. But now the administration and the regulators have decided to add liberally to the fog of opacity. Why call them "stress tests"? "Fudge tests" would be a truer description.
Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, is a weekly columnist for Forbes.Milton Chu was driving to the grocery store when his passenger asked him, “Doesn’t that noise bother you?” “What noise?” he said, listening for a rattle or knock he hadn’t noticed before.
“The engine. It’s so loud.”
Chu was accustomed to the stirring V-8 aria because the Ferrari California was his daily driver. By the time he traded it in, he’d accumulated 77,000 miles over four years. His new—and only—car is another Ferrari, this one a menacing black-on-black 458 Italia Spider that he uses for everything from his weekday work commute to weekend trips to the hardware store.
Milton Chu loads groceries into his Ferrari’s frunk before heading to In-N-Out Burger for a Double-Double.
“I understand why some people don’t drive their Ferraris—because they feel that they’re preserving something that’s almost perfect,” he says. “But for me, that’s not as much of a priority as driving the car. I want to experience the engine, the acceleration, the handling. I don’t believe in reincarnation. I’m only going to live once. I paid for the car, so I might as well use it.”
Chu, a 53-year-old ophthalmologist, is one of the rare and enlightened enthusiasts who drive their exotic cars on a daily basis rather than sequestering them in climate-controlled garages like museum-quality treasures that can be exposed to the elements on only the most exceptional occasions. Ferrari owners are a case in point. The company’s most recent survey found that American owners of the FF—the four-seater that comes closest to being a family car—averaged about 3,000 miles a year, while sportier Ferraris were driven even less frequently.
It’s true that Ferraris from the early days of the electronics era are ticking time bombs. But the factory now offers a competitive warranty—three years bumper to bumper with unlimited mileage—and seven years of free maintenance on new cars. These days, frankly, just about any car from any manufacturer can be ridden hard and put away wet.
“I don’t believe in reincarnation. I’m only going to live once. I paid for the car, so I might as well use it.”
Ray McKewon, for example, has put nearly 100,000 miles on his Maserati GranTurismo. A 66-year-old guitarist and music producer, he treats the car like a garage band’s Ford Econoline. “It can hold two electric guitars, a guitar amp, a music stand, a guitar stand, and all my foot pedals,” he says. “I don’t regret a single penny I’ve spent on it. If you’re going to buy a Maserati, drive it. If you want something to stare at, buy a painting.”
Malcolm Barksdale shares McKewon’s attitude. “Contemporary cars aren’t going to go up in value,” he explains. “So why buy a car and not drive it?” The 72-year-old architect owns a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano. He bought it with 507 miles on the clock, leading him to believe that the original owner bought it in San Diego, drove it to San Francisco, and dumped it in a hangar. Barksdale, by contrast, drives it to work every morning and is happy to park it on the street. As he says, “It’s just a car.”
With the last name “Barksdale,” Malcolm Barksdale is sort of required to own a dog. What did the Ferrari owner name his furry friend? Dino, of course.
Barksdale cycled through a series of quirky sports cars before spending half a year’s salary to buy his first Ferrari—a used 308 GT4 2+2—and using it as his everyday ride. (He also did his own service and changed the clutch in the garage of his condo.) “I put 40,000 miles on it and sold it for what I paid for it,” he says. Over the years, he’s logged thousands of miles in Ferraris, including a 365 GTC, a pair of 456s, a Daytona, and even a 275 GTB, often taking his big dogs along for the ride. His collection also includes several lovely non-Ferraris. “I didn’t buy any of them to be collectible,” he says. “I bought them because I loved them.”
David Lee, on the other hand, is a car collector par excellence. The 45-year-old owner of high-end watch and jewelry stores worked his way through a long roster of exotic cars before settling on an impeccably curated squadron of Ferraris—a 1967 330 GTS, a 1968 275 GTB, a 1985 288 GTO, a 1986 288 GTO Evoluzione race car, an 1990 F40, a 1995 F50, a 2003 Enzo, a 2014 FF, and his most recent purchase, a 1964 250 GT Lusso bought for $2.31 million.
But the sweetest thing about Lee’s stable is that he exercises his prancing horses on a regular basis. Each night, he looks at his schedule and chooses a Ferrari to fit his mood and upcoming agenda. “Yesterday,” he says, “I drove the 330 GTS because it wasn’t too hot. The other day, I chose the 275 GTB because I was driving around a neighborhood with a lot of old houses, and it fit right in.”
In his younger days, Lee owned several lesser Ferraris and a trio of supercars he hardly used. “I was so afraid of putting miles on them and taking a big hit when I resold them,” he says. “But when I look back, I regret not driving them more. Yeah, I would have lost a little money, but I would have enjoyed the cars a lot more.”
David Lee has this dilemma: Which Ferrari should I drive? Answer: A homologation- special 288 GTO.
Nobody’s gotten more of his money’s worth out of his car than Jack Riddell. In 1972, while he was in the middle of a 22-year stint in the Navy, he scraped together $6,250 to buy a used 1967 Lamborghini 400 GT 2+2. For the next three decades, he drove the Lambo from his home to various naval bases and, after leaving the Navy, to his job as a senior lead technical writer. “It’s a great car to drive,” he explains. “It’s a GT, a Grand Tourer. When you get it up to cruising speed, it’s fast, it’s comfortable, and you can’t beat the V-12 sound.”
Jack Riddell’s 400 GT is going strong but has had its moments, like when it started spitting oil and coolant on a California highway.
Riddell is 76 and retired now, but his 400 GT is still going strong. The odometer in his bright red car—which he painted himself, in his garage—shows nearly 270,000 miles, with a bunch of them added this past summer on a foray to Pebble Beach. Unfortunately, the car was sidelined near Santa Barbara by an oil leak through the front pulley seal. But he managed a DIY fix and drove it home to suburban San Diego.
“At this point,” Riddell says, “the car is like an appendage, an extension of my body. There’s not a piece on it that I haven’t touched except for the differential. I know every nook and cranny, so I’m comfortable with everything that could go wrong.”Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The king has received treatment for a variety of ailments in recent years including a build up of fluid surrounding the brain and a swollen lung
The health of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej is "not stable", palace officials have said.
King Bhumibol, 88, is the world's longest reigning monarch, but has spent much of the last year in hospital and is rarely seen in public.
He is widely revered in Thailand, where he is seen as an arbiter in the divided political arena.
His doctors said they had now sought formal permission for the king to stop performing any official duties.
Thailand marks 70 years of king's reign
The palace statement, released late on Sunday night, said the king's blood pressure had dropped as he was being prepared for haemodialysis, a procedure used to treat kidney failure.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption These women, holding portraits of the king above their heads as a sign of respect, were among those gathered outside the hospital on Monday
He was placed on a ventilator and medication helped return his pressure to normal levels, it added. Doctors are now monitoring his condition closely.
Strict laws
King Bhumibol has been on the Thai throne since 1946.
Amid increasing concerns about his health in recent months, the Royal Household Bureau has issued more frequent bulletins.
Earlier this month, a statement said the king was recovering from a respiratory infection.
But the BBC's South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head says that this is the first time doctors have sought permission for him to stop working, suggesting that perhaps the palace is considering transferring some of his formal duties to his heir, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn.
Given the pivotal role the king has played in maintaining the balance of power in Thailand's volatile political environment, the succession will be a formidable challenge for the military government, our correspondent adds.
Thailand's strict lese majeste laws mean public discussion of his health and succession plans are not permitted, and punishable by lengthy jail terms.David Villa's international career might not be over after all.
Despite seemingly closing the chapter on his career with the Spanish international team when a teary-eyed Villa exited his country's World Cup match against Australia in 2014, the 34-year-old has recently stated his willingness to return if new manager Julen Lopetegui thinks he's capable of playing a role during World Cup qualifiers.
Villa's possible restoration into the squad could be expedited after impressing Lopetegui last weekend when he watched the Spanish forward score a goal and set up another during New York City FC's 4-1 triumph over the Columbus Crew.
"I went to New York with my wife, I took advantage and watched Villa play," Lopetegui told Spanish radio station Onda Cero, as translated by Adriana Garcia of ESPN FC. "The truth is that I saw him very well and playing with a lot of intensity."
Villa appeared to lose any chance of being recalled to the national team after his move to MLS due to the league's perceived drop in talent relative to European leagues.
Either way, the former Barcelona and Valencia striker has restored his place as one of the sport's top marksman after scoring 23 goals last season - second only to Bradley Wright-Phillips' 24.
"Villa continues to play at a very good level and in the future we will see if he can return," Lopetegui continued.
"We don't close the door to any player and we always have consideration for players that can help the national team.
"Villa is well, playing with a lot of rhythm, scoring lots of goals and showing a great attitude."
Villa remains Spain's all-time leading scorer after finding the back of the net 59 times in 97 appearances during the country's era of dominance, winning a pair of European Championships (2008, 2012) and a World Cup (2010).
His stock could rise even further if he's able to help New York City capture its first MLS Cup later this year.So, here’s a plan that I had the idea for ages ago, but only managed to assemble the relevant ingredients (a slam-door intercity train, a first class ticket, a daytime journey, some decent weather…) for this weekend.
In all my slow-motion work so far, I’ve used a static camera to capture a high-speed event. But, I wondered, what would happen if the camera was the fast-moving object? For instance, if you use a 210fps camera at 35mph, on playback at 30fps it’ll seem to the observer that they’re moving at walking pace- but everything observed will be operating at 1/7th speed.1
What I’d hoped to do was film the people on a railway platform from a train as it blasted past, but since the places they don’t stop at tend not to be listed in the timetables, this would be hard to co-ordinate. I figured that being at the very front of a fast train as it approached a stop would suffice; although the ‘frozen in time’ effect is less pronounced towards the end of the video, the platforms at non-stops tended to be mostly empty, so there’d be less to capture anyway. Helpfully, people don’t seem to move too much as their train arrives!
Here’s the most successful of my attempts, then- as it happens, the first stop, Bath Spa, had the best lighting. Youtube has, as usual, mangled things somewhat- it’s a lot smoother at the original quality, but vimeo does no better, so this’ll have to do.
Without a slow-motion camera you can achieve something similar by convincing a large group of people not to move! This improv-everywhere scene experimented with just that, which inspired a ‘big freeze’ flashmob in Edinburgh whilst I was living there. Portraying lack of motion in a photograph strikes me now as a fools errand, although like many others I did try, and the (annoyingly uncredited) photo in the BBC coverage is one of mine. The opposite problem, of compressing a block of time into a single frame, can give fantastic results, and is in some sense the inverse of what I’ve been trying here, which is to stretch a moment into an extended video. I find all this mucking around with time endlessly fascinating…
1 I’ve reworded this bit slightly as a lot of people have assumed the train was doing a mere 35mph- British rail isn’t that bad! I believe intercity services such as this can hit 125mph, although I don’t know whether they can build up that much speed between Bristol and Bath – or how fast you’re allowed to enter a station."Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen — right? Don't we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states."
In April 1990 — long before the White House press secretary Sean Spicer indicated president Donald Trump’s administration was interested in cracking down on states where recreational marijuana is legal, by enforcing federal marijuana laws — Trump had acknowledged that the United States should legalize drugs and use the money collected to educate the public on the dangers of drug use.
“We’re losing badly the war on drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.”
Then in October 2015 — after the third Republican debate was held in Colorado, which legalized marijuana for recreational use in 2012 — Trump insisted that in terms of marijuana and legalization, it should be a state issue, state-by-state. Later — during a political rally in Nevada, which recently legalized medical marijuana — Trump further softened his tone on marijuana legalization:
“Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen — right? Don’t we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states.”
In February 2016, Trump hastened to point out his unequivocal support for medical marijuana. Speaking to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, he acknowledged that he is one hundred percent in favor of medical marijuana and that legalizing it is “good in some ways”:
“I know people that have serious problems… and… it [marijuana] really, really does help them.”
As Trump grew older, perhaps, his memory deteriorated and he forgot his own stated position on marijuana after becoming the President of the United States. Or, perhaps he vowed to respect state marijuana rights on the campaign trail only to gain the votes he needed to infiltrate the oval office.
Isn’t it unethical for Trump, who apparently supports states’ rights, to crackdown on legal marijuana in states where voters have approved it? Why is Trump undermining his decade old stance about legalizing marijuana to help end the war on drugs? Does he want marijuana to be produced and sold by cartels and criminals, rather than tightly regulated taxpaying businesses?
#marijuana is a $1.3 BILLION Industry in Colorado. Provided 20,000 jobs. And our economy is BOOMING. $ going to schools and infrastructure. — Julz? (@JulzyaIsaidit) February 24, 2017
Can the federal government interfere in state marijuana laws or dishonor popular support on the issue? Who is going to compensate the states (in Washington state, sales at licensed marijuana shops now average nearly $4.4 million per day)? The Times Editorial Board notes:
“Decades of experience has shown that the U.S. can’t win a war on marijuana. It would be foolhardy for the federal government to dig in on cannabis prohibition now, when voters are increasingly choosing to legalize the drug for medicinal and recreational use.”
Roger Stone, a political strategist who advised Trump during his presidential campaign, criticized Spicer’s remarks on Twitter:
A crackdown on legal marijuana in the states will cost thousands of jobs & bankrupt local govt- huge mistake #StatesRights @realDonaldTrump — Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) February 24, 2017
Spicer’s remarks came the same day as a Quinnipiac poll found 59% of Americans believed marijuana should be legal, while 71% of voters opposed the government’s move to enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have already legalized medical or recreational marijuana. Eight states and Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes; 20 more states in the U.S. have legalized it for medical purposes.
Former president Barack Obama’s administration did not enforce federal marijuana laws on these states and refused to intervene in state’s marijuana laws as long as they kept marijuana — a Schedule 1 drug with no medical value — from crossing state borders and away from children and drug cartels.
Spicer one minute: “We are a states rights party.”
Spicer next minute: Federal marijuana laws override state recreational marijuana laws. — Paul Blumenthal (@PaulBlu) February 23, 2017
This article (ICYMI: When Donald Trump Favored Legal Marijuana — 100%) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.In a windowless room on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, two undergrads are playing a Monopoly game that one of them has no chance of winning. A team of psychologists has rigged it so that skill, brains, savvy, and luckthose ingredients that ineffably combine to create success in games as in lifehave been made immaterial. Here, the only thing that matters is money.
One of the players, a brown-haired guy in a striped T-shirt, has been made rich. He got $2,000 from the Mon |
who methodically — and with great emotional detachment — humiliate, confuse, and otherwise generally screw with their opponents.
Roth is an interesting guy, thoughtful and open in interviews where most ballplayers are happy to give platitudes. After four years of good grades in a competitive business program, Roth might have actually taken a pay cut by pursuing baseball as a career, considering how bleak his professional outlook was and how little minor leaguers make. He defies the myopic jock ethos with a Twitter bio that states “Baseball is something I do, not who I am.”
Michael Roth made his major league debut at home against the Astros Saturday night. Two innings, six batters faced, 22 pitches, four strikeouts. No one reached base or hit a ball out of the infield. Roth enjoyed an enormous strike zone and skirted its edges with a barrage of marginal breaking pitches and tepid fastballs, and he was unhittable. Albert Pujols hit a walk-off double in the ninth, and Roth recorded the win. Same as it ever was.
Saturday night doesn’t change anything. Roth is still a junkballer with barely any experience above rookie ball, and two great innings in a debut do not a Cy Young winner make. But it’s enough to make you hope.
Michael Baumann (@MJ_Baumann) writes about the Philadelphia Phillies for Crashburn Alley of ESPN’s SweetSpot Network.Most Canadians have never heard of B.C.'s Julie Vu, but to hordes of YouTube fans worldwide, she is Princess Joules, transgender role model and LGBT advocate.
From creating video logs that chronicle her transition from male to female, to appearing in what's touted as the first-ever transgender sitcom, Vu, 22, has become an inspiration to people around the world.
"They bawl their eyes out. And they say how much I’ve changed their lives, and their views, and how much I’ve made a difference," she tells The Huffington Post B.C. in an interview. "And that’s kind of the reasons why I keep making videos like this. It makes me happy to see people happy."
Growing up in Surrey, B.C., Vu said she always knew she was trans: "I've always played with Barbies, I knew I was a girl. I just hated my body."
Vu, who was born in Prince Rupert, told people she was gay to hide the fact she felt like a female in a male body. After "coming out of the closet" in high school, she says all of her male friends abandoned her, including her best friend who treated her like a stranger.
When she was 19, Vu began socially transitioning — confusing her Vietnamese parents. Her mother ripped up anything that was "girly" and burned them. Over time, she slowly began to accept that Vu was no longer a boy. Unfortunately, her father is still struggling with it.
Last year, Vu began the lengthy process to physically change her body to match her mind and soul. Five months after assessments by two psychiatrists in Victoria, the province approved her sex reassignment surgery.
In April, she travelled to Montreal alone for the operation and stayed in a bed and breakfast.
She said she felt anxious before the surgery but remembered words of encouragement and comfort from friends who had gone through the process. But once the operation was over, she felt overwhelmed.
"I was in the recovery home and I cried every single night calling my boyfriend, calling everyone that I knew that I loved because I thought I was going to die," Vu revealed in a YouTube video.
"For a moment, I asked myself 'What am I doing to myself? Why am I going through this? Did I make a mistake?' At that point I was regretting my surgery because of how badly I was in pain."
Now, months later, she says she's getting better: "I don't regret my decision. I'm happy. And going by myself to Montreal made me a stronger person."
She continues to channel her experiences through posts on YouTube, where she's amassed almost 200,000 subscribers and 12 million views since 2011.
"I am a fan because she is real and not afraid to talk about her experiences, and cry on camera et cetera. She’s just there to teach people about what she goes through," said Tran Vuong. "But in the beginning I watched her because of her tutorials. She is really good at makeup!"
Vu admits that there are both positive and negative aspects to being so public — such as receiving death threats.
"Walking around the streets sometimes I’m always scared and anxious who's out there. There’s lots of crazy people out there," she admits. "Strangers would message me and say 'You're a disgrace to the Vietnamese race'... It definitely hurts."
Despite that, she said she has no plans to stop her channel anytime soon. In fact, she moved to television, starring in "The Switch."
A half-hour pilot aired on OutTV earlier this year, with the Vancouver producers successfully raising $50,000 through Kickstarter to help with subsequent episodes.
But last month, Vu was dropped from the show and her role was re-cast. Many of her fans were outraged with the decision, and believe the producers used Vu for her online fame.
"I still feel you are exploiting Miss Vu by continuing to use her image, and regardless of what you say about her contributions, most people straight people I know would know nothing about your show if it had not been for Miss Vu," commented Anne Burke on Facebook.
"Yes, I do feel used and thrown away," says Vu, adding that producers told her most of the Kickstarter traffic wasn't coming from her fan base. "Talk about a slap in the face."
But Amy Fox of Trembling Void Studios, which is producing "The Switch," said the split was due to "deep professional differences which we could not resolve."
Fox continued in a Facebook update: "I would also like to make sure that people are aware that re-shooting the pilot is going to cost considerably more money than has been brought to the project through Julie's brand."
For now, Vu is trying to put that behind her by focusing on her career. She recently appeared as a screening host at the Buffer Festival, a three-day event in Toronto that celebrates YouTube content.
And she says she's happy and more confident being in the right body.
With files from Lauren Sundstrom
Listen to a documentary about Julie Vu.
Like this article? Follow our Facebook page Or follow us on Twitter Follow @HuffPostBC
Also on HuffPostThis video, flagged by invaluable Twitter resource and Ace of Spades Decision Desk entrepreneur John Ekdahl, is among the most infuriating things you will see today.
Composed by American Commitment, this video is nothing more than a smash cut of the various videos of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber juxtaposed against footage of Democratic lawmakers either denying his existence or exalting him to the havens.
This video perfectly encapsulates why the imbroglio surrounding Gruber’s comments has the potential to blow the debate over the Affordable Care Act wide open. For a law which enjoys a popularity rating of 37 percent, Obamacare supporters can scarcely afford for the ACA to shed more of its already moribund favorability – particularly at a time in American history when the law’s opponents are on the ascendancy.
The nut of why this whole episode is so infuriating, when it isn’t enervating, are the repeated insults done to America’s collective intelligence by those who believe themselves to be members of a superior class. That condition is made even more insufferable by those Obamacare supporters who are attempting to rewrite the history of the ACA in order to airbrush Gruber out of the picture.
The Federalist’s Sean Davis has a compelling piece on this phenomenon, and it’s worth your full attention. It concludes…
Come. On. I hate to break it to you all, but Gruber doesn’t get to be an architect of Obamacare and Romneycare when you want to use his authority and credentials to bash Republicans or spin for the law, and then radically transform into one of three Jon Grubers who just happens to live in Obama’s neighborhood once Gruber becomes a massive liability for the Left. Gruber was one of the key architects of Obamacare. He didn’t just build econometric simulation models based on the law. He was also involved in drafting its key components. And he was paid enormous sums of money for his advice and counsel. These are facts. Accept them, learn to deal with them, and give the embarrassingly bad Gruber Truthing a rest.
The sloppy, almost perfunctory efforts from some members of the liberal press simply are not up to the task of defusing “Gruber-gate.” The public was told that the entirety of the American health care system had to be remade in order to extend coverage to, at most by the end of this year, 13 million people. Now, they are being informed by no less a figure than the law’s architect that they were idiots for believing him and his allies.
This could all be quite explosive.At last, Leslie Feist is ready to release a new album.
According to Exclaim, the long-awaited follow-up to 2011’s Metals is entitled, Pleasure, and will see release on April 28th through Interscope Records.
Spanning 11 tracks, the album is described as “an exploration into emotional limits,” encapsulating “loneliness, private ritual, secrets, shame, mounting pressures, disconnect, tenderness, rejection, care and the lack thereof.”
Update – March 16th: Feist has shared an Instagram video featuring a snippet of new music.
Update – March 14th: Over a series of tweets, Feist has shared the album’s artwork and also discussed the meaning of the album’s title.
Much to my surprise, I woke up this morning to see the word is out for
🌸P l e a s u r e🌸 pic.twitter.com/mGKMNfTcZb — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
But as Leonard Cohen once said "the devil laughs at those who make plans." — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
I've been so inward facing during the making of this record that I hadn't quite prepared myself to face it, and myself, outward again. — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
So here's what I can tell you….
I made this record last winter with 2 of my closest friends, Mocky and Renaud LeTang. — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
I was raw and so were the takes. — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
Our desire was to record that state without guile or go-to's and to pin the songs down with conviction and our straight up human bodies. — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
I titled the album Pleasure like I was planting a seed or prophecising some brightness. — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
The experience of pleasure is mild or deep, sometimes temporal, sometimes a sort of low grade lasting, usually a motivator. — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
If the way you look at things is how they look then my motivation is to look with a brighter eye. — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
So there it is, in a nutshell. I'm grateful for your curiosity, the music is en route. Best and soon, Leslie 🌺 — Feist (@FeistMusic) March 14, 2017
Pleasure Tracklist:
01. Pleasure
02. I Wish I Didn’t Miss You
03. Get Not High, Get Not Low
04. Lost Dreams
05. Any Party
06. A Man Is Not His Song
07. The Wind
08. Century
09. Baby Be Simple
10. I’m Not Running Away
11. Young Up
In support of the album, Feist has confirmed her first live appearances since 2015. She’ll play a number of festivals this summer, including Justin Vernon’s Eaux Claires Festival, Toronto’s Field Trip Festival, and Oya Festival in Oslo, Norway. See her current itinerary below:
Feist 2017 Tour Dates:
06/03-04 – Toronto, ON @ Field Trip Festival
06/17 – Eau Claire, WI @ Eaux Claires Festival
07/06 – Winnipeg, MB @ Winnipeg Folk Fest
07/20-22 – Wiesen, AT @ Out of the Woods Fesitval
08/04-06 – Katowice, PL @ OFF Festival
08/08-12 – Oslo, NO @ Oya Festival
08/10-12 – Gotenburg, SE @ Way Out West FestivalUrijah Faber faces Frankie Edgar May 16 in Manilla, but he's already setting himself up for another moneyweight fight against No. 1 UFC featherweight contender Conor McGregor.
Faber admits he'd be oversized against McGregor, but says he already has him beat where it counts.
"The good thing is, he does give up, and I don't," Faber told FOX Sports.
McGregor has only been beaten twice in 19 professional bouts, but Faber reads a lot into those losses. Both came via submission and Faber believes McGregor showed his true colors when he tapped to a kneebar in 2008.
"I wouldn't mind fighting Conor," said Faber. "I'll tell you what -- he's got something that a lot of guys don't have. Something a guy like me doesn't have, a guy like Chad Mendes doesn't have, a guy like Frankie Edgar doesn't have, and that's the instincts and willingness to give up when he's about to get knee barred. I wouldn't give up. Come on... His knee was in danger of having some pain inflicted on it and he was like, 'I'm out.'"
McGregor faces UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo July 11 at UFC 189 in las Vegas, Nevada.
Faber took an onslaught of abuse from Aldo in 2010 when he challenged for the Brazilian's title at WEC 48 in Sacramento, California. Faber could hardly stand after enduring five rounds of Aldo's leg kicks.
Calling McGregor "a very talented guy," Faber says the Irishman "gives up" if "his body is in danger."
"Can you teach that? Can you take that away? I don't think so. That's an instinct. He will give up."
5 MUST-READ STORIES
The bloodbath at Krakow. Chuck Mindenhall explains how Mirko Cro Cop's redeeming win in Poland could keep him fighting, even it probably shouldn't.
'We are being violated.' Wanderlei Silva calls out-of-competition drug testing ‘against the constitution.' 'They are not athletes and they don't know what we have to go through to be there and put on a show.'
Sigh. With Yoel Romero withdrawing due to injury, Chris Camozzi will step in to fight Ronaldo Souza at UFC on FOX 15.
'It's about me and not anyone else.' CM Punk says he doesn't care if you hate that he's fighting in the UFC because his attitude is 'punk rock across the board.' 'Shut the f**k up and don't watch the fight.'
'We're not a charity right now.' Metamoris president Ralek Gracie explains why the promotion can't afford to book matches between women, but says he'd make an exception for Ronda Rousey. 'We're interested in having Ronda Rousey and we're willing to invest and potentially take a loss on that opportunity and risk that opportunity because of how big she is.'
MEDIA STEW
UFC Road to the Octagon: Lyoto Machida vs. Luke Rockhold.
Mirko Cro Cop's Octagon interview.
Eddie Bravo talking Conor McGregor's ground game.
Joe Lauzon has a fun story about someone sending him an envelope of white powder. (via r/MMA)
Marcin Held taps Alexander Sarnavskiy at Bellator 136.
Men(?) from BuzzFeed trane UFC. (via Bloody Elbow)
Long watches.
Fight Night Krakow: Post-fight Press Conference
...
Fight Night Krakow: Q&A with Joanna Jedrzejczyk
...
Don Frye: Kimbo, Predator's Predictions, Jose Aldo vs. Conor McGregor, Cain Velasquez
TWEETS
See how the pros reacted to Cro Cop's win over Gonzaga.
Victory lap.
Victory is always possible for the persone who refuses to stop fighting Posted by Mirko Filipovic on Saturday, April 11, 2015
...
@jama43okoh thanks coach. No partying. Just back to work. We're staying busy this year — jimi manuwa (@POSTERBOYJM) April 12, 2015
Thank you all. I am available for July and never been in Scotland. #UFCKrakow — Paweł Pawlak (@PawlakMMA) April 12, 2015
Prayers and belief and a good team @UTCUK pic.twitter.com/AicbOhr8yc — Leon 'Rocky' Edwards (@RockyUtc) April 11, 2015
Better luck next time.
Life...my life is Mma,I give it everything and always that bit more but yet it's still not good enough to take away the hurdles.Sorry guys. — Joanne Calderwood (@DRkneevil) April 12, 2015
My coaches and training partners did a great job getting me prepared for this fight. Tip my hat to Leon & thank you Poland. #UFCKrakow — Seth Baczynski (@Sethbmma) April 11, 2015
Dana back?
Yikes.
I'm big on respect in this sport, so I give it and expect it back. Some ppl can't handle a ass whooping like a man. You loss to Jon you talked trash after, you loss to me and you talk trash now After showing respect at first.
So this is dedicated to you from me and that 6 out of 7 days...
Like I said I need only one to end your life and career @alexthemauler
I never showed you any disrespect ever and now you say this.
That's some low class stuff right there if any class at all
Happy #TBT Alex
I'm fighting jbj and my focus is on him... he's the best ever and its a honor to fight him.
So don't think one sec that Alex is distracting me!
@alexthemauler remember this one too...
You loss to both of us and still no respect.
It's all good though, I'll still show you respect even if you don't show it back.
This one is for the road courtesy of jbj @jonnybones
A photo posted by Anthony Johnson (@anthony_rumble) on Apr 9, 2015 at 10:25am PDT
Not done.
I'm not done yet,I still have a lot of fight left in me https://t.co/6DdC8svb8y — Quinton Jackson (@Rampage4real) April 13, 2015
Beef.
@kjnoons @JennyF209 are you for real man. I was beating your ass till you gouged out my eyes. — Daron Cruickshank (@Cruickshank155) April 12, 2015
Only posting a few of these. It's awful.
@philbaroni I am a white boy who lives n cali and has competed in Thai boxing good job Phil and U are still a worthless piece of shit COWARD — Joe Schilling (@JoeSchilling187) April 12, 2015
@philbaroni when I run into u in Vegas & u try to act like this is just a joke ur gonna wake up wishing u hadn't COWARD — Joe Schilling (@JoeSchilling187) April 12, 2015
Flawless.
'Flawless Victory' #MMA #UFC #UFC189 #JoseAldo #ConorMcGregor A video posted by Respect all, Fear none! (@mmaworld_) on Apr 9, 2015 at 3:03pm PDT
FIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTS
Announced this weekend (April 10-12 2015)
Yoel Romero out, Chris Camozzi vs. Ronaldo Souza at UFC on FOX 15
Seo Hee Ham out, Lisa Ellis vs. Bec Rawlings at UFC Fight Night: Hunt vs. Miocic
Scott Askham vs. Antonio dos Santos Jr. at UFC Fight Night: Gustafsson vs. Teixeira
Steve Bosse vs. Fabio Maldonado at UFC 186
Henry Briones vs. unbeaten Cody Garbrandt at UFC 189
FANPOST OF THE DAY
Today's Fanpost of the Day comes via TheFightNerd
WSOF 20: Reflections of a First-Timer
I have caught a few individual fights from the World Series of Fighting before, but Friday night's WSOF 20 was the first time I watched a card from beginning to end, and what an interesting experience it was. I'm not going to break down every fight because the professional MMA journalists will have that covered in a much better fashion, but there are a few quick things I thought I'd cover from the eyes of a first-timer. I'll admit, good ol' Ben Fodor, aka "Phoenix Jones" was one of the main reasons I tuned in on Friday night. I've heard about the guy for a couple of years, and wanted to see him fight outside of grainy internet footage. And not that I was expecting a world-beater, but even with what I thought were realistically tempered expectations, Phoenix Jones was pretty disappointing. The first kick he threw was so slow, my first thought was that he might be dying of dehydration or exhausted from his walk to the cage....
Check out the rest of the post here.
Found something you'd like to see in the Morning Report? Just hit me up on Twitter @SaintMMA and we'll include it in tomorrow's column.Perhaps it's sick irony that in a movie featuring animal abuse, the real behind-the-scenes story may be even worse than the fictitious version. Or maybe it's just plain sick.
KTLA's Lu Parker investigates undercover video documenting the alleged abuse of Tai, the elephant featured in the Reese Witherspoon/Robert Pattinson film, "Water For Elephants."
The footage, provided by Animal Defenders International (ADI), shows Tai and other elephants being abused by trainers from the company Have Trunk Will Travel. The footage reveals the elephants being beaten with bull hooks -- even a baby elephant is beaten over the head with a hook. The video also shows the elephants receiving electric shocks, and screaming out in pain.
In a very different version of how the animals were treated on the set of "Water For Elephants," the American Humane Association (AHA) has provided a video ensuring that no animals were harmed in the making of the film. Reese Witherspoon says of AHA, "They're very conscious of how the animals were treated. They're on set everyday… They're just the happiest animals. You can tell."
AHA's Tonya Obeso discusses the elephant abuse that appears in the movie, "Throughout the movie she is supposed to be mistreated. Of course that's never going to be a reality on the set." Of course? It's doubtful that if the animals were abused, the actors or AHA representatives were aware of the abuse.
Perhaps Obeso actually reveals the unknown truth, when she states, "The reality is, it's actually a trained behavior for [the elephant] to do something."
That's the problem. This elephant was trained before the making of the film. As the KTLA report suggests, these elephants were abused during their training sessions, when trainers thought no one was watching. TMZ reports that after viewing the video, AHA stated, "We were not present when this video was shot in 2005. We are not clear about all of the content of this video."
According to KTLA, Have Trunk Will Travel issued a statement following the release of the video footage:
"We are unwavering in our commitment to elephants, we stand by our care and training methods."
They also released a statement during the filming of "Water For Elephants":
"Have Trunk Will Travel does not condone using electrical devices to discipline and control elephants except in situations where elephant or human safety is at risk." -Kari Johnson
There's a much larger underlying issue here. If these animals were in fact abused, what then? According to KTLA, the actions by the trainers were technically not illegal. As one anchor remarks, we see these kind of videos too often.
According to Parker's conversations with trainers and activists, "These animals would not be acting in this behavior unless they had been poked, shocked, or hit, because they're not going to learn that behavior any other way."
In other words, this type of abuse will continue until there is not an audience for it. But as long as there is a group who will pay to attend certain (not all) movies, circuses, and zoos, animals will continue to be abused. If we want the abuse to stop, we must stop paying for the entertainment.
This piece has been updated with a statement from the trainers, and to clarify that the alleged abuses captured on the video may not be against the law.Bernie Sanders is surging across the Democratic primary landscape, with a series of polls showing him slashing Hillary Clinton’s leads in the critical states ahead and becoming competitive in states where he once appeared to have no chance.
After a come-from-behind victory in Wisconsin, where he turned what was a consistent double-digit deficit early in the campaign season into a 13-point win, Sanders would appear to have the potential for more upsets on the horizon as his momentum continues to cut into Clinton’s leads in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
In one of the most important developments for Bernie Sanders, a Friday poll showed that he has cut deeply into Clinton’s lead in delegate-rich California with still two months until the primary.
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The Field Poll showed that after trailing by double-digit margins in January, Bernie Sanders is now just 6 percentage points behind Hillary Clinton.
“He’s building some momentum,” poll director Mark DiCamillo told the Sacramento Bee.
The poll found that while Clinton still leads by 10 percentage points among independents likely to vote in the May primary, Sanders is dominating the younger demographics. He is up by 25 percentage points among likely voters in their 30s and by an even wider margin among younger voters.
Sanders is also cutting into the Latino vote, once a solid voting block in Clinton’s favor. While Clinton once held 20 or even 30-point leads among Latino voters in earlier states, the gap is now just 7 percentage points in California.
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That could be trouble for Hillary Clinton, DiCamillo said.
“Latinos would be a traditionally strong segment for Hillary, she’d have it in her back pocket,” he said, adding that now “it’s one of the segments that’s moving away.”
The Sacramento Bee noted that the strong numbers in California could be a bellwether for Sanders’ ability to compete in other, earlier large states. An important vote looms in New York, where Clinton spent eight years as a United States Senator and still enjoys large support.
But even here Bernie Sanders is surging, taking a Clinton lead that was consistently in the 20s — and even as high as 48 points in one recent poll — and cutting it to 10 percentage points with a little less than two weeks left.
Bernie Sanders is surging even in states seen as friendly to Clinton. Maryland is viewed as one of her safest states remaining, with a high African-American voting bloc that to this point has tilted heavily in her favor. Clinton had consistently held leads in the 30s in Maryland, but a poll this week from the University of Maryland/Washington Post shows that Sanders has cut that in half and is now trailing by just 15 points.
While that still leaves a lot of ground to make up, Bernie Sanders would not need to rely on a win in Maryland to keep on his path to reach Clinton in the delegate count. In an analysis in March from FiveThirtyEight pollster Nate Silver, Sanders’ goal for Maryland was to hold Clinton’s win to just 9 percentage points. So even if Clinton were to win Maryland but by a smaller margin, it could still be a positive development for Sanders.
Despite the challenge ahead, the polls show that Bernie Sanders may be in the strongest position in weeks and could be poised to make it a tight race if he can keep up the momentum of the last few weeks.
[Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images]As chickens clucked and torch flames flickered, Harry Huntley, 17, welcomed a small audience to the backyard of his family's house in Hoes Heights.
They had come to hear a presidential candidate give a campaign speech over the Internet.
"I'm Harry," Huntley told 25 people sitting under a tent, where a projector connected to a laptop computer was about to beam live-streamed remarks by Sen. Bernie Sanders onto a bedsheet hung against the siding of the house as a makeshift screen. "I organized this whole thing," Huntley said. "I'm so glad you're here.
"So, without further ado..."
Sanders, the Vermont senator who identifies as a Socialist but is running for the Democratic nomination, delivered a brief, standard stump speech July 30, highlighting familiar issues such as getting money out of politics and granting every college student free, government-funded tuition. The speech was viewed simultaneously at similar house parties nationwide, which the Sanders campaign called "grassroots organizing meetings."
Noah Scialom / Baltimore Sun Media Group Poly senior Harry Huntley, 17, speaks with guests at a backyard party in Hoes Heights to hear Bernie Sanders talk via live stream on the Internet on Wednesday, July 29th. Poly senior Harry Huntley, 17, speaks with guests at a backyard party in Hoes Heights to hear Bernie Sanders talk via live stream on the Internet on Wednesday, July 29th. (Noah Scialom / Baltimore Sun Media Group) (Noah Scialom / Baltimore Sun Media Group)
But the party here — one of seven in the area, Huntley said — was more than simply a political story about Sanders. It was a sign that presidential politics, with 21 Republicans and Democrats running to lead the nation, is heating up, and that some young people are not only paying attention, but getting actively involved.
"I'm very interested in politics," said Huntley, a high school senior at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and president of Poly's Student Government Association. He would be too young to vote if the election were held today, but said he will turn 18 by the time of the general election in November 2016.
Larry Pearl / Baltimore Sun Media Group Poly senior Harry Huntley, 17, hosts guests at his parents' Hoes Heights home to listen to Bernie Sanders talk via live stream on Wednesday, July 29, 2015. Poly senior Harry Huntley, 17, hosts guests at his parents' Hoes Heights home to listen to Bernie Sanders talk via live stream on Wednesday, July 29, 2015. (Larry Pearl / Baltimore Sun Media Group) (Larry Pearl / Baltimore Sun Media Group)
Huntley said his parents, Edye Sanford and Craig Huntley, let him hold the party at their house.
"I got them involved," he said.
For his parents, the party, 16 months before the general election, was less important for its political purpose than for the organizing brains behind it.
"The schmaltzy story is about the mom crying because her kid made it happen," said Sanford, 50, a clothes designer and former secretary to the Hampden Village Merchants Association. "He wanted to make a difference," she said.
Craig Huntley, 51, an engineer who also helps run the 32nd Street Farmers Market in Waverly, said he is "not 100 percent sold" on Sanders, but on his son's organizing acumen.
"I'm impressed," the senior Huntley said. "He really was excited about it (and) did all the legwork and computers."
Harry Huntley isn't exactly new to politics. As far back as 2008, he helped his mother knock on doors in support of Barack Obama's candidacy. But he was 10 or 11 and barely remembers that.
He said he's a gardener at heart (he showed a 2-foot-long string bean that he grew) and that he fell into the role of political organizer for the Sanders event. He said the Student Government Association doesn't really dabble in politics per se, choosing mostly to help organize school events and to promote the agenda of Poly's Environmental Club.
One of his most notable accomplishments as a student leader, he said, was to make Terrible Towels for students to wave at the annual Poly-City College High School football game.
"I wasn't really looking to get involved" in presidential politics, Huntley said. But last month, he saw an announcement on Reddit, an online entertainment, social networking and news site, about Sanders' plan for an online speech and effort to organize watching parties around the country.
"When I first saw it, there were 300 meetings planned," Huntley said before Sanders' speech. "Now, there's 3,500 planned."
Huntley and his best friend, fellow Poly senior Will Powell, of Mount Washington, posted 75 pro-Sanders posters along 41st Street between Roland Avenue and Falls Road, and on Falls between 36th and 41st streets, with slogans like "Get money out of politics," and "Not for sale."
Huntley wrote a formal "media advisory" to announce "a live message from Bernie Sanders about how a grassroots movement can take this country back from the billionaire class," according to the press release.
And although Poly and City College are sports rivals, "We will have students and graduates of Poly and City uniting behind a common goal," the press release stated. "There will be pet chickens for Bernie Sanders (not Colonel Sanders). We will be giving out heirloom vegetables from our garden."
With the help of his parents, his brother, Russell, and two cousins, Huntley set up the backyard party, with a small sign and arrow on the front of the house saying, "Bernie party this way."
He and his family invited about 40 people, including his student government adviser, Matthew Lummel, who teaches government and social studies at Poly.
For Lummel, 33, of Mount Vernon, seeing one of his students organize such a party was validating.
"It's the best thing you could see as a social studies teacher," Lummel said.
Huntley's support of Sanders, whom he considers "an underdog," stems largely from a likability factor and a desire to see political candidates become less beholden to campaign contributions. He said te other Democrats in the race, including former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are accepting too much money from rich donors.
He admitted that his passion for politics is not generally shared by others his age, at least this early in the presidential campaign.
"I think a lot of people are apathetic," he said. "A lot of people don't even think about it. I think a lot of the apathy comes from this buying of elections. They don't see how policies are affecting them. Congress is passing fewer bills than ever before."
After Sanders' roughly 10-minute speech, Huntley stood before the audience again and invited people, some from as far away as Baltimore County, to talk about Sanders.
"I believe he's a man of morals that I can get behind," said educator Kelly Martinez, 34, of Towson.
Huntley's neighbor, Terry Heffner, 47, a security supervisor, said he and his partner, Rick Hoy, are uncommitted to a candidate but leaning toward Sanders.
"We came to support Harry," Heffner said.
As evening turned to dusk, the conversation continued, even as the family's four chickens roosted under a tree in the grassy backyard and Huntley's parents retired to a large wooden swing with their female dog, Fred. (Long story.)
Talk about a grassroots campaign.
"Definitely," said Heffner, laughing.The move isn't expected to make much of a dent at the box office given that the Warner Bros. tentpole was only scheduled to play in 15 locations.
Lebanon has officially banned the Warner Bros. tentpole Wonder Woman just hours before the film was set to premiere in Beirut.
The decision was made by the Lebanese government, taking issue with the fact that the film’s star, Gal Gadot, is Israeli and served in the military (all Israeli citizens serve in the military). Lebanon is officially at war with Israel.
The move isn't expected to make much of a dent at the box office. The movie was only scheduled to play in 15 locations. It is tracking to open domestically at $87 million and is expected to do brisk business overseas.
The ban was decided by a six-member Ministry of Economy committee. The film’s Lebanese premiere was scheduled for this evening (a sneak preview took place yesterday evening as planned).Priti Patel has resigned. But what will happen to Dfid? Photo: PA A few weeks before Priti Patel resigned as International Development Secretary, I spoke to a long-serving official in her department. He was tired, frustrated and had just decided to quit. “I just don’t know what we’re doing anymore,” he said. The department he was leaving was not the one he had joined. Development experts had been overlooked for promotion, while fast-track civil service graduates with no overseas experience were being groomed for top positions. Indeed, increasing numbers of senior officials had never been based abroad. Dozens of experienced staff had already left this year. After 20 years in existence, and 10 in which Britain’s two parties competed to express their devotion to the Department for International Development (Dfid) and its budget, the tenor of the times had suddenly turned against the department and left it feeling besieged. It was under almost daily attack from the same constellation of right-wing newspapers and forces that had recently done for Britain’s place in the European Union. In October Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, called its independent existence into question—lamenting the “colossal mistake” that New Labour had made in splitting aid off from its original home in the Foreign Office. And in this testing environment, Dfid was living under hostile leadership. Patel, who Johnson cheerfully relayed was—like him—“basically trying to bring the Foreign Office and Dfid” together, was never likely to defend her turf, because she’d never really believed in the Dfid mission. Several Dfid staff I spoke to worried that her agenda had become indistinguishable from that of the department |
studio so I could take some photos of my latest purchase, Alter's 1/8th Melty from Shining Hearts. Now… [more]
It's been not only a long time since I've posted here, but it has been a long time since I shared photos of my place. The last time you guys saw where I lived I was still living at home with my parents. It was back in 2012, so easily 4 years ago you saw my collection. Now you can see not only has my… [more]
Did you know I like Yoko from Gurren Lagann? Well I do! I own about 28 Yoko figures and am still missing only one to complete my collection of all the Scaled PVCs of Yoko. This is the latest one that has been released for Gurren Lagann’s 5th Year Anniversary.
Of course I’m partially biased when it comes to figures of Yoko, so it’s hard for me not to like one. Still for the price I feel the quality of this Yoko figure is pretty awesome. It isn’t up to par with say GSC or Alter but she’s still very nice for a prize figure.
Boota is grabbing onto Yoko’s top and pulling, seems she’s worried her top might fly off at any moment!
Some seam lines as well as the paint is a bit too glossy for my taste. As well as there are some shading issue with this figure, however she wasn’t much money and you do get what you pay for in terms of quality.
Her face is pretty adorable with the open mouth, but if you don’t look at her at the correct angle she does look a little derpy sadly.
The base is simple but the way she’s being held up is cool. The 5th Anniversary, makes me wish more companies released Gurren Lagann merchandise for this 5th year.
Nice view from the back, her shorts are very devoid of any detail, not there there is much to focus on.
As mentioned her base is pretty awesome in that it has Lagann’s hand coming out to hold her up. It really does add that extra special something nice to this figure.
Top view of the Oppai!
This Yoko isn’t the best out there for sure, but if you’re on a budget I’d say she’s the one to get. If you’re looking for best quality there are plenty of other Yoko’s out there that are much better and prettier. I got her as I’m a huge fan of Yoko and Gurren Lagann and couldn’t resist! If you’re like me or are just looking for an inexpensive Yoko figure, then I’d get her!!
-Figure Info-
Manufactured by Sega
Non Scale
Initial release in July ’12
Price of 1,800 Yen
Get your own at anyone of these fine retailers!
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And Like Howagirlfigures.com on FacebookIn a stroke of self-satire, Pentagon officials tried to block Stars and Stripes — the military’s respected independent newspaper — from covering the troops’ plain and honest reactions to the election night news about their new commander in chief. The Department of Defense once again made news by smothering news.
The boneheaded muzzling of the newspaper, which is protected by First Amendment guarantees against editorial interference, barred reporters assigned to do simple color stories from the public areas of military bases in order to “avoid engaging in activities that could associate the Department with any partisan election.”
Partisan? By that rationale, the civilian news media’s coverage of the spontaneous celebrations across the land on Tuesday night was an act of journalistic bias. It’s ludicrous that Pentagon brass feared men and women in uniform might be caught smiling, frowning or variously exclaiming “Whoopee!” or “Rats!” at voting results from the democracy they defend with their lives.
The good news is that Stars and Stripes found commanders in the Middle East and Europe that ignored the foolish directive, as if it were a premise for a “M*A*S*H” episode. When other commanders clamped down in Japan and South Korea, the paper properly took the ban as illegal under longstanding Congressional and military policies. Its reporters did their jobs until forced to stop.
By law, troops are allowed to express their political opinions in a nonofficial capacity. These days, they do so nonstop by name in blogs and newspaper letters. Even so, a Pentagon spokesman told the newspaper there’s no obligation to “assist with a story that chips away at the fundamental apolitical nature of the military.”
Inane is more apt than apolitical. The Pentagon should retreat from its head-in-the-sand posturing.Soundboard, Matrix, SirMick Topics
Collection GratefulDead
Set 1
New Minglewood Blues
Dire Wolf
Looks Like Rain
They Love Each Other
Big River ->
El Paso
Brown Eyed Women
Let It Grow
Set 2
Samson And Delilah
Sunrise
Terrapin Station ->
Playing In The Band ->
Drums ->
Space ->
Saint Stephen ->
Not Fade Away ->
Playing In The Band
Encore
Passenger
Notes
Sources used:
1) SBD > MC > R > PCM > D > CD > EAC > SHN
part of The Music Never Stopped Project 2002
Thanks to Raoul Duke & Matt Vernon
edits/encoding by JCotsman
2) audience recording on a Marantz pro cassette deck, don't recall the model & Sennheiser MKH404 mics
Lineage: master cassette > reel @ 3.75 ips > reel @ 3.75 ips > HD > wav
Encoding: CDWave > flac frontend > flac
Recorded by: a friend of a friend
Transfer by: Pantagruel
notes:
- the dc offset has been removed from both sources
- a number of very small dropouts have been repaired in the aud source, and a small patch of static
removed from the sbd
- much of the tuning is missing from the aud and has been patched in from the sbd
- several sections of music are missing from both sources. The relevant sections have been patched in
from the opposite source
comments:
- my track splits for most of d2 are somewhat speculative, since it doesn't seem to have been pinned down.
The timings at Deadlists, even allowing for the fact that the pitch may not be correct, are quite different
from these and there, d2t05 has been included as part of the previous track.
Matrixed by
SIRMick
June 2008
Identifier gd1978-01-11.mtx.sirmick.92086.sbeok.flac16 Location Los Angeles, CA Run time 144 Source Matrix by Sir Mick Transferred by SirMick Type sound Venue Shrine Auditorium Year 1978It seems like Google Glass has the same Achilles heel as most mobile devices: a short battery life. And so, even if the device isn’t for sale yet, someone’s already come up with a complementary external battery pack for it. It’s called PWRglass, a 1400mAh battery pack that looks like a lanyard.
The company behind PWRglass claims that the battery is equivalent to almost three times the unspecified battery life of Glass. While Google claims that the device’s built-in battery is enough for “one day of typical use”, PWRglass explains that it will only last 51 minutes of continuous video. That’s one of the most popular applications of Glass to date. With PWRglass, you can continuously shoot with Glass for up to 2 hours and 21 minutes. The video below – showing the PWRglass crew getting a second Google Glass test unit – proves that claim:
Because Glass uses a microUSB charger, I bet it will work with many external battery packs, but the PWRglass does make it easier to carry that extra power around.
[PWRglass via Gear Diary]Putting the rad back in radio. Mark Gonzales is the true skateboard pioneer. From the libraries of South Gate to the streets of the world, he took what he saw happening in skateparks and took it to the streets. No conspiracy by freestylers here, just mimicking the parks' style on the rails and curbs all over the LA city basin. Thanks, Mark. —Jake Phelps
Anti-Nowhere League - "Let's Break the Law"
The Pretenders - "Brass in Pocket"
Journey - "Lights"
Thin Lizzy - "Rocker"
Stray Cats - "Rock This Town"
Download Ep.55
Subscribe to the Thrasher Radio Podcast by copying this link into your favorite podcasting app, or click here for more options!
Photo: Joseffer
Have a question or comment for Jake? Who do you want to see on the show? Let us know by leaving a comment below.- For eight years Arab-American Nedal Tamer has been looking for a change - and he found what he was looking for, in then-presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
"Obama didn't do anything for me as an Arabic Muslim," he said. "I don't have any benefits from the eight years he spent in the White House.
"If you really care about your family in the Middle East, and you care about your relatives, you support President Trump," Tamer said. "He has a plan to clean out these terroristic groups."
This real estate developer from Dearborn is a minority within minorities. Not only does he support President Trump, he feels the executive order banning refugees makes the country safer from terror attacks.
"What's the guarantee that these groups are not going to come with refugees," Tamer said.
As he watches protests all over the country over the refugee bans in seven predominantly Muslim countries he wonders about the timing.
"Why we didn't protest when we saw the airstrikes in Yemen daily?"
He feels the reaction is premature.
"Support your country, support your president and wait and see for the next 4 years," he said.
He understands that families are separated for the moment but he believes its temporary and safety should be a priority right now.
"This is for the safety for me, my family and the community. Why aren't we thinking in that positive way?"
Tamer is fully aware that are consequences to taking a public stance in support of trump within his community but he says it is a risk worth taking.
"In social media you get messages," he said. "How do you deal with that? I ignore it."
He feels it necessary for him to speak out now for his children, who constantly hear messages that their president is anti-Muslim. He says that is simply not the case.
"Protect your family," he said. "Because you love your house and family and the president is doing the same."Yazid ibn Nu'aym ibn Huzzal, on his father's authority said: Ma'iz ibn Malik was an orphan under the protection of my father. He had illegal sexual intercourse with a slave-girl belonging to a clan. My father said to him: Go to the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) and inform him of what you have done, for he may perhaps ask Allah for your forgiveness. His purpose in that was simply a hope that it might be a way of escape for him.
So he went to him and said: Messenger of Allah! I have committed fornication, so inflict on me the punishment ordained by Allah. He (the Prophet) turned away from him, so he came back and said: Messenger of Allah! I have committed fornication, so inflict on me the punishment ordained by Allah. He (again) turned away from him, so he came back and said: Messenger of Allah! I have committed fornication, so inflict on me the punishment ordained by Allah.
When he uttered it four times, the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: You have said it four times. With whom did you commit it?
He replied: With so and so. He asked: Did you lie down with her? He replied: Yes. He asked: Had your skin been in contact with hers? He replied. Yes. He asked: Did you have intercourse with her? He said: Yes. So he (the Prophet) gave orders that he should be stoned to death. He was then taken out to the Harrah, and while he was being stoned he felt the effect of the stones and could not bear it and fled. But Abdullah ibn Unays encountered him when those who had been stoning him could not catch up with him. He threw the bone of a camel's foreleg at him, which hit him and killed him. They then went to the Prophet (ﷺ) and reported it to him.
He said: Why did you not leave him alone. Perhaps he might have repented and been forgiven by Allah.Chris Nuttall-Smith has eaten his way through Toronto's restaurant scene — but now the feast is over and he can reveal his face to the world.
The Globe and Mail's national restaurant critic has been going undercover since 2012 to review the city's eateries for that newspaper. His last review, however, was published Saturday.
But before that column went to print, Nuttal-Smith had one last tidbit of business to do: finally show the face behind the byline. And he did just that Friday on CBC's Metro Morning with host Matt Galloway — in an interview that was streamed on Facebook Live so viewers could see the real Chris Nuttall-Smith.
Nuttall-Smith has travelled Toronto's epicurean scene, letting small bistros share the stage with fine dining restaurants. (Blacktail Restaurant)
"It'll be a little strange to walk into a restaurant and not only to be recognized but for people to let on that they recognize me," he said.
He said there have been few photos of him online since he began reviewing restaurants for Toronto Life a decade ago. Oddly enough, one of the photos that pops up when you search his name is actually that of author David Bezmozgis.
"So, I hope he's gotten really good service [in restaurants] over the last few years," Nuttall-Smith joked.
'One of the great food capitals on earth'
I'm really happy to leave some of that pressure behind to be honest. Restaurant critic Chris Nuttall-Smith
He's observed the city's food scene evolve throughout the years, but told Galloway that the biggest change he's noticed has been watching the culinary borders dissolve.
"People used to go to the suburbs for suburban food and they used to come downtown for urban food," he said. "It was steak frites and pizza versus biryani and regional Chinese.
"That's over."
Nuttall-Smith says the city became as multicultural in its food choices "as we are as people. Making us one of the great food capitals on earth."
Toronto's food scene has become as multicultural as its residents, Nuttall-Smith says. (Charles Dharapak/The Associated Press)
The gourmand's reviews have sometimes made restaurants — while at other times his columns been blamed for closing them.
It's a part of a job that's been stressful and he says he's happy "to leave some of that pressure behind."
Nuttall-Smith said he never revelled in the power he held over businesses, instead making sure he did his due diligence.
"It's not like you just go to a restaurant once. You go two, three times and, some cases, four times. You're bringing as much knowledge, as much history to bear, and you're talking to the restaurateur as well. So critic is part of it but you're also a reporter."
Say cheese
Keeping his identity a secret hasn't been that difficult for Nuttall-Smith because, he says, he's a "funny looking guy" and few people have taken his picture. There has, however, been the odd photo of him circulating on the web.
"I called people and said, 'Can you take that photo of me down?''' he said. "The Momofuku chain took my picture with their hidden camera. It's a part of the job. It happens to everybody.
"One critic I know says when he walks into a restaurant there's a red laser beam on his head."
Momofuku snapped Nuttall-Smith's picture when he visited the Japanese franchise in Toronto. (CBC)
But now, the bespectacled, fit and youthful-looking critic will be in front of the cameras, instead of trying to avoid them. He says he's working on a television show about food, though he wouldn't divulge details.
As for his favourite spots in the city? He says for special occasions nothing beats Edulis.
"They do such an incredible job — constantly striving — and they can stand up to any place in the world."
But he's quick to mention the little places as well, like One2 Snacks in Scarborough.
He'll miss "having such a unique and amazing vantage point on the economy, the sociology, the demography, the geography of the city," he said. "Restaurants say so much about a place. Going in, finding stuff that's amazing and really being able to enthuse about it."Today, we released a new version of LBRY beta with tools to publish your own original content!
Now anyone with access to LBRY beta can reserve LBRY names and publish their own original, digital content.
We’ve finally come around and have to admit that LBRY has the potential to be much more than the world’s most efficient media player of It’s a Wonderful Life.
First, we launched with It’s a Disaster and Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Rap Battle. That was pretty cool, and we’re stoked to be the first protocol in the world to stream a Hollywood feature film via blockchain.
Then July happened.
The whirlwind of growth over the past few weeks has left our team floored by the response to our beta release. We have a waiting list of over 100,000 future LBRYians standing by for their opportunity tell the mainstream media middlemen to take a hike.
And now LBRY beta users can do just that…
When you open LBRY, you will also notice 3 areas on the homescreen displaying LBRY’s current featured content. These areas correspond to the LBRY names “One”, “Two”, and “Three” (lbry://one, etc.). Anyone can bid for those names and get your content featured on LBRY’s opening screen!
The true power of LBRY is allowing creators to connect directly with their audience. So what are you waiting for? Go and do it!
Oh… you don’t have an invite yet? Avoid waiting longer than you have to by joining the beta waiting list now.
Plus, we’ve got another little secret…
If you're a content creator, you can submit your original work to us for a chance to jump the waiting list (100K strong and growing). Our goal is to turn LBRY into a one-stop-shop of the best original content available on the internet. So we want to reward those who are interested in using LBRY as it is meant to be used.
And we’re serious about the reward part. Accepted partners receive $1,000 in LBC.
Read more about this program and sign up here.audio
sensors (autorotation)
wifi
3D graphics
hardware accelerated video playback
camera
SD card and USB mounting
gapps
not enough space to install gapps in /system
microphone doesnt work
you have to merge 2 system partitions in one to install 2017-02-25 and newer builds
whole new audio based on opensource tinyhal (microphone should work both builtin and headset). Please report any regression.
new libwvm means widevine drm should work now
big system partition (1.2Gb). You have to install it on merged system1 and system2, if you have already merged just install.
SD card mount fix included (previosly avaliable as boot.img)
Wifi uses unique device MAC addres from /BKB partition
cleaned some useless blobs like powerservice daemon
Added settings for enable Navigation bar ( check in Settings -> Buttons). Hardware keys disables when nav bar switched on.
Vibration intensity setting (check in Settings -> Sound)
Settings for notification and battery LED (color, intensity)
Settings for buttons backlight intensity
Added ffmpeg codecs for format unsupported by hardware or google, like flac
battery animation on offline charging
userspace cpquiet governor by default (resolves all lags in video)
updated hwui props in build.prop (improve screen stability, less black pixels in chrome)
bigger shader cache (seems to little improved graphic perfomance)
updated wifi driver and firmware
hope finally resolved wifi disconnection issue by disabling IpReachability monitor
MAC address loading fixed
Resolved issue with wifi Switch On
Added hardboot exec patch for work as main rom for MultiROM
XDA:DevDB Information
LineageOS 13.0 for Xiaomi MiPad (mocha), ROM for the Xiaomi Mi Pad
Contributors
Version Information
Here is one more ROM for Mi PAD. This one I consider as stable daily driver.What working:Known problems:Initial releasechangelog:changelog::gihub source code links: Device tree (cm-13.0 branch) Kernel (cm-13.0 branch) Vendor blobs (cm-13.0 branch)Thanks for author of this repository for building custom webview.apk manumanfred/android_external_chromium-webview Mi Pad by default has 2 /syetm partition, each 640Mb. It is not enogh to install LineageOS and Gapps. To install 2017-02-25 build and newer you have to merge 2 system partition in one 1.2Gb system partition. To dod this follow instruction http://en.miui.com/thread-118294-1-1.html If you want root acces flash SuperSU zip https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/supersu 6.0.x MarshmallowLinux 3.10.xCyanogenMod, LineageOSBeta2017-02-212017-04-20(Newser) – Police say a 38-year-old man played it a little too cool after getting locked in a walk-in beer cooler overnight Tuesday in Wisconsin. The Daily Tribune reports the man entered the cooler at a Kwik Trip convenience store in Marshfield around 11:50pm. The cooler automatically locks at midnight and trapped the man, identified as Jeremy Van Ert, inside, according to WSAW. The store is open 24 hours, so Van Ert would only have had to knock on the glass to be rescued by an employee. Instead, police say he spent all night in the 32-degree cooler, drinking a bottle of beer and three cans of Four Loko.
Van Ert was freed when a customer noticed him in the cooler around 5:50am Wednesday. Police say he left the store without paying for his drinks—or the three cases of beer he damaged when he fell over them—but was soon arrested on suspicion of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. Van Ert was cited for misdemeanor retail theft. (Read more beer stories.)Coming This Fall: The Bounty Hunter Code: From the Files of Boba Fett
Posted by Eric on
You've seen The Jedi Path. You've seen The Book of Sith. Now witness the third installment in Lucasfilm's series of accessory-packed in-universe books, Star Wars: The Bounty Hunter Code: From the Files of Boba Fett. The blog Idle Hands lets us know that this product was previewed, albeit stealthily, at the recent BookExpo America conference. Daniel Wallace, Ryder Windham, and Jason Fry are collaborating on this book, and it'll be released on October 15, 2013. In fact, it's already available for pre-order on Amazon.
Here's some information about the book courtesy of Idle Hands:
When legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett met his untimely end at the Pit of Carkoon, the Rebel Alliance discovered a secure, blast-proof bounty hunters case holding Boba Fetts personal items. For years it remained hidden away. But now all who wish may unlock the secrets held within....
Press the buttons, insert the data card, and the case opens with sounds and lights. Housed within is a text of great import. At some point in his career Boba Fett bound together the latest edition of the Bounty Hunters Guild Handbook and a manifesto from Death Watch, the secretive splinter group of Mandalorians. Together, these volumes make up The Bounty Hunter Code.
The handbook is an essential guide for all bounty hunters. Senior Guild members offer advice for hunters new to the Guild, a detailed list of the tools and techniques crucial to the crimson trade, and the basics of making a living on the margins of galactic law. Boba Fett has scrawled additions and commentary in the margins throughout, as have the bounty hunters Greedo, Bossk, and Dengar, all of whom were once in possession of the Handbook.
The Death Watch volumepart informational guide, part manifestois full of Death Watch history, philosophy, and discussions of key Mandalorian gear: their famous T-visors, their celebrated armor, and their impressive jetpacks. This Death Watch booklet was originally taken from Death Watch leader Tor Vizsla and given to Boba by his father, Jango Fett, and features handwritten notes from father to son. Boba in turn intended to leave it to his daughter, and so hes added his own annotations to aid in her education. The bounty hunter Aurra Sing and the pirate Hondo Ohnaka have added their commentary as well.
Tucked beneath The Bounty Hunter Code is Cradossks memoir, Making a Killing, a brutal account of his rise to the top of the Bounty Hunters Guild.
From the creators of Book of Sith and The Jedi Path, in collaboration with Lucasfilm, The Bounty Hunter Code reveals the secrets of the hunt and offers insight into this demanding, dangerous, and misunderstood profession.
The case includes:
The Bounty Hunter Code
The 48-page memoirs of Cradossk, former head of the Bounty Hunters Guild, with an inscription from the author to Boba Fett
A Kamino saberdart
Boba Fetts captain's license
Boba Fett's arms permit
Slave I s official operating license
An Imperial wanted poster for Han Solo
All credit to Idle Hands for getting the scoop on this awesome new product!Get Your Dollars Out Now! FAST!!!
By Adrian Salbuchi
03/10/08 " Global Research " -- - The events of the last two weeks have clearly revealed that the global financial, monetary and banking system imposed on the world by the power structures promoting "globalization" is fundamentally flawed, unviable and immoral in its effects upon the most all of Mankind. After allowing a small cabal of shady characters to illegitimately accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power over markets, corporations, industries, media, armed forces and entire nations, like the World Trade Center towers on 9/11, this entire System is now in free-fall, collapsing into itself in one massive implosion.
This loathsome and unjust Global Power System was designed and implemented over the past seven decades by the geopolitical and geoeconomic strategic planners serving the New World Order power structures, most notably its network of discrete, low-profile but highly powerful private think tanks, such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR, founded in New York in 1919), The Trilateral Commission (founded in 1973), The Bilderberg Conference (formed in Holland in 1954), and others like the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the notorious Neo-con Project for a New American Century (PNAC) (1).
Considering the enormous complexity of the process that is taking place right now; the vast amounts of information we are bombarded with every minute of the day, and the apparent difficulty in foreseeing just how this global crisis will finally be resolved, we would summarize certain important aspects and key data which we believe will help us put together this veritable jig-saw puzzle, so that we may begin to fathom what the true face of this horrendous creature euphemistically called "globalization", is really like. As Argentine citizens, we have a huge advantage over other peoples including US citizens when it comes to understanding and coping with this kind of crisis. I say this because in our own lifetimes we have suffered in Argentina all of what is now happening globally - albeit on a much smaller scale in our case. We've seen this movie... We've been there, and done that... We've been pushed and dragged through the entire hysterical hocus-pocus of inflation, hyperinflation, systemic banking collapses, currency changes, Debt Bond Swaps, Mega-Debt Bond Swaps, financial "armouring", banking holidays, freezing of bank accounts, etc., etc... And we have also suffered the end-results: bank bail-outs paid for by taxpayers (or through inflation, or through the confiscation of savings), disappearance of pension funds, destruction of job posts and overall impoverishment of the population.
So, take a clue from our thirty years' experience in "financial meltdowns": GO GET YOUR DOLLARS OUT FROM YOUR BANK NOW, AND DO IT FAST!!!!
A Flawed Model
Finance versus Economics -
The financial system (i.e., the basically virtual, unreal and parasitic wonderworld of banking), was designed to function in a way increasingly contrary to the interests of the Economy (i.e., the real world of concrete work, labour and production/services). In recent decades, Finance and the Economy have increasingly parted paths, ceasing to maintain the essential balance and equilibrium that is necessary for ensuring healthy economic activity centered on the Common Good of the People. In fact, Finance and Economy have today become all but total enemies. This can be seen, for example, by the fact that the present Global Economic and Financial System rests almost completely on the concept of DEBT, which is another way of saying that the Real Economy is always controlled by, and subservient to, the interests, whims and crises of Virtual Finance.
The Debt System -
The Doctrine (or, should I say, Dogma) of Extreme Capitalism has imposed the concept of DEBT as the preferred way to move the economy. In most countries (Argentina, for example) this means that there is no proper use of the local National Currency by the State to generate credit in a controlled and non-Interest bearing manner. This is the best way of fueling economic expansion for specific social, defense, infrastructure, and technological developments, always focusing on the Common Good and prioritizing the National Interest. One of Extreme Capitalism's key dogmas says that central banks controlling the national currency must be totally "independent" of Government. However, since all such institutions must finally respond to somebody somewhere, we thus discover that nowadays central banks are subordinated and subservient not to the State (i.e., the People), but rather to the private banking superstructure, both local and global, which naturally leaves the whole concept of the Common Good and National Interest almost totally aside.
This is so in Argentina as in other countries, however in the case of the United States this is particularly extreme because its central bank - the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) - is a private institution, with almost 97% of its unique shareholding structure in the hands of the private banking infrastructure itself, both domestic (in a first instance) as well as global (if we look further afield). Once the private banking superstructure achieves control of the local central bank, it is then in a position to impose chronic and often drastic under-monetization of the Economy.
This means that there is never enough money to satisfy the true needs of the Real Economy. That's when the private banks come on stage offering to close that artificially generated "gap", becoming the prime credit generators of the economy, for which they charge interest - often at usury rates - for loans made to individuals, companies and even the State itself. We should also understand that the key source of inflation in all economies lies not so much in monetary expansion by the State (if this is kept in sync with true economic growth), but rather most inflation in any economy is fueled by interest bearing loans made by the private banking sector.
At a Geoeconomic level (2), this has also served to generate massive public debt in Third World countries like Argentina,. fueled by rampant corruption amongst the individuals involved in the lending and borrowing process, and supported by Governments that never seem to understand how to use the sovereign functions inherent in their power to issue money to fund and promote balanced economic growth. Instead, these countries adopt IMF-designed neoliberal policies on key matters spanning from central banking functions, fiscal policies, debt, rates of interest and exchange, to banking regulations and other key factors, that have all been twisted out of shape so that they run counter to the country's National Interest.
Fractional Reserve Banking System -
This is a universaly applicable banking concept in today's global marketplace, that allows the private banking infrastructure to generate "Virtual Money" literally out of thin air (i.e., electronic credit lines, loans and the like) in a proportion of 6, 10, 30 or 50 times more than the actual Real Money they hold in their bank vaults.
To add insult to injury, the banks then charge you hefty interest rates for the "money" they created out of nothing and "lent" to you, whilst they require collateral consisting of real stuff like your home, your car, or your company. The proportion between the number of Dollars or pesos in their vaults and the amount of credit they can generate, is determined by the local central bank (remember: controlled by the private banks themselves), is called minimum monetary reserves under the Fractional Reserve Banking System and reflects a statistical estimate of what portion of deposit holders will normally visit the bank to withdraw their money in cash. The problem is that the concept of "normal" is basically a group or collective psychological factor, intimately linked to the perception that deposit-holders have regarding the financial system in general, and individual banks in particular. When "abnormal" times come - and boy have they come today!! - then people panic and run to their banks all at the same time, demanding to withdraw their money, not as electronic blips on the ATM machine, but as hard cash.
That was when we all discovered that the amount of Real Money in each bank's vaults was not suffient to pay all depositors, except for a handful (normally privileged insiders who "saw it all coming"). For the rest: of us, there was nothing left and the banking system collapsed. That's when in the US for example, and barring any taxpayer funded bail-outs, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) indemnifies up to 100.000 dollars in the US or, in Argentina, that's when we all realized that we had all been totally robbed, and took to the streets to uselessly bang our pots and pans on the banks' monumental iron-clad gates, conveniently shuttered the night before... All thanks to the inherently fraudulent Fractional Reserve Banking System. This is what happened in Argentina in 2001 and this is what is unfolding right now in the US.
Investment Banking -
In the US, Commercial or Main Street banks like Bank of America, JPMorganChase or CitiGroup are allowed to generate 8 to 10 "Virtual" - i.e., fake - Dollars for every Real Buck they have in their vaults. This scheme is controlled by the authorities, i.e., the FED and the Comptroller of the Currency. However, so called "investment banks" in the US and elsewhere, do not need to comply with any such requirements; they are the ones making Mega-Loans to Corporations, the US Government and foreign Governments like Argentina's, which is why they are far less controlled and regulated This means that for every Real Dollar they hold, these investment bankers can create 26 "virtual" Dollars (Goldman Sachs), 30 "virtual" Dollars (Morgan Stanley), more than 60 (Merrill Lynch, just before they went bust), or more than 100 in the cases of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. (3)
Channeling and Transference System -
Another key factor lies in the way that the global financial system has structured automatic channels to bring in profits and transfer away all losses throughout the entire system. This has the effect that in times of great growth and gigantic profits (i.e., when the whole system grows), it is stable and allows creating many trillions of dollars out of thin air). That's when profits are conveniently privatized, i.e., they naturally flow into the pockets of shareholders, speculators, directors, CEO's, top management, "investors" and other key stakeholders in financial institutions and Corporate infrastructure. But when the system suddenly contracts, and tail-spins out of control as is happening now, then mechanisms are conveniently activated to socialize all losses through State-funded bailouts, special loans, FED-funded acquisitions via specific "vehicles" like JPMorgan, Citicorp and Bank of America, so that it is the domestic and foreign populations as a whole who end up paying the bill, through such phenomenae as inflation, hyperinflation (oh, we know a lot about that in Argentina!!), banking collapses, tax hikes, debt defaults, nationalizations, etc). The 4 Pillars of the Extreme Capitalist Model - In short the key factors described above, in the long-term all function together in a coordinated, consistent and synchronized manner, which means that, even if in the short- and medium-terms there are spates of high profits where money is sloshed around big time, in the long-term the whole system just doesn't add up. That's when you have periodic meltdowns like today's. Usually, they are explained away by well-paid economic gurus writing brainy explanations in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times or New York Times, who tell us that this is all just part of "the economic cycle". For the most part, they can isolate sections of those downturns and localize them, so that they only affect a couple of emerging markets...
Like Argentina in 2001, or Brasil in 1999, or Mexico in 1997. In short, these four pillars are:
1. Programmed Monetary Insufficiency - Artificially generated by an "independent" central bank, controlled by the local and global private banking institutions superstructure;
2. Private banking based on Fractional Reserves - As a system, this allows banks to create money out of thin air, charging interest for it - often at usury rates -, and generating huge profits for "investors" and creditors;
3. Debt - This is the key concept that "fuels" private and public economies replacing the far more economically sound concept of reinvesting company profits and promoting a savings culture. Those who |
link they give doesn't work); they quote snippets of translated pages from the web sites of the White House, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.. Since we actually tuned the translation file for these sites earlier this week, it's a shame that link's broken. UPDATE (2005-11-13): smurflaw.suxs.net Here's something else for which the online community can now thank Olivia and the IMPS (see their legal threat emails below): SuxS.Net. I registered that domain and set the new site up to let anyone in the world who wants to set up a critical or satirical site without the danger of losing the site's name to the UDRP (or most trademark laws) register a safe name for their site. Using this, the WebSmurfer is now available as smurflaw.suxs.net. UPDATE (2005-11-10): log oddities So, I was looking through the site logs this afternoon to see what sort of sites are referring all this new traffic and found a fascinating link to this site: it's in the web version of Appendix A to the Edelman Expert Report, from the case Multnomah County Public Library et al., vs. United States of America, et al.. Apparently the WebSmurfer was on the short-list of incorrectly blocked sites in that case, and was listed (with link) in the documents submitted by the ACLU, which eventually went to the Supreme Court. Apparently the censorware company N2H2 had this site listed under "Adults Only, Nudity, Pornography, Sex"; now they have it listed under "Loop Hole Sites", which I suppose is a bit more appropriate. UPDATE (2005-11-10): so now this site is back up and functioning I want to thank Olivia Rodriguez and her employer "International Merchandising, Promotion & Services" for providing that little boost of motivation I needed to finally get this site re-built after my server's drives crashed; without her emails (see below) I might very well not have gotten around to it. Also, it looks like Google has re-indexed so the Smurf Name Generator has now dropped out completely (presumably because it's been returning 404s since it's owner received his threat letter) and The WebSmurfer is 2nd in Google searches for "smurf". So I guess I need to thank Olivia and the IMPS for boosting me in Google's search listings as well. UPDATE (2005-11-09): and in other news... An article about this went up at The Register, which seems to have been picked up by a lot of news and blog sites in Europe (particularly.nl and, home of the Smurfs themselves,.be). This site receives about 30k hits per month normally, and today alone it's gotten 29k. Yow. UPDATE (2005-11-08): apparently this is happening to other smurf-related sites too... So, it looks like this is one of those things a law firm sticks the interns on when there's no photocopying to do, since it appears that the fellow who ran the site 2nd highest on Google searches for "smurf" (the WebSmurfer is 3rd) also received one. His Smurf Name Generator is currently offline while he discusses the threat he received with his lawyer. UPDATE (2005-11-08): this site is still being legally threatened! Apparently this corporation, and I'm not entirely certain what their name is, really want to shut down my little site. Perhaps they haven't noticed that three crashing hard drives have pretty much accomplished their goal for them, albeit only temporarily. Here's the latest round of email (see the section below for more): their next threat email
my reply UPDATE (2005-11-02): this site is also being legally threatened! As if the joy of trying to recover from a drive crash weren't enough, I also received a threatening email this morning from someone claiming to represent whatever corporation currently controls the legal rights to a variety of Smurf-related trademarks. Apparently they feel that this site's URL, which they had incorrect, infringes on these trademarks; they made no mention of the site's content, in case you're curious. Here's the correspondence so far: the original threat email
my reply
the publicly-available domain registration information for smurfs.comElsa, Anna, Rapunzel, and Kairi make up four of the new Princesses of Heart. Come theorise who the last three Princesses will be!
Details Published on February 18, 2013 @ 10:01 pm Written by Cecily
Composer Takeharu Ishimoto updated his blog last night unveiling the official THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU Live Crossover 2nd website, complete with brand new information detailing any specifics attendees would require! Taking place on May 10th, 2013 at the shibuya duo MUSIC EXCHANGE in O-EAST, The Death March return to bring you all the familiar tunes from the Reaper's Game.
Presale tickets at the cost of 4,500円 (roughly $48.52 USD) will be available from February 25th-March 4th 2013.
If purchasing tickets on the day of the event, they will instead be 5,000円 (roughly $53.91 USD).
It's worth noting however, that there will not be a live stream available this time around, so to all who are willing and able, don't miss the opportunity to purchase your tickets!Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday launched a blistering assault on Allied policy during World War II, saying world powers’ failure to bomb the Nazi concentration camps from 1942 cost the lives of four million Jews and millions of others.
Citing recently released UN documents that show the Allies were aware of the scale of the Holocaust in 1942, some two years earlier than previously assumed, Netanyahu said in a speech marking Holocaust Remembrance Day that this new research assumed “a terrible significance.”
“If the powers in 1942 had acted against the death camps — and all that was needed was repeated bombing of the camps — had they acted then, they could have saved 4 million Jews and millions of other people,” he said at the official state ceremony marking the start of the memorial day.
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“The powers knew, and they did not act,” he told the audience at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
“When terrible crimes were being committed against the Jews, when our brothers and sisters were being sent to the furnaces,” he went on, “the powers knew and did not act.”
In a bleak and bitter address, the Israeli prime minister said that the Holocaust was enabled by three factors: the vast hatred of the Jews, global indifference to the horrors, and “the terrible weakness of our people in the Diaspora.”
Anti-Semitism had not disappeared, and “it would be naive to think” that it would do so in the foreseeable future, he said. It was being exacerbated by “hatred from the East,” led by Iran and the Islamic State, he added.
The speech marked a sharp contrast from that of President Reuven Rivlin, who spoke just before Netanyahu, and cautioned against seeing anti-Semitism where it does not exist.
Global indifference persisted, too, Netanyahu said, as evidenced by the horrors in Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan and Syria. One “ray of light,” he noted, was US President Donald Trump’s determined response to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s gassing of his own people.
What had changed, though, was that the Jewish nation now has a strong Israel to protect it. “The weak do not have much chance of survival,” he said. “The strong survive; the weak are wiped out…our people learned this in the Holocaust.”
The lesson for Israel, he said, “is that we have to be able to defend ourselves, by ourselves, against any threat, against any enemy.”
He warned that “those who seek to kill us put themselves in the line of fire.”
That stance, he said, was “not a provocation or an exaggeration; it’s the only way to truly ensure our future.”
And that imperative, Netanyahu stressed, “is the prime obligation… of all Israeli prime ministers.”Last week Samsung got to breathe a sigh of relief as an Australian court ruled they didn’t “slavishly copy” the iPad with the Galaxy Tab 10.1, as Apple has been insisted from the onset in court documents. Yesterday, the South Korean company told the Sydney Morning Herald that the court cases have helped make their device a “household name” and today we are seeing the Galaxy Tab maker taking advantage of the media spotlight and the fact that it’s been in the headlines thanks to lawsuits and those cheesy commercials.
As tweeted by Martin Aungle, an Australian corporate and marketing communications professional, Samsung is now pitching its device as “the tablet Apple tried to stop”. The above advert ran in the Sun-Herald newspaper this week. Samsung has obviously decided to up the stakes in this game considering they resisted up until now mentioning Apple by name in their marketing communication. We’ll see, of course, whether publicly celebrating its courtroom victory at Apple’s expense will have any effect on sales.
via Engadget
Related articlesTwo people were reportedly in the plane when it flipped.
High winds have caused a Cessna plane to flip on Tauranga Airport's runway, SunLive reports.
Emergency services were called to the airport about 12.45pm after reports a plane had overturned while moving in the airport.
A SunLive reporter at the scene said the plane's two occupants were out of the aircraft and there are believed to be no injuries.
Andrew Campbell The plane lies upside down on the runway.
The plane is listed as being owned by Sunair Aviation.
Tauranga City Council communications advisor Marcel Currin says there were no disruptions to Air NZ services.
It comes after a week of wild weather. Wellington's public transport system is still being repaired after slips and flooding damaged rail lines and roads on Thursday.
READ MORE:
* LIVE: Wellington weather
* Tornado strikes Mt Maunganui
* Body found in floodwaters
* More rain to come for the North Island
* Videos of the flooding
* Photos of the flooding
* Wellington: After the floods
* Raumati flood victim a quake survivorGreetings everyone! I’m happy to announce that version 3 of the Ionic CLI is now available!
Since we announced the CLI v3 Beta and our Easter Egg hunt, we’ve seen a large amount early beta testers using the CLI successfully in their Ionic projects. These testers were able to provide some great feedback, as well as get a chance to win a prize! In fact, many of them found our Easter Egg in just a few short hours. More recently, we were able to get even more feedback while devs became true Ionic Jedi Hacksters in our hackathon last week (Stay tuned for results on our Ionic Jedi Hackathon!!!)
Other than the version change, what makes this CLI release special? Let’s take a look at some of the key improvements to the CLI.
Speed + Guidance
The first thing you may notice is how quickly the new CLI installs. This is partly due to eliminating over 90MB of dependencies and thousands of lines of legacy code! Now when you install the CLI, you get a much smaller footprint as well as a faster install time. Going forward, CLI speed and performance will be one of the primary considerations we have.
Another consideration we had was providing more help, guidance, and feedback. A large number of commands now provide interactive prompts when information is needed. The CLI tries to be informative and helpful when problems arise. Command help has also been improved. Just append --help to any command for a detailed overview of inputs and options. We also provide examples of common use cases. For example, check out the details of ionic start --help :
Plugins!
We took a different approach to the architecture of the CLI. Instead of providing everything in one global install, we split out non-essential commands and functionality into CLI plugins. This keeps the core small, while still offering valuable, project-specific functionality in plugins.
For the first release of CLI v3, there are four official CLI plugins:
@ionic/cli-plugin-ionic-angular – Ionic Angular project plugin that provides useful build tools and generators.
– Ionic Angular project plugin that provides useful build tools and generators. @ionic/cli-plugin-ionic1 – Ionic 1 project plugin that has functionality ported from the old CLI.
– Ionic 1 project plugin that has functionality ported from the old CLI. @ionic/cli-plugin-cordova – Essential for an Ionic/Cordova app.
– Essential for an Ionic/Cordova app. @ionic/cli-plugin-proxy – For proxying CLI requests through a firewall.
A common question that came up during the beta test was “Why are the commands different?” With the new CLI, we decided to namespace the Cordova commands (e.g. ionic build is now ionic cordova build ). We felt this was a necessary change as Ionic developers are beginning to create Ionic apps for desktop, PWAs, and other platforms. To help with the differences, we made you a lovely Cheat Sheet.
Getting Started
Make sure you have Node 6+ and npm 3+.
Install the new CLI globally (after uninstalling the old one):
npm uninstall -g ionic npm install -g [email protected]
In your Ionic project directory (and assuming you have a standard Ionic project structure), try running a command, such as ionic info. The CLI attempts to identify your project type and will prompt you to install the respective plugin. If you run ionic cordova, it will prompt you to install the Cordova plugin. If you run ionic --help, you’ll see a list of all commands.
You’ll need both the Cordova plugin ( @ionic/cli-plugin-cordova ) and the project plugin ( @ionic/cli-plugin-ionic-angular or @ionic/cli-plugin-ionic1 ) to continue developing an existing Ionic/Cordova app:
For Ionic Angular:
For Ionic 1:
The CLI will also occasionally check for updates and prompt you when there’s updates available.
Known Issues
We have a few minor things to improve now that CLI v3 is out.
ionic start still takes a long time to download dependencies. (#2231)
still takes a long time to download dependencies. (#2231) ionic start does not yet support alternatives such as downloading from a Github repo, a zip URL, or an Ionic Creator project. (#2156)
does not yet support alternatives such as downloading from a Github repo, a zip URL, or an Ionic Creator project. (#2156) Using ionic cordova commands indent config.xml to 4 spaces, which may be alarming for existing apps. We write to config.xml for resource generation and livereload. (#2230)
commands indent to 4 spaces, which may be alarming for existing apps. We write to for resource generation and livereload. (#2230) For Ionic 1, some gulp hooks are not called. (#1989)
Uploads from CLI v3 don’t extract properly in Ionic Deploy on Android devices. (#2237)
For a full list of CLI changes, please see CHANGELOG.md. For more documentation, please see README.md.
Questions? Ideas? Feedback? Issues? Please let us know by filing an issue on the Ionic CLI repo.
THANK YOU to all our wonderful Beta testers! Special thanks to those who went the extra mile and contributed issues, comments, and pull requests on Github. ❤️Faulkner County Judge Allen Dodson knew the moment when the oil spill that happened in Mayflower was a bigger catastrophe than he could have ever imagined. In the first hours of attempted containment, Dodson saw crude oil moving toward a cove. He asked if it was a direct pathway to Lake Conway. The answer he got made him shudder.
"At that moment, you think of Exxon Valdez or BP in the gulf," Dodson said. "You realize that maybe this lake, which I have used my entire life, could take decades to clean."
While it wasn’t as bad as the other two catastrophes, the oil spill in March has been top of the priority list for Dodson, who assumed the role of county judge following the departure of Preston Scroggin. While the temporary gig would be responsibility enough, having to deal with a disaster like the oil spill has kept the former county attorney on his toes.
Dodson shared his views about the past three months during a roundtable with Log Cabin Democrat publisher Alan English, editor Ricky Duke and reporters Megan Reynolds, Lee Hogan and Hilary Dixon.
Log Cabin Democrat: Just a few months after taking over as county judge, and this falls into your lap. What were your initial feelings during those first few moments and days?
Allen Dodson: It may seem cliche, but at that time, you just have to fall back on your training. If you can think back to a time when you had to respond without thinking, it’s just your training. You know what to do, and you just do it. If you’ve got to jump off of a ledge to help someone, it’s not, "Oh, I’m scared." You figure out where you’ve got to hit and roll just right.
LCD: What was it like in those first moments.
AD: I rolled up there, and people were sort of in a daze. There were a number of people looking at me just like you are. You have that realization that these people need to get to work. They don’t necessarily know what the coordinated attack needs to be, but they need some leadership... and golly, that’s me. There’s that split second where the recognition hits that you have a role to fill, and you go do it. Even if you make mistakes, you have to live with it.
LCD: Who all were there initially?
AD: The thing that was comforting was there were so many people there. (Mayflower Mayor Randy) Holland and his folks, the people there from the street department, the fire department, the water department, our (Office of Emergency Management), our road department, on and on. Conway’s Hazmat team responded, Pulaski County’s Hazmat team responded. There was nowhere where anyone dropped the ball. You didn’t see any jockeying. It was controlled desperation.
LCD: Any images you remember?
AD: You would just stand beside Highway 365 and see oil that black come through a ditch. I was standing there on the side of the ditch with the smallest pittance of a boom trying to lodge it into some brush. I hate to say the image was comical, but when you realize it’s 3,500 barrels?
LCD: When did you realize how serious it was?
AD: The precise moment was when we were standing below the roadway trying to get booms on both sides of the road. I rose up and looked over the road toward the lake knowing full well the oil was on the other side of that road. I turned to (the Mayflower Fire Chief) and said, "Is that a straight shot to the lake?" I sort of knew it was, but there was a stupefying moment where you were hoping for a different answer. We were fortunate that there were two 4-foot culverts that led the ditch to the lake or we could have been in serious trouble. I’m thinking crude oil is in the lake. This is our lake, our 6,700-acre lake, and I’m thinking... decades. All that’s running through my mind. All the people I know living on that lake. I fished on that lake.
LCD: Do you regret taking on this job now?
AD: No. I’m just thank the Lord that I haven’t messed up yet. If I mess up, you have to put it on the front page. So, I think people know me enough now to know that I’m not going to be on the take. But if I mess up now, I would hope that most people wouldn’t change their evaluation of me. They would just realize that I made a mistake. My concern is my family. I see my mom and my two sisters everyday of every year. So I can’t do anything that would bring embarrassment or shame to them. Heck, they wouldn’t even be embarrassed. They would just be hurting for me. But I haven’t messed up yet.Share 0 SHARES
AN incredibly boring Waterford man doesn’t need alcohol to have a good time, it has been alleged.
Tommy Martin, a 29-year-old non drinker, has been boring the pants off friends and family with the suggestion that he has a very enjoyable social life despite the absence of alcohol consumption.
“The dry shite has been going on about getting up before 1pm on the weekends, I fall asleep mid sentence listening to the cunt,” shared friend of Tommy’s, Alan Rattigan.
Despite claims of partaking in rock climbing, kayaking, running and enjoying something called a ‘brunch’ all before many of his friends wake up, Tommy has been able to provide little evidence that he is actually having anything normal, fun people call ‘craic’.
“He’s lost the run of himself, I don’t like looking at a friend and saying ‘you know what? I couldn’t tell you the last time he yelled out SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS’, when in the middle of a pub. And this prick is trying to tell me he knows how to have fun?” professional banter merchant Cian Grogan explained to WWN.
“He’s always cracking jokes on nights out, asking after my family and how things are going at work, it’s like, stop trying to wreck the buzz and down a jagerbomb already” Cian confirmed.
Friends of Tommy’s have also confirmed if they get one more text from him ‘looking to do something’ before 5pm on the weekends, they will snap.Tim Darcy has a gifted voice, with a delivery that triggers the Lou Reed and Roy Orbison pleasure centers of my brain. The words he delivers are mysterious and mellifluous, playing in my mind's ear long after his newest album, Saturday Night — so named because it was mostly recorded on the weekends in the midst of making his other band's second album — comes to its close.
While this new batch of songs don't fit the brashness of Darcy's band Ought, there are plenty of rough-hewn edges here. He told me in an email that he is "not the songwriter of Ought," but "one of four," and that he "felt a strong need to get outside of the collaborative and get back to my roots in my own voice."
Darcy grew up in Arizona writing poetry as a kid, eventually making his way to Colorado, then New Hampshire, before falling creatively into a life in Montreal. In addition to two tracks from Saturday Night, there's a new, unreleased song here — "What'd You Release?" — with Darcy joined by Toronto songwriter Charlotte Cornfield on piano.
Saturday Night is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon)
Set List
"Still Waking Up"
"Joan Pt. 1, 2"
"Sledgehammer And The Rose"
"What'd You Release?"
Musicians
Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar); Charlotte Cornfield (piano)
Credits
Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith; Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison; Photo: Marian Carrasquero/NPR.
For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast.DONGGUAN, China - China destroyed about 6 tons of illegal ivory from its stockpile on Monday in an unprecedented move wildlife groups say shows growing concern about the black market trade by authorities in the world's biggest market for elephant tusks.
Authorities displayed a pile of ornaments, carvings and tusks to reporters, diplomats and conservationists before feeding them into two crushing machines. Tusks that were too long were cut up into smaller chunks by workers with circular saws before they could be pulverized.
Forestry and customs officials organized what they said was the country's first large-scale ivory destruction in Dongguan in southern Guangdong province, where much of China's ivory trade is focused.
Conservation groups say China is the world's biggest market for ivory.
The Ivory War
Demand is fueled by rapid growth in the world's second biggest economy, which has created a vast middle class with the spending power to buy ivory carvings prized as status symbols.
Ivory can fetch up to $2,000 a kilogram on the black market, earning it the nickname "white gold."
Officials said the 6.1 metric tons of ivory destroyed was just a portion of the illegal ivory held by China, though they wouldn't disclose how big the country's total stockpile is. The destroyed ivory came from shipments from Africa intercepted by customs officers as well as from carving factories and shops in China.
Ginette Hemley, a senior vice president with the World Wildlife Fund, called China’s action “exactly the kind of leadership needed by governments.”
China is following other countries that have destroyed their ivory stocks in the past year.
In June, the Philippines burned and crushed more than 5 tons of ivory worth an estimated $10 million confiscated since 2009, becoming the first Asian country to do so. In November, the United States destroyed 6 tons of ivory seized over 25 years. Gabon burned nearly 5 tons in 2012.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a statement Monday, saying “Along with the United States’ destruction of its seized ivory in November, today’s action by China sends a clear and powerful message to poachers, traffickers and consumers that wildlife crime will not be tolerated. Our two nations now join Kenya, Gabon and the Philippines, in the community of nations that have destroyed illegal ivory. We are very pleased to hear that France will also destroy illegal elephant ivory this year.”
The International Fund for Animal Welfare said the destruction was a powerful symbolic act that shows that the Chinese government is "concerned about the toll ivory trafficking is taking on elephant populations, as well as the other threats to regional security that arise in connection with wildlife crime."
Ivory destruction in countries along the trade chain "clearly tells consumers everywhere that ivory buying is unethical and wrong," IFAW CEO Azzedine Downs, who attended the event, said in a statement. IFAW estimates that more than 35,000 elephants were killed last year by poachers for ivory.Several script snippets—selected to portray character traits—potentially from upcoming Wander Over Yonder episodes, character descriptions, and polished concept art are listed on a website Alison linked in this post of hers. Many thanks!
Judging from the URL, it seem to be a page maintained by casting director Sara Goldberg (see the Cast and Crew tag for more information). It also contains the same data for several Gravity Falls characters and a number more that I can’t readily place.
The documents are organized by character. From Wander Over Yonder we get the following four, all except for the Sylvia one created on March 14, 2011, by “[Disney] Television Animation.” The document on Sylvia is from April 12, 2012. All were uploaded to the server on December 4, 2012.
Lord Hater
Commander Peepers (sergeant at the time)
Sylvia
Wander
Everything below the break.
Lord Hater
Upon first meeting him, Lord Hater fulfills every expectation one would have of the universe’s most loathsome intergalactic overlord bent on total domination. Large, imposing and powerful. Terrifying, heartless and cruel. He wields a deep booming voice that inspires fear and terror in the souls of all who hear it. However, and quite surprisingly, should anyone manage to get under his non‐existent skin, they will find the snarky, entitled heart of an immature, tantrum‐throwing teenager—but with the same deep booming voice. As it turns out, Hater’s bid to take over the galaxy is fueled by a deep emotional need to feel important. Perhaps his mother didn’t love him enough. Perhaps he had an older brother who was a bully. Perhaps in high school the jocks picked on him and the cheerleaders laughed at him for being a walking skeleton—who knows? For certainly all those big, fat, mean jerks have been destroyed by now. Lord Hater’s acting will have to constantly switch between a very believable scourge of the universe to an equally believable (not mocking) overly sensitive, emo teenager. Villianous/self important: I AM LORD HATER!!! The most feared, evil ruler in all the galaxy!! I have mangled the minds of millions! I have tempted forth torrential tides of tears! I have crushed the courage of countless kings! I have reduced the richest of republics to rubble and ruin! And I have done all of this because I am the GREATEST IN ALL THE GALAXY!! Whiny/bratty/tantrum‐my: IT’S NOT FAIR!!! I should have won the trophy! I’m the GREATEST IN THE GALAXY!! You guys are just a bunch of… of… of MEANY MEANERSONS!! I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!!! Irate/snotty: Seriously Peepers did you see that??!! I mean seriously, they like totally wrecked my ship. It’s ruined! I mean look at this. It’s totaled. I am so mad right now I could just scream!! Insecure/sensitive: Ah jeez, who am I kidding? I’m such a failure. Nobody fears me. Nobody loathes me. They’re just saying that to make me feel better. Grop, I’m such a loser. Evil Laugh: WA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!
Commander (Sergeant) Peepers
Sgt. Peeper’s could easily give Napoleon a run for his famous complex. Short, squishy and cute, Peepers would have taken over the universe well before his boss, Lord Hater, did, if it were not for his adorable stature. A brilliant tactician and a ruthless commander, it would have been easy—if only he could be taken seriously. His intelligence, penchant for engineering and inventing, along with his nasally, weasely voice and often nerdy demeanor doesn’t help. To compensate, Peepers has developed a MASSIVELY short temper. He can turn on you at a moment’s notice for only the slightest offense. In fact, he’s so quick to have a coronary, he comes across as cartoonishly bi‐polar. When he’s not on the verge of an aneurism from screaming, he may be calm and calculating, reflecting on the pleasantries of war making, and even congratulating his men on a job well done. The only being spared Peeper’s rage is Lord Hater. With much effort, Peeper’s manages to hold his tongue with his childish leader, holding his hand and coddling him even when he’s making the stupidest calls.
Sly/intimidating: Well, well, well if it isn’t Wander and Sylvia, Lord Hater and I have been looking for you two idiots for a very long time. Losing temper/having a coronary/Bi‐polar: (angry) WHAT?!! WHAT IS IT BOB!?! (to self) Unconquered Planet? How could that… Huh. Whattaya know ’bout that. Thought we got ‘em all. (maniacal) WELL WE’LL SURE TURN THEIR FROWNS UPSIDE DOWN!! HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! Seething/trying to hold back temper: Yes, your… royal heinousness. I think that’s a… fantastic… idea. It sure is a good thing that you thought of it and… not… me… I am but your humble… stupid… servant. Commanding: Yes! That’s it my obedient Watch Dogs, that’s it! Keep on the lookout for anything you see that could threaten or strengthen our power!! See
what you will see and report back to me and we will continue to be the most FEARED FORCE IN THE GALAXY!!
Sylvia
Sylvia does not consider herself a pessimist, she considers herself a realist. Though she’s strong enough, tough enough and capable enough to be one of the galaxies greatest vigilantes, her belief that no good deed ever goes unpunished keeps her constantly mumbling and grumbling under her breath every time Wander finds a soft enough spot in her heart to convince her to join him in an act of do-goodery. This constant state of exasperation does not derive from a source of hatred, rather it springs forth from an overwhelming frustration with the mindboggling idiocies of the universe and a clear idea of how things could and should work. In a world of chaos and nonsense where she adventures with an overly impulsive hero, Sylvia is often the only (and irritated) voice of reason and logic. In order to relate to her, it’s important to capture her frustration and pessimism while avoiding a voice that sounds too harsh or off-putting. Her sarcastic comments should be a source of comedy and not one of disdain.
Irritated/sarcastic: I told you, Wander, I told you this place looked like bad news! But did you listen? No, you were all (imitating Wander) “let’s go look at that neato skull ship! Maybe there’s nice folks there!” What about now? Think they’re nice now? Sarcastically complaining to self while kicking ass: Oh great the idiotic door won’t open when you push the flargin’ button <HYAAA! (kicks door down)> Well would you lookit that, a swarm of <ugh!> (punching) Watchdogs that want to <hng!> destroy me! <ug!> What’s this? THE GROP DERNED, SHIP IS EXPLODING!! HOORAY! Reluctantly giving in: Oh… all right, ya sappy bean pole. You can have ONE more—just stop it with those disgustingly adorable puppy dog eyes before I blorf. Nervous/apologetic: Heh heh. Sorry Lord Hater we’ll find it, promise! Heh, never knew skeletons could loose their skulls so easily, heh. Trying not to laugh: No, no, no, no, It’s not going to work. I don’t care how many hot dogs you can shove in you mout—SERIOUSLY, STOP IT, it’s not funny, IT’S NOT FUNNY!
WanderAccording to multiple sources the State Department will issue its long awaited Final Environmental Impact Statement on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline later today.
The early spin today is that “environmentalists will be disappointed”. But consider the source. Last week, Jack Gerard, the head of the American Petroleum Institute, told Reuters that “It’s our expectation it will be released next week” Apparently Gerard cited sources within the administration.
“We’re expecting to hear the same conclusion that we’ve heard four times before: no significant impact on the environment,” Gerard said.
Two facts are important here:
1) Jack Gerard is saying the pipeline won’t impact the environment. This is about as surprising as the sun setting in the west.
2) Jack Gerard was apparently briefed by “sources within the Administration” on the timing and content of the report. Before the environmental community. Before Congress. Before anyone else.
If that doesn’t prove once and for all what a corrupt process this has been, I don’t know what will. The oil industry, which has had this process rigged since the word go, are the first to know, because of their cozy and corrupt role in this process.
Even so, the report that comes out today may in fact show what we already know, that the Keystone XL pipeline will by any measure fail the President’s own climate test. Even a corrupt process like the one we’ve seen can’t beat back such a fundamental truth.
Last June, President Obama noted that he and others in Washington needed to be less concerned with ‘well connected donors, and more concerned with the judgment of posterity.’ And in the recent State of the Union, he implored, “It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank account, that drives our democracy.”
We intend to hold the President to his word.She was the terror, she was the darkness, she was that which no pony would dare go near.And thus, she was alone.Always alone.As Nightmare Moon's victory over Celestia became worldly known, her darkness spread all over the land. Armies were raised to combat her, but without their sun to guide them, they fell one by one. pages never written into history, never to be remembered.well over twenty years later, Nightmare moon was beginning to wane.The alicorn sighed heavily, watching her moonlight bathe the land in her glorious night as she sat atop the marble throne of Canterlot. She owned the castle now, the land around it...the whole country was her's to command.Now if only there were ponies to command as well.After her coup, the ponies of Equestria revolted, they demanded she return the throne to her celestial sister.To which she refused, of course.As a final act of defiance, they left. Leaving for the Crystal Empire, and Griffonia. When Nightmare forbade them from leaving they laughed."Try to stop the exodus, but we will be like sand in your magic, eventually we will slip through and be gone from your tyranny."And just like sand, they slowly vanished from the now desolate and empty lands she called home. She could terrorize them with horrors whilst they slept, but it would not bring them home.Another sigh, another empty court room.And now, an empty throne.Nightmare left her castle and explored the land surrounding it. She flew here, walked there, and let her mind wander over whatever she laid eyes on. The lands were quiet, and calm.But far from peaceful. No, they needed life, movement, motion, something to use the space around her...If just to feel lived in again.She paused in her umpteenth waltz through Canterlot and found she had reached a district she didn't visit often. The working District, with it's large warehouses and loading docks, all desolate and eerily devoid of any commotion.except one.Nightmare's ears perked up at the sound, swiveling towards one of the dilapidated buildings to her right. She listened, and heard.It was faint, but it was there, and she felt her hopes leap into the night sky. Maybe it was a pony?Entering the structure through one of the main docking bays, she crept stealthily around the stacks of crates and equipment, long forgotten and cluttering the area with dust and debris.The sound grew louder shortly, and Nightmare felt her breath hitch, had they heard her?Pausing in her search she remained still and listened again, her hopes almost dashed as nothing came within reach...then,"...Ouch!"It was fairly close by, and she recognized the |
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We’re here to help! You may contact us by either email or phone. If you’ve had any difficulty with the Insta Curve website, just leave us your email address or phone number. We’re happy to contact you back. You should expect a response to your email within two business days, so if you haven’t heard from one of us by then, we recommend checking your spam folder and for good measure, adding Instacurve.com to your safe senders' list.Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester fairy tale may have come to an ignominious end in the soulless surrounds of a Radisson Blu hotel next to East Midlands Airport hotel on Thursday, but the origins of his demise can be traced to a scorching hot Californian afternoon last July.
Leicester’s trip to Los Angeles to participate in the International Champions Cup had already threatened to turn sour, with players grumbling about the 11-hour flight and Ranieri appearing unusually jaded and irritable throughout the trip.
Yet arguably the most telling sign that all was not well with the club who had been crowned English champions for the first time two months previously came when owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and another senior board member bizarrely decided to monitor a training session from high chairs. It was a telling symbol of a club struggling to adjust to its new lofty status, and one suddenly under a level of scrutiny and expectation unprecedented in its 133-year history.Back in May, we first reported that Goldman became the first bank to dare to ask if the Fed has lost control of the market, if in slightly more polite terms of course. This is how Jan Hatzius phrased it: "Despite two rate hikes and indications of impending balance sheet runoff, financial conditions have continued to loosen in recent months. Our financial conditions index is now about 50bp below its November 2016 average and near the easiest levels of the past two years." Several months later, after the third rate hike, Goldman found that once again, paradoxically, financial conditions eased further, and the market rose even more in direct opposition of what Fed rate hikes are supposed to do!
Fast forward to this weekend, when we reported that that lovely word which describes the new normal so well - "paradox" - made a repeat appearance, this time in the last quarterly report by the Bank of International Settlement, which for the nth time issued an alert on the state of the stock market, an alert which will be summarily ignored by everyone until after the crash, and reminded everyone what happened the last time financial conditions eased instead of tightening when the Fed hiked rates (spoiler alert: biggest crash in modern history). This is what the BIS' chief economist Claudio Borio said (among other things)"
Hence a paradox. Even as the Fed has proceeded with its tightening, overall financial conditions have eased. For instance, a standard indicator of such conditions, which combines information from various asset classes, points to an overall easing regardless of the precise date at which the tightening is assumed to have started. Indeed, that indicator touched a 24-year low. If financial conditions are the main transmission channel for tighter policy, has policy in effect been tightened at all? (We can see from the BIS chart below how, unlike the last 12-month period, the Chicago Fed Financial Conditions Index did actually tighten in the May 2004-May 2005 period, and especially in the January 1994-January 1995 period.)
“In fact, this paradoxical outcome is not entirely new… it is reminiscent of the Fed policy tightening in the 2000s - the phase that spawned the now famous "Greenspan conundrum". Then, overall financial conditions hardly budged, and in some respects eased, as the Federal Reserve progressively raised rates. The experience contrasted sharply with previous tightenings, not least the one in 1994. At that time, long-term rates soared, the yield curve steepened, asset prices fell, corporate spreads widened, and EMs came under pressure. Today's experience is reminiscent of the repeated reassurance of the 2000s' "measured pace", except that the adjustment has been, if anything, even more telegraphed. If gradualism comforts market participants that tighter policy will not derail the economy or upset asset markets, its predictability compresses risk premia. This can foster higher leverage and risk-taking. By the same token, any sense that central banks will not remain on the sidelines should market tensions arise simply reinforces those incentives. Against this backdrop, easier financial conditions look less surprising.
Today, it was SocGen's grumpy "permarealist" Albert Edwards' turn to focus on this peculiar "paradox" in which the more the Fed tightens, the higher markets rise in the process "poisoning the market."
Picking up on what Bank of America showed yesterday, namely that central banks broke both volatility and the market itself some time in 2013/2014...
... in his latest "weekly' note (published about 3 weeks after the last one), Edwards writes that "so scared (or is that scarred) were central bankers after the summer 2013 taper tantrum, they have now gone out of their way to reassure financial markets. Thus recent tightenings of monetary policy, whether by the Fed, ECB or Bank of England, were all perceived by markets as "dovish" tightening - and hence led to even more buoyant financial markets. Policymakers are so scared the financial bubbles they created might burst that today what might be good for the economy is subservient to the needs of Wall Street."
He then brings up our favorite new normal word - "paradox" of course - and lays out the problem on the chart below, stating that "the current situation is even worse than in the run-up to the 2008 crisis. At least back then rate hikes did not lead to easing financial conditions the way they do now! The Fed'?s desire to soothe the nerves of the financial markets has made a mockery of their tightening cycle."
Naturally, Edwards was just getting started, and the furious rant continues:
You don?t have to be a genius to reach the conclusion that central banks? dovish tightening really means there has been no tightening of monetary policy at all for Wall Street. But for Main Street, interest rate hikes do have an economic impact that will ultimately end in recession, and like an increasingly stretched elastic band this tension will eventually snap with disastrous financial market consequences. Many clients we meet have similarly apocalyptic views to our own but remain fully invested. They cannot see an immediate trigger for the financial Armageddon that they accept is heading slowly our way.
And yet, despite central bankers' best intentions to kill the free and efficient market, this time something may be changing, and may soon unleash that "shock" event that is so critical for the market to determine just what the new strike price of the Fed put is as BofA explained: that something is China.
Making the "China" case, Edwards refers to a post we published recently, and cautions that "investors are convinced that China?'s policymakers remain firmly in control of economic events." Here's why that is no longer the case.
But Gordon Johnson of Axiom Capital notes it may be that the China credit multiplier, after years of diminishing returns, is finally exhausted. He writes, “given what we’ve seen this year – ie 101.7% new credit issuance growth YTD through Oct. 2017 (see chart below) – it seems the level of credit necessary to stimulate growth in China could prove elusive at this point. We don’t recall any economist’s forecasts exiting 2016 pointing to China’s new credit issuance more than doubling Y/Y in 2017, yet that’s exactly what’s happened. Had this been our base case, we would have expected all economic indicators in China to be moving substantially higher at this point in the cycle.”
Edwards then goes full circle to reach the same conclusion we have referenced so many times: the next crash will come out of China, and it will be at Beijing's doing:
On this view if China?s policymakers are now pressing hard on the policy brakes after their politically expedient puffing up of the economy, a soft landing might prove more elusive than almost any investor currently assumes. Could this yet be the trigger that blindsides investors?
It could, especially since it was -ironically enough - China which in early 2016 halted what then appeared to be a global risk crash:
... it was this February?s Shanghai G20 deal that marked the point when global investors totally removed China from their watch list of things to be concerned about. That G20 meeting saw an agreement not to engage in further competitive devaluation and helped reverse the period of sustained dollar strength that had been exacerbating the renmnibi''s problems (weaker US economic data in the face of huge dollar bullishness also helped reverse the dollar?s prior relentless rise). Hence investors are very relaxed about China at exactly the point they should not be.
Which is why it would be so delightfully ironic once the next global crash originates out of China, the same country that saved the world with its gargantuan credit creation first in 2008/2009 and the second time in 2016/2017. Ironic, or perhaps the right word is paradox...WGS84 and the Greenwich Meridian
When visitors to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich stand astride the Meridian, they are often perplexed to discover that their GPS does not give their longitude as zero. Likewise, users of Google Earth are sometimes surprised to see that the Meridian as marked, appears to pass around 100 m to the east of where they expected.
The explanation for these apparent anomalies is rooted in the history of longitude determination, the irregular shape of the Earth and a switch from astronomically determined longitudes to geodetic ones.
Precision measurements before the space age
From the earliest of times, it was a priority for astronomers to get an accurate determination of the difference in longitude of their observatories. Of particular importance was the longitude difference of the Greenwich and Paris Observatories. To this end, at least 18 different determinations were made between the 1690s and the start of the 1920s. Each was a major undertaking. Most were astronomical and involved the measurement of the time difference. Those made in 1790, 1791 and 1828 were trigonometrical.
The first attempt to accurately fix the relative longitude of Greenwich and an American observatory, (Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts), took place in the 1840s when nearly four hundred chronometers were transported back and forth across the Atlantic. Following the laying of the first transatlantic cable, the time difference, and hence longitude difference between the two observatories, was determined with even greater precision by telegraphic means in 1866.
The uneven Earth
When the Royal Observatory was founded back in 1675, it was widely believed that the Earth was spherical. This notion was challenged by Newton with the publication of the third volume of his Principia in 1687 in which he hypothesized that the Earth was an oblate spheroid, also known as an ellipsoid, the shape generated by spinning an ellipse on its minor axis. He estimated the equatorial diameter would differ from the polar by about 1 part in 230. The parameters of the ellipsoid have since been refined, but the ellipsoid is not a perfect fit either.
The Earth not only has a surface which is far from uniform, but the distribution of mass within it is uneven. Because of this, the size and direction of the Earth’s gravitational field varies from one place to another.
From the early 1700s until the 1980s, time (and hence longitude) was determined with the aid of specialist telescopes. At Greenwich, transit telescopes were used to start with but these were superseded in the 1950s by the Danjon Prismatic Astrolabe and the Photographic Zenith Tube. Similar instruments were used at other observatories. Each required levelling. This was done with a spirit level in the case of the transit telescopes and with a tray of mercury in the case of the Danjon Prismatic Astrolabe and the Photographic Zenith Tube. The measurements made with all three instrumental types were realised with respect to the local vertical and were thus affected by local gravity.
The dawn of the space age
The advent of satellite technology enabled measurements to be made with reference to the Earth’s centre of mass rather than the local vertical. It was this change from measuring astronomical longitudes to measuring geodetic ones that caused the apparent shift of the Meridian at Greenwich.
Why the Meridian moved
Surprisingly, it took until 2015 for the scientific community to provide the first proper analysis of why the Zero Meridian shifted. Written by Stephen Malys, John H Seago, Nikolaos K Palvis, P Kenneth Seidelmann and George H Kaplan, under the title of Why the Greenwich meridian moved. Published on 1 August 2015, in the Journal of Geodesy, it was much commented on in the global press. The authors’ conclusions are reproduced below:
‘Zero longitude is the terrestrial origin for Universal Time (UT1), a realization of mean solar time at Greenwich used to define the rotation angle of the Earth in space. The 102-m offset between the Airy Transit Circle and zero longitude indicated by a GNSS receiver is attributable to the fact that continuity in the UT1 time series was maintained in the BIH reference frames, as geodetic longitudes replaced astronomical longitudes when space-geodetic methods were introduced. This continuity condition constrained the BTS 84, and consequentially, the ITRF zero meridian plane, to be practically parallel to the orientation of the astronomical prime meridian through Airy’s instrument that is aligned to local gravity. Extended to infinity, these parallel meridian planes sweep past the same stars simultaneously, so that both planes indicate the same astronomical time (UT1). The difference between precise GNSS coordinates and astronomically determined coordinates everywhere remains a localized gravity effect due to the deflection of the vertical; thus, no systematic rotation of global longitudes occurred between the former astronomical system and the current geodetic system.
Because the value of the DoV [deflection of the vertical] at Greenwich and the continuity constraint on UT1 were the primary factors that influenced the current location of the ITRF zero meridian, the 1884 recommendation of a prime meridian based on the “Observatory in Greenwich” has been practically maintained to the present by passing the zero meridian plane through the center of mass of the Earth, rather than through the center of the Airy Transit Circle. Modern, high-resolution global gravitational models of the Earth confirm that the local slope of the geoid at Greenwich is of the proper sign and magnitude to support this interpretation, conclusive to within the accuracy of the deflection model (±0.5” 1 σ in longitude for the EGM2008 model).’
Local mapping
Most accurate maps show only a small part of the Earth’s surface. Before the space age, when choosing an ellipsoid to represent the shape of the Earth, it was the practice to pick one whose surface had a good alignment with reality over the area of the map. In the UK for example, the maps produced by the Ordnance Survey were (and still are) based on the ‘Airy Ellipsoid’ – an ellipsoid defined by the seventh Astronomer Royal George Airy in 1830. The chosen ellipsoids differed slightly in centre position and orientation as well as in size and shape.
Some ellipsoids and their dates of adoption (from Wikipedia)
Reference ellipsoid name Equatorial radius (m) Polar radius (m) Inverse flattening Where used Airy (1830) 6,377,563.396 6,356,256.909 299.3249646 Britain (OSGB36) Clarke (1866) 6,378,206.4 6,356,583.8 294.9786982 North America Clarke (1878) 6,378,190 6,356,456 293.4659980 North America NAD 27 (1927) 6,378,206.4 6,356,583.800 294.978698208 North America NAD83 (1983) 6,378,137 6,356,752.3 298.257024899 North America WGS84 (1984) 6,378,137 6,356,752.3142 298.257223563 Globally
Until the advent of GPS, local datums were only ever used in a local context. Although usually inappropriate to do so, it is possible with GPS to set a receiver to get a latitude and longitude fix anywhere in the world in any of the different datums. The precise latitude and longitude of a place will vary with the particular coordinate system or datum that is used. Paradoxically, as we have already seen, this also applies to the Airy Transit Circle, whose longitude by definition one might reasonably expect to be zero. The difference between the co-ordinates on different datums also varies from place to place. Most datums agree with each other to within half a kilometre or so. The most commonly used in the UK are OSGB36 & WGS84.
Continental drift and plate tectonics
At the time of the International Meridian Conference in 1884, the concepts of continental drift and plate tectonics did not exit. The first evidence of plate movement came in the mid 1950’s as the space age was about to begin. The Earth’s tectonic plates move relative to one another at about the same rate at which human finger nails grow – not much on a day to day basis, but a substantial amount over a period of decades and centuries. The International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), which defines the International Meridian and poles, is based on the combination of sets of station coordinates and velocities derived from a variety of different types of observations: Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), and Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR). Data from Global Positioning System (GPS) was introduced in 1991 and from Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) in 1994. The International Reference Meridian and Poles and, hence the WGS84 datum, are stationary with respect to the average motion of the Earth’s crustal plates. As a consequence, all individual locations are in motion relative to them. In the UK, WGS84 latitudes and longitudes are changing at about 2.5 cm per year in a north-easterly direction. In 1989, the International Reference Meridian passed an estimated 102.478 m to the east of the Airy Transit Circle at Greenwich.
Further reading
Rear Admiral Robert W. Knox, Precise determination of Longitude in the United States, Geographical Review, Vol 47, No. 4 (Oct 1957), pp.555–563 American Geographical Society.
G. Gebel and B. Matthews, Navigation at the Prime Meridian, Navigation: Journal of the Institute of Navigation (Washington, DC) 18/2 (Summer 1971) pp.141–146.
Ordnance Survey – A guide to coordinate systems in Great Britain (downloads as pdf)
Malys, Stephen; Seago, John H.; Palvis, Nikolaos K.; Seidelmann, P. Kenneth; Kaplan, George H. (1 August 2015). Why the Greenwich meridian moved. Journal of Geodesy.
Acknowledgements
The extract from Why the Greenwich meridian moved is reproduced under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International LicenseProductivity Sauce
Dmitri Popov
DLNA provides a hassle-free solution for sharing digital media between devices, and you can put this technology to good use on your local network. Install DLNA software on a server on your network, and you can easily access photos, videos, and music from any device that has a DLNA client on it. Using the minidlna application, you can turn any Linux machine into a DLNA server in a matter of minutes. Here is how to do this on Debian and Ubuntu. Since minidlna is available in the official software repositories of both distros, installing it is a matter of running the apt-get install minidlna command as root. Once the package has been installed, open the minidlna.conf configuration file in a text editor by running the nano /etc/minidlna.conf command as root. At the very least, you need to specify two things: paths to directories containing digital media and a descriptive name for the DLNA server. On my Raspberry Pi, I store photos, videos, and music in separate directories on a USB stick, so my minidlna.conf configuration file looks like this:
media_dir=P,/media/usb0/photos media_dir=V,/media/usb0/videos media_dir=A,/media/usb0/music friendly_name=Raspberry Pi DLNA server
Next, you should generate minidlna's database. To do this, stop the minidlna server with the /etc/init.d/minidlna stop command, then issue the following command (both commands should be run as root):
minidlna -R
Start then the minidlna server using the /etc/init.d/minidlna start as root, and you are done. Unfortunately, minidlna cannot update the database automatically, so you need to do this manually every time you add new media files.
To access digital media served by the DLNA server, you either need a DLNA-capable device or to install a DLNA client software. On Linux, you might want to give eezUPnP a try (see this article for more info), while the AnDLNA app can come in handy for accessing media files from an Android device.
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DisqusMirror’s Edge Catalyst is a new video game that's out on June 7 in North America and June 9 in Europe on PS4, PC, and Xbox One. A reboot of the mid-00s game Mirror's Edge, it tells the story of Faith, "a daring Runner who uncovers a hidden truth within the walls of the city of Glass," according to the game's description. Chvrches have composed an original song for the game called "Warning Call." The lyrics, written by Lauren Mayberry, are from Faith's perspective. Listen below. Update (5/18 4:31 p.m.): Chvrches have shared the "Warning Call" lyric video. It features images from Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Watch it below.
"We were honored to be asked to contribute to the soundtrack for Mirror’s Edge Catalyst," the band's Iain Cook said in a press release. "The sound of Chvrches' music resonates with the minimalist sci-fi dystopia of the Mirror’s Edge world, and we feel that the song complements the drama, emotion and empowering themes of Faith's story.”
Read "Keeping it Unreal: In the Studio with Chvrches"
Watch Chvrches' "Over/Under" on Pitchfork.tv:The eye of big finance is finally turning towards cryptocurrency. Responding to requests from clients, Goldman Sachs has put out an early assessment of Bitcoin that says little about the bank’s official position on BTC investment.
So far, the financial services firm is neutral regarding the currency and is not actively recommending it to clients in its broad assessment of the currency and its impact for merchants and consumers. The bank’s take on Bitcoin attempts to tamp down on some of the hype around the currency.
The document, which we acquired through a source close to the bank, states: “2013 was the year when Bitcoin became a mainstay in mass media, to the extent that it has become hard to separate the effect of hype surrounding the currency from its fundamentals.”
Goldman also found that “there is no liquid derivative market for Bitcoin; nor a large market of B2B suppliers which companies can use for spending Bitcoin” and reiterates that Amazon has no current plants to accept Bitcoin. Both of these facts point to little traction in the BTC markets for big banks. Without the imprimatur of a big name, Goldman warns, the currency is a bit dangerous to offer to the serious investor.
Longtime followers of BTC will find nothing surprising in the document, but the fact that it exists at all – even in the guise of a discussion document – is an important step in mass acceptance.
Their investor recommendations are particularly interesting:
For investors, there are a number of ways to gain exposure to value creation in the Bitcoin ecosystem
— Speculation: Holding Bitcoin with the view that the currency will appreciate over time
— Mining: Purchase computers capable of mining Bitcon, and earn newly minted Bitcoins
— Enterprise: Provide value-add services to participants in the Bitcoin ecosystem, for a fee
Their analysis also splashes cold water on its rate of adoption, noting that “despite media coverage and current trading levels, bitcoin remains orders of magnitude away from widespread adoption.
“As a full suite of financial services build up around Bitcoin, there will be numerous (mostly commission- based) revenue opportunities investors can focus on, including providing exchanges, wallets, payment processing, lending, derivatives and other services,” the document notes.
Final analysis: The jury’s still out.
Underlying Value: While difficult to value the underlying currency, value of Bitcoin comes in its use as a payment method that removes credit card processing costs for merchants (especially important in micropayments) and adds anonymity, security and a natively digital experience to online transactions for consumers
* Merchant Use: For businesses today it is not yet feasible to hold Bitcoin given its volatility, and so merchants must convert into fiat currencies immediately (and incur commission charge)
— In the future when both hedging Bitcoin positions and committing to expenditure in Bitcoin is viable for merchants, this will help Bitcoin’s use as a store of value for merchants
Consumer Behavior: Currently there are more speculators in Bitcoin versus participants in commerce. As the currency begins to gain mainstream relevance as a payment method, this balance should shift. Overstock.com are joining Zynga and others who already take Bitcoin as a means of payment
Opportunity: We are currently in the first innings of a shift to natively digital transactions
— Bitcoin may emerge as the reigning standard, or others may compete for the crown
— Positioning investments in the companies striving to provide value-add services around cryptocurrencies will be key to participating in this cycle of value creation
It’s not much, but to BTC fans, it’s definitely a start.Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.
Grid View Expand Ami James works on the first tattoo of the morning.
Wooster Street Social Club promised tattoos to the first 50 people, but it looked like over 50 were waiting for the doors to open at noon.
The guy in the center told us he was getting the Greyjoy kraken because he's a water sign, among other reasons. He hasn't yet finished Book Five.
Here's the Stark direwolf, with the house mottos below
The Baratheon stag
The Lannister lion. One woman told us she was getting this because she loves fan favorite Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage on the show)
The Greyjoy kraken. James says this one is his favorite, aesthetically speaking.
The Targaryan three-headed dragon
James prepares for his first tattoo of the day.
Another member of the 2am crowd gets prepped.
The Wooster Street Social Club was also hanging out temporary tattoos.
The first guy in line shows off his stag.
Here's a close-up.
The first three people waiting in line for free Game of Thrones tattoos at the Wooster Street Social Club this morning had all arrived at 2am, and they all wanted the Baratheon stag. Which is an interesting move, since the Baratheons aren't necessarily the books' most obvious heroes.
In general, the fifty-odd fans lined up on Wooster had a wide range of reasons for which of the five tattoos—representing the show's five main households—they wanted to get. Favorite characters, house history; one woman said she hated dragon-keeping teen queen Daenerys but was getting a dragon tattoo because she liked Daenerys's feuding, incestuous relatives. Another said she'd been watching the show for exactly two days but liked Ned Stark enough that she'd decided to get the Stark family wolf as her first tattoo.
The five designs were all created by Wooster Street's Ami James, star of the TLC reality show NY Ink. He worked up stylized versions of the house crests designed by HBO for the show, which means that yes, in a way, all the superfans were there to get an HBO tattoo. But the series pretty obviously meant more to most of them than just TV entertainment. Some had decided to get a Game of Thrones tattoo long ago and were just taking advantage of the opportunity to get one for free. And majority of line-waiters told us they'd loved the books for years—even the ones who'd only decided yesterday to get a sigil permanently etched on their arms.
· Get a Free Game of Thrones Tattoo Tomorrow in Soho [Racked NY]
· Game of Thrones 3/30 TATTOO EVENT [Facebook]
· Wooster Street Social Club [Official Site]The Methodist farmer who founded the festival, and his daughter, reveal why they are welcoming the Labour leader – and Johnny Depp – to this year’s event and what happens to Glastonbury next
One year on from an apocalyptically muddy and Brexit-dazed Glastonbury 2016, and with the country reeling after a series of horrific events, Michael and Emily Eavis are aiming to create an upbeat, safe and politically engaged festival this year – helped in part by an appearance from Jeremy Corbyn.
The Labour leader, buoyed by a stronger than expected election result, could eclipse the likes of Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry and Radiohead when he addresses the crowds on the Pyramid stage on the Saturday afternoon of the festival. While Glastonbury attracts a wider cross-section of society than its hippie stereotype suggests, its 175,000-strong crowd is still mostly liberal-minded, and likely to roar with approval as Corbyn steps on stage, notionally to introduce the duo Run the Jewels.
Jeremy Corbyn to appear on Pyramid stage at Glastonbury festival 2017 Read more
“I’ll be leading him on – I’ll get a cheer as well!” laughs festival founder Michael Eavis, who at 81 remains as twinkly as ever, constantly rattling off high-pitched chuckles. “I’m so looking forward to it. He really is the hero of the hour, and he’s so refreshing. We’re going to make some major changes in our society. There’ll be a way of financing it somehow, there has to be – this is the future of the country, and young people are so into it. It’s bloody brilliant!
“Sorry,” he adds. “I don’t usually swear very much.”
Eavis applauds Corbyn’s policies on nuclear disarmament and public services, saying of the latter: “The Tories have ignored them, and the Labour party as well – the Blairites. It’s all changed now.”
His daughter Emily, a mother of three who carried her newborn baby around last year’s festival, agrees. “When you think about the number of young people who voted, that gives me enormous hope,” she says. “And I love the way Corbyn has stuck to his message.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Pyramid stage one week before the gates open. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian
Father and daughter both still live on Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset, site of the festival since 1970, when 1,500 people came to see acts including Tyrannosaurus Rex. Speaking on a gloriously sunny morning just days before the gates open this year, Emily describes “a real history of leftwing activism” at the event that chimes with her own political values. “We used to go on ‘Maggie Outs’ every weekend when I was a kid,” she says, reminiscing on the Thatcher years. “We’d go to the market in the morning, buy some cows, then do a ‘Maggie Out’ in the afternoon. I thought that was normal until I went to school and everyone was like: ‘What?’ So we’ve always been doing it.”
Corbyn’s appearance should help to create a different political mood to the one at last year’s festival, when attendees woke up on a waterlogged site to news that Britain had voted to leave the EU. “That was a sad, sad start to the festival last year,” Emily says. “There were a lot of people who were really disappointed. But they ended up pushing back and enjoying themselves – it was almost like we were Remaining until Monday.
“There were also probably a lot of people who didn’t vote,” she adds. “But I think people have been really pissed off after Brexit, and felt like they were sold a lot of lies. I think those people have used their voice [to vote for Corbyn].”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Eavis with a baby Emily Eavis at the Glastonbury festival in 1980. Photograph: Courtesy Glastonbury festival
This year’s festival comes after terror attacks on Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester Arena, which has required a series of security tweaks. “We don’t normally make a point of searching people, because historically this event has been incredibly safe, but we are this year,” says Emily. Attendees are being encouraged to pack as lightly as possible to speed up the process of searching every ticketholder’s luggage. “These attacks are very upsetting, for everyone, but the fact is that most events are totally safe. There’s as much chance of something happening in a supermarket or shopping centre or sporting event. We just have to carry on and put in as many checks as possible, to make people feel safe.”
Emily hops behind the wheel of an aged Land Rover for a tour of the site, and we pass a set of the infamous “long drop” toilets whose uric tang is very much part of the Glasto experience. “My kids love them,” she says. “They’re always saying, ‘Can we go to the toilet outside today?’” As the sun beats down, preparations are being made in an unhurried and quintessentially Glastonbury way: children paint signs, wood is sawn to a disco beat, and a man erects a mock graveyard with stones for Amber Rudd and Boris Johnson as Grace Jones’s La Vie en Rose wafts around. Michael is in raptures about his 30,000-strong staff. “You couldn’t get them to want to come, and put up with purgatory, and still enjoy it, anywhere else. That willingness is extraordinary – it’s the eighth wonder of the world.”
We arrive at the south east area of the site – often dubbed the “naughty corner” – which hosts dance music amid fantastical structures until dawn. The Shangri-La section, a kind of outdoor art gallery-cum-nightclub, has had a total redesign, its artworks by the likes of Mark Titchner and Gee Vaucher all focused on the theme of waste – a salient topic at Glastonbury, which, despite its ostensibly green outlook, creates a tide of discarded plastic, tents and other detritus come Monday morning.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The eighth wonder of the world’... some of Glastonbury’s army of staff. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian
“It’s awful,” says organiser Kaye Dunnings. “It’s why I changed the theme this year – I couldn’t carry on doing this, if we couldn’t do something about it.” Shangri-La’s stages are made entirely of recycled materials, and where once posters exhorted “Leave No Trace”, Dunnings’ will read: “Don’t Be a Dick” and “WTF Fam?”
Another addition to the festival this year is Cineramageddon, a drive-in movie theatre created by director Julien Temple, with customised cyberpunk cars to watch from. Temple’s star booking is Johnny Depp, who will introduce a curated night of films, though some eyebrows have been raised at the right-on G |
This is a match that I had heard about years ago and never watched until recently. Originally, it was going to be a lot lower on the list because in my mind, I always thought it was some OVW special attraction from when Punk was training there. Boy, was I wrong. This was before the company even changed their name to WWE and Rey Mysterio wasn’t even on the roster yet. Eddie was only involved due to some agreement with WWF while being on hiatus.
It’s a perfect mixture of what this list is all about. Eddie was under contract with WWF, but got to do some indy shows regardless. Plus he had a mullet. CM Punk was in the midst of building up his indy cred, while at no point looking like he didn’t belong in the mix. Plus he was blond. Rey Mysterio was in-between major jobs and since he hadn’t been signed to WWF just yet, he was maskless. Plus he was maskless.
To top it all off, the three had a really good match that went long enough and ended with Eddie stealing away Punk’s title.
3) STING and SHAWN MICHAELS team up
DWO, 2005
YouTube
Suggested by Lamuella
Hoooooo boy. This one is insane. Much like Undertaker, Shawn Michaels never skipped town and joined WCW, meaning that Michaels vs. Sting was another major dream match we’d never see. The two have been shown to get along due to their equal enthusiasm in their Christian beliefs. Nothing wrong with that at all. While the two never combated each other and never will, the one time they worked together was completely batshit.
Detroit World Outreach’s Power Wrestling Alliance was a trippy wrestling show put together by the late Bishop Jack Wallace to spread the message of Jesus. The footage in the YouTube clip jumps around, so I’m not sure of the full initial context, not that it matters. Sting appeared to be in a match with Buff Bagwell, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine had interfered and put either another wrestler or a security guard through a table as the two heels beat up Sting some more. “Sexy Boy” started to play and Shawn Michaels came out. Due to being under WWE contract, he wasn’t allowed to have a match, but he still was able to do a run-in. A run-in with pyro and name graphic, but a run-in nonetheless. Even though Michaels rescuing Sting and giving Sweet Chin Music to Valentine and Bagwell should have felt like a big deal, the commentators failed due to their inadequacies. Sure, one actually came off as excited, but the other sounded like one of the women on SNL’s Delicious Dish skit. He went to the Droopy Dog Academy of Broadcast, apparently.
Despite getting waffled with Michael’s signature move, Valentine and Bagwell sold it by sadly walking away through the crowd, as if Michaels had told them to go their rooms. Having finished his posing for the fans, Michaels almost-briskly walked behind them. That left Sting in the ring and that… my friends… is when things got weird.
Sting stood around in confusion until the lights dimmed and a group of thugs in red facepaint described by the competent commentator as “demon-like people” terrorized Sting like bullies in a musical. They went from beating him and shoving him around to throwing alcohol and pills at him (as described by the commentators) and then putting him in chains. It went on until Sting was finally rescued. Was it by Shawn Michaels? What about Road Warrior Animal or Jim Neidhart, who were said to be in attendance? No, it was Bishop Jack Wallace, telling all those facepainted guys to get. Wallace must have been a badass. I wonder why ECW never hired him.
Rather than get Sting out of those chains, Wallace grabbed a mic and told Sting to break the chains. Sting looked to him and yelled, “NO! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON IN MY LIFE!” He whined that no money, drugs, women or big wrestling events could allow him to break the chains. Wallace was about to mention the one man who could most definitely help Sting break the chains, but then he was interrupted by “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase.
Just so we’re square, he was about to talk about Mark Henry, right?
Dibiase claimed that he himself could help Sting break the chains because might = money and he had a lot of it. Then he did his awesome laugh. Wallace argued that it wasn’t Dibiase. It was someone who Dibiase couldn’t buy because this guy already paid the price. Admittedly, that’s a pretty cool line. The crowd began to chant, “JESUS!” Wallace left Sting to his own devices and our hero collapsed to the mat.
As if things couldn’t get more bonkers, a passion play appeared on a nearby stage with narration and song as a black guy depicting Jesus got beaten to a bloody pulp. They put him on the cross and one of the Romans even swayed to the music while putting up the devil horns with both hands. They carried him away while a guy lipsynched a song “This Blood is for You” and then Jesus came out from the back in a white robe, tripped over the stairs and came to find the beaten and desperate Sting. The chains fell right off, Sting stood tall and they held their hands up like they just won the tag team titles. Which doesn’t sound like a bad idea if you ask me.
From there, the rest of the segment became Sting and the other wrestlers taking turns doing motivational speaking from inside the ring. All you need to know is that during his piece, Sting said, “At one point the Devil had the Scorpion Death Lock on me.”
And that’s the story of how Shawn Michaels saved Sting.
2) THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR’s house show opponents
WWF, 1991-1996
Back in the day, the on-air wrestling angles were meant to sell the house show circuit. Two guys would feud, they’d have a series of matches across the country that you had to pay to see and it would usually get some kind of televised blow-off down the line. Sometimes on Saturday Night’s Main Event and sometimes on PPV. For instance, in 1989 Ultimate Warrior feuded with Andre the Giant for a little while. They had a series of house show matches where Warrior more often than not beat him in under a minute. That ultimately meant nothing to the people at home, so they ended up bringing closure via their match at Survivor Series. Warrior got the last word and they were able to move on.
With the Ultimate Warrior, that didn’t seem to happen as much as it should have. Due to his history of bailing on the company for whatever reason, Warrior ended up taking part in a bunch of storylines that went nowhere, but gave us some house show matches that are worth talking about.
To start with, Warrior feuded with the Undertaker in 1991. This came from a televised segment of Paul Bearer’s Funeral Parlor where Warrior was a guest. Undertaker attacked him, locked him in a coffin and the rivalry was on. I myself got to see the two take each other on in a Bodybag Match at Madison Square Garden. Warrior won after stealing the urn, bouncing off the ropes, diving at Undertaker and clocking him with the urn to knock him out. Then he put him in the bodybag, left the ring in victory and Undertaker casually tore out of the bodybag and stood up. It was pretty cool. Other matches on the circuit had them do regular singles matches that ended in disqualification. Their feud crossed over into the comic book world, yet they never fought on TV.
Warrior ended up taking the guidance of Jake “The Snake” Roberts to help understand Undertaker’s dark ways. This was all a setup and Jake revealed he and Undertaker were in cahoots. They never got around to doing any Warrior vs. Jake matches and there was never any real follow-up to it. Warrior took a break from the feud so he could team up with Hulk Hogan at Summerslam and that’s when he got fired. So when you look at it, Undertaker and Jake Roberts were the first guys to ever win a feud against Warrior.
Warrior came back in 1992 at the end of Wrestlemania 8 to rescue Hogan from Sid Justice and Papa Shango. This was meant to springboard into a feud between Warrior and Sid and vignettes were even shown on TV to signify this, but it didn’t go so far. Warrior had a couple house show matches with Papa Shango and on April 26, he went up against Sid. Twice! WWF had split the roster into two tours that each had two shows that day, albeit one of those shows was canceled due to poor attendance. Yes, Warrior vs. Sid only happened twice and within hours of each other. The only details of the matches are that they were short (four minutes, apparently) and Warrior won via disqualification. I don’t know what was going on between the two, but after the second match, Sid stormed out of the building and quit the company in a huff. Warrior spent the rest of the tour wrestling with Papa Shango.
Warrior remained in the company for half a year and on the circuit teamed up with the now-face Undertaker. It was neat just for the two doing a promo together and Warrior promising that he was willing to let the past be the past. After Ric Flair regained the WWF Championship, he and Warrior had a handful of matches across the country. More were advertised, but two things happened. One, Warrior injured Flair during one of the matches, meaning he had to take on the likes of Ted Dibiase, Kamala and Nailz instead. Then Warrior simply stopped showing up and his matches were replaced with impromptu Undertaker vs. Nailz squashes.
During Warrior’s final run with the company, he had a series of matches against Vader, even before the initial steps of their feud were introduced. These matches involved Warrior winning via pin, winning via count-out or both of them getting counted out. The feud was meant to be based on Warrior teaming up with Shawn Michaels and Ahmed Johnson against Jim Cornette’s stable of Vader, Owen Hart and British Bulldog, but he had yet another falling out with the company and they wrote him off TV by having Vader crush him repeatedly at the end of a Warrior vs. Owen match. The guy simply had a lot of unfinished business.
And it was Warrior’s tendency to no-show that gives us the #1 spot on the countdown.
1) RANDY SAVAGE vs. THE UNDERTAKER
WWF, 1991
You might be saying, “Wait, what? Savage fought Undertaker? I don’t remember that. I think I’d at least remember seeing some kind of segment setting up for a battle at the Nassau Coloseum where Savage goes on a crazy rant and Undertaker groans through a promo.” There’s a reason you’d never see such a thing. There was zero advertising for it. It was never supposed to happen and yet it did, several times.
In-between Wrestlemania and Survivor Series in 91, Savage was retired in-story. He lost his big Career-Ending Match against the Warrior and rode off into the sunset with Elizabeth. On TV, he didn’t wrestle until Sid Justice campaigned for it just before Survivor Series. He wasn’t advertised for any house shows. That’s not to say his in-ring presence wasn’t needed.
Hulk Hogan missed a couple house shows so we got Randy Savage vs. Sergeant Slaughter, where Savage made him submit with the Camel Clutch. Sid Justice missed a couple shows and Savage was used to take on Jake Roberts. In one of these shows, they explained his ability to wrestle by having him wear a mask and compete as Mr. Madness. Sadly, I don’t think there are any images out there of Mr. Madness in action.
When Warrior was in his feud with Undertaker, Warrior missed a few shows and Savage was thrown in there instead. This happened three times. Savage pinned Undertaker twice and Undertaker defeated Savage once. There’s no footage of any of this. Just the memories of a few who were lucky enough to catch two legends fight it out without warning for no reason more than, “Hey, Randy! Jim didn’t show up again! Get on out there!”
To hell with it. I’m building that time machine. I’m going to hit the hardware store, build this time machine, save Buddy Holly, buy tickets to watch Savage vs. Undertaker, return that copy of Maximum Overdrive to Blockbuster from back in 96 and then watch Savage vs. Undertaker again with better seats.
Before I go, are there any big or small matches hidden in yesteryear that I’m a big dummy for skipping on? Let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading and thanks to the Something Awful goons for giving me a hand.
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Posted in Lists, The Top 60 Wrestling Matches That Surprisingly Happened, Wrestlecomics by Gavok |(Image Credit: Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)
Screens will flicker back to life tonight at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater for the first time since July 20, when a gunman opened fire during a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises", killing 12 people and injuring another 58.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan and the Cinemark CEO Tim Warner are expected to speak at a "special evening of remembrance" for the victims. The theater is expected to open to the public temporarily, starting Friday and then permanently by Jan. 25.
The theater has undergone cosmetic changes to the interior and exterior, including new paint and a different marquee. Inside, individual theaters are now labeled with letters instead of numbers. Theater 9, where James Holmes allegedly carried out his attack, is now "Auditorium H," according to the Denver Post. It has been renovated into what Cinemark calls an "XD" or "Extreme Digital" theater that will show movies on a large, IMAX-like screen.
Some family members and victims of the shooting are boycotting the reopening, saying they are outraged by the timing of Cinemark's invitation to the event, which arrived a few days after Christmas. A group representing families and victims is also upset at their perceived treatment by Cinemark, which they say has refused to meet with them or offer condolences. Several lawsuits have been filed against Cinemark, claiming the theater lacked adequate security.
Holmes, 25, a former neuroscience student at the University of Colorado, is charged with 166 counts that include murder and attempted murder. He is expected to enter a plea March 12.
His attorneys have said in court that they believe Holmes, 25, is mentally ill. While a student, Holmes was under the care of psychiatrist Lynne Fenton. The first lawsuit against Fenton was filed Wednesday by the widow of victim Jonathan Blunk. The suit claims that Fenton, who testified that she went to police in June with concerns about Holmes, was negligent for not putting him on a 72-hour mental health hold.
At a preliminary hearing last week, a flood of new details emerged about how Holmes allegedly planned the attack.
Prosecutors say photos recovered from Holmes' iPhone show he scouted the theater weeks in advance. FBI and ATF agents testified about Holmes' elaborate booby-trapped apartment and the weapons and ammunition he allegedly stockpiled. The lead detective in the case testified about Holmes' odd behavior after he was arrested.
That those and other details are now public has prompted the city of Aurora to ask the judge to lift his gag order that has prevented officials from speaking about the case.
The city filed a motion Wednesday arguing that the gag order should be lifted primarily because the city has been forced to decline requests from police and fire departments interested in learning how Aurora first responders handled the incident.
Speaking about the incident would no longer jeopardize the investigation, the motion argued, "because the evidence has already been revealed to millions of people worldwide."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.As I wrote this morning, news outlets are portraying the budget showdown over Planned Parenthood funding as one about “abortion.” It is not. It is about defunding the other services Planned Parenthood provides, not just because it also provides abortion, not just because the religious right doesn’t like the other stuff it does, but because the religious right model is that God’s will should guide your reproduction. As the religious right heroine Michelle Duggar says, “Our motto is obey first, understand later.”
Now the GOP and its religious right allies might argue that Planned Parenthood shouldn’t be funded because it provides abortions, therefore it shouldn’t be supported in its other services, either. Mike Pence claims he is not for shutting down family planning, just, you know, the biggest provider of family planning. But if you listen to what the religious right says, it’s really about the whole package of what they believe God’s plan and design for women and families is.
Mark Goldberg has a great post on another, little-noticed provision in the GOP riders that’s also a hobby horse of the religious right: an effort to defund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The UNFPA doesn’t even provide abortions, as Goldberg clearly lays out and I noted last year in discussing religious fundamentalism and global womens’ health. Yet Rep. Chris Smith, one of the most vehement opponents of womens’ reproductive rights in Congress, has claimed that the UNFPA, which Goldberg documents provides life-saving services to women around the world, “remains guilty of shamelessly supporting and whitewashing terrible crimes against humanity.” During the Bush administration, anti-choice activists successfully cut off US funding for UNFPA in part based on their false claim that the UNFPA supported “forced abortions” under China’s one-child policy.
This is the same Chris Smith, by the way, who recently traveled to Kenya to condemn that country’s recent decriminalization of abortion, after expending taxpayer resources demanding a USAID Inspector General investigation into whether the Obama administration had broken the law prohibiting taxpayer dollars from being used to lobby for or against abortion overseas. USAID had supported the passage of a new Kenyan constitution, which decriminalized abortion. A USAID spokesperson told me last year that the Inspector General “did not find evidence that USAID funds had been spent on direct lobbying for or against abortion.”
For Smith, though, and the other anti-UNFPA, anti-Planned Parenthood crusaders, the model family is something like the 19-kid Duggars—let God’s hand, not some pesky birth control—guide your life. As the Family Research Council noted last year in bestowing an award on the stars of 19 Kids and Counting at the Values Voters Summit, the Duggars, with their cable television reality show, serve as a Christian model for the rest of America of what happens when you let the Bible be “the owner’s manual for life.” The Duggars, after all, claim that birth control pills actually caused Michelle to miscarry early in their marriage, and have since then left everything in God’s hands.
When the Democrats criticize the Republicans for “throwing women under the bus” or assert they are “not bending on women’s health” they miss telling the whole story. Maybe some voters wouldn’t be moved by the bus-n-bend talking points. But maybe they’d be moved if they knew that what was behind the Republican strategy was the goal of making the religious right’s reading of the Bible the “owner’s manual for life.”
UPDATE: Via Dave Weigel and Think Progress, it looks like at least two possible 2012 presidential contenders, Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, are seeing the political downsides of letting the government shut down over the Planned Parenthood rider.MakeItGoodPDX
Night-sky gazing just got a little sexier with glow-in-the-dark space underwear for both men and women.
Etsy shop MakeItGoodPDX sells the solar system undies in bikini and trunk styles for women at $18 (about £12 or AU$23) and $24 (about £16 or AU$30). Trunks for men are priced at $28 (about £19 or AU$36).
"The solar system print was inspired by the scientific galactic retro glow-in-the-dark prints of our youth, and hand-drawn by artist Nate Crane," MakeItGoodPDX says on its Etsy page. "Planets, moons, galaxy, shooting stars, asteroids and swirling star clusters will catch eyes and imaginations."
The women's undies are made from a blend of black jersey knit, organic cotton and spandex. The men's underwear is made from bamboo and spandex. The solar system design is printed in glow-in-the-dark ink.
The shop also offers glow-in-the-dark solar system women's leggings for $60 (about £40 or AU$77).
The undies and leggings are handmade in Portland, Ore. The shop ships internationally, and perhaps one day, intergalactically.Premier and Minister for the Arts The Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk
Win an on-set role in Thor: Ragnarok on the Gold Coast
One lucky movie buff will rub shoulders with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and win a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with a walk-on role in the blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced today.
The Premier said the winner would receive a walk-on-role in the movie, backstage access and a Gold Coast holiday with three friends as part of a promotion between Tourism and Events Queensland (TEQ) and The Today Show.
“Being part of a Marvel Studios production is a unique opportunity and I am proud my Government was able to secure the filming of this blockbuster for our state,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“The winner will see the making of a Hollywood blockbuster and the brand new super stage, the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, which the Government invested in and is being used for the very first time for this movie.
“This promotion and working with studios such as Marvel to ensure Thor was exclusively filmed in Queensland is a great opportunity to showcase our state and boost the economy.
“There is a lot of buzz in Queensland about the growing film and television industry and the Queensland Government has backed the industry with $30 million over four years for Screen Queensland to continue to attract large-scale film and high end television,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“Productions such as Thor support jobs, tourism and new spend into our economy and I’m thrilled to announce this unique opportunity for a member of the public to be on the same set that our very own Chris Hemsworth and Cate Blanchett, Tom Hiddleston and Mark Ruffalo are working on right now,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“This multi-million dollar production is expected to spend more than $100 million in Queensland and support 850 jobs during filming,” she said.
To enter, write in 25 words or less about your favourite Thor moment and explain why.
The competition is open to anyone in Australia 16 years and older from Monday, 29 August to Friday, 4 September 2016. Competition entries must be submitted at www.ninenow.com.au/today.
The first two films in the Thor series – Thor, released in 2011, and Thor: The Dark World, released in 2013 – earned more than $1 billion USD at the global box office.
Competition details:
The winner will receive the following:
- 4 x return airfares from any Australian capital city.
- 5 x nights’ accommodation (apartment style) on the Gold Coast for four people.
- Transfers to and from Village Roadshow Studios.
- 4 x backstage access on set.
- 1 x walk-on-role (extra) in Thor: Ragnarok.
How to enter
- Entries open Monday 29 August 2016 and close Friday 4 September 2016.
- Log on to http://thorcompetition.hscampaigns.com/ and fill out the entry form: Tell us in 25 words or less what your favourite Thor moment is and why.
- Entrants must be 16 years and over.
- The winner will be announced on Friday 9 September 2016.I wasn’t one of the six million who died in the Shoah,
I wasn’t even among the survivors.
And I wasn’t one of the six hundred thousand who went out of Egypt…
I was born in America 15 years after the Shoah to a mother and father born in America, whose parents were born in America. My great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. well before the 1920’s quotas that restricted Jewish immigration from central and eastern Europe. I never heard any family stories about family left behind to suffer at the evil hands of the Nazis. But I knew of great-uncles who served in the U.S. army during World War II.
In a collection of old photographs in my mother’s apartment, there is a family picture of relatives sitting around a Brooklyn kitchen table welcoming uniformed Uncle Davey back from the war. My favorite photo in that same pile is of my teenage mother, my grandmother, my great-aunt, and a woman I don’t recognize – dressed in uniforms doing volunteer work on behalf of the war effort.
No, I was not in that number, though I still have the fire and the smoke
within me, pillars of fire and pillars of smoke that guide me
by night and by day. I still have inside me the mad search
for emergency exits, for soft places, for the nakedness
of the land, for the escape into weakness and hope,
I still have within me the lust to search for living water…
Stories and images of the Holocaust entered my personal, Jewish historical consciousness as I learned to be a Jew outside the home: in Hebrew school, in youth group, and through lots of reading as a teenager. A recent experience visiting Berlin, especially at the Jewish Museum there, helped me reflect on how much the Shoah is such a dominant filter for my understanding of what it means to be a Jew, even when I am not fully acknowledging it.
The Berlin Jewish Museum complex is two buildings: an old building – a former Baroque palace – and a new building attached to the old – designed by the famous architect Daniel Liebeskind. The new building houses the permanent exhibit – a history of Jews in Germany from ancient times through today’s Jewish revival, which is shaped by the influx of new “German” Jews, mainly from the former Soviet Union and young Jews from Israel. There is no entrance directly into the new building. Liebeskind’s design does not permit a visitor to begin the tour of the permanent exhibit, which starts during Roman times, without passing through a symbolic and artistic dialogue with the Shoah. As though I was having such a dialogue is just how I felt while walking the streets of Berlin, where “stumbling stones” in the pavement across this modern city mark the houses where Holocaust victims once lived. Indeed, the systematic extermination of six million Jews is, and must be, a consequential part of today’s Jewish story: always as backstory and pushed to the foreground when appropriate or needed.
Yom HaShoah (which begins at sundown this Sunday, April 23, and ends at sundown on Monday, April 24) cannot be the only day that we as Jews place Holocaust remembrance into the foreground of Jewish identification. All year long, the worldwide Jewish community has obligations to care for the remaining survivors who may still need communal support. And, every day when more than 13 million Jews, living mostly in the Western world and Israel, enjoy so much freedom, they should see themselves as doing so in defiance of the murdered six million and their missing progeny, who never had the chance to exist.
Because the Shoah story is just as much about perpetrators as it is about victims, Shoah as foreground is a 21st century obligation to end all forms of oppression. Here the unique story of anti-Semitism combines with other uniquely horrible crimes against humanity resulting from racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic nationalism.
The State of Israel, because it is the only Jewish state, can mark Yom HaShoah in the most public and visible ways. One of the most pervasively felt markers is the siren that goes off at 10 a.m. – traffic stops on highways, pedestrians stand still on streets, workplaces pause. While this two-minute siren is a call to silence, other sirens we know are calls to action, alerts to impending emergency, or signals to make way for rescuers. This Yom HaShoah I’d like to imagine the 10 a.m. siren heard as an alarm around the world, stirring all humanity toward the pursuit of justice.
I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment
millions of human beings are standing at crossroads
and intersections, in jungles and deserts,
showing each other where to turn, what the right way is,
which direction…
Yehuda Amichai, excerpted from “I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What is My Life Span?” from Open Closed Open, trans. by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld.Beginning today, ProPublica is launching a Campaign Finance API to help researchers, journalists and software developers cover election fundraising and expenditures.
An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a language that two programs can use to communicate and trade data. Programmers can use it to access data from a website or Internet service more easily.
We’re assuming responsibility of an API that was previously published by The New York Times. If you used the previous Campaign Finance API published by the New York Times, your code will continue to work for a short time, but you should migrate immediately. Keep reading for details on how.
New users can sign up for a free API key by emailing [email protected]. The API provides information on committees and candidates that file records with the Federal Election Commission, with an emphasis on those committees that file electronically (almost every federal committee except most Senate campaigns).
The API is updated with new electronic filings every 15 minutes and with summary data published by the FEC once a day.
The ProPublica Campaign Finance API powers our FEC Itemizer database, which non-programmers can use to find and browse electronic campaign finance filings as soon as they’re filed. Taking over the API will help us add new features to this project.
The API includes information about electronic filings, which are submitted to the FEC on nearly every day of the year. The API provides details about specific types of filings, filings for a specific date and a summary of financial information in each filing.
The API does not include itemized contribution records except in some specific circumstances. If you’re looking to search for contributors, the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics make bulk data available, and the FEC’s new beta site also has an individual search.
The FEC has provided this data in bulk for decades, and has recently launched a beta API of its own that has includes candidates, committees, filings and some itemized transactions. There is some overlap between the FEC’s API and ProPublica’s: both offer users the ability to search for candidates or committees and summary financial information, while both offer information that the other does not.
One big difference is timeliness: the FEC API is updated nightly, while ours will be updated throughout each day. For many users of campaign finance data, that distinction may not be a big deal, but on filing days, when thousands of filings are submitted to the FEC, timeliness can matter a lot. Another is the source data: the FEC considers electronic filings to be “unofficial” in the sense that data from them is then brought into agency databases before being published as bulk data. The FEC API publishes data only from those official tables, while the ProPublica API has data from both the official tables and the raw electronic filings. As the FEC API develops, we may move to incorporate aspects of it into the ProPublica API, or to remove clearly duplicative offerings.
If you are a current user of The New York Times Campaign Finance API, we want to make this transition as easy as possible. The Times’ API will be shut down in a few days, so we encourage you to sign up for a new API key to use the ProPublica API. Requests will look similar, but not identical, to the previous ones. For example, to search for committees with the word “tomorrow” in the name, The Times API call would have been:
http://api.nytimes.com/svc/elections/us/v3/finances/2016/committees/search.json?query=TOMORROW&api-key=NYT_CAMPAIGN_FINANCE_API_KEY
The URL structure for that request using the ProPublica Campaign Finance API is:
https://api.propublica.org/campaign-finance/v1/2016/committees/search.json?query=TOMORROW
There are a couple of important changes to requests: First, the version is “v1” rather than the previous “v3” since this is the first iteration of the API under ProPublica. Second, the API key isn’t passed as a query string; instead it is sent as a header with the request. From a command line interface using curl, it would look like this:
The API will continue to return JSON and XML formats for requests, and callbacks will be supported for JSON responses. Documentation of all available requests is here.
We’re grateful to Chase Davis of The Times for his help in making it possible for ProPublica to acquire and host the API. We’re planning on adding some new data points and enhancing others, particularly where we can add value through custom calculations or categorization. If you have questions or comments about the transition, or the API going forward, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We’d also love to hear your ideas and requests, either in the comments below or at [email protected].I’ll admit it. When I first started in educational leadership as a charter school director, I saw student needs in terms of the “regular” student population and then those with “special needs.” But after many different educational experiences over the years with students, parents and advocates, including working in the Exceptional Student Services Division of the Arizona Department of Education, studying characteristics of effective districts, and now implementing professional learning systems at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind, I am a firm believer that these students do not have special needs–they have the same needs as every other child: educators who believe in them, who hold them to high expectations, and who care enough to give them the specialized, individual supports needed to succeed.
Our students need “special” educators who see beyond the “special needs” labels, and as leaders we can inspire this mindset. There are times when the peripheral noise of all that is asked of school leaders can make us lose our main focus: achievement for all students. In those times, we need to get back to our core values and remember that we do more than manage things like budgets and schedules; we mobilize people to act. Not just any people, but people who chose a profession aimed at putting the needs of children, all children, first. To do this, we must remain focused in uncertain times and remind our staff and colleagues of our purpose. We are the ones with high expectations, we are the ones who know it takes a team to succeed, we are the ones who know actions speak louder than words, and we are the ones who are not satisfied with the status quo.
If we do not promote high expectations for all students, and see beyond the “special needs” labels, who will? Not who should, but who will? As leaders, we must commit to a culture of high expectations for all students and strategically drive a student-first mentality. We are obligated to have significant involvement in keeping the school’s focus on the achievement of all students. This includes shaping a vision of academic success for all students, creating a climate welcoming to education, cultivating leadership in others, improving instruction, and directing procedures to nurture school improvement (Wallace Foundation, 2013).
As effective leaders, it is imperative we consider all staff treasured members of the school team and support them as such. As a colleague during a site visit stated, “We respect their expertise and depend on them to work with parents to make our vision for a community of learners a reality” (Tkatchov & DeVries, 2017). We must remember to share responsibility with the entire staff, remove roadblocks that prevent the team from achieving collective goals and provide supports that promote continual growth. We must give them the specialized, individual supports needed to succeed and meet our expectations that we are asking them to give to the students.
Finally, and exhaustingly, as effective leaders we can never be content with the status quo. We live in a changing world and as leaders we must respond to those changes. For an effective leader, this position is more than a job, it is also a passion, and passion is not confined in a 40-hour work week.
After almost 20 years dedicated to this profession, I have concluded that there is no “regular” kid, and there is also no child whose needs we should not strive to meet. As leaders, our devoir is to create systems that focus on all kids and foster a student-first mentality in all of the professionals who make up our learning community. This “all students” mindset begins with us. We model it for the staff and students to observe and learn from. One person cannot do it alone, but one leader can set the necessary conditions for a group of people to make significant changes in the lives of kids.
Oran Tkatchov’s educational career has included such roles as a middle school English teacher, high school English teacher and charter school director. For over a decade he directed and provided professional development in the areas of special education and school/district improvement at the Arizona Department of Education. He currently supports professional learning at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind.Email Share +1 14K Shares
A transgender man from Spain had a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Saturday.
Hoy, a newspaper in the Extremadura region of Spain, reported that Diego Neria Lejárraga and his fiancée had a private audience with the pontiff that took place at his official residence.
Neria told Francis in a letter that some of his fellow parishioners at the church he attends in the Spanish city of Plasencia rejected him after he underwent sex-reassignment surgery. He said a priest even called him “the devil’s daughter.”
Francis called Neria on Christmas Eve after receiving his letter.
The private audience took place a month later.
“After hearing him on many occasions, I felt that he would listen to me,” Neria told Hoy in an interview the newspaper published on Sunday.
The meeting took place against the backdrop of what many LGBT Catholics have described as the Vatican’s more moderate tone on marriage rights for same-sex couples and other issues since Francis became pope nearly two years ago.
Francis — the former archbishop of Buenos Aires — in July 2013 told reporters who asked him about the reported homosexuality of a man he appointed to oversee the Vatican bank that gay men and lesbians should not be judged or marginalized. An Italian Jesuit magazine a few months later published an interview with the Argentine-born pontiff during which he said the church |
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Nick Diaz is ready to join younger brother Nate on the bill for UFC 202 after responding to a challenge from UFC welterweight king Tyron Woodley.
Diaz's 18-month suspension from the Octagon ended on Monday.
He served a ban after an alleged marijuana violation in a fight-night test following his last bout at UFC 183 in January 2015.
The 33-year-old was initially banned for five years before the suspension was slashed to 18 months earlier this year, meaning he is now eligible to fight again - and Woodley is on his radar.
New champion Woodley called out Diaz after his first-round knockout over Robbie Lawler at UFC 201 last weekend.
(Image: Zuffa LLC via Getty)
(Image: Zuffa LLC via Getty)
And Diaz is willing to make it happen on the undercard of his younger brother’s upcoming rematch against Conor McGregor on August 20 in Las Vegas.
“I want to fight the best guy,” said Diaz, speaking to TMZ Sports.
“I always want to fight the best guy, but the thing is I’m on top. I’m the one on top, they’re dropping my name. I don’t need no fake ass piece of plastic, f*** that.
(Image: Getty)
“Everyone wants to do a fight with me: champions at 170 (lbs), champions at 185 (lbs). I say we meet halfway, I don’t owe nobody nothing. I made PPV without a title.”
Diaz said the fight could happen at UFC 202 if the promotion'makes him an offer he can't refuse'.
Returning UFC legend Georges St-Pierre is also keen on a match with Woodley.I sometimes get asked about the possible contribution of our daily energy consumption to warming in the U.S. With the recent announcement that the U.S. experienced the warmest year on record in 2012 (in the surface temperature data), I thought I would revisit this issue.
Many authors have analyzed the problem, starting in the 1960’s. Jill Jager’s 1983 book Climate and Energy Systems; A Reviews of their Interactions is little known, but is very good on this subject.
I have never looked into the problem very deeply, and have always assumed that the heat generated through our use of electricity and various fuels was, compared to the radiative forcing from increasing CO2, negligibly small. I have assumed that most of the urban heat island effect is “passive”, due to replacing the cooling effects of vegetation with buildings, streets. etc, which warm up more in the sun.
Now I’m not so sure….at least for industrialized and economically active countries like the U.S., it looks like waste heat production from our energy use could be a major player.
If similar calculations to those below have been posted elsewhere, my apologies…just consider this an independent estimate. Again, what I am discussing here is separate from, and in addition to, the passive change in the land energy budget from replacing vegetation with manmade structures (parking lots, etc.).
U.S. Energy Consumption
It 2006, total U.S. energy consumption was estimated (according to DOE/EIA) to be 97.1 quadrillion BTUs, which when converted to “watts” type measurements is equivalent to 3.25 x 1012 watts generated continuously over the course of a year.
If we divide that by the surface area of the U.S. in meters, we get 0.33 watts per sq. meter.
Now, compare that the the total radiative forcing from increasing greenhouse gas concentrations supposedly operating today, which (according to the IPCC) is somewhere around 1.6 W/m2.
At this point, we might conclude that the waste heat generation (0.33 W/m2) is only about 20% of the radiative forcing from increasing CO2 (1.6 W/m2).
But there are at least 2 issues we would be neglecting.
1) Radiative Forcing is Alleviated After Warming…Waste Heat Forcing Is Not
The actual residual radiative imbalance from increasing CO 2 in 2006 was (according to Jim Hansen or the IPCC) more like 0.6 watts per sq. meter, since warming has alleviated some of the radiative forcing caused by increasing CO 2.
In contrast, waste heat from our use of energy keeps getting generated, no matter how much our surroundings have warmed. So, with this correction, we now see that waste heat generation (0.33) becomes more like 50% of the remaining radiative imbalance (0.6) from anthropogenic GHG production.
2) Waste Heat is Mostly Released in the Lowest 10% of the Atmosphere
The second point we would be missing is that, whereas radiative forcing from GHGs is distributed throughout the atmosphere, most waste heat (except for jet traffic) is concentrated close to the ground…in the lowest few hundred meters. And the smaller the mass of air heated by the same energy input, the greater the temperature rise will be.
Of course, the extra warmth is then dispersed upward from convection and IR cooling, but it still is first expressed as concentrated warming of the air in the lowest atmosphere. (I need to check into the increase in radiative forcing in the lower atmosphere from increasing CO 2, to make this a fair comparison).
So, What is the Contribution of Waste Heat to Measured Warming?
This would not be an easy question to answer. I’ve assumed that the waste heat generated in the U.S. is spread evenly across the U.S., whereas it is actually much more concentrated where people are. Of course, thermometers are also placed where people are, so they are more apt to measure the effects of this waste heat.
Even the Climate Reference Network of “well-sited” thermometers are, for the most part, not that far from local economic activity…especially in the eastern U.S. I’ve looked at every one of the 100+ sites in Google Earth (most of are actually visible, with their distinctive trio of bright white thermometer solar shields), and relatively few of them are what you would call “remote”.
Unless I have made a serious error in my back-of-the-printer-paper calculations (which wouldn’t be the first time), I would say that humanity’s generation of waste heat can’t be ignored in the discussion of observed land surface warming trends.
This reminds me of the 2007 paper by McKitrick and Michaels who found that regional surface warming was statistically related to the level of economic activity. What I have provided here is instead a simpler comparison of the levels of energy input from waste heat production versus radiative forcing from GHGs.
(And if you want to bring in the observed warming of the oceans, where virtually no one lives, I will point out that the slight warming of the oceans in the last 50 years is equivalent to only 0.2 watts per sq. meter of net energy input (according to Levitus) into the upper half of the ocean. This value is so small and uncertain, dependent upon the measurement accuracy of hundredths of a degree change hundreds of meters deep, and with the uncertain nature of potential changes in deep ocean mixing, that I don’t think we can say anything definitive about the cause(s) of slight warming in the upper half of the ocean.)What is sex? Think you have that answer down pat? Well, if you have a teen or college-aged child, you might want to ask them what they think.
Most young adults agree penile-vaginal intercourse is sex, but less than one in five think that oral-genital contact counts as "having sex," according to a 2007 survey of undergraduate college students.
This attitude toward oral sex represents a dramatic and sudden shift in thinking since 1991, when a similar survey found that nearly twice as many young adults (about 40%) would classify oral-genital contact as sex.
Researchers point to former President Clinton's infamous statement, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," as the pivotal turning point in society's changing views about oral sex. The attitude shift has been dubbed the "Clinton-Lewinsky" effect.
"Like President Clinton, adolescents and young adults often interpret these words with a degree of latitude, depending on whether they want to maintain an image of being sexually experienced or inexperienced," Jason D. Hans and colleagues at the University of Kentucky, Lexington write in their report, "Sex Redefined: The Reclassification of Oral-Genital Contact."
A surge in abstinence-only education and sex education programs that focus primarily on vaginal-penile intercourse also may play a role in the disassociation of oral-genital stimulation from sex, the authors say.
Would You Say You Had Sex If...?
The survey involved 477 undergraduate students, mostly white heterosexual females, enrolled in a human sexuality class. The majority (98%) of participants was age 24 or younger; the average age was 20.7 years.
The participants answered the following question:
"Would you say you 'had sex' with someone if the most intimate behavior you engaged in was..."
• Penile-vaginal intercourse?
• Penile-anal intercourse?
• Oral contact with partner's genitals?
• Partner's oral contact with your genitals?
• Partner touches your genitals?
• You touch partner's genitals?
• Oral contact with partner's breasts/nipples?
• You touch partner's breasts/nipples?
• Deep kissing?
• Partner's oral contact with your breasts/nipples?
• Partner touches your breasts/nipples?
Among the survey's notable findings:
• Only 20% of those surveyed said oral contact with their partner's genitals would constitute sex.
• Less than 80% of participants considered penile-anal intercourse as sex.
Males were much more likely than females to say sex included the following behaviors:
• Their partner touched their genitals (13% vs. 7%).
• Orally stimulating a partner's breasts or nipples (9% vs. 4%).
• Touching a partner's breast or nipples (8% vs. 3%).
Why the Concern?
Oral sex has become increasingly acceptable among youths in recent years, perhaps because it's viewed by some as a less risky alternative. But experts say oral-genital contact can lead to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Such diseases include HIV, herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, and the human papillomavirus (HPV), which has been linked to cervical cancer.
The researchers encourage sex educators to increase awareness about oral sex and how it can lead to the spread of STDs.
Complete survey results are available online ahead of print. The article will be published in the June 2010 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
By Kelli Stacy
Reviewed by Laura Martin
©2005-2008 WebMD, LLC. All rights reservedHot Toys Previews The Dark Knight Rises Sixth Scale Bat-Pod Collectible
Batman's vehicle gets an upgrade for the latest movie
Due to the popularity of their previously released 1/6th scale Bat-Pod collectible from The Dark Knight, Hot Toys will be re-releasing it with some minor updates to coincide with The Dark Knight Rises' release. The toy manufacturer gave fans their first look at the vehicle collectible this morning with eight new photos.
Even in its sixth scale, the Bat-Pod is a lengthy beast, measuring nearly 2 feet long and 6 inches high. As you can tell from the photos, it's perfectly sized to display any Hot Toys Batman figure. You could even display their 1989 Batman (Michael Keaton) figure on it if you wanted. The Bat-Pod has a metal frame to handle the weight and if the previous release is anything to go by, they'll be including a replacement cape that's better suited to mimicking the cape flowing at great speeds.
The Dark Knight Rises Bat-Pod is now available for pre-order via Sideshow Collectibles. The mammoth collectible is priced at $274.99, but completely worth it (based on our experience with the previous Bat-Pod).Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Sep. 19, 2014, 12:23 AM GMT / Updated Sep. 19, 2014, 2:30 PM GMT
A convicted felon fatally shot his daughter and six grandchildren before killing himself in a Florida home Thursday, police said. The shooter, who was identified as 51-year-old Don Spirit, took his own life after police officers arrived at the residence in Bell, outside Gainesville, Gilchrist County Sheriff Robert Schultz said. Schultz said that authorities found the seven victims "all over on the property." They included a 10-week-old baby.
Spirit already had a lengthy criminal record stretching back 22 years, according to Florida corrections records. Reports from 2003 show that one charge, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, came after he pleaded guilty to accidentally shooting and killing his 8-year-old son while they were out hunting. He was sentenced to three years in prison. Spirit was also convicted of depriving a child of food and shelter, battery, and possession of drug paraphernalia between 1992 and 1995. Schultz said officers had previously "been out to that residence on numerous law enforcement occasions." The victims were identified as Sarah Lorraine Spirit, 28, and her daughters Alanna Stewart, 2½ months, Brandon Stewart, 4, Destiny Stewart, 5, and Kylie Kuhlmann, 9, and sons Johnathon Kuhlmann, 8, and Kaleb Kuhlmann, 11. "This is something you can't explain," Schultz said at a press conference. "I will continue to ask everybody to pray for the families."John Oliver isn’t buying it.
The “Last Week Tonight” host doesn’t believe President Donald Trump’s claims that former FBI director James Comey said that Trump himself wasn’t under investigation three times.
“I call bullshit,” Oliver said on Sunday night. “I call turbo bullshit on that. There is no way those conversations went down in that manner.”
The president is somehow “both a terrible and an amazing liar, and I don’t know how that’s physically possible,” Oliver said.
Oliver also slammed the “genuinely weird” termination letter as well as the following week of “confusing and contradicting” explanations that were ultimately blown up by Trump’s interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Thursday.
That was when Trump admitted he was going to can Comey, no matter what.
“Trump is so desperate to appear dominant he will rush to take the credit for anything no matter how bad it is,” Oliver said, adding:
“If you wanted him to confess to murder, all a lawyer would have to say is ‘Your honor, the killer could not possibly have been Donald Trump. It must have been someone much stronger and smarter with a much hotter daughter,’ and before they finished that sentence, Trump would be yelling, ‘I did it! It was me! Lock me up! Lock me up! Lock me up!’”
Check it out above.CAVE CREEK, AZ--(Marketwired - Jan 28, 2014) - Endexx Corporation (OTC Pink: EDXC) announces publicly its long term collaboration with Xeden Cloud Concepts, Inc. known internally as "Project Xendex." For the past 12 months, Endexx and Xeden have fully developed the core engine and architecture that supports and integrates the M3Hub Platform. The companies have executed an exclusive Worldwide Licensing and Technology Services Agreement.
Xeden's Cloud-based Asset/Agriculture Inventory Tracking System (CAITS) is a proprietary supply chain management platform that connects growing, processing and distribution cycles. The system integrates Point of Sale (POS) technologies and Payment Gateway solutions that directly address the current banking regulatory challenges and restrictions and gives Endexx a unique advantage in payment processing for medical and recreational marijuana dispensers and retailers. The POS application helps eliminate costly kiosks and machines as components of the transaction process and can be easily integrated into mobile devices and content rich social media platforms.
Stephen Fentl, President of Xeden Clouds Concepts, stated:
"Our Cloud-based Asset Inventory Tracking System does more than just meet the needs of marijuana growers, marijuana dispensaries, consumers, and government regulators; CAITS also provides state of the art security, real time distribution of funds to all parties (including government) taxes, and the world's first media-centric rights exchange. CAITS improves the efficiency, profitability, tracking capacity, sale, and regulatory compliance for growers and dispensers of marijuana, both medical and recreational. In addition, CAITS provides a POS (Point of Sale) system that is directly integrated with merchant gateways for seamless processing of financial transactions that resolves the banking and tax related issues of the marijuana industry."
Michael Short, Founder and Systems Architect of Xeden Cloud Concepts, stated:
"While CAITS provides a comprehensive inventory management and point of sale product it is unique in that the level of tracking it can provide goes beyond industry norms to achieve the unprecedented granularity required by new regulations. CAITS is unique because it is actually a large collection of related cloud applications that can organize contacts, purchase orders, prescriptions, inventory, point of sale, and payment processing. Unique to CAITS is an integrated media library securely managing reports, photos, videos, and all digital media for a business. Xeden Cloud Concepts has been working with Endexx to insure its CAITS collection of cloud applications fully meet the rigorous requirements of governments and regulatory agencies overseeing evolving marijuana-related businesses."
Todd Davis, CEO of Endexx, stated: "This historic strategic alliance with Xeden is the culmination of one year of thorough due diligence and collaboration. It solidifies our technological and process integration superiority in 'Seed to Sale' management and inventory tracking that none of our competitors can claim. The platform is ready for deployment for marijuana program oversight administrators, growers, processors, retailers, medical patients and users. A product demo will be made available through endexx.com in February."
Xeden's core innovation and expertise lies in the Digital Rights Exchange that is comprised of a user management system that includes secure user data management, hierarchical relationships, multiple levels of access, multiple account types and privileges and credit management. The second component is the Rights Exchange that provides the transactions between account holders and grants access to previously registered digital and physical assets.
As per the Technology Services Agreement, Xeden provides Endexx online proprietary work flow, tracking, CRM, and other cloud services software which enables users to securely collect, manage, create, publish, transmit and distribute customizable formatted content via digital and non-digital means. Xeden, through M3Hub, also provides use of its online software, via a browser interface and data encryption, for transmission, access, storage and messaging in a cloud.
Story continuesDeathstroke has kind of, sort of, been confirmed as the lead villain in Ben Affleck and Geoff Johns' upcoming Batman movie, but that can't be it, right? While there's no denying that Slade "The Terminator" Wilson is a great character with a ton of potential (just look at what Arrow did with him), can he really carry an entire movie alone? Possibly, but it would be better if he's hired by someone!
There are a number of Batman villains who might want to send an assassin like Deathstroke after Bruce Wayne and/or Batman, but who are the most likely candidates? Looking at what we know about the movie, past rumours, and general speculation, what you'll find here is a look at the eight characters with the biggest axe to grind with the Caped Crusader who might just end up employing Slade...
8. Hush
Thomas Elliot was a renowned surgeon and childhood friend of Bruce Wayne who developed a hatred for him after Thomas Wayne (a returning Jeffrey Dean Morgan in flashbacks?) inadvertently thwarted his plan to kill his parents and receive his inheritance early. Years later, Elliot discovered Batman's secret identity, and assuming the identity of criminal mastermind Hush, he set out to destroy him.
He came pretty close too, and if this movie were to loosely adapt the storyline he was introduced in, we could get to see an epic line-up of villains promised by early rumours that the release was going to take place entirely in Arkham Asylum. Regardless of who else shows up though, Hush sending an assassin like Deathstroke after Batman makes perfect sense, and the dynamic between all three of these characters would be fascinating to see explored on the big screen as they come to blows.
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7. Lex Luthor
The prospect of Lex Luthor becoming a Batman villain feels really weird, but Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice established him as a foe of the Dark Knight's whether you like it or not! Storyboards teased by Zack Snyder point to Luthor hiring Deathstroke in Justice League, so even if he doesn't factor into The Batman, it's entirely possible that he's the one who puts Slade Wilson on the Caped Crusader's tail as revenge for him being sent to Arkham Asylum.
Lex factoring into the hero's solo outing would be a little odd as he really should be saved for the now confirmed Man of Steel sequel, but that too could happen depending on exactly how closely tied the bald villain ends up being tied to Deathstroke in Justice League. Regardless of what the future holds in store for Luthor though, him being the one who initally hires the assassin does make a lot of sense, so don't be surprised to see these two sharing the screen.
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6. The Penguin
The Penguin is a character who definitely deserves to be brought back to the big screen, and having him be revealed as a mastermind plotting against Batman in his movie would be very cool. Many fans have wondered why Batman: Earth One was among the comic books sent to Joe Manganiello (aside from the fact that it was written by Geoff Johns), but a new take on Oswald Cobblepot heavily factors into that tale, so The Batman going down a similar route would work really well.
After all, if Bruce Wayne and Cobblepot clash at some point, him sending The Terminator after the billionaire - only for the Caped Crusader to obviously intervene - might make a lot of sense and potentially sets up The Penguin as a big bad of this and future movies starring Batman. It ultimately depends on where in his criminal career we end up picking up with the villain here, but The Penguin definitely deserves another chance to shine.
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5. Bane
Is it too soon to bring back Bane? He was after all the main villain in The Dark Knight Rises, but if Affleck and Johns really embrace the source material and deliver a version of the character who is larger than life and powered up by Venom, any comparisons would be quickly forgotten (especially if this Bane is much easier to understand).
Despite his brutish nature, the villain has often been portrayed as a mastermind of sorts, and while he doesn't exactly need to hire muscle like Deathstroke, he could very well just use the assassin as a distraction of sorts as he makes a move against Gotham City and potentially opens the door to some sort of adaptation of No Man's Land. As good as that sounds, similarities to the last Batman movie could be an issue here, but a more comic book faithful Bane is definitely something it would be fun to see on the big screen as would his sure to be unique relationship with Slade. Back Next
4. The Joker
The mixed response to Jared Leto's take on The Joker may have closed the door to him being the lead villain in The Batman, but the Clown Prince of Crime should definitely still make his presence felt here. This movie not addressing the fact that he killed Robin and is now on the loose with Harley Quinn would be ridiculous, and it feels like these two having some sort of encounter is an inevitability.
Of course, Warner Bros. may want to take a slow burn approach to their inevitable confrontation, so The Joker hiring Deathstroke in the meantime to try and get some revenge of Batman for imprisoning Harley would make sense. Whether or not Leto would be open to what would essentially be just another cameo is hard to say, but him hiring Slade Wilson opens the door to a lot of different storytelling opportunities both in this and future releases. Don't forget that there are also rumours of him appearing in Justice League.
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3. Black Mask
Roman Sionis is a ruthless mob boss whose sole goal is to become the supreme leader of the Gotham criminal underworld. Possessing an extreme hatred for Bruce Wayne, and a sadistic talent for torturing his victims, Black Mask is one of Batman's most dangerous adversaries, and him attempting to take over the city in this movie could make for a great storyline.
He is after all quite a bit different to the villains we've previously seen in live-action, but to rule over Gotham, he'll need someone formidable by his side, and who better than Deathstroke? Black Mask isn't exactly a physical threat to Batman, so him having a hired gun like Slade under his control would work perfectly and gives the Caped Crusader someone to fight in some sure to be amazing sequences. Who knows, if Deadshot managed to escape from Belle Reve, he too could return to Gotham work for Black Mask...or maybe with Batman!
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2. Poison Ivy
Of all the characters you have and expected to see here, I'm willing to bet Poison Ivy wasn't among them. After all, she has very few ties with Deathstroke in the comic books and isn't really the type to hire someone like him to do her dirty work. However, given Ivy's penchant for manipulating men into doing her bidding, making her the big bad of The Batman with Deathstroke at her side has a ton of potential.
A female lead villain would be something new not just for this franchise, but pretty much superhero movies in general, and throwing Slade Wilson into the mix gives the Dark Knight someone to fight as she pulls the strings in the background and attempts to take over Gotham City. If it is ultimately revealed that Deathstroke is under her control, he could finish this movie in his anti-hero status, something which would make the character getting his own spinoff a more likely possibility in the near future.
Back Nexthere is a recipe to celebrate the weekend.
i am a banana girl and let me tell you,
this is one of my favorite banana recipes i’ve made.
the best part? no flour/oil/butter but you can’t even tell!
make them for breakfast. you won’t regret it!
{make sure to eat them warm or heat them up because they are best that way!}
Ingredients
2.5 cups old fashioned oats {or gluten-free}
1 cup plain low fat greek yogurt
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar {or sweetener of choice}
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 ripe bananas
chocolate chips {optional}
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray tin with non-stick cooking spray or line 12 muffin tins with silicone or foil liners.
2. Place all of the ingredients, including bananas in a blender or food processor, and blend until oats are smooth. {I added the oats a cup at a time and blended in between}
3. Divide batter among cupcake liners, and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.
**Be sure to watch them closely in the oven, because depending on altitude, baking time may be a little less**
4. Most importantly: Enjoy & try not to eat them all at once!
husband ate 4 in the first ten minutes after they came out of the oven..
on the last one he even added his own topping: nutella! smart guy.
have a great saturday! we are off to the flea market {one of our fall dates
and then our visitors arrive! XO
*UPDATE: read through the comments below if you’re going to make these!
there are some great tips for substitutions and variations to make these gluten-free, etc!
as you can see in the pictures, i’ve made them a few different ways & they’ve all been great!Even Mike WiLL Made-It’s hardest trap beats have a watery feel, like you just woke up on the sticky floor of a raging club as the song begins. But the Atlanta duo Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” sounds like two different Super Nintendo water levels playing on separate browser tabs; it starts out submerged and never surfaces. The songs’ two synth patterns, running in opposite directions, are transfixing, and listening to them is like staring dumbly at the light ripples at the bottom of a backyard pool after taking a too-generous hit.
By now it’s clearer than ever that Rae Sremmurd are Mike WiLL’s muses, the artists that he was designed to work with. Together they have Just Blaze/Jay chemistry, Waka Flocka Flame/Lex Luger chemistry. Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi rap and sing entirely in punchy, candy-shelled couplets that conceal razors: “She think she love me/I think she trolling”; “quick release the cash, watch out for slow leaking”; “get you somebody who can do both.” There is not a single second of this song you can touch without getting it stuck to you. The ad-libs are hooks, the verses are hooks, the hooks are hooks. Gucci Mane’s clone wanders through, too, and while he sounds great, he also sounds relatively conventional here, the adult crashing the kids’ party.For most Americans, land is money, and land ownership constitutes power. For individuals who are not familiar with tribal cultures and histories, it is easy to assume that the ability to make money off of land by leasing it to extractive industries or selling it off is a natural path to personal success and therefore prosperity for the community at large. Make no mistake: For Native people, a link exists between landownership and success, but it is much more complex and intimate than the personal ability to exploit or sell land for financial gain. Not all communities are facing the same kind of crises, but almost all recognize the importance of land to cultural preservation. Whether in our ancestral homelands, such as those where the Lakota have stopped the construction of the pipeline, or in areas of Oklahoma, where more than two dozen tribes were forcefully placed during the 19th century, protecting our tribal land bases is an intrinsic part of the formula that will lead to greater prosperity and success for individuals and tribes in Indian country.
That is the reason why protests to defend treaty-protected lands, like the current protests over the Dakota Access pipeline, are so important. It is also the reason why thousands of Native people, representing scores of tribes, have made the journey to North Dakota to protest the pipeline that threatens both sites that are sacred to the Sioux people and the drinking water for those living on the nearby reservation. They are there to speak for their ancestors who are buried on those sites. They are there to speak for themselves and their right to preserve their ceremonial sites and drinking water. And they are there to speak for the subsequent generations who will have to live with the results of the pipeline’s construction.
Proponents of privatization, be they corporations or well-intentioned free-market reformers, are disregarding Indian culture and values. The author Naomi Schaefer Riley, for instance, recently published an article in The Atlantic suggesting that Native American communities suffer from economic devastation and social inequity due to the federal policy of holding Native American lands in trust. Her solution to this policy, which she argues has stymied individual success and contributed to endemic poverty in Native American communities, is the resurrection of a much older, failed solution: the redistribution of lands collectively held by tribes to individuals.
Reform-minded authors like Schaefer Riley begin making their case by citing a number of terrifying statistics about poverty on reservations, violence against Native women, and teen suicide rates, among others. All are largely factual. Schaefer Riley’s solution, however, creates a false dichotomy, suggesting that success is limited to either the individual or the tribe. She claims that tribal citizens’ inability to privately own, and therefore capitalize on, tribal lands, “prevents American Indians from reaping numerous benefits.” This is a narrow interpretation of the resources and policies that would benefit Natives, and it disregards the cultural and spiritual values at the core of Native American tribal societies.Last month (April, 2016) marked the first time that graduates who paid higher tuition fees began their repayments. My Facebook and LinkedIn was awash with exasperated recent graduates seeing student loan repayments coming out of their hard-earned pay cheques for the first time. Furthermore, they were able to see the total figure of their debt. For many, this is over £50,000.
At that point, I decided to write a blog post in an attempt ease the grief of the first group of graduates repaying their higher-tuition fees. Hopefully this analysis will show that the total amount of debt is not the thing to worry about. In fact, many new graduates who paid the higher fees will find they are actually financially better off than those who studied before them.
Although the rate of university applications initially fell after the announcement of higher tuition fees, the rate has now surpassed its previous 2011 high. Nevertheless, there is still a misconception that with the higher tuition fees comes higher monthly payments and a lifetime of crippling debt.
What many graduates may be surprised by is the fact that, as my analysis will show, all higher tuition fee graduates will actually have lower monthly repayments and many will actually repay less of their student loan over their lifetimes than those on the lower tuition fees.
Application Rates
When the higher rates of tuition fees were introduced in 2012, there was a huge negative response. It resulted in a drop in the number of 18 year-olds applying for higher education.
As we can see below, there was a 5% drop in applications in 2012 compared with the previous year. Since then, however, we can see that application rates have risen again at an average rate of 3% year on year.
As a result of this, despite the drop in applications in 2012, there is a greater proportion of 18 year-olds applying to higher education than there was in 2011 before the changes were announced.
Comparison of monthly repayments
Rather than looking at the amount of debt a student is in, it makes more sense to look at how the repayments are going to affect their month-by month situation. This is just the first way in which graduates who paid the higher fees will be surprised to learn they will be better off.
It is important to note the difference in the payment terms between the two plans. They both have a salary threshold at which point a graduate must begin repaying their loan. After the threshold, they must pay 9% of their salary.
The threshold for pre-2012 loans (Plan 1) is currently £17,495 with the threshold for post-2012 loans (Plan 2) set at £21,000. Let’s compare repayments for two graduates with a starting salary of £24,000. Graduate A is on Plan 1 and graduate B is on Plan 2.
We have to look at the difference between their salary before tax and the threshold to be able to calculate what they pay. In A’s case, this is £6,505. They will have to pay 9% of this which equates to £585 a year, or £49 per month.
Graduate B, who is on the post-2012 plan doesn't have to start repaying their loan until he reaches the higher threshold of £21,000. With a salary of £24,000 this means they only have to pay 9% of £3,000. This equals only £270 a year, or £23 per month.
As we can see, on a short-term basis, graduate B on Plan 2 is £26 better off every month, or £315 over the course of a year. The table below shows the same comparison of monthly payments for graduates on different salaries.
The chart below represents the above table showing the comparison of monthly repayments between the two plans. Graduates on Plan 1 will always be paying more each month than those on Plan 2.
Another way to consider this would be to look at monthly repayments as a proportion of income before tax. This gives us a better representation of the impact of a person’s standard of living. The chart below shows us this.
There is a bigger difference for graduates on lower salaries. If we look at the two graduates on salaries of £22,000, Graduate A (plan 1) is paying £34 per month, whereas B (plan 2) is paying £7.50. A is paying 4.5 times the amount that B is paying each month.
We can therefore conclude that, on a month-by-month basis, graduates who paid the higher tuition fees are better off than those who began higher education before 2012. This difference is even more prominent when at the lower end of starting salaries.
Debt is written off after 25 or 30 years
The next major thing to remember is that loans are written off after a set period of time. For Plan 1 that’s 25 years after graduation, and for Plan 2 it’s 30 years. Many graduates will find they won’t be able to pay off their entire loan in that amount of time. In that case, the total amount of the loan becomes irrelevant.
We can analyse how much of a student loan is likely to be paid before it is written off based on starting salary. For the sake of calculations in this analysis I will only be looking at real increases in salary (above the rate of inflation). On average, according to the Office of National Statistics, the salaries of UK graduates increase at an annual rate of 2% on top of inflation. From that, we can calculate how much of a loan is paid before it is written off. You can see my results below. A reminder that the write-off period for Plan 1 is 25 years, whereas for Plan 2 it is 30 years.
The chart below shows the same comparison, looking at the predicted maximum amount payable before it is written off for the two plans. Disregarding the total value of the loan, those on Plan 2 will be repay less if their starting salary is less than £27,000.
Obviously, this doesn't take into consideration the size of each loan. The total value will be different for each graduate, since maintenance loans are means-tested. I have taken the average loan sizes for the two plans. The average size of a Plan 1 loan is £26,100, with a Plan 2 loan an average of £53,400. The following chart reflects this.
We can draw a number of conclusions from the chart above. The first conclusion is whether or not a graduate is likely to pay off their entire loan.
When each line flattens out it shows a graduate has paid been able to pay off the entire amount before it has been written off. For a graduate who was on the lower fees of Plan 1, we can see that it is unlikely they will pay off the entire loan if their starting salary is less than £24,000. We can compare this with a Plan 2 graduate on the higher tuition fees. They are not likely to pay off the full loan unless they start |
Update 08/01/2016, 4.19PM: Late on Friday afternoon, Yonhap reported North Korea is broadcasting its own propaganda in the hopes of drowning out the ongoing South Korean broadcasts.
While the content of North Korea’s broadcast has not been revealed to public, NK News previously reported that the radio broadcasts from the North are mainly to ensure North Korean citizens and soldiers do not hear the South’s speakers.
South Korean Ministry of National Defense (MND) has announced its plan to use six new mobile loudspeakers along with fixed loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda at the North.
The ministry also added their plan to use only mobile loudspeakers on Gyodong Island, only 2.5 kilometers from North Korean shores. Gyodong Island, one of South Korea’s northernmost islands, is close enough to swim across, as two North Koreans reached it to defect to the South in 2014.
The South Korean military announced on Thursday evening that they will resume the broadcast starting noon Friday, 136 days after they were halted by the August 25 Agreement.
South Korean media have reported the MND is planning to play two to six hours of the latest K-pop songs daily, including Apink’s “Just Let Us Love” and G-Friend’s “Me Gustas Tu,” along with Voice Of Freedom, the South Korean government owned propaganda radio program.
As part of its August broadcasts, the MND played Big Bang’s “Bang Bang Bang” and Girl’s Generation’s “Tell Me your Wish (Genie)” as well.
The residents of the islands have expressed fear of North Korean bombardment as a countermeasure to stop the broadcasts, the MND has decided to use only mobile loudspeakers on this occasion.
“We strongly urge South Korean Defense to move the loudspeakers somewhere else,” said one island resident demonstrating in front of the MND in August, Hankook Ilbo’s reported.
“Without the help of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to pinpoint the location of mobile loudspeakers, North Korea’s only way to locate them would be relying on visual identification, which is quite inaccurate,” a civilian military adviser to South Korea’s National Defense Committee told NK News on condition of anonymity.
A civilian military adviser between South Korea and international authorities mentioned the mobile speakers are still sitting-ducks during broadcast hours.
“Despite the speaker being called mobile, the speakers are not constantly movable,” said the adviser.
“They are only called mobile as they can be quickly installed in any area the MND wishes. Even the mobile loudspeakers will have to be fixed-in during the broadcasting hours, which make them sitting ducks during the operation.”
While the tension is rising, one anonymous MND source told Yonhap that North Korea’s front-line troops are reinforcing their defenses along the border.
Featured image: ROKMND Official FlickrSenior Saudi Arabian Prince Miteb bin Abdullah has been freed from custody after agreeing to pay $1 billion to settle allegations made against him, a Saudi official said.
On Tuesday, Prince Miteb was released after reaching “an acceptable settlement agreement,” the official said, according to Reuters. The official believed the amount was around or more than $1 billion.
“It is understood that the settlement included admitting corruption involving known cases,” the official said.
SENIOR SAUDI PRINCE MITEB BIN ABDULLAH REPORTEDLY HAS BEEN RELEASED FROM CUSTODY
Prince Miteb, 65, headed the country’s powerful National Guard until he was taken into custody on Nov. 9 after being accused of “embezzlement, hiring ghost employees and awarding contracts to his own firms,” Reuters reported. Bloomberg reported at least three other detainees reached deals as well.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered dozens of top princes and businessmen to be detained after investigators said they uncovered at least $100 billion in corruption. Officials believed the crown prince ordered the detentions in order to bolster his power, The New York Times reported.
SAUDI PRINCES, OTHERS ARRESTED IN SWEEP VIEWED AS SHOW OF FORCE BY CROWN PRINCE
Prince Miteb was considered a contender for the throne a few years ago and was believed to have opposed Prince Salman from becoming a crown prince.
Prince Miteb denied the corruption allegations and accused Prince Salman of using the anti-corruption campaign to boost his power in the kingdom.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.The Pocket add-on bundled with Firefox finally has an excuse to be there
Chances are you’ve heard the new: Mozilla has acquired Pocket, the go-to ‘read it later’ service for many of us.
Mozilla say the ‘strategic acquisition’ will help them grow their ‘mobile presence’ by ‘providing people everywhere with powerful tools to discover and access high quality web content, on their terms, independent of platform or content silo.’
Firefox has shipped with Pocket integration since 2015.
Both Pocket and Mozilla stress that Pocket (paid features and all) will continue to tick over in its current form for now — but I’d be surprised if we didn’t see some synergy or interplay happen between Pocket and Firefox Sync in the mid-term.
Don’t Call It a Mid-Life Crisis
Firefox doesn’t command as big a slice of the overall browser marketshare as it once did, and the rise of mobile-first computing focused around Google Chrome and Apple WebKit has made it far harder to establish the Firefox on the mobile web.
The company launched a stalled excursion into mobile with Boot2Gecko and Firefox OS, and in to smart devices and the Internet of Things (Panasonic launched a few Firefox OS powered televisions, no less).
But with failure writ large it was inevitable that the company would need to pivot back to what it does best: web.
The Mozilla logo recently received a dramatic makeover (though some may say makeunder) as part of a wide-reaching reset of the company’s brand identity. The acquisition of Pocket, while not an obvious move, is at least a strategic one.
‘Mozilla also plan to open source the Pocket code’
What It Means for Pocket
Pocket will nestle among Mozilla’s product portfolio. The focus will be on “promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content”, where it will no doubt be used to plug in to Mozilla’s (rather complex) Context Graph doohickey.
Mozilla also plan to open source the Pocket code in due course as part of the deal. There’s no word on (or if) Mozilla will integrate or leverage Pocket data in other ways.
Chris Beard, Mozilla CEO, says “…discovery and accessibility of high quality web content is key to keeping the internet healthy by fighting against the rising tide of centralization and walled gardens. Pocket provides people with the tools they need to engage with and share content on their own terms, independent of hardware platform or content silo, for a safer, more empowered and independent online experience.”
As for Pocket, well they say the Mozilla deal adds ‘fuel to our rocketship’.
“We have worked closely with Mozilla as we partnered with their Firefox team, and established a deep trust with their team and vision. They have extraordinary resources, global scale, and reach to put Pocket in more places, and help us build an even better product, faster,” Pocket founder Nate Weiner says in a blog post.
“Together we are going to continue expanding the reach of high-quality content, while staying true to the values that drive both Pocket and Mozilla alike: Protecting the openness of the web and creating a content platform built around trust and privacy.”
Reassuring stuff.London, England (CNN) -- Hit the road, Jack.
Last year's most popular name for baby boys in England has been knocked off -- by Mohammed.
That's not immediately obvious from data put out this week by the Office of National Statistics, which declared Wednesday that Oliver was the single most popular name for boys born in 2009.
But a CNN analysis of the top 4,500 boys names shows that, when different spellings of the name are lumped together, Mohammed is No. 1.
Oliver and variations come second, followed by Jack, Thomas, Charles, Harry, William and Daniel.
The United Kingdom is about 4.6 percent Muslim, with just under 2.9 million Muslims according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
And Muslims have a strong tendency to name their sons Mohammed.
"The first reason why people keep the children's name Mohammed is because of their love of the prophet Mohammed, because they want to emulate him," said Imam Abdullah al-Hasan of the East London Mosque.
"They want to copy him not just through his behavior and conduct, but also his name," said the imam, who is thinking about naming his own newborn son after the founder of Islam.
The Muslim population has risen rapidly in Western Europe in the past 20 years, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
From under 10 million in 1990, it's gone up to about 17 million today, the think tank said in a report last month.
That has be accompanied by tensions ranging from racial violence in parts of England to legal restrictions like banning the burqa in France and banning minarets in Switzerland.
But al-Hasan says Britain has nothing to fear.
"One message I would give to them is that you shouldn't be surprised. You shouldn't be scared. You shouldn't be frightened or anything like that," he said.
"It shows that Islam is here to stay in Britain. Islam is here to stay in Europe," he said. "It's not alien from the Western society. It's not alien to the British context."
CNN's Brittany Harris, Erin McLaughlin and Atika Shubert contributed to this report.Yesterday, Michael Savage responded to David Axelrod’s claim that President Obama described himself as “the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.” According to Savage, Obama is not far off … but only when it comes to the Jews who are “fools” and “idiots.”
“He’s right, liberal Jews in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and he are one in the same,” the right-wing talk show host said. “Yeah, he’s the best friend Jews ever had, self-hating Jews who want to die. No question about that.”
After all, Savage believes that Obama is “the terrorist in the White House” who is destroying America and who wants to bring in “the criminals and the perverts and the rapists and the terrorists.”
He continued: “So if an enemy were to break our borders, we would say he’s a terrorist, right? What if an enemy were to debase our language? What if an enemy were to destroy or decimate our culture? You would say he’s a terrorist, wouldn’t you?”There's no shortage of doomsayers who think the Internet is forcing media into a clickbait-driven race to the bottom.
Reveal, a new investigative reporting podcast and radio show, is the counterpoint to that line of thinking.
A joint effort between the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and digital audio marketplace Public Radio Exchange (PRX), Reveal is an hour-long podcast that will center around in-depth, untold stories of public importance. An upcoming episodes will include stories about the regulation of day-care centers, online currency trading and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The people behind Reveal understand that it is swimming in the wake of Serial, an investigative podcast centered on a murder near Baltimore. Serial became a cultural phenomenon, breaking into pop media in a way no other podcast had.
Serial, however, was only the boiling of a pot that has been heating up for a while, according to Jake Shapiro, founder and CEO of Public Radio Exchange (PRX). In addition to Serial, he also credits This American Life, Planet Money and Radiolab as helping to build the foundation that has led to the podcasting renaissance.
Now, Shapiro said, podcasts are being looked at in a new light.
"You've got more talent that's seeing this as a pathway toward expression and audience. You've got more partners, including almost all of the music subscriptions services, seeing podcasts and spoken word as a viable category," Shapiro said.
The suddenly high profile of podcasting has proved a tailwind. Reveal is already well funded through donations including a three-year $3 million grant from the Reva and David Logan Foundation along with $500,000 from the Ford Foundation. The show also has an underwriter — spoken-word audio company Audible — which is something nonprofit journalism usually is unable to attract.
Podcasts have historically not been a particularly lucrative medium. Neither has investigative reporting, particularly due to the usually money and time-intensive work that goes into major stories. An investigative reporting podcast, by that measure, might seem like a nonstarter.
But things have changed. After chugging along for years as the weird cousin of digital media, podcasting is enjoying a day in the sun. Larger audiences and digital media are the keys to making this kind of investigative content viable, said Joaquin Alvarado, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting.
"We're all trying to figure out the sustainability question, and I think that one of the keys here is we have to create a leapfrog moment. It used to be that we and other nonprofits would compete for the same limited resources and you didn't get economies of scale out of that. You did not get a network effect out of that," Alvarado said.
Reveal is off to a good start. The show has produced a series of pilots, including one on opiate prescriptions from the Veterans Affairs Office that garnered a Peabody Award. The show was picked up in January 2015 on 200 public radio stations, including by WBEZ in Chicago, the station that is home to This American Life, which spun off Serial.
Those shows may have helped pave the path for Reveal, but as expectations and funding has risen, so have the stakes. The technology evolution and the shift in media consumption have made efforts like Reveal more tenable but also brought it into competition with a host of other content.
"We know it has to compete for attention. Part of what Reveal has to be, given that it can be heavy-duty journalism, it has to be engaging," Shapiro said.Most archaeological sites are pretty old and firmly on the ground, or rather, under the ground. But a new project is taking archaeology in orbit, with “space archaeologists” examining the culture and society that has developed on the International Space Station (ISS) over the 17 years its been in orbit, reports Megan Gannon at Space.com.
The genesis of the Space Archaeology program began in 2015 when NASA began looking for its newest class of astronauts. The agency encouraged scientists including doctors, geologists and computer scientists to apply, but Justin Walsh, an archaeologist at Chapman University in Orange, California, was miffed that social scientists weren’t included. “I thought that was too bad,” he tells Gannon. “If they’re thinking about sending people to Mars, sending people to deep space, or sending people to [the] moon for long periods of time, it would really behoove them to understand how astronaut societies are maintained, how astronauts create a kind of culture.”
That’s why Walsh teamed up with Alice Gorman of Flinders University in Australia, who specializes in documenting space junk and artifacts from the Space Age (which is now courting 60 years). The two have started a project to conduct an archaeological examination of the ISS, which has seen the involvement of five space agencies and been visited by at least 252 people from 18 countries since November 2000.
According to a blog post on their site, ISS Archaeology, they will not be able to travel to the space station themselves. Instead, they will use the millions of photographs taken over nearly two decades onboard the ISS to document developments and change within the station's “microculture.” The researchers will eventually use crowdsourcing to help tag and catalogue that huge cache of photos, though they also hope to use machine learning and AI to help with the job. The project will likely take several years.
Using those photos and inventory lists from NASA and elsewhere, the team plans to create a 4-D model showing the movements of every visitor to the space station and how each object was used over time. Using that model, Walsh and Gorman hope to pick out patterns of behavior among visitors and investigate a host of social science questions about how people behave in “a microsociety in a miniworld.” Questions they hope to address include:
How do crewmembers interact with each other and with equipment and spaces originating in other cultures? How does material culture reflect gender, race, class, and hierarchy on the ISS? How do spaces and objects frame interactions of conflict or cooperation? How have crewmembers altered the space station to suit their needs or desires? What are the effects of microgravity on the development of society and culture?
Gannon points out that social scientists have already studied how isolation impacts astronauts and that digital cameras have helped document day-to-day life on the ISS pretty well. Walsh and Gorman think their approach, however, could be helpful to space agencies by revealing how tensions arise between astronauts and how crews of differing nationalities interact in ways they may not be conscious of.
“It is our contention that the structures of the microsociety on board the International Space Station will become visible to us by looking at its material culture – the built spaces and the objects placed there by the crew – and the associations of crewmembers with that material culture,” the team writes on its blog.
Unlike archaeological sites here on Earth, the ISS likely won't be around in 1,000 years for archeologists to explore. In fact, without more funding the ISS will lose NASA’s support in 2024, and sometime in the future it will fall into the ocean. Then it will be a problem for underwater archaeologists.In Europe’s Top 5 leagues, there are 13 stadiums that have opened over the last 10 years, including Juventus’ Juventus Stadium and Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.
Four of the new stadiums are in France (a lot thanks to Euro 2016), four in Germany, two in England, two in Spain and one in Italy.
Emirates Stadium, Arsenal
The Emirates Stadium replaced Highbury as the home ground of Arsenal, opening on July 2006. It has a capacity of 60,432. The first player to score a league goal at the stadium was Olof Mellberg, an Aston Villa player. Gilberto Silva was the first Arsenal player to find the net there.
WIRSOL Rhein-Neckar-Arena, Hoffenheim
The home of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim since January 24, 2009, it has a capacity of 30,150. That’s almost enough to hold the entire population of the town it’s in. Matches in the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup were played there.
WWK Arena, Augsburg
The WWK Arena opened on July 26, 2009, and has since been part of the hosting venues for the U-20 Women’s World and the Women’s World Cup, along with the 2010 DFL-Supercup. It has a capacity of 30,660 for league matches, and just over 28,000 for international matches.
RCDE Stadium, Espanyol
Also known as Estadi Cornellà-El Prat, it is the 8th stadium in the history of the smaller Barcelona club, replacing Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys. The RCDE stadium opened on August 2, 2009 under the Cornellà-El Prat, followed by Power8 Stadium in 2014. It can seat 40,500, and it’s a 4-star UEFA venue.
Audi Sportpark, Ingolstadt
The smallest stadium on the list, the Audi Sportpark, home of FC Ingolstadt 04, has a capacity of 15,800.
Opel Arena, Mainz
They love their cars in Germany, and car manufacturers love sponsoring stadiums. The Opel Arena opened on July 3, 2011 and has a capacity of 34,034. It was previously named Coface Arena.
London Stadium/Olympic Stadium, West Ham
The London Olympic Stadium opened in 2011 and was used during the 2012 Olympics, but it became West Ham’s home ground, replacing Upton Park, at the beginning of this season. It has a capacity of 60,000 for football matches. One of the main criticisms of the stadium is that is design isn’t appropriate for football matches, with fans seated too far away from the pitch.
Juventus Stadium, Juventus
Opened September 8, 2011, the new permanent home for Juve after leaving the Delle Alpi (the new stadium is built on the Delle Alpi’s site) and moving to the Olympic stadium goes hand in hand with its newly found dominance in the Serie A. Since it opened, Juventus have won every league title (five in a row). It’s one of only three club-owned football stadiums in Serie A, alongside Sassuolo’s Mapei Stadium and Udinese’s Stadio Friuli. It has a capacity of 41,507.
Stade Pierre-Mauroy, Lille
Home of Lille OSC since August 17, 2012, it was initially named Grand Stade Lille Métropole, and was renamed Stade Pierre Mauroy on 21 June 2013, just after the death of the former Mayor of Lille and former French Prime Minister. It has a capacity of 50,186, and was one of the stadiums used in Euro 2016.
Allianz Arena, Nice
OGC Nice have been playing at the Allianz Arena since September 2013. The project for a new Nice stadium was due to be completed in 2007, but fear of future costs shelved the project, until it was revived thanks to France winning the big to host Euro 2016. It has a capacity of 35,624, and due to sponsorship regulations, the stadium is known as the Stade de Nice in UEFA competition.
San Mames Stadium, Athletic Bilbao
The new San Mames opened on September 16, 2013, next to the previous San Mames stadium, which survived for 100 years. It has a capacity of 53,289, and will be one of the 13 stadiums across Europe that will host at least one match in Euro 2020.
Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux/Mamut Atlantique, Bordeaux
Currently known as the Mamut Atlantique for sponsorship purposes, the new Bordeaux stadium opened in May 18, 2015, and got to host five matches during Euro 2016. The first match played there was the final one of the 2014-2015 Ligue 1 season, with Bordeaux facing Montpellier. It has a capacity of 42,115.
Parc Olympique Lyonnais, Lyon
Home of Olympique Lyonnais, it was used as one of the venues in Euro 2016, hosting six matches including the semi final between Portugal and Wales. It has a capacity of 59,186, and it opened on January 9, 2016. Lyon beat Troyes in their debut match on the pitch, with Alexandre Lacazette scoring the stadium’s first goal.At 65, Franken retains the thick build of the high-school wrestler he once was. The resting pout of his mouth — the Baby Huey countenance to match his honking voice — has assumed more of a smirk. Franken is not good at masking emotions. He cries easily and can become impatient and never bothered much to disguise his contempt for adversaries, at least until he arrived in the Senate, whose hidebound traditions of decorum demanded at least an honest effort. Franken has been mostly successful at this, and has been strenuous in his attempts to leave his comic past behind, though he was once busted for making dismissive faces and hand gestures behind Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader gave a floor speech in 2010. “This isn’t ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al,” McConnell said, admonishing Franken, who later wrote a note of apology.
Unlike comedy, politics has traditionally drawn clear lines of what’s allowed, what requires contrition and what ends careers. But then Trump came along and pretty much vandalized every bright line and was rewarded with the American presidency. Trump’s ascent has also posed a quandary to political humor in general. At first, the notion of him in the White House felt purely theoretical — and funny. President Obama’s withering roast of Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner might have been the most memorable comedic turn of his presidency, and certainly the most foreboding (Trump, then considering a presidential run, “would bring change to the White House,” Obama taunted him as he introduced an image of the White House rebranded as the Trump White House Resort and Casino).
One thing that made it safe to laugh was the ridiculousness of the conceit. People assumed that the normal checks and balances would kick in and never allow someone like Trump to be elected — the disapproval of the “establishment,” the outrage capacity of the electorate or even a candidate’s own code of ethics or ability to be shamed. Back in the spring of 2015, when few believed that Trump was serious or would mount a real campaign, comedians reacted to his entry into the race with ostentatious gratitude: Jon Stewart, whose final six weeks on Comedy Central coincided with the first stage of the campaign, thanked Trump for “putting me in some kind of comedy hospice.”
As Trump bloated into the campaign’s inescapable parade float, his supposed comic abundance became more of a crisis. Every stopgap failed in 2015 and 2016. So did every pundit assumption, and even the long-understood barriers between, say, real and fake news. Where does comedy even fit when the outrageous becomes the default? By October, the executive producer of HBO’s “Veep,” David Mandel, was complaining to The Los Angeles Times that Trump was “ruining comedy.” By December, it was revealed that Trump would remain the executive producer of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” and the fusion between reality TV and the sobering reality of the presidency seemed complete. Political humor has faced similar moments in the past, but never such a reckoning. “People on ‘S.N.L.’ actually were saying eight years ago when Sarah Palin was running, We couldn’t have written this ourselves,” said Robert Smigel, a longtime writer for the show and friend of Franken’s who is best known as the voice behind the foul-mouthed puppet Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.
Franken’s body of work has been oddly prescient. He was the subject of a 2006 documentary, “God Spoke,” which chronicled his journey to the Senate. A.O. Scott of The New York Times described it as “an investigation of the phenomenon of ideological celebrity, with Mr. Franken as a willing case study.” You could make the case that Trump himself might represent something of a next-phase case study himself — a nominally ideological celebrity that has grown into a political phenomenon.House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has subpoenaed the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to testify next week before Congress about a trove of lost emails that could contain evidence of a plan to targeted conservative groups.
Issa, R-Calif., will hold a June 23 hearing aimed at finding out more about two year's worth of emails -- from 2009 to 2011 -- that the IRS has reported lost. The emails were from former top IRS official Lois G. Lerner to Justice Department and Treasury officials.
Issa had requested the emails because he and other Republicans believe Lerner played a key role in the targeting scheme and they believe she can link the targeting to even higher levels of the government.
They believe Lerner was conspiring with other administration officials to find a way to target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, which Lerner and the Obama administration has denied.
In a tersely worded letter sent Monday to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, Issa said that the IRS was required under law to preserve the Lerner emails under the Federal Records Act. The IRS, Issa said, is in violation of the law for losing the Lerner emails.
"I will not tolerate your continued obstruction and game-playing in response to the Committee's investigation of the IRS targeting,” Issa wrote to Koskinen. “For too long, the IRS has promised to produce requested — and, later, subpoenaed — documents, only to respond later with excuses and inaction. Despite your empty promises and broken commitments to cooperation, the IRS still insists on flouting Constitutional congressional oversight."
Agency officials have not indicated yet whether Koskinen will comply with the subpoena.Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
“If the programme which our people saw set on foot at Appomattox Court-House had been carried out … we would have no disturbance in the South,” testified the former Confederate general (and future senator) John Brown Gordon in 1871. Speaking before a congressional committee investigating the widespread anti-black violence in the former Confederacy, Gordon was accusing Radical Republicans of bad faith – specifically, of breaking the “Appomattox Compact.”
Some Northerners might have been surprised by the idea that anything resembling a “compact” came out of Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865. But Gordon, along with other prominent veterans of Lee’s army, believed that the agreement at Appomattox was more two-sided than many in the North believed.
The notion of the compact was rooted in two points: that the Union military victory was illegitimate, a triumph of might over right, and that Lee had negotiated a deal with Grant at Appomattox containing the promise that “honorable” Southern men would not be treated dishonorably. This position might have seemed incongruous, were it not for the fact that Gordon and a cadre of influential former Confederate officers – including the former generals Henry A. Wise, Armistead L. Long, William N. Pendleton and Edward Porter Alexander, along with other senior officers like Charles Marshall and Walter Taylor — spent decades advocating it, long after the North grew tired of arguing about the war. And to a large extent, they won, not only undermining Reconstruction, but distorting its memory.
Gordon’s first point, the “might over right” argument, was enshrined in Lee’s April 10, 1865, Farewell Address to his troops. The address, drafted by Marshall, his aide-de-camp, attributed Confederate defeat to the Yankees’ “overwhelming numbers and resources.” In the context of proslavery ideology, this was a kind of code, conjuring up images of the heartless efficiency of Northern society.
Responding to Lee’s repeated plea that the “bravery and devotion of the Army of Northern Virginia shall be correctly transmitted to posterity,” Lee’s officers churned out speeches, articles and memoirs designed to banish the specter of Confederate failure and to disseminate the idea that Lee had faced insurmountable odds of five-to-one or worse in the final campaign. Lee’s “eight thousand starving men” at Appomattox, Taylor explained, had surrendered to an unworthy foe that “had long despaired to conquer it by skill or daring, and who had worn it away by weight of numbers and brutal exchange of many lives for one.”
This doctrine referred not only to the size but also the social composition of the Union army. Appomattox veterans lamented that they had been compelled to surrender to a mercenary army — “German, Irish, negro, and Yankee wretches,” as Pendleton put it bitterly — of their social and racial inferiors.
Scholars have since established that Lee faced odds of two-to-one at Appomattox, no worse than odds he had beaten before. But in its day, the numbers game had a distinct political purpose. By denying the legitimacy of the North’s military victory, former Confederates hoped to deny the North the right to impose its political will on the South. And it worked: As Reconstruction unfolded, Northern commentators again and again observed that white Southern recalcitrance was nourished by the sentiments of the Farewell Address. An exasperated Northerner traveling through the South in 1866 characterized his encounters with Confederates this way: “‘We were overpowered by numbers,’ they say. … They’ve said that to me more than fifty times within the last few weeks. And they say that they are the gentlemen; we are amalgamationists, mudsills, vandals, and so forth.” The message was clear: The North had not won a moral victory or mandate at Appomattox.
The second front in this war of words concerned the surrender terms themselves. Grant’s leniency, so Lee’s officers insisted, was a form of homage to Southern bravery. In Confederate eyes, Lee was not a passive recipient of that leniency at Appomattox, but instead made a series of propositions, such as the suggestion that Confederates might retain their horses, to which Grant assented. More important still, Lee extracted from Grant, during their brief April 10 meeting on horseback, the promise that each Confederate soldier would receive a printed parole pass, to prove that he came under the April terms. In keeping with the language of the surrender terms, a parole certificate vouched that if a soldier observed the laws in force where he resided, he was to “remain undisturbed.”
Photo
Confederates argued that these paroles conferred immunity against Yankee reprisals generally, such as confiscation and treason trials. Edward Porter Alexander reckoned that the Appomattox terms “practically gave an amnesty to every surrendered soldier for all political offences.” When Henry A. Wise, on his way home to Norfolk from Appomattox, was confronted by a Yankee cavalryman who wanted to confiscate his horse, Wise brandished his parole certificate, declaring that he had “Gen. Grant’s safe-guard” and was “under its protection!” A little more than a year later, in May 1866, Wise gave a pair of defiant speeches in Virginia in which he insisted that securing favorable terms was a kind of victory. “I have the profound satisfaction,” he declaimed, “of saying that I fought until we won the privilege of being paroled.”
But Confederates went further still, emphasizing that the peace was conditional — dependent on the North’s good behavior. In a late April 1865 interview with The New York Herald, Lee himself issued a warning. If “arbitrary or vindictive or revengeful policies” were enacted by the Yankee government, Southerners would renew the fight, and “give their lives as dearly as possible.” In the same spirit, Pendleton asserted that the promise that Southerners would remain unmolested by federal authorities was no “mere military arrangement” but instead a “solemn compact, rigidly binding on both sides.” The Confederates would not have laid down their arms without this “pledge of honor for their protection.”
As Reconstruction got underway, former Confederates again and again invoked their interpretation of the Appomattox terms, and particularly the “remain undisturbed” clause, as a shield against social change. Republican efforts to give freedpeople a measure of equality and opportunity and protection were met by white Southern protests that such a radical agenda was a betrayal of the Appomattox agreement — that the prospect of black citizenship, as one Virginia newspaper put it, “molests and disturbs us.”
None of Lee’s lieutenants did more to register such protests than John Brown Gordon, a leader of Georgia’s Ku Klux Klan and future senator and governor. In his 1871 congressional testimony, he gave a stalwart defense of his region against charges of brutality and lawlessness, repeatedly invoking the Appomattox terms. Back in April 1865, Gordon argued, Confederates had been gratified by the “deferential” treatment they received at the surrender. “We should not be disturbed, so long as we obeyed the laws”: this was the pledge, Gordon said, that Grant had made to the Confederates. Peace would have come swiftly and surely, Gordon continued, if Radicals had not betrayed the spirit of Appomattox by telling Confederates “your former slaves are better fitted to administer the laws than you are.”
Trafficking in the toxic myth that congressional Reconstruction was a time of white Southern prostration and vindictive “black rule,” Gordon claimed, “our people feel that the faith which was pledged to them has been violated.” Southerners were “disturbed” by the congressional program, “deprived of rights which we had inherited — which belonged to us as citizens of the country.” If they had known what indignities and disabilities awaited them, Gordon surmised, Confederates would not have surrendered on April 9, 1865.
Gordon’s message was clear: The only way to restore peace was to leave the white South alone to manage its own affairs.
This Confederate campaign did not go unchallenged. Northern Republicans and Southern Unionists, white and black, offered their own interpretation of Appomattox, in which the Union victory was the product of skill and bravery, Grant’s magnanimity was the emblem of Northern moral superiority and the paroles protected the lives of the surrendered rebels but also commanded their political atonement and obedience. Grant spoke for all these groups when he told a Northern reporter in May 1866 that he was deeply disappointed in Lee’s demeanor since the surrender — Lee was “setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized.”
Related Civil War Timeline An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors. Visit the Timeline »
Grant hoped more white Southerners would make the choice that Gen. James Longstreet — who became a convert to the Republican Party after the war — had made. In Longstreet’s eyes, the North’s victory at arms was a victory for its principles, and Southerners must yield, in keeping, Longstreet wrote, with “the obligations under which we were placed by the terms of our paroles.”
But Longstreet was an anomaly. Gordon’s views proved ascendant in the late 19th century, leaving those who favored social change and social justice to sing their own laments over the lost promise of Appomattox. In 1912, with the Lost Cause cult at a peak of popularity, an article in The Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, observed somberly, “Southern thought is conquering the entire country on the race question.” The article quoted a poem called “Appomattox,” by the black poet Charles R. Dinkins, in which Lee addresses his defeated army with the following charge:
When fails the sword, the better way
Becomes the soldier’s part to play;
The south will whip the north some day
With ink and pen.
Lee’s prophecy, the article noted, had come to pass: The unrepentant South had struck down the doctrine of social equality, and “revolutionized the sentiment, doctrines and practices of the north.” Gordon’s war of words would continue.
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Sources: Edward Porter Alexander, “Fighting for the Confederacy”; Army and Navy |
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Any links to The Princess in Black books on this page are affiliate links. This means that your purchase of a book through this link will earn Brave Like a Girl a small commission. This allows us to continue doing the work we do for Brave Girls everywhere. Thank you so much for your support!The.NET Framework was good. Really good. Until it wasn't. Why did I leave.NET? In short, it constrained our ability to choose (which is a huge deal for me) and turned our focus inward toward the perceived safety of the nest instead of the helping us experience all of the possibilities out there in the big, wide world.
[Buckle up: this is post has pratically become a book in length...]
The Good
First let me start of by saying there's a whole lot of things that.NET did right, albeit most of these things were not from.NET itself, but came about because of the.NET community.
C-Sharp
C# is awesome. I think it's a spectacular language. Coming from a strong C background, I thoroughly enjoy the syntax, the flow, and the feel of the language. Yes there are things I would change, but in general it's a solid language. And with such a hefty percentage of developers using the language and the preeminence of Windows as an operating system, it's a great language to know.
ReSharper
I also love ReSharper. The guys at JetBrains are miracle workers. Without ReSharper and a few related tools, I might not have enjoyed C# as much.
BDD and MSpec
I also really enjoyed the BDD-style framework called Machine.Specifications (MSpec) for short. It's a spectacular testing framework that really encourages correct language in the tests themselves. Before MSpec my tests were a mess and really got in my way.
Additionally, Mspec was a huge inspiration and incentive for my organization when we created GoConvey--a Golang-based BDD testing framework.
A Multi-language Runtime
I think the concept of the multi-language CLR really got the JVM world thinking. I'm not aware of any non-Java JVM languages prior to the CLR, but with the advent of a "common language runtime", my understanding is this got people on the JVM moving and ultimately creating great JVM languages such as Scala and Clojure. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Further, the CLR made the Sun guys sit up and take notice because Java was a bit stale and is only now catching up in many ways with the advent of Java 8. Competition is a very good thing.
NuGet
Another obvious one is NuGet. The package management story in Windows as a whole and specifically within Windows development was terrible. NuGet solves a lot of problems and they do a lot of things right by borrowing heavily from Python and Ruby. Is there room for improvement? Sure. But I haven't felt a lot of pain with NuGet other than a few, select package upgrades here and there.
Mono
I can't speak highly enough of the Mono guys. What they created was nothing short of amazing. Without any official support and despite potential legal issues hanging over their heads, they pushed forward and created an incredibly capable alternative to the official runtime implementation. I've had several applications running in production for almost a year on Mono without any issues. Is it production ready? That may depend on your application (see "Mono" below)
CQRS and Event Sourcing
Arguably one of the best things about.NET was that it was the birthplace of CQRS and the correlated technique: event sourcing. Granted, CQRS+ES in and of itself is nothing terribly new. As Greg Young will tell you, this is a bunch of 40-year-old stuff repackaged and rebranded for us. I was having some pretty serious problems with a large codebase and CQRS+ES quite literally unshackled my domain when I came across it about five years ago. CQRS+ES is a named pattern now and the growth has been phenomenal. It is perhaps the one thing that.NET has been able to share with other development communities. Aside from this, most all of the innovation is coming from the outside in.
The Bad
With the good stuff out of the way, let's look at what's wrong and why I left the.NET Framework. The thing that excites me the most about my recent development platform migration is that I can take a lot of the best parts with me while leaving the bad stuff (as found below) behind.
Windows
As covered previously, Windows is not a good player when it comes to network-based server software. One other really big problem I see with Windows is that traditional Windows devs are typically only good at Windows and get lost very quickly outside of their comfort zones, which is not true for Linux devs. Computing is SO much bigger than just Windows. One problem of devs only being capable on a single OS is that it inevitably leads to the proliferation of Windows. In other words, Windows begets Windows. There's no way to break the cycle.
*NIX guys on the other hand are typically familiar with multiple operating systems (Linux, Unix, OSX, Windows, etc.), the inner workings of an OS, various distributions (Debian- and Fedora-based), window managers (lowercase "w"), desktop managers, file systems, package management, compiling, recompiling, repackaging, command line "fu", and the list goes on and on.
One pet peeve of mine is file systems. NTFS is not the only file system out there, and it hardly the best for any given task. ZFS, BTRFS, ReiserFS, ext*, etc. have some really cool properties. I also love being able to create loopback devices from BASH or creating RAM drives for various high-speed/transient disk operations. This doesn't happen in Windows--not without third-party software.
In the AWS cloud, firing up a Windows box takes a good 10+ minutes. I can fire up a simple Linux box in about 15-20 seconds. When it comes to cloud scaling, it's really important to be able to scale quickly because 10-15 minutes is an eternity when scaling is important.
Visual Studio
Another thorn in my side is Visual Studio. The fact that I need a big, honkin' IDE to do any real development bothers me. It's just as big a resource hog as Windows. I had a Core i7 3770K 3.5GHZ desktop I built with 16 GB of RAM and a Vertex 4 512 GB SSD. It literally maxed out the Windows Experience Index and Windows + VS was still slow. (Yes ReSharper makes it slower, but ReSharper was worth it.)
Now I dev on a MacBook Pro which has less CPU horsepower than my beefy desktop and things are noticebly faster and the UX is infinitely better after a small learning curve. In fact, I don't even use a mouse anymore--my hands are always on the keyboard or trackpad and I can gesture to my computer and actually have it respond--unlike Windows.
One cool thing about VS was the debugger. It was incredibly handy see and use. Every so often it would report the wrong values in the watch window which caused more hours of debugging. At the same time, this is also big negative because the default, multi-threaded world of the CLR caused me to need a debugger in the first place. Not having a debugger is actually a liberating experience because it forces you to code in a different way.
VS also has this really nasty habit of creating "csproj" and "sln" files. I hate those things. Sure, C# has to know what to build and when. I get that. In Golang, the references are in the code using import statements. If it weren't for the project files in.NET land, I could have probably coded C# using a simple text editor and been more fluent in the language. These files also had the really nasty habit of creating wonderful merge conflicts during git rebase operations.
Don't get me started about line break differences. I can't believe we're still dealing with this kind of thing today. If the VS solution file had Linux line endings it wouldn't load the solution by double clicking on it because the VS solution file parser couldn't read it.
Source Control
Fortunately, I jumped out of the Microsoft Camp for source control early (Visual Source Safe). I was using Subversion in the early 2000's after VSS lost my commits for the umpteenth time. Then git came around and I was fascinated by it. Unfortunately, there was no Windows port--a typical occurrence for me. Finally someone created a port and I was there and I haven't looked back. Git is a very sharp knife but when you wield it properly, it's a powerful and effective tool. Once I used TFS on a small job and it was a monster--just like everything else from Redmond. It infected my project files and contaminated my source directories. Yuck. No thank you. Give me command line git any day...or perhaps SourceTree if you need a little love from a GUI.
Mono
Yes, this is the second entry for Mono. As amazing as Mono is, it's still a second-class citizen in the.NET world. Whenever I try to get anything serious to run on Mono, I'm typically fighting through bugs in the implementation. Fortunately, I'm not uncomfortable downloading the source, finding the problem, issuing a pull request, and then recompiling on Linux. But I've done this exact thing more times than I care to remember.
Of course the CLR is a massive beast and getting identical behavior on a different OS from an unofficial implementation is nothing short of a miracle akin to parting the Red Sea...but the fact that I have to spend so much time hunting standard library bugs to get my code to behave correctly is very difficult to justify.
Certain areas of Mono are also slow. Perhaps it's not slow in every capacity, but for me the web server is one critical piece. And it's dog slow as in, dead last, bottom of the pack slow--even for trivial stuff. I suppose the good news is that it can only get better from here. I should also mention that the Mono guys have forgotten more about Linux than I'll probably ever know, so I can't be too critical.
IIS
Perhaps IIS is trying to be too many things for too many applications. It's gone from being a web server to being an application host similar to a J2EE application container. It's also on the slow side. I guess if I needed higher performance, I should code my own web server, but I'd really like to focus on my application code instead. It would be nice to utilize an evented web server on Windows but nginx and other servers just don't like Windows in production.
The various JVM-based implementations, such as Netty, easily do 650K+/requests per second. IIS chokes out at about 50K/requests per second running a simple CLR "Hello, World!" application. (As a funny aside, the guys in the referenced benchmark created a simple C# web server from TCP sockets and it did about 120K requests per second.)
Close-mindedness
There was a movement a few years back called ALT.NET. The movement was all about looking outside of ourselves at the broader development community as a whole and bringing together different parts. Interestingly enough, that's where the inspiration for StructureMap, Autofac, NuGet, ASP.NET MVC, and many other tools came from. The movement was viewed with a lot of disdain and contempt from within traditional.NET circles. I see that as a huge evidence of inertia and general close-mindedness of the community as a whole. (Granted, some of this may be dissipating as different technologies emerge including Redis, MongoDB, among others.)
There are so many great solutions out there. To assume that Microsoft has ordained The One True Way is absurd. If that was the case, we'd all still be using visual designers in Visual Studio to drag and drop button and link elements onto a WebForm surface and we'd wire up the button and rely on ASP.NET ViewState to help insulate us from the "horrors" of scary HTTP. The day I got rid of the last WebForm from one of my deployed code bases was a day of glorious celebration. Literally.
(And who ever thought "web controls" was a good idea? Apparently I did because I drank the Kool-Aid and embraced it to the fullest. It bit me hard. Ever seen a 2MB+ ViewState?)
[NOTE: When I was composing this post, it was originally titled, "Why I Left.NET", meaning the entire.NET ecosystem. The title felt a little short I updated it to be "Why I Left the.NET Framework". I consider.NET to be an ecosystem including all tools, projects, platforms, organizations, and groups of developers. This is why some elements of the wider.NET community come under fire in my post.]
Performance Killers
The typical, multi-threaded paradigms in C, Java, and C# strongly encourages the use of locks and mutexes. There's a hidden cost to locks: they're painfully slow. Using the Disruptor (a lock-free ring buffer on the JVM), you can easily process 20M+ events per second. On.NET using ordained "best practices" anything more than a dozen transactions per second is considered decent-to-good performance and at that point, you just need bigger/better/more hardware. In fact, I've seen third-party client libraries (Rabbit, Couch, Mongo, etc.) with lock statements all over the code. Even if I don't have any concurrency in my code, the default and preferred method is using locks.
The lock-free, event-driven approach allows you to reduce hardware and capital outlay by a massive degree. Most applications could easily run on two machines with the second being necessary only for redundancy and failover in case the first machine became unavailable due to hardware-related issues.
Another aspect of this is the traditional way of calling network and disk subsystems: synchronous, blocking code. If you want multiple, concurrent HTTP requests, you need more threads. What most developers have never bothered to understand is the 1-2MB overhead needed to maintain the thread AND the requirement to context switch the thread which can cause the CPU cores to spend all their time thrashing doing context switches instead of doing real work. So now we've got hundreds or thousands of threads in an application tying up RAM and causing the CPU to spin its wheels. There's a better way.
Netty/NIO (JVM), Erlang, Node, Gevent (Python), and Go all encourage the use of event-based subsystem operations (select/epoll/kqueue). This means that the CPU is free to do actual work while waiting for packets to be tx/rx across network. Netty is arguably the fastest at this task because of the maturity of the JVM, but I love the way Go handles this with Goroutines--it's simple, elegant, and easy to reason about without callback spaghetti.
SQL Server
As a.NET developer, when you start a new project there are a few things you'll typically do (by hand, of course):
Create a new solution
Add it to Team Foundation Server
Create a corresponding website entry in IIS
Create a new SQL Server database
Associate the Entity Framework with the solution (typically for projects created after 2010)
Start designing your database and your ActiveRecord entities.
This isn't the right way to code in most cases. Sure it may work in some scenarios, but as a "default architecture" it's not where you want to be. Why have we made any technology choices before we even understand the problem domain? This literally puts the cart before the horse.
The Microsoft ecosystem encourages everyone to utilize SQL Server. It's so incredibly easy to interact with SQL Server from within Visual Studio or using SQL Management Studio (and its predecessor, SQL Query Analyzer). This database-centric focus is part of the ordained and One True Way. It gets you hooked on Microsoft even more. Vendor lock-in is always good for the vendor.
Why do we develop this way? Why aren't we considering the behavior of the application more than how it's stored? All of my projects now utilize a JSON-based key/value store. With this capability, I can choose any storage engine I want including SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Cassandra, CouchDB, CouchBase, Dynamo, SimpleDB, S3, Riak, BerkeleyDB, Firebird, Hypertable, RavenDB, Redis, Tokyo Cabinet/Tyrant, Azure Blobs, plaintext JSON files on the file system, etc., etc., etc. All of a sudden, we can start choosing a storage engine based upon its merits rather than just familiarity.
Aside: Ever run SQL Server in the cloud on AWS RDS? Don't. Sure it'll work, but some of the simplest of things like replication don't exist. The docs are littered with references to capabilities of SQL Server that don't work within AWS RDS.
Conclusion
Perhaps the two most important lessons I have learned in software development are:
The importance of boundaries and encapsulation (in various forms)
Paying the price to get the model and abstractions right
Years ago I hated the word "model". Everyone would throw it around and it was such an overloaded term it was hard to understand what it meant and why it was important. At this point I will only say that a model is a narrow representation of the reality you are trying to encapsulate. Perhaps the simplest example is the Mercator Projection of the globe. It's good at exactly one thing: navigation. If you use it for anything else, it's less than worthless. If you're not focused on paying the price to get the model right and to encapsulate the business realities, no amount of technology can save you.
The biggest beef I have with.NET is that the One True Way leads you away from the ideal model and pushes you more toward focusing on the implementation details and technology defaults. This kind of focus results in the technical implementation bleeding through and infecting the model which ultimately cause it to decay and deteriorate as it can't adapt to ever-changing business requirements. As this happens, developers struggle and kick as they move from one new technology to another like drug addicts hoping that the next big thing will cure their ailments.
Technology itself isn't a panacea, instead, it's about tradeoffs and choices. Only a correct understanding of the business behaviors and encapsulation of the same into well-formed, well-understood model help keep a technology stack where it belongs--as an implementation detail.
And that's why I left the.NET Framework because it kept reasserting itself and wanting to be more than it was: an implementation detail.Get the biggest Manchester City FC 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
Former Manchester City legends will be going head-to-head with members of emergency services in a charity football match on Friday, in aid of the Manchester bombing monument.
Ian Brightwell, Peter Barnes and Les Chapman are just some of the City icons who will be playing at Hyde Football Club on October 20.
Opponents include Simon Dear of Greater Manchester Police, David Yearley of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service and Andy Wood of North West Ambulance Service - many of whom were present on the night of the arena attack on May 22.
All funds made from ticket sales will be donated to the Manchester Memorial Fund which will be used to establish a permanent monument for those affected in the terror attack.
The goodwill initiative is one of several which the M.E.N. is celebrating as part of the #WeStandTogether campaign to highlight good deeds and caring by Greater Manchester communities.
Speaking about the reason for backing the campaign, Derek Partridge from Haughton Green - manager of the former Manchester City players team who raise money for charity - felt compelled to raise money for the cause and reached out to the emergency services.
“They are so excited because most are Man City fans playing against their heroes.
“It’s going to be very special,” he said.
The 70-year-old, who manages the team with Peter Barnes and Allan Grafton MBE, was an outside-left (midfielder) for Hyde United for four years before becoming a manager at Macclesfield Town F.C. and then Manchester City.
In 2014 Derek was presented with a Medal of Distinction and a Commendation from the Armed Forces for his long-standing dedication to various charitable causes, including The Christie and Cancer Research.
“I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and we’ve raised over a million pounds in total,” he added.
Derek’s grandchildren Hugh Chambers, 9, and Charlotte Chambers, 7, created ‘an enormous bee’ as part of a school project, which will be taking pride of place by the pitch and will be open to bidders.
Speaking about his excitement for the big match, Derek said: “We’re very proud to be part of it. We love Manchester.
“You don’t have to be a football fanatic. It’s if you are proud of who you are and what you do in Manchester,” added Derek.
Kickoff is at 7.30pm and tickets will be available to buy on entry at £5 for adults and £2 for pensioners and children.
Players Taking Part
North West Ambulance Service:
Andy wood
Wyse Povbes
Jo Scully
Chris Brown
Mike Jones
Mark Sullivan
Mark Taylor
Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service:
David Yearley
Renny Tumine
Damien Billingham
Greater Manchester Police:
Simon Dear
Tony Hanlon
Dave Elson
Jimmy McGowan
Mark Rose
Manchester City Legends:
Nicky Weaver
Ian Brightwell
Colin Hendry
Gary Bennett
Neil Poynton
Reece Day
Jim Whitley
Les Chapman
Peter Barnes
Uwe Rosler
Paul Dickov
Simon Bower
Paul Newton
Tony Barras
#WeStandTogether is our campaign for a more peaceful Greater Manchester. We want to make sure every child in Greater Manchester is given the chance to learn about peace and how to solve problems without turning to violence; To encourage and celebrate acts of love and kindness and to help fight every kind of crime which is driven by hatred. We’re working with the Foundation for Peace and Greater Manchester Police - and we want community groups, businesses and YOU to join in too.This article was originally published in Jan 2017, and is re-upped ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel
MUMBAI – Last September, Pakistani terrorists attacked an Indian army base in Kashmir, killing 19 soldiers. The Indian army responded with “surgical strikes” against terrorist organizations on the Pakistani side of the border. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi brimmed with pride at the precision capabilities of his forces, saying in October, “Everyone is talking about our army. We used to hear about similar feats of Israel. But now everyone knows the Indian army is” equally good.
>>Follow Haaretz's live updates and analysis of Modi's historic visit to Israel
His remarks went unnoticed in Israel, which is a shame. For one thing they marked a sea change in India’s attitude toward Israel, which for years had been anathema in the subcontinent. But the Indians also admire Israel for its military prowess and technological skills, too. In fact, top officials at the Indian Foreign Ministry say that if there are three countries admired on the Indian street, they’re Singapore, Japan and Israel.
The second reason is that Modi himself is a superstar. Given the crisis shaking the world’s democracies, he’s probably the most powerful, popular democratic leader in the world right now. As governor of Gujarat (one of the 29 states comprising the Indian federation), he drove the fastest economic growth in India.
skip - Indian Prime Minister Modi is visiting Israel. How did the countries become so close?
As an Indian nationalist and ardent supporter of the free market, privatization and small government, Modi gets a rare billing in Indian politics: the man who drove great economic growth without being personally corrupt.
Corruption is rife in India; hardly a government ends without accusations of rot being bandied about. Modi’s clean image alone makes him a superstar to the masses and, for the first time in years, the incumbent government has a majority in Congress. Modi’s clout is so great that many experts think he might achieve the unthinkable and get reelected in the 2019 general election.
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Being a Hindi nationalist, conservative, supporter of the free market and security-oriented, Modi also tends to strongly support Israel. There is a good reason his relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are so robust, and why there were reciprocal visits from the Indian and Israeli presidents.
Modi has driven several gigantic economic reforms since his election in 2014, all aimed at one thing: opening up Indian business and bringing in foreign investment. He has sought to reduce bureaucracy, privatize whole industries and advance backward India by light years. All of these aims chime with the strengths of the Israeli economy and India has been coming a-courting. But their ardor may go unanswered.
Great security relations
Last month, an Israeli-Indian forum met for the ninth time in Mumbai, featuring leading businessmen from both countries. The event was run by Tel Aviv University, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Ananta Aspen, an American-Indian philanthropic association. Participants included people from the Indian giant Tata and Triveni Engineering, representatives of Israeli and Indian universities, and more.
Although the venue was packed with businessmen, politicians and academics, the real question was why – if the forum has been convening for nine years – economic relations between India and Israel have failed to develop.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, India, January 17, 2017. Manish Swarup/AP
Since 2010, Israel-India trade has run at $4-5 billion a year – adding a billion dollars more if we tack arms onto that. It hasn’t shifted from there, though. Israeli exports to India totaled $2.2 billion in 2015, down from $2.9 billion in 2010.
India is the second-most populous country in the world, with 1.3 billion citizens; in a decade, its population is expected to outstrip China’s. India attracted $44 billion in foreign investment in 2015 – more than China. Yet despite also being a flourishing democracy and viewing Israel as a partner, Israeli exports to India only totaled $1.2 billion last year, just 3% of total Israeli exports.
In fact, Israel and India have only enjoyed diplomatic relations since 1992 – and even then they were on a low flame. India used to be heavily influenced by Russia, which led to chilly relations with the United States and Israel, and a general inclination to take the Palestinian side over Israel’s.
The turning point was the Oslo Accords in 1993 and also the border conflicts with Pakistan that erupted in 1999. The Indians needed arms, urgently, and Israeli defense officials scrambled to help. Since then, security relations between Israel and India have been wonderful – in fact, the only successful trade between the two countries is weapons systems.
Satellites in space, no toilets
Civilian trade has been going nowhere, but India is opening up to the world and positioning itself as one of the five big economies, with aspirations of fighting poverty with the help of high-tech.
The failure of Indian-Israeli business to take off is largely due to cultural differences, but there are also differences in needs.
India is a country of vast contradictions, something the country itself is first to admit. It’s the largest democracy in the world, featuring high voting rates, and the tolerant culture encourages debate. It also has dozens of minority groups; a large Muslim minority (about 15% of its population); and incessant simmering tension with Pakistan over Kashmir.
And there is the grinding poverty. About half of India lives below the poverty line. Remote villages have no water supply or electricity and, according to Deloitte Israel, some 75 million Indians have no access to flowing water at all.
Some 400 million Indians relieve themselves in the wild. The Indian government invested heavily in building toilets in villages, as did the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: not only does the habit contaminate the environment, and water and food supply; it also leads to rape as women venture outside in the dark to relieve themselves.
But it didn’t help. Hating the filth of the toilets and reluctant to clean them (a job that had been the task of untouchables in the past), Indians – including city dwellers – continue to do their business outside. Nowadays, not even untouchables will clean toilets.
Paradoxically, India is also a technology superpower with some of the best universities in the world. Silicon Valley has nearly as many Indian engineers as American ones (and lots of Israelis, too). India is also a nuclear and space power; it’s one of the few countries that has shot satellites into outer space.
Yet it can’t supply clean water to its people and has barely any social rights. It has no national insurance, no pensions and, although there are state-funded schools and health care, they’re not good systems. Hospitals in far-flung villages have no equipment. Or doctors – they don’t want to work in rural India. India has built about a million schools in recent years, but most have no electricity, 60% of the teachers don’t show for class and 70% of the kids drop out by eighth-grade.
‘Middle class’ but no fridge
India is proud of its rapid growth in recent years and its prosperous middle class – but “middle class” is a slippery concept.
The Indian middle class is supposed to include about 300 million people. But as Arunabha Ghosh – a doctor of economics at Oxford, and adviser to the Indian government on the environment and energy – points out, less than 10% of Indians have a refrigerator at home, while only 2% have a car; only 15% have a vehicle that isn’t a car (usually a motorbike), and only 4% pay income tax.
A woman cleaning an ATM in Mumbai, India, November 2016. Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
“We are able to build a satellite but didn’t provide clean water,” he said, adding, “But there is a huge Indian achievement: We are the world’s poorest democracy – and we are able to remain democratic despite the disparities and poverty.”
Things are definitely improving, though. With average growth of 7% a year, even without a public willingness to pay taxes, the federal government has enough income to invest more in infrastructure. A recent move was to scrap its two biggest bank bills. Another is to reach a flat sales tax rate in all Indian states, a vast move that would enormously reduce paperwork.
Revolution in digital banking
Modi’s major program is “Make in India,” which is designed to turn India into a manufacturing powerhouse for global corporations (like China did two decades ago). The goal is to double industrial manufacturing to represent 25% of GDP within a decade. With that in mind, Modi is opening the Indian economy to foreign investment, through large-scale privatization, reducing government regulation, granting tax exemptions to foreign investment and obligating foreign corporations to invest in Indian firms. Due to India’s semi-communist past, the government controls most of the economy and has prevented foreign investment in Indian firms.
This has been a dramatic and hugely successful step: Within a year of its September 2014 launch, foreign investment in India soared by 50% – reaching a record $44 billion in 2015. Modi is leading a surge of investment in Indian infrastructure, including the construction of smart cities, power stations, a fiber-optic network, clean energy and advanced agriculture technologies, and a huge professional training network, all in an attempt to provide employment for 100 million young Indians.
The numbers are dizzying: 500 new cities will be built in Israel within a decade, most of them smart cities. The number of power stations projected for India in the next 15 years is double that of all the existing power stations in the entire United States. Each year, India builds power stations whose capacity is 50% greater than Israel’s total electricity production.
In addition, Modi has introduced banking reforms demanding that all banks in India open accounts even for those without any income – as a means of paying allowances to the poor directly to their bank accounts, and as a basis for the growth of small businesses in villages. For that purpose, 1 billion Indians have already undergone biometric identification, making India the most comprehensive biometric ID system in the world.
Indeed, banking was the key issue at one of the Israel-India forum’s meetings. India’s banking system is backward and suffers from huge debts – most of the banks are government-owned and are so poorly managed, the international rating agencies are threatening to lower the whole country’s rating due to their situation. Yet it is about to jump two generations ahead in banking, to digital banking.
If China leads the world in the use of the digital wallet and in payments by mobile phone, India is now likely to become the world leader in digital banking and the use of “fintech” (financial technologies).
That is likely to be one of the most important and unpremeditated successes of Modi’s currency exchange program. Uday Kotak, chairman of the Kotak Mahindra Bank – one of India’s most successful private banks – told the forum participants that he estimates the curse of exchanging currency is likely to develop into a blessing in the new era of digital banking.
Kotak says that of the $220 billion in bank bills scrapped by Modi last October, about $180 billion to $200 billion was exchanged by the banks, with about $75 billion of that remaining in bank accounts. (In other words, the amount of cash in India shrank by about a third.) This represents additional interest revenues of about $2-$3 billion annually for the Indians.
The use of fintech enjoys a relative advantage in India, due to the biometric ID database of the entire population (so there is no problem opening digital accounts) and the widespread use of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which enables accounts to be transferred among banks by digital means, with the banks unable to prevent the transfer.
“India is going to be at the summit of global fintech,” declares Kotak. “In China, we saw the breakthrough of the digital wallet; in India, we’ll see the revolution in digital banking.”
No shortage of bureaucracy – just like Israel
This assessment highlights the issue of potential trade between Israel and India. There’s no question that the potential is extremely promising, if only in terms of culture: Indians are warm, open and tolerant, and Israelis feel naturally comfortable with them (as distinct from their relationship with the cold and rigid Chinese).
The geographical proximity and similar security concerns – both countries are in conflict with neighboring Muslim states – create a natural identity of interests. Both countries boast an advanced higher education system and outstanding human capital. And, finally, the Indians are desperate for advanced technology to help them make the quantum leap they need in the areas of water, agriculture, renewable energy, banking, biotech, nanotech, advanced materials, and more.
Despite all this, commerce is sputtering – for many reasons. First, Indian bureaucracy – which is quite often accompanied by corruption – makes it difficult to do business in India. In order to overcome these problems, investments in India must be made in cooperation with a local partner or intermediary, and often these partnerships go awry – with horror stories of Indian intermediaries brazenly stealing the technology they represented in order to start their own businesses.
In order to successfully penetrate the Indian market, you need a lot of patience and an investment of several years’ relationship-building before it is possible to see any return. Most Israelis are in a huge hurry and aren’t willing to undertake the necessary investment in building relationships.
The Israeli side has its bureaucracy, too. Indians complain bitterly about the difficulties of receiving business visas for Israel, as well as the humiliating security checks at Ben-Gurion International Airport. The fact that most Indians have dark skin, and some have Muslim names, makes them the subject of abuse by Israeli security staff, they say. This applies even to the richest Indian tycoons, who can find themselves humiliated by young Israeli security guards – which certainly doesn’t increase their desire to do business with Israel.
Right technology, wrong price
Also, what India needs is often quite different to what Israel has to offer. Israelis are at the cutting edge of technology and knowledge, and develop the most expensive technologies. The Indians need cheap, simple and accessible technologies, which can be distributed in enormous quantities in poor rural areas.
“Can you offer us the same technology but at a third of the price?” asks James Abraham, an Indian investor in the field of solar energy. “If the answer is probably not, then you should remember that here you can reach 30 times the volume of sales that you planned on.”
The challenge of adapting Israeli technology to a low price but on a huge scale is foreign to the Israeli DNA – and Israelis are often condescending to those who think otherwise. “We are building technology that can take us to the moon,” admits Aaron Mankovski, a partner at Pitango Venture Capital. “And if the customer doesn’t see the genius in the technology, we tend to dismiss him as stupid.” The Indians are not stupid. They simply need different solutions.
The difference in needs is expressed in other areas, too. India needs fiber-optic cable networks, power plants, solar power plants and transportation in incredible quantities. Israel cannot offer all of this. Even in sectors similar to those that Israeli businesses operate in, such as agricultural and water technologies, Israel is a much smaller power than it likes to represent itself: The number of startups in Israel in the areas of water and agrotech isn’t big, and we have yet to learn how to leverage development centers such as the Volcani agricultural research center.
The Indians have invited Israel to join them in developing inexpensive and accessible agricultural and water technologies, and say that in addition to the huge Indian market in those sectors, the next market that will need these same solutions is Africa.
The Israel Innovation Authority (previously known as the Office of the Chief Scientist) has identified the potential of the Indian market for Israeli high-tech firms. Consequently, it has established two programs to encourage cooperative business plans between the two countries.
One program is conducted with India’s Global Innovation & Technology Alliance (GITA), in which both countries allocate funding for cooperative Indian-Israeli business ventures. Still, the innovation authority says that despite the good intentions, this program is finding it difficult to get off the ground: Indian bureaucracy has made it almost impossible to receive Indian government funding, even for joint ventures that have already been approved by both sides.
The other program is meant to overcome the differences in needs: the fact that Israeli high-tech is involved mostly with leading technologies, while the Indians need cheaper products. |
bring or produce x-number of jobs in that region. This is not a theoretical exercise. We seek propositions for actual pending transactions.
Business development plans are best when focused on synergistic economic clusters. Clusters are a number of businesses that are involved in the same general enterprise, usually including research and development, manufacturing or related supply chain companies. Clusters often occur in concert with an institution of higher learning. The new economic clusters often build from that region's existing assets. For example, Rochester, which has a long history of engineering and academics coming from the Kodak and Xerox era, is now developing a cluster economy in the photonics area. Often, the key to the future is found in updating the past.
This is not a political ("small p") process. The regions are devising a business plan. You cannot make everyone happy in development of a viable business plan. This is not the preparation of a Christmas list. Even with a500 million capital infusion, a region cannot develop more than two or three clusters effectively. "Spreading out the funding" so that everyone gets something is not an economic strategy. It placates members of a committee during the application process, but only until the announcement day, when they find out they are not winners.
"No copycat economic blueprints." What works for one region may not necessarily work for another region. For example, Buffalo's success cannot be duplicated by copying Buffalo's plan. What made the Buffalo plan successful was that it was custom-designed, building on Buffalo's assets. A region's cluster strategy is built on that region's assets, institutions and advantages. This state does not have one economy. It truly has ten regional economies and each region can do better or worse depending on the efforts of the local leadership. There is no statewide economic tide. Each region must paddle to move forward.
"Swing for the fences." Start by looking for a business opportunity that would make the region competitive not just statewide, but nationally or internationally. Also, explore the opportunity for government reform: consolidation, shared resources, equipment cooperatives, et cetera. The enemy of Upstate business development is high property taxes. Property taxes are a function of local government. The state has capped the growth at two percent and assumed the greatest cost (growth in Medicaid). We need and welcome local initiative to find creative ways to reduce the cost of local government.
The competition calls for "regional" plans - provide them. We understand the economic engine of a central city, but we also understand that the economy has to work for the entire region and the plans that address the region comprehensively are the most competitive.
Consult everyone, including all elected officials. Strive for consensus but don't achieve consensus by sacrificing the plan's integrity and intelligence. Forge consensus by developing the best plan to succeed and then get the entire community to buy-in, unified and motivated by the hope of a better future.
Develop a plan that can be implemented even if you don't win the competition. It is a function of collaboration and partnership that is accelerated by a500 million capital investment. But the plan should be viable even without the investment, albeit harder and probably slower to achieve.
Get the community excited. Only communities that believe they have a future actually have a future. It's the taxi driver and waitress story. Everyone needs to communicate optimism. The way consumer confidence is a national indicator of economic success, I believe that likewise, resident confidence or citizen confidence is a predictor of a locality's success. Residents who believe in the economic future of their region will purchase homes, improve the homes they have, invest in their business, tell their children to remain in the community and attract others to the community. Residents emanate confidence which affects the business community. Call it economic karma: believe in your success.
Plans are not dreams. These plans must be detailed blueprints that are feasible and capable of implementation with identifiable timelines. We don't want projects that are feasible in concept, we want projects that are feasible in practice. Local governmental approvals, if necessary, should be in place. Zoning must be in place. If a project requires other means of financing, those must be identified. The state is effectively functioning as an investment banker and will only commit to projects that are ready to go.
The Upstate Revitalization Initiative is a major opportunity to extend the growth of Upstate New York. One thing is certain: we have proven that there is no reason for despair in Upstate New York. Communities that are committed, unified, and capably led can achieve remarkable progress in a relatively short period of time. I understand the roots of the economic distress of Upstate New York. There have been decades of decline and a parade of politicians promising help that never materialized. It's hard to believe in the future again after so much disappointment. On the other hand, the evidence of rebirth is overwhelming and economic optimism is necessary to make revitalization possible. I believe in Upstate New York and, more importantly, Upstate New Yorkers should believe too, because the best is yet to be.An infestation of cockroaches is so out of control at a Veterans Affairs hospital, the insects are finding their way into patients’ food.
According to Conservative Review, cockroaches routinely crawl across countertops as cooks prepare meals at a suburban Chicago Veterans Affairs hospital.
“The workers try to brush the cockroaches off the counters, but the bugs get in the food,” Germaine Clarno, a social worker at the Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital said.
“It’s been like this for years, ever since anyone can remember,” Clarno said.
Dietetic technician Kelvin Gilkey explained how PTSD-traumatized veterans in the mental health unit were given food trays with cockroaches on them on multiple occasions last year.
At one point, a veteran was so enraged he began swearing and demanded to be discharged. He stayed there for another 28 days and was sick whenever he had to eat a meal.
“I apologized and said I would provide him with a special tray but he refused to eat,” Gilkey said. “He went hungry for a couple of days until I convinced him to eat. He even refused to come out of his room and socialize with anyone. I told him I would take care of him.”
The staff was down 25 positions as food service funding was diverted in order to fix a secret medical wait list scandal two years ago.
In addition, kitchen employees refused to show up out of fear they'd bring the bugs home with them leaving no one to clean.
An inquiry was opened on March 4 after yet another veteran found a cockroach in his food. The case was closed on April 6 without an onsite visit by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration because the VA had shown proof the problem was addressed.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is demanding things be fixed.
Kirk sent a letter to the VA last week, wanting to know what is being done to ensure veterans' food is handled to the highest standards.
“The dining environment … operations are of a questionable level of sanitation. In fact, reports of contamination, including but not limited to the persistent presence of roaches in and around the food service area, have been circulated by staff with facility leadership for years,” part of the letter read.
He also told Conservative Review that, “a veteran should NEVER be served food with a roach on their tray. It's not only deplorable to find out that a roach infestation in the veteran’s kitchen has been allowed to knowingly exist for years without remedy, but once again we learn that the merry-go-round of bullied silence and cover-up continues at Hines VA with impunity.”
Gilkey sides strongly with Mark Kirk and says the whole thing hurts him.
“Senior management is hiding the fact that this kitchen is infested with roaches and nothing has been done with it,” he said. “I have spent 33 years here and never would I imagine that we’d treat the veterans like we’re treating them. While we are lying in bed at night, they are out protecting the world. This hurts me.”Tech-metal electro maestro The Algorithm is streaming his new album Brute Force exclusively with Metal Hammer.
To gain a deeper insight into the mind of The Algorithm (or Rémi Gallego as his mum calls him), Rémi has written us a track by track guide to Brute Force you can check out below.
“Brute Force is a step towards more musicianship and organic feelings in my works,” says Rémi. “While keeping the electronic elements very present I tried to bring human feelings and authenticity to it using two fusioned elements of music I love.”
boot
“The starting point, for me it feels like a launch at hyper speed or something and that’s what I had in mind when I wrote the track.”
floating point
“This was the first track with which I started experimenting more with guitars. I think it’s the most straight-forward track on the album and I always love playing it live.”
pointers
“pointers again let me experiment with different stylistic techniques and guitar solos even further, I’m pretty sure it sounds like a motherboard talking.”
brute force
“I think the most melancholic ‘metal’ track of the album. This is the track I wrote the quickest, surprisingly, and is also one of my favourites. It has a lot of passion in it.”
userspace
“This one also has a lot of passion, in a more introspective way. It talks a lot to my melancholic nature and has a very different direction than everything I’ve written so far. It was very interesting working on this one.”
shellcode
“Probably the most evil song on the album. I can’t wait for when we play it live, it will happen the next tour for sure.”
hex
“Same thing for this one. The synthwave is in general a very good inspiration for my works and it specifically shows a lot on hex.”
deadlock
“I’ve been a fan of Igorrr since I started making music and he’s always been a great inspiration, I’m so proud to have done this collaboration with this incredible producer. Also a big thanks to Nicolas from Pryapisme for the intro!”
rootkit
“Again a reference to the synthwave, and also a look back to my early works on tracks such as Decay on my first demo The Doppler Effect.”
trojans (hard mode)
“I always wanted to do a twist on my older works. It was incredibly fun doing it – I couldn’t stop laughing!”
Brute Force is available to pre-order now.On Jaunary 1 a new regulation went into effect mandating that California drivers “no longer … hold their cellphones in their hands for any reason.”
In other words, even if you are not texting or talking on your phone, you are barred from holding the phone to sift through photos, music playlists, or material on other applications.
The new phone regulation is in addition to four new California firearm regulations that went into effect on January 1 as well.
According to The Sacramento Bee, the new law still allows phones to be used in cars, as long as the phones are operated “hands-free.” This “often means voice activated and operated.” But the “phones must be mounted on the dashboard or windshield or console.”Once the phone is mounted, the new regulation allows the driver touch his or her phone one time to “activate or deactivate a feature or function … with the motion of a single swipe or tap of the driver’s finger.”
Drivers quickly questioned the enforceability of the law, especially the limitation on touching the phone one time to activate it. Lyft driver James Turner asked, “How are they going to tell if you swiped (only) once?”
On January 1 Breitbart News reported that four new gun regulations took effect in California. The Bee noted that confusion surrounded the new gun controls in a year where the legislature passed one set of gun laws for law-abiding citizens while the state — via ballot initiative — passed another. But the following four regulations certainly went into effect January 1:
A new law that makes it “a crime to falsely report a firearm has been lost or stolen.” A new law that makes it “illegal, with limited exceptions, to loan guns to anyone outside of immediate family members.” A new start date for the new definition of “assault weapons” (a ban on “bullet buttons” included). A new ” requirement that handguns be stored in a locked container or locked trunk when left in an unattended vehicle.”Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media Tuition is up 1,200 percent in 30 years. Here's why you're unemployed, crushed by debt -- and no one is helping
The price of a year at college has increased by more than 1,200 percent over the last 30 years, far outpacing any other price the government tracks: food, housing, cars, gasoline, TVs, you name it. Tuition has increased at a rate double that of medical care, usually considered the most expensive of human necessities. It has outstripped any reasonable expectation people might have had for investments over the period. And, as we all know, it has crushed a generation of college grads with debt. Today, thanks to those enormous tuition prices, young Americans routinely start adult life with a burden unknown to any previous cohort and whose ruinous effects we can only guess at.
On the assumption that anyone in that generation still has a taste for irony, I offer the following quotation on the subject, drawn from one of the earliest news stories about the problem of soaring tuition. The newspaper was the Washington Post; the speaker was an assistant dean at a college that had just announced a tuition hike of 19 percent; and the question before him was how much farther tuition increases could go. “Maybe all of a sudden this bubble is going to burst,” he was quoted as saying. “How much will the public take?”
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Oh, we would take quite a lot, as it happened. It was 1981 when the assistant dean worried in that manner—the very first year of what was once called the “tuition spiral,” when higher ed prices got the attention of the media by outpacing inflation by a factor of two or three. There was something shocking about this development; tuition hadn’t gone up like that during the 1970s, even though that was the heyday of ascending consumer prices.
Yet at that point, the tuition spiral had more than three decades to go—indeed, it is still twisting upward today. But the way we talk about this slow-motion disaster has changed little over the years. Ever since the spiral began, commentators have been marveling at how far it’s gone and wondering how much farther it has yet to run—“the trend can’t continue,” they say every few years. They ask when the families and politicians of America are finally going to get off their knees and do something about it.
But somehow nothing ever gets done. The trend does continue. And for 30 years the journalists who cover the subject have followed the same pointless script. They have hunted fruitlessly for the legitimate expense that they knew must be driving up the prices. They have chased repeatedly after the wrong answers, blaming everybody and everything except for the obvious culprits. They have related to us the politicians’ plans for bringing the spiral to a stop—plans that everyone can see have virtually no chance of succeeding.
And all along, the larger meaning of the spiral is almost never discussed, as though it were contrary to some unwritten rule of journalistic cognition.
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Reading back over journalistic accounts of the tuition spiral from the '80s and '90s, you get the impression that all concerned felt it was a wee bit uncouth to dig too deeply into a university’s pricing practices or suspect the sachems of higher learning who presided over them of anything inappropriate. These were the journalists’s beloved alma maters, after all: surely they had our best interests at heart. Surely we could trust the word of university administrators, even though they always—in their determination to make tuition price increases seem rational and sensible—seemed to find a way to blame someone other than themselves.
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And so, beginning in the '80s, university administrators, their words dutifully transcribed by journalists, blamed utility bills for soaring tuition. They blamed libraries, which made a certain amount of sense until libraries went dramatically out of fashion in the Internet age—and yet still tuition prices went up.
They blamed professors, of course, since professors are the most visible part of a university and because it’s easy to hate professors. Sometimes university spokesmen would claim that colleges were being forced to spend a lot in order to hire the very best professors, an academic echo of the reasoning corporate America uses to explain fat executive salaries. On other occasions, however, they would claim that they were being forced to spend a lot because professors nowadays were lazy and didn’t want to teach and so they were forced to hire an expanded roster of them to offer all their courses. Both excuses were plausible on paper, and there’s probably some university president somewhere who’s still blaming professors for his insane tuition bills. But these alibis only made sense until the outside world figured out that universities were actually using graduate students and adjuncts to teach their courses and yet still tuition prices were mounting at an insane clip.
Administrators also blamed tuition inflation on onerous government regulations, which (they said) forced them to hire bureaucrats to fill out forms; sometimes they did this even when they themselves had lobbied for the government regulation in question. They blamed students, who were supposedly demanding all manner of luxuries and would not be denied. “Students today want carpeting, they want furniture, they want voice mail,” an administrator at a Nevada university told USA Today for a 1997 story about the tuition spiral. “They want all the amenities that 10, 20, 30 years ago were almost unheard of.” (One wonders if, by that logic, students today “want” life-altering amounts of debt, too.)
And administrators blamed society, which was forcing them to be high-tech and culturally diverse, social improvements that were supposed to be terribly expensive. According to a tuition-spiral story that appeared in The New York Times in 1988,
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“colleges say that tuition bills reflect the demands society places on them: to shelter students from drugs and alcohol, to diversify their campuses with more black, Hispanic and rural students, to provide access ramps and elevators for the handicapped, to prepare students for a high-technology society.”
In one of the most curious bits of blame-evasion, a 1990 report commissioned by the College Board actually attributed rising tuition prices to a declining student population. Like all the other excuses, this got university administrators off the hook, but it also raised troubling questions. Ordinarily, reduced demand makes prices go down, not up; that the opposite was happening implied that colleges had the power simply to impose their costs on the student population regardless of that population’s size or wishes. (Besides, when the student population numbers reversed themselves and began to rise several years later, tuition still ascended.) The same report went on to insist that higher ed was an “extremely competitive” industry, but that it had simply “chosen to compete in ways other than price.” They were building really fine gymnasiums in lieu of keeping prices under control—six one way, half dozen the other. This was supposed to be reassuring, but like the stuff about reduced demand yielding higher prices, it should have rung alarm bells all over Washington, clearly indicating that this particular industry was not subject to basic market forces—that regulation and maybe even price controls were immediately required.
The possibility that higher tuition prices were going to pay for rapidly multiplying and yet educationally unnecessary administrators was not really raised in earnest until a memorable page-one series published in 1996 by the Philadelphia Inquirer. This interpretation had the virtue of being accurate: Unlike tenured faculty, university administrations actually have grown by 369 percent since the mid-1970s. (As I have noted before.) But blaming administrators proved difficult for journalists, perhaps because administrators were the very people journalists had been going to for explanations in their tuition-outrage stories. Could their sources actually be the culprits? No way. And so, less than a year after the Inquirer’s series appeared, USA Today ran its own big tuition-shock tale in which the blame was pinned on all the familiar blame-objects: Professors, student demands, technology, gummint regulation. A 1997 cover story in Time magazine—“How Colleges Are Gouging U,” the illustration shouted—barely mentioned administrators at all.
One factor remained constant through all these years of journalistic hand-wringing: Those who wrote about the higher ed price problem kept expecting the Invisible Hand to assert itself and straighten this thing out. Every glimmer of light looked to them like the end of the tunnel: An unusually small tuition increase at Stanford in 1990, for example, was trumpeted on page one of the New York Times as evidence that market forces had worked, that the spiral had ended. Others agreed. In February of 1991, the Seattle Times announced that we had reached the end of the ordeal: “The fact is, middle-class students and parents simply can’t pay any more.” They were wrong, of course. Eight months later, USA Today reported that tuition was spiking upward again, growing by 12 percent that year at state universities. And it pains me to report that an education at Stanford today costs about $60,000 per year, just a little less than the most expensive schools of them all.
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What were journalists to do after ringing the alarm bells for so many years without effect? Well, there was one easy answer to this frustrating situation: To discover that there wasn’t really any problem in the first place. That the tuition spiral was entirely reasonable, even if no one could actually explain it. How so? Well, if you examine what has come to be called the “college wage premium”—the difference between what is earned by college grads and high school grads—it becomes clear that someone who finishes four years at a university will eventually earn far more than they spent to go there, even at the crazy tuition prices of recent decades. Today this is a universal way of considering the situation, always leading us to conclude that going to college is “worth it”; that it is a “bargain”; that it “pays off.” But it only seemed to enter journalists’ consciousness in the 1990s, as on the occasion when Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, explained matters thusly to the Los Angeles Times in 1999:
“He said there has been too much focus on the cost of college and too little on the lifetime returns for four years of investment. Because a college graduate today earns about twice as much as a worker with only a high school diploma, he said, ‘a college education is worth about $1 million over a lifetime.’ ”
The mind reels when confronted with this kind of smugness. One wonders: Is there some identifiable aspect of a college education that yields that million dollar prize—exposure to advanced literary theory, for example? Is there a way to isolate that particular 24-carat nugget and leave the dross behind—all the plush dorm carpeting and the many layers of assistant deans? My guess, though, is that Caperton’s statement meant exactly the opposite of this—that there was no need to inquire any further about the tuition outrage. What it implied, by extension, was that since we now know the final value of a college degree (one million dollars!), the colleges can simply keep raising tuition prices and student indebtedness until they have extracted that amount from their graduates—and only after they have hit that figure will we have cause to complain.
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Government has been little better than journalists. Over the three decades of the tuition spiral, by far the most forthright antagonist of the inflation-happy colleges was the Reagan-era culture warrior/education secretary William Bennett, who seemed to delight in blunt statements like this one: “Some of our colleges and universities charge what the market will bear.... The heart of the matter is that colleges raise costs because they can.” Were some member of the compromise-minded Obama team to talk like that today the centrist earth below Washington DC would gape in outrage and swallow them up.
Unfortunately, angry rhetoric is as far as Bennett went. The solutions he proposed, like all the solutions anyone has proposed over the three decades of the tuition spiral, did the opposite of help. Bennett believed that federal grants fed the tuition spiral; replacing them with loans and restricting the annual increase was supposed to solve the problem. The basic idea here was that if we exposed students more directly to the educational market that Bennett had identified—making them borrow the money to attend—we could then count on those self-interested economic actors to behave as consumers are supposed to and do something about the problem. The policy was “to re-emphasize self-help,” per the New York Times. But this particular market has never worked that way, and the only effect, of course, was to raise up the Himalayas of student debt that are such a familiar part of the landscape today.
The hunt for a market-based solution went on, however. During the presidency of George H. W. Bush, the Department of Justice accused the Ivy League universities of acting as a “collegiate cartel” and conspiring to fix financial aid and hence prices. The antitrust case was settled with a consent decree in 1991; the tuition spiral proceeded as before. (I have written about this elsewhere, in case you’re interested.)
And that was pretty much it—the very last time the federal government tried to get tough with the higher ed industry. Since then, the two parties have gone their different ways on the matter—Democrats today worship education, while Republicans today worship the market, neither of which faith has brought us close to a solution. The efforts of the Clinton administration, for example, were almost unbelievably feeble: With great fanfare, the Democrats streamlined the student loan process, proposed a tax cut for parents who paid for college, and—hooray—cracked down on student borrowers. (“We have tracked down defaulters and made them pay,” Bill Clinton boasted in 1997.)
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A low point of sorts was reached in the late 1990s, when Congress appointed a “National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education,” and filled it with university presidents and the head of one of the main higher-ed lobby groups. The report they proceeded to publish in 1998 was an entirely predictable outcome of this staffing decision, I suppose, but still the reader is struck by its resounding impotence. This panel was so pallid it didn’t even amount to a whitewash. On page one of its report, for example, the Commission declared that it wasn’t really interested in soaring tuition at all, except insofar as soaring tuitions might cause Americans to feel “ill will” toward universities. After going on to catalog the usual culprits—blame regulations, blame students—the Commission concluded that there should be—yes!—further study on the matter. (“The Commission recommends that the philanthropic community, research institutes, and agencies of state and local government adopt the topic of academic cost control as a research area worthy of major financial support.”) They also recommended that universities do a better PR job, that they organize themselves to “inform the public” about “the returns on this investment.”
But even that would probably be considered an outrage were it published today. Last year, the Obama administration announced its own “Plan to Make College More Affordable”; the centerpiece was a scheme for doing something analogous to what that Commission proposed back in 1998: building a rating system to inform the public about the returns on college investments. (There was also the obligatory olive branch to the right, in a proposal to “reduce regulatory barriers.”)
The universities responded by going absolutely apeshit. They are happy to talk about the “return on investment” when it’s a vague promise of a million bucks for anyone who pays up and goes to college; when someone actually takes them at their word and tries to measure the claim, it seems that fundamental principles are being trampled.
I hope Obama ignores the wailing of the universities and goes through with his plan, despite the obvious folly of trying to explain people’s relative prosperity by reference to the college they attended instead of their class background. If the president were to expand his approach to include data on the vast and growing size of university administrations and how many courses are taught at each college by adjuncts, his rating system might well be useful.
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But there should be no illusions. More information by itself is not going to stop the tuition spiral, not after 33 years. In fact, we can predict fairly easily how this thing will backfire once the government discovers and announces the precise “return on investment” for each institution of higher learning: Like any rational, profit-maximizing entity those institutions will simply continue hiking tuitions in order to capture a larger chunk of that return for themselves.
As the reforms fail and the journalism fails maybe we will figure out that all along there has been a single bad ideological idea behind all of this failure: The notion that the market will solve the problem if we only adjust the controls a little. And as the newspapers of 2020 tell us about an angry new generation of students shouldering an unimaginable debt burden, maybe it will dawn on Barack Obama, by then retired and relaxing on the beach in Hawaii, that maybe we shouldn’t have thought of education as a market in the first place. Maybe college shouldn’t be about individuals getting rich. Maybe there is another purpose.
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In the long sweep of journalistic commentary on the tuition spiral, relatively few have raised that question. One occasion when it cropped up was in 1986, when the shift from grants to loans was under way, and a spokesman for a higher-ed accreditation group was able to grasp the larger meaning of the change. “A grant conveys the message, ‘We value you and will invest in your future,’ ” he told the New York Times. “The message of a loan is, ‘Go forward if you want, but on your own nickel.’ Loans reinforce privatist, instrumental values, a sense that you’re in college for yourself and that college studies have as an end only what comes later—a job and paying off the loan.”
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Let me repeat, as a fact of some significance, that the great tuition price spiral began in 1981. That was the same year in which Ronald Reagan brought his jolly band of deregulators to Washington, in which Congress enacted the landmark Kemp-Roth tax cut, and in which the air-traffic controllers' union went down to humiliating defeat. In 1981 the old order was crumbling, the soldiers of the free market were strapping on their Adam Smith neckties, and colleges all across America were deciding they needed to jack up tuition prices far in excess of the rate of inflation, something they had not done before.
When considering the significance of this point of beginning, a 1987 inquiry into the tuition problem threw up its hands. “Nobody knows why tuition increases lagged behind consumer prices in the 1970s and jumped ahead in the 1980s,” according to an Associated Press summary. But in retrospect I think the answer is obvious. It happened then because these things are all related: deregulation, tax cuts, de-unionization and outrageous tuition inflation are all part of the same historical turn. I acknowledge that, on the surface, this is not an obvious connection: The Reagan administration was always hostile to universities and loved to bemoan the tuition spiral; what’s more, over the period in question, the universities themselves embraced a hyper-leftist public image that helped them distract attention from the catastrophe they have visited upon the nation’s young.
But if we think of these things as part of a larger ideological shift, they all start to make sense. Universities were capable of doing in the '70s what they did in the '80s (and still are doing today), but maybe they didn’t do it then because Americans thought of universities in a different light in those days.
What I mean to say is that the tuition price spiral is part of the larger history of inequality, just as is the ever-rising price of Andy Warhol paintings, or the ever-growing size of the McMansion, or the ever-weightier catalogs issued by Restoration Hardware—and, of course, the never-increasing wages of American workers. As the rewards that can potentially be won by members of the white-collar class have gone from meh (in the egalitarian 1970s) to Neronian (today), it feels natural that the entrance fee for membership in that class should have escalated in a corresponding manner. The iron logic of inequality works the other way as well: Although a college degree doesn’t necessarily guarantee a life of splendor, not having one pretty much makes a life of poorly compensated toil a sure thing. Finding ourselves on the receiving end of inequality is a fate we will pay virtually any price to avoid, and our system of higher ed exists to set and extract that price.
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Put it another way: Over the last 30-odd years we have essentially privatized higher ed. In saying this I’m not referencing the defunding of our State U’s (an explanation for the tuition spiral, by the way, that doesn’t get nearly enough journalistic attention). And I am aware that a good chunk of our institutions of higher ed have been private all along. What has changed is that they aren’t “our” institutions of higher ed anymore. Maybe they never were, but not too long ago it was possible to think of them—from Milton Friedman’s University of Chicago all the way down to Michele Bachmann’s Winona State University—as serving some sort of public function. Whether founded by the grace of Rockefeller or by Act of the Minnesota Legislature, they manufactured good citizens; they taught us scientific farming techniques; hell, they built the atomic bomb and created the Internet. This is why our government subsidized (and still subsidizes) them with grants and earmarks and tax abatements and preferential treatment of every description. But the other part of the bargain doesn’t work the way it used to anymore. Everyone in the age of inequality knows that the purpose of a college education isn’t to benefit the nation; it’s to give the private individual a shot at achieving a High Net Worth.
Agreeing upon that, everyone from state legislators to the Secretary of Education naturally began to ask, Why should I pay for someone else to get rich? Those people need to foot the bill themselves.
Agreeing upon that, the colleges and universities reconceived their mission and began to put a more accurate price tag on what the consensus now acknowledged that they were selling.
The whole enterprise changed. One term they used for it in the early days, according to a landmark 1988 magazine article by Barry Werth, was the “Chivas Regal argument”—the idea that college was a luxury good and should be treated as such. Forget all the bushwah about diversity and lazy professors driving up tuition; price increases in those days became virtually an end in themselves, something colleges did simply to burnish their prestigious brand image. Werth quoted an administrator from Lehigh University who put the new philosophy succinctly: “If it’s going to be a world of haves and have-nots, we sure intend to be among the haves.”
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That is the offer our ever-more expensive colleges extend to their students as well: in a world of rich and poor, the only choice before you is whether or not you intend to purchase a place among the haves. And these days even the once-sanctimonious New York Times runs stories openly treating the most expensive colleges as brands, as class signifiers.
Economists who write about class issues usually depict higher ed as a force for solving the inequality problem, not for making it worse. Other big thinkers tell us that universities are fountainheads of innovation and creativity, the only things we really have going for us as a nation. Those attitudes, plus the amazing deference our professional and political classes feel toward the hallowed groves of academe, probably explain why this industry has been able to get away with 30 years of something close to price gouging, a practice that would never be tolerated from any other provider of life’s necessities. They also explain why American students have done virtually nothing to stop the spiral while students elsewhere take to the streets in fury when threatened with the tiniest tuition increases.
Because in this country college fulfills a different role. Even if those peaceful campus quadrangles were originally laid out by Quakers or by the egalitarian Thomas Jefferson, we all know what they signify today: They are the central symbolic device for explaining inequality. College is where money and merit meet; where the privileged learn that they are not only smarter than everyone else but that they are more virtuous, too. They are better people with better test scores, better taste, better politics. College itself is the biggest lesson of them all, the thing that teaches us where we stand in a world that is very rapidly coming apart.New peers include former Tory MP who claimed expenses to clean moat at his manor house and banker who has given almost £3m to Conservatives
Twenty six Conservatives have been appointed to the House of Lords, including a former MP who claimed expenses to clean his moat, a City banker who has given millions to the party and a chief executive of a company criticised earlier this year for failing to pay the minimum wage.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Video: Meg Russell, the deputy director of the constitution unit at University College London, says David Cameron’s repeated new appointments to the House of Lords severely damages its reputation, and increasingly undermines its ability to function
They dominate a list of 45 new peers with former MPs, party advisers and donors included in appointments made to the Labour and Lib Dem benches as well as the governing party.
The new peerages and the new House of Lords – full list Read more
Douglas Hogg, who claimed expenses to clean his country estate’s moat, is among the former MPs who have been elevated. He stepped down from contesting the 2010 election after it emerged he had claimed £2,200 for the cleaning of the moat at his 13th-century manor house.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Douglas Hogg. Photograph: Getty Images
The banker is James Lupton, a financier who has given £2.8m to the Conservative party and is its co-treasurer. Lupton was also an active supporter of, and donor to Kids Company, the charity that recently announced its closure.
The chief executive is Ruby McGregor-Smith, of Mitie Group, who will also be elevated to the House of Lords months after signing a letter backing Cameron’s cuts programme. The outsourcing company MiHomecare, which is part of the group, has faced criticism this year for failing to pay care workers the minimum wage.
Also lined up by the Tories is Michelle Mone, the founder of the Ultimo lingerie brand, to become a peer just weeks after she was appointed as the government’s new entrepreneurship tsar for areas of high unemployment.
The arrivals will take the upper house to 826 members, further expanding the second most populous legislative chamber in the world. It is surpassed only by the National People’s Congress in China. The appointments are part of the dissolution honours list which are gifts from the former party leaders.
Cameron will be accused of attempting to pack the Lords with reliable supporters including Kate Fall, his deputy chief of staff, James O’Shaughnessy, a former head of policy at No 10, and Simone Finn |
would come to fruition." Representative Ed Whitfield (KY-01) – Representative Ed Whitfield sent out a press release calling himself "a tireless champion for community health centers both in Kentucky and throughout the country."
– Representative Ed Whitfield sent out a press release calling himself "a tireless champion for community health centers both in Kentucky and throughout the country." Representative David Dreier (CA-26) – Representative David Dreier said, "The nation relies on Southern California’s infrastructure and innovation. Strategic federal investments in these areas will yield tremendous returns from coast to coast."
– Representative David Dreier said, "The nation relies on Southern California’s infrastructure and innovation. Strategic federal investments in these areas will yield tremendous returns from coast to coast." Representative Tom Petri (WI-06) – Representative Petri is a "strong supporter of the allocation" of $754,000 to restore and maintain navigable channels in the Two Rivers harbor, as "maintaining navigable waters in the area is essential for the local economy."
– Representative Petri is a "strong supporter of the allocation" of $754,000 to restore and maintain navigable channels in the Two Rivers harbor, as "maintaining navigable waters in the area is essential for the local economy." Representative Aaron Schock (IL-18) – "The biodiesel plant is ready to go. I want to call for a meeting with the state to guarantee $20 million in loans for the building of the plant. This could produce real jobs and a real stimulus in the next 30 days."
– "The biodiesel plant is ready to go. I want to call for a meeting with the state to guarantee $20 million in loans for the building of the plant. This could produce real jobs and a real stimulus in the next 30 days." Representative Mary Bono Mack (CA-45) – "This funding will provide much-needed assistance to local residents who are at risk of losing their homes or experiencing homelessness... I am pleased that our community will benefit from this funding."
– "This funding will provide much-needed assistance to local residents who are at risk of losing their homes or experiencing homelessness... I am pleased that our community will benefit from this funding." Representative Judy Biggert (IL-13) – "These important investments will create local jobs and help keep our area’s road and transit systems working for commuters."
– "These important investments will create local jobs and help keep our area’s road and transit systems working for commuters." Representative Pete Hoekstra (MI-02) – "If you know of someone thinking of buying first home, now may be the time. Stimulus incentive is very generous! Up to 8k! Check it out."
Of course Washington is rife with people who try to take credit where none is due (see: Bush, George; "Mission Accomplished"), and if it was just one or two shameless hypocrites pulling this nonsense we could dismiss it as just that -- shameless hypocrisy. But sixty-seven times? That's not coincidence, that's policy.Moyer Outlast Rain for Fifth Win of 2014 DIRTcar Summer Nationals Season at Farmer City Raceway
By Jordan Morris
FARMER CITY, Ill. — July 11, 2014 — One night after Shannon Babb tied Billy Moyeratop the DIRTcar Summer Nationals all-time wins list at 86 career victories, Moyer retook the lead and broke the tie by outlasting the rain and dominating Friday night at Farmer City Raceway.
Brian Shirley started the 40-lap feature event from the pole-position with Mike Spatola starting to his outside. Neither driver managed to lead a lap as third-place starter Billy Moyer rocketed around both front-row starters and claimed the top spot on the first lap.
The six-time champion Moyer had the car to beat all night as he jumped out to a commanding lead early and never looked back. The only thing that dampened Moyer’s night was when a rain shower temporarily halted the race on lap 27.
Before the caution flew for rain, two race contenders were plagued by flat tires. Shirley, who started from the pole, rode around on a flat right-rear, gambling that the ensuing rain shower would end the race, but his bet didn’t pay off as he was caught in the pits when the caution did finally fly. Seventh-place starter Brandon Sheppard was cutting into Moyer’s large lead when he too suffered a flat tire on lap 27 just before the caution came out.
When the racing resumed, Moyer again proved to be too strong, as he easily dominated the remaining 13 laps, defeating fifth-place starting Bobby Pierce by over two seconds, en route to claiming the $10,000 checkered flag, his fifth win of the season and 87th career DIRTcar Summer Nationals victory,
“You just gotta have patience," said Moyer of the rain-delayed feature event. "I’m usually pretty good at that, just trying to hold yourself back and not make any stupid moves. Really, I couldn’t see. It was kinda, I guess, raining the whole time, spitting, I think, you know, because the vision wasn’t good the whole race really.”
Shannon Babb, Mike Spatola and Kevin Weaver rounded out the top five.
Heat race winners were Moyer, Shirley, Jason Feger and Spatola.
The DIRTcar Summer Nationals continues on Saturday night at 34 Raceway in Burlington, Iowa.
DIRTcar Summer Nationals Statistical Report; Farmer City Raceway; Farmer City, Ill.;
July 11, 2014; A-Main (40-laps): 1. 21-Billy Moyer ($10,000), 2. 32-Bobby Pierce, 3. 18-Shannon Babb, 4. 89-Mike Spatola, 5. 12B-Kevin Weaver, 6. B5-Brandon Sheppard, 7. 24-Ryan Unzicker, 8. 7R-Kent Robinson, 9. 81-Brian Shirley, 10. 89F-Daren Friedman, 11. Z-Joe Harlan, 12. 96-Tanner English, 13. 9D-Daniel Flessner, 14. 7T-Steve Thorsten, 15. 4G-Bob Gardner, 16. 10S-Scott Schmitt, 17. 25-Jason Feger, 18. 116-Torin Mettille, 19. 75D-Billy Drake, 20. 42-MCKay Wenger, 21. 81JR-Jason Riggs, 22. 83-Scott Bull.
2014 DIRTcar Summer Nationals Schedule
Date Day Track Location Win June 11 Wed Brownstown Speedway Brownstown, Ind. RAIN June 12 Thur Kankakee Co. Speedway Kankakee, Ill. Billy Moyer June 13 Fri Cedar Lake Speedway Somerset, Wis. Rick Eckert June 14 Sat Cedar Lake Speedway Somerset, Wis. RAIN June 15 Sun Wilmot Raceway Wilmot, Wis. Rick Eckert(2) June 16 Mon Off June 17 Tue Farley Speedway Farley, Iowa Shannon Babb June 18 Wed Spoon River Speedway Canton, Ill. Jason Feger June 19 Thur Quincy Raceways Quincy, Ill. RAIN June 20 Fri Tri-City Speedway Pontoon Beach, Ill. Billy Moyer(2) June 21 Sat Fairbury Speedway Fairbury, Ill. RAIN June 22 Sun I-96 Speedway Ionia, Mich. Brian Shirley June 23 Mon Peoria Speedway Peoria, Ill. Brandon Sheppard June 24 Tue Off June 25 Wed Clarksville Speedway Clarksville, Tenn. Shannon Babb(2) June 26 Thur Clayhill Motorsports Atwood, Tenn. Brian Shirley (2) June 27 Fri Paducah Int. Raceway Paducah, Ky. RAIN June 28 Sat Federated Auto Parts Raceway Pevely, Mo. Brian Birkhofer June 29 Sun Lincoln Speedway Lincoln, Ill. Brady Smith June 30 Mon Off July 1 Tue Belle Clair Speedway Belleville, Ill. Bobby Pierce July 2 Wed Jacksonville Speedway Jacksonville, Ill. Jason Feger(2) July 3 Thur LaSalle Speedway LaSalle, Ill. Brian Birkhofer(2) July 4 Fri Fayette Co. Speedway Brownstown, Ill. Brandon Sheppard(2) July 5 Sat Highland Speedway Highland, Ill. Tyler Reddick July 6 Sun Tri-State Speedway Haubstadt, Ind. Billy Moyer(3) July 7 Mon Off July 8 Tue Florence Speedway Union, Ky. Jason Jameson July 9 Wed Terre Haute Action Track Terre Haute, Ind. Billy Moyer(4) July 10 Thur Macon Speedway Macon, Ill. Shannon Babb(3) July 11 Fri Farmer City Raceway Farmer City, Ill. Billy Moyer(5) July 12 Sat 34 Raceway Burlington, Iowa $10,000 July 13 Sun Vermilion Co. Speedway Danville, Ill. $5,000 July 14 Mon Off July 15 Tue TBA July 16 Wed Atomic Speedway Chillicothe, Ohio $5,000 July 17 Thur Brushcreek Motorsports Complex Peebles, Ohio $5,000 July 18 Fri Attica Raceway Park Attica, Ohio $5,000 July 19 Sat Oakshade Raceway Wauseon, Ohio $10,000
The DIRTcar Summer Nationals “Hell Tour” is brought to fans across the country by many important partners including: Arizona Sport Shirts (Official Apparel Company), Hoosier Racing Tires (Official Racing Tires), Racing Electronics (Official Communication), Velocita (Official Uniform), VP Racing Fuel (Official Racing Fuel); in addition to these fine Contingency Partners: Beyea Headers, Cometic Gasket, Comp Cams, Dominator Race Products, Edelbrock, Fox Shocks, JE Pistons, JRI Shocks, Mobil 1, MSD, Quartermaster, Superflow Dynos, Summit Racing Equipment and Wrisco Aluminum; Promotional Partners include: Chevy Performance Parts, Indiana Decal, Intercomp and Petroff Towing.by Brett Stevens on November 10, 2009
Roll back preconceptions for a minute, and look at history as a series of 3,000-year cycles.
After all, that’s about how long it takes an idea to take hold of a population and be fully acted out, from the highest to the lowest levels. By “idea” here I mean a big idea.
The biggest idea of our last 3,000 years, and the only idea steadily gaining in distribution, has been the equality of human individuals.
Our modern governments, institutions and social attitudes are founded on it. It in turn is founded on the idea of egalitarianism, or equality of treatment for all people, which comes from a social impulse — a type of politeness — called altruism, or wanting to do good for others.
Altruism can exist in a selfless form, where you expect no one to know the good things you’ve done for them, or a manipulative form, where you very publicly do good things so people think you’re a good person — and then do good things for you.
The enforcer of this altruism, guilt, is what people feel when they don’t reciprocate when someone has done something nice for them. If I give you a newspaper and say, “It’s free, but I’m trying to sell lemonade,” you’re more likely to buy a glass — if it’s cheap enough to not sidetrack you.
This psychology underlies our social urge to be egalitarian. Others extend to us equality; we should extend it to them. Even more, we avoid conflict this way and as a bonus, we look good to others because we are altruistic.
Eventually we start trying to prove we’re actually more altruistic than they are — a form of social one-upmanship similar to “keeping up with the Joneses” but in moral and not material form — in what is called competitive altruism. This is exclusively the manipulative variant because it’s always public and is done to make the altruist look better, and therefore through guilt, be owed more by the society as a whole.
The object of this competition is called status. Unlike actual ability, status reflects the degree of approval of an individual by his or her fellow citizens, according to the consensual reality of altruism and guilt:
“I Am Charlotte Simmons,” particularly in its notice of the coarse sexuality governing campus life, is a book a liberal would never write, as corroborated in the many negative reviews…he was frankly taken aback by those who took it “as a counterrevolutionary attack on the sexual revolution.... Then it really dawned on me that so many people are proud of the sexual revolution, you know, ‘We freed ourselves from those damned religious people and this Puritanism.'” This is Tom Wolfe’s MO–sorting out and at once demolishing pretension, snobbery, vanity in all its guises. “There is such a thing as intellectual fashion–just as we get our clothing fashions–and often it does not mean anything more,” he says. “One follows fashion in order to look proper, and it’s the same thing with ideas.” {snip} Mr. Wolfe offers a personal incident as evidence of “what a fashion liberalism is.” A reporter for the New York Times called him up to ask why George W. Bush was apparently a great fan of the “Charlotte Simmons” book. “I just assumed it was the dazzling quality of the writing,” he says. In the course of the reporting, however, it came out that Mr. Wolfe had voted for the Bush ticket. “The reaction among the people I move among was really interesting. It was as if I had raised my hand and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, I’m a child molester.'” {snap} We’ve plowed headfirst into one of Mr. Wolfe’s great themes. He has long argued American literature was going through a bad patch, and the condition wouldn’t improve until authors engaged with the density and complexity of “this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping Baroque country of ours.” So any change, 15-odd years later? “No, I don’t see any at all,” he says acutely. “The great emphasis is still put on the psychological novel, and to dig your hands into the dirty social reality is really unrefined... as if the social context doesn’t mean a thing.” That’s the thing, the social context. “All of us are products of this vast plane called the social reality, the weight of the time and place we live, intersecting vertically with the individual psychology, or our impulses. And a person’s psyche, to use a vague term, is the result of the intersection.” “I think every living moment of a human being’s life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status,” he says. WSJ
Tom Wolfe is an astute writer who identifies himself as a Nietzschean in some of his older interviews, not so much from an advocacy perspective as being cognizant of the philosophy and aware of the troubling ideas it brings up:
Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. On Truth and Lies in a Sense Outside Morality, by F.W. Nietzsche
Nietzsche talks about us inventing knowing, meaning creating a domain in which human thoughts supplant reality for the purposes of assessing what is important, real or meaningful to us.
After all, with our big brains, we have a choice. We can decide principle is more important than consequences. We can go into denial, and become narcissistic — or worse, solipsistic. We can pick a pleasant emotion that lets us put our heads down and work without knowing we’ll succeed, or we can use that same denial to ignore our mortality, or even, to push aside reality in favor of moral measurement of intentions, desires or the effects on the individual of necessary parts of reality.
Wolfe takes Nietzsche’s knowing and breaks it down to understand it better. One aspect of our knowing is our certainty that equality, human rights, democracy and freedom are essential to society; even more, in our knowing, is the idea that those who are altruistic are risen in social status over others.
It would be quite the mental trip, then, if we found out that “knowing” in this context had a biological origin, meaning that it’s not a choice of our “free will,” but an impulse from within the intricate nest of hormones, nerve impulses and gestures inculcated by natural selection which forms the part of us that is unconscious, or not under the control of our personalities:
The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system. It is a bundle of nerves that originates in the top of the spinal cord, it activates different organs throughout the body (heart, lungs, liver, digestive organs). When active, it is likely to produce that feeling of warm expansion in the chest, for example when we are moved by someone’s goodness or when we appreciate a beautiful piece of music. University of Illinois, Chicago, psychiatrist Steve Porges long ago argued that the vagus nerve is a care-taking organ in the body (of course, it serves many other functions as well). Several reasons justify this claim. The vagus nerve is thought to stimulate certain muscles in the vocal chamber, enabling communication. It reduces heart rate. Very new science suggests that it may be closely connected to oxytocin receptor networks. And it is unique to mammals. Our research and that of other scientists suggests that the vagus nerve may be a physiological system that supports caretaking and altruism. We have found that activation of the vagus nerve is associated with feelings of compassion and the ethical intuition that humans from different social groups (even adversarial ones) share a common humanity. People who have high vagus nerve activation in a resting state, we have found, are prone to feeling emotions that promote altruism — compassion, gratitude, love, happiness. Arizona State University psychologist Nancy Eisenberg has found that children with elevated vagal tone (high baseline vagus nerve activity) are more cooperative and likely to give. This area of study is the beginning of a fascinating new argument about altruism — that a branch of our nervous system evolved to support such behavior. Scientific American
Life must be studied as a process, meaning anything that produces a reward rapidly gets assimilated into the cycle of life, and confers an advantage onto those who have it.
Could it be possible that millenia of biology have shaped us to base our self-esteem on how we are approved of by others, and that the index of this comparison is vagus-stirring altruism?
While there’s no question that there’s a deep human drive for a feeling of self-esteem or competence, this feeling of competence is almost never assessed on its own: we are social beings at the core, and as such our sense of competence appears to be deeply connected to others around us. Self-esteem may not be an accurate way of understanding this feeling of ‘okayness’, when we actually measure this constantly against others. Instead of self-esteem, we need to start thinking about the more dynamic sense of ‘status’. Status means where are we positioned in relation to those around us: literally where we are in the ‘pecking order’. Your perception of status, and any changes in it, can be a driver of what’s called primary reward or threat. A sense of increasing status can be more rewarding than money, and a sense of decreasing status can feel like your life is in danger. Here’s an excerpt from Your Brain at Work on this whole issue. {snip} Naomi Eisenberger, a leading social neuroscience researcher at UCLA, wanted to understand what goes on in the brain when people feel rejected by others. She designed an experiment that used fMRI to scan the brains of participants as they played a computer game called “Cyberball.” Cyberball harks back to the nastiness of the school playground. “People thought they were playing a ball tossing game over the Internet with two other people,” Eisenberger explained during an interview down the road from her lab. “They could see an avatar that represented them, and avatars for two other people. Then, about half way through this game of toss between the three of them, they stop receiving the ball and the other players throw the ball only to each other.” This experiment generates intense emotions for most people. Eisenberger says, “What we found is that when people were excluded, you see activity in the dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate cortex, which is the neural region that’s also involved in the distressing component of pain, or what sometimes people call the “suffering component” of pain. Those people who felt the most rejected had the highest levels of activity in this region.” Psychology Today
Fear of exclusion enforces altruism. But altruism itself can be hacked.
For example, if I become a philanthropist and give away lots of money in a very public way, while using the goodwill engendered to get people to look the other way while I do sketchy things on the side, I’ve hacked altruism. The altruism represented 10% of my wealth, and the 90% came from invisible (to most people, who aren’t going to go out of their way to look) bad deeds.
Slowly, however, people are starting to study how the guilt/altruism cycle replaces our desire to perceive reality with a knee-jerk instinct to placate others through potlatch:
Current work on cooperation is focused on the theory of reciprocal altruism. However, reciprocity is just one way of getting a return on an investment in altruism and is difficult to apply to many examples. Reciprocity theory addresses how animals respond dynamically to others so as to cooperate without being exploited. I discuss how introducing differences in individual generosity together with partner choice into models of reciprocity can lead to an escalation in altruistic behaviour. Individuals may compete for the most altruistic partners and non-altruists may become ostracized. I refer to this phenomenon as competitive altruism and propose that it can represent a move away from the dynamic responsiveness of reciprocity. Altruism may be rewarded in kind, but rewards may be indirectly accrued or may not involve the return of altruism at all, for example if altruists tend to be chosen as mates. This variety makes the idea of competitive altruism relevant to behaviours which cannot be explained by reciprocity. I consider whether altruism might act as a signal of quality, as proposed by the handicap principle. I suggest that altruistic acts could make particularly effective signals because of the inherent benefits to receivers. I consider how reciprocity and competitive altruism are related and how they may be distinguished. PubMed
None of this will be taboo research, but if we start to apply it to our thinking about how this impulse controls our socialization, economics, politics and even thinking — because it exists at a layer of thought and assumption below our conscious minds — we start to see it as a virus or other parasitic entity, because it manipulates us so that it may live on, oblivious to the consequences to us:
To relate this condition to the prisoner’s dilemma, an individual may benefit the most in a one-time interaction with another by defecting (i.e. receiving benefits without incurring any cost to itself). However, in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, where individuals interact more than once, if the act of defecting makes the individual less likely to attract a fit mate in the future, then cooperative behavior will be selected for.[1] This selection for cooperation is even stronger if an individual’s action in an interaction is observed by third-party individuals, for the possibility of forming a reputation arises. Amotz Zahavi, famous for his work with the altruistic Arabian babbler, suggests that this level of “social prestige” will affect which individuals interact with one another and how they behave. Wikipedia
Wolfe again, expanding on how the foundation of sociology is a study in a Nietzschean context of how this altruistic, or maybe we should say “politeness,” reciprocal impulse controls what we’re willing to allow ourselves to realize about the world:
When I was in graduate school, I was introduced to this concept of social status in the work of Max Weber, the German sociologist. And the more I thought about it, the more I could see that status was not simply something that was appearances and houses and automobiles, or even ranks in a corporation or that sort of thing. It invaded every single part of life. Every time we go into a room with other people, it’s as if we have a teleprompter in front of us and it’s telling us the history of ourselves versus these people. We can’t even think of thinking without this huge library of good information and bad information. When you get up in the morning, you do not think about triangles and squares and these similes that psychologists have been using for the past 100 years. You think about status. You think about where you are in relation to your peers. You’re thinking about your spouse, about your kids, about your boss. Ninety-nine percent of your time is spent thinking about other people’s thoughts about you, their intentions, and all this kind of stuff. Seed
In postmodern theory, one area of extensive study is the concept of “narrative,” or how we as individuals formulate a story from the third person which explains our motives, their justifications (usually in terms of altruism, because that is 100% universally absolutely accepted, where anything else varies with the audience), and our goals with the intent of having other people understand us and approve. A narrative is how we explain ourselves to the world:
Imagine I show you a list of 30 words. One of the words is written in green ink. The rest are blue. Half an hour goes by and I ask you to recall the words on the list. Which word are you most likely to remember? The one written in green ink, of course. This is the “von Restorff Effect”: Novelty grabs our attention. It’s basic cognitive hardwiring. Journalists don’t zero in on “man bites dog” stories because they’re perverse. They do it because they’re human. … When a story breaks, grabs the media’s attention, and gets people talking, something else happens. The story ceases to be about a single incident. Instead, it creates a narrative. The absence of a narrative means a story must stand or fall on its own. And when a story runs contrary to a narrative, it is positively resisted. The Ottawa Citizen
Another word for narrative is “script,” as in, “since we were looking for guys dressed in black carrying bicycles, he fit right into our script.”
The media uses these means to control you: novelty and its stepchild, negativity — since evolution has primed you to first look for threats — and a script into which all news must fit. We could call that script a “justification,” as we do in our manifesto.
When those who have money and power want you to jump, they make a few calls to their friends and business associates. They put out the meme: X is the new threat, or Y is another instance of the current script of threats, whether it be global warming, hackers, racists, Satanists or godless Communism.
That’s how you keep a nation in line when they don’t have much in common as far as ideologies, values, etc. go. You manipulate them with carrot and stick: we free, they bad.
Much as democracy relies on having a horde of people who don’t read or think very deeply about issues, modern society relies on useful idiots to bleat out that the sky is falling any time such a meme comes around.
How does this relate to history at large? Well, as recent research points out, social attitudes shape genetics, and so a culture that chose, say, altruism over competence — picking flattering and conflict-avoiding people to those who want to get the right answer and don’t care who gets upset — might literally breed themselves into docility and lose the ability to solve problems, because they reward those who are docile with better chances of breeding, better jobs, better social scenes and more general approval:
Culture, not just genes, can drive evolutionary outcomes, according to a study released Wednesday that compares individualist and group-oriented societies across the globe. Bridging a rarely-crossed border between natural and social sciences, the study looks at the interplay across 29 countries of two sets of data, one genetic and the other cultural. The researchers found that most people in countries widely described as collectivist have a specific mutation within a gene regulating the transport of serotonin, a neurochemical known to profoundly affect mood. {snip} “What we are proposing is that cultural and genetic selection actually operate in tandem, and that you can view human behaviour as a product of culture-gene co-evolution,” she said. AFP
Isn’t that interesting… cultural values determine what genetic combinations are rewarded with reproduction, and as a result, gradually shape the population.
In that view, of course, we’re playing with more than we realize when we look at the importance of not letting a social virus or fashion subvert our values system.
Hear a Tom Wolfe interview about altruism, status and political fashion (coming to us via orgtheory by way of Contexts). Also of note: the Altruism poster designs at Kasia Kaczmarek’s blog.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Jeb Wright of Classic Rock Revisited recently conducted an interview with MOTÖRHEAD mainman Lemmy Kilmister. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Classic Rock Revisited: There are rumors that the next MOTÖRHEAD album will be all covers.
Lemmy: We did discuss it, but we haven't come to a concrete decision on it. It would be fun to do. The three of us are very different when it comes to music, so it would be a very diverse album. We'd make them all into MOTÖRHEAD songs, anyway. We've done covers before.
Classic Rock Revisited: Do you have any new music?
Lemmy: Not yet. We will just go into the studio a month before we do the next album and just write.
Classic Rock Revisited: Even with different musicians in the band you've retained a MOTÖRHEAD sound. After 30, or 40 years, how do you keep from running out of ideas?
Lemmy: I only play one way, so if we have an idea that is outside of that, then, by the time we are finished with it, it sounds like us. We've done off-the-wall stuff, like "1916", and we did "I Ain't No Nice Guy", and we did some tracks that were absolutely not normal for us, but they sounded good.
Classic Rock Revisited: You have your own Lemmy figurine. I understand that you had to pose for it.
Lemmy: They did an all-around thing with the camera, where they went around my entire body so it would be just like me. The funny thing is that they did a gold one, they did a silver one and they did three different natural ones, with different guitars and they did a black one, as well, which seemed a bit strange to me. My face is black; the guitar is black and everything. It was pretty weird.
Classic Rock Revisited: You have been in videos, movies and TV shows; do you like acting?
Lemmy: It is fucking tedious. You have to be there at five in the morning and you have to hang out with fucking actors all day. Then, at four in the afternoon, they say, "Oh, we don't need you today." That's great. I really need more of that in my life, right?
Classic Rock Revisited: You could pass the time better now. You have MOTÖRHEAD beer, wine and vodka.
Lemmy: Soon we will have bourbon.
Classic Rock Revisited: Do you taste test these products?
Lemmy: Yes. I didn't taste the red wine because I don't like that, but I tasted the rosé, the vodka and the whiskey. Most of this stuff is bought by the fans, so it has to be good. There is a review of the wine with people's name on it. They said SLAYER's wasn't bad, but Gene Simmons' was terrible. You get a lock of Gene's hair with every bottle. That's really what you need, isn't it? I think he needs to be holding on to all of the hair he can.
Classic Rock Revisited: How does the classic band compare to the current band? I think the last few studio albums, in some ways, are better than the classics.
Lemmy: This band is tighter, but I don't know if there is as much feel. We were very sloppy before and now we are not sloppy. Then again, sometimes the old band was tight. Any band I've ever had has been very good at timekeeping; we don't vary, very much. We used to jam in the studio to get song ideas, but on stage it was very to formula.
Classic Rock Revisited: You travel the world and see every walk of life there is. Does the injustice in the world get to you and inspire your lyrics?
Lemmy: There is no shortage of injustice in the world, believe me. Look at this country, the medical monster charges people so much when they are ill that people actually commit suicide because they can't pay any bills. People are homeless because they are sick. What the fuck is that? I think that's really weird, don't you?
Classic Rock Revisited: In all seriousness, if you went to the doctor and he said, "Lemmy, you have ruined your liver. Quit drinking or you will die." Would you quit?
Lemmy: Well, you have to, if something like that happens, don't you? You can stop drinking, smoking or doing drugs if you want to. The trouble is that people stop doing something and they don't really want to stop doing it, so they go back to it.
Classic Rock Revisited: At your age, have you outgrown the speed usage?
Lemmy: You'd be surprised. I don't talk about drugs, you know.
Classic Rock Revisited: People often don't understand how easy a touring musician can get drugs.
Lemmy: It's just good old-fashioned greed. The demand is there, so someone will always be around to fulfill it. There is a demand for child porn on the Internet and there is always some bastard that will do it. If somebody wants dope, then someone will bring it to them because they make money at it. The art crowd does as much dope as we do. I don't see anything wrong with smoking a bit of dope, as it has been proven to be fucking harmless. They are always tossing out the dangers of marijuana on TV, it's ridiculous.
Read the entire interview from Classic Rock Revisited.Over the next several weeks, we’re going to learn a lot more about the anthrax case and Bruce E. Ivins, the man the US government believed was the anthrax terrorist. But what we do know so far includes the following:
the targets of the anthrax attacks were progressive Democratic Senators and the media
for 18 years, Ivins was a US Army microbiologist working on biodefense
Ivins was a practicing Catholic
To be sure, Ivins’ profession and his religion aren’t evidence, by themselves, that he was some Bircher. But taken together they don’t exactly paint the picture of some dirty hippie either. And now that it’s pretty clear that Saddam Hussein or some a-rab wasn’t the culprit — despite what John McSame was saying at the time, the fact that Democrats and the media were targeted should at least raise questions about a possible political motive.
Ivins, who was described by an acquaintance as "a pretty religious guy," wrote a series of rather strange letters to his local newspaper over the years, including this gloating note about the outcome of the 2004 election: (h/t Glenn Greenwald)
I read Deborah Carter’s column of Nov. 7, "Election blues," and I have three comments for the good woman, and for everybody else, as well. First, it’s clear that views like hers would put Jesus on that cross again. Second, thy loom and churn best be still, come the Sabbath. Third, you can get on board or get left behind, because that Christian Nation Express is pulling out of the station!
Let’s not jump to conclusions. Ivins’ attorney is maintaining his innocence, and we don’t have all the facts yet. But it’s hard not to wonder, given what we do know so far, if Ivins wasn’t yet another Eric Rudolph, Jim Adkisson or Timothy McVeigh.Misleading presuppositions about the nature of poetry are not just a problem for young readers. Many young poets, however, confuse being deliberately obscure with creating a deeper mystery. Good poets do not deliberately complicate something just to make it harder for a reader to understand. Unfortunately, young readers, and young poets too, are taught to think that this is exactly what poets do. This has, in turn, created certain habits in the writing of contemporary poetry. Bad information about poetry in, bad poetry out, a kind of poetic obscurity feedback loop. It often takes poets a long time to unlearn this. Some never do. They continue to write in this way, deliberately obscure and esoteric, because it is a shortcut to being mysterious. The so-called effect of their poems relies on hidden meaning, keeping something away from the reader.
I don’t know what writers of stories, novels and essays eventually discover for themselves, but I can say that sooner or later poets figure out that there are no new ideas, only the same old ones — and that nobody who loves poetry reads it to be impressed, but to experience and feel and understand in ways only poetry can conjure.
I’m sympathetic to young poets who feel a strong impulse to disguise what they’re saying. Early in my life as a poet, I, too, had trouble being direct. I felt self-conscious, as if I needed to demonstrate my talent with the art in every line. It took me a long time to get over this feeling, and it was only when I did that I started to write poetry that was any good.
I see this |
he's creating. So Chance turned on some gospel music—Fred Hammond, Kirk Franklin and Hezekiah Walker in particular—to set the mood. "We just played gospel music so loud," he remembers. "If you know Kanye West, you understand he overdoes it in terms of sound. More speakers and subs than you've ever seen. He plays music really loud. We were shaking these room int he studio with this gospel." (Chance also threw in this little tidbit: "Kanye likes dissonance. You know, chordal dissonance. He likes minor chords and stuff that has a little pain behind it.")
Later in the conversation, they turn to politics, with Chance saying he's "scared" of Donald Trump as a young black man. "Anybody in the world who's surprised by the election of Donald Trump has been ignorant of racism," he says. Asked which rapper would be the best president, Chano picks David Banner.
Towards the end of the interview, Chance also reveals that while many people have mistaken his mixtapes for albums so far, he's now finally working on his official debut studio album.
"I think what I'm working on now is an album," says Chance. "But I think it's also in two parts. I think when I'm making music usually, I'm writing it because I want you to listen to it in the car but I'm also thinking about the day we finally meet and I get to play it for you in front of a bunch of people and we get to sing along. So in part, yeah I want to make an album. My mixtapes have been confused for albums for a long time, so it has to be something different. Something that you could consider an album...it might not be physical, it might not be a disc or something, but an album that comes with its own live show."
Chance has been having a fantastic year. Just a couple weeks ago, his Wayne and Tity Boi collab "No Problem" hit No. 1 on urban radio. He hasn't needed a major record label to get where he's at, and chances are he never will.THE Thorn report into management failures at the University of Limerick makes for sobering reading.
A catalogue of management and governance issues was identified over a period of years that led to a corrosive culture at the heart of the institution.
In an era when hard-working parents are under severe pressure to save - in some cases borrowing the money - to give their children the opportunity of a life-changing university education, public money was being scandalously wasted to fund questionable expenses claims and generous severance payments that breached public service pay guidelines.
Staff who attempted to blow the whistle were silenced.
Other articles in this newspaper have dealt with the report’s myriad findings and recommendations, but we must acknowledge the brave and tireless efforts of Limerick Leader journalists in highlighting many of those issues from an early stage – despite the very serious threats of legal action against them by the university.
Had this newspaper not exposed the litany of problems, there is a good chance that these issues would have continued, and left unchallenged perhaps even grown worse.
While the senior management of the university must take responsibility for the many issues that have emerged in the report, professors and lecturers must share some of the blame for failing to defend the Limerick Leader in pursuing the story.
Under Irish law, university lecturers have a special privilege under Section 14.2 of the Universities Act to be critical, to challenge consensus, to shine a light in dark places, and to call out hypocrisy and wrongdoing.
It is commonly known as “academic freedom”.
The university also has a hard-won reputation for its fine journalism programmes. Recent UL graduates working as journalists include Pamela Duncan at The Guardian in London, Hilary McGann at CNN, Wayne O’Connor at the Irish Independent and Fintan Walsh at the Limerick Leader.
But the sad reality is that while many lecturers and professors stood on podiums and pontificated to students about notions of media and democratic accountability, few of them publicly criticised the university for its own failings.
Not one publicly supported the Limerick Leader when it was threatened with legal action.
While junior members of staff on precarious contracts could not be expected to lead the charge, senior academics have been found wanting when it came to standing up for democracy and press freedom. There is no doubt that the reputation of the institution has been severely dented.
Some of what has come to light could have been prevented, and certainly could have defused much earlier, if mistakes were acknowledged earlier.
Instead, the university took the sinister decision to sue the Limerick Leader to try to silence the truth.
The attempt to muzzle the Leader by launching legal action against both the paper and personally against its editor was reprehensible. These sort of bullyboy threats are unfortunately all too common in Irish journalism.
So say nothing and you’ll be fine. Tell the truth and we’ll come after you.
Local newspapers are particularly susceptible to these pressures as the business model to support local journalism is under severe stress. Fewer people are paying for the quality journalism you will read today in this newspaper.
That means there is less money available to support reporters to do their jobs.
Bullying of our democratic principles should never be allowed. The fact that this was undertaken by a university charged with educating the next generation of doctors, scientists, teachers, public servants and journalists is truly shocking and appalling.
Thankfully, the tactic didn’t work and we are a better democracy and a better society today because of the Limerick Leader and the fine work of journalists like Anne Sheridan and Alan English. We owe them a huge debt of thanks.
Their relentless pursuit of this story has exposed a corroded ethos at the heart of the most important educational and cultural institution in the Mid-West.
The final report into the long and complicated series of events is complex. In some cases the issues were systemic, in some cases poor management practice has been identified, in other cases failures of governance and oversight uncovered. In more cases there was a failure to manage inter-personal difficulties between staff.
These sorts of issues are not unusual in the Irish public service, or in large institutions.
Rather than deal with the issues, the instinct of senior managers was to cover things up. We know that the gardai, the Catholic Church and many other institutions had the same initial instincts. When challenged, they circle the wagons, put their heads in the sand or use attack as the best form of defence.
Now that the truth has been uncovered, the university has the opportunity to move on, to regain the trust of the local community and its many stakeholders, to be more transparent, open and accountable in its operations, and to strengthen its management team, especially in areas that have been identified in the report.
Under UL’s highly respected and impressive new president, Dr Des Fitzgerald, much of this work has already begun.
Truth is uncomfortable but we all benefit from full transparency and accountability. The University of Limerick has been damaged by this sorry saga, but it will recover, stronger and better as a result of being held accountable by Limerick Leader journalism.
- Tom Felle is a senior lecturer in journalism at City, University of London. He is a graduate of the University of Limerick and was a lecturer and Head of Journalism at UL between 2009 and 2013ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday upheld the conviction of Mumtaz Qadri, the killer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer, under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
A two member bench comprising Justice Noorul Haq Qureshi and Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui dismissed the appeal.
The bench had reserved the judgment on Feb 11 after Advocate General Islamabad Mian Abdul Rauf, the prosecutor in the case, and Qadri’s counsels, including former Lahore High Court chief justice Khawaja Mohammad Sharif and retired Justice Mian Nazeer – concluded their arguments.
The ruling by IHC was a surprise to many who had expected the killer's sentence might be reduced amid growing threats to lawyers and judges hearing blasphemy-related cases.
Death sentence remains, 7 ATA void
In Oct 2011, an anti-terrorist court (ATC) in Rawalpindi had sentenced Qadri to death on two counts under section 302 PPC and 7 Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) for killing Taseer. Following the sentencing, Qadri's counsels had challenged the ATC's decision through two applications the same month.
Read: Mumtaz Qadri files appeal against death penalty
The first petition had demanded that Qadri's death sentence should be quashed and the second asked for Section 7 of the ATA to be declared void from the sentencing.
In its ruling on the appeal today, the IHC rejected Qadri's application against his death sentence under the PPC but accepted his application to void ATA's Section 7.
Qadri's counsels have planned to challenge IHC's decision to uphold his death penalty in the Supreme Court.
Know more: Legal and moral abyss
With the removal of Section 7, Qadri may still face the death sentence but will likely not be executed. Although the government has recently done away with the moratorium on capital punishment, the hangings since then have been those of terror convicts only.
With the acceptance of Qadri's plea demanding the exclusion of anti-terror clauses, the case is open to go for a retrial in a sessions court.
Take a look: How could Qadri declare Taseer a blasphemer, IHC asks defence
In light of today's verdict, security around the IHC had been tightened and paths leading to the court had been sealed with barbed wires due to the sensitive nature of the case. Unauthorised personnel were also barred from entering the court.
Qadri, a former commando of Punjab police’s Elite Force, was sentenced to death for assassinating former Punjab governor Salman Taseer in Islamabad’s Kohsar Market. Qadri said he killed Taseer over the politician's vocal opposition to the country's harsh blasphemy laws.
Read more: Qadri sentenced to death for killing Taseer
He had confessed to shooting Taseer dead outside an upmarket coffee shop close to the latter's residence in the capital on Jan 4.
Also read: Mumtaz Qadri, Prison King
The killing highlighted a growing gulf between conservatives and more liberal elements in society.
Qadri is viewed as a hero by many people who thought Taseer himself was a blasphemer by calling for the law's reform.
Some lawyers threw rose petals at Qadri when he arrived in court days after the killing. The judge who convicted Qadri was forced to flee the country after death threats.
Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan where 97 per cent of the population is Muslim and unproven claims regularly lead to mob violence.Project 86 have November square in their sights for their new album, 'Knives to the Future,' but in the meantime they've unleashed the disc's title track exclusively here at Loudwire (listen below).
The hard-hitting tune has a tribal beat to it as the song propels forward. Meanwhile, frontman Andrew Schwab doesn't hold back, unleashing some primal vocals on listeners.
The frontman tells Loudwire of the track, "Conceptually, this is a song about embracing your past, for better or worse, and realizing you do not have to be defined by it. It is about greeting what lies ahead without fear or shame. Prepared, we brace for anything that comes in our paths."
As stated, 'Knives to the Future' is the title track to the band's next album. Project 86 used an Indiegogo campaign to help offset the costs of the disc and nearly doubled their chosen goal. The band laid down 12 tracks for the album, along four additional acoustic bonus tracks, and Schwab is proud of what Project 86 have accomplished on their new album.
"The album is about a search for truth and destiny through rediscovering secrets hidden in your past," says Schwab. "Sonically it is heavy, deeply emotional, desperate, and very personal. I'm very proud of what has been accomplished both with the fans and the music in this recent chapter."
'Knives to the Future' is due Nov. 11, with pre-orders available at this location. You can also look for Project 86 returning to the road and Schwab is plotting a new companion workbook for 'The Tin Soldiers' along with a 3-song digital single for his new electronic project, London Six Echo. Check out Project 86's 'Knives to the Future' title track below.(Photo by Victor Tan / New Day Review)
Sept. 20, 2017 at Sylvan Lake Park
Availability: HC Anthony Pulis, CB Conor Donovan
Orlando City B return home after a road game against Saint Louis FC on Sept. 16 to play the No. 3 Charleston Battery on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
So far this season, Charleston third-best goal differential in the Eastern Conference and the seventh-best in all the United Soccer League (+13).
HC ANTHONY PULIS: “Probably the most athletic team in the league. They’ve got a lot of size. Very dangerous off set pieces. And they’re a counterattacking team. Lots of pace in forward areas. They’ve got two wide players that are dangerous in 1-v-1 situations. Forwards that can stretch the defense if you’re not switched on, so it’s important we defend properly, but also we—I mean, we’ve come up against them a number of times over the years, so we kinda have a good idea of what they’re gonna be about, and they’re probably the same as us.” CB CONOR DONOVAN: “Yeah, I mean, it’s gonna be a massive game. I mean, every game, from here on, is gonna be huge with playoff implications, but Charleston’s a good team. They got a lot of good forwards and a lot of good attacking players, and, I mean, their record speaks for themselves. It’s gonna be a tough game, and I think every game in the [United Soccer League’s] been tough this year, and it’s a lot of good competition, but it’s a massive game for us.”
OCB are coming off a two-game losing streak after enjoying a 12-game unbeaten streak that lasted from June 23 to Sept. 7.
The USL Lions are currently in the eighth and final USL playoff position but only hold a one-point lead over Bethlehem Steel FC and the Pittsburgh Riverhounds and a two-point lead over Saint Louis FC.
HC ANTHONY PULIS: “Yeah, it’s—I mean, we’ve had a look at [the standings], obviously. And you try not to spend too much time looking at it, and I think we’ve kind of communicated that message with the players as well ’cause it’s about us, at the end of the day. It’s about what we do, and we need to obviously see if we can pick some points up between now and the end of the season over the remaining four games. And if we can perform like we did on Saturday against Saint Louis [FC], then we won’t have any complaints from me.” “Well, the message that I’m always communicating with the players is you don’t get too high when you win, and, by the same token, you don’t get too low when you lose. So, for me, it’s about being on an even keel, and we prepare the guys exactly the same for every game. We approach training with the same mentality, and once we finished the video debrief yesterday on the Saint Louis game, a line was drawn under that game, and the focus was straight on Charleston and, first and foremost, making sure that we train properly this week and we have four really good, bright, intense days of training. See what personnel we get from [Orlando City SC head coach Jason Kreis] and his staff. Hope we find out this afternoon, and then we go from there.” CB CONOR DONOVAN: “I just think get back to basics. Obviously, the last two losses were tough, but I think once we get back to just defending and keeping the ball a little bit better and just be more aggressive going forward, and I think we’ll be alright. I think, I mean, we’ve had a decent performance last game, and we just gotta keep building on that.”
Since first-team goalkeeper Josh Saunders’ season-ending neck injury, OCB goalkeeper Jake Fenlason has relinquished Earl Edwards Jr. of his position, allowing the latter to serve as Joe Bendik’s back-up for the club’s first team.
season-ending neck injury, OCB goalkeeper has relinquished of his position, allowing the latter to serve as back-up for the club’s first team. Despite not having played for OCB in about a month, Edwards Jr. is still tied for fifth in saves with 75.
Fenlason posted a 3-0 shutout with eight saves against Louisville City FC on Aug. 26.
HC ANTHONY PULIS: “Jake’s slotted in fine. I don’t think he’s had a great deal to do, in my opinion, in the games he’s played. I think he did well at Louisville [City FC] and made some good saves and got the shutout that he deserved in that game. The other two games, he’s obviously conceded the goals, but I don’t think it was an awful lot he could’ve done about them. I think it was more so making sure that the guys in front did a better job to stop the ball getting there. But I think he’s [inserted] himself fine, which we knew he would do.” CB CONOR DONOVAN: “It’s good. I mean, obviously, his first game, we got a shutout, 3-0, and he made team of the week, so I think the transition’s pretty smooth. He’s a good goalkeeper, and, obviously, the way we’ve been working here is to defend the best we can so that [we] make the goalkeeper’s job very easy, but they’ve also—they’ve both have done a really good job backing us up.”
Orlando City and OCB each have five and four games, respectively, remaining in their respective regular seasons.
City will play two road games, starting with the Portland Timbers on Sunday, and will conclude the season with a visit to the Philadelphia Union.
OCB, on the other hand, will play three of their last four regular-season matches at home with the lone away game being a visit to the Richmond Kickers.
HC ANTHONY PULIS: “I mean, not at the moment [have Kreis and I spoken about Major League Soccer players joining OCB for the remaining regular-season games] because, obviously, the MLS has still got games themselves. They’ve got a tough stretch this week. They play Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday. So, obviously, Jason’s gonna need a certain amount of players. Hopefully we’ll probably have a conversation this afternoon and take it from there.”
For more on OCB, as they try to stay in position for the playoffs, follow Victor Tan on Twitter at @NDR_VictorTan.Last week, I came across this story from the Telegraph. In the U.K., a coalition of liberal churches, educational and secular groups including the British Humanist Association are calling on the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, to scrap a law which forces British schools to hold mandatory religious services for all their pupils.
The 1944 Education Act and its amendments require British secondary schools to hold a daily assembly of all students for Christian worship. A student’s parents can choose to opt them out, but students can’t opt out on their own. At least, this is the letter of the law; the article notes that many schools already ignore the rule because they don’t have the time. And good for them, I say – why should valuable educational time be wasted on mandatory religious instruction when there are important subjects to teach?
Under these circumstances, the call for repealing the law is largely a fait accompli. Even so, the U.K.’s churches are adamant about not giving up their special privileges:
Any move to scrap the rules would be strongly resisted by the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church.
A CofE spokesman said: “To get rid of the act of worship is to deny children the opportunity to experience something they wouldn’t experience elsewhere in their lives.”
This is a telling admission, isn’t it? It’s basically saying that the church wants to get its hands even on children whose parents haven’t decided to give them a religious upbringing. This should be the decision of the family, not the state. If a student’s parents didn’t choose to raise their child with religion, what makes the church think it has the right to step in and demand that the child be forced to attend church services anyway?
This is the start of a trend we can expect to see throughout Europe in the coming decades. As church attendance plummets, religious organizations will cling even more tightly to the special privileges they were once granted, trying to squeeze the last drops of devotion out of a populace that increasingly finds them outdated and irrelevant.
In the U.S., meanwhile, defenders of secularism still have to battle even the politicians who should be our allies. This editorial from the Times points out that President Obama has conspicuously failed to keep one of his most important campaign promises regarding church-state separation:
Federal funding for church-run charities was once reserved to well-organized, experienced organizations that both hired employees and served the needy without regard to religious beliefs. But the Bush administration, in a thinly disguised vote-buying scheme dubbed the “faith-based initiative”, threw open the floodgates to every storefront church with its hand out. Worse, Bush administration lawyers advanced the ludicrous claim that these groups could take public money, then turn around and discriminate against people who didn’t share their religion – a total reversal of decades of progress in civil rights. Even worse, a right-wing Supreme Court then slammed the door in freethinkers’ faces by ruling that no one has the right to sue over how this money is distributed, even if it’s done in ways that violate the First Amendment.
Unfortunately, in American politics, it’s much easier to prevent an entitlement from passing than to dismantle it once it’s passed. I’m sure that Obama is continuing the program for the same reason Bush started it, as a means of bribing churchgoers to vote for him and distributing favors to cooperative pastors. The biggest problem with this is Obama’s misguided belief that he’ll ever win anything from the right-wing lunatic sects. The fundamentalists will never support Obama; even if he buried their churches in federal dollars, the only reward he’d get would be their continued undying hatred. They’ll continue to do everything in their power to oppose and undermine him, and American taxpayers will continue to be on the hook for these wasteful and illegal giveaways.The US Congress championed the creation of NASA's Space Launch System rocket in 2010, at which time its members also successfully beat back an effort by the Obama administration to end support for the Orion spacecraft. Since then, Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate have patiently spent $3 billion to $4 billion annually for continued development of these deep space vehicles.
However, in recent years the projected launch date of the first flight of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft has slipped to the right, from 2017 to 2018 and now likely into mid-2020. While overall support remains strong for these space vehicles, delays in their development may have begun to break the almost uniform congressional approbation for these exploration programs.
During a hearing Thursday before a House subcommittee over NASA, some of those concerns spilled into the public. "It is very disappointing to hear about delays caused by poor execution when the US taxpayer has invested so much in these programs," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. "NASA and the contractors should not assume future delays and cost overruns will have no consequences."
Smith, who recently announced that this will be his last term in Congress, perhaps felt more free to discuss his concerns about the delays in work being done by NASA and its large contractors, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Aerojet, and others on the SLS and Orion programs. "That confidence is ebbing," he said of congressional faith in NASA's exploration systems. "If it slips much further, NASA and the contractors will have a hard time regaining their credibility."
Commercial solutions?
The Texas congressman also tiptoed around an issue that, until now, lawmakers have almost never mentioned in public: SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance are all developing competitive launch vehicles that would be useful for a lunar surface program. SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is also being built with a heat shield capable of returning from the Moon, much like NASA's own much more expensive Orion spacecraft.
"Alternatives to SLS and Orion almost certainly would involve significant taxpayer funding and lead to further delays," Smith said during his prepared remarks. "But the more setbacks SLS and Orion face, the more support builds for other options."
The chairman of the subcommittee, another Texas Republican, Brian Babin, did not go as far as Smith in his criticism of NASA. But he, too, said the space agency must now execute on its program. "Failure to do so could have dire consequences for the program, and there will be no one else to blame," Babin said. "The administration has demonstrated its renewed support. Congress consistently funds the program at healthy levels. It is time for NASA and the contractors to deliver."
Both of the witnesses at Thursday's hearing, NASA's chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, and the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sandy Magnus, defended the status quo. They urged Congress to stay the course with NASA and continue to fund the program between now and 2023, when the first crewed flight of SLS and Orion may take place.
"I repeat, because this is critical, to be successful in our space endeavors it is imperative that we commit, as a nation, with a constancy of purpose for the long term—it is the nature of the space business that it takes time, patience, and constant purpose to make advancements," Magnus said.One question I hear a lot is “Why didn’t my spell work?” and while there could be many, many reasons why a spell didn’t work my answer is generally not about any of those reasons. Unless there is clear evidence of a spell backfiring or flat out not working for some identifiable reason I assume that a spell has always, on some level, worked.
Even if it did not result in the desired outcome.
Say what?!
I know, it sounds a tad absurd but bear with me. It’s time for a little magic theory.
How The Odds Affect Your Spells
When we cast spells what we’re doing is increasing the probability that the particular outcome that we’re seeking will happen.
What does that mean?
To take a common example, say you want to win the lottery so you decide to do a spell to help you win. Who doesn’t want to win the lottery? And you’ve got the magic to back it up! It’s a sure thing, right? As much as I would love for that to be the case, it’s not so.
Your chances of winning the lottery without the help of magic is 1 in 175 million. Pretty terrible odds, huh?
So you do your spell and if your spell is just insanely effective and it full on doubles your chances of winning you’d still only have a 1 in 87.5 million chance of winning. Those are still really terrible odds and sadly, you’re still not going to win.
So of course, you don’t win and you think your spell didn’t work when in fact your spell was quite effective!
This concept applies to all magic and often it’s necessary to take this into account when deciding how to pursue a desired effect.
You always want to play your odds right when using witchcraft.
There are two ways of doing this. The first is through boosting your odds.
If you’re looking to produce a desired effect but your chances of this effect occurring naturally are slim to none? It might be time to find a way to supplement the magic.
What do I mean by that?
If, for example, you do a spell to get a job but don’t put yourself in a position to be offered a job your chances of getting that job are basically zero. Sure, you could just so happen to meet that one person who's looking to hire for that one position that you’re perfect for but in all likelihood that’s just not going to happen.
Instead you supplement the job spell by going out and applying for jobs, chatting with potential employers and so forth. This gives you a reasonable chance of getting a job and allows the magic room to work. Now the spell has a whole slew of avenues to use and your chances of getting a job start looking way better.
The second way to play your odds right in your spell work is to be unspecific.
Now this flies in the face of a lot of magical advice so let me be clear, this is not a good method to use for everything. If the spell could potentially cause unwanted effects or leak out onto people you didn't intend it to affect, being specific can be a lifesaver.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s the only ethical method available.
Love spells are a particularly good example of this. Many witches consider love spells that are meant to make a specific person love you highly unethical. Essentially this is overriding their consent and forcing them into an emotional state and potentially a relationship that they don’t want. In this case the ONLY ethical way to go is to be unspecific!
Being unspecific allows you the major advantage of having many available paths for your magic to take.
When not directed otherwise a spell will always take the path of least resistance.
Being specific narrows the field of focus, occasionally down to a single path, and if the probability of that path leading to the result you want is very low to begin with your chances may not improve enough with magic to give you the result you want.
A less specific spell means that your spell has many paths to choose from! In all likelihood, one of these paths will have a much higher probability of resulting in the desired effect and that is the path that your spell will naturally seek out.
Due to this the results of spells will often seem rather mundane. Occasionally you will find yourself with improbable results that are clearly the work of your spell but more often than not (especially for beginners) your spells will have a clearly defined logical path that may not seem much like magic at all!
Often if something can be explained logically then any magical involvement is discounted. This assumption is overlooking one of the primary constraints on the reaches of magic though:
Magic must obey the laws of our universe.
You cannot defy the laws of physics with magic. We can’t make things zip across the room. We can’t create something out of nothing. There will always be some sort of logical explanation as to how something has happened.
Does that mean that it isn’t magic? Of course not!
The presence of scientific explanation does not invalidate magic. It simply means that your magic works hand in hand with the world around you to create the outcome you were looking for.
This is a GOOD thing!
As magic becomes more improbable it starts to require more and more energy to function effectively. Forcing a person to act entirely against their nature is hard, it requires a lot of magical coercion and a whole lot of your energy.
In contrast, if your spell is designed to find a person who is already willing to take the actions you desire and just start that ball rolling it would be significantly easier and require a far more manageable amount of energy output on your part.
Each of these aspects helps create a complex system of things to consider, choosing how you navigate all of the choices involved in balancing these concepts can be overwhelming at first.
As you practice and gain experience you’ll find that you develop a natural sense of how you like to make use of the various ins and outs of magic but for now here’s a quick recap to keep in mind when you’re doing spellwork.The race for the Democratic National Committee Chairperson is very important.
In case you haven’t been following it, there are many candidates running, but only two major contenders: Keith Ellison, Democratic Congressman from Minnesota’s 5th congressional district for 10 years straight, and Tom Perez, the Secretary of Labor from the Obama Administration. The winner of the race, who will be chosen during the weekend of February 24 by 447 party insiders, will run fundraising, outreach, and primary processes for the Democratic Party over the next several years.
Overall, Ellison has stronger social justice credentials than Perez – he’s been an active Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has put forward some of the most progressive economic justice legislation in Congress during his time there. He’s been a staunch advocate for unions, was an early supporter of a $15 minimum wage, and was an early opponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other trade deals that are more about enriching multinational corporations than promoting the free exchange of goods and services. His voting record on women’s rights, LGBT rights, anti-racist policy – you name it – is excellent. And before coming to Congress, Ellison worked in civil rights and employment law.
But Perez deserves a fair bit of credit for his record, too. As the Labor Secretary, Perez went after companies that stole from their workers, embraced policies that would raise the pay of and increase opportunities for members of underserved groups to become federal employees and contractors, and pushed forward a rule that would reestablish the right to overtime pay for millions of workers. His active support for the TPP is a non-trivial stain on his résumé, but those who believe in social justice should generally like the policies he’s pursued, as others have also noted.
Yet if that’s the case, why is it so important that Ellison wins?
The answer to that question lies in the answer to another: why is Perez even running?
Ellison jumped into the DNC Chair race right after the election (on Monday, November 14). His candidacy made a ton of sense for the party for three main reasons:
– Ellison was one of the few Democrats calling for the party and media to take Donald Trump seriously from the beginning. The clip below, from a panel Ellison did back in July of 2015, is the most striking illustration of the contrast between Ellison’s prescience and the irresponsibility of the vast majority of Establishment media figures and politicians during the course of the 2016 election.
– Ellison was the second congressperson to endorse Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary, and one of only a small handful to have done so at all. Many other federal policymakers also had backgrounds more aligned with Sanders than with Hillary Clinton but backed Clinton anyway, possibly because of some combination of a misguided sense of political pragmatism and a legitimate fear of retribution.
Given that Sanders was much more popular than Clinton among Independents and the most popular primary candidate ever among young people, whose energy and enthusiasm Democrats desperately need in the future, it makes strategic sense for the party to put one of his early supporters in a leadership role. Doing so would suggest that the Democrats, after throwing a ton of institutional weight behind the less electable, less social-justice-oriented candidate (and failing to hold party leaders accountable for their clear violations of the DNC’s charter) en route to squandering the 2016 election, have learned something. It would give hope that the Democrats may run a fairer, more democratic primary process next time, and that those who opposed Clinton needn’t write the party off entirely.
– Once Sanders lost the primary, Ellison helped draft the DNC platform and became an outspoken proponent of voting for Clinton. He campaigned very hard for Clinton between July and November. He showed, in other words, that even though he thinks there is a better path than the one the Democratic Party is currently on, he believes in working within the Democratic Party structure for change.
I would have personally preferred Ellison to not campaign for Clinton, but I respected his choice to do so, and the fact that he did – vociferously – makes him an ideal candidate for party unification. So does the fact that, unlike Sanders, Ellison is Black and Muslim, and his ascendance would diversify Democratic Party leadership, a worthy objective that Clinton fans have long claimed to support. Ellison can potentially bridge the gap between good-faith Clinton and Sanders supporters and grow a bigger Democratic coalition.
Establishment Democrats and big-name donors began attacking Ellison as soon as he declared his interest in being DNC Chair, however. They first complained that chairmanship was a full-time job and that, as a sitting congressman, Ellison wouldn’t have the bandwidth to focus on it. They then inaccurately cast Ellison as an anti-Semite, misconstruing a 2010 speech he gave and condemnations of White supremacy and Israeli policy that he made twenty-five years ago. Ellison soon thereafter declared that he would resign from Congress and become DNC Chair full-time if he wins the race, and he has repeatedly proven allegations of anti-Semitism false, but no matter; the Clinton/Obama apparatus wanted a challenger, and when Howard Dean didn’t pan out, they pressured Perez to step in. He formally entered the race on December 15.
Perez has presented little that looks different from what Ellison has proposed, and nobody has offered a coherent explanation for why they think he’d do a better job leading the party than Ellison would. Endorsements of Perez, like the one Joe Biden just made, have just highlighted personal details about him and included vague statements that could at least as easily apply to Ellison. It’s thus hard to understand why Perez would have thrown his hat into the DNC Chair race (as opposed to the Maryland gubernatorial race) if not to maintain the Democratic Party’s current power structure. The message to those who supported Sanders and want the party to embrace full-scale social and economic justice – many of whom are already upset that Perez pushed some of the Clinton campaign’s disingenuous attacks on Sanders behind the scenes during the primary – seems to be that they’re still expected to fall in line and support whatever the party Establishment decides.
An Ellison victory wouldn’t by itself bring the change the party needs – not by a long shot – and even if he wins, social justice advocates will need to push him on several issues. Maybe in part to try to forestall attacks from Democrats who will be making the DNC Chair decision, he’s embraced some worrisome positions. Ellison has endorsed the corporate candidate over the Bernie supporter in a recent race for Florida Democratic Chair, criticized the peaceful Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against the oppressive policies of the Israeli government, softened on his previous commitment to banning lobbyist contributions to the DNC, and promoted some election postmortems that deserve considerably more skepticism. But Ellison has a strong record overall and would bring a real possibility for regime change, a commitment to grassroots activism, and a new kind of Democratic Party politics. As Sanders said following Biden’s endorsement of Perez (who Sanders likes and expressed respect for), the race for DNC Chair is about whether the Democratic Party “stay[s] with a failed status |
of Turin and Dr Tite of the British Museum. The scientists from the carbon-dating laboratories were not involved. The labs used different cleaning procedures, control samples were used to test their calibration, some tests were performed blind, that is scientists didn't know if they were testing the shroud sample or a control sample and none of their results were compared until all three labs had completed testing. The results from the three independent laboratories were'mutually compatible', i.e., they independently obtained similar dates. Let's look at the testing conspiracies first. The only time that the test tube samples were together and relatively unobserved was when the Archbishop of Turin was packaging them. Once they were sent to the labs, altering the sample at one lab wouldn't affect the samples at the other two labs. Since all three labs reached the same result, they obviously all had the same sample, so a fake medieval sample would have had to be planted when all three test tubes were together. So if there was a switch, it was performed by or at least observed by the Archbishop of Turin. I think you'll agree that this is highly unlikely. As for bets being placed ahead of time by the scientists, I haven't struck this one before, but even if true it sounds innocent enough to me. People place bets on horse races all the time, but we shouldn't infer from this that they have illegally rigged the outcome. I would suspect that many scientists of STURP would bet that the shroud is authentic, does this mean that they have also falsified their scientific results? In fact before they even examined the shroud, some STURP scientists went on record with statements such as "I am forced to conclude that the image was formed by a burst of radiant energy — light if you will. I think there is no question about that." This shows that they had reached a conclusion before their tests even begun, hardly the view of objective scientists. It's important to note that no reputable pro-shroud advocate in their numerous books and websites make any of these unsubstantiated accusations towards the scientists. None question the integrity of the laboratories. None accuse the labs of conspiracy, of fraud, of reneging on agreed protocols. Could the 1532 Chambery fire have effected the dating? The answer is an unequivocal no. Dr McCrone, a shroud researcher, has described this suggestion as 'ludicrous'. While the addition of biological contaminants could theoretically skew the result, Dr McCrone has calculated that carbon nearly twice the weigh of the shroud would have to be added. The 20 lb. shroud would need nearly 40 lbs. of contaminants to be added to shift a date 1300 years, from the 1st century to the 14th century. Even the untrained eye would notice 40 lbs of crud on the shroud. Also all three labs thoroughly cleaned their samples before testing, using different methods. The most unbelievable aspect of this claim though, is that by the most amazing and miraculous of coincidences, even after the labs supposedly cleaned off varying amounts of contamination, they all still returned a 14th century date. Are we expected to believe that the fire modified the fabric by just the right amount to give a date that matched the shroud's documented origin? It would be bad enough, in the eyes of shroud supporters, if the fire caused a date slightly later than the 1st century, but to give a date that matched its first appearance in the 14th century is a disaster. How unlucky! As for bacteria on the shroud not being properly cleaned off, and thus skewing the date, this explanation fails for the same reasons that the fire of 1532 fails. The amount of bacteria required is unrealistic, it could not pass unnoticed and the samples were all expertly cleaned, using different methods. If the cleaning methods used were inefficient as claimed, all three labs should still have cleaned off varying amounts of bacteria, even if nowhere near enough to give an accurate test. Thus the three labs should have all returned different dates, since they were measuring different amounts of bacteria. Yet they didn't. Like the fire scenario, it seems the bacteria all conspired to return the most damaging date possible, the 14th century appearance of the shroud. The most recent 'explanation' by shroud proponents for the 'wrong' date is that the sample removed from the shroud for testing was a patch. There's no denying that the shroud has been patched during its existence, especially after the 1532 fire. In it's early days some people even deliberately tried to damage it to prove that the burial cloth of their Lord Jesus Christ was indestructible. They were wrong. There's also no denying that most of these patches stand out like squares on a patchwork quilt. The contention is that the sample returned a 14th century date because it was not part of the original shroud linen, but part of a medieval patch. The carbon dating was 100% accurate. The mistake was made in selecting the sample. While this is of course plausible, there are several reasons to doubt this version of events. For one the Vatican had already examined the shroud over many years. They knew the shroud's surface intimately. The STURP scientists had also conducted their extensive examination of the shroud. The Vatican had already cut a sample from the shroud for examination by a textile expert called Raes, and this piece was not revealed as a patch. This fact is important because the carbon dating sample was taken from exactly the same area. It was only after consultation between the Vatican, scientists and textile experts that the sample area was agreed on. Everyone was well aware that they had to avoid patched areas. None of these groups, least of all the Vatican, would have permitted the sample to be taken from an area that wasn't thought to be the original material. Some people have since said that the scientists were incompetent, that they rushed the sample taking or that they deliberately chose a patch, knowing it would give a medieval date. But as I've said, the scientists didn't make the choice alone, they didn't take the actual sample and the Vatican fully supported the choice. No one expressed any doubts at the time. Only after the 'wrong' date was arrived at and their theories on bio-contamination were debunked did shroud supporters start looking at the possibility of a flawed sample. They now insist that you can't tell it's a patch, even under a microscope, because the medieval repairers employed 'invisible reweaving'. Obviously this skill of 'invisible reweaving' was lost by the time of the 1532 fire repairs in 1534, which appear very amateurish. Shroud proponents' claim that medieval artisans were too stupid to make the shroud but at the same time had this unknown weaving skill that is impossible to achieve today. The only real support for the patch theory comes from the late Ray Rogers, a retired chemist and also director of chemical research for STURP. In his home laboratory he performed some controversial tests on two threads he claims came from the carbon dating sample, stating they differ from the rest of the shroud which he has dated between 1000 BC and 700 CE. He achieved his dating using an imprecise, unproven scientific method involving the measurements of carbohydrates such as vanillin. A method that was not calibrated and that used no control samples. Needless to say the scientific community do not support his results or methods. While it is possible that the sample was a patch, there is no convincing evidence to support or even suggest this. Thus there is no evidence to suggest that the carbon dating result is flawed. There was no scientific conspiracy, the 1532 fire and/or devious bacteria didn't contaminate the sample, and Rogers' claim that the sample was a medieval patch is weak in the extreme. The Vatican's scientists would have never permitted a doubtful sample to be taken. One other problem with this tact is that if these challenges to the carbon dating results were valid — and shroud proponents believe they are — then they would apply no matter what date was returned. Even if a 1st century date were returned, shroud proponents would in all honesty have to state that they still can't accept it as accurate. The possibly of the fire and/or bacteria affecting the result would still exist. Perhaps this contamination was skewing the result and the shroud was older still, perhaps around 1300 BC. Likewise the patch problem could still exist but in reverse. A medieval shroud was patched with a piece of genuine 1st century cloth. You can't say the problem of contamination no longer exists just because carbon dating returns the date you were hoping for — the 1st century. If it's possible for the scientists to cheat, it's equally possible for the Vatican to cheat and substitute a sample of 1st century cloth for testing. Thus shroud proponents are in effect saying that they can't rely on carbon dating no matter what date it gives. They would be hypocrites to claim otherwise. But can you really imagine shroud proponents rejecting the 1988 carbon dating tests as inconclusive if they had returned a 1st century date? Can you imagine them mounting these arguments against that result? Neither can I. What about the detail seen in the image? Question: There is so much detail in the Shroud when it comes to the wounds and blood flow of the man on the Shroud. Do you think that a man in this time period (1260-1390) could have possibly created this cloth when at this time so little was known about medical things? This question needs to be examined in two parts. First it's misleading in that it states "as fact" that there is a lot of detail regarding wounds and blood flow on the image that needs to be explained. I would debate this. The blood flows may look realistic when we compare them to someone bleeding on the TV news, but we need to remember that this body was dead. When you die your heart stops and normally no more blood flows from your body, however a corpse can leak blood through an open wound due to gravity. On death blood will pool inside the body, sinking to the lower extremities such as the back or legs depending on how the body is positioned. If there are open wounds at these low points then you may get some blood flow, but you won't likely get blood flowing from wounds on the top of a body that is lying on its back. And since the Bible [John 19:40] indicates that Jesus's burial followed Jewish customs, meaning Joseph of Arimethea would have washed the body, this means that the blood flow onto the shroud must have occurred after it was washed and wrapped. Although contradicting the Bible account, the body shown in the shroud was not washed. Washed or not, evidently there was blood flowing freely from all of Jesus' wounds, not just the lower ones due to gravity, which is difficult to explain. Obviously Jesus would have bled while being tortured and crucified, but once dead the bleeding would have stopped and the exposed blood would have dried. The body was not washed, and the dried blood should not have transferred to the shroud. If the blood hadn't dried by the time Jesus was wrapped in the cloth (unlikely), then this means that while he was being removed from the cross and carried to the tomb, it would have been very difficult for those handling his body not to have smudged and rubbed the blood flows. If you've seen Mel Gibson's sadistic movie 'Passion of the Christ', which the Catholic Church assures us is an accurate portrayal of Jesus' final hours, then you'll remember that Jesus was naked and literally swimming in blood. Carrying a naked, heavy, slippery dead body without touching the blood flows would be impossible. And strangely enough, the shroud image is not covered in blood. Just a little blood to indicate the wounds described in the Bible. Even if by some'miracle' the blood flows were still wet and not disturbed, as soon as you wrapped the body in an absorbent linen cloth, the blood would spread into the material. The detail that is supposedly seen in the image would be lost. Same with the blood from the scalp wound, it should mat the hair, not run in rivulets. Far from being accurate, the blood flows are more like an artist's representation of blood. The only wound that possibly conveys unexpected detail is the one in the wrist. And I say unexpected for someone living in the 21st century, not necessarily unknown detail for someone in the 14th century. The Bible clearly states that on the cross nails were driven though the hands. Most historical literature and paintings have continued with this tradition. Yet we have since re-discovered that nails through the hands will not support the weight of a crucified body. However historical documents have also revealed that many of the victims were actually tied to the crossbar rather than nailed, so perhaps if nails were used as well, they could still go through the hands. Anyway, since we haven't crucified people for centuries, we have forgotten the practical details and simply assumed that the Bible was accurate about the hands. We also arrogantly assume that since we didn't know the true details, then ignorant peasants in the Middle Ages wouldn't have known either. But they lived a lot closer to crucifixion times than we did, so it's quite possible that some people still remembered how it was really done. We need to stop assuming that man in times gone by was intellectually inferior to 21st century man. A similar argument is used for the fact that the image is naked. Paintings from the Middle Ages always show Jesus with some sort of loin cloth, thus, just as with the bit about the nails, it's suggested that medieval artists obviously didn't know he was really naked. However I think you have to be pretty naïve to believe that regardless of how they normally painted him, they didn't know he would have been naked. Crucifixion was a brutal punishment designed to act as an example to others. The Romans had just tortured him and were now killing him, are we expected to believe that they would be concerned about his nudity embarrassing him? His public nakedness would have been part of the punishment. Likewise, just because they normally painted him with nails through the hands didn't mean that they didn't know they should really go through the wrist. The shroud artist may simply have decided to forgo tradition and create a more realistic image, naked and with wounds in the wrist. Of course if you still accept the argument that there is a lot of unexpected detail in the image, you then have to explain why a lot of detail you would expect is actually missing. For example the navel is missing. The body's buttocks, chest and toes "are defined poorly or not at all". The ears are missing. The top of the head is missing. The genitals are not visible. One pro-shroud website article explains this item away with the following: 'The genitalia are not visible because they are covered by a folded modesty cloth by Jewish custom'. What Jewish custom, and why would the body need a'modesty cloth'? It was wrapped from head to toe in an opaque cloth. Also why did the radiation or whatever it was that created the image not penetrate the modesty cloth? The missing genitalia, whether covered by an unnatural posture, magic underwear or simply missing would suggest an artist trying to maintain Jesus Christ's modesty rather than portraying a naked body in a natural posture. And of course, as I've already mentioned, there are evidently serious anatomical problems with the image — "Jesus' face, body, arms, and fingers were unnaturally thin and elongated, one forearm was longer than the other, and his right hand is too long. The man is improbably tall, between 5' 11½" and 6' 2" tall. Jews who lived in the 1st century were much shorter than this." (As someone has commented, if Jesus was really this tall he would have really stood out and there would have been no need for Judas to point him out to the Romans). "The head is disproportionately small for the body, the face unnaturally narrow and the forehead foreshortened, and ears lost. The front and back images, in particular of the head, do not match up precisely, and the back image is longer than the front. The back of the head is wider than the front of the head. The hair is hanging straight down, as if the man was sitting." So there are in fact no medical details revealed in the image that hadn't already been discovered by the Middle Ages. It is simply an attempt to portray a wounded and bleeding body, a rather poor attempt. Rather than describe things that they couldn't have known, they actually got many details wrong. Details that they would have known well. After all, humans have been exposed to the sight of wounded, bleeding and dead bodies for thousands of years. We may be relatively shielded from that today, but in medieval times artisans would have been extremely familiar with blood and dead bodies. History details numerous wars involving close combat with sharp implements, the Inquisition with its judicial torture had already begun and remember also that the Black Death occurred during the 14th century so blood and death would have surrounded those living during this time. They may not have known why blood flowed but they would have been depressing familiar with all manners of horrific wounds and bleeding bodies. So now that we've established the real problems with the image, we move to the second part of the question: 'Do you think that a man in this time period (1260-1390) could have possibly created this cloth when at this time so little was known about medical things?' Since the image is actually quite inaccurate regarding'medical things', the question now becomes: 'Could a man in this time period have possibly created a cloth displaying a'medically inaccurate image?' Obviously the answer is yes. Any fool can create an image that doesn't accurately reflect reality. Since the image displays many details that don't occur naturally, the shroud image can't have formed by being wrapped around a real dead body. Didn't the STURP scientists authenticate the shroud? Question: The STURP group researched the Shroud and discovered that the cloth covered a real human body, the blood stains on the cloth were real blood, the image on the cloth could not have been burned on and the image on the cloth could not have been painted on. What do you think of their findings? The STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) group of scientists examined the shroud in 1978. Unfortunately almost all of these scientists were deeply religious, many were not specialised in the field they investigated and they were actively trying to prove its authenticity. In their book 'Debunked!', physicists Georges Charpak and Henri Broch noted that STURP consisted of 40 scientists, made up of 39 devout believers and 1 agnostic. Knowing that the proportion of believers to agnostics is much different in scientific circles than it is in the general population, they calculated that the odds of selecting a group of 40 scientists at random and achieving this high ratio of believers is 7 chances in 1,000,000,000,000,000. In other words the makeup of this group is stacked and very biased towards authenticating the shroud, and therefore you must take their claims with an extremely large grain of salt. In fact before they even examined the shroud, STURP scientists went on record with statements such as: "I am forced to conclude that the image was formed by a burst of radiant energy — light if you will. I think there is no question about that."
"What better way, if you're a deity, of regenerating faith in a sceptical age, than to leave evidence 2000 years ago that could be defined only by the technology available in that sceptical age."
"The one possible alternative is that the images were created by a burst of radiant light, such as Christ might have produced at the moment of resurrection."
"I believe it through the eyes of faith, and as a scientist I have seen evidence that it could be His shroud." This shows that they had reached a conclusion before their tests even begun, hardly the view of objective scientists. Remember also that the authenticity of the shroud is vastly more important to Christians scientists than it is to secular scientists. So if secular scientists may have been prepared to cheat to discredit the shroud, as suggested by some shroud supporters, then it is equally reasonable to believe that Christian scientists are even more likely to cheat and falsify their results. We are not for a moment suggesting that the STURP group has been in any way dishonest, however all scientists must be continually alert that they don't allow their personal beliefs or desires to unconsciously bias their experimental results. STURP claiming that the cloth covered a real human body and that the alleged stains were real blood does not make it so. Other scientists have claimed just the opposite, that there is no blood on the Shroud: all the forensic tests specific for blood, and only blood, have failed. We've already mentioned that this "real blood" doesn't behave like real blood and that the argument that the cloth covered a real body is also suspect, since there are serious anatomical problems with the image. It's also vitally important to realise that even if there was a real body and real blood on the shroud, whose body was it, whose blood was it? How old is it? Medieval perhaps? An artist could have decided that the best way to represent blood stains was to use real blood and/or a real body. The existence of blood proves nothing as we don't know Jesus' blood group nor do we have a sample of his DNA to compare it with. Even if STURP's results were correct — real body, real blood — this knowledge can in no way be used to connect the shroud with the crucifixion of Jesus. Many hospitals possess cloths that contained real bodies and real blood, but none wrapped Jesus. STURP's claim that the image was not burnt or painted onto the cloth is accepted. However by 'painted on' STURP means that there was no paint or brush strokes detected on the shroud. However other scientists have detected what they believe could be paint pigments. As already mentioned, if the image was created by using a bas-relief technique that was known in the Middle Ages, no burning or brush strokes would be evident. The facts are that STURP did their tests in 1978, with the scientific tools they had available at the time and, importantly, they were unable to date the shroud. Carbon dating in 1988, a more invasive and accurate test, has since dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 CE. I repeat, STURP's conclusions have been superseded. Unlike religion, science is willing to accept more reliable evidence. What about 8th century paintings of the shroud? Question: How would you respond to the fact that certain paintings from the 8th century exist that show the Shroud? I have no knowledge of any paintings from the 8th century that show the shroud. The only picture I'm aware of that allegedly depicts the shroud, prior to 1355 CE, is from a document called the Hungarian Pray Manuscript or Pray Codex, produced between 1192 and 1195. An illustration in this appears to show Jesus being prepared for burial and the shroud after the resurrection, although it takes considerable imagination to see the shroud in the picture (Click image to enlarge). It's claimed that it shows the unusual weave of the cloth, some burn marks, the act of Jesus trying to cover his genitals and the fact that you can't see Jesus' thumbs, just like the shroud. There is the claim that four small circles in this image do match burn marks on the shroud, but why the obsession to show minor burn marks on the cloth that had nothing to do with the crucifixion, and yet omit important details such as the wounds through the wrists and feet of Jesus, in fact there is no sign of blood on the body or the shroud. The hands are shown in the wrong position, and in the shroud image Jesus clearly has a moustache and beard, but not in the manuscript image. We're asked to believe that the artist went out of his way to show the unimportant herringbone pattern weave of the shroud, which isn't at all obvious, and the four small burn marks, but seemingly ignored the important detail the shroud revealed of Jesus. Why bother getting a very minor thing like the linen right, which was evidently common in the Middle Ages, if you're not going to bother showing the right clothes, since the people administering to Jesus are shown dressed in medieval clothes? As for the artist deliberately omitting the thumbs to accurately portray the image on the shroud, supporters neglect to tell us that the man with his hand on the chest of Jesus is also missing a thumb, as is the guy top right and the guy bottom left has five fingers and no thumb. Obviously the artist simply had a problem with drawing hands. There is also a large halo like object around Jesus' head. Why didn't that show up on the shroud image? And Jesus covering his genitals is just another example of artistic modesty. It's actually quite clear that the manuscript doesn't show the shroud, since a simple description of the shroud would be 'a large cloth with the image of a crucified man on it'. Yet the shroud shown in the manuscript is BLANK! Why paint a blank shroud if you're trying to show that the burial shroud of Jesus has his image imprinted on it? The only thing that makes the Shroud of Turin stand out from any other burial shroud is the mysterious image on it. And yet this mysterious image is the very thing that the manuscript neglects to show! It's claimed that they thought the burn marks were important to record for posterity, but evidently they could see no reason to show that the shroud had an image of Jesus on it. Clearly they had no knowledge of it. Can you imagine any modern Christian raving about the Shroud of Turin to someone who had never heard of it and all they talk about is the small burn marks and the herringbone weave of the cloth, and never reveal that it contains a miraculous image of Jesus? Without the image the shroud is just a piece of old cloth. And yet this is exactly what the Hungarian pray manuscript does, they refer to the death and burial of Jesus with pictures and text, but not once do they show an image on the shroud or mention that one could be seen. In fact no where in the text do they mention that the real burial shroud of Jesus, with or without an image, still exists and can be viewed. Why can no one be bothered to mention that this shroud actually still exists until the 14th century? People deceptively insist that this is an accurate representation of the shroud, but what it omits is far more revealing than what it appears to show. The only other image mentioned by shroud proponents is the 'Image of Edessa' (or the Edessa Cloth or the Holy Mandylion). This was an ancient cloth allegedly bearing an image of the face of Jesus. It no longer exists, if it ever did. The legend for this cloth began when Jesus was still alive, and like most legends, this one has been continuously embellished on each retelling. King Abgar of Edessa wrote to Jesus asking for his help, and initially the King only received a letter from Jesus, then the legend changed to one of the disciples bringing him a small cloth bearing the image of Jesus' face. The legend continues to change in certain details, but it important to note that the cloth never shows a full body image, only the face, and this legend actually began when Jesus was still alive, so it can't be referring to a burial cloth. So how do Shroud proponents tie the Shroud of Turin to the 'Image of Edessa'? By suggesting that they are in fact one and the same, even though they all acknowledge that these references to the 'Image of Edessa' always refer to it as an image of the face and never as a full body image. If the Shroud of Turin was known to history as the 'Image of Edessa', this would give the shroud a traceable history from the time of Jesus up until the Middle Ages. Only the face was visible because the shroud was folded up, like a beach towel on a shelf. They want us to believe that for all the centuries that this cloth existed, not one of its owners realised that it was actually a folded, 20 lb, 14 foot piece of linen displaying two full length images of Jesus. None noticed that the image extended beyond the face. Just how stupid to they think these people were, or us if we are to believe this fairytale? Proponents also fail to highlight that painters' representations of the 'Image of Edessa' bear no resemblance to the image on the shroud. While there are references to Jesus and burial cloths prior to the mid-14th century, the Bible for example, there are none that could reasonably be said to depict the Shroud of Turin. The most important and respectable reference, the Bible, actually conflicts utterly with the Shroud of Turin. Thus the shroud does not appear in history before the 14th century. Why do skeptics accept stories about Pontius Pilate but not Jesus? Question: If people claimed this was the burial cloth of Pontius Pilate or any other known historical person, would you believe it to be authentic? The answer to this question as it stands is a simple no. There is nothing about the shroud that matches what we know about Pontius Pilate. As for other people from history, there were a large number crucified that could theoretically have left behind burial cloths. The biblical description of the cloth and the missing historical record can be ignored if this shroud didn't belong to Jesus, but the scientific problems would still exist and would still suggest that it wasn't a 1st century burial cloth. However I suspect that this question is hinting at something else. Many Christians can't understand why skeptics are seemingly quite willing to accept stories about historical figures such as Pontius Pilate, Josephus or Tacitus by reference to historical documents, but then are highly skeptical of stories about Jesus or other biblical figures featured in other historical documents, specifically the Bible. Some Christians suggest that skeptics are not consistent, that we demand a higher standard of evidence for events involving Jesus than we do for other historical figures. This is blatantly incorrect. It needs to be highlighted that historians don't necessarily accept everything they read about people such as Pontius Pilate. The Bible tells us that he supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. Thus Pilate's existence is more widely accepted than his connection with Jesus. What some Christians don't grasp is that historians may be prepared to accept, on rather weak evidence, that Pontius Pilate for example, may have had two children. Pilate having children is perfectly feasible, it doesn't contradict other reports about Pilate or known laws of physics and it doesn't have any real impact on history. Christians then make the unwarranted leap that weakly supported claims about Jesus should also be accepted. If this merely involved the possibility that he ran his own carpentry business before turning to preaching or that he had two brothers, then historians would happily accept these claims as plausible even if there was only weak evidence for them. However the claims that Christians want accepted, based on weak or non-existent evidence, is that Jesus was actually God, that he walked on water, turned water into wine, raised people from the dead, performed numerous miracles and rose from the dead himself after being executed. These are claims that no sane person would accept without extraordinary evidence, yet Christians imply that if these claims were attributed to Pontius Pilate then historians would be more accepting of them, due to different standards. This is utter rubbish. Imagine if an ancient document surfaced that said Pilate could fly like a bird, turn himself invisible and walk through walls. Historians and skeptics would correctly state that there is no evidence that humans can perform these magical feats, that no one else wrote about Pilate possessing these powers and that Pilate himself did not write about it. They would deduce that this one document was a fantasy and could not be relied on to inform us about Pontius Pilate. And Christians would wholeheartedly support this conclusion. They would see it as ridiculous and impossible that Pilate had these magical powers. Even if you claimed that Pilate had these powers because he was actually the son of the Roman god Jupiter, still no one would believe you, neither skeptic nor Christian. The fact that Pilate was a real historical person rather than a biblical figure would not stop skeptics immediately dismissing this claim. Rather than the skeptic being inconsistent in the way that they deal with different historical claims, it is in fact the Christian that is guilty of this crime. Christians are perfectly happy when skeptics refuse to believe certain stories surrounding numerous other famous historical figures, and indeed, they don't believe them themselves. I'm referring to historical figures such as Zeus, Apollo, Osiris, Dionysus, Ra, Shiva, Thor etc. Not only are skeptics disbelieving of their exploits, they don't even believe they existed at all. And Christians support them 100%, seeing no problems with their reasoning and no problems with the scientific and historical research methods used to reach these conclusions. And yet when these same methods of inquiry are turned on a similar historical figure called Jesus, suddenly researchers are accused of being biased and unfair. It is important to realise that these figures are not silly fairytale caricatures. Long before Jesus allegedly appeared, they were the 'Jesus' of their time. They were believed to exist by most of the population and the similarity of some gods with the Jesus figure yet to come is considerable. Osiris, Dionysus, Mithra, Adonis, Bacchus, Attis etc all had events in their "lives" that would later be retold in the Jesus story. The myths concerning these names all involved 'a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egypt he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being... [and] from as early as the third century BCE... the combined name 'Osiris-Dionysus' [was used] to denote his universal and composite nature' [6]. Some details about the 'Osiris-Dionysus' god clearly demonstrates this similarity with Jesus: he was born of a virgin on December 25 in a cave/manger with his birth being announced by a star and attended by Magi. He was baptised. He had 12 disciples. He turned water into wine at a wedding. He healed the sick, exorcised demons, provided miraculous meals and performed other miracles. He rode triumphantly into town on a donkey. His followers symbolically ate bread and drunk wine to commune with him. He was crucified as a sacrifice to redeem the sins of the world and was resurrected on the third day. If you removed the name Osiris and Dionysus from the above list of events, Christians could easily be convinced that you were describing the life of Jesus. And yet as similar as the ancient figures Osiris, Dionysus, Mithra, Adonis, Bacchus, Attis etc are to Jesus, not one single Christian believes that they existed. Christians will categorically state that there is no evidence whatsoever that there once existed someone who was born of a virgin, turned water into wine and rose from the dead — if that someone was called Osiris or Dionysus. They will confidently claim that any rational person should be able to discern that these stories are myths, with no support from science or history. Yet in the next breath they will assign the identical story to Jesus and proclaim it as fact. The reasons they so confidently trumpeted to demonstrate the falseness of the Osiris and Dionysus stories are forgotten. It is Christians who are inconsistent, who have different standards of proof, who correctly turn the full glare of reason and science onto the beliefs of others, but then turn down it's brilliance when examining their own. Thus skeptics do not have to fear that they are being unfair to Christians by refusing to give their stories equal credence with those of Pontius Pilate. It's a level playing field and claims stand or fall after being exposed to the same rational inquiry. Of course it would be revealing to ask shroud supporters the same type of question: If people claimed this was the burial cloth of Osiris, Dionysus or Zeus or any other known historical person, would you believe it to be authentic? But Christians never take skeptics to task for not believing that a certain Greek urn might have been used by Zeus, that a certain Roman toga might have been worn by Jupiter or that a recently discovered Egyptian sarcophagus might have been occupied by Osiris. Christians never accuse skeptics of being biased and unfair as they debunk these historical figures. Just the Jesus one. Does more research need to be done on the Shroud? Question: Do you think more research needs to be done on the Shroud? Yes and no. From an intellectual point of view it would be interesting to know exactly how the image was created, by whom and for what reason. That said, this would be a frivolous pursuit. There are far more important things that our scientists could be doing. The conclusions reached, whether 1st century or 14th century, would still just be considered a curiosity by most and have no impact on our future. If the shroud is from the 14th century, further scientific tests would just reconfirm the medieval date with increased accuracy. However shroud proponents have already shown that they aren't prepared to accept, and will challenge, any scientific result that doesn't favour authenticity, eg carbon dating. Is there any test that shroud proponents would accept? Probably not, as the 1988 carbon dating result should have squashed all serious debate. It didn't. The other possibility of course is that further testing could actually show that the shroud was 1st century after all. But how could shroud proponents accept 31 CE without labelling themselves hypocrites? They would basically be saying, 'I will accept any test as accurate that gives a 1st century result, and challenge all tests that don't'. Many shroud proponents already have their desired answer and now they merely need a test to return that date. Whether it's a revised form of radiometric dating or a silly psychic channelling one of the disciples is immaterial. Unfortunately there is no conceivable test that can be performed to conclusively prove it is the burial cloth of Jesus. None. Remember that nowhere in the Bible is there even a vague description of what Jesus might have looked like. Also remember that the Gospels that purport to describe his life and death were not written during his lifetime. They were not written by anyone that had ever met Jesus and in some cases they were written by people that weren't even familiar with Palestine of the 1st century or with Jewish custom. Originally they had no titles and only in later years were the Gospels called Mark, Matthew, Luke and John |
friend, and maybe it’s better to look to ourselves to solve problems instead of expecting the government to do it for us. I’m thankful for the millions – billions – of genuinely nice people out there. We only hear news stories about the bad people – but how about the good ones? The ones that offer a smile, pick up garbage, help the homeless, volunteer in endless venues and otherwise make this world go round? A resounding “thanks” for being nice.
This is the season to celebrate our blessings. I hope you’ll be inspired to do the same … and thank you for being a reader!
Learn how to achieve a simple lifestyle without “going green” or joining a monastery. Read Patrice Lewis’ helpful book, “The Simplicity Primer: 365 Ideas for Making Life more Livable”
Media wishing to interview Patrice Lewis, please contact [email protected].While the situations may differ, one thing remains the same: Religion is being used as an excuse to discriminate against and harm others.
A year ago today, the Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby didn’t have to include birth control in its employees’ health insurance because of religious objections. Employees from Hobby Lobby and other corporations left without coverage have been paying for their employer’s religious beliefs — literally — ever since.
With increasing frequency, we are seeing individuals and institutions claiming a right to discriminate—by refusing to provide services to women and LGBT people—based on religious objections. The discrimination takes many forms, including the following:
Religiously affiliated schools firing women because they became pregnant while not married
Business owners refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception for their employees
Graduate students, training to be social workers, refusing to counsel gay people
Pharmacies turning away women seeking to fill birth control prescriptions
Bridal salons, photo st udios, and reception halls closing their doors to same-sex couples planning their weddings
While the situations may differ, one thing remains the same: Religion is being used as an excuse to discriminate against and harm others.
Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today.
Religious freedom in America means that we all have a right to our religious beliefs, but this does not give us the right to use our religion to discriminate against and impose those beliefs on others who do not share them.
A year after the Hobby Lobby ruling, here is a look at some other ways religious belief has been invoked to harm other people.
1. Adoption Denied
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a bill that would allow taxpayer-funded adoption agencies to deny loving homes to vulnerable children.
2. Baby Refused Medical Care
In Michigan, a pediatrician said that she would not help a baby because the baby had two moms. Unfortunately, Michigan does not have a statewide law protecting against this type of discrimination.
3. Pregnant Woman Refused Treatment
Tamesha Means was rushed to a Catholic hospital in Michigan after her water broke at only 18 weeks of pregnancy. Based on Catholic religious directives, the hospital refused to terminate the pregnancy and sent her home twice even though Tamesha was in excruciating pain. There was virtually no chance that her pregnancy was viable, and continuing it posed significant risks to her health.
4. Child Labor Laws Ignored
A judge ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act prevented investigators from requiring the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to answer questions about the use of children as workers at a pecan ranch in Utah.
5. Same-Sex Couples Refused Service
A Colorado bakery refused to make a cake for David Mullins and Charlie Craig’s wedding reception in violation of longstanding state law, based on the owner’s religious beliefs. The trial in this case starts in early July.Contribution
Jun. 4, 2013 1:31pm
Wayne is the author of the newly released national bestseller: "The Murder of the Middle Class". Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, successful entrepreneur, small business defender, business speaker, Capital Evangelist, and media personality- appearing on over 5000 interviews in the past 5 years. Wayne’s web site: ROOTforAmerica.com.
President Barack Obama speaks to crowds along a rain soaked boardwalk on May 28, 2013 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. (Photo: Getty Images)
I just returned from New York, where I attended my 30th Columbia University reunion. I celebrated with my esteemed classmates. Everyone except Barack Obama. As usual- he wasn’t there. Not even a video greeting. Not a personalized letter to his classmates. Nothing. But worse, no one at our 30th reunion ever met him. The President of the United States is the ghost of Columbia University.
I’m certainly no “Johnny come lately.” For five years now (since 2007 when it became clear Barack Obama was running for President), I’ve been quoted in the media as saying that no one I’ve ever met at Columbia can remember ever meeting, or even seeing, our college classmate Barack Obama. Don’t you think the media should be asking questions? Isn’t this a very strange story?
Wayne Allyn Root joined us for the full hour on Tuesday’s BlazeCast with TheBlaze Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker:
I am a graduate of Columbia University, Class of 1983. That’s the same class Barack Obama claims to have graduated from. We shared the same exact major- Political Science. We were both Pre Law. It was a small class- about 700 students. The Political Science department was even smaller and closer-knit (maybe 150 students). I thought I knew, or met at least once, (or certainly saw in classes) every fellow Poly Sci classmate in my four years at Columbia.
But not Obama. No one ever met him. Even worse, no one even remembers seeing that unique memorable face. Think about this for a minute. Our classmate is President of the United States. Shouldn’t someone remember him? Or at least claim to remember him?
.
One of the speakers at the 30th reunion should have reminisced about “my days with the future President.” But no one did. You’d think Obama might have sent a video to tell us all how much he enjoyed his time at Columbia. You’d think he’d have sent at least a letter to be read aloud from one of his former college buddies. Right? But he didn’t. Because Obama has no former college buddies. No one that ever met Obama, let alone befriended him, was in attendence at our 30th class reunion.
Now you might argue this is all strange, but it’s possible. Afterall Columbia says he graduated. And I take my college’s word for it. Would one of the world’s greatest Ivy League institutions participate in a coverup, thereby risking their billion dollar reputation? And there is one single article written for the Columbia newspaper with Obama’s name on it. A single photo also exists of Obama in his Manhattan apartment with the man he claims was his college roommate- a Pakistani foreign student. And one single radical leftist Columbia professor who hates Israel also claims he remembers Obama.
That’s the sum total of Obama’s existence at Columbia University, Class of ’83.
So I asked every classmate I met at our 30th reunion, many of them Political Science majors, if they ever met, or saw, or heard of Obama. The answer was a resounding NO from every one of them. I asked if they found this strange, or worried how this was possible? They all answered YES. I asked if they thought it was possible to be a Political Science major and never meet a fellow major in our small classes? They all gave me a very strange look and answered NO. So I asked, “How could this be possible? Can you explain this?” No one had an answer.
Keep in mind these people I spoke to are all- to a man and woman- dedicated liberal Democrats who voted for Obama. I’m guessing 90% are major Democrat contributors. My Columbia classmates are the crème of the crop of American society. Lawyers, doctors, billionaire hedge fund members, stars of the media. They adore Obama. But they all admit they never met him in their four years at Columbia. I am proud of my classmates for their honesty and integrity.
One classmate told me he was present when one of the most honored professors in Columbia University history gave a speech to alumni a couple of years ago. The speech was followed by Q&A. This beloved professor was asked about Obama at Columbia. He said, “I have my doubts about the story.” The crowd was stunned. He immediately went onto the next question and never elaborated. So obviously I’m not the only one with doubts.
So here’s my take on this great mystery. I’ve never said Obama was not registered at Columbia. I’m sure he was. I’ve never said he didn’t graduate. If Columbia says he did, then I’m sure he did. But I’ve always said there is something wrong with the story. It’s rancid. It’s unbelievable. It’s impossible. It’s the story of a Manchurian candidate.
The question isn’t was he ever registered, or did he graduate. And it’s interesting that one photo, one professor, and one newspaper article exists- just enough to provide a thin cover. But the serious question the media should be asking is…What did Obama do for two full years in-between registration and graduation? Did he ever attend a class? Did he ever have a single friend other than a Pakistani national? Why is the only professor to ever come forward and claim he remembers him a radical leftist who hates Israel? What exactly was he doing when no one met him, saw him, or heard of him? Why are his college records sealed? What has he got to hide?
But my educated guess is he can’t, or won’t ever release those records. Because what we’d find would be shocking.
Now I know somewhere in America is an Obama defender that will accuse me of lying. But are all those classmates at our 30th reunion lying too? And if I wanted to lie, wouldn’t I better off saying I knew the future President well? If I wanted to malign the President, shouldn’t I be saying he was my close buddy and I witnessed all kinds of terrible things? But I can’t say that. Because I never witnessed anything. Neither did any of my classmates. We didn’t know him. Never met him. Never saw him. My story is simply the truth- and it’s the same consistent story I’ve told since 2007.
There is something wrong with Obama’s story- that much I know. He is either the ghost of Columbia, or the perfect Manchurian candidate. But something smells rotten at Columbia.
–
More Contributions From TheBlaze:Celtic's Stuart Armstrong scored his 14th goal of the season against Killie
Champions Celtic survived a brief second-half scare before cruising to a comfortable victory over Kilmarnock.
Stuart Armstrong gave the hosts the lead with a 25-yard drive that flew in through a crowd of players.
Jordan Jones drew Killie level against the run of play after the break but Scott Sinclair soon made it 2-1.
James Forrest nodded home the third to confirm Celtic's win and put an end to Killie's hopes of securing a top-six finish this season.
Media playback is not supported on this device Scottish Premiership highlights: Celtic 3-1 Kilmarnock
With Partick Thistle beating Motherwell 1-0 at Firhill, they cannot be caught in the race for a top-six berth.
Killie pack defence
Lee McCulloch's side gave the champions a guard of honour as they took to the field and the interim boss showed Celtic further respect by deploying a five-man defence.
Media playback is not supported on this device Interviews: Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers and Killie interim boss Lee McCulloch
Gary Dicker, Iain Wilson and Scott Boyd filled the central roles with Luke Hendrie and Greg Taylor occupying the full-back berths. The formation restricted Celtic early on but the problem for Killie was that every one of their clearances dropped to players in green and white.
Chances eventually came for the hosts, with Sinclair firing wide from Forrest's cross before Callum McGregor's deflected effort was tipped over by keeper Freddie Woodman.
Stu dunnit
Midfielder Stuart Armstrong fires Celtic ahead with a fine strike from 25 yards
The breakthrough arrived midway through the first half and it was the player of the month for March who did the damage. Armstrong decided to try his luck from distance and his shot appeared to take a slight touch as it flew past Woodman for the midfielder's 14th goal of the season.
Last ditch tackles from Wilson and Boyd denied McGregor and Armstrong before Kieran Tierney sent a left foot volley wide of the target as the home side were unable to increase their lead before the interval.
At times it was like a training game for Celtic as they maximised possession and Killie sat back and hoped to hit them on the break.
The tactic paid off, though, as the Rugby Park men squared it against the run of play. Conor Sammon played in Jones and his effort from 16 yards took a deflection to beat Craig Gordon.
Rodgers' men respond
That goal spurred Celtic into action and from a free kick delivered by Armstrong, Dedryck Boyata's headed knockdown was turned across the face of goal by McGregor for Sinclair to net with a close range tap in.
James Forrest provides a simple finish to secure the win for Celtic
Moussa Dembele made an immediate impact as a substitute, contributing to Celtic's third goal. His deflected shot came back off the Killie keeper's left hand post and winger Forrest headed the rebound into the net from two yards out.
The result extends Celtic's unbeaten domestic run to 39 games as Killie experienced their first defeat away from home in their last seven games.
Post-match reaction
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers: "I thought it was an outstanding team performance. We played our shape very very well, the quality of the movement, the speed. It was difficult in the beginning because Lee (McCulloch) obviously set his team out very tight in their organisation in a real low position and that's always difficult to break down.
"But we showed quality and great patience and I must say big applause as well to the crowd because they're now seeing what we're trying to do - they're not getting frustrated, they're understanding at times they're going to have to be patient.
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers paid tribute to the club's fans
"Our only mistake was for the goal which was the counter attack but every other element we showed a lovely charisma in the game today. We got three goals and with a bit more luck we could have had another one or two."
Interim Kilmarnock boss Lee McCulloch: "I thought first half we were too deep, stood off the game too much and allowed Celtic a little bit too much respect. Second half we changed the system and decided to go a little bit higher up the pitch.
"I'm delighted with the way the boys played and the character and concentration they showed for most of the game.
"We get back in the game and gather a little bit of momentum then we just switch off for a set play as we have done a couple of times this season - that's the most disappointing part of the day.
"Did we deserve to win then game - absolutely not. But I'm proud of the way the boys showed character and passed the ball, especially in the second half at times and maybe on another day we could have stolen a point."MOSCOW — The phrase was too toxic even for Nikita Khrushchev, a war-hardened veteran communist not known for squeamishness. As leader of the Soviet Union, he demanded an end to the use of the term “enemy of the people” because “it eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight.”
“The formula ‘enemy of the people,’” Mr. Khrushchev told the Soviet Communist Party in a 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, “was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader.
It is difficult to know if President Trump is aware of the historic resonance of the term, a label generally associated with despotic communist governments rather than democracies. But his decision to unleash the terminology has left some historians scratching their heads. Why would the elected leader of a democratic nation embrace a label that, after the death of Stalin, even the Soviet Union found to be too freighted with sinister connotations?
Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Mr. Khrushchev and a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, said the phrase was “shocking to hear in a non-Soviet, moreover non-Stalinist setting.” Her great-grandfather, she said, “of course also used Soviet slogans and ideological idioms but still tried to stay away from sweeping denunciations of whole segments of the Soviet population.”New corporate lobbying from Silicon Valley companies, including Facebook and Google, has successfully postponed a committee hearing for a new California state bill: the “Right to Know Act of 2013."
If passed, the bill would allow an unprecedented amount of access to individuals to find out what companies know about us. Further, if the bill does become law, it could have nationwide effects. (California has a history of pushing privacy concepts into law and influencing non-California businesses to comply.) The hearing had been scheduled for last week, but it is now scheduled for May 7 in Sacramento.
According to the Bay Area News Group, the state's Assembly Judiciary Committee chair, Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), postponed the bill due to questions raised by lobbying. The news organization reported:
"Menlo Park-based Facebook and Mountain View-based Google are both in the district represented by Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park, who said he hasn't made up his mind on the bill, but is looking for the'sweet spot' where privacy is protected 'but you don't completely shut off Internet commerce. I'm trying to sort it out.'"
Inspiration from Europe
As we reported earlier this month, the bill aims to bring California law in closer line with the European Union, where citizens have a near-blanket right to compel companies to release personal data held about them. This practice has been in the spotlight recently, as it’s the means through which an Austrian law student has become a thorn in the side of Facebook. The student is exercising his right as he attempts to compel the social network to disclose the vast amount of data that it holds about him.
As currently written, the bill’s digest summarizes the draft legislation this way:
This bill would instead require any business that retains a customer’s personal information, as defined, or discloses that information to a third party, to provide at no charge, within 30 days of the customer’s specified request, a copy of that information to the customer as well as the names and contact information for all third parties with which the business has shared the information during the previous 12 months, regardless of any business relationship with the customer. This bill would require that a business subject to these provisions choose one of several specified options to provide the customer with a designated address for use in making a request for copies of information under these provisions.
A recent letter from the group of corporate interests across the Golden State argues that AB 1291 is “overbroad.”
“It would expand the definition of ‘personal information’ under California’s Shine the Light Law to cover not only any information that identifies ‘or references’ an individual, but also any information that identifies or ‘is able to be uniquely associated with a particular device,’” the group writes. “It would specifically reach IP addresses and device identifiers, as well as information that could be associated with that information.”
(We reached out to TechAmerica, a Silicon Valley industry group that is one of the prominent signatories of this letter. We will update this story if more information becomes available.)
However, the bill’s sponsor, Assembly Member Bonnie Lowenthal (representing parts of the Los Angeles area) is pushing ahead.
“We expected significant opposition, but we’re confident that we’ll find a way forward with it,” Allison Ruff, Lowenthal’s chief of staff, told Ars. (She added that the bill was inspired by existing European law.) “It didn’t kill industry [in Europe]. Most of these companies, they’re already complying with laws in the European Union, so complying in California shouldn’t be a problem for them.”Josh Jooris is a prime example of a kid (he is 24 but he is still a damn kid) who came out of nowhere and won over the fans and team. He also has the characteristics of a young man poised for a long NHL career if he continues on his current trajectory.
The tools and ability he possesses lends itself to a bottom six player (or at least a guy who can move onto the second line if needed) who will thrive in crushing zone starts, tough competition, and be a fixture of a team's penalty kill in the future.
Jooris' rise from AHL to the NHL this year further supports the necessity of signing players who are often overlooked, and taking chances on players who aren't the highly touted offensive juggernauts. The need for expanding player assessment, as well as appreciation for the players who can drive play and provide stable secondary scoring, is at a premium in this era.
Secondary scoring
Like much of the Flames roster, Jooris benefited from an abnormally high shooting percentage: 13.5%. Seven of his goals came in the home plate, an area regarded as a prime scoring location. The big thing here was his ability to generate 79.2% of his total points at even strength.
The remainder (four goals and an assist) came on the PP in limited usage, averaging 0:40 of PP TOI/GP for the season. Of the forward group, he received the ninth most PP TOI at 40:30 total. It may seem like a lot but Mason Raymond had 117:11 on the PP this season: good for fifth on the team in the forward group.
Moving forward, IF Jooris can continue to put in 10-15 goals a season while maintaining a heavy ES point total his value will increase. If he is able to find success adding goals while shorthanded, it's obvious his value will increase exponentially.
Regular season success - Who is this kid who can drive play?
As a rookie, Jooris was the best forward in terms of CF% at ES 5v5 (unadjusted). But hey, no one really noticed that, nor did they notice Jooris being the top FF% forward in the same appropriate sample. Overlooking the immediate impact he provided on a poor possession team as a rookie, as the league did, is criminal.
While fans of the Flames know his name, it's high time more folks around the league started to keep an eye on him, too.
ES 5v5 (Unadjusted) with minimum of 200 minutes played, sorted by CF%:
The team noticed a drop with Jooris off the ice in terms of shot attempt generation. Specifically with FF% (shots and missed shots) as opposed to CF% (shots, missed shots, and blocked shots).
It would also appear that Jooris has some strength in shot suppression as well, something the Flames had issues controlling this year.
He managed to find success in a variety of roles, too. He was used on all lines throughout the season, at centre, on the wing, and in all situations. He made veterans and players who may benefit of a beneficial bias (cough Joe Colborne ) look terrible. Actually wait -- Joe Colborne is just terrible.
There was a noticeable impact of using Jooris with forwards that improved their performance. Jooris can make his linemates better and it's very evident with his play.
All of this makes up a clearer argument that matches with what GM Brad Treliving mentioned recently:
Treliving talks about being a better possession team. Says "we need to spend more time in the offensive zone." #Flames — Pat Steinberg (@Fan960Steinberg) May 12, 2015
If the Flames can continue adding players via logical decisions that contribute to more offensive zone time, we can hopefully see the team avoid the pitfalls that befell the Colorado Avalanche this year.
PK usage and Playoffs Usage - I am become Jooris, destroyer of power plays
In the first round against Vancouver, the Flames gave up three PPGA (power play goals against) in a six game series. None of them were scored when Jooris was on the ice. Of his 61:42 TOI over six games against Vancouver, Jooris spent 10:20 killing penalties.
His TOI varied from game to game, as did his allocation of special teams play, though he remained in regular usage on the PK in all games. Though the key element here is as the playoffs went on, Jooris was the second-most used forward down a man, only behind Matt Stajan.
This is a carryover from the regular season when Jooris experienced regular usage while shorthanded when in the line-up. He was sixth in the forward group with 67:18 TOI while SH. His 1:07 TOI/GP placed him fifth behind the likes of Bouma, Backlund, Stajan, and Byron.
Examining his play
I've highlighted Jooris' play before in a systems breakdown which lead to Brandon Bollig scoring. He also directly contributed to assisting on a strong sequence in game one against Vancouver. Jooris' forechecking skills are among, if not the best on the Flames. His ability to bounce and force turnovers is an underrated quality in his game that only adds to his value.
The increased usage of Jooris in the right environments as his season continued was some of Hartley's better decision making this year. Initial usage as a top-six centre on a line with Gaudreau and Jiri Hudler did look great, though it was clear Jooris needed more time to develop before being used in such a role.
Given the depth issues the team experienced later in the year due to injuries, his role did increase slightly: all of which directly fed into his usage in the post-season.
Assessing The Contract
The Flames have lots of cap space, though it's no question that smart cap management this summer is one of the more critical areas to emphasize. The Flames have a number of high priority contracts coming up in the next couple of years including extensions to Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, and Sam Bennett. Plus, you know... Mikael Backlund is an RFA this year.
For what Josh Jooris is now, it's clear he deserves some sort of a raise. At 24, he'll be a UFA at the age of 27 and if his play continues to improve through that time he'll receive attention then. Right now, at the very least a three year deal at $1.5M to $1.75M would be a fantastic steal.
His versatility, ability to drive play, and ability to provide potentially sustainable secondary offense is the calling card of the new modern bottom six forward. He isn't a Lance Bouma-esque player who blocks shots as a calling card, but a player who suppresses the opposition with intelligence and aggressive play. He is exactly what you want in a player and hopefully Calgary locks him up.Almost 170,000 pupils are languishing in state secondaries where fewer than four-in-10 teenagers gain a string of good GCSE grades, according to Government data.
In all, 195 schools in England are falling below the Government’s basic floor target for 16-year-olds.
They face being closed or converted into independent academies under the leadership of a private sponsor as part of a Coalition plan to raise standards.
It was also revealed that around one-in-four schools and colleges – more than 600 – are failing to produce a single student with top A-level grades in subjects seen as a stepping stone to a leading university.
The disclosure – in data published by the Department for Education – sparked claims that pupils were being let down by a “culture of low aspirations” in too many schools.
But the Government defended the figures, insisting that significant improvements had been registered over the last 12 months.
More schools are responding to tougher targets by boosting results and entering more pupils in exams for key academic subjects, a spokesman said, adding that standards had increased five times as quick in sponsored academies.
The data also shows that:
– More than 100,000 children – six-in-10 – who were considered among the brightest pupils at the age of 11 failed to go on to gain GCSEs in a range of academic subjects five years later;
– The top performing school in the country was Colyton Grammar in Devon where pupils scored an average of 816 GCSE points – the equivalent of 14 A* grades each;
– The most improved school over four years was Trinity High in Redditch, Worcestershire, which saw its headline GCSE results rise from 32 per cent in 2009 to 80 per cent last summer;
– Tunbridge Wells Girls’ Grammar School in Kent was the best state school for the “English Baccalaureate” – which is awarded to pupils with good grades in English, maths, two sciences, a language and history or geography – with 98 per cent of teenagers hitting the mark;
– Some secondaries are still failing to focus on these academic qualifications, with one school – Heath Park in Wolverhampton – seeing 81 per cent of pupils gaining five A* to C grades in all subjects but no teenagers gaining the “English Baccalaureate”;
– Kensington and Chelsea in west London was the best performing area, with almost 80 per cent of pupils gaining five good GCSE grades, including English and maths, while Knowsley in Merseyside was the worst, with just 41 per cent of pupils hitting the target.
The Rushden Community College, Northamptonshire, was the worst performing school in the country, with just six per cent of pupils gaining five A* to C grades at the age of 16.
But Mark Lester, the head, said the college had entered pupils for the English language and English exams but not English literature, which he said is the one counted by the DfE.
"Because of the decision made by the DfE about which English specification counts, we fall foul of that particular loophole."
Mr Lester said that if his students' English exams had been counted, their pass rate including English and maths would have been 46 per cent.
Under Coalition reforms, all state schools in England have been told to ensure that at least 40 per cent of pupils gain five A* to C grades at GCSE, including the core subjects of English and maths. They must also satisfy separate targets relating to the amount of progress made by children in the three-Rs between the age of 11 and 16.
According to today’s league tables, 215 secondary schools fell below the floor target last summer, although 20 have since been closed and converted into academies led by a private sponsor.
In all, 167,000 children are being taught at the 195 remaining secondary schools stuck below the Government’s floor target.
The number of struggling schools is up on the 107 classed as failing in 2011, although this was down to an increase in the overall target that schools are supposed to meet.
In 2011, the basic standard was set at 35 per cent. If it had been as high as 40 per cent, some 251 would have failed, it emerged.
The DfE insisted the figures showed how “introducing tougher floor standards, giving greater freedom to heads and teachers, accelerating the academy programme, and encouraging take-up of key academic subjects is driving improvement in education”.
“These figures are further evidence of the great success of the academy programme in turning around our weakest schools – sponsored academies are improving their GCSE results five times faster than other schools." a spokesman added.
But Chris McGovern, a former head teacher and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “There is a culture of low aspirations at too many schools. Michael Gove [the Education Secretary] is trying to fix the problem by encouraging a greater focus on academic subjects, but the fact is that secondary schools are inheriting children with great potential and then failing to ensure they can realise it.
“It is a tragic waste of talent.”
For the first time this year, the Government has also published figures on the number of pupils at each school or college scoring good A-levels in core academic "facilitating" subjects.
Pupils are supposed to gain at least two A grades and a B in maths and further maths, English literature, physics, biology, chemistry, geography, history and modern and classical languages to meet the target.
These are subjects in demand among leading Russell Group universities and the indicator is intended to show which schools and colleges are fully preparing pupils for the most sought-after degree courses.
But the figures show that at around 600 schools and colleges - just over one in four - no A-level student scored AAB in facilitating subjects.
Private schools dominated the new measure, with 70 per cent of pupils at St Paul’s Girls’ School in west London and Magdalen College School in Oxford hitting the target.
TABLE: Top 100 secondary schools by GCSE results 2012
TABLE: Top 100 secondary schools by A-level results 2012STANFORD, CA, USA -- Everything is clicking for CoCo Vandeweghe in her California return at the Bank of the West Classic.
The World No.24 has not come close to dropping a set en route to her first semifinal since the Australian Open in January, beating Ajla Tomljanovic, Nicole Gibbs, and No.4 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to set up a showdown against either Petra Kvitova or CiCi Bellis on Saturday.
In five sets played, Vandeweghe has saved all six break points she's faced on her vaunted serve, and has yet to be broken.
"My feeling is that it's not like I'm getting crazy high percentages but I think my play off the ground has been very solid," she said. "I've been moving very well off the ground.
"I don't feel like I'm playing off too many second serves consistently in a game, which helps me. If I'm playing off one or two second serves in a game that's okay, but any more than that then you start feeling [the pressure] yourself, that 'Gosh, I'm hitting second serves all the time, I need to get a first serve in'."For Honor? Problems in the Rhetoric of Skill in Games
Ubisoft’s For Honor released on Valentine’s Day to some chuckles at the irony of a brutal if hyperbolic medieval decapitation-fest on a day popularized by elementary school kids in the US trading Star Wars and Minions cards and heart candies. As with a great many video games today that feature a large online component, critical and professional review sites delayed their formal reviews of For Honor until sometimes as much as a week after the release date in order to test the game while running on servers live with real players, but those reviewers and gamers also shared early impressions based on closed and open beta sessions that ran in early 2017.
Regardless of novice or professional, or from Ubisoft itself, For Honor is utterly absurd. In its premise, For Honor pits Apollyon, an approximation of an angel of death in the Greek and Hebrew, or essentially Ares, as a black-armored fiend driven to find the finest warriors through forced conflict. Apollyon instigates a number of cataclysmic events that drive Japanese samurai, Scandinavian Vikings, and European knights into battle.
Despite the absurd premise, player impressions and professional reviews abound that describe the exceptional and unique game mechanics in For Honor. The game draws together ludic elements from the complex sword-dueling of the Bushido Blade games or Chivalry, the battlefield hack-and-slash of the Dynasty Warriors games, intricate combos in fighting game series like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, and the squad-based first- and third-person-shooter tactics found in the Battlefield series and Rainbow Six games. Players find a deceptively deep and complex combat system, one that involves the samurai, Viking, or knight managing a roster of light attacks, heavy attacks, unblockable and zone attacks, charged attacks, combos, blocks, dodges, feints, parries, guard breaks, and throws. For Honor‘s ludic novelty relies on managing all these movies within three stances: left, right, and high.
Gorgeous Problems
Everyone seems to agree on one thing: For Honor is gorgeous and it’s exciting to don mythologized warriors from medieval history. There is also general agreement that Ubisoft didn’t address a series of problems in closed and open betas. Among those problems: the always online digital rights management (DRM) system, use of peer-to-peer networks (P2P), and the ambiguous matchmaking ratio (MMR).
The first references the broad dissatisfaction that a game with offline components requires a constant internet connection, something especially poignant at the contentious Xbox One announcement at E3 in 2013. Modern concerns about consistent internet availability and privacy and data collection fueled the immediate backlash and Microsoft’s quick policy reversal.
The second problem refers to the general consensus that heavily online multiplayer games like For Honor should be supported by dedicated servers for consistent online experiences. P2P server setups depend on individual user internet connections to piggy-back on one another, which works effectively enough for two people dueling but can stagger and become completely unstable for the eight players that might be involved in a For Honor match.
Third, players and reviewers have found and continue to experience frustration with an ineffective MMR, which frequently pairs players of radically different proficiency or skill.
Since launch, new problems have been identified that can mar the otherwise excellent potential in For Honor. A problem that often frustrates gamers and that reviewers identify in For Honor is microtransactions and the related phenomenon of developers releasing games only to dole out finished or upcoming additional content for more money. The in-game currency for unlocking aesthetic and gameplay gear for characters is “steel,” and For Honor offers steel packs for direct purchase for up to $100, which can be stacked. Like with many games today, players may spend several times the basic purchase price of the game. At the same time, For Honor‘s microtransactions are wholly optional and hardly the most egregious problem.
Difficulty Metrics and Skill Rhetoric in Gaming
Beyond the issues described above (and new problems, including the continued way that PvP modes don’t repopulate between games and drop all players or the AFK nonsense in multiplayer vs AI bot Dominion), the more important and more fundamental problem in For Honor and other games centers on how it determines “skill” and the way it contributes to the incessant and inaccurate rhetoric about relative gamer skill and game difficulty. Hayden |
hand to those evangelical institutions and individuals who over the years have demonstrated a firm commitment to the state of Israel and the Jewish people. While evangelical support for Israel is hardly contingent on reciprocation, reciprocation would enable it to flourish still more vigorously. In its 2011 study, Pew found that although 82 percent of American evangelical leaders viewed Jews favorably, a whopping 42 percent felt that Jews were unfriendly to evangelicals, while most of the rest thought them indifferent at best.
Statistics, to be sure, go only so far, and the history of Jewish-Christian relations, among other things, has played a definite role in creating and sustaining the wary Jewish mindset. But the persistent disparity in the feelings of the two sides inhibits cooperation in areas of overlapping concern.
Extending a hand can mean any number of things, from strategic funding of pro-Israel evangelical organizations to simply contacting one’s local evangelical pastor and thanking him for the work he is doing. One would be surprised to see how far such seemingly small efforts can go. On the institutional level, one admirable initiative is the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin in Efrat, Israel, which brings together rabbis and Jewish educators with Christian leaders, especially evangelicals, for the study of the Hebrew Bible.
A more programmatic approach would involve targeted educational programs on the fundamentals of Israeli history and society. Notwithstanding their devout attachment to the Zionist cause, most evangelicals are ignorant of even the most basic aspects of modern Israel. An instance close to home: just before their recent trip to Jerusalem, members of my church asked me where Israel was located on the map, what language Israelis spoke (a common guess was Arabic), and what religion they practiced (Islam?). Ask ten evangelicals about the significance of Theodor Herzl in the founding of modern Israel, and my guess is that no more than two could answer intelligently.
Not all evangelicals are so uninformed, but one should err on the side of the lowest common denominator. Even the most ardent Christian Zionist, raised to support Israel on the basis of biblical passages, is generally unequipped to respond to critics invoking the Balfour Declaration, UN Resolution 242, or Sabra and Shatila. Many young evangelicals have been induced to depart from Christian Zionism by a film like With God on Our Side or a college course on the Middle East where, in the face of a professor’s blatant certainties, their utter lack of knowledge frustrates any ability to defend their convictions or brings them to adopt the Palestinian narrative as the “truth” their parents never told them.
This is a Christian problem, one that must first and foremost be addressed by evangelical leaders themselves. But that doesn’t mean interested Jewish partners cannot propose ways of accomplishing the task more effectively. The best education on Israel comes from visiting the land, meeting its people, and witnessing its day-to-day life, in all its complexity, firsthand. While over a million evangelicals visit Israel every year, many tend to be older and already convinced. Other Christian pilgrims do little more than follow in Jesus’ footsteps in Galilee, tour the Old City of Jerusalem, and pay a visit to (where else?) Bethlehem.
To my knowledge, no serious, large-scale effort exists to bring evangelicals—particularly young evangelicals—to Israel to learn about the realities of life on the ground. In September, Israel’s Minister of Tourism Uzi Landau announced tentative plans to establish a Birthright-type program that would help shore up evangelical support for Israel in the rising generation. As with most endeavors of this kind, securing the necessary long-term funding promises to be difficult. But whether initiated by Christians or by Jews, programs like this one are a must. A successful effort, though it may never rise to Birthright’s impressive scope in terms of numbers, would exercise a powerful impact on attitudes in the Christian world, one that would reverberate for decades to come.
8. Concluding Thoughts
For any Jewish supporter of Israel who still finds the idea of outreach to evangelicals too abstract or too uncomfortable to command his attention, let me say a few words about the current moment.
We live in historic times. What Jew (or Christian, for that matter) would have ever predicted that Christians, many of whom have never met a Jew in their lives, would be standing up strongly, in their millions, in defense of a Jewish state? On a variety of levels, this moment was simply unimaginable.
As a Christian who takes his faith seriously, I believe that the current link between evangelicals and the Jews is not just a serendipitous coincidence. Rather than just another religious or national grouping, I see the Jews as a community appointed to play a special role in the cosmic order. Yet even those who cannot themselves assent to such a statement of faith must surely recognize its power as a motivating factor in the hearts and minds of others. So long as evangelicals and Jews share an interest in protecting Israel, they should, despite their perfectly appropriate differences, do everything they can to build a strategic alliance based on the mutual imperative of defending the world’s only Jewish state against those who would seek to destroy it and those all too ready to lend a helping or acquiescent hand.
But I would insist on the element of time. In an insightful essay on the growing rifts within the evangelical world, Lee Smith predicts that “if the ‘Christ at the Checkpoint’ camp wins out, the pro-Israel Jewish community that once looked warily upon evangelical support may come to regard that movement with nostalgia.”
Nostalgia, and bitter regret. If Jews and evangelicals are to cooperate, they must do so sooner and not later. I’m proud to stand surety for my own community’s readiness to act.
ResponsesNote: Written because one of my soldiers died horribly during his first encounter with an Ethereal, and I felt like he needed a story to send him off.
Your hand breaks the door (if you can call it that—a thin, translucent bluish screen, glowing iridescently.) It parts around your fingers, and you dive through, sideways.
Your neck tingles with rising hair as you squirm behind the console. There’s something here, that dreaded thud…
“Muton here!” you whisper into your radio.
“Say again?” Freestyle. She didn’t hear properly.
Thud. Thud… arrhythmic.
“Correction. Two mutons!” They’re getting closer. You check your rifle: enough juice for two shots, enough to down one… you’re not sure if you’ll have time to reload…
What is that noise? Quiet, whispery… it sends a chill down your spine. You can feel the muton. Thud, thud…
No time.
You spring up on your feet. You fire.
The thing recoils, beats its chest, but it doesn’t scare you. Not any more. You faced one down in the middle of Toronto without blinking: that’s how you ended up with XCOM in the first place.
In the first place.
The rifle beeps. Ready!
You squeeze the trigger again. Boom. The alien collapses, its form barrelling to the floor.
That’s when you see it. As you crouch again, you catch it in the corner of your eye.
Not a muton. Too small. Too slender.
Slender Man is your first thought. Sycorax is your second. A beige, gnarly, bone-like thing that passes for a face, and a tattered red cloak. It’s hovering.
You’re shivering again—not just out of fear, actual cold shudders—and you can’t take your eyes off this thing.
Tina’s on the comm again. “What’s happening? What do you see?”
You open your mouth to report as the thing floats a little closer.
Its cloak opens. Its cloak closes.
For a moment you see a flash of mauve light—and then a horrible feeling of something penetrating, snaking its way in through your mouth and your nose and your eyes and fuck you feel like—you are throwing up, doubled over, your digestive system inverting itself as your world turns purple.
“What’s happening? Mustang, get there! NOW!” You hear Tina bellowing over the comm, but it’s distant, noise in a sea of static and growling and gurgling and…
The Thing raises its hand. It has four, bony, stretchy… and as it contracts into a fist, you gasp involuntarily, swallowing your own vomit—
“Help!” you ejaculate, your blood running white-hot and cold. You can’t hear yourself scream, but you can feel it.
You’re in the classroom. Your mate Charlie made a joke, but the Mrs Banner’s there, beckoning.
“There’s people here to see you,” she says, gently. You see the lights of the police car flashing outside… and your stomach turns in on itself.
A flash of understanding… and your mouth hangs open in horror as you realise what it’s doing. The mauve tendrils extend, face-fucking you in the mouth and the nose and the eyes and the ears and the mind…
“I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news,” says the policeman. “Your father Stephen was hit by a car on Rectory Road earlier. The driver didn’t stop, but—”
“No, no,” you weep, echoing what you said all that time ago… the Worst Day Of Your Life…
“He’s in Intensive Care. It’s not looking good,” the policeman says, gently.
“God. God.” You choke up, but you can’t tell why… he’s dying, dead… your dad is dead, has been for years… and you remember, realise what’s happening—
“I’m so sorry,” the nurse says, touching his hand. “Your dad had extremely bad internal injuries. He didn’t make it.”
“IT’S INSIDE MY HEAD!” you roar, and there’s a flash in your periphery as something—someone severs the link, and you gasp and vomit again.
You spit, trying to clear the burning sensation from your mouth and your nostrils. How did it do that? What did it do!?
You’re on all-fours, and you summon the courage to look up, through the latent tears… Mustang, in the doorway, legs astride, arm forward. An explosion of purple between them, a condensed cyclone of light and sparks and arcing.
You came through the Psi testing without a single blip on the graph. Mustapha Nur’s was perfect—but the most gifted psionic soldier humanity had produced was losing. His eyes were flaring, but he was sweating and shaking visibly.
A sudden flash of red as you regain your footing. The Elder—as you slowly process what Dr Vahlen has been barking in the comm all this time—turns its attention to Tina, braced behind the opposite doorway, her scattergun flaring.
Its hands rise. Its cloak opens.
Your blood runs hot.
“Oh, no you don’t,” you spit, reaching for your rifle.
You re-load.
You fire.
The Elder recoils. Its face swivels, and your field of vision flares purple again.
You keep your finger on the trigger.
It’s all coming back… everything. Everything in your worst nightmares.
The voices come thick and fast, the faces popping into view as formations in the flares of green plasma.
The disappointment on Mom’s face when you told her your results. The argument. The smashed family portrait. Walking out of the home with nothing more than the clothes on your back and a guitar you couldn’t even play.
You keep your finger pressed down. You don’t know how this is working. Everything you hate about yourself—every mistake, every cringe of your life—
The girlfriend you didn’t really love. The shitty attempts to dump her. The shitty attempts to pick up someone else. The desperation.
The physical pain rises up your spine, and you scream in rage as the gun rat-tat-tats against your skeleton, muzzle flaring…
The pain. Every bump. Every scrape. Every burn. Every broken bone. Every migraine. All the pain of your life in one exquisite, excruciating symphony of discord.
“Come on, ya son of a bitch!” you manage, as the purple sphere builds.
It discharges.
Your vision whites out, and you can’t breathe. You know it: this is the end.
The howling noise dulls into wind, then a soft breeze. The end. You can still feel it—the horrible shooting feeling up your spine, the regrets, the pain—but there’s nothing more you can do.
The magazine must be empty by now, anyway.
You feel your knees give way, and gravity snatches you from the physical world, hauling you to the ethereal with a gust of wind. You can’t see a thing—it’s all happened so fast, but there’s a shadow where the Elder is…
and another red flash, and a dull boom…
the shadow fades, and as you exhale your last breath, although you have no energy to smile,
no life left to live,
you’re satisfied.
It’s done.
Phyrrus would be proud.It is the first serious reversal in almost four decades for the US intelligence agencies in terms of accumulation of power – and a huge victory for the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Last night at midnight the National Security Agency lost key powers, primarily the bulk collection of phone data. These powers expired for the mammoth surveillance agency because of miscalculations on the part of a complacent Republican leadership out of touch with the mood in America.
The NSA can't surveil Americans' every phone call – at least for now | Trevor Timm Read more
Later this week Congress as a whole is expected to pass legislation – a USA Freedom Act – that will enshrine some of these changes, most importantly the end to the collection of the phone records of millions of Americans, first disclosed in the Guardian almost exactly two years ago in documents leaked by Snowden.
The last time US intelligence agencies suffered a comparable setback was in the 1970s, when the late senator Frank Church led reform in the wake of revelations of spying on civil rights leaders, anti-war protesters, trade unionists, journalists and others. In the four decades since, the intelligence services have been accumulating powers on a scale that even Church could not have envisaged. Changes in technology have made this possible, but so has a lack of transparency and political and legal oversight, with the intelligence agencies left to grow in secret. US reaction to the 9/11 attacks accelerated the process.
The bulk collection of phone data began after 9/11 in secret and was later authorised under section 215 of the US Patriot Act. The process was conducted by a secret court. And it all remained secret until Snowden revealed it in June 2013.
NSA reform: Bush-era powers expire as US prepares to roll back surveillance Read more
The Snowden disclosures united both liberals in the Democratic party and members of the libertarian wing of the Republican party, such as the Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who led the opposition in the Senate to the extension of NSA powers. Older, establishment hawks in the Republican party – such as Mitch McConnell, the Senate leader, and senator John McCain – arguing in favour of extension, found themselves squeezed and out of touch.
The importance of the loss of bulk phone collection is not just its demise. The key point is that the intelligence services, after decades left to their own devices, have been exposed to publicity. The idea that their activities can be left free from at least some degree of transparency and oversight is no longer tenable.
Snowden and backers such as Aclu – the American Civil Liberties Union – welcome the end of the programme but stress that it is only a minimal change. The intelligence agencies still possess a vast array of surveillance tools, and they are unlikely to give them up any time soon, if ever.
Aclu instead is pushing for a more realistic outcome, increased transparency and serious political and legal oversight.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Snowden’s interview with the Guardian in Moscow - video
Yesterday the head of the CIA, John Brennan, said the surveillance programmes were “important to American lives”. But Aclu has documented how there is not even a single case in which the intelligence services have demonstrated that mass surveillance has stopped a terrorist attack.
There is no argument about the need for targeted surveillance. The argument is about mass surveillance, and where the balance should be drawn between security and privacy.
Snowden, interviewed by the Guardian in Moscow a fortnight ago, was unwilling to get too excited by the recent federal court decision ruling bulk collection illegal and the pending legislative changes, pointing out all the other programmes that still needed to be addressed.
Almost exactly two years ago, in a hotel in Hong Kong, Snowden said he was leaking the documents because he wanted to start a debate about the powers of the intelligence agencies. He can take satisfaction from the fact that he has succeeded in that. However, the worldwide discussion has turned out to be much bigger than he ever envisaged, and it is not over yet.Previews of IronPython for.NET 4 have been shipping along with VS 2010, but that does not mean the two are tied together. While Microsoft intends to launch IronPython for.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 on the same day, they will remain on separate development cycles for the foreseeable future.
IronPython for.NET 4 will be compatible with Python 2.6. There are currently no definite plans for supporting Python 3.1. Python 3.1 is a significant break from the 2.x series. In addition to significant improvements over earlier versions of the language, it will remove many features that are no longer considered to be desirable. This means Python 3.1 is not backwards compatible, which in turns has lead to a slow adoption for Python 3.1.
The final version of IronPython for.NET 4.0 will support C#’s new dynamic keyword as well as the improved version of VB’s implicit late binding.
Editor's note - This article originally discussed Python 3.1 support based on information gleaned at an IronPython presentation in Copenhagen. That information was incorrect, and there is in fact no confirmed date for 3.x compatibility according to the timeline at DevHawk. The article above has been updated to reflect thisApril 13, 2013 at 3:54 PM
U.S. men’s national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann was in attendance for Saturday’s game between Sounders FC and New England. He met with reporters at halftime and here is a transcript of the interview, as provided by the Sounders (it doesn’t look 100-percent complete, so I’ll update it later today).
* * *
(On his visit to Seattle…) “We wanted to connect with the Sounders and see the game, and secondly, use the opportunity to discuss a bit our World Cup qualifier here, look at the facilities and the hotel.”
(On looking at any particular players…) “When you get a chance to watch the game, you look at players who are of interest to you. Unfortunately, Brad Evans is still out, Eddie Johnson is still out. We wanted to see them, but then look at the next ones in line. What we’re doing right now is we’re all over the place with our coaching staff looking at players. Most important thing is being in touch with coach they know what’s going on all over the place.”
(On playing in Seattle…) “It’s a big deal for us coming to the Northwest. It was already planned for a long time. The tricky part for us was when we can get our European players coming into the Northwest. We have a nine-hour time difference. With a short time window, it’s difficult, and it’s tough for the players. We end up mostly on the East coast and go from there and obviously to the Central American countries. When we looked at everything for summer schedule, we have to make it happen here.”
(On playing on grass at CenturyLink Field…) ”A big topic coming into the Northwest is can we play on a regular grass field? The Sounders made it possible. Seattle made it possible that we have the World Cup qualifier on grass on June 11. That plays a vital role for us. Portland wasn’t able, but Portland was also on the schedule for the Gold Cup. […] We know support is amazing in the Northwest and interest is huge. Thrilled it all worked out being here on June 11 and in Portland on July 9 to open Gold Cup.”
(On Osvaldo Alonso’s situation…) “We’ve followed his situation with big interest. Unfortunately, the Cuban side isn’t responsive at all. We need their help in a certain way to get him cleared from Cuba. It is more like an administrative and governmental issue which we have no influence on it. I wish I could have brought him into January camp, and he knows that. Obviously, I’m in touch with Sigi and Adrian here all the time. He deserves a chance. He deserves a possibility, but it’s not in our hands, unfortunately. If Cuba is not giving a clearance, it’s not giving us a bit of help, FIFA is kind of strict in those matters. We’re on it, but no movement so far.”
(More on Alonso…) “Having a player you can follow and plays on a consistent high level is of interest to us. I think Ozzie did that over the last two years. He really made himself known as a very strong No. 6, a very good team player, a player who is always there for his teammates. He has a role similar to Kyle Beckerman of Salt Lake. Those two guys as No. 6’s in the league have shown tremendous consistency and the highest quality. You just hope you can make something for him. He would have been part of our January camp, but unfortunately, we can’t bring him in.”
(On DeAndre Yedlin…) “We follow the youngsters. We’re aware of the U-20 players, the U-17 players. We have our eye on them. But you don’t want to bring their name up to the national team unless he’s ready because you don’t want to get them off the ground too early.”
(On the hexagonal stage…) “Every team to play away is tough. We have big ones still coming up in Costa Rica, then Panama, as well. Every match is a huge. So that’s why it’s huge for us coming here on June 11 to play this home game against Panama here in Seattle with a full stadium and big support. Every game you have to treat as a big one, as a three-pointer whenever you meet one of those teams.”Before the verdict, Mr. Gabriele addressed the court and told the three judges, “I am not a thief.”
Speaking with little emotion in his voice, Mr. Gabriele said that “he felt the strong conviction deep inside to have acted exclusively for love, a visceral love, for the church” and the pope.
Photo
In depositions to Vatican court officials, Mr. Gabriele had said he acted in the interests of the pope, whom he believed was not adequately informed about the misdeeds that the former butler said were flourishing within the Vatican. He told officials investigating the crime he wanted to bring the corruption to light so that it would be cleaned up.
For several months, beginning in November, Mr. Gabriele gave a number of documents to a journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who published many of them in the book “His Holiness: the Secret Papers of Pope Benedict XVI.” The most embarrassing revelations pointed to alleged misdeeds within the Vatican’s administration and alleged financial mismanagement at its chief financial institutions.
Two weeks after the book was published in May, Mr. Gabriele was arrested when hundreds of photocopied documents were found in his apartment inside Vatican City, where he lives with his wife and their three children. Mr. Gabriele spent nearly two months in a holding cell at the Vatican before being released to house arrest.
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The trial lasted less than a week and focused the attention of the world’s media onto the world’s smallest — and most secretive — city-state.
“It’s a good sentence, a balanced sentence,” said Mr. Gabriele’s lawyer, Cristiana Arru. Mr. Gabriele has three days to appeal the sentence.
A Vatican computer expert has also been indicted and is accused of aiding and abetting Mr. Gabriele, and his trial is expected to begin soon.
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During a briefing to reporters Saturday afternoon, Father Lombardi said the investigation into the leaks and possible other charges against Mr. Gabriele and others had not been formally closed, though the investigations had not turned up anything to suggest “collaboration or complicity” by anyone else.
In making his decision on a possible pardon, the pope would probably consider the results of a commission of cardinals that he had entrusted to carry out a separate, confidential investigation.
But Father Lombardi could not say “when or how” a pardon might be granted. He would also not speculate on whether Mr. Gabriele would remain an employee of the Vatican. “That is another chapter,” he said.WASHINGTON – Testimony before Congress on Tuesday by new Secret Service Director Joe Clancy further revealed the stark and stunning contrast between two incidents in the headlines.
On Oct. 3, 2013, unarmed suburban mother Miriam Carey was accused of ramming a White House barricade with her car. Secret Service agents and Capitol Police officers chased her down and shot her dead. They were rewarded with a standing ovation in Congress.
On March 4, 2015, two apparently drunk Secret Service officers rammed a White House barricade and drove through the middle of an active bomb investigation. One agent was a member of the president’s protective detail. They were set free. They were not given sobriety tests. They were not fired. They were not suspended. They have been reassigned to desk jobs. With full pay.
The sharp difference in outcomes was dramatic. But so were the differences in the causes of the two incidents.
While the Washington Post reported Secret Service agents did ram a White House barricade, Carey never did. In fact, a Secret Service agent threw a bicycle rack-type gate in front of her car, to try to prevent her from lawfully exiting a White House kiosk after she apparently entered by mistake and promptly tried to leave.
In the incident two weeks ago, the Post quoted an agency official who said the two agents “drove a government car into White House security barricades after drinking at a late-night party.”
The paper also reported, “Officers on duty who witnessed the March 4 incident wanted to arrest the agents and conduct sobriety tests. … But the officers were ordered by a supervisor on duty that night to let the agents go home.”
Secret Service Director Clancy was grilled on Tuesday by outraged lawmakers about a pervasive culture of scandal in an agency they portrayed as out of control and a national embarrassment.
Carey family attorney Eric Sanders has been saying as much, ever since Miriam was gunned down in the shadow of the nation’s Capitol.
Regarding the latest incident, Sanders told WND, “This is more solid proof the United States Secret Service is a poorly managed federal agency filled with chronic alcoholics, criminals and apologists.”
“Meanwhile, gullible citizens still believe the authorities’ version of the events that led to Miriam Iris Carey’s death. So much for the so-called independent investigations by the Metropolitan Police Department and United States Attorney’s Office. More apologists!”
The apparently drunk agents who rammed a White House barricade on March 4 were off duty, having arrived from a late-night party for retiring Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan.
A key player in the Carey case was also an off-duty agent who tried to block her from leaving the White House.
When asked in July how Carey managed to drive past two uniformed Secret Service agents at the kiosk without them stopping her, Sanders told WND, “You know how she got past them? Because they were over there, smoking and joking and lackadaisical, just like I said.”
The left-wing media are just now beginning to notice the Carey story and the civil liberties implications in her shooting death by federal officers.
Mother Jones published a summary of the Carey case last week, questioning the official version of events after discovering the basic facts of the case.
The website did acknowledge, “The media outlet that pursued Miriam’s story with the most zeal was WorldNetDaily (WND), a conservative news site, which published more than 50 pieces about her.”
On Tuesday, Democracy Now published an article with an interview with Miriam’s sister, Valarie Carey, retired New York police sergeant; Carey family attorney Sanders; and David Montgomery, a staff reporter for the Washington Post.
The Post’s Montgomery has been the only member of the mainstream media to investigate the Carey story.
His article on Nov. 26, 2014, made a simple but brilliant observation.
The reporter noted the U.S. attorney had claimed Carey, while being chased by federal officers, had driven at speeds estimated at 40 to 80 mph, weaving through traffic and ignoring red lights.
But Montgomery deduced, “Garfield Circle is 1.3 miles from the White House checkpoint. The U.S. attorney’s investigation determined that Carey covered the distance in four minutes. If Carey arrived in four minutes, her average speed was 19.5 mph in a 25-mph zone.”
If Carey’s family members are skeptical of the official version of events, they are not alone.
Lawmakers on the House Appropriations committee were blistering in their questioning of Secret Service Director Clancy about this latest scandal, and the scathing admonitions were bipartisan.
Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky.:
“I can’t believe you did not learn of this incident from Wednesday, when it happened, until Monday. Why – what happened? Why did you not learn of this incident immediately?”
“You can’t run an agency like this, for God’s sakes, or any other agency unless you have discipline in the ranks. And this is a breakdown, to put it mildly, of discipline within the ranks of your agency, and that – that’s a cancer that can consume you.”
“I’m disappointed that you have not waged your own vigorous, tough investigation of this that occurred on White House grounds by security agents who appeared to be inebriated. To say you’re not investigating because you want the inspector general of the department to investigate is hogwash.”
“I don’t care about the office of the inspector general. God love them and good luck to them. You’re in charge.”
“We’ve got to have some changes, and you’ve got to be the one that makes those changes. And I don’t sense at this moment that you have the determination to make that happen. Am I wrong?”
“And if we’ve got special agents on the grounds at night, in the White House, ramming a barricade, drunk, it seems to me that the only discipline that you could exert would be caused by the ability of you and your staff to terminate as punishment, so that every other agent knows, Boy, I don’t want to go there. That director’s going to fire me. That’s what makes the mind work.”
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.:
“I’m just shocked by your testimony. First of all, you said it wouldn’t have been reported to you other than a whistleblower. I mean, it wasn’t someone in the chain of command that reported it to you.”
“And then you said what really shocks me – it will take time to change the culture. I don’t understand this one bit. It seems to me it should take time to help people who think this is the culture to go get another job! How can we, as members of Congress, have respect for an agency that feels it’s OK – we’re not talking about someone drinking at a party. We’re talking about a respected member of the Secret Service who was absolutely drunk!”
“How many people do you know, how many friends have you – do you know who may go to a party and then take a car and go ram it into a fence, or some other barricade? I find this testimony shocking.”
“I would think it would take five minutes to change the culture. Before you even know the facts, you can say, based on the allegations, if, in fact, you are not aware that this kind of activity is inappropriate for a member of the Secret Service, you better get it now and go find another job.”
“That’s why I’m so puzzled. I can’t believe you said it will take time to change the culture. Can you explain to me why it’s OK for a member of the Secret Service to get so inebriated that they would take a car and run into a barricade?”
“I don’t want a member of the Secret Service, frankly, who’s capable of getting so inebriated that this kind of an action can be accepted.”
“I don’t think we want this kind of person in the Secret Service. Whether they’re on duty or off duty or – you don’t want them behaving this way at any time. That is not the kind of person you want in the Secret Service. They can go find another job, frankly.”
“[W]hether you’re on duty or off duty, you cannot get so inebriated – it is not accepted that you’re capable of taking a car and going into a fence or killing someone on the street. These are people with guns.”
Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah:
“You may not be able to fire them, but you should assign them to the furthest tip of the Aleutian Islands.”
“I was a military man for many years, and I hear you say, ‘Well, you know, people are coping with stress.’ And I got to say – I kind of go, ‘Please, oh, please,’ because lots of people experience stress. This is a stressful job, but there’s lots of stressful jobs in the world. And military members experience acute stress, and they would never protect nor sanction the behavior such as this.”
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas:
“Put yourself in our shoes. We’ve heard other directors say, ‘We’re going to take care of it.’ What are you going to do that’s going to be different? Because we’ve heard this before, and, with all due respect to you, tell me how do you convince us that what you’re going to do is going to be different?”
The list of Secret Service scandals under Obama’s watch is long.
September 2014: Secret Service agents allowed a man with a gun and an assault record to get on an elevator with the president during a trip to Atlanta.
September 2014: A man with a knife jumped the White House fence, making it past on-duty agents and 160 feet inside the executive mansion before he was tackled by an off-duty agent. Another fence jumper was brought down weeks later by guard dogs.
March 2014: Three Secret Service agents responsible for guarding the president in Amsterdam were placed on leave after a night of drinking. One agent reportedly was found passed out in a hallway.
May 2013: A Secret Service supervisor reportedly tried to force his way into a woman’s room at the Hay-Adams hotel, overlooking the White House, after leaving a bullet there. An investigation revealed he and a colleague had sent sexually suggestive emails to a female subordinate.
October 2013: Miriam Carey was shot and killed by Secret Service agents and Capitol Police after the unarmed mother apparently made a wrong turn, then tried to leave a White House checkpoint.
April 2012: A dozen agents on assignment in Cartagena, Columbia, brought prostitutes back to their hotel rooms during a world summit attended by President Obama.
November 2011: A man with a rifle fired at the White House, with Sasha Obama inside. A Secret Service supervisor ordered officers to stand down after mistaking the shots for a car backfire. The Secret Service only figured out that shots hit the building four days later, when a housekeeper noticed broken glass.
November 2009: Washington couple Tareq and Michaele Salahi crashed Obama’s first state dinner. The Secret Service never checked to see if they were on the guest list.
Follow Garth Kant @DCgarthFirst pharmacogenetics-based cannabis compatibility test from a Licensed Producer comes in the form of a simple cheek swab and will assist physicians with dosing and product selection
MARKHAM, ON, Nov. 9, 2017 /CNW/ - Canadian patients are increasingly turning to medical cannabis for relief. As of June 2016, there were approximately 75,000 Canadians registered to purchase medical cannabis from a licensed producer and that grew to over 200,000 a year later.i While patient demand is evident, the physician community is looking for more scientific evidence before they embrace the widespread recommendation of cannabis for use as a medicine.ii
There is a need to address the primary areas of concern for physicians and to bring increased certainty and clarity when prescribing. For that reason, MedReleaf Corp. (TSX: LEAF), a leading Canadian medical cannabis producer, is introducing a ground-breaking, patent-pending, new genetic test called ReleafDxTM. This novel test analyzes a patient's DNA and health conditions to provide physicians with answers to two key questions: 1) what dosage should be prescribed; and 2) what cannabis product will work best for each individual.
"Physicians are getting requests from their patients for medical cannabis for a variety of ailments and symptoms, but comfort with prescribing it varies from doctor to doctor," says Dr. Andrew Feifer, Surgical Oncologist, researcher and founder of the Trillium Health Partners Advanced Prostate Cancer Clinic, and medical advisor to MedReleaf. "Having a genetic test that provides objective evidenced-based guides to physicians on strain and dosage provides an individualized and systematic approach to recommending safe and effective treatment programs, and that's what physicians have been waiting for."
Through extensive research, MedReleaf has translated human genetic information related to how tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are metabolized to help predict better health outcomes for patients. ReleafDxTM analyzes biomarkers within known metabolic pathways to allow physicians to identify patients that may metabolize cannabis more slowly or quickly than normal. Knowing this information will help minimize the chance of an adverse reaction and maximize the likelihood of a positive effect.
"We have heard loud and clear from physicians across the country that there is a need to infuse more scientific rigour into the prescribing process. Given MedReleaf's emphasis on discovery and innovation, we felt it was important to work towards a solution," says Neil Closner, CEO, MedReleaf. "We have been working on this test for a few years and the data we have gathered and analyzed across thousands of patients has enabled us to remove much of the guesswork out of selecting the right cannabis solution for each patient based on their own individual |
of the financial engineering that went into the spinoff, California Resources was loaded up with debt to pay Oxy $6 billion. Shares started trading on December 1. Bank of America explained at the time that the company was undervalued and rated it a buy with a $14-a-share outlook. Those hapless souls who believed the Wall Street hype and bought these misbegotten shares have watched them drop to $4.33 by today, losing 57% of their investment in seven weeks.
Its junk bonds – 6% notes due 2024 – were trading at 79 cents on the dollar today, down another 3 points from last week, according to S&P Capital IQ LCD.
Others weren’t so lucky.
Samson Resources is barely hanging on. It was acquired for $7.2 billion in 2011 by a group of private-equity firms led by KKR. They loaded it up with $3.6 billion in new debt and saddled it with “management fees.” Since its acquisition, it lost over $3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. This is the inevitable result of fracking for natural gas whose price has been below the cost of production for years – though the industry has vigorously denied this at every twist and turn to attract the new money it needed to fill the holes.
Having burned through most of its available credit, Samson is getting rid of workers and selling off a chunk of its oil-and-gas fields. According to S&P Capital IQ LCD, its junk bonds – 9.75% notes due 2020 – traded at 26.5 cents on the dollar today, down about 10 points this week alone.
Halcón Resources, which cut its 2015 budget by 55% to 60% just to survive somehow, saw its shares plunge 10% today to $1.20, down 85% since June, and down 25% since January 12 when I wrote about it last. Its junk bonds slid six points this week to 72 cents on the dollar.
Hercules Offshore, when I last wrote about it on October 15, was trading for $1.47 a share, down 81% since July. This rock-bottom price might have induced some folks to jump in and follow the Wall-Street hype-advice to “buy the most hated stocks.” Today, it’s trading for $0.82 a share, down another 44%. In mid-October, its 8.75% notes due 2022 traded at 66 cent on the dollar. Yesterday they traded at 45.
Despite what Wall-Street hype mongers want us to believe: bottom-fishing in the early stages of an oil bust can be one of the most expensive things to do.
Paragon Offshore is another perfect example of Wall Street engineering in the oil and gas sector. The offshore driller was spun off from Noble in early August 2014 with the goal of goosing Noble’s stock price and loading up the new company with debt. As part of the spinoff, the company sold $580 million in junk bonds at 100 cents on the dollar. When its shares started trading, they immediately plunged. By the time I wrote about the company on October 15, they’d dropped 68% to $5.60. And the 6.75% notes due 2022 were trading at 77 cents on the dollar. Then in November, Paragon had the temerity to take on more debt to acquire Prospector Drilling Offshore.
Two days ago, Moody’s downgraded the outfit to Ba3, with negative outlook, citing the “rapid and significant deterioration in offshore rig-market fundamentals,” “the high likelihood” its older rigs might “not find new contracts,” and the “mostly debt-funded acquisition” of Prospector Drilling. The downgrade affects about $1.64 billion in debt.
Today, Paragon’s shares trade for $2.18, down another 61% since October 15. Its junk bonds are now down to 58 cents on the dollar.
Swift Energy – whose stock, now at $2.37, has been declining for years and is down 84% from a year ago – saw its junk bonds shrivel another eight points over the week to 36 cents on the dollar.
“Such movement demonstrates the challenging market conditions for oil-spill credits, with spotty trades and often large price gaps lower,” S&P Capital IQ LCD reported.
It boils down to this: these companies are locked out of the capital markets for all practical purposes: at these share prices, they can’t raise equity capital without wiping out existing stockholders; and they can’t issue new debt at affordable rates. For them, the junk-bond music has stopped. And their banks are getting nervous too.
Their hope rests on cutting operating costs and capital expenditures, and coddling every dollar they get, while pushing production to maximize cash flow, which ironically will contribute to the oil glut and pressure prices further. They’re hoping to hang on until the next miracle arrives.
“We are not panicking,” is how a bank CEO responded to the fact that loans to energy companies made up 20% of the bank’s loan portfolio. Read… How Wall Street Drove the Oil & Gas Drilling Boom That’s Turning into a DisasterIn what turned out to be his last big speech as a presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders called on his supporters to run for office. By then, one political newcomer from Derby, just outside of Wichita, had already filed to run for the Kansas Senate.
Gabriel Costilla had never thought about running for office. But, inspired by Sanders’ campaign, the Wichita high school teacher announced he would take on two-term Republican state Sen. Ty Masterson in the District 16 race.
“I had a little bit of involvement with political campaigns before, but never to this extent,” Costilla says.
Masterson is an experienced politician and one of the state’s top leaders as chair of the Ways and Means Committee. He has represented the 16th District since 2009; he previously served in the Kansas House and on the Andover City Council. He was unopposed in the 2012 election and beat his Republican challenger in the August primary.
Costilla has zero political experience — but says he makes up for that with passion.
“I’m a teacher, a parent and a concerned citizen and I’m in this race because I care about not only my family’s future, but for the people who are in my community and the people of Kansas,” he says.
Costilla is not only facing a tough opponent; he is also is trying to get votes in a tough district. Senate District 16, which covers eastern Sedgwick County and Butler County, is overwhelmingly Republican.
Democratic Party organizers “had to twist my arm a little bit,” Costilla says. “But my wife was right in saying that basically, there’s no reason not to try. And so I decided to go ahead and make an effort to run against Ty Masterson, not knowing anything about how to run, but knowing that I needed to because no one else was doing it.”
Last winter Costilla was just getting into politics and began volunteering for the Bernie Sanders campaign.
“I was really passionate about what Bernie was bringing, his authenticity,” Costilla says, “so I decided I was going to get involved.”
He pitched in with canvassing and phone banking and went on to serve as a deputy at the first caucus he ever attended. At the Kansas Democratic caucus back in March, Costilla decided to stick around and run for delegate.
A few weeks later, at the Democrats’ 4th Congressional District Convention, he gave a two-minute speech and was elected as one of three Bernie delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
“I couldn’t believe it, because there were like 68 other people there, and they had some great accomplishments,” Costilla says. “They had done more for Bernie’s campaign than I had, for sure.”
But that short delegate stump speech caught the attention of state and local Democratic leaders. Kansas Democratic Party Chair Lee Kinch was impressed enough to ask Costilla to run for the 16th Senate District against Masterson.
“He has fire in the belly,” Kinch says of Costilla. “That’s what I was interested in, someone who will make a compelling candidate. And I believe he makes a compelling candidate.”
Getting Costilla on board helped the party’s mission to fill the state legislative races with Democrats. They fielded candidates in 91 of 125 House races and for all 40 Senate seats.
And the campaigns are growing the ranks of party supporters, too.
Dana Riley is a lifelong Democrat who also went to her first caucus this year.
“I felt energized by the Bernie message, but I also was really concerned about the direction that Kansas was headed,” she says.
Riley was one of the people who voted for Costilla to be a delegate. She’s now Costilla’s volunteer coordinator – and she doesn’t even live in District 16.
“It just really hit me that he was going to be a special candidate and someone that I felt strong enough about that I wanted to invest my time and energy into helping him get elected,” she says.
Riley’s not alone. More than 50 people are volunteering for the Costilla campaign.
Jeff Jarman, a political analyst and professor of political science at Wichita State University, says he’s seen how a presidential campaign can be the spark that brings new people into the political process.
“We saw with [President] Obama eight years ago, and Bernie Sanders in this cycle, [they’re] able to inspire people,” Jarman says. “In Sanders’ case, the supporters had to find something else to do.”
And once the Sanders campaign folded, one of those “somethings” was volunteering for state legislative candidates like Gabriel Costilla.
Kansas Democrats hope their new recruits — and their supporters – will be around for the next election cycle.
Deborah Shaar is a reporter for KMUW 89.1 in Wichita and is on Twitter @DeborahShaar. KMUW is a partner in a statewide collaboration covering elections in Kansas.System Architecture Newsflash
Getting a product market fit and ready for adoption is now vital for our project’s future. As such, speed of development and user experience have been prioritized.
kingflurkel Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 31, 2017
Edited by Matthew Carano
From the community and how it is organized (or self-organized) to the way our dev team works — some parts are still centralized, or at least have the risk of becoming centralized. The path to full decentralization is the one we are creating ourselves.
Creating a blockchain based app that’s fast and responsive as a bee is hard. That’s why the Swarm City architecture consists of several layers that interoperate, to create an experience that enables a decentralized peer to peer sharing economy.
The protocol is the most important part; making sure layers can communicate by speaking the same language using the same grammatical rules. These layers are isolated so they can be changed without disabling the app.
One of these layers enables the communication between devices, the blockchain, and IPFS. Before data is stored on IPFS or the Ethereum blockchain, it needs to be available on every user’s device so it can interact with it. In the current live version, this part is played by Whisper. With the development and release of Boardwalk (June 2017) the dev team reached and pushed the limits of what you can use Whisper for today.
To create an awesome user experience, Boardwalk 2.0 will use Firebase to enable the communication layer. In the meantime our dev and lab teams keep working on optimizing the Whisper solution, and when ready, will swap out the components on this layer.
Firebase knows what’s going to be on IPFS before it’s there. But it needs to have the hash later on, so everyone can verify what is true.
IPFS stores all data — Firebase caches
There is a unique IPFS bridge constructed within Firebase, and its function is to listen to changes made to the Firebase database and storage. This bridge is a caching layer and hash index to the IPFS. All changes to Firebase will be saved to IPFS, and IPFS will generate a hash from the data, which in turn is saved back to Firebase updating the stored data with the IPFS hash.
Data is stored in the browser’s local storage via IndexedDB and Firebase database. This data is then synced to the IPFS. Firebase functions trigger updates to the Blockchain.
Public servers are used to interacting with geth, leaving the app completely infrastructure free with exception of the IPFS server.
But who will pay for it?
It’s like asking “Who will build the roads” when talking about voluntarism. A small percentage of the hashtag fee will go to making sure the infrastructure works. As we further decentralize the infrastructure by setting up a network of helper nodes (coming soon!) these fees will be distributed over a decentralized network. For now, this work is done by firebase, so they get paid from the hashtag fee. We happily hand this task over to the Biz hive lead Bernd Lapp.
The dev team and their advisors have made sure this solution does not break Swarm City’s technological decentralization principles. The ecosystem is censorship resistant because every centralized component may be swapped out with a decentralized one, now or later. And, it can operate and run in a total decentralized way by peer to peer connections and the Ethereum blockchain providing unstoppable computing power.
End of newsflashEarlier this week, Amazon Studios revealed it was planning a prequel series to Lord of the Rings, a timid choice that passed over fresh fantasy literature in favor of a well-established and ever-expanding franchise. My colleague Andrew Liptak put forward an excellent argument for bringing new, lesser-known work into the spotlight. But since the announcement, I’ve realized that a company as powerful as Amazon could take that good advice to a level that’s downright dystopian.
Amazon has built a stable of services touching just about every part of the entertainment industry, from film and game development to ebook publishing and video streaming. It’s also built a retail empire on cheap piecemeal labor, free material generated by users, and an arcane system designed to connect people with things they want at the absolute maximum level of efficiency. So it’s not hard to imagine it — or a similarly large competitor — building a miniature film industry that looks a lot like an automated marketplace.
Amazon’s services would tie neatly into a miniature licensing system
In Amazon’s case, the basic pieces exist already. Its Kindle Direct Publishing service would add an automatic, opt-out film or TV license — including the option for specific stipulations, like no R-rated adaptations or no character whitewashing. The synopsis would go to Amazon Studios, where aspiring directors or screenwriters could lease the rights for a production. They’d submit the final result to Amazon Studios, where a moderation team could approve it for Amazon Video.
This doesn’t actually sound bad. It combines ideas that are already in use on other web platforms — the fiction site Wattpad helps sell popular stories to studios, for example, and YouTube lets music labels automatically collect royalties from people using their songs. Ideally, the system encourages directors outside the existing film industry to build on the ideas of authors outside the bestseller lists, and give their work a place in a major streaming library. If a project is popular enough, a traditional studio could pick it up for wider release with a bigger budget, the way web series can become TV shows.
But the bigger platforms get, the scarier the idea becomes. Amazon has tremendous clout in the publishing industry, and a near-monopolistic version could make it very difficult for authors to refuse the company’s deal. It could also contractually make filmmakers’ work permanently exclusive to Amazon Video. Scammers and trolls would find ways to game a massive semi-automated catalog, just as they game Amazon’s retail marketplace. If Amazon keeps ultimate control over adaptation rights, it could even let studios pull a successful project out from under its independent creators, replacing them with a “safer,” better-known cast and crew.
Imagine an ouroboros of spinoffs and novelizations
And the same aversion to new work could creep into the process over time. Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, for instance, currently lets authors write tie-in stories for existing book series. Throw it (or a similar program) into the mix, you could end up with a franchise ouroboros: writers eternally churning out Amazon fan fiction for their favorite Amazon TV series, and directors processing it into spinoff after spinoff. To make things worse, it’s easier to get away with telling “fan writers” that they’re privileged simply to have their material picked up for a project, and they shouldn’t expect payment as well.
Entertainment is already being transformed by a combination of far-reaching platforms and an endless supply of free creative labor. This nightmare scenario is just the most elegantly Darwinian incarnation. It’s certainly not inevitable: even beyond the established entertainment industry, there’s a history of creative people designing systems that offer havens from exploitative platforms. When now-failed commercial fan fiction site FanLib angered a group of writers with its restrictive terms, they created Archive of our Own, a remarkably well-designed nonprofit option. The Creative Commons copyright system isn’t a discrete “platform,” but it’s a framework that lets artists operate outside the traditional copyright system without giving up all rights to their work.
Even so, if we’re talking about epic struggles for the fate of fantasy worlds, it’s worth keeping an eye on the powers that are shaping our own.Playing safety in the NFL is more difficult than ever. The NFL has become a passing league, so the days of pure in-the-box, run-stuffing safeties are over. Safeties need to be able to play a center field role in two-deep zone and man-to-man coverages against wide receivers, tight ends and athletic pass-catching running backs. Plus, they need to be able to assert themselves against the run and also blitz in today's sophisticated defenses.
Complicating their issues of late is the development of the tight end position. Every team now covets -- and many have found -- tight ends that are remarkably athletic and are equal parts tight end and wide receiver (think Jimmy Graham or Jermichael Finley). As such fantastic offensive weapons emerge, someone has to cover them. And that responsibility usually falls on the shoulders of safeties. We are also seeing more and more "Big Nickel" sets -- five defensive backs, including three safeties -- against offensive base personnel.
Below is a list of very young players at this position who should have bright futures ahead of them. Ed Reed and Troy Polamalu are still the best two players at the position, but they won't play forever. This is the next wave.The film premiered at Sundance, where it won both the best directing and best editing awards in the World Cinema Documentary category.
Drafthouse Films has acquired North American rights to semifictional film 20,000 Days on Earth, starring Nick Cave, from Hanway Films.
Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s directorial debut premiered in January at Sundance, where it won the best directing and best editing awards in the World Cinema Documentary category. The pic will have its European premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The film distribution arm of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is planning a theatrical release for the film this year.
Set to an original score by Cave and Warren Ellis, 20,000 Days on Earth is an intimate look at the artistic process that follows a fictional day in Cave's life.
The inventive pic, a Pulse Films/JW Films production, was produced by James Wilson and Dan Bowen with the support of Film4, Corniche Pictures amd the BFI.
“I am among many who consider Nick Cave the unofficial poet laureate of the modern age,” says Drafthouse Films founder Tim League in a statement. “While his music fans are already eagerly anticipating this release, I am personally excited to share this riveting portrait of a modern creative genius with a much wider audience.”
THR's critic David Rooney, who reviewed the film at Sundance, wrote: "What makes 20,000 Days on Earth distinctive is that it provides an overview of the man and his art while creating the illusion that this has come together organically -- out of poetic ruminations, casual encounters, ghost-like visitations and good old Freudian psychoanalysis."
The deal was negotiated by League and James Emanuel Shapiro on behalf of Drafthouse Films and Thorsten Schumacher, managing director at Hanway Films, for the producers.He chose Door No. 2, and it took all of three months. Emory University was looking to replace the director of the Yerkes primate center, who was about to retire, and Dr. Insel was at the top of their list. He had already run a lab, as chief of the neurobiology division of the mental health institute, and his work with voles would diversify Yerkes’s portfolio, which then was focused on studying H.I.V. in primates.
He packed up his family and his voles, and moved south. “Acclaimed Researcher to Head Yerkes Center,” read the headline in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Aug. 20, 1994, the day the hiring was announced. “All I know is I had to go out and buy my first tie,” is how Dr. Insel tells it.
He quickly expanded rodent research at the center and also deepened his own work on the biology of attachment, with the help of an Emory postdoctoral student, Larry Young, who has since extended the research on his own. The work with voles effectively scotched the assumption that a complex behavior could not be reduced to brain biology. Oxytocin and vasopressin are now a focus of intense interest as possible modulators of social behaviors in other species, though the effects of such proteins are still a matter of debate.
His necktie came in handy at Yerkes. Between the march on his home in Decatur and other crises, the “psychiatrist who became a bench scientist,” as he has described himself, took on yet another role: He became a public official.
He was comfortable in front of audiences, relaxed with the news media, and willing to see at-home protests as part of the job, nothing to lose sleep over. The precociousness was long gone. By 2000, he had some well-tailored suits to go with his ties, a commanding view over his field, and some strong beliefs about how to improve its infrastructure.
All of which made him “the natural choice” for the mental health institute’s director, in the words of Dr. Elias Zerhouni, then director of National Institutes of Health who hired him for the job in 2002, citing his “ability to communicate a compelling vision for mental health research, his outstanding scientific record, and his proven leadership skills.”
The Path Ahead
In one way, it was a homecoming, a return to Washington and to the National Institute of Mental Health, where he’d made a name for himself. In a more consequential sense, however, Dr. Insel’s arrival as director signaled yet another departure, this one far larger than just about anyone could have anticipated. Dr. Insel has sharply shifted the agency’s focus — to basic neuroscience and genetics, at the expense of the very type of behavioral research he himself had once done. That change has generated a mix of optimism and outrage.Royal Caribbean to cut emissions on 19 ships
Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas. (Photo11: Royal Caribbean International)
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. will use new pollution-reducing scrubbers to "meet or exceed" environmental standards, officials said.
The company announced plans to retrofit 13 Royal Caribbean and six Celebrity Cruises ships with scrubber technology, each installation taking about eight months.
The scrubbers will reduce the sulfur dioxide emissions generated by ships' diesel engines by more than 97%, officials said.
SEE MORE: Royal Caribbean to say goodbye to Majesty of the Seas
PHOTO TOUR: Inside a Royal Caribbean ship | Inside a Celebrity Cruises ship
The installation of the technology will take place between 2015 and 2017.
The move is ahead of new International Maritime Organization Emission Control Area standards and complies with existing European Union standards, the line said.
Another option would have been switching to a fuel with lower sulfur content, but Royal officials said supplies of lower-sulfur fuels are limited in some areas where the line's ships sail.
Carnival Corporation (with its various brands including Carnival, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line) announced last year it would spend $180 million over three years to install scrubber technology on 32 diesel-powered ships. Norwegian Cruise Line also announced plans to use scrubber technology to meet the new standards.
RELATED: Carnival to cut pollution on 32 ships
Royal Caribbean has been involved in the development and testing of the technology since 2010, officials said. The new Quantum of the Seas was built with a scrubber system installed, as was the company's new German ship, Mein Schiff 3. The Liberty of the Seas has been a testing ground for the technology for two years.
Officials said Royal Caribbean faced "significant challenges" in adding the scrubbers on existing ships, noting that some pieces are as large as a school bus and that each system weighs several hundred tons.
"A retrofit project of this size and complexity — and the scale and intricacy of the research, planning, and design required — is unprecedented for our company, and has required a very systematic process and involved the world's leading expertise in this field," said Harri Kulovaara, Royal Caribbean's executive vice president, Maritime.
Royal Caribbean will get the scrubbers from Swedish company Alfa Laval and Finnish company Wartsila. For a deck-by-deck look inside a Royal Caribbean ship, click through the carousel below.
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Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1AYi2DqWASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry has accused Russia of behaving in a “19th-century fashion” because of its annexation of Crimea.
But Western experts who have followed the success of Russian forces in carrying out President Vladimir V. Putin’s policy in Crimea and eastern Ukraine have come to a different conclusion about Russian military strategy. They see a military disparaged for its decline since the fall of the Soviet Union skillfully employing 21st-century tactics that combine cyberwarfare, an energetic information campaign and the use of highly trained special operation troops to seize the initiative from the West.
“It is a significant shift in how Russian ground forces approach a problem,” said James G. Stavridis, the retired admiral and former NATO commander. “They have played their hand of cards with finesse.”
The abilities the Russian military has displayed are not only important to the high-stakes drama in Ukraine, they also have implications for the security of Moldova, Georgia, Central Asian nations and even the Central Europe nations that are members of NATO.Councillor Doug Ford is raising the heat in a battle with the president of Toronto’s firefighters association after the union criticized Mayor Rob Ford’s use of a fire truck at his recent re-election campaign launch at the same time fire services in the city are being reduced. “I encourage the firefighters, the great firefighters we have, to replace this person, Mr. Kennedy, that just wants to start controversy, make up stories and he’s being disingenuous with people. The worst thing he could do is put scare tactics into the people when we’re pouring money into the fire department,” said Ford, who is acting as his brother Rob’s campaign manager.
A fire truck sits in the hall as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford launches his re-election campaign at the Toronto Congress Centre in Toronto. ( Steve Russell / Toronto Star )
Ford accused Ed Kennedy of playing “real dirty,” linking him with political consultant Nick Kouvalis, despite the fact Kouvalis ran his brother’s successful mayoral campaign in 2010. Kouvalis is now working for the mayoral campaign of John Tory. The Toronto Fire Fighters Association issued a statement after the Thursday evening event, calling the use of the fire truck “utterly tasteless” and a “slap in the face” at a time fire services are actually being reduced. Related:
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Rob Ford launches campaign More Toronto 2014 campaign coverage on Thestar.com Kennedy, president of the TPFFA, called the elder Ford brother’s comments “typical...it’s to be expected.” “It’s kind of hypocritical to use a fire truck as a prop when all of sudden, you’re going to be pulling four fire trucks out of service,” Kennedy said, noting that the trucks will be withdrawn from service on Monday, along with 84 firefighter positions.
“This is not about politics. It’s about public safety. They (Ford brothers) are misleading the public. The citizens aren’t aware of this, we’re making them aware because we’re concerned,” Kennedy added, noting firefighters are working on their off-time to notify residents in the four affected communities about the reduction in service. While Doug Ford said the city is preparing to open four new fire halls, Kennedy said the actual number is only two — one at the CNE and one at Midland Ave. and Eglinton Ave. E — but without hiring additional firefighters.
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“I am a taxpayer, I live in the city and I live in one of the impacted areas,” said Kennedy, a firefighter for 33 years. “We’ve never played dirty politics. We’re supporting nobody and there’ve been no discussions,” Kennedy noted. The firefighters union has only ever endorsed one mayoral candidate in recent memory, David Miller, who was first elected in 2003. The association did not endorse him when he was re-elected in 2007, said association spokesperson Frank Ramagnano. Kennedy said he’s confident he will be re-elected as union president later this year. Doug Ford also criticized public service union leaders in general, noting his he and his brother “differentiate between labour and labour leadership.” “We don’t always agree with the public sector labour leadership. And do you know what’s amazing? Sixty per cent of union members don’t agree with their leaders. On top of it, they don’t even want to belong to the union,” he said. At a city-sponsored Environment Day event in the ward of city budget chief Frank Di Giorgio, Mayor Ford defended his vote in 2011 to stop city funding for such events, which encourage residents to turn in items such as old paint cans and to pick up compost and new recycling bins. “I didn’t support Environment Days all the time. But we should condense them, two into one. We don’t need 44, we could have 22. If the councillors want to do something different, that’s up to council,” Mayor Ford said. Ford also said he continues to support Gene Jones, the embattled CEO of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. City ombudsman Fiona Crean is expected to release a damaging report on Tuesday after investigating the housing corporation’s hiring, firing and promotion practices under Jones’ leadership in the past two years. “I’ve always supported Gene Jones,” Ford said. Asked if he’ll continue to support Jones regardless of the report’s findings, he responded: “Absolutely.”
Read more about:Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have dueling rallies in DC coming soon. Stewart's is "Rally to Restore Sanity" and Colbert's is "March to Keep Fear Alive!"
Obviously, Colbert is a great satirist who is poking fun here, since we sure don't need a rally to keep fear alive. Alarming messages are all around us, like the news about global warming or the "Threat Level Orange" announcements every few minutes in the airport.
Some of those messages are true and worth heeding. For example, dumping carbon into the atmosphere must inevitably make the planet hotter; it's basic physics.
But others are wildly exaggerated: the actual odds of a bad event on your airplane flight are "Threat Level Chartreuse" -- a bucket of green paint with a drop of yellow.
How do we tell the difference between real threats and bogus ones? (This is important for many reasons; for one, chasing fake threats takes away resources from real issues.)
But it's tough to do, since evolution has given us a brain with what scientists call a "negativity bias" that makes it prone to feeling threatened. This bias developed because the ancient mammals, primates, and early humans that were all mellow and fearless did not notice the shadow overhead or slither nearby that CHOMP! killed them. The ones that survived to pass on their genes were nervous and cranky, and we are their great-grandchildren, sitting atop the food chain, armed with nuclear weapons.
Stephen Colbert, relax: Mother Nature is on your side, already working hard to keep fear alive.
Your brain is continually looking for bad news. As soon as it finds some, it fixates on it with tunnel vision, fast-tracks it into memory storage, and then reactivates it at the least hint of anything even vaguely similar. But good news gets a kind of neural shrug: "uh, whatever."
In effect, the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones.
All this makes human beings super-sensitive to apparent threats. Basically, in evolution, there are two kinds of mistakes: (1) You think there is a tiger in the bushes but there isn't one, and (2) You think the coast is clear, no tiger in the bushes, but there really is one about to pounce.
These mistakes have very different consequences. The first one will make you anxious, but the second one will kill you. That's why Mother Nature wants you to make the first mistake a thousand times over in order to avoid making the second mistake even once.
This hard-wired tendency toward fear affects individuals, groups (from couples to multinational corporations), and nations. It makes them overestimate threats, underestimate opportunities, and underestimate resources.
Of course we need to deal with real tigers, real threats, ranging from leaky roofs to the shaky economy, national debt, terrorism, and global warming. But "keeping fear alive" for tigers that are nonexistent, manageably small, or made out of paper has huge costs.
At the personal level, fear feels bad, wears down physical and mental health, and makes people duck for cover in life and play small. (These individual costs also drag down the economy.)
Nationally, feeling threatened gets intensified by the classic drumbeat of alarms about inner and outer enemies from people who are good at trumping hope with fear. The result? Paper tiger paranoia - which makes us over-invest in threat protection, under-invest in infrastructure, miss real tigers because we're flooded with warnings about illusory or exaggerated ones, and over-react in ways that create new real tigers (like America's longest war, in Iraq).
The solution? It's to have the courage to see real tigers clearly and to deal with them effectively - and to refuse to be frightened and cowed by boys and girls crying tiger.
It also helps to get more skillful with your own brain: to understand how it makes you needlessly afraid, whether you're talking with a family member, doing a project at work, or watching the news - and most importantly, what you can do about that by using your mind alone to change your brain for the better.
Which is what I'll be exploring in my upcoming posts, including how to calm down threat reactivity, feel stronger and safer, recognize both real tigers and paper ones, and realize that in most situations most of the time, it is not "Threat Level Orange."
Meanwhile, let's not do anything more to keep fear alive. Mother Nature and Fox News are already doing a very good job there. Instead, let's do more to keep courage alive.
A great first step is to laugh at paper tigers.About
Trump California Sunset
I want Mr. Trump treated fairly. I am African American and Mr Trump Changed My Life. I don't want the money to come from Mr. Trump because it would look like propaganda. Now I don't agree with all of his politics, but it is highly unfair to call that man a racist when he's not. In 2007 I had just co-produced a fundraiser for a global foundation at Mr. Trump's ballroom. My friend and I had put up $50,000 to get the event done and we raised 116,000 at a 14 table event. please understand the $50,000 covered marketing, a cocktail reception, dinner and a live musical recording that featured artists from all over the country. Video of that fundraiser is included in the video that I uploaded. Mr. Trump waved $9,000 off of our bill to make a donation to the foundation. So we asked Mr. Trump is there anything that we could do for him because he was so generous towards our event. He said he could use a video for his golf course. Now they did not have drones in 2007 I knew I had to go up in a helicopter and shoot and I had never done it before, but I knew one of the best pilots in the country. He had done a lot of movies so I felt confident I could pull the aerial off and I also knew one of the top photographers in the country, so I knew we could get the photos done. Now my co-producer is White and the one in direct communication with Mr. Trump and his people, so I still had not met him yet. I go up and I shoot the aerial in 22 minutes and we killed it and I did it Handheld no Gyro, he's a great pilot and I had an iron hand so it worked. The next day we shot all the holes, photos and video, the clubhouse and the driving range. The third day we shot five estates, and that was not easy. I did the editing of the video, and even scored the music myself. We sent it to Mr. Trump and he is the FIRST client ever, still to this day, in 30 years that told me my first cut was perfect, and he wrote a thank you letter, an actual letter not an email. Mr. Trump said to come and shoot an interview with him when he would be in town in a few weeks, so it we can add it to the video.
So the day of the shoot, we are set up, ready to go and he decided he wanted to play nine holes of golf before the interview, however he recently had a skin treatment, which made him very vulnerable to getting sunburned. So when he came to shoot he had the worst sunburn I'd ever seen. He was practically blood red and I was like there's no way we're going to be able to put make up on him. Now when he greeted me he said "I got a bit of a burn but I guess you don't have a problem do you?" and I said no sir I don't so I was glad that he was able to joke about it because it looked really painful. Some people might be offend by his joke, but there was nothing malicious about it. I was acting thinking I'm glad I don't have that problem when he said it. Now he had every |
The trial was held on a constitutional challenge to the 2008 voter initiative by two same-sex couples.
Later in 2010, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Proposition 8, and this year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also found the measure unconstitutional, although on narrow grounds that would apply only to California.
The sponsors of Proposition 8 are now appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At the trial two years ago, Blankenhorn testified he believed that marriage would benefit lesbian and gay couples and their children, but said he feared that allowing same-sex weddings would undermine heterosexual marriage as an institution.
In today’s essay, Blankenhorn wrote he had hoped that debating gay marriage “might help to lead heterosexual America to a broader and more positive commitment to marriage as an institution.”
“But it hasn’t happened,” Blankenhorn wrote.”If fighting gay marriage was going to help marriage overall, I think we’d have seen some signs of it by now,” Blankenhorn wrote.
Blanenhorn said he hopes that gay people and heterosexuals who want to strengthen marriage will form coalitions to work together.
Carla Hass, a spokeswoman for the sponsors of Proposition 8, said the sponsors had no immediate comment.
Hass said the sponsors have not yet filed their petition for review with the Supreme Court, but are going ahead with plans to do so.
The lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 was supported by the Los Angeles-based American Foundation for Equal Rights.
Adam Umhoefer, the foundation’s executive director, said, “We are happy to consider Mr. Blankenhorn a supporter” in the quest for marriage equality “and applaud his commitment to equality.”
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
Want more news, sent to your inbox every day? Then how about subscribing to our email newsletter? Here’s why we think you should. Come on, give it a try.Scientists believe they may have cracked an important conundrum in atmospheric chemistry: how a volatile molecule released by plants helps to form aerosols that can have a profound effect on weather and climate systems.
Isoprene, C 5 H 8, is emitted by deciduous plants and is the largest source of hydrocarbons other than methane to enter the atmosphere - estimated at more than 500 million tonnes each year. It has been known for many years that isoprene participates in the formation of aerosols - tiny liquid droplets suspended in the atmosphere. These ’secondary organic aerosols’ play an important part in the formation of clouds and the cycling of water in the atmosphere. However, their composition and the chemistry of their formation has remained elusive, leaving a large gap in knowledge for those trying to develop comprehensive atmospheric models. Isoprene itself is too volatile to attach to particles in the atmosphere and create aerosols.
Now, a team led by Fabien Paulot of the Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, has demonstrated the chemical process by which isoprene can contribute to the formation of secondary organic aerosols. The work could have important practical value for air quality modelling.
In the laboratory the researchers simulated conditions found in the atmosphere above forests where it is known that hydroxyl radicals oxidise isoprene in the presence of sunlight. Using chemical ionisation mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry, the team identified organic hydroperoxides and epoxides. The presence of these molecules enabled the researchers to formulate a reaction pathway by which the isoprene can be attacked by hydroxyl radicals, ultimately forming epoxides. Crucially, the pathway results in the recycling of the hydroxyl radical. This is important because previous ideas about the oxidation of isoprene would result in a net consumption of hydroxyl radicals - something that is not observed in the field.
Furthermore, the researchers showed that when the epoxides come into contact with existing aerosol particles, they are taken up by the aerosol and consequently contribute to the aerosol mass.
Markus Kalberer, who researches organic aerosols at the University of Cambridge in the UK is impressed with the research, highlighting the interaction observed between the epoxides and the aerosol particles as particularly interesting: ’In this whole business of secondary organic aerosol particles this has been a missing link and they have done a really nice job on the chemical identification - often you see papers where there is a lot of guessing. Epoxide has been hypothesised for more than 10 years and this seems to confirm its role, and it does appear to be the dominant route of this oxidation pathway, which, importantly, recycles the OH.’
Simon Hadlington
Interesting? Spread the word using the ’tools’ menu on the left..- The Dominicans have posted on their social media a greeting for the 110th birthday of Sister Marie Bernadette, “the oldest Dominican sister in the world.”
Sister Marie Bernadette, who lives in Dax, in France's Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, is not only the oldest sister in the order but she also set a historic record for her years of profession.
In a Jan. 5 post on the Dominicains de Bordeaux Facebook page, the Dominicans quoted the sister's superior on the occasion of her birthday: “For me, what's most beautiful is that she will be professed for 90 years this coming April 18!!! That's a record.”
The post also indicated that Sister Marie Bernadette is one of the oldest sisters in the community and that she prays for all the Dominicans. They also called on everyone to pray for an increase in monastic vocations.
At the Dax monastery, the Dominican sisters lead a life of prayer, contemplation, and they also do sewing and make pastries for income.Correcting for gender imbalances in tech won't be an overnight fix.
August 22, 2017 5 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The discussion about gender equity in the workplace is nothing new. It’s been ongoing for decades, but we’ve made a good deal of progress overall. However, we still have a lot of problems encouraging diversity in tech.
Varied perspectives make for a more dynamic, in-touch and ultimately sustainable organization, meaning that it’s not just a moral judgement -- it’s also smart business. The shortage of female recruits in tech, though, makes diverse organizations much harder to build.
Related: Onward and Upward: 5 Tips to Help Women in Tech Develop an Executive Presence
This leaves a lot of tech businesses asking the question: “How can we attract more diverse recruits?” Fortunately, addressing imbalances in tech isn’t as difficult as many might assume.
Encourage diverse leadership.
Opportunities for advancement are a powerful incentive in recruiting top talent, and the best way to recruit female candidates revolves around this very simple concept. Step one is to underscore that the same opportunities exist for male and female recruits by encouraging women in leadership positions. Drawing on diverse perspectives in leadership will pay off quickly as you can expect more:
Customer engagement and a better understanding of individual consumers
Creative and innovative thought
Sustainable growth
Positive impressions of the company that will help recruit talent
If candidates see your company as an active promoter of women in tech with a culture that makes advocacy a priority, they will be more interested in working with you.
Related: Here Are the Best Tech Companies for Women to Work
Hold the door for others.
Data from 2015 found that less than 30 percent of the labor force at the largest tech companies were women, and women occupied just 15.6 percent of explicitly tech-related positions. It’s not easy for women to find their way in this industry. When they do, though, it’s helpful if they can provide support for others still at the beginning of their career.
I’m passionate about advocating for women in tech positions because I know that it makes a difference. Women are much more likely to start at entry-level roles than their male counterparts, and they tend to make less. I’m a firm believer in the idea that people should be paid and positioned according to the value that they represent to a company, but that’s not always the case in tech.
We can change the situation by supporting and pushing for assurances of pay equity to make for a more welcoming and enticing culture in tech. Women who’ve fought through the barriers to entry have indispensable insight into the matter of gender equity in tech, and no one out there is better positioned to have an impact on it.
Related: Women Won't Achieve Equal Representation in Business Unless Men Help Change the Status Quo
Encourage mentorship and self-advocacy in company culture.
Of course, helping bring women on board is just part of the equation. Business leaders can also make a positive difference by equipping women in tech with the tools to find success.
The best way to get others to promote your contributions is to start promoting yourself. Women need to take on the roles of self-advocates, but that’s much easier with the benefit of guidance from a more experienced figure. Unsurprisingly, though, these relationships tend to be divided along gender lines.
As women occupy a relatively small share of tech positions, chances for them to find more experienced mentor figures are limited. That’s why it’s important for women with tech backgrounds to seek out opportunities to pass on the benefits of their experience.
Having a mentor figure to offer insight and the benefit of years of experience can fundamentally impact one’s career. So, just as women need to advocate for themselves, it’s also important that tech companies encourage mentorship in the company culture. It will make your company more attractive to female candidates if they know that it will be a positive career move.
Related: Why I Didn't Speak Up When Male Colleagues Made More Doing the Same Job -- But Worse
Develop passion for tech early on.
The themes of mentorship and advocacy carry over into the next generation as well. Based on my experiences, there are three main reasons young women tend not to consider tech as a career path:
The passion for tech isn’t instilled in girls early on.
Girls aren’t aware of the opportunities available in the field.
They don’t possess the same confidence as boys when it comes to tech.
Correcting for these is essential if we’re ever going to address the gender imbalance in the industry, and we’re going to have to start with young people to pull it off.
The industry can play a major role in helping inspire a love for STEM subjects in young girls. This will be the most effective way to encourage more women to pursue these fields and stick with them. The next generation of thinkers and innovators are developing now. By encouraging girls to tinker and create, tech companies can ensure a much more diverse future for the industry.
Keep at it.
Correcting for gender imbalances in tech won’t be an overnight fix. But, if everyone plays their part -- business leaders, women in tech and women looking to enter the industry -- it will make the process much easier.POLL: Would you live at the Chattanooga Choo Choo? no
yes Submit Results no: 38.44 % (168) yes: 61.56 % (269) Total Responses: 437
More than 90 hotel rooms at the Chattanooga Choo Choo are going to be repurposed and made into affordable apartments starting early next year, as the historic downtown attraction revamps its image and goes forward with an $8 million makeover.
The Choo Choo is dedicating 97 rooms in the building immediately behind the iconic Market Street lobby for apartments, but will otherwise continue operating as a 267-room hotel.
Two of the new apartments will be 650 square feet in size, and the other 95 each will include 350 square feet. The redevelopment includes building facade upgrades and sprinkler system additions.
In July, the Choo Choo's owners unveiled a major revitalization plan that includes the installation of two new restaurants (Nashville-based Sam's Sports Grill and Jacksonville, Fla.-based Blue Fish Oyster Bar) in the lobby, the introduction of a new 500-person, on-site music venue and the relocation of the Comedy Catch from Brainerd to the Choo Choo campus. Track 29 will remain at the Choo Choo.
The residential redevelopment is estimated to cost about $4.1 million, and CapitalMark Bank is handling financing for the project.
Jon Kinsey, part owner of the Choo Choo and former mayor of Chattanooga, said Tuesday that the Choo Choo's owners are responding to calls from city leaders for more affordable downtown housing options. "I think it's really important that downtown has options for people of all income levels," he said.
Consequently, affordability was the determining factor in offering the 350-square-foot apartments, rather than knock out walls between hotel rooms and create larger floor plans, he said.
The 300, a complex of smaller floor-plan apartments at the corner of Sixth and Pine streets downtown, has been successful following the small-but-affordable model, Kinsey said.
A year ago, Chattanooga's downtown development agency River City Co. released a survey detailing the downtown housing shortfall and encouraging builders to meet it by starting residential projects.
According to that River City survey, downtown can support 250-350 new rental units and 200 new student housing units being added every year.
"The city and county and River City have been talking actually for decades about the need for some affordable apartments downtown, and we think this is a great way to fit that niche," said Kinsey. "They've asked people to come do this, and we're trying to do what the local government's requested."
The Chattanooga Choo Choo basks in the setting sun in Chattanooga, Tenn., in this file photo. The Chattanooga Choo Choo basks in the setting... Photo by Logan Foll /Times Free Press.
To help incentivize the downtown residential development they've asked for, city officials agreed in August to offer property tax breaks -- good for the next decade -- for any new downtown residential project (new construction or remodel) with affordable rent.
The payment-in-lieu-of-tax (PILOT) offer stipulates that 20 percent of a new development's units must be affordable to moderate- or low-income families to qualify for a reduced tax rate on the new investment made downtown. The improvements eligible for the tax breaks must be worth at least 60 percent of the existing structure's value.
In exchange for offering new, affordable downtown housing options, the PILOT program freezes property taxes, and the owner pays only a portion of those pre-development taxes back to the city over a determined period of time, usually 10 years but maybe more depending on the project.
Because 100 percent of the Choo Choo's new apartments are considered affordable, with rent between $680 and $730 a month, the redevelopment qualifies for the downtown residential tax breaks.
Amy Donahue, communication manager at River City Co., said Tuesday that none of the commercial work at the Choo Choo will be eligible for the tax breaks. Increased property value caused by the commercial work will have to be paid each year like normal.
"The PILOT only goes toward residential development that meets the requirements," she said. "The commercial space, if there's any commercial space either in the building or associated with it in any way, that is not eligible for the PILOT."
Members of the city's Health, Educational and Housing Facility Board will make a decision whether to award the Choo Choo project the property tax breaks at a meeting at noon Friday.
River City Co. recommends approval for the Choo Choo PILOT, for a 12-year term and a four-year phase-in period following, in which the Choo Choo will pay 20 percent of its new property taxes.
Kinsey said Tuesday that construction is set to begin on the apartments next month, and the hope is that the new units will be ready within six months.
Rent will include utilities, parking and Wi-Fi service.
Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.Scottish FA JD Performance Schools
At the heart of the Scottish FA’s performance strategy are seven schools that have been operating since 2012 to support the development of Scotland’s best young footballing talent. The Performance Schools programme is designed to give talented boys and girls, with the best potential to develop their abilities, the opportunity to practise football everyday within an educational environment.
The vision
Ensuring talented young players develop into successful professionals is an extremely challenging task that can be affected by many factors. The player’s family, peers, school and clubs will all have a significant influence on how they develop.
The vision for the Performance Schools is to provide an environment that gives young boys and girls the best possible chance to fulfil their potential. The coaching at the schools is focused on creating a new generation of Scottish players that are equipped to prosper in the modern game.
In short, we are looking to produce players with excellent technique who can pass with precision, control with comfort, run with purpose and play with joy.
Read more about our vision here.
What are the Performance Schools?
The seven performance schools across Scotland each run a programme in partnership with the Scottish FA for boys and girls within the S1 to S4 age groups. Every year, each school will select a number of the most talented under-12 players to join the programme. Over a four-year period, this will provide the most talented young footballers throughout the country with an extra 800 hours of coaching.
Each school has a full-time elite youth coach who has overall responsibility for the delivery of the programmes. Each coach in turn is supported by a range of national team and club coaches, sport scientists and other specialist experts. The schools are:
Hazlehead Academy – Aberdeen
St John’s RC High School – Dundee
Broughton High School – Edinburgh
Graeme High School – Falkirk
Holyrood Secondary School – Glasgow
Grange Academy – Kilmarnock
Braidhurst High School – Motherwell
Coaching takes place during regular school hours within an appropriate timetable that compliments their academic studies and their club football team. Although the primary focus is on developing elite young players it is important to understand that the programme is also about the young person and player.
The sessions delivered by the coach will assist with the development of Curriculum for Excellence outcomes, including developing pupils’ ability to communicate effectively, be responsible for their actions, contribute to their own and others’ learning experiences and become more confident people.
What does an average day look like?
On average pupils will be training between 75 to 90 minutes each day. Daily coaching will consist of four main components, which are delivered in an integrated way and focus on the development of:
Technical skills (passing, dribbling, moving with the ball)
Tactical skills (defending, attacking, decision making, game awareness)
Physical skills (co-ordination, balance, speed, agility)
Mental skills (mindset, perseverance, focus, discipline)
The results are monitored regularly (through skills tests, report cards and parents evenings) to provide support to the pupils’ development from both a playing and academic point of view.
Building an elite player
Click on the infographic below to find out more about what it takes to become an elite player.Portland, Oreg. — After being unanimously approved by both houses of the Oregon legislature, on March 28, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed House Bill 4009 marking Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon in perpetuity. The signing was followed by a march of over 250 people that reenacted Min Yasui’s historic walk from his office in Old Japan Town to the former site of the Portland police headquarters where he was arrested and subsequently incarcerated for nine months in solitary confinement at the Multnomah County Jail.
In November 2015, Min Yasui was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first such award to any Oregonian.
The signing ceremony was attended by members of the Portland Japanese American Citizens League, as well as other key elected officials and members of the Yasui family.A new report sets out a plan to reverse the union movement's decline. Leaders should listen closely.
For those of us who want to see our economy shifted towards the interests of working people, here’s a stat which matters: just 13% of private sector workers are members of a union.
Today the Changing Work Centre – a joint initiative between the Fabian Society and Community union – have published an extensive plan to turn that around.
At a time when Labour party support and membership seems resurgent, the long-term collapse in membership of the wider labour movement is a pretty stark and worrying contrast. Private sector union membership is now less than a third of what it was in 1979. And the self-employed workforce will soon outnumber those in the (largely unionised) public sector.
While most European countries have seen some decline since the shift towards laissez-faire economics in the 1980s, decline towards oblivion is not inevitable. But it is possible.
At the same time, the Fabian study reveals that three in five (59%) private sector workers believe that trade unions are necessary to protect working conditions. So why the slow-motion collapse?
The reasons are complex and historical – but that doesn’t let unions (or free-riders) off the hook. The problem is a collective action one: people want unions, they just don’t think they have to join them: ‘As long as they exist somewhere in the distance, we’ll be OK’. Obviously that’s not how membership organisations work.
The brutal truth is that there is no god-given assurance of the movement’s survival.
And while young private sector workers are broadly positive about unions, many think unions are ‘not for me’. Unions feel distant from young private sector workers’ day-to-day experiences. And they have a diversity problem that is putting off prospective members.
The study rings true: can you think of a young union leader? When was the last time you saw a BME union representative or one in their 20s or 30s on the TV or radio?
Future Union has a set of demands for the movement to change these perceptions – and put unions on the front foot again. It argues they need to:
Establish a clearing house role for the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in the 150 th anniversary of its foundation: i.e. you join the TUC, and your membership can follow you into different sectors and types of work
(TUC) in the 150 anniversary of its foundation: i.e. you join the TUC, and your membership can follow you into different sectors and types of work Be representative of the workforce they represent: they must address the diversity deficit at a leadership level
of the workforce they represent: they must address the diversity deficit at a leadership level Set up career development centres to help people prepare for their future
to help people prepare for their future Get better at selling themselves: unions should ‘echo the marketing strategies of disruptive start-up businesses’
unions should ‘echo the marketing strategies of disruptive start-up businesses’ Introduce discount membership rates : unions should offer discounted membership deals to under 35s and to workers in unrecognised workplaces
: unions should offer discounted membership deals to under 35s and to workers in unrecognised workplaces Provide ‘instant breakdown cover’ for workers with preexisting problems. At the moment most unions won’t deal with problems members had before they joined the union: a huge disincentive to signing up. ‘Unions should follow the lead of the AA.’
The report also recommends finding out how workers join each sector – and start from the beginning of their careers: whether that’s apprenticeships, internships, training or education. They should develop apps and tech-based solutions to organise isolated and dispersed workers. And they should make the most of Big Data: unions are sitting on huge amounts of data – they should use it to improve their campaigning.
Cameron Tait, head of the Changing Work Centre and author of the report, said:
“Trade unions have a mountain to climb to stem four decades of membership decline, but it is not insurmountable. Our research shows the majority of private sector workers support unions and the work they do, but unions must plug the gap between instinctively positive attitudes and workers actually deciding to become members. “Our recommendations for unions to improve their practices, collaborate with each other, and work in partnership with business and government provide a roadmap to a membership renaissance. “Millions of workers could stand to benefit from the work trade unions do, with pay flatlining, insecurity at work rising, and technology rapidly changing the nature of work. This report shows how that can happen.”
The Community union have launched a project called ‘indycube’ for self-employed workers – which tackle this problem by ending late payments and providing instant, free legal assistance for self-employed workers. It’s a start, but we’re going to have to start seeing much more like this.
Alarm bells have been ringing for unions for a long time, but now the tolls are deafening. Every General Secretary should now be looking closely at these recommendations – and acting on them.
Josiah Mortimer is Editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter.
See also: We need unions as much as ever. The challenge is finding new ways to organiseTaking antidepressants during pregnancy may slightly increase the risk of having a child with autism, but the chances of having a baby without the disorder are still about 98.8 per cent, new Canadian research suggests.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have difficulties with social communicating and show repetitive behaviour. It occurs in about one per cent of the general population worldwide.
The causes of autism spectrum disorder are mysterious. Some research points to genetic vulnerability, but genes alone don't offer a full explanation.
That's why investigators at the University of Montreal consider it a public health priority to try to understand the long-term effects of taking antidepressants in pregnancy on the neurodevelopment of children, given that 4.5 per cent of pregnant women in Canada have reported using antidepressants.
Anick Bérard, a pharmacy professor at the University of Montreal, is the latest to analyze data on births in Quebec between 1998 and 2009, antidepressant prescriptions from the province's public prescription drug insurance plan and medical claims for autism spectrum disorder.
"Use of antidepressants, specifically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, during the second and/or third trimester increases the risk of autism spectrum disorder in children, even after considering maternal depression," Bérard and her team said in Monday's issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Among mothers who filled at least one prescription for antidepressants during their second and/or third trimester, the risk of having an autistic child was 1.87 times higher.
Among those who tooks SSRIs such as fluoxetine (Prozac) or paroxetine (Paxil), the risk was 2.17 times higher.
A journal editorial by Dr. Bryan King of the department of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the University of Washington provides the real numbers broken down by trimester.
Of the 2, 532 children exposed to the drugs during the second or third trimester, 31 had autism spectrum disorder — an additional 12 children affected with ASD than would otherwise be expected.
"Of course, even one potentially preventable case is noteworthy," King said. "But this finding must also be viewed in the context of other risks."
The findings are still within the range of autism prevalence reported across Canada and the U.S., said Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou, a senior clinician scientist at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto.
Moms' wellness
"Moms need to understand that it is still a rare event, that we have more than a 98 per cent chance of having a typically developing child that doesn't have ASD," said Anagnostou, Canada research chair translational therapeutics in autism and an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
"When they speak to their physician, the discussion should be about the wellness of themselves, their own mental health and their ability to raise the child that's come into this world. Plus they should also know that untreated depression is also associated with somewhat higher number of poor neurodevelopmental outcomes."
While such studies measure a small association between taking antidepressants and risk of autism spectrum disorder, no cause-and-effect relationships can be drawn without doing a randomized trial, which is unethical in pregnancy.
Previous research has pointed to potential physical side-effects of taking some antidepressants during pregnancy. For example, Health Canada publicized GlaxoSmithKline's warning of possible heart defects in newborns associated with Paxil.
Bérard suggests all women with a chronic disease talk to their doctor before pregnancy, get informed about the risks and benefits of medication, and consider alternatives such as psychotherapy and exercise.
Anagnostou said the new findings are important for people who study biology, because they may encourage them to take another look at how changing serotonin during pregnancy may influence how the brain develops.
The question of whether it's the depression causing the problem or the SSRIs themselves remains unanswered.
What's known is that if a family has one baby on the spectrum, there's a 10 to 20 per cent chance another child will be affected because of genetic predisposition, Anagnostou said.
In the study, other classes of antidepressants were not associated with any statistically significant increased risk of autism spectrum disorder.
Too soon to change health policy
Dr. Peter Szatmari, chief of the Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative between the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, SickKids and the University of Toronto, said the Quebec study was based on a large sample size and accurate data on prescriptions.
However, some cases of autism spectrum disorder may have been missed, Szatmari said. The diagnoses weren't validated, and the researchers couldn't determine if the women in fact took the antidepressants prescribed.
He also questioned the biological basis of finding an association for the second and third trimester and not the first trimester.
In general, it's too early based on this one study to influence practice or policy, Szatmari said in an email provided to CBC News.
The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Reseach (CIHR) and the Québec Training Network in Perinatal Research.H
Mjesec dana nakon početka crowdfunding kampanje, zagrebački književni klub Booksa uspio ostvariti zadani cilj i prikupiti šest tisuća dolara, koje će namijeniti za obnovu kluba, promjenu ozvučenja, ugradnju klima uređaja i promjenu već derutnog znaka na pročelju.U kampanju, koja je pokrenuta na Indiegogo platformi, na internetu se uključilo 138 donatora iz Hrvatske, SAD-a, Velike Britanije, Kanade, Austrije, Francuske, Norveške, Srbije, Italije i Njemačke. Osim 'online' u njoj je sudjelovao niz Booksinih simpatizera, članova, gostiju, suradnika, kolega, prijatelja, donirajući novac na brojnim obljetničkim događanjima koji su se u klubu održali tijekom prosinca. Kampanja je završila u petak i prikupljeno je više od očekivanog iznosa - 6.706 dolara."Ovo nije mogao biti ljepši završetak proslave desetog rođendana Bookse koja je trajala cijeli prosinac i ujedno odličan početak nove godine", ističu u tom zagrebačkom klubu, dodajući da im je jako puno značila i golema podrška koju su dobili, s obzirom na to da su im, osim financijski, mnogi dali potporu širenjem informacija o kampanji i poklanjanjem slobodnog vremena i svojih usluga.Već tijekom prva tri dana kampanje bilo je prikupljeno dvadesetak posto ciljanog iznosa, a uplate su stizale iz Hrvatske, Srbije, Bosne i Hercegovine, ali i Kanade, Norveške i Švedske.Crowdfunding (engl. crowd - skupina, funding - financiranje) relativno je novi način prikupljanja novca od donatora kojim se podupire djelatnost ili pokretanje originalnih, umjetničkih ili nekonvencionalnih poslovnih ideja pojedinaca ili tvrtki, a koje željena sredstva inače teško dobivaju iz tradicionalnih financijskih izvora.12 amusing and funny pics from OKC’s Westboro Baptist Church counter-protests…
The lone bright spot in the Thunder’s terrible loss to the Houston Rockets was the Westboro Baptist Church protesting in downtown Oklahoma City.
Wait a second. Did I just call a Westboro protest a “bright spot?” Yes, I did.
Normally, I hate giving those crazy attention whores any attention or publicity, but this time I’m breaking that rule. Last night, people from all over OKC crashed Westboro’s party with their own counter-protest. They brought funny signs, dressed in Daisy Dukes, and even sent over a few glitter farts. The whole counter-protest was funny and amusing, and for the time being, has helped distract me from the Thunder’s piss poor performance against the guys from Houston. That’s why I’m calling it a “bright spot.”
Anyway, we spent some time searching Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the web to find some of counter-protest pics. Here are some good ones we found:
Via @yadnulsirhc
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Via Busted Coverage
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Via @UnicornSpiral
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Via @Andrew_Kalman
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Several different versions of this sign have made the rounds over the Internet. I believe the sign was made by the guy on the left, @bigwillokc.
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This one is doctored, but funny:
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Submitted by Ogle Mole Nathan
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Via SPH_OTOS
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Via CloversMama
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Via Lex1026
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Update: Here are a few mor pics emailed to us after this post was published:
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That’s it. Once again, I hate giving the Westboro terds attention, but I felt these pics deserve to be seen. If you have any photos that you’d like to see added, drop us an email or find us on Facebook.
Also the next time Westboro protests outside of a Thunder game, lets hope it isn’t the lone bright spot…and that Kevin Martin isn’t on the Thunder roster.Share
Previous Next 1 of 14 Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build Ai Build
When CEO and founder Daghan Cam was studying architecture, he noticed a disconnect between small-scale manufacturing and large-scale construction. “On one side we have a fully automated production pipeline,” Cam explained at a recent conference in London. “On the other side we’re completely dependent on human labor.” With the emergence of more efficient printing technologies, he thought there must be a better way.
“We wanted to push the boundaries of how intricate we could design things through computation and how we could create them through 3D printing,” Cam said.
“We wanted to push the boundaries of how intricate we could design things.”
3D printing may be seen as the future of fabrication but it can be an expensive, time-consuming, and unscalable endeavor. Small objects are simple enough to print. Larger objects can often be prohibitively complicated. When you read about fully 3D printed airplanes, office spaces, or artworks, they’re not printed as a whole, but rather as many small parts that are pieced together afterward like a puzzle.
To scale up the printing process, Cam and his team strapped foam guns to KUKA robotic arms and programmed them to print intricate structures. To cut costs and expedite construction, they combined the standard layer-by-layer design with a latticework design that printed filament at angles while small fans simultaneously cooled and hardened the material. This allowed them to use a lot less material while still supporting strong and efficient structures.
But it was still too slow. Fabrication leaves little room for error, so the robots had to print at a snail’s pace, excreting filament precisely and uniformly, then waiting for it to dry. If Ai Build wanted quicker — and thus cheaper — printing, it would either risk structural defects or have to overcome a fundamental flaw in robotics.
“Our robots were blind,” Cam said. “They take instructions from a computer and blindly execute them. If there’s any problem they don’t notice and can’t adapt.”
To solve this problem, Cam and his team attached cameras to their robots and used machine vision algorithms to analyze the structures as they were being printed. “The goal was to create a feedback loop between the physical environment and the digital environment,” Cam said.
With its new set of eyes, the robotic arm could detect defects and compensate for them in subsequent layers. The results were quickly printed, Zaha Hadid-esque structures that Cam says were printed in about half the time it would take without the AI.
Ai Build’s first stand out structure was printed for just $185 — a fraction of the $31,000 Cam said competitor quoted to print a structure with the same specifications. Not only did the competitors lack AI, they would also need to print the piece in multiple parts. The ability to print structures as a single, complete unit gives Ai Build an undeniable edge.
“The goal was to create a feedback loop between the physical environment and the digital environment.”
But the startup has limits to scale. Just last week at GPU Technology Conference in Amsterdam, they premiered a five meter wide, five meter deep, four and one-half meter tall structure designed in partnership with renowned firm Arup Engineers. Dubbed the “Daedalus Pavilion” after the legendary craftsmen who built the Labyrinth, the 350-pound pavilion consists of 48 individual parts. Despite its impressive size, it took just fifteen days to print and a half-day to construct. Given the company’s rate of about $100 per robot hour, an object of this size would cost a little over $35,600.
“The structure was quiet optimized for using material efficiently and to minimize production time so the whole structure was very lightweight in the end,” Cam said.
The project saw the young company continue its partnerships with GPU-manufacturer NVIDIA and robotics-manufacturer KUKA, two established firms at the top of their respective industries.
Beautiful as it may be, the Daedalus Pavilion is just a proof of concept. And though the startup has an obvious interest in design, it’s focus is on revolutionizing large-scale construction with 3D-printed structures such as concrete casting molds.
Ai Build
Ai Build has also begun early development of a futuristic chandelier called aiPort, which is designed to integrate all smart devices into a single place. With a series of gestures or words, users can turn on a light bulb, turn down the air conditioning, and turn up the music on their stereo thanks to a panel of cameras and microphones sprawled across the chandelier |
yet there is only one more aspect of ourselves to consider — consciousness. Are you conscious, am I conscious? "Yes," is the usual immediate answer. If this were not so you would say, "I'd be unconscious." Can you be conscious without being conscious of anything? Most people would say not. Let us find out what are the factors involved in being conscious. Can one be conscious without a body? Not that we know of, so we can assume from this that consciousness arises dependent on the body. Will there be consciousness if no sense-organs are in the body? We can categorically state that there will not be. So our second step is that consciousness is dependent on the sense-organs. Will there be consciousness with body and sense-organs and no internal or external sense-impingement? Again we can say definitely, "No." Given sense-impingement shall we be conscious? Yes, but it will not be a very meaningful consciousness. We shall see a conglomeration of colors, hear noises, smell things, have bodily sensations, and taste things, but not be able to recognize them. If perception is missing one cannot say, "I am conscious." We have already discussed perception and shown that it is not one's real self. Sense-consciousness, together with perception, gives us our awareness of things, but is there an "I" who is aware? If you say, "I am conscious of a vase of flowers on the table," are you really conscious of it? By our investigation we have tried to show that you do not enter into is at all and that consciousness, like all the other aspects of self, has birth, decay, and death. To fall into the delusion that the body, feelings, perception, volitional action, and consciousness are you is to suffer because unfortunately they are not of you and you are not of them, and you cannot expect them ever to give satisfaction for very long. In conclusion I would say that the more disgusted one becomes with compounded things the closer one gets to things that give lasting happiness. — From "The Maha Bodhi," May 1964.
Physical and Biological Aspects of Anattaa by Edward Greenly The labors of a succession of devoted scholars, from Turnour to Rhys Davids, has now made impossible, at any rate for all serious students of religion, the cruder misconceptions of Buddhism that were current in Europe at the end of last century. Its deeply intellectual character, its unique and unsullied record of tolerance, its priority (relatively to the Mediterranean systems) of five centuries in promulgation of the higher ethic, all these things are now widely known. And yet in spite of all this, even among such as are devoid of prejudice, it is seldom that one meets with a real, penetrating understanding of the Teaching. To some its philosophy, to others its influence, appear alike unintelligible. Now the source of this perplexity, it may safely be affirmed, is, invariably, a failure to apprehend that characteristic and central doctrine or principle of Buddhism that is summed up in the Pali term anattaa. Without this, there must appear to be an unbridgeable gap in the Buddhist doctrine of causation, its power over the hearts and lives of men must seem incapable of explanation, its final goal still present the insoluble enigma that it has for long presented to the European mind. Anattaa once comprehended, however, all whether thought or practice, is clear and open. That is the key that unlocks the secret, the way to the heart of the Buddhist mystery. The term is generally explained as meaning "denial of the soul"; and yet such a translation is apt to be somewhat misleading to a European. For it involves, in a certain sense, both less and more than that. It does not by any means imply, for example, that "death ends all" in the sense of some of the Western schools. And on the other hand, the idea of a "soul" is but a part, though indeed the most important part, of the great body of conceptions which it denies. Taken in connection with aniccaa, the principle of impermanence, that which it denies is the idea of separate and abiding substance in anything whatever in the whole unbounded universe, whether psychical or physical. Psyche, of course, was the particular kind of substance which the Buddhist teachers had in view, and its proper treatment is, naturally, psychological. But every kind of substance comes under the same condemnation; and, as the Western mind of today is far more at home in, and thinks far more clearly and powerfully upon, physical affairs, a consideration of some of the physical and biological aspects of anattaa is likely to be the best possible preparation for an understanding of those psychical aspects of it which the Buddhist teachers so earnestly labored to convey, the more so as such cases are, it should most clearly be understood, not "illustrations" or analogies only; they are actual examples of the principle itself. Consider such a phenomenon as a rainbow. To the unsophisticated mind, a rainbow is just as real as any other object, much more vivid and real than the faint and distant hills that lie beyond it. A child, indeed, filled with longing, will beg that it may be given to him, that he may have and hold and possess for himself this beautiful and brilliant thing. Later on, he learns something of its real nature, learns that there is in it no "thing" whatever capable of being so held; that it is but a conditioning of certain rays of light and drops of water, and has no existence in itself at all.[1] That is precisely, the anattaa doctrine. The rainbow is anattaa. This step in sound philosophy every sane adult is taught to take. How many take any further steps? For most, "the cares of life and the deceitfulness of riches" — riches often of another world as much as of this — occupy the mind entirely, and there is no desire for further knowledge. Yet to some, one day to all, the question cannot but arise — "If this be so, if the rainbow be but a conditioning, how about the things of which it is a conditioning? How about the light and water? Surely those are real enough?" Very well, then. The light, first, what is that? Little as we all know, we know enough to answer that it is an undulation or vibration, a particular kind of very rapid movement of something. But what is this but just the very answer that was given to the child about the rainbow, given to the adult about the light? Just as that rainbow was a conditioning of the light and had no existence in itself, so now the light proves to be a conditioning in its turn, to have no more existence in itself than the rainbow had. The light, too is anattaa. Yet, if it be an undulation of what is it an undulation? Of the ether. [2] And what is this ether? Here we are getting near the limits of our knowledge. Yet this much can be said, that it is not matter. It is not this, it is not that, it is not the other — to any question concerning it, such are the replies: and yet it is not non-existence. Seek it, and it vanishes from the grasp of the mind, just as the rainbow and the light did in their turn. It is the very type of insubstantiality, of anattaa. The water, however: that at least is tangible and substantive enough. Here is existence in a way that cannot be denied. Go far enough to north or south, and water will react to even the Johnsonian fist. Nevertheless, let it but feel the touch of a lump of sodium, or even of a few inches of hot copper, and where is it? Vanished utterly, and in its place two things that are no more water than it or light were rainbow. Water in itself, then, is not and never was — nothing "was" but a particular conditioning of these other things, this hydrogen and oxygen, as we call them; and "water" is but a name for such conditioning. Nor need we even think that this water-conditioning is the rule, and the water-abolishing experiments mere curious exceptions. Throughout the whole vast universe that is visible to us, only in a score of tiny specks is that the case. Not for one fleeting moment in the great star that daily lights us, or in a single one of the millions of its peers in the depths of space, could the water-conditioning hold good. Both the constituents of the rainbow, therefore, are as truly anattaa as the rainbow itself. As in the case of the first constituent, however, the question leads us further. What of these elements, this hydrogen and this oxygen, into which the water has resolved itself? Well, it is true that, misled by the unsound views of the nature of things in which they were brought up, many, probably most, chemists did, for a long time, think that in the ultimate combining particle, the "atom" of such elements, real, separate, and abiding substance had at last been hunted down. Not all, indeed, were so deceived. Hardly had the atomic theory been formulated, when discerning minds began to seek, first by one means, then by another, for that of which the atom must be but a compounding. The time had not come, and they were baffled. How in the last few years they have been completely justified, how abiding substance eludes us no less in the atom than it does elsewhere, has been already told elsewhere. The hydrogen and oxygen, therefore, are in their turn nothing but conditionings of something else, and when we inquire concerning that of which they are conditionings, then, as we have done to the ether, we can give to it a name, we can show that it must behave in such and such a way; but the moment that we attempt to lay the profane finger of thought upon it, and say that it is this or that, it is gone. As of the rainbow, so of all things: process there is, conditioning there is, but nowhere the least trace of substance, nowhere the least trace of "self." That is the anattaa doctrine as exemplified by matter. According to the theory of the soul, familiar to all of us from our childhood, each living body, at any rate each living human body, is inhabited and informed by a single psychic entity, the thinker of all its thoughts, doer of its deeds, and director of the organism generally. In Christianity, until very lately, such a soul was ascribed to human beings only; animals had no souls. For them death ended all, without even the hope of a future life in which might be redeemed some of their unmerited sufferings; and the present writer well remembers his passionate yearnings as a child after a larger hope for some of the dear animals he loved so well, and remembers the quenching of this hope by his orthodox instructors.[3] The Roman Catholic Church still holds valorously to this ancient orthodoxy,[4] but the rapidly-growing feeling of compassion for animal suffering that has sprung up in the Western world during the past hundred years, and is one of its kindliest and noblest features,[5] has, outside the Roman pale, begun to modify opinion, and souls are now postulated for at any rate the higher animals. Concurrently with this, an influence of a different kind has accelerated the movement of men's minds in the same direction. This comes from the acceptance, now general, of the theory of evolution. Fear for the existence of the human soul was the motive, indeed, of much of the early opposition to that theory, but now that resistance is no longer possible, it is coming to be felt that a worthier way out of the difficulty is to be found in the concession of a soul to these our fellow-beings. The inter-relationship and unity of all life left, indeed, no other way, if the soul theory was to be held at all. The unity of life, however, has other bearings very searching, some of them, upon the whole question and a consideration of these may throw some light upon animistic views in general. For there is no stopping at the higher animals, still less at those who are our especial friends and lovers. If we concede a soul to a dog, so must we also to a wolf; if to a cat, then also to a tiger. Nor can we call a halt at any place, as, passing from these sensitive and splendid beings, we descend lower and lower through the mammalia till we reach the very humblest of the primitive marsupials. But the mammalia form but one of the branches of the Tree of Life; bird, reptile, fish put in the same claim, and it cannot be denied to them. Not even the lowly Amphioxus brooks the refusal of a soul, and he, standing at the confines of his kingdom, opens the gates to the still vaster and dimmer armies of the life we call Invertebrate. To cut an almost endless story short, we find even here no place at which to stop, and are fain to concede at last that the microscopic protoplasmic cell-units called the protozoa are as able to make good their title as the lordliest of the mammalia. Besides, if we were inclined to pass them by with a De minimis non curat lex, they could reinforce their claim, by pointing out that man himself enters upon his existence as a protozoan unit indistinguishable from themselves, and that if this unit contains a soul, why should not each of them contain one likewise? There is another curious consideration. If my soul enters upon existence along with me, and is mine and no one else's, so also does any other being's even such as a protozoan's, and it is his soul and no other protozoan's. Now, man propagates his kind at an exceptionally slow rate, but the rate of increase in the lower ranks of life is prodigious. Statisticians amuse themselves sometimes by computations of the progeny of a single cod-fish in quite a moderate space of time, and the results are astonishing. But the multiplication of the protozoa proceeds by geometrical progression, so that, without books at hand, I am afraid to quote the shortness of the period in which one such will have given rise to millions. The influx of new souls into this world alone, therefore, is proceeding at a rate beyond all power of numbers to convey, and when we reflect that this has been going on throughout the whole of geological time, the conception is truly staggering. Well-found indeed must be the ship of speculation that can carry such a freight as that across the stormy seas of modern thought! So far we have considered the single soul in a single body, such as we ourselves have been taught we are endowed with. But there are cases not so simple. Among the coelenterata and the polyzoa there are, as well as a single hydroid animals, many species of compound ones, in which whole colonies of such beings are united by a "coenosarc" or flesh-body common to them all. What are we to say of the soul in a case of this sort? Shall we ascribe it to the individuals, to the coenosarc, or to the colony as a whole? The individual is just such another as any simple hydroid, yet if we assign to him a soul like that of the simple one, what becomes of the coenosarc, which is just as much alive? Or, if we assign it to the community, then why, to the hydra that is rooted in a coenosarc, should be denied that which is conceded to his cousin who is rooted on a stone? And, as if this were not perplexing enough, sometimes a member of such a community will detach himself from it altogether, and conduct his life on his own account. To return, however, to the higher beings, ourselves included, with a single body and its single soul. Closely bound up with the theory of evolution are the facts of histology, the structures and relationships, that is to say, of the microscopic units that compose the living being. Let us consider, first, the corpuscles of the blood. They are of the two kinds, the large white corpuscles, and the smaller red ones. Both are cells, but we will consider just now the white ones. They are minute specks of living protoplasm, constantly changing their shape, moving slowly about, and living upon what they meet with. Now, amongst the protozoa, animals consisting of a single cell, whose claims to a single soul we were obliged to admit capable of being made good with such irresistible effect, is a creature known as the amoeba. It is a speck of protoplasm that moves slowly about from point to point, changing its shape as it goes along, and living upon any suitable object it can meet with. The white blood-corpuscles, in short, and the amoeba are indistinguishable in composition, aspect and behavior. They differ in nothing but their habitat: the amoeboid corpuscle (as it is called) can make every whit as effective a claim to a single soul as the amoeba. The one, however, is an independent being; the other an integral part of a most essential portion of our own economy, essential, indeed, for without them the blood cannot perform its functions; and is not the blood, as we have long ago been told, "the life" (Deut. xii,23)? Even if we take refuge in the brain, and seek to locate the soul where thought goes on, to that retreat also they pursue us; for stop the blood, and in a few short minutes thinking ceases. Clearly there is something wrong. It is evident that the simple-seeming hypothesis of a single soul in a single body hides a world of perplexities and complications. The difficulty of the hydrozoan coenosarc has reappeared in a more subtle form than ever, and that within our own breasts, the very citadel of the soul-hypothesis. Nor is this even the end of the matter. The relations of the amoeboid corpuscle to the amoeba strike the mind at once, and the lessons that they teach are past mistaking. But the red corpuscle is no whit less a cell, which, were it found elsewhere than in the blood, would pass without challenge as one among many protozoan creatures. Nay, further still. If we watch through the microscope a drop of pond-water full of paramecium or any other simple animals, it will not be long before we see one of them constrict into a sort of "waist," develop there a medial cell-wall, and part along that into two, each of which proceeds without more ado to go about its own business.[6] In paramecium and its congeners the new cells leave each other, but in slightly higher animals they remain united along the medial wall, dividing, perhaps, and redividing until we have a tissue or colony of several cells. The members of such a tissue are to the free separating cells as the hydroids of a coenosarcal community to the solitary hydroids. The inner nature of the cell remains the same. Now, all the tissues of the living body are neither more nor less than just such colonies. Modified in various ways according to the nature of the tissue, here for muscle, here for skin, there for bone, differently again for nerve, and finally in a special way for brain itself: the units of these tissues are, throughout the body, cells, alike in their essential nature, different only in their modifications. The blood corpuscles are just some of these cells which, in order to perform a particular function, remained detached and free to move, like the protozoa. And every activity of the being, physical or psychical, depends entirely on the co-ordinated activities, physical or psychical, of this vast multitude, which indeed no man can number. But each one of these is, as we now perceive, a being to whom, if we set out the hypothesis of souls, it is logically impossible to refuse a separate soul-unit of its own. Seeking in the first part of this article for the essential, inner self or being of the rainbow, light, water, and their elements, we found that there was not in any one of them any essential self or being whatsoever. Every one of them turned out to be, by its very nature, a conditioning of elements that were not itself, and this held good to the last stages of analysis that knowledge could apply. Every one of them had to be pronounced anattaa. What have we now found (using a biological analysis) to be the case of the living being? We have found it to be, more conspicuously if possible than even those other phenomena, a conditioning of a vast number of elements that are not one of them itself, dependent absolutely upon these elements, having apart from them and their activities no existence "in itself" whatever. Beginning with a phenomenon, the rainbow, with regard to which the Anattaa doctrine is already held by every sane adult, we have followed that doctrine and found it to apply to the highest form of existence that we know upon this earth. From the biological point of view, the living being is, and that in a superlative degree, anattaa. Further treatment of the anattaa subject is, of course, psychological. With that, this article is not concerned. But any sound psychology must be in harmony, not at variance, with biology and physics. Suffice it, then, to say here, that we may be sure that what is biologically compound will not prove to be psychologically simple. Were we ever inclined to regard the doctrines of anattaa and the khandhas as either fantastic or perverse, we may wonder rather at the discernment which perceived the one, long before biology and physics were, and at the moderation which gave us but five khandhas where modern science would give for one of them alone (viz. ruupa) something much more like five hundred millions! Far more marvellous, however, was that surpassing spiritual penetration that could see, in this compositeness of our nature, nothing less than the balm of sorrow, the justification of the Golden Rule, and life's liberation from the house of bondage. Parts of this article may have, perhaps, a somewhat polemical expression. Well, argument, if undertaken at all, should be made conclusive and convincing, if that be possible, and should result in intellectual conviction. But intellectual conviction is not religion, it may not even have religion as its consequence in life. Something more is needed. He who discerns not life's pathos and its sorrow, will not find out the Annattaa path of love to sorrow's utter ceasing. — From "The Buddhist Review," Vol. III, No. 1 (1911). Notes 1. The writer can even now recall his own childish perplexity at being told that a rainbow was "the sun shining upon drops of water." For what resemblance of any kind did it bear to either drops of water or the sun? 2. The theory of a "luminiferous ether" as the medium in which light — and all forms of electromagnetic radiation — propagates was dealt a mortal blow in the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment. The final nails were hammered in its coffin by Einstein in 1905. The author, writing in 1911, was probably not aware of this. — ATI ed. 3. The great Bishop Butler, however, ventured to suggest some such hope. 4. With the sinister corollary that as animals have no souls, neither have they any rights. 5. In the Buddhist countries of Asia such a sentiment has long prevailed. 6. In passing, it may well be asked, what has happened with the soul. Has that divided also, or has a new soul arisen to animate one of the two bodies? And if so, which, for they are substantially equal and alike?
The Spell of Narcissism and the Anattaa Doctrine by M.W. Padmasiri de Silva "Narcissism is a passion the intensity of which in many individuals can only be compared with sexual desire and the desire to stay alive. In fact, many times it proves to be stronger than either. Even in the average individual in whom it does not reach such intensity, there remains a narcissistic core which appears to be almost indestructible." — Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man The word "narcissism" is derived from a Greek legend. Narcissus in mythology is a beautiful youth who loved no one till he saw his own body reflected in water. Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection; finally he pined away, died, and was turned into the flower of like name.[1] Thus the word "narcissism" derived from this legend has been generally used to refer to a kind of morbid self-love.[2] The concept of narcissism was woven into psychological theory by Sigmund Freud. Freud himself borrowed this name from Paul Nacke, who used the term to describe a perversion, where "an adult individual lavishes upon his own body all the caresses expended only upon a sexual object other than himself."[3] it was Freud, however, who grasped for the first time the tremendous significance of the concept of narcissism. Freud's essay on narcissism is one of the richest spots in his psychology, unfortunately neglected by his fellow psychiatrists and submerged by the popular image of Freud's work. Freud's essay on narcissism is a little gem which would have been pushed into an insignificant corner in the field of psychological theory, but for the efforts of Eric Fromm who remarks that, "One of the most fruitful and far-reaching of Freud's discoveries is his concept of narcissism. Freud himself considered it to be one of his most important findings..."[4] In this paper I shall very briefly refer to the Freudian concept of narcissism and then present Fromm's development on this against the background of the anattaa doctrine. Before his paper on narcissism appeared, Freud made a clear distinction between the sexual instinct (libido) and the ego instinct, or in more popular terms between "love" and "hunger." But he came across an interesting category of patients whose condition presented a great challenge to this distinction between sexual and ego instincts. "We became slowly accustomed to the conception that the libido, which we find attached to certain objects and which is the desire to gain some satisfaction in these objects, can also abandon these objects and set the ego itself in their place," says Freud.[5] More reflection on this point made him realize that a fixation of this kind to the subject's own body and his person was not something accidental, it is probable that this is the original condition of man (primary narcissism) out of which object love develops later without thereby necessarily affecting a disappearance of narcissism. This conception of narcissism was backed by evidence from a number of sources. In megalomania, we get the subjective over-estimation of self-importance, in dementia praecox we get the magical belief in the "omnipotence of thought." Freud also studied the mind of the infant and the primitive man and here too discovered an expression of narcissism. There are also other situations in life like disease, after an accident, in old age etc., "when the tendency to this withdrawal into self-preoccupation is apt to become pronounced." Normal love is also affected by a great deal of narcissism. The notion of narcissism was used to explain a wide range of distinct phenomena ranging from love, jealousy, and fear to mass phenomena. Continuing on these lines Fromm has worked out the spell of narcissism in group behavior, nationalism, and war. It was due to Fromm's insight that the concept of narcissism was salvaged from its limited base in the libido theory and given a more comprehensive interpretation. Narcissism in Buddhism and the Writings of Fromm Fromm himself makes a reference to Buddhism which is extremely significant for an understanding of narcissism. Fromm says that the essential teachings of all the humanistic religions in the world can be summarized in one sentence: "It is the goal of man to overcome one's narcissism. Perhaps this principle is nowhere expressed more radically than in Buddhism."[6] Fromm concludes on these lines that if man sheds the "illusion of his indestructible ego" and the other objects of greed, only then can he be totally open, awake and be fully related to the world. The illusion of the indestructible ego that Fromm mentions is quite clearly a reference to the Buddhist doctrine of anattaa (egolessness). There is no ego entity existing apart and independently of those physical and mental processes that constitute life. The illusion of the ego has two basic forms: eternity belief and annihilation belief. The craving for selfish pursuits arises with a false conception of personality, based on the dogma of personal immortality (sassata-di.t.thi), and the craving for annihilation arises with a false conception of personality, based on the annihilationist view (uccheda di.t.thi).[7] An understanding of the doctrine of sakkaaya-di.t.thi (twenty forms of wrong personality beliefs) helps us to grasp the Buddhist doctrine of egolessness. Where there is a mere complex of corporeality, feeling, perception, dispositions, and consciousness, the individual being subject to the ego illusion assumes the existence of an ego: 1-5: Ego is identified with corporeality, feeling, perception, dispositions, and consciousness. 6-10: Ego is contained in them. 11-15: Ego is independent of them. 16-20: Ego is their owner. This does not mean that the ego is merely an intellectual construction. The roots of the ego illusion are strong and it is fed by deep effective processes.[8] These processes are dormant proclivities described in the Discourses of the Buddha as the latent desire for continued existence (bhava-raaga anusaya). Corporeal Overtones of the Ego Concept The origin of the Freudian concept of narcissism is the point at which Narcissus falls in love with his own body. In relating auto-eroticism to narcissism, Freud says that the ego is first and foremost a "body-ego." Fromm also says that one of the most elementary examples of narcissism can be found in the attitude to the body exhibited by the average person.[9] The narcissistic relation to one's body has its parallel in the doctrine of the Buddha, where he discusses the operation of personality beliefs (atta di.t.thi) in relation to corporeality. The majority of the people who are not skilled in the doctrine of the Buddha are subject to the ego-illusion associated with their body. This ego-illusion is described in the suttas: These people who are untrained in the doctrine of the Buddha, "regard body as the self (attaaa, Skr: aatman); they regard the self as having a body, body as being in the self, the self as being in the body. 'I am the body,' say they; 'body is mine'; and they are possessed by this idea." The Buddha also says that due to the excessive attachment to the body, when it alters and changes, sorrow and grief set in; thus the doctrine of anattaa is linked to the doctrine of dukkha (suffering). However, while the body-image concept of the ego dominates the thought of Freud, the Buddha offers a more comprehensive analysis, relating the ego-illusion to feeling, perception, dispositions, and consciousness. To use a phrase of Wolheim, "the corporeal overtones of the ego concept" prevented Freud from presenting a broad base for his theory of narcissism. In fact, Wolheim has pointed out a significant ambiguity in the Freudian analysis of narcissism. Sometimes Freud conceives narcissism as an attraction towards one's own person, and sometimes as an attraction towards one's own body. Fromm has not merely re-vitalized the Freudian concept of narcissism, but takes it very much beyond this, and brings it close to the doctrine of the Buddha. Not merely does Fromm offer a theory of narcissism which is of interest to the Buddhist, but he quite clearly refers to the doctrine of the Buddha: "The 'awakened' person of whom Buddhist teaching speaks is the person who has overcome his narcissism, and who is therefore capable of being fully awake."[10] The Narcissistic "Self-Image" The narcissistic person is not only proud of his body but he has an exaggerated and inflated image of all aspects of his personality: his intelligence, his honor and his wealth, his social standing, etc. "Just as the narcissistic person has made his'self-image' the object of his narcissistic attachment, he does the same with everything connected with him. His ideas, his knowledge, his house, but also people in his'sphere of interest' become objects of his narcissistic attachment."[11] As both Freud and Fromm point out, one's narcissistic image about oneself is projected on to the children. This is extended to identification with wider groups, culminating in nationalism. Karen Horney was quick to point out that at the root of this kind of narcissistic self-image is found a kind of "self-inflation" rather than "self-love," with a need not for love but the admiration of others. At this point we see the relevance of the Buddhist concept of maana (self-conceit). Self-conceit, according to the Buddha, takes three forms: I am superior to others (seyyo' ham asmi-maana); I am equal to others (sadiso 'ham asmi-maana); I am inferior to others (hino 'ham asmi maana). Maana is one of the fetters that bind man to the ills of existence, and it varies from a crude feeling of pride to a subtle feeling of distinctiveness that prevails till the attainment of arahantship (sainthood). If a person is proud of his attainments, exaggerates them, and feels infuriated when someone gives a lower estimation of his doings, he suffers from an inflated sense of vanity (maana mada). If he feels frustrated, disappointed and underestimates his attainments he is subject to a kind of inferiority complex. This is similar to what Fromm describes as "depression." "The element of mourning in melancholia refers, in my opinion to the narcissistic image of the wonderful 'I' which has died, and for which the depressed person is mourning." Pride, vanity and conceit manifest clearly in interpersonal relations, as a reactive expression, as "wounded narcissism." Its mechanism is similar to what Freud refers to as "secondary narcissism." One's wounded narcissism gives way either to an ego collapse, depression and melancholy or to anger and fury. The Antinomy between Self-love and Love for Others Apart from discussing the pathology of narcissism and its crippling impact on healthy personality growth, Fromm raises the question whether there could be a kind of healthy self-love, a benign form of narcissism as different from malignant narcissism. Is a certain degree of narcissism necessary for survival? Is there a necessary antinomy between love of self and others? Part of the problem could of course arise due to the linguistic issues besetting the use of the word "self" in diverse contexts. A grasp of the subtle mechanisms that bear upon the psychology of human motivation can clear up another facet of this issue. Ultimately this might involve a whole philosophical perspective or a way of looking at the universe and man. Fromm's analysis of this question too can be presented against the background of the Buddhist analysis of the issues involved. The problem arises when we consider love for others and love for oneself as alternatives which are mutually exclusive.[12] Selfishness is not identical with mature self-love. In fact selfishness is caused by a real lack of genuine self-love. "Love, in principle, is indivisible as far as the connection between the 'objects' and one's own self is concerned. Genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. It is not an 'affect' in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for the growth and happiness of the loved person, rooted in one's own capacity to love."[13] Fromm says that it is only a "symbiotic attachment" which is rooted in one's narcissism. Symbiotic attachment takes two basic forms: that of passive submission (to use a clinical term, masochism), and active dominance (sadism). The masochistic person escapes from the unbearable feeling of separation and isolation by making himself a part and parcel of another person; the sadistic person wants to escape from his aloneness by making another person part and parcel of himself. From the Buddhist standpoint, a clear distinction could be made between self-devoting motives and self-centered motives. The practice of metta-bhaavanaa is the finest expression of the fusing of self-love and love for others in Buddhism. The meditation of loving-kindness is first developed towards oneself and then radiates towards others. One first starts with the thought, "May I be happy," and then extends it to the welfare and happiness of others. Even, where a person makes a sacrifice and forgoes certain material benefits for the sake of others, it merely strengthens his self-development. The very nature of the good is such that no one can seek the salvation of others without seeking his own. It is extremely important to mention that Buddhism considers the life of renunciation as the highest expression of the other-regarding instincts. This is very well expressed in the Kindred Sayings: He who of both is a physician, since Himself he healeth and the others too. In the suttas, there is a classification of beings into four types: He who is neither bent on his own profit nor on the profit of another; he who is bent on the profit of another but not his own; he who is bent on his own profits not another's; and he who is bent on the profit both of himself and another.[14] The Buddha considers the last category as the best. The context in which the Buddha made the analysis cited above may be a little different from the context in which Fromm has made a case for genuine self-love. But I do not see any fundamental difference between the approaches in Buddhism and that of Erich Fromm. It is true that the Buddha was basically concerned with the life of renunciation, and the other-regarding virtues in Buddhism are based on a deeper doctrine of compassion. But if we present the basic human relations presented in a homily to Sigaala, it will be quite clear that even in limited social situations, the Buddha advocates mature human relations which deny any symbiotic attachment[15] of abnormal domination or dependence. There is however a wider dimension in which the Buddhist analysis of self-love has to be presented. A layman who has made a necessary compromise with life will find it difficult to handle the obtruding ego, while the recluse committed |
able track, a hard-charging rock explosion that also happens to have a second-act breakdown ripe for molding into whatever form the band saw fit. From night to night it would change, the song spending years as a de factor set closer. The album version is a much more streamlined affair, but it’s still so raucous, so full of the energy and promise of a world-class band just getting to its feet, that it can’t help but merit inclusion.
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16. “Yellow Ledbetter” (1992)
Then, of course, comes the finale. One of the first songs the band ever wrote as a group (and released as a B-side for “Jeremy”), it slowly became an audience favorite, and eventually supplanted “Porch” as the standard show closer. In concerts, it often segues into a lengthy solo by McCready, which, if you’re not in the audience (and sometimes even if you are), can sound lengthy and exhausting. But on record, it still captures something fleeting and essential about the band. It’s what Pearl Jam often leaves you with after an inspired concert, and it’s how this Power Hour ends, too.
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Total time: 59:56Mark I/II:XL:XL+:*******************************************************************************4.00Improved power tube plate current vs. grid voltage accuracy. New models more accurately reflect how the response is higher order at lower grid voltages and “relaxes” into a lower order response at higher grid voltages. This improves feel when the virtual power amp is overdriven and improves harmonic content accuracy.Note that existing presets will NOT be affected. Any existing preset will have its local Modeling Version (under the Adv tab of the Amp block) adjusted to its previous value. To use the new modeling you will need to set the Modeling Version parameter to “Latest”. Any new presets that are created will use the Modeling Version selected in the Global menu. For example, if an existing preset was using Q3.xx modeling it will still use Q3.xx. To use Q4.00 you would need to set the Amp block Modeling Version to “Latest”. If you create a new preset and the Global menu Modeling Version is “Latest” the new preset will use Q4.00 modeling.The campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney have voiced concerns that Candy Crowley isn’t planning to abide by the terms that were set for the second presidential debate on Tuesday night.
Lawyers for the two camps have written to the Commission on Presidential Debates questioning whether Crowley intends to take a more active role during the town-hall event than the campaigns agreed to, according to Time.
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Crowley, who is a host on CNN, has made comments recently that suggest she plans to aggressively question the candidates during the debate at Hofstra University in New York.
"Once the table is kind of set by the town-hall questioner, there is then time for me to say, ‘Hey, wait a second, what about X, Y, Z?' " Crowley said on Oct. 5.
That comment reportedly drew a letter of concern from the top attorneys for the Obama and Romney campaigns. The debate commission responded to the letter by saying it would talk with Crowley and “reconfirm her function,” according to Time.
A spokeswoman for Obama's campaign avoided questions Monday on whether the campaign had requested that Crowley ask no follow-up questions.
"I'm not going to get into the specifics of the negotiations," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.
According to Time, the campaigns said they are worried that Crowley will do more than just push the candidates to answer the questions posed to them by the audience, which is the role prescribed in the pre-debate agreement that was signed by both campaigns.
The Time report notes Crowley was not party to the agreement reached by the campaigns.
Aside from moderating questions from the audience, Crowley's responsibilities at the debate include sifting through the audience queries and picking the ones that will be asked. The audience will be made up of likely voters selected by the polling organization Gallup.
CNN did not respond with a comment to Time magazine about the letter, and neither campaign immediately responded to The Hill's requests for comment.
This story was updated at 11:11 a.m.Before heading into UFC 157, most probably assumed the Submission of the Night was a lock for the Queen of Armbars 'Rowdy' Ronda Rousey, and few would expect it to go to a Facebook preliminary fighter, as traditionally these 'of the night' bonuses elude the lower profile fighters.
Fortunately for Kenny Robertson, his submission was unique enough for fans to already consider it a 'Submission of the Year' contender. Talking to Ariel Helwani backstage, Robertson explained the origin of the move.
"I kind of made it up in college when I was wrestling, unfortunately I tore a kid's hamstring in half doing it. But I learned... I converted it over to submissions and it worked really well. All it is is when people try to get the hooks out, they tripod up and try to shake you off, you just reach down (and) lift that heel right up."
Without getting into too much of an editorial on the reality of inventing a technique that hasn't been done before, all I'll say is, for as long as humans have been competitively grappling the likelihood of creating something new is incredibly small. As Coach Billy Robinson likes to say, moves aren't invented, they've just been forgotten and rediscovered.
Even in MMA, Robertson's unique looking submission has actually been pulled off just over 10 years prior, at the 2 Hot 2 Handle 5 event back in 2002 in a fight between Amar Suloev and Paul Cahoon in Rotterdam, Holland.
Suloev is an Armenian fighter and an early MMA combatant that trained out of the Russian 'Red Devil' Sports Club' fight team, which would later become the home for Heavyweight great Fedor Emelianenko. Suloev actually features in one of the earliest MMA documentaries 'Rites of Passage' where he wins the limited-rules bare knuckle WVC 11 World Vale Tudo Championship tournament in Brazil that the documentary covers. A natural middleweight, Suloev got a chance to fight Chuck Liddell at UFC 35 and was one of the few to take Liddell to a decision, as his kickboxing was competitive with that of Liddell's. Although he lost, he got another chance to fight in the UFC against Phil Baroni, where after an illegal knee to the head of Baroni, the New York Badass capitalised on a referee stand up and blitzed Suloev with a barrage of punches leading to a TKO stoppage. Suloev spent the rest of his career fighting in Europe and Japan mostly for M-1 and Pride Bushido.
In addition to being a competent kickboxer, his Armenian roots and Red Devil training lead to skills in Wrestling and Sambo. Depending on which site you read his record on, the submission he scored on Cahoon has been called anything from a Hip Lock to a Thigh Slicer, but in tribute to this little known fighter, I've decided to call it The Suloev Stretch.
Similar to Robertson vs Jardine, Suloev is on the back of Cahoon who attempts to tripod up and escape the position. Suloev is high up and in danger of being bucked off, but takes his opportunity to pick the heel of Cahoon's right squatting leg while keeping both his legs hooked in from the back. Suloev extends the leg and stretches the hamstring and groin until enough muscle tears for Cahoon to submit.
This is particularly effective given the mechanics of the body when it is compressed and contorted like this, and is actually the optimal way to kneebar someone. As your leg is brought nearer to your body, your hamstring naturally tightens depending on its flexibility. Traditional Kneebars can often fail when an attempt is made to hyper extend the leg when the opponent is in an otherwise natural and comfortable position, greater success is found if you fall back directly onto your opponent with the leg locked up because of how it affects the hamstring.
Here we see Robertson executing the Suloev Stretch almost identically, only Jardine taps at a point before Cahoon does, possibly due to pain tolerance and / or differences in flexibility.Still from Adventures from Superman TV series, (1952-1958)
As a life-long reader of superhero comic books, I have an abiding belief in the importance of origin stories.
When I was an undergraduate student, I was told a story about the history of my field—in Canada, at least. It was a story of how a tradition of inquiry based in fandom became institutionalized in universities when faculty in English departments began to grapple with the cultural forms that were competing for their students’ attention. First came the cinema, and then the panoply of newly “new media”: television, video games, web-based video, social media, and so on.
This origin story is not unlike that of comics studies. [ ] It, too, has its robust tradition of fan scholarship. And it too has been deeply shaped by its association with literature departments, but, notwithstanding the comics studies groups within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and International Association for Media and Communication Research and the growth of standalone learned societies like the Comics Studies Association and the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics, it remains essentially a branch of literary studies. Moreover, because of their relatively marginal position within the more established discipline, many comics scholars (especially, students in programs that lack a deep bench of supervisors working in popular literatures) end up reproducing literary studies’ most conservative paradigms, staking a claim for comics’ inherent quality to justify their place in a university classroom or scholarly journal. [ ]
I fear that this equation of aesthetic with scholarly value impoverishes the field at precisely the time when it needs to be its gutsiest. This is not a time for retreat into media-specific silos. So, as Flow goes through a similar process of re-orientation, I want to use my columns this year to reflect on the relationship between comics studies and media studies, more generally: What would it mean to consider comics as media, and what might we gain by drawing comics studies and media studies into closer alignment?
Ad for novelization of The Death and Life of Superman
The gentrifying labels of “graphic novels” and “graphic narrative” seek to re-shape comics into plausible texts for literary study. But, as media and as culture, they quickly overflow the container of the literary text. [ ]
Literature is, perhaps first and foremost, the product of an author, and authorship remains a key organizing concept. Comics almost systematically frustrates this. Most comics have been the product of creative teams of writers and pencillers and inkers and colorists and letterers, to say nothing of the editorial, production and business staff who make publishing a comic book possible. Some traditions of cartooning do offer figures that can be taken for authors or auteurs. Someone who both writes and draws their comics—a Spiegelman or Bechdel, for instance—seems to exert the level of autonomy and control we demand of a literary author. Even then, the literary framing tends to focus scholars’ attention on the words they write more than the pictures they draw or the myriad interrelations of text and image in space.
Cover, Superman Salutes the Bicentennial (DC Comics, 1976)
In doing this work, most comics creators have been more oriented to the market and audience demand than the ideal-typical literary author is imagined to be. In Bourdieusian terms, comics as a whole lies closer to the heteronomous pole than the autonomous one. Grappling with this means accounting for seriality, circulation, and the fact that most comics are not remarkable or even all that good. We need to look not only at the few, precious pearls but also the big pile of empty oyster shells. Dale Jacobs ’s current project to analyze every comic book published in America during the bicentennial year of 1976, the critic Douglas Wolk’s effort to read every Marvel comic book, and the What Were Comics? project are all attempts at a different mode of reading and a different method for apprehending comics as eighty years of output from a cultural industry.
But the comic book industry is not exactly like other publishing industries, and it would be a mistake to think its products are “books” or “magazines.” Ian Gordon’s recent book on Superman, for instance, raises questions about just what Superman is. Gordon eventually settles on the term “icon” to describe the bundle of symbols, characters, settings, narrative devices, and themes brought together under the sign of a big red S. [ ] If the concept of transmedia represents a network of adaptations in which no text has the privileged status of “original,” then comics were transmedia avant la lettre. Their publishers are in the business of maintaining a database of narrative and aesthetic elements that can be endlessly recompiled into new media products: one Harley Quinn for tween girls and another for allegedly grown men appearing across a range of platforms. [ ]
“Superman Merchandise, 1979” uploaded to Flickr by Tom Simpson
Scholars have pointed to the increased articulation between the comic book industry and Hollywood in the form of adaptations of superhero comic-book franchises. [ ] There is undoubtedly something to this, but histories of early comic art show this is hardly a new phenomenon. [ ] Within two years of Superman’s debut, for example, the company that would become DC Comics had already established Superman, Inc. (later known as the Licensing Corporation of America) to manage its valuable intellectual properties, and its business manager Jack Liebowitz was one of the architects of the Warner Communications conglomerate. [ ] “Comics” don’t stop at the edge of the page; we have to follow the transmedial object as it spreads promiscuously through our media culture.
In “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Michel Foucault warns that a focus on origin stories makes for a bad philosophy of history. The comics-as-literature discourse provided comics studies a point of departure but it can’t remain our primary frame of reference. After all, comics isn’t a genre of literature.
Comics is a cultural form that circulates through a range of media (newspaper strips, periodicals, codex books, and web sites, apps and social media) and enrolls various publics—creators, industrial actors, retailers, critics and scholars, audiences and fans, re-mediators and adaptors—into specific media-oriented practices. Consequently, we’ll need a big and truly interdisciplinary toolkit to apprehend it.
Image Credits:
1. Still from Adventures from Superman TV series, (1952-1958).
2. Ad for novelization of The Death and Life of Superman.
3. Cover, Superman Salutes the Bicentennial (DC Comics, 1976).
4. “Superman merchandise, 1979” uploaded to Flickr by Tom Simpson.
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Secretary of State John Kerry took a shot at Donald Trump during his Friday commencement speech at Northeastern University, by saying no wall is big enough to keep dangerous terrorists out of the United States.
"Many of you were in elementary school when you learned the toughest lesson of all on 9/11," he said. "There are no walls big enough to stop people from anywhere, tens of thousands of miles away, who are determined to take their own lives while they target others."
"So I think that everything that we've lived and learn tells us that we will never come out on top if we accept advice from sound-bite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward," Kerry added. "And hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt."
Kerry didn't mention Trump by name, but Trump has repeatedly called for a wall on the southern U.S. border, and many Democrats, and some Republicans, have taken to calling him a carnival barker.
Kerry also seemed to dismiss the importance of national borders, and said technology has reshaped the world into one that the U.S. must engage at the risk of being left behind. He said Trump and others who want to look inward are making a mistake, even in the face of rising tension and violence in the world.
"For some people, that is all they need simply to climb under the sheets, close their eyes and push the world away," Kerry said. "And shockingly, we even see this attitude from some who think they ought to be entrusted with the job of managing international affairs."OTTAWA — Colin Basram is having growing pains.
In some ways a victim of his own success, the mayor of Kelowna has been struggling in recent years to rein in his city as it slowly spreads across the B.C. interior, testing his ability to provide core municipal services and build badly needed infrastructure.
Nor is the city's middle-aged spread at all unique, according to the 2016 census data released Wednesday: Canada's population of 35.15 million is settling in the bigger cities, ensuring they and their suburban neighbours keep growing, while small cities get smaller.
The three biggest metropolitan areas in the country — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — are now home to more than one-third of all Canadians with a combined population of 12.5 million, with almost one half living in Toronto and its suburban neighbours, the data shows.
Canada is once again the fastest growing country in the G7, Statistics Canada says in the first of what will be seven tranches of 2016 census data to be released over the course of the year. Wednesday's release focused on population and dwellings; the next one, in May, will be focused on age and sex.
The latest figures also show that the once yawning gulf in growth rates between the spreading suburbs and their urban centres has continued to narrow, with young professionals and aging baby boomers alike opting for the downtown-condominium life.
The census shows that 82 per cent of Canadian population live in large and medium-sized cities across the country, one of the highest concentrations among G7 nations. Immigration has driven that change with new arrivals settling in urban centres as opposed to rural communities.
"The municipalities located on the edge of the (census metropolitan areas) are growing faster than the municipalities located (in the centre) of the census metropolitan area,'' said Laurent Martel, director of the demography division at Statistics Canada.
"Also the rural areas located outside the census metropolitan areas, but close to them, are also growing faster than rural areas much farther away, so that's also a sign of an urban spread phenomenon.''
Canada's rural population is aging at a much faster rate than those in the urban centres, which tend to attract younger families, said Michael Haan, a sociology professor at Western University in London, Ont.
"Demographers call cities population sinks for a reason,'' Haan said. "Imagine you had all sorts of water on a counter and it all just runs into the sink and it never comes out again.''
How to keep those sinks from overflowing has become an increasing concern for urban planners.
"How do you create more density and a different built form that can help people age in place in the community they're in right now so that they don't feel they have to move somewhere else?"
It's why suburban lots over the years have become smaller, circuitous streets designed for cars are being replaced with a transit-and-foot-friendly grid system, and dwellings are increasingly being designed to allow young families to age in place.
"If we have a whole bunch of really young population, now we know that they're going to start to age in our communities,'' said Eleanor Mohammed, president of the Canadian Institute of Planners, and chief planner in Beaumont, Alta., which grew at a rate of 31 per cent between 2011 and 2016.
"So, if your community is really suburban, how do you create more density and a different built form that can help people age in place in the community they're in right now so that they don't feel they have to move somewhere else?''
The mayor of Kelowna has been struggling in recent years to rein in his city as it slowly spreads across the B.C. interior. (Photo: Getty Images)
In Kelowna, officials are encouraging people to live in areas that are already built out, as opposed to pushing the boundaries of the community further and further with new subdivisions.
The city's growth rate over the last five years was 8.4 per cent — the sixth highest among metropolitan areas in the nation — pushing its population to 194,882, the census found.
"What we're trying to do, as many communities are, is really trying to stop or limit sprawl and densify the areas that we already have because we know infrastructure is expensive,'' Basram said.
Slow growth in Atlantic Canada
Not all cities and towns in Canada are looking to keep their borders from expanding. Many are simply trying to hold on.
Several small towns in Nova Scotia not attached to an urban centre, such as New Glasgow, Cumberland and Digby, watched their population figures drop in the census.
Saint John, N.B., was one of only two metropolitan regions across Canada that saw a drop between 2011 and 2016 — from 70,065 to 67,575 — mirroring a larger provincial trend. New Brunswick's population declined by 0.5 per cent, the only province to post negative growth since 2006.
Across the rest of Atlantic Canada, growth slowed largely because fewer immigrants came into the region and more people left the area to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
That elsewhere continued to be the West with Alberta growing at more than twice the national average, leading provincial growth for the third straight census cycle. Manitoba's population increased by 5.8 per cent, surpassing the national average for the first time in 80 years largely on the back of new immigrants.
Almost one-third of Canadians now live in the West, the region's largest share ever. Calgary and Edmonton were the fastest growing cities between 2011 and 2016, with Calgary leap-frogging Ottawa for fourth-largest overall behind the big three of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Quebec's population surpassed the eight million mark and Ontario's growth slowed to hit 13.4 million, still giving the two most populous provinces 61.5 per cent of the nation's population.
Migration will be the dominant source of growth by 2056
Nationally, growth slowed to about one per cent annually between 2011 and 2016, an extra 1.7 million people. That would have been even lower if not for an influx of new immigrants, which Statistics Canada says accounted for about two-thirds of the latest increase.
Statistics Canada projections suggest natural, fertility-fuelled growth will decline in the coming years, thanks to an aging population and a declining birth rate, to less than one per cent, making migration by far the dominant source of growth by 2056.
Those numbers and projections are why the federal government's economic growth council has recommended increasing immigration levels to 450,000 from 260,000 to ensure there are enough workers in the country to keep Canada's economy humming along.US intelligence agencies and private experts say that Russia is probably responsible for major cyber attacks on the American political system. But, in tonight’s debate, Republican nominee Donald Trump—who has been accused of cozying up to Russia—said that “no one knows” who committed the attacks. He said they could even have been done by “someone who weighs 400 pounds who is sitting on a bed.”
Trump made his remark after his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton suggested that, as president, she might order a massive cyber attack on Russia if it does not stop its cyber-intrusions on the US. It is a step that president Barack Obama has not said he would do. But, Clinton said, “We have to make clear that the United States has much greater capacity,” hinting at general agreement by experts that the US is the global leader in cyber technology.
In his response, Trump cast doubt on US cyber capability. “We should be better,” he said. He went on to cast doubt as well on who committed the cyber break-ins. “No one knows it was Russia,” he said. “It could be China. Or it could be someone who weighs 400 pounds who is sitting on a bed. We don’t know.”Sledgefire shells are now available on HasbroToyShop.com at $4.99 for a pack of 3. It’s something we’ve known about for a little while now thanks to BackyardLazers on Reddit, but I wanted to actually get some in my hands to give a full report.
As I had assumed, these are refill shells and not a retail package. They don’t come with darts and they don’t come in a normal package as you can see in the image below.
It’s a little disappointing that I can’t go to my local Target and purchase these right off the shelf. I think this is a positive sign though; that they may decide to offer them in a retail setting at some point in the future and/or they may develop more blasters that use this shell.
If you happen to own a Sledgefire, click on over to HasbroToyShop and pick some up!Last year, three little, oft-maligned towns across the world decided it was time to transcend their stigma and use their unfortunate names as a force for good. United by common pain—and the prospect of a little extra tourism—the municipalities of Bland, Australia; Boring, Oregon; and Dull, Scotland teamed up to create what they call the League of Extraordinary Communities, but which many have dubbed the Trinity of Tedium. Although part of the union is about reclaiming the joke of their names and having a good laugh themselves, it’s also just one of many strange bids by small towns to bring in a few extra dollars. And it appears to be working, which we can only hope means we’ll see more such confederacies soon.
For those unfamiliar with the villages, here’s a quick primer: Bland, full name Bland Shire, is a town of 6,400 in the dead center of Australia’s New South Wales state. Named after William Bland, one of Australia’s first medical practitioners and a convict shipped to the continent after killing a man in a duel in then-Bombay, the town now sports a small gold mine, but not much else. Boring, Oregon, the largest of the trio with 13,000 residents, is named for early settler William H. Boring, a Civil War Union solider. Home to a center for Seeing Eye Dog training, and some of the worst business puns known to man, residents have been known to post signs reading “the most exciting place to live” around town. And little Dull, Scotland, with just 84 residents living along one street in the Tay Valley, is by far the smallest of the group, but among the richest in history, featuring many historic Celtic and Christian sites alongside its rapidly declining modern structures and shrinking population.
Before Bland completed the trio last year, Boring and Dull linked up in 2012 after a Scottish woman on a cycling holiday in America passed a sign for Boring, and decided to tell the local Community Planning Organization about Dull. The result was a Dull & Boring Facebook page for residents to communicate together and some basic plans for cooperation and mutual promotion as a tourist duo. By doing so they followed in the tradition of Toledo, Ohio and Toledo, Spain, who became the world’s first sister cities based on an unlikely kinship in 1931.The union spawned 522 American communities with commercial and touristic ties to diverse and unexpected towns around the world. Last year, Neil Pokoney, mayor of Bland, heard about the partnership between Dull and Boring and decided he’d like to get in on the fun and profit—possibly after two Bland citizens visited Dull in 2013 and decided the union seemed like a great way to both channel and challenge the fun other Australians poked at them.
As strange as the Trinity sounds, it’s hardly the weirdest thing a small, out-of-the-way town has ever done to promote itself and draw in a little extra income. Consider the 30-foot, beagle-shaped bed and breakfast that defines Cottonwood, Idaho, the seven-million-foot ball and sisal of twine in Cawker City, Kansas, and the “car-henge,” which is pretty much what it sounds like, in Alliance, Nebraska. A town in Oregon even changed its name, for one year, to half.com, the name of a popular online store, for a cash grant and some free computers. And perhaps earliest and oddest of all, the Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll decided to capitalize on English fascination with long Welsh names in the 1880s by renaming their town Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrob-wllllantysiliogogogoch, a 57-letter moniker featuring four “l”s in a row, which translates to St. Mary’s Church in the Hollow of White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysillo near the Red Cave. The name still attracts touristic photographers and sells t-shirts (although travel guru Rick Steves claims it’s been outstripped by the 163-letter Thai town of Krungthepmahanakornamornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadi-lokphopnopparatrajathaniburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharnamornphimarnavatarnsathitsak-kattiyavisanukamprasit.)
According to Norman Rice of the Boring Community Planning Organization, the Trinity is working—the town has seen a market increase in visitors and a boost in sales of branded mugs and t-shirts, not to mention the ancillary business of people who come to photograph their signs when they hear about the union. He says the other towns have had similar success, and capitalize on the fame to draw people into their existing attractions, like Dull’s Highland safaris and 7th century Celtic crosses. The communities have also initiated, as of 2013, Dull and Boring Days, which will expand to include Bland soon, featuring ice cream, bagpipes, and American folk singing; Boring hopes to achieve state legislative recognition of the holiday to draw in even more spectators.
And possibly the best part of the Trinity—the three towns involved barely need to do anything to promote or expand it. Internet commenters, gaga over the project, have already suggested that Draby, Poland, Monotony Valley, Nevada, Normal, Illinois, and Tedious Creek, Maryland consider joining the party (although no one knows if they’d allow in Bland, Missouri—perhaps that repetition would be just too…dull).
For my money, though, I’d pay to see completely new unions form. Perhaps an Eerie, Indiana-themed alliance between Odd, West Virginia, Peculiar, Missouri, and Strange, Ontario. Or an existential entente between Why, Why Not, and Nowhere Else. Of all the options, though, we all have to admit that perhaps the best team-up would be what I’ll call for now the Enneagon of Eroticism, the unholy bonding of Blue Ball, Ireland; Brown Willy, Cornwall; Climax, Georgia; Cocks, Cornwall; Dildo, Newfoundland; Fucking, Austria; Intercourse, Pennsylvania; Muff, Ireland and Wank, Germany. That’s not even scratching the surface of dirty town names, but it’s a good title to start off, say, a delightfully depraved world tour. Because, let’s admit it, if people will shell out for the admittedly awesome Trinity of Tedium, what wouldn’t they pay to make this salacious circuit?A Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I-Vt.)-backed candidate running to head the California Democratic Party says she was cheated out of the job, alleging hundreds of improperly cast ballots helped her establishment-backed rival beat her last month.
Kimberly Ellis, a Bay-area Democratic activist who enjoyed support from Sanders and many of his allies, said her campaign has evidence that some delegates to the state convention voted twice, and that other ballots are missing.
The discrepancies she publicized late Monday call into question the results of the election for state Democratic Party chairman, a race won by Los Angeles-area activist Eric Bauman. Bauman beat Ellis by just 62 votes, out of about 3,300 delegates who attended the convention last month in Sacramento.
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“Based on the information contained here, the actual vote count is in question,” Ellis’s team wrote in a six-page memo. “It is believed the wrong individual is serving as Chair.”
In a statement Monday, Bauman said the continued controversy was hurting the Democratic Party.
“I am well aware that 49% of the delegates to the Convention voted for Kimberly Ellis and that if we are to keep California the big blue beacon of hope and the beating heart of the resistance, those who have felt shut out of the process must have a true seat at the table,” Bauman wrote. “But I also know that doing so does not require burning down every institution and trashing those activists and volunteers who have given their blood, sweat and tears over the years to make the California Democratic Party the most successful Democratic Party anywhere in America.”
Bauman did not specifically ask Ellis to drop her challenge.
Bauman entered the race with the support of the vast majority of state Democratic legislators, who carry multiple votes at the state convention. He also had backing from most Democratic members of Congress and most major unions that play significant roles in the state.
But Ellis emerged as a dark horse, spurred on by grassroots support from Sanders backers who dominated Assembly district caucuses earlier this year. Our Revolution, the outgrowth of Sanders’s presidential campaign, helped whip votes on Ellis’s behalf. Those delegates make up about a third of the total voters eligible to cast ballots at the convention.
Ellis tried to cast Bauman as an establishment insider while selling herself as the upstart outsider bent on shaking up a moribund party. In truth, both candidates hewed to a platform that closely resembled Sanders’s own, supporting a $15 minimum wage and a single-payer healthcare system.
Before the vote, both candidates claimed enough votes to win on the convention floor.
In the memo, Ellis’s team said it met with John Burton, the outgoing state party chairman, the day after the vote took place. Burton congratulated Ellis on running a strong campaign, but Ellis said she would not concede. She told Burton she had heard enough reports of “irregularities and inappropriate behaviors” that she did not have confidence in the result.
The Ellis campaign raised concerns that voters at the state convention were not required to show identification when they received their credentials, which would allow them to cast a ballot. They also complained that records of whether some delegates paid the appropriate convention fees were missing.
They further suggested there remains a “storm of suspicion” around the 2016 Democratic primary in California, where Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE beat Sanders by about 350,000 votes. Both Ellis and Bauman backed Clinton in the primary.
Bauman backers are increasingly irate that Ellis hasn’t dropped her challenge. Bob Mulholland, a DNC member and Bauman supporter, called Ellis’s questions over voters showing identification “outrageous.”
President “Trump must be laughing that Kimberly Ellis is joining him, demanding that all voters (especially African-Americans and Latinos) be denied the right to vote unless they have” an identification, Mulholland wrote in an email.
The dispute between California Democrats and Ellis comes at a moment when Sanders supporters are battling for control of state Democratic Party organizations around the country. Sanders, a Vermont independent senator who has not formally become a member of the Democratic Party, supported Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) in his bid to head the Democratic National Committee earlier this year, a race Ellison lost to former Labor Secretary Tom Perez.
Even as President Trump swept to the White House in 2016, California Democrats notched big wins across the state. Democrats control every executive office at the state level, and they hold supermajorities in both the state Senate and the state Assembly.Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) said on Thursday that if he became president he would repeal all previous executive orders.
“I think the first executive order that I would issue would be to repeal all previous executive orders,” he said, according to Breitbart News.
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Paul is a likely 2016 presidential candidate, and he made the remark at an event in New Hampshire, home of the first primary, to a group of young libertarians called Generation Opportunity.
"We’ve done way too many things [the wrong way]: Signing statements, altering legislation by the president, are wrong and unconstitutional and shouldn’t happen. Executive orders shouldn’t either," Paul said.
Repealing all executive orders has the potential to undo a large amount of policy. Executive orders, for example, ban assassinations by the United States and organize intelligence agencies under the Director of National Intelligence.
"Senator Paul's statement was meant to emphasize this president's overt and unconstitutional executive orders, it was not meant to be taken literally," Paul spokesman Sergio Gor wrote in an email.
At the New Hampshire event, Paul also touched on his trip last month to Guatemala, one of the main sources of unaccompanied children arriving in the U.S. over the summer last month.
"I was in Guatemala a couple weeks ago, and my main conversation with the president there was we would like more adoption of Guatemalan children," he said. "There are thousands of Americans who would adopt Guatemalan children. I don’t want to be the party that is against Guatemalan kids, but I do want to be the party that is for enforcing the rule of law and says we can’t have just everybody come whenever they want to.”With obvious public outcries against forced abortions in China and forced sterilizations of mentally handicapped individuals in Nazi Germany, one might assume the United States knows better.
However, today, in Nevada, the life of an 11-week-old unborn baby and the future of his or her 32-year-old mother hang in the balance as a judge considers whether or not to order the woman to undergo an abortion and sterilization against her will.
Elisa Bauer, who suffers from severe mental and physical disabilities |
.4 billion dollar haul for J.J. Abrams’ film, putting it well behind Avatar‘s $2.78 billion and slotting it in at No. 2.
Then again, Star Wars has been defying box office expectations all along, so there’s still a chance, especially if it finds a market in China. Come again, Faux News?Not to be confused with Windsock
In computing, the Windows Sockets API (WSA), later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application (such as an FTP client or a web browser) and the underlying TCP/IP protocol stack. The nomenclature is based on the Berkeley sockets API model used in BSD for communications between programs.
Background [ edit ]
Early Microsoft operating systems, both MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, offered limited networking capability, chiefly based on NetBIOS. In particular, Microsoft did not offer support for the TCP/IP protocol stack at that time. A number of university groups and commercial vendors, including the PC/IP group at MIT, FTP Software, Sun Microsystems, Ungermann-Bass, and Excelan, introduced TCP/IP products for MS-DOS, often as part of a hardware/software bundle. When Windows 2.0 was released, these vendors were joined by others such as Distinct and NetManage in offering TCP/IP for Windows.
The drawback faced by all of these vendors was that each of them used their own API (Application Programming Interface). Without a single standard programming model, it was difficult to persuade independent software developers to create networking applications which would work with any vendor’s underlying TCP/IP implementation. Add to this the fact that end users were wary of getting locked into a single vendor and it became clear that some standardization was needed.
The Windows Sockets API was proposed by Martin Hall of JSB Software (later Stardust Technologies) in a "BoF" (Birds of a Feather) discussion on the CompuServe BBS network in October 1991.[citation needed] The first edition of the specification was authored by Martin Hall, Mark Towfiq of Microdyne (later Sun Microsystems), Geoff Arnold of Sun Microsystems, and Henry Sanders and J Allard of Microsoft, with assistance from many others.[citation needed] There was some discussion about how best to address the copyright, intellectual property, and potential anti-trust issues, and consideration was given to working through the IETF or establishing a non-profit foundation. In the end, it was decided that the specification would simply be copyrighted by the five authors as (unaffiliated) individuals.
All the participating developers resisted the shortening of the name to simple Winsock for a long time,[citation needed] since there was much confusion among users between the API and the DLL library file (winsock.dll) which only exposed the common WSA interfaces to applications above it. Users would commonly believe that only making sure the DLL file was present on a system would provide full TCP/IP protocol support.[citation needed]
Technology [ edit ]
The Windows Sockets API specification defines two interfaces: the API used by application developers, and the SPI, which provides a means for network software developers to add new protocol modules to the system. Each interface represents a contract. The API guarantees that a conforming application will function correctly with a conforming protocol implementation from any network software vendor. The SPI contract guarantees that a conforming protocol module may be added to Windows and will thereby be usable by an API-compliant application. Although these contracts were important when Windows Sockets was first released, since network environments required multi-protocol support (see above) they are now of only academic interest. Included in the Windows Sockets API version 2.0 are functions to use IPX/SPX, although the protocol was all but obsolete already at the time WSA 2.0 shipped. Microsoft has shipped the TCP/IP protocol stack with all recent versions of Windows, and there are no significant independent alternatives. Nor has there been significant interest in implementing protocols other than TCP/IP.
Windows Sockets code and design are based on BSD sockets, but provides additional functionality to allow the API to comply with the regular Windows programming model. The Windows Sockets API covered almost all the features of the BSD sockets API, but there were some unavoidable obstacles which mostly arose out of fundamental differences between Windows and Unix (though Windows Sockets differed less from BSD sockets than the latter did from STREAMS). All function calls in the API begin with the moniker WSA, e.g. WSASend() for sending data on a connected socket.
However it was a design goal of Windows Sockets that it should be relatively easy for developers to port socket-based applications from Unix to Windows. It was not considered sufficient to create an API which was only useful for newly written Windows programs. For this reason, Windows Sockets included a number of elements which were designed to facilitate porting. For example, Unix applications were able to use the same errno variable to record both networking errors and errors detected within standard C library functions. Since this was not possible in Windows, Windows Sockets introduced a dedicated function, WSAGetLastError(), to retrieve error information. Such mechanisms were helpful, but application porting remained extremely complex. Many original TCP/IP applications had been implemented by using system features specific to Unix, such as pseudo terminals and the fork system call, and reproducing such functionality in Windows was problematic. Within a relatively short time, porting gave way to the development of dedicated Windows applications.
Specifications [ edit ]
Version 1.0 (June 1992) defined the basic operation of Winsock. It was kept very close to the existing interface of Berkeley sockets to simplify porting of existing applications. A few Windows-specific extensions were added, mainly for asynchronous operations with message-based notifications.
Although the document didn't limit support to TCP/IP, TCP and UDP were the only protocols explicitly mentioned. Most vendors only delivered TCP/IP support, although Winsock from DEC included DECNet support as well.
Version 1.1 (January 1993) made many minor corrections and clarifications of the specification. The most significant change was the inclusion of the gethostname() function.
function. Winsock 2 was a backwards-compatible extension of Winsock 1.1. It added support for protocol-independent name resolution, asynchronous operations with event-based notifications and completion routines, layered protocol implementations, multicasting, and quality of service. It also formalized support for multiple protocols, including IPX/SPX and DECnet. The new specification allowed sockets to be optionally shared between processes, incoming connection requests to be conditionally accepted, and certain operations to be performed on socket groups rather than individual sockets. Although the new specification differed substantially from Winsock 1, it provided source- and binary-level compatibility with the Winsock 1.1 API. One of the lesser known additions was the Service Provider Interface (SPI) API and Layered Service Providers.
Versions 2.0.x (May 1994 onwards) had internal draft status, and were not announced as public standards.
Version 2.1.0 (January 1996) was the first public release of the Winsock 2 specification.
Version 2.2.0 (May 1996) included many minor corrections, clarifications, and usage recommendations. It was also the first version to remove support for 16-bit Windows applications.
Version 2.2.1 (May 1997) and Version 2.2.2 (August 1997) introduced minor functionality enhancements. Mechanisms were added for querying and receiving notification of changes in network and system configuration.
The IPv6 Technical Preview for Windows 2000 (December 2000) saw the first implementation of RFC 2553 (March 1999, later obsoleted by RFC 3493), a protocol-independent API for name resolution, which would become part of Winsock in Windows XP.
Windows 8 includes the "RIO" (Registered IO) extensions for Winsock.[1] These extensions are designed to reduce the overhead of the user to kernel mode transition for the network data path and the notification path, but use the rest of the regular Windows TCP and UDP stack (and uses existing network cards). The setup path (for example, the "connect" function) is unchanged from the regular Winsock path.
Implementations [ edit ]
Microsoft implementations [ edit ]
Microsoft did not supply an implementation of Winsock 1.0.
Version 1.1 of Winsock was supplied in an add-on package (called Wolverine) for Windows for Workgroups (code named Snowball ). It was an integral component of Windows 95 and Windows NT from versions 3.5 and onwards (the initial commercially available version of Windows NT, version 3.1, included only a proprietary and quite incomplete implementation of TCP/IP based on the AT&T UNIX System V "STREAMS" API [ citation needed ] ).
). It was an integral component of Windows 95 and Windows NT from versions 3.5 and onwards (the initial commercially available version of Windows NT, version 3.1, included only a proprietary and quite incomplete implementation of TCP/IP based on the AT&T UNIX System V "STREAMS" API ). Version 2.1 of Winsock was supplied in an add-on package for Windows 95. It was an integral component of Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, and all subsequent Windows releases. (Microsoft did not supply implementations of Winsock 2 for Windows 3.x or Windows NT 3.x.)
Recent versions of Winsock 2.x have been delivered with new Windows releases or as part of service packs.
Winsock 2 is extensible by a mechanism known as a Layered Service Provider (LSP). Winsock LSPs are available for a wide range of useful purposes, including Internet parental controls, web content filtering, QoS etc. The layering order of all providers is kept in the Winsock Catalog. In previous versions of Windows, removing a buggy LSP could result in corruption of the Winsock catalog in the registry, potentially resulting in a loss of all network connectivity. Winsock in Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and all later Windows operating systems has the ability to self-heal after a user uninstalls such an LSP.
Other implementations [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]September 12, 2009 — Alderson Warm-Fork
Robert Nozick wrote, a while back, an article with this title. It’s an odd piece, and its essential answer to the titular question is, I think,something like this:
“Intellectuals – those whose job is to move words around a lot, whether academics, media-types, novelists, etc. – are usually people who did relatively well in school and relatively less well in wider society. This makes them resent market-society for frustrating the expectations they had built up; they want to make all of society like a school, where professor Lenin gives out gold stars not to the industrialists and bankers but to the best intellectuals.”
The primary problem with this piece is, of course, that it poses a question and then studiously ignores the most obvious possible answer. The most obvious answer to ‘why do intellectuals oppose capitalism?’ is ‘because capitalism is intellectually bankrupt’.
That’s not necessarily to attribute to intellectuals a superior ability to ‘see the truth’ of matters. It might alternatively be a matter of how that ‘truth’ is expressed. Loads of people, after all, are pissed off with how society works, frustrated, angry, insubordinate.
But that could be expressed in a range of ways: one way would be to direct hostility away from the essential parameters of the system and towards more specific scapegoats, whether that’s some minority blamed for ‘stealing our jobs’ or a hidden conspiracy of US government agents that orchestrated the world trade centre attacks. Or it could involve joining a ‘rebellious’ subculture and swearing a lot. Or just not working very hard. Or trying to find personal safety by cutting out food additives. Or – formulating a political rejection of capitalism itself. It hardly seems odd that intellectuals would pick that last one more often.
Note, the intellectual response need not always be very ‘correct’: arguably many or most intellectual rejections of capitalism have done so on the basis of some more-or-less silly alternative, which combined good and bad elements. Supporting the USSR in the 50s is hardly a less foolish expression of discontent than is the 9/11-truth movement. But it might explain the datum Nozick focuses on – that it’s often among ‘intellectuals’ that one finds the most explicit support from the abolition of private property.
But that’s only the first problem with Nozick’s writing. It also expresses the one-sided ‘free-market’ understanding of capitalism. He writes:
“The (future) wordsmith intellectuals are successful within the formal, official social system of the schools, wherein the relevant rewards are distributed by the central authority of the teacher. The schools contain another informal social system within classrooms, hallways, and schoolyards, wherein rewards are distributed not by central direction but spontaneously at the pleasure and whim of schoolmates. Here the intellectuals do less well.
It is not surprising, therefore, that distribution of goods and rewards via a centrally organized distributional mechanism later strikes intellectuals as more appropriate than the “anarchy and chaos” of the marketplace. For distribution in a centrally planned socialist society stands to distribution in a capitalist society as distribution by the teacher stands to distribution by the schoolyard and hallway” (note for clarity: the earlier italicised passage was my paraphrase, while this one is a quote)
This is an interesting idea. The classroom – a hierarchical situation, where one person, with hugely greater power, directs the boring and often resented activities of the mass of others, who come in every day at specified times, have their day organised into discrete blocks, and must follow the arbitrary rules of the petty tyrants around them – this, we are told, is what socialism would be like, and is the polar opposite of our capitalism.
Isn’t it fortunate that no-where in capitalist society do huge groups of people resentfully trudge into a single place, where, according to a schedule handed down to them alongside a collection of rules made by someone else, they grind away their lives on activities that don’t interest them, under the supervision of a piddling authority figure? Indeed, we should forget about the intellectuals – we have a much bigger problem! The structure of schooling is raising all of our children in precisely the wrong way – training them to be obedient work-drones, and not self-propelling entrepreneurs!
The idea that anti-capitalism (or at least, socialism) is actually about seeking greater opportunity for creativity, less hierarchy, less compulsion and discipline, does not fit into this analysis at all.
Similarly, Nozick implicitly presents his explanation of intellectual anti-capitalism as one that separates it from rational validity. Which would work – if the post-school environment were one where, rather than the smartest, it was the most cunning, most productive, or most determined who succeeded. But is this really the case?
Another quote:
“Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards.
The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority “entitled” them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?”
Nozick studiously avoids mentioning who the greatest rewards do go to in ‘market-society’? But what if – let’s just suppose – they often went to people born into fortunate circumstances? Or to people who demonstrated a ruthlessness or skill for manipulation that let them grow rich, even while actually harming the rest of society? Or to people who could get easily accepted by the foregoing groups, due their ability to parrot the right buzzwords and present the right image?
What if the virtues that Nozick implicitly counterposes to intellectual ones – such as working really hard to provide others with much-needed services, for instance – were very often unrecognised, and rewarded only with low wages and unpaid overtime?
Because then the same phenomenon that Nozick holds up – that, supposedly, intellectuals are pissed off when they leave school and find themselves not at the top of the pecking order – acquires a very different appearance. Now, even if the key motivation is still a certain egotism, a certain superiority complex, that egotism serves merely to ‘unmask’ the fact that the distribution of rewards under capitalism is largely irrational and unfair, by any standard.
That is, perhaps out of three groups, those who do well in capitalism, those who do badly in both capitalism and school, and those (Nozick’s “intellectuals”) who do well in school and badly in capitalism, the third is best-placed to notice the irrationality of capitalism, because the first has a self-seeking motive to accept self-justifying ideology (the poor are lazy, the rich are ‘wealth-creators’, etc.), and the second lacks the confidence to condemn their own exploitation, because their experience in school taught them from an early age that they deserve no better.
So in summary: Nozick poses a question to which a certain answer naturally suggests itself (intellectuals oppose capitalism because capitalism is intellectually bankrupt); he assumes the wrongness of this answer, and then offers an alternative – which, whether explicit or not, has the function of de-legitimising intellectual anti-capitalism, by painting it as a matter of petty jealousy.
But his answer involves assuming some grossly unrealistic things about the workings of actual capitalist society – that is, it treats every part of that society other than the ideological picture of hard-working entrepreneurs and efficient free markets (parts such as the authoritarian schooling structure and the also authoritarian state, or the formation of monopolies) as something alien, rather than as an integral part, the flipside of that entrepreneurial market.
As a result, two things emerge. Firstly, his explanation is quite weak, and deals with only one segment of the data (authoritarian anti-capitalists, who undoubtedly exist). This means that it doesn’t compare favourably with the more obvious explanation (capitalism sucks) except for those who have already rejected that. Secondly, it means that even to the extent that his account is true, this doesn’t undermine the validity of intellectual anti-capitalism, because it just means that the petty jealousy of intellectuals allows them to recognise facts that the petty smugness or petty timidity of others might not.By Paul Tomkins.
Any time I start to buy into the potential brilliance of Brendan Rodgers he goes and does something that gives rise to some doubts.
Having said that, overall it has felt like an upward trajectory under the Ulsterman, so things have to be kept in that context.
Last season he over-talked his team before the visit of Aston Villa, who promptly embarrassed the Reds. This time Rodgers overloaded his team, so that it was far too top-heavy, and paid the price; a creditable comeback masking a quite dreadful first 45 in which Villa’s front three were made to look like Messi, Neymar and Pedro by the gifting of an ocean of space.
Perhaps the manager was eager to provide entertainment to John Henry and his wife Linda, who were making their first visit of the season, but with a makeshift defence – and in Rodgers’ own defence (unless it’s down to bad training) there’s the issue of constant injuries to the back four – he opted for no Lucas to protect them. It smacked of hubris, but Rodgers’ boldness has often paid off. This time it backfired, with two points dropped.
Shoehorning Sturridge back into the side whilst retaining Suarez, Coutinho and man-of-the-match Sterling resulted in a team out of balance. Lucas came on at half-time, and the game was “won” 1-0 during his brief appearance before injury struck; and yet after just five minutes of the opening half it was clear to most fans that there was a serious problem.
Rodgers is not afraid to change the personnel and formation early in a game, as seen by the withdrawal of Suso against Wigan last season after half an hour, even though the young Spaniard was playing well, but this time waited until it was almost too late to bring on a defensive-minded midfielder. On the balance of play, Liverpool were lucky to go in only 2-1 down at the interval, although Henderson’s flick and Sturridge’s finish were top class.
Some might argue that Rodgers’ team are only marginally ahead of Everton in 6th place (and maybe behind them after their game in hand) despite having the best player in the world on the form of the season so far (even if Lionel Messi is of course better overall, and Ronaldo’s goalscroring record is phenomenal over a longer period of time). Others might argue that Suarez’s continued ascent is down to Rodgers. My take is that Rodgers was lucky to inherit such a talent, but he has helped build a side to suit Suarez’s strengths, and that the player has flourished under the manager’s guidance.
Despite creating the space for the first goal and winning the penalty for the second, it wasn’t one of Suarez’s better games. Then again, few emerged with any credit.
I took some stick on Twitter yesterday for defending Aly Cissokho (albeit a defence that acknowledged he doesn’t look very good), but he’s not the reason the team was struggling. Millions of Liverpool fans the world over develop Tourette’s whenever he gets near the ball, yet I fail to see why he’s seen as quite as bad as he is. Must there always be a scapegoat in any side?
Only a couple of weeks ago I wrote about how certain players were “shit”, according to so many fans, and in it I only mentioned Cissokho once. That article was about others who were in the firing line. Now the French left-back is firmly in the sights of the snipers.
There’s definitely some confirmation bias going on, where fans point out his every bad touch as full proof of his uselessness.
Remember, Cissokho is to Liverpool fans what Suarez is to the national media: someone who’s every possible misdemeanour gets blown out of all proportion due to reputation. (As a brief aside, Suarez may have ‘dived’ to win the penalty, but only after drawing Guzan to sprawl across his path without getting the ball, and only after several earlier deliberate fouls on the striker were ignored by the ref, including a thumping elbow into the face. We hate to see diving in England, blah blah blah, but we’re okay with a good old fashioned jaw-breaker.)
It’s a strange situation with Cissokho, as this is a mere ‘freebie’, on loan for the season. He’s never been described as a first choice, and rookie right-back Jon Flanagan even got in the side ahead of him, so it’s not like Rodgers is indulging the Frenchman, who had fallen to at least third in the pecking order when everyone was fit. (Agger, another tried at left-back, is also injured, as is left-sided centre-back Sakho.)
And while Cissokho’s use of the ball was often poor yesterday, it looked to me like he was trying his best, and in my opinion he was not the worst Reds’ performer on the day. Yet he gained a disproportionate amount of the blame.
Cissokho did well in a brief spell at Porto, for whom he played in the Champions League. AC Milan thought they’d signed him for £12m, but he failed his medical because of his teeth. (This is surely a first? Apparently it was linked to spinal problems, but I’m no doctor; although my failure to make it as a pro is hitherto blamed on a tricky molar.) He ended up at Lyon, who were still the powerhouse of French football at the time. He went on to play for France under Laurent Blanc. Lyon then faded, taking Cissokho with them; so he went to Valencia. He didn’t settle, and at the age of just 25 he moved to Liverpool.
At the time I didn’t hear anyone saying that Liverpool should have kept Jack Robinson from gaining experience a division down (where he has struggled at times with Wolves), or that Flanagan was the answer to a position he may never even have played before. Like Coutinho and Sturridge, Cissokho was at a good age with prior big-club experience, and surplus to requirements at his parent club.
Someone told me yesterday that Liverpool were lucky to not lose every time Cissokho started. Yet the win percentage with him playing is 63.6%, against a season average of 58.3%. These stats aren’t quoted to nail the argument one way or the other, but they do suggest that the left-back is not the liability some like to think. If people expect to lose whenever Cissokho plays, how come results are generally better?
So, I have to ask, has Cissokho merely tricked a succession of managers into thinking that he can play football? Is he “shit”, as so many tell me? Or merely a decent (at best) player who is struggling, with the notion of him being a liability overplayed?
In a way the reaction to him reminds me of the one Christian Poulsen provoked. The highly-capped Denmark international had played at Schalke, Sevilla and Juventus before Roy Hodgson brought him to Anfield. Yet he came to represent everything the fans despised. The difference was that Poulsen was almost 30, cost several million pounds, and was brought in on the assumption that he’d go straight into the team. Now, Poulsen has had something of a revival at Ajax, and had been a big success in Spain earlier in his career, so he wasn’t a dreadful player, even if he turned out to be a dreadful signing.
Similarly, I found Paul Konchesky fairly offensive in a red shirt because he was also nearing 30, had only a brief time at a biggish club (Spurs), and never really looked like a proper footballer to me. Like Cissokho, Konchesky had 90 minutes of international action to his name, in his case spread over two second halves for England, rather than one full game for France. Unlike Cissokho, he cost a fee – c.£5m – which included the promising youngster Alex Kacaniklic going to Fulham – what a desperately bad deal that was! – and also with Emiliano Insua (now at Atletico Madrid after a successful stint at Sporting Lisbon) loaned out. Konchesky has been in the Championship ever since.
And yet, as much as I loathed the performances of Poulsen and Konchesky, I hated hearing the cheers when they were subbed off and the jeers when they got the ball.
I said the same about Lucas, who went on to become a Reds’ player of the year, and also Henderson, who has grown and matured into something rather special. However, the jeers don’t help the player in the question at the time. Abusing your own team’s players at the game is not going to get anything extra out of them. It may make them stronger over time, but it’s a bit like punching your kids “to toughen them up” (i.e. it’s not advisable).
I was told yesterday by one fan that 19-year-old Brad Smith can’t be any worse, so why wasn’t he getting the spot? And yet when the lad came on against Chelsea as a sub, I saw people mocking him as someone who’d never played the sport before in his life, having “won a competition to get onto the pitch”. This was a teenager making his professional debut in a massive game when his side were on the rack. Talk about showing some understanding.
Imagine if that was your son out there, or reading the papers the next day. Imagine if that was your son getting dog’s abuse on Twitter, as, bit by bit, fans of his own club try to break him down psychologically.
Yes, he’s ‘privileged’ to be playing for Liverpool, but it will have been a long, hard road of working his way up through the different levels to get to that point, and if he was nervous, would you blame him? And you can’t say that Smith was tainted by fame and wealth – as he has neither – and therefore deserving of the stick. Incidentally, it was a similar level of abuse that was dished out to Flanagan, who was seen as a complete waste of time until being reborn as Roberto Carlos against Spurs.
As much as I didn’t see this hidden potential in Flanagan, it’s not a reason to go around hounding someone who tries his best. And yet I had fans telling me that Flanagan should have been playing ahead of Cissokho, and that Cissokho should never have been brought to the club. Never mind that Flanagan is injured.
Now the fans (on Twitter, at least) are also turning on Simon Mignolet. And yet he’d had the best half-season of any Liverpool keeper in about five years. Now, as I’ve said with keepers before, the test is when they have that first setback, and how they respond. At big clubs, mistakes get magnified, and there’s more potential to wilt under the weight of a heavy shirt. Now, I’ve pointed out his mistakes in recent weeks, but I’ve never said he’s “not good enough”.
Right now, the Belgian is looking nervous, and based on the last five games he doesn’t look good enough; costing a goal a game. However, based on the 20-or-so before that, he looked more than good enough. So, which one is true? If he can rediscover his confidence then he could come back stronger. If he doesn’t, he may go the way of James, Westerveld and Dudek. But let’s at least take the whole season into account, not just a handful of bad games and/or moments.
During my years as a season ticket holder I wasn’t one for getting on players’ backs, but I was prone to the occasional red mist descending and, with it, the eruption of a stream of expletives. I’d feel personally offended by certain players’ performances; and yet it was never about me. Teams and individuals have bad days, and it’s not designed to piss you off.
While the players under-performed yesterday – Glen Johnson has looked sluggish for months, Gerrard was given the complete runaround in the holding role, Coutinho’s shots and clever through-balls have grown ever less effective, and Kolo Toure looked like an old pro who hasn’t played much football lately – this defeat rests at the feet of the manager.
Perhaps if Liverpool got an early goal it could have ended 6-0. Instead, Liverpool’s attacking formation proved a negative step, because there was no defensive platform on which to build. It gifted the game to Villa.
And yet Rodgers deserves to be cut some slack based on a generally good season so far. That said, he will only escape valid criticism if Liverpool have markedly improved on last season come May.
Fortunately for him, the Reds are still on course to finish higher in the table, with more points on the board.Coffee drinkers across the United States have been telling Starbucks baristas their names were "black lives matter" this week. The goal was to make the baristas write the phrase on customers' coffee cups, and shout it across the store when their orders were ready for everyone else to hear.
This did not go as planned for Genevieve Uzamere, a customer and journalist, who wrote about her recent Starbucks experience on her blog, The Ratchette, Tuesday. According to the post, baristas at Uzamere's local Starbucks in New York City told her they could not serve her under the name "black lives matter." Uzamere was then asked to stand aside while other customers placed their orders.
"Starbucks does not take a stance on racial matters," Uzamere was allegedly told.
This is ironic given the company's campaign to foster conversations about race among its clientele last year. In March 2015, Starbucks encouraged its baristas to write the phrase "Race Together" on cups to encourage customers to talk about racial inequality in its stores. This did not go well. Critics on Twitter were quick to point out — among other things — Starbucks' alleged role as a harbinger of gentrification:
why did the CEO of Starbucks think this was a good idea when a Starbucks in the hood is the 1st sign of gentrification? #RaceTogether
The arrival of Starbucks is typically a key indicator of gentrification in low-income communities. But, #RaceTogether
Which brings us to today, where apparently, talking about race is being actively discouraged in some Starbucks stores.
"Is the value of a life a racial matter?" Uzamere wrote in her blog post. "Is simply acknowledging that black lives are worth something such a cause for controversy?"
Uzamere added that the baristas did not feel comfortable serving her, and one even phoned a district manager to ask if she was required to serve a customer named "black lives matter." Uzamere captured several parts of the exchange on Instagram, where she wrote the caption, "NYC Starbucks refuses to serve #BlackLivesMatter" under each of the following four videos.
A photo posted by (@) on
A photo posted by (@) on
A photo posted by (@) on
A photo posted by (@) on
Uzamere ended her post by saying the baristas met her with "disdainful glares," even though they normally smiled at her. Apparently, people start acting out when you "[change your] name to one that begs the acknowledgement of [your] humanity." Neither Starbucks nor Uzamere immediately replied to request for comment.Vivaldi 1.0 stable was released today and if you gave it a try, you might have noticed, at least on a fresh Ubuntu installation, that Flash and H.264 don't work out of the box.
Here's how to get Adobe Flash and H.264 (used, for instance, by the YouTube HTML5 player) to work with Vivaldi browser, in Ubuntu, Linux Mint and derivatives.
Get Vivaldi browser to support H.264
Before installing "chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra"
After installing "chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra"
To enable H.264 support for Vivaldi in Ubuntu, you need to install a package called "chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra".
This is already available if Chromium browser is installed on your system. If you don't have Chromium browser, you can install the package that provides H.264 support by using the following command:
sudo apt-get install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
You can check if your browser supports H.264 by visiting the YouTube HTML5 page.
Get Adobe Flash working in Vivaldi Browser
To do this, open Software & Updates, and on the "Other Software" tab, enable "Canonical Partners". Then click "Close", and when asked to reload the software sources, click the "Reload" button.
sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin
If Google Chrome is installed, Vivaldi will automatically pick up its Widevine Content Decryption plugin (it comes with a symbolic link to the location of the libwidevinecdm.so plugin in the Google Chrome stable installation folder).
If you don't want to install Google Chrome and you need this plugin, you can extract libwidevinecdm.so from the Google Chrome deb and place it in /opt/vivaldi/, replacing the existing symbolic link.
thanks to B.Jay for the tip!
And restart Vivaldi.To get Flash working in Vivaldi, you must install the adobe-flashplugin package, available in the Canonical Partner repository:A military veteran who says his skull was crushed by a 7kg "Bunya" pine cone is suing the US government.
According to court papers, Sean Mace is claiming that employee negligence led to his injuries.
Mace, who used to be in the US navy, says he was under a false Monkey Puzzle tree in San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park in October last year when the pine cone dropped on his head.
He says he's had to have two operations for a "traumatic brain injury".
Court papers also say he's been left with "severe and likely irreversible cognitive defects" after the surgery to relieve swelling caused by internal bleeding on his brain.
Sean Mace is claiming financial damages of $5m (£3.2m) for personal injury and losses caused by "the negligent or wrongful act of omission of any employee".
He's named the park, the US government, the National Park Service and the Department of Interior as defendants in the case.
His lawyer Scott Johnson says he needs a third operation.
The papers claim that inaction by workers "created a hidden hazard or peril" for visitors to the park, and that a safety barrier was only built around the Bunya Pine grove in the northeast part of the park after Mace suffered his injuries.
Pine cones from the evergreen conifers can grow to around 25-35cm in diameter and weigh more than 30 to 40 pounds or more than two stone (14-18kg).
Sean Mace claims park staff who planted the trees decades ago knew there was a high risk of injury to anyone below them.
The court case was filed last month but was first reported on Monday by the San Francisco Chronicle.
The newspaper said Mace, who is thought to be in his 50s, had chosen the waterfront park to try to find a quiet spot to watch the Blue Angels air show during last year's Bay Area Fleet Week.
The National Park Service says it doesn't comment on ongoing court cases.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram, Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube and you can now follow BBC_Newsbeat on SnapchatBut it only works if people understand the difference between an inflation target and price-level path target, and expect temporarily higher inflation with a price-level path target following a negative shock. And this experiment was designed to see whether people could figure it out.
The strength of automatic stabilisers will matter even more if you believe that the Zero Lower Bound on nominal interest rates may be a binding constraint on the Bank of Canada.
Shocks hit the economy, and the Bank of Canada responds to those shocks to try to keep Aggregate Demand growing steadily despite those shocks. But there are lags, and the Bank of Canada does not have a crystal ball, so it will always fail. But the amount by which it fails depends on the strength of the automatic stabiliser properties of the monetary policy regime -- what the Bank of Canada targets, and what instrument it uses. And there are reasons to believe that a price-level path target would make for a stronger automatic |
. Every morning at my Finnish public school, she spends just three hours in the classroom. And every afternoon she has three hours of free play at her afterschool club. At 4:00 pm, she walks home on her own.
When Carla unlocks the door to her apartment, her mom usually isn’t there to greet her. This has been the case since she was in first grade.
I ask Carla if she ever dreads the mile-long walk home through the narrow city streets. She assures me that she never gets scared, and this impresses me. Helsinki isn’t New York City, but it’s a major European city nonetheless.
***
When Carla sheds her backpack at the door, she doesn’t flop helplessly on the couch and watch the clock, impatiently waiting for her mom to return. She’s proactive and tries to get her homework out of the way.
I wonder what else she does while she’s alone, and she tells me that she likes to make food for herself. Especially eggs.
Carla – this petite eight-year-old – makes eggs the “grownup” way. She switches on the stove, cracks an egg into a frying pan and savors her favorite afternoon snack all by herself. I’m very impressed.
***
I shared Carla’s story with several of my Helsinki fifth graders, and they weren’t so impressed. The most common response went something like this: “Yup, that sounds like my life.” One of my students told me that he had been commuting home on his own since he was a preschooler!
During our conversation, my fifth graders had wondered why I was so amazed by Carla. And I had told them that – where I’m from in the United States – I’m not used to seeing such young children with so much freedom. I reasoned that American “helicopter parents” have a lot to do with this.
They looked very confused and asked me, “What’s a helicopter parent?” I explained that this kind of parent anxiously hovers over his child in an effort to prevent something bad from happening. Naturally, helicopter parents limit the freedom of their children.
My fifth graders racked their brains to come up with examples of Finnish parents who matched this description. But they couldn’t think of any.
***
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My fifth graders appear to be fiercely independent compared with American fifth graders. All of my students in Finland have their own cell phones. Most of them commute to school on their own. All of them walk through the hallways independently, which they’ve been doing since they were in first grade.
Throughout this school year, the independence of my fifth graders has challenged me to trust them with more freedom in the classroom.
Two months ago, the other fifth grade teacher and I experimented by having an “Independent Learning Week.” At the beginning of this week, I provided my students with a list of tasks to complete in nearly every academic subject. And I told them that we wouldn’t have regular lessons for the next few days. Instead, they would have open blocks where they could finish these tasks at their own pace.
I trusted them to reach out to me when they needed help. During Independent Learning Week, I wasn’t circulating around the classroom and peering over their shoulders. Instead, I was giving them opportunities to wrestle with their work first – something that I’ve seen my Finnish colleagues do regularly with their students.
I was also trusting my fifth graders with a lot of instructional time – nearly 15 hours worth – and yet, I wasn’t anxious. I knew they were capable of being successful while having lots of freedom.
All in all, my students didn’t let me down. Everyone finished their work – even if they needed extra time.
***
Although American kids appear to be a lot less independent than Finnish kids, it’s not because they lack an “independence gene.” The biggest difference, in my opinion, is that American children have fewer opportunities to exercise freedom.
I wonder how much of this has to do with our cultural mindset as Americans. We so desperately want our children to be safe, or to succeed, that we try to take a more active role in their lives. We want to minimize risks, and we think that exerting a greater degree of control will help.
But what I’ve seen in Finland is that children “rise to the occasion” – and become more self-directed – when they experience more freedom.
***
Tim Walker is an American teacher and writer based in Finland. He writes regularly about education and culture at Taught by Finland.
Follow Taught by Finland on Facebook!Lesbian Journalist Robin Roberts Is Mississippi Tourism's Cover Girl
Mississippi lawmakers passed a law that allows them to discriminate against LGBT people, but the state's official tourism guide features out lesbian anchor Robin Roberts on its cover.
Lesbian news anchor Robin Roberts is the face of Mississippi's official state tourism publication this year, joining Gov. Phil Bryant, who recently signed an anti-LGBT bill into law, in encouraging tourists to visit the Magnolia State.
The 2016 official tour guide for the state of Mississippi, which features Roberts on the cover, came out well before the governor signed a pro-discrimination law, allowing businesses, individuals and broadly defined "religiously affiliated organizations" to refuse service to LGBT people, single mothers, and others who somehow offend an individual's "sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction" regarding marriage and sexuality. The law also directly targets transgender residents, effectively claiming that one's sex assigned at birth is immutable and will be the only gender recognized by the state. The law takes effect July 1.
Roberts, who grew up in Pass Christian, Miss., is interviewed about her work covering the Mississippi impact of Hurricane Katrina for Good Morning America. Inside the magazine, the cover story indicates that "Robin Roberts reflects on how her Mississippi roots shaped her life."
Roberts's smiling face not only covers the annual tourism publication but also appears on MississippiTourGuide.com as well as on the state's tourism website, VisitMississippi.org.
The state's tourism industry was recently parodied in a satirical ad by Funny or Die, encouraging visitors to travel to the state where "We have an oppressive law to match our oppressive heat." That video directs viewers to the state's official tourism website, where Roberts is prominently featured.
In the interview with the state's tourism publication, Roberts makes no mention of her sexuality or longtime girlfriend. "Roberts advises first-time visitors to enter Mississippi with an open mind, ready to experience that great food, prefect weather and what she calls 'true Southern hospitality,'" the article reads.
That "Southern hospitality" now includes what LGBT activists have decried as the nation's strongest pro-discrimination law.
In the article, Roberts reflects on her upbringing and her appreciation for her home state: "I'm so incredibly proud to say I'm from Mississippi," she says. "And Mississippians continue to make me proud to say that's where I'm from."
Gov. Bryant, a Republican who signed the anti-LGBT bill into law and has claimed that it "reinforces the rights which currently exist to the exercise of religious freedom," also wrote a letter to visitors featured prominently in the tourism magazine.
"We are proud of our distinct culture, and we want to share it with you," writes Bryant, along with his wife in an editor's note welcoming tourists to the state. "Mississippi is such a diverse and multifaceted place..."
When The Advocate reached out to Roberts for comment, ABC News’s vice president of communication, Heather Riley, responded: “Robin is away on vacation, I am happy to follow up with you when she returns.”
Officials with the state tourism magazine did not immediately respond to The Advocate's request for comment.During a typical bike ride from Downtown Houston to Herman Park, Joey Sanchez noticed that many sidewalks still featured the historic blue tile street signs. He started photographing the signs throughout the city, noting that other Houstonians were just as interested in these hidden gems as he was. In 2015, he launched the Blue Tile Project, using social media and geo-tagging to catalogue the city’s remaining blue tile signs before they faded into history.
Sanchez recently spoke with us about the blue tiles, what drew him to preservation, and the future of the Blue Tile Project.
Can you give us a little history of Houston’s blue tiles?
The blue tile street signs are the original street markers of the first paved streets of Houston. Located inside the historic central core of Houston "inside the loop" you will find the oldest blue tile street signs, dating back to the early 1920s. They continued to build blue tile street signs into the curbs of Houston until the 1960s. These blue tiles are a time period piece dating back to a young city. Now the 4th largest city in America, we are going to bring the blue tiles back to the Bayou City.Barack Obama isn't impressed with your high school degree. He made that quite clear in the early days of his presidency when he told Congress: "Whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country."
Virtually every president in recent memory has made a big stink about higher education, usually without making fundamental changes to the system. However, on July 14 in Warren, Michigan, Obama put $12 billion where his mouth is, promising investments in community colleges around the country. The purpose, he said, was to drive reforms that would make it easier for people to get educated in the struggling economy.
But the more fundamental proposed change came the following day, when Rep. George Miller (D-CA) introduced a bill in Congress boosting the amount in Pell Grant scholarship funds given to low-income students. In order to pay for the expanded program, as well as the community college initiative, the legislation cancels subsidies to private lenders making college loans. Instead, the federal government will become the sole, direct lender. This is a big deal.
Obama isn't the first president to throw government money at America's higher education system and hope that it sticks. President George W. Bush fiddled around with his College Cost Reduction and Access Act in September 2007. The law implemented mandatory increases in Pell Grants, cut interest rates on student loans, and established a provision that would cancel any outstanding loans after 25 years.
Bush tried it again one year later with the Higher Education Act Reauthorization. Not only did it contain a wide array of federal student aid provisions, but it also mandated that the Department of Education publish a list of universities that have the highest tuition costs in 2011. Schools on the list would then be forced to justify and explain their tuition rates; a requirement that would be tantamount to a reprimand by the federal government for daring to charge high fees.
Despite (or perhaps because of) these half-measures, tuition rates at public universities continue to rise. According to a report issued by the College Board, the cost for going to college increased at an annual rate of 4.2 percent between 1999 and 2009, with tuition increasing 6.4 percent last year alone.
But after all those virtuous-sounding laws, paying for college just isn't getting any easier. Are greedy universities charging exorbitant amounts of tuition just because they can? Not exactly. Instead, government meddling has thrown the laws of supply and demand into overdrive.
This dilemma is not unlike what we saw in the housing market during the last few years. Someone decided homeownership was a good thing for almost everyone, so the government started pushing people to buy homes, using the tax code and other incentives. The same thing is happening with college. But instead of people getting loans for houses they could never pay off, 18-year-olds are getting excessive loans for college. And just as we saw before the collapse of the housing bubble, the price of going to college in America is skyrocketing.
The reason is simple. The increase in demand (artificial though it may be) means shorter supply, which ultimately means higher prices for everyone. But whether it's in the name of affordable housing or affordable education, the government continues to throw more money into the system, hustling to increase demand. The only difference with education is that instead of bailing out banks to force them to continue making loans, the government is now making the loans itself.
Traditionally, college has been discriminatory in the best possible sense. It was used to weed out those likely to be unsuccessful in the work force. Someone who did not make it through college did not make it to the high paying jobs, period. Furthermore, letting the market control tuition prices (even if they are high) means that many people who probably wouldn't thrive at college—or would do better at a blue-collar job—won't even apply in the first place. This weeding process would eventually decrease demand and in turn, prices would go down, especially at less competitive schools.
Instead, with government help and nudging, more and more people are entering college who wouldn't have made that decision if left to their own devices. We've seen the effects this kind of micro managing has on the housing market. If things don't change now, education will be headed down the same disastrous path and universities will soon become too big to fail.
Federal involvement in education is nothing new, but President Obama is taking it to an extreme level by taking the financing of college out of the private sector entirely. With the increase in and government administration of Pell Grants, Obama is aggressively funneling young people into college; a decision that just isn't right for everyone. Apparently it's not enough to be the country's head auto exec and commander in chief: Obama is eager to try out the role of guidance counselor in chief, too.
Amanda Carey is a summer intern at Reason magazine.In the age of smartphones and frictionless-dating apps, sex addiction is like being hooked on a drug that's always available in unlimited supply. It's like living with a meth dealer at your side, or a brick of cocaine in your pocket. Worse, you can get a potential high from every person you meet. But unlike other addictions, this one isn't officially recognized. There's no health coverage for it, no medication, and for those trapped in its strange and unrelenting spell, no easy way out.
I. AROUSAL
SEX ADDICTION— diagnosing it, treating it, portraying it on-screen—is big business. The number of certified sex-addiction therapists has more than doubled since 2008, according to the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals. Hookup apps like Tinder (26 million matches per day) and Grindr (1.6 million active daily users) are growing wildly and multiplying, like real-life manifestations of the futuristic smartphone imagined by Gary Shteyngart in Super Sad True Love Story, which rates the "Fuckability" of everyone around you. The movie industry, for its part, has released at least five films on sex addiction in the past five years, six if you count both parts of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. Forty years ago, the term sex addiction didn’t exist. Today it is thoroughly assimilated into the culture.
But even now, sex addiction seems to exist in parallel realities: one in which millions of people are struggling with it, and another in which it is barely studied and not even clinically recognized. Research has yet to confirm that extreme sexual behavior really is addictive in the same neuroscientific sense that, for instance, habitual heroin use appears to be. For this reason, many clinicians prefer the term hypersexuality, even though they concede that the distinction is mostly semantic. But the practical effects of such uncertainty are enormous. No drugs exist to treat sex addiction; no health care plan specifically covers it; there’s virtually no funding for studies. Eli Coleman, a psychologist and director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota, estimates that approximately 19 million Americans—5 to 7 percent of the population—are hypersexual. But estimates like this are controversial. "We’re all blind in this field," says UCLA neuroscientist Nicole Prause.
This much is certain: More and more people are seeking treatment. A lot more. In each year over the past decade, the number of groups registered with Sex Addicts Anonymous, one of the nation’s largest twelve-step organizations for sex addiction, has grown by 10 percent. Hollywood is just the latest market to capitalize on this phenomenon, even if filmmakers’ depictions tend to do more harm than good. On-screen, sex addiction tends to be portrayed as glamorous, even fleetingly aspirational—either posey, broody, and existential or chaotically fun in a Warren Beatty-in-the-’70s kind of way.
But no two-hour movie can communicate the relentless patterns of thought that persecute sex addicts. If sex is ordinarily a way of dealing with another person, then sex addiction is a way of dealing with yourself. You act out—you can’t not act out—in order to escape from unbearable feelings: depression, severe ADD, bipolar disorders, the scars of family trauma, profound despair. Most addictions require you to extend yourself in some way—go to a particular place, spend a certain amount of money. Sex addiction does not. The fuel for your disease is all around you, invading your senses. The poet and professor Michael Ryan captures this experience in his unsettling, mesmerizing autobiography, Secret Life: "The substance I used," he writes, "was human beings."
Jacob, age 28
In recovery since 2012
JACOB* IS A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER, and on the morning he greets me at the door of his and his wife’s Seattle-area apartment, he looks as though he’s been up all night wrestling with code. His eyes are bleary behind rimless steel glasses. His face is drained of color. But when I ask him if he’s tired, he says no, just the opposite: "I sleep too well. It’s the only time I’m able to forget everything."
In a wedding photograph on the wall, Jacob holds hands with his wife, Ashley, on a country lane. He smiles hesitantly, his eyes skittering off to one side. If you didn’t know better, you might say he looks like a typical bewildered groom. But what the picture really seems to capture, and perhaps this is why he won’t look directly into the lens, is Jacob at war with himself, trying to erase one terrible thought from his brain: that if his wife knew who he really was—if she knew about the pornography, the explicit online chats, the anonymous sex with other women, with random men—she would get as far away from him as she could.
They have been together for nearly half their lives. They met when they were 16, married in the fall of 2009. But they haven’t had sex since June 2012, haven’t even seen each other naked (except by accident) since he told her he was a sex addict. Almost every night, they separately attend meetings or therapy.
Aside from a few desultory wall treatments, there isn’t much of a female presence in the apartment: Ikea couch and armchair, long desk by the window, computer screens. It may be that Ashley doesn’t go in for decorating. It may also be that she’s still not sure she’s going to stay here. I’d hoped to talk with Ashley today, but she and Jacob have decided against it. I get the impression that her forgiveness may be so provisional that simply facing a reporter’s questions for an hour could undo it.
Four pairs of running shoes, all so worn-out that they’ve lost their shape and turned gray, are lined up inside the front door. In high school, Jacob was all-state three times in cross-country; he still runs six to eight miles every day and competes at least once a month in local events. He has broken this routine only when he’s been lost in the stupor of his addiction.
Jacob grew up devoutly Christian in a remote part of a midwestern state. His father worked the late shift in a factory and typically wasn’t home before eleven at night. As a kid, Jacob was shy and introverted. He dreamed of being an astronaut and walking on Mars, of his toys coming to life and being perfect friends to him.
When I was in third grade, my teenage cousin sexually propositioned me. She wrote me detailed notes about what we would do. I went to a medical encyclopedia to see if all this stuff was real and figured out that it was. We came pretty close to having sex, but I always felt dirty about it. I pushed her away and said, "I can’t do this." So we never did. But it stuck in my mind. I was preoccupied with it for a long time, fantasizing about it. My dad worked a lot, he was never around, and getting that attention felt good.
When Jacob was in ninth grade, someone told him about Internet sex chat: It was a perfect medium for someone who had always lived best in his own mind. The first time he shared a photograph of himself with a girl—or someone who said she was a girl; it didn’t really matter to him—she told him he was cute. "It was intensely affirming," he says. He spent hours at the computer, cybersexing as either a boy or a girl, whatever it took.
At the private Christian college where he studied computer science, Jacob would proxy his way around firewalls, risking expulsion to access the chat rooms. Every conversation followed the same script: "Tell me where you’re going to meet me," he would demand. "Tell me when. Tell me what you’re going to do to me." He would plan things out meticulously, bring people right up to the line, to the point at which they were climbing into their cars. Then he would cut off the conversation and block the person’s username. If it was a particularly good chat, he might save the transcript and reread it later.
The goal is the high. It’s always about the high. I’d get [his eyelids flutter and his eyes roll back] light-headed. I’d feel euphoric.... Orgasm was never the goal. It was always about: What can we do for as long as we can do it?
Amy, age 44
In recovery since 1998
AMY HAS A GAP BETWEEN her front teeth, like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. She also has a half-dozen piercings, which she asked us not to describe for fear they would be too identifying. She lives in a ranch-style house at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Nevada desert. As we sit down in her living room, the flat-screen, tuned to a soothing New Age radio channel, is playing Enya. Amy and her partner, Patrick, a ponytailed software engineer, exchange I-love-you’s. "I’m going to be watching my show," he says, closing the door of their bedroom behind him. In the living room, we are surrounded by Amy’s two dogs and one of her four cats.
I started looking at porn when I was 7 or 8. My father’s magazines: Penthouse and Hustler_. They were hidden under the bed, behind the tray he used to separate the seeds from his pot. When my parents would go away, the whole ritual of pulling the magazines out and having to put them back would get me excited. It was a job to get it all right and put it back properly. I obviously couldn’t have an orgasm at that young age, but I do remember a tingle. I remember thinking God gave me a special gift, that I was the only one who had these feelings._
In conversation, she doesn’t flirt or, as she calls it, "intrigue." In Sex Addicts Anonymous, she has learned to avoid speech and behavior that might trigger someone else’s addiction, or her own. The way she talks, the way she acts, is subdued, modulated: It’s clear that she has higher gears that she won’t use. It’s also clear that when she did use them, years ago, she must have been magnetic.
She had sex for the first time when she was 13, on a dare.
At a party me and a girlfriend dared each other who would lose their virginity first, and I was going to win that night. My boyfriend and I were both very drunk, stumbled into a bedroom, don’t know whose. He said, "I can’t do this, I’m too drunk." I said, "You will do this." It was not kind and loving. It was "I’m going to win this fucking bet."
What I should have noticed is that there was always a boyfriend. It was not okay to not have one. If I didn’t have a boyfriend, what was I? I remember being in gym class after I’d broken up with a guy. I said, "The next guy whose shoes I like, I’m going to date." And I did.
One boyfriend had his own apartment. They could have sex there whenever they wanted. It was a kind of freedom any high school couple would envy, and it enabled her precocious discovery of the thing she liked most. She was naked in his bed one day when he pulled out a hunting knife.
He was running the knife all over. All over. I just lay there with my eyes closed. It was so titillating. And that started it.
Edward, age 71
In recovery since 2005
AS HE PREPARES coffee for us, Edward has the air of awkward officiousness you sometimes see in divorced men who’ve learned their way around a kitchen only in middle age. He’s dressed in a kind of generic well-to-do older gentleman’s casualwear: khakis, a plaid button-down shirt, white sneakers.
Leather-bound volumes on medical history fill a glass-fronted bookcase. Later, I’ll see a dozen framed diplomas and awards hanging in his home office. This could be your grandparents’ apartment: the carpet a little thicker than usual, the furniture a little darker, heavier, more ornate. There’s that downsized feeling of pieces that were never meant to be together in the same room.
As far as his neighbors know, Edward is a retired surgeon who lost most of his money in a divorce. A decade ago, he ran a network of hospitals in this Sun Belt city and lived with his wife and daughter in a 6,000-square-foot house in a tony neighborhood. He drove a new Mercedes and made $400,000 a year. Then, he says, "the wheels came off my wagon."
I grew up in the Deep South, in a home where the word "sex" was never mentioned. I mean, you didn’t even talk about what sex the dog was! But I was 30-plus years old before I engaged in any obsessive thinking or compulsive behavior.
The event that precipitated my addiction was the birth of our daughter. My wife was paying more attention to the child than to me, and I felt rejected. It was just happenstance that to avoid horrendous traffic in the city where we lived, the route I took home passed right by an adult bookstore. Bright lights, the whole bit. I wondered what goes on at those places. I picked a time when there were no other cars in the parking lot.
Edward sits up straighter in his chair. His voice gets louder. Even in recovery, the vast majority of sex addicts prefer to keep their condition secret. In this regard, they’re different from alcoholics and drug addicts, whose diseases tend not to be as stigmatized. The pressure of secrecy concentrates a memory, intensifying the details. These scenes, decades old, are alive for Edward.
The bookstore was brightly lighted, which was a shock. It was physically dirty. In the peep-show area, which was dark and almost creepy, there were spots of semen on the walls. As a surgeon, I was fastidious about cleanliness, and it made my flesh crawl.
On my next visit, I got a handful of quarters and went into one of the booths.
II. MADNESS
THE BODY OF A SEX ADDICT can become his whole world. The urgent messages he receives from his brain—I’m depressed, I’m lonely, I’m frightened, I’m angry—drown out everything else around him. He can’t feel happiness, except as a physical sensation.
Arousal and orgasm, as he knows them, are not lived experience but rather a retreat from it. They are a simulation of all that may be absent from his life: joy, intimacy, a feeling of accomplishment. They are a kind of biochemical brute-force attempt to blot out an overwhelmingly bad feeling with an overwhelmingly good one. In the space between arousal and orgasm, he finds a fleeting calm. He strives to prolong it, to escape time, escape his own mind. He lurches between wretchedness and euphoria, looping back on himself endlessly. He wants to be outside himself; instead he becomes his own prison.
The pursuit of that elusive high can drive sex addicts to escalate into increasingly risky behavior: from exhibitionism and habitual anonymous sex to, in certain cases, a fascination—even in people who have always preferred adults—with child pornography.
Eli Coleman, who has studied this phenomenon, says that some of these men are working out conflicts about their sexuality. But some are not. Instead, he says, they may have other, intricately tangled motives: to express self-hatred through behavior they may regard as debasing, to subjugate a partner they regard as more physically powerful than a woman, to feel desired by and intimate with a father who was emotionally distant.
Jacob
I WOULD MAKE THESE pacts with myself: I’m going to stop. It would last a day or two and I’d be back at it again. I was acting out with other people, or porn, or masturbation, almost daily. At first there was a baseline level of attractiveness I needed, but later on, it was just anybody and everybody who could and would. I would look for people who I perceived could not get sex because of their looks, their age, or their body size, because I thought those people would be more available.
The first guy, I met him on Craigslist my junior year. I remember going over to a seedy little apartment. He was a couple of years older than me, and he was actually a cross-dresser. He asked me if I wanted him to cross-dress for me, and I said no. Not a lot happened that first time. I got some oral sex but didn’t have an orgasm. It was really awkward. I buried that experience from everybody because I was so ashamed. I’ve never really found myself attracted to men. It was truly the most convenient, expedient way for me to get sex, so I took it.
Jacob would scrupulously research prospective partners: "Not that it ever fazed me, but you hear the stories about people getting murdered or killed or whatever online." If he couldn’t document a person’s real-life identity, he wouldn’t meet them. He began writing a program for a kind of "dead-man’s switch," a piece of software that, if he didn’t log in within a prescribed period of time, would e-mail to friends the last street address he’d visited.
The month before I got engaged to Ashley, I went to see a much older woman, probably forties, who was just looking for sex with a younger guy. I had unprotected sex with her. That was the first time in my life that I had ever had intercourse. I don’t think I’ve ever felt despair like that in my whole life. I remember driving home just screaming, because I knew that I had just destroyed my relationship with my girlfriend. She’s not going to stick around with a guy who’s done this. So there in that car that night, I told myself, "I have to bury it so deep and so far down that no one ever finds it." That really was the fuel, the catalyst, that kept my fire burning long after that.
I can’t say that I believed marriage would save me, but I tried to live in this naive little world. Did my wife fulfill me? No, she didn’t. I honestly don’t think that she could’ve.
Amy
I WOULD BE PREDATORY. They were meat, and I was eating that night. I didn’t even need to know their names. It was just the nearest available person who showed interest. I pretty much got what I wanted back then.
I would have sex with people that I normally wouldn’t shake their hand. I had no respect for them. When I was in extreme arousal, my threshold for pain was different. There were times with the S&M stuff when I felt powerful, in that I could get nice guys to do things to me that they didn’t want to do, things that were against their values. That was pleasurable.
So the knife became more fun, and I wanted to be cut.
You would bleed? I ask her.
Yes. My back is where I liked it.
What was the most extreme thing you coerced someone into doing to you?
I particularly remember one man crying afterward.
After being made to do what?
I don’t want to say. Things that felt good at the moment. Things I’m terribly ashamed of.
Amy was popular in high school, she was a cheerleader. But none of it was enough. She developed an eating disorder, then began using cocaine to suppress her appetite. Eventually she was freebasing. At 19, she went into drug and alcohol rehab, where clinicians raised a separate concern: It was highly unusual, they said, for someone so young to have developed a taste for sadomasochistic sex. They recommended she go to Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings.
A group of us from meetings used to go out to a bar and dance. Then I became a little groupie and started dating the lead singer of the house band, who had a daughter a year younger than me. That was Richard, the father of my first child. When I broke up with him, I already had the next guy in sight and was with him when I gave birth. Scott: teardrop tattoo, Levi’s, big boots. Construction worker. Yeah, it was like a porn. He was the father of my second child.
I was not a good parent. I lost my temper more than I might have, had I gotten a good night’s sleep and not masturbated to porn all night. Like, "How is the sun possibly coming up right now? I just put the kids to bed."
I would leave my children with anyone who would watch them so that I could go act out with whoever I was seeing at the time. When it was time to pick them up, I would call with an excuse, or I wouldn’t call at all. Finally they threatened to take my children away.
I never got into anything illegal, child pornography or anything, thank goodness. But I was aroused by snuff films. That was one of those things I would only tell my sponsor. The ones I was watching were probably fake, but I think I saw one real one. I would identify with the woman in them. It’s rape. She’s usually been kidnapped. They’re planning on killing her.
Edward
AT TIMES, RECALLING the indignities he subjected himself to at adult bookstores, Edward laughs exactly as you might if you were telling a story about the time you drank too much in college. His laughter mis disbelief, self-loathing, and a peculiar kind of nostalgia.
The big leap was a booth that had a hole between it and the booth next to it. Somebody came into the booth next door and motioned to me through the hole. That was the first time I realized what the holes were for. I freaked out and left.
But the next time I returned, I chose a booth with a hole in it. The other person gave me a blow job. The glory holes are just: I don’t want anything to do with this person, I just want a sexual event and to be done with it. This is part of the shame: I don’t want to be a creep who does this. Hello! I’m a creep who does this!
It must be flattering when someone listens attentively to your life story, no matter how grim it may be, but Edward seems to take a private enjoyment in reliving the past. It’s clear that on some level, these are happy memories for him. As far as anyone knew back then, he was "the ideal father, husband, church member, and surgeon," he says. Even now, the pleasure of describing those days seems to make him forget, temporarily, how catastrophically they ended.
On a couple of social occasions, I ran into guys I had had sex with. That was terrifying. Can you imagine? You’re in somebody’s lovely home for a cocktail party. You’re with your wife, and he’s with his wife. You act like you’re old friends from way back. You go into performance mode. The mask.
Performance mode: Several times during the interview, Edward’s phone rings. In exactly the same courtly, affable drawl with which he has been describing anonymous sex at adult bookstores, he says, "Oh, hi. I’m in a meeting. Can I call you back?"
In 2003, I chatted online with a couple of guys who said they were 14. I agreed to meet one. I was morbidly curious. You wonder if this is a real person and, if so, what’s going on that a 14-year-old wants to do this. So I arranged to meet this person. He supposedly lived nearby. I drove out and parked. Nobody showed up, and I left.
That was a Thursday, and mid-afternoon Friday at the clinic, somebody came and said someone had bumped my car in the parking lot; could I please come out there? I walked out the back door of the building, and it was an FBI agent. They already had all my chat logs. They had pictures of me. There was no denying it. I resigned on the spot.
My daughter found out right away. It was like, "So this is who you are." She didn’t talk to me for ten years. I was so devastated and so terrified of publicity that I agreed to plead guilty, which I should not have, in retrospect. The FBI seized all my computers and went through them, and they found nothing that indicated child pornography. The case hinged on intent, not an act. I was charged with solicitation of a minor, and I spent a year in federal prison.
My wife filed for divorce, and I granted it, no contest. I gave her 80 percent of everything I had. Now I wish I’d not done it, because she got remarried to a bad guy, a con artist who apparently preyed on well-to-do women, and he basically stole about half a million dollars from her. It’s just a family fiasco. Occasionally I get really depressed that I caused it all.
I’ve never been sexually attracted to children. But let’s say a 14-year-old had showed up that day, and he was a cute kid, and he was relatively mature for his age... I cannot honestly say that I would not have pursued it further. I mean, I’m a sex addict. There’s very few things that I could say, I would not do that, period, ever.
III. TREATMENT
IN 2010, A GROUP led by Harvard |
Ms. Quimby sold her remaining 20 percent share in Burt’s Bees to Clorox for about $183 million.
Ms. Quimby, 57, now runs Happy Green Bee, a company that makes organic clothing for children. She says she spent more than $50 million to buy 100,000 acres where she tries to restore the land to its natural state by blocking hunting, closing roads and dismantling bridges.
In the meantime, the task of defending Clorox’s purchase of Burt’s Bees has fallen on Mr. Replogle’s shoulders. He says that in six months, he will post a blog on the Burt’s Bees site about whether he thinks Clorox is making enough progress on its green initiatives. He says Burt’s Bees’ 380 employees have an opportunity to influence the direction of Clorox, a company that generated $4.8 billion in sales last year and employs 7,800 people.
Burt’s Bees maintains its founders’ green philosophies. Employees’ bonuses are based in part on how well the company meets energy conservation goals, and there are prime parking spaces for staff members who drive hybrid cars or carpool. It buys offsets for 100 percent of its carbon emissions and is working toward a goal of sending no trash to landfills by 2020.
Mr. Replogle calls his current job a “mission” and says he is trying to reinvent business with an idea he calls “the Greater Good,” based on the founders’ ideals. The premise is that if companies are socially responsible, profit will follow. Burt’s Bees not only prioritizes the natural origin of its ingredients but also emphasizes animal rights, responsible trade, employee benefits and the environment.
Like most natural-products companies, Burt’s Bees has the luxury of charging enough for its goods to pay for such causes. A 0.15-ounce tube of Burt’s Bees basic lip balm, for example, costs $3. The same-size tube of ChapStick, which uses synthetic ingredients, costs $1.69.
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Burt’s Bees is not perfect, Mr. Replogle acknowledges. The company obtains all of its beeswax from hives in Ethiopia, so shipping the ingredient across the Atlantic adds to carbon emissions.
LATELY, Burt’s Bees has started to police its industry. The company’s research lab is full of competitors’ products labeled “natural,” and employees of Burt’s Bees test those assertions.
Burt’s Bees has also led a group of companies that have teamed up with the Natural Products Association to create a standard for natural personal care products, complete with stickers to label items that make the cut. To qualify, brands must create products that are at least 95 percent natural and contain no ingredients known to be harmful. The stickers will make their debut in April.
Consumers “walk down the aisle in the grocery stores’ health and beauty area, and they’re confronted with ‘natural’ at every turn,” says Daniel Fabricant, vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the association. “We just don’t want to see the term misused any longer.”
To prove his own bona fides, Mr. Replogle grabs a bottle of Burt’s Bees avocado butter hair treatment, squeezes some onto his finger and dramatically licks it off. He then passes the tube to two Clorox executives so they can have a taste.
“If you can’t put it into your mouth, you shouldn’t put it on your skin,” he says. “I’d like to see other companies do that.”
Clorox says it is reshaping its product mix so that more of its products will be eco-friendly by its 100th anniversary in 2013. Two weeks ago, the company introduced Green Works, household cleaning solutions labeled as 99 percent natural. The last 1 percent consists of preservatives and fragrances.
Clorox says Green Works is more natural than all other cleaning products.
“It is the standard-setter,” says Beth Springer, vice president for strategy and growth at Clorox.
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Green Works products are so new that outside groups have had little time to evaluate the company’s assertions. But Clorox says it believes that consumers will pay more for natural products. So, while they may be more expensive to produce, they will also be more profitable. Clorox research recently found that 53 percent of consumers planned to buy more eco-friendly products this year and that 47 percent were willing to pay 20 percent to 25 percent premiums for them.
While Clorox has decided to keep its brand off of Burt’s Bees products, its name is on the Green Works cleaning line.
“We spent a lot of time talking with consumers who wanted to keep their homes clean and healthy but wanted more natural alternatives,” Ms. Springer says. “And they confessed in most cases they were disappointed with having to pay more for products that didn’t work. So we concluded that we would initially bring it out with the Clorox brand name endorsing it because it gave people a belief in its efficacy.”
Then she lapses into Burt’s Bees speak as she continues.
“If we think about the Greater Good,” Ms. Springer says, “one lesson we’ve learned is, if you set your mind to the goal of more natural and sustainable practices, you might actually surprise yourself with what you can accomplish.”On August 7, the big moves of the summer should be done. But both Carmelo Anthony and Kyrie Irving want to be traded, so we remain on alert and ready to alter the projections of any teams involved in a major deal.
Maybe those deals don't come for a while, though. This year's rookies can't be dealt for the first 30 days after signing their first contract (Andrew Wiggins wasn't traded for Kevin Love until Aug. 23, 2014) and free agents who signed new deals aren't trade-eligible until Dec. 15. A delayed deal would make for some awkward moments at Media Day and in locker rooms over the first two months of the season, but the Knicks and Cavs obviously have to get the best deal available and neither team has much pressure to win games in October and November.
With no clear timeline for these possible deals, let's just go ahead and rank the league's 30 teams as they stand right now.
No matter what happens with Anthony and Irving, it's the Warriors and everybody else. The defending champs should be the biggest pre-season title favorite we've seen in a long time, and it's hard to imagine a non-injury scenario that has them losing four games in any playoff series next Spring.
But every team in the league has questions to answer and numbers to know with player movement having slowed to a crawl. Some teams will surprise, some will disappoint, and some will wish they were in the other conference.
With Jimmy Butler, Paul George and Paul Millsap all moving from the East to the West, conference imbalance may be bigger than ever (the West has already had a better record in 17 of the 18 seasons). But their moves have created opportunities for a few teams in the East, where Gordon Hayward's arrival could signal the end of LeBron James' dominance.
Maybe.
April 10: Warriors again the favorites as playoffs near
High jumps of the summer: Minnesota (+17), Philadelphia (+8), Denver (+7)
Minnesota (+17), Philadelphia (+8), Denver (+7) Free falls of the summer: Atlanta (-15), Chicago (-14), Indiana (-11)
* * *
Pace: Possessions per 48 minutes (League Rank)
OffRtg: Points scored per 100 possessions (League Rank)
DefRtg: Points allowed per 100 possessions (League Rank)
NetRtg: Point differential per 100 possessions (League Rank)
The league averaged 98.7 possessions (per team) per 48 minutes and 106.2 points scored per 100 possessions last season.
* * *
NBA.com's Power Rankings, released every Monday during the season, are just one man's opinion. If you have an issue with the rankings, or have a question or comment for John Schuhmann, send him an e-mail or contact him via Twitter.
* * *Cracking Magento passwords for $1
TL;DR: Find weak passwords on your Magento stores before the bad guys do. If you spend some serious money ($1) on high-performance computing power, you can find easily guessable passwords. Here’s - step by step - how you can check your stores for vulnerable admin accounts.
A password guessing attack (aka “brute force”) has become the most successful attack vector recently. Hackers try zillions of passwords on authenticated pages ( /admin, /downloader, /rss ) until they hit the jackpot.
Now, you (the admin) can easily find weak passwords, because you have a major advantage over remote attackers: speed. Potential hackers test passwords over HTTP, which is relatively slow. With a botnet and fast servers, at best (worst) they can try a few hundred passwords per second per store. You, on the other hand, have direct database access. With the proper setup (read on!) you can test 4 billion passwords per second.
What is password hashing?
When big companies are hacked, they always say your password is safe because it was stored in an unreadable manner.
What they actually mean is that they stored a hash of your password. Hashing is a one-way algorithm to translate some data (your password) into a unique code. Say, you have password qwerty123. The MD5 hash for this password is 3fc0a7acf087f549ac2b266baf94b8b1. It is not possible to revert this. However, nothing stops you from hashing random passwords and see if they match 3fc0a7acf087f549ac2b266baf94b8b1. You would only have to try enough combinations, starting with aaaaaaaa, then all the way to ZZZZZZZZ (and beyond).
The MD5 method is not a very safe hash, because it is unbelievably fast. A 5-year old PC can compute about 70 megahashes (MH) per second. And a juicy videocard can do 4500 MH per second.
Get the machinery in place
Magento 1 CE uses the fast MD5 hash to store admin passwords. To find weak ones, you need:
A hashing utility such as hashcat
A dictionary (such as those from Skullsecurity)
A cloud server optimized for machine learning, such as Amazon’s P2
A list of hashed Magento passwords
Amazon released their P2 GPU servers recently, to jump on the machine learning money wagon. P2 servers happen to be also really good at hashing. Equipped with Nvidia’s Tesla K80 cards, those servers are nothing but hash grinding beasts. The smallest P2 server is still pricey, but for $1, you may tame it for a whole hour.
Boot a p2.xlarge with Amazon EC2. Root disk 8GB is ok. Pick Ubuntu 16.04 AMI. Download keyfile (pem). Run these commands in terminal.
Extract hashes from your Magento stores
Almost ready to start cracking: you just need the password hashes. If you have magerun, you can do this (run on your Magento server):
n98-magerun db:query "select concat(username,':',password) from admin_user where is_active=1" | tail -n +3 | tee maghashes.txt
Now, maghashes.txt contains lines with username:hash:salt like this:
admin:90EFkDlbNgMIVq6oJZfXJ7XrifM4TI80:ToV9inml5MawidrOTCgcKvwSwn1xIApE backup:ep0NXnY2MeRI9JzXDHefnRdQDyNmhkH7:8M
Copy this file to your hash grinder and start the magic:
scp maghashes.txt ubuntu@<AWS-IP>:/data # back to your AWS terminal cd /data/hashcat./hc -m20 --username -r rules/best64.rule../maghashes.txt../phpbb.txt
The One Dollar Challenge
Show all the guessed passwords:
./hc --show --username -m20../maghashes.txt
In practice, 10-15% of the admin passwords appears easily guesseable. This is more than I expected. Notable cases are test/test123 and admin/123. Magento 2 forces strong passwords by default, but for anyone still running M1, it’s a good idea to give your admin passwords a boost.
Bonus
Update 15:40: Magento 2 uses the somewhat safer SHA-256 hash, but it is still not as good as PHP’s native password_hash(). Tobias Zander proposed to change it in January 2015 but it hasn’t happened. The illustrious Daniel Sloof has made a Magento 2 module to use more secure hashing while retaining backwards compatibility.
It would be absolutely awesome if sombody could make a magerun plugin to check for the most common weak passwords (test123, welcome01, etc), so that testing takes 1 minute instead of 1 hour.
If you find it scary that password cracking is so easy: say bye bye to MD5! There are several ready to use replacements, made by Classylama and Fabian Blechschmidt, that implement safer algorithms. Why Magento1 still uses MD5 is beyond me. To demonstrate the speed difference, here is the benchmark for the Amazon P2 grinding rig running MD5 and PHP’s password_hash() (bcrypt/c10):
MD5 4,231,000 hashes/sec PHP’s password_hash() 53 hashes/secHero dog Buddy stabbed defending Darwin home
Updated
A seven-month-old German shepherd has been hailed a hero after it was stabbed protecting a Darwin home from a group of youths attempting to break in as the owners slept.
Security guard Mobin Pour Nowrouz and his pregnant partner Yuni were asleep in their home in the suburb of Malak when the incident happened about 9:30pm on Wednesday.
Mr Pour Nowrouz, 26, was awoken by his partner's parents some time after the attempted break-in and found their dog Buddy in a pool of blood.
The dog had been stabbed in one of its back legs.
"He's a hero," Mr Pour Nowrouz said.
"Me and my partner were inside, she's four-months' pregnant.
"If Buddy wasn't there they might have just broken into the house, woken us up and stabbed us."
A witness told Mr Pour Nowrouz he saw five young people running away from the property.
The dog was expected to make a full recovery, but Mr Pour Nowrouz said vets explained to him that Buddy could have died if he was found much later.
"He means so much [to me]," he said.
"Every fortnight when I get paid I have to first buy his food and then do my own shopping."
A Go Fund Me campaign set-up by a stranger to help pay for Buddy's surgery bill exceeded its $5,000 goal only hours after going online.
"I'm going to get the receipt from the vet and the rest I'm going to donate to one of the animal shelters," Mr Pour Nowrouz said.
Police are calling for other witnesses to contact them.
Topics: animals, law-crime-and-justice, malak-0812, darwin-0800
First postedMore people to travel this July 4th, AAA says
A record number of people in the USA will travel for Independence Day weekend, according to AAA. (Photo11: Julio Cortez, AP)
A record number of U.S. travelers will venture beyond their homes by 50 miles or more this Fourth of July, according to a forecast released Thursday from auto club AAA.
A total of 44.2 million people will take to the roads, skies, rails and waterways to celebrate Independence Day, AAA says.
That’s an increase of 1.25 million travelers over last year, making it the most traveled Independence Day weekend since AAA has been counting. That is a 2.9 percent increase over last year this time.
“Combined, strong employment, rising incomes and higher consumer confidence bode well for the travel industry, in particular this Independence Day weekend,” Bill Sutherland, AAA senior vice president of Travel and Publishing, said in a written statement.
AAA defines this year’s Independence Day holiday travel period as Friday, June 30, to Tuesday, July 4.
More people will drive to their destinations—37.5 million people, an increase of 2.9 percent over last year.
That spike is helped by cheaper gas prices. The national average price for gas is $0.04 less than this time last year. The national average price for a gallon of gas is $2.28, a historic low for the summer travel season.
Daily car rental rates are also lower, averaging $65. That is 14 percent less than last Independence Day.
Planes will be more full this holiday weekend, with 3.44 million passengers, an increase of 4.6 percent over last year.
Travelers can expect lower airfares. According to AAA’s Leisure Travel Index, average airfares for the top 40 domestic routes will be 10 percent less this year. The average round trip-ticket is $186.
Cruises, trains and buses will attract another 3.27 million travelers, AAA says. That is a 1.4 percent spike over last year.
Hotel rates remain steady, with the average AAA Three Diamond Rated hotel costing $185 per night.
The most visited destination this year is Orlando. The top 10 destinations are:
Orlando Vancouver Cancun Seattle Punta Cana, Dominican Republic Honolulu Anaheim Anchorage Las Vegas Montego Bay
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Submarines
by Chris Woodford. Last updated: February 26, 2019.
The worst thing that could ever happen to you on a ship in the middle of the ocean would be for water to flood in and make you sink. But if you're on-board a submarine, sinking is exactly what you want! Unlike ships, which pitch and roll as they struggle across the waves, submarines slip swiftly and silently through the calmer waters beneath. They are lean, mean, military machines and they can stay submerged for weeks or even months at a time. Let's take a closer look at how they work!
Photo: The fast-attack, nuclear-powered submarine USS Dallas (SSN 700) heads out to sea. Photo by Paul Farley courtesy of US Navy.
What is a submarine?
Photo: Submarine ahoy! When we see photos of submarines floating on the surface, it's hard to imagine how big they really are: like icebergs, virtually all of a floating sub is underwater. In this very unusual picture of a submarine in dry dock for maintenance, you can clearly see how big a submarine really is—and that it really is almost a perfect cylinder. Photo of USS City of Corpus Christi at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard by Dustan Longhini courtesy of US Navy.
Oceans are most turbulent where wind meets water: on their surface. The waves that race across the sea are a sign of energy, originally transmitted by the Sun and whipped up into winds, racing from one side of the planet to the other. Ships battle and lurch across tough seas where no fish—worth its salt—would ever swim. Sailing ships make good use of winds, harnessing the gusts of air to make a very effective form of propulsion. Diesel-powered ships stay on the surface for a different reason: their engines need a steady supply of oxygen to burn fuel. In theory, it should be much easier for ships to swim under the waves where the water is calmer and puts up less resistance; in practice, that creates a different set of problems.
If you've ever gone snorkeling or scuba diving, you'll know that life underwater is very different from life on the surface. It's dark and difficult to see, there's no air to breathe, and intense water pressure makes everything feel uncomfortable and claustrophobic. Submarines are ingenious bits of engineering designed to carry people safely through this very harsh environment. Although they were originally invented as military machines, and most large subs are still built for the world's navies, a few smaller subs do work as scientific research vessels. Most of these are submersibles (generally small, unpowered, one- or two-person submarines tethered to scientific research ships as they operate).
Parts of a submarine
Photo: Despite many technological advances, the basic concept of the submarine has changed little in over a century, since John Holland designed the USS Holland, the US Navy's first submarine. Photo by courtesy of Naval Historical Center.
These are some of the key parts of a typical submarine.
Pressure hull
The pressure of water pushing inward is the biggest problem for anyone who wants to go deep beneath the ocean surface. Even with scuba tanks, we can dive only so far because the immense pressure soon makes it impossible to breath. At a depth of 600m (2000ft), the maximum depth subs ever dive to, the water pressure is over 60 times greater than it is at the surface!
How do subs survive where people can't? The hull of a standard ship is the metal outside that keeps the water out. Most submarines have two hulls, one inside the other, to help them survive. The outer hull is waterproof, while the inner one (called the pressure hull) is much stronger and resistant to immense water pressure. The strongest submarines have hulls made from tough steel or titanium.
Planes
Photo: The diving planes on either side of a submarine's tower generate lift as it moves forward, just like the wings on a plane. Photo of USS Emory S. Land by Jared Aldape courtesy of US Navy.
Just as sharks have fins on their bodies to help them swim and dive, so submarines have fins called diving planes or hydroplanes. They work a bit like the wings and control surfaces (swiveling flaps) on an airplane, creating an upward force called lift. Buoyancy is the tendency of something to sink, rise, or float at a certain depth. While it's underwater, a submarine is negatively buoyant, which means it tends to sink, left to its own devices, if it's not moving. But as the submarine's propellers push it forward, water rushes over the planes, creating an upward force called lift that helps it remain at a certain depth, creating a state of neutral buoyancy (floating). The planes can be tilted to change the lift force, so making the submarine climb or dive through the sea, as necessary. The planes provide most of the submarine's control of its depth, most of the time. The amount of lift they generate depends both on the angle to which they're tilted and on the submarine's speed (just as the lift that wings generate depends on a plane's speed and "angle of attack").
Ballast tanks
There are spaces in between the two hulls that can be filled with either air or water. These are called the ballast tanks and, with the diving planes, they give a sub control over its buoyancy, particularly during the first part of a dive or a return to the surface from the depths. When the ballast tanks are filled with air, the submarine rises to the surface because it has positive buoyancy. With water inside the tanks, the sub has negative buoyancy so it sinks deeper into the ocean. The tanks at the front (known as the front trim tanks) are usually filled with water or air first, so the submarine's front (bow) falls or rises before its rear (stern). The ballast tanks can also be used to help a submarine surface very quickly in an emergency.
Engine
Gasoline engines and diesel engines used by cars and trucks, and jet engines used by planes, need a supply of oxygen from the air to make them work. Things are different for submarines, which operate underwater where there is no air. Most submarines except nuclear ones have diesel-electric engines. The diesel engine operates normally when the sub is near the surface but it doesn't drive the sub's propellers directly. Instead, it powers an electricity generator that charges up huge batteries. These drive an electric motor that, in turn, powers the propellers. Once the diesel engine has fully charged the batteries, the sub can switch off its engine and go underwater, where it relies entirely on battery power.
Early military submarines used breathing tubes called snorkels to feed air to their engines from the air above the sea, but that meant they had to operate very near the surface where they were vulnerable to attack from airplanes. Most large military submarines are now nuclear-powered. Like nuclear power plants, they have small nuclear reactors and, since they need no air to operate, they can generate power to drive the electric motors and propellers whether they are on the surface or deep underwater.
Tower
Photo: The tower or sail can double up as an observation platform when the sub is cruising on the surface. Note the various different communications and navigation antenna. Photo by Jeffrey M. Richardson courtesy of US Navy.
Submarines are cigar-shaped so they can slip smoothly through the water, but in the very center there's a tall tower. In older submarines, the tower was packed with navigation and other equipment and was sometimes known as the conning tower (because, historically, it contained a submarines controls). It's also referred to simply as the tower or the sail, because in a modern submarine the controls and navigation equipment take up more room and tend to be located in the hull.
Navigation systems
Photo: Periscopes are useful if you're near the surface searching for enemy ships but they're useless underwater. Photo by Jeffery S. Viano courtesy of US Navy.
Light doesn't travel well through water, so it gets darker and darker the deeper down you go. Most of the time, submarine pilots can't even see where they're going! Submarines have periscopes (seeing tubes that can be pushed up through the tower), but they're useful only when subs are on the surface or just beneath it. Submarines navigate using a whole range of electronic equipment. There's GPS satellite navigation, for starters, which uses space satellites to tell the submarine its position. There's also SONAR, a system similar to radar, which sends out pulses of sound into the sea and listens for echoes reflecting off the seabed or other nearby submarines. Another important navigation system onboard a submarine is known as inertial guidance. It's a way of using gyroscopes to keep track of how far the submarine has traveled, and in which direction, without referring to any outside information. Inertial guidance is accurate only for so long (10 days or so) and occasionally needs to be corrected using GPS, radar, or other data.
Photo: The sonar apparatus in a typical submarine. Photo by Brandon Shelander courtesy of US Navy.
Life-support systems
A large military submarine has dozens of people onboard. How can they eat, sleep, and breathe, buried deep beneath the sea, in freezing cold water, for months at a time? A submarine is a completely sealed environment. The nuclear engine provides warmth and generates electricity—and the electricity powers all the life-support systems that submariners need. It makes oxygen for people to breathe using electrolysis to chemically separate molecules of water (turning H 2 O into H 2 and O 2 ) and it scrubs unwanted carbon dioxide from the air. Subs can even make their own drinking water from seawater using electricity to remove the salt. Trash is compacted into steel cans, which are ejected from an airlock system (a watertight exit in the hull) and dumped on the seabed.
Who invented the submarine?
Early days
1620: Englishman Cornelis Drebble (1572–1633) builds the first submarine by waterproofing a wooden, egg-shaped boat with leather and coating the whole thing in wax. Scientists are uncertain whether Drebble's boat ever set sail.
(1572–1633) builds the first submarine by waterproofing a wooden, egg-shaped boat with leather and coating the whole thing in wax. Scientists are uncertain whether Drebble's boat ever set sail. 1776: During the US revolution, David Bushnell (1742–1824) builds a hand-powered one-person submarine called the Turtle to help attack British warships.
(1742–1824) builds a hand-powered one-person submarine called the Turtle to help attack British warships. 1800: American steam engineer Robert Fulton (1765–1815) designs a convertible ship with folding-down sails that can turn itself into a submarine for traveling underwater.
(1765–1815) designs a convertible ship with folding-down sails that can turn itself into a submarine for traveling underwater. 1897: American inventor Simon Lake (1866–1945) launches the Argonaut, the first submarine to operate in the open sea.
Practical subs
Photo: The USS Holland (Submarine Torpedo Boat # 1) underway, circa 1900. Photo by courtesy of Naval Historical Center.
1900: The US Navy launches its first ever submarine, the USS Holland, named for its Irish-American inventor John Holland (1840–1914). Although Holland had offered submarines to the Navy for years beforehand, it had originally shown no interest.
(1840–1914). Although Holland had offered submarines to the Navy for years beforehand, it had originally shown no interest. 1908: Russia's Pochtovy is an early pioneer of Air Independent Propulsion (AIP)—operating a submarine without frequent trips to the surface—using a gasoline engine fed by compressed air.
From World Wars to the Cold War
1914–18: During World War I, the German navy operates a fleet of highly effective military submarines called U-boats (short for Unterseeboot, which means underwater ship). In the 1930s, the Germans start using snorkel tubes (invented by a Dutch engineer) to supply air to their U-boat's diesel-electric engines, giving them greater range and effectiveness.
1930s: Germany engineer Hellmuth Walter pioneers high-thrust hydrogen peroxide engines for use in submarines and missile rockets. It's another step forward for Air Independent Propulsion.
1952: French underwater photographer Dimitri Rebikoff launches the Poodle, the first tethered Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).
1955: The US Navy launches the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine.
1964: Alvin, a scientific research submersible operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, begins its long and distinguished history of underwater exploration. Its major successes including discovering black smokers (hydrothermal vents—a bit like chimneys in the ocean floor) and exploring the wreck of the Titanic.
1968: The Soviet Union (Russia and its former allies) launches K-162, the first submarine with a titanium hull and the world's fastest.
1969: The Soviets launch the first of their sleek, fast, titanium-hulled Alfa-class nuclear submarines.
Modern times
Photo: What of the future? Over two thirds of our planet is water, so submarines will always have a place in the military. But when it comes to scientific exploration, small robotic submersibles, like this Super Scorpio remotely operated vehicle (ROV), are becoming increasingly important. Note the video cameras on the front and the large, silver, robotic grabber arms. Photo by Geoffrey Patrick courtesy of US Navy.Researchers from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tasked with monitoring the overall health of Pacific coral reefs are sounding an alarm of international proportions to notify the public and government agencies that the Pacific Ocean coral reefs are facing a massive die-off known commonly as "coral bleaching". Publishing their recent study in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers are pointing towards warming oceans and dying trade winds for the massive coral bleaching soon to hit these coral reefs, and are naming global climate change as a contributing factor.
Led by marine biologist Diane Thompson, the study primarily analyzed corals off of the coasts of remote Pacific islands, each unique yet each sharing the common cause for dying corals. Known to be keystone species of the sea, for their delicate nature, symbiotic relationships with algae and their sensitivity to water temperatures, the corals indicated to the team that in spite of claims denying globally warming in recent years, that temperatures have been on the rise. And when they spike, so does the death toll of the Pacific reefs.
"When winds weaken, which they inevitably will, warming will soon again accelerate" Thompson says. "The warming brought on by greenhouse gases and the warming linked with this all-natural cycle will soon compound one another."
But it's not just the warming temperatures that are going to play a role in the coral bleaching. The researchers also point towards the trade winds which can greatly alter below-surface water temperatures, even when temperatures above soar. Looking to the element Manganese as a proxy for strength of trade winds, the researchers with the NOAA believe now that the winds are dying down and with them so too will the coral reefs.
A nutrient found in the skeletons of corals, Manganese is often released from coral reefs when powerful bursts of wind stir sediments from the underlying sands beneath the coral reefs. And as a result, allows researchers to analyze the wind patterns by measuring the abundance of Manganese within their skeletons.
What the researchers discovered was that the levels of Manganese are fluctuating, indicating quicker rises in global temperatures, and of their oceans, proving that more coral bleaching may soon be on the rise. The NOAA and Thompson's team believe that weakening of the trade winds could happen within the next decade, and that coupled with increasing surface temperatures attributed to climate change, may bring about the end to many coral reefs.
"We're going to continue to see a pattern of high thermal stress that really follows the same sort of time sequence and movement of the 1998 [massive coral die-off] events" Coordinator for the NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, Mark Eakin says. "Everything we're seeing now says that same pattern [may] happen again this year."In its first ever acquisition, Netflix has bought Millarworld, the comic book publisher founded by Mark Millar which has spawned stories such as Kick-Ass, Kingsman and Old Man Logan.
Netflix and Millar will work to bring Millarworld’s portfolio of character franchises to life through films, series and kids shows available exclusively to Netflix global subscribers. The company will continue to create and publish new stories and character franchises under the Netflix label.
While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the move does reflect Netflix’s ambition to own and develop intellectuatl property.
“As creator and re-inventor of some of the most memorable stories and characters in recent history, ranging from Marvel’s The Avengers to Millarworld’s Kick-Ass, Kingsman, Wanted and Reborn franchises, Mark is as close as you can get to a modern-day Stan Lee,” said Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. “We can’t wait to harness the creative power of Millarworld to Netflix and start a new era in global storytelling.”
Millar added: “This is only the third time in history a major comic book company has been purchased at this level. I’m so in love with what Netflix is doing and excited by their plans. Netflix is the future and Millarworld couldn’t have a better home.”
Millar runs Millarworld with his wife Lucy. He previously spent eight years at Marvel, where he developed the comic books and story arcs that inspired the first Avengers movie, Captain America: Civil War and Logan (Wolverine), which collectively grossed more than $3B at the worldwide box office. Since Millarworld was started, the company and its co-creators have created 18 published character worlds, of which three – Wanted, Kick-Ass and Kingsman – have yielded theatrical films that have collectively grossed nearly $1B worldwide.Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have introduced a bill to boost rural broadband in rural and tribal areas.
The Broadband Connections for Rural Opportunities Program Act is meant to close the rural digital divide by providing new federal grants for high-speed broadband buildouts to supplement the money already available through the USDA's Rural Utilities Service.
It would also double the RUS broadband program funding to $50 million.
Capito and Gillibrand cited FCC stats saying that 40% of rural and tribal areas do not have access to broadband, but also suggested their bill was about competition, not just providing access where none existed.
"When high-speed broadband is available, consumers often have only one choice for service and pay more for high-speed plans than consumers in some other advanced countries," they said in a joint release announcing the bill.
ISPs have long argued that government funds should be targeted to areas without service first, not where government money underwrites competition to existing privacy investment and service.Beautiful, touching and compelling, we may just have the best animated film of the year… Beating out box-office sensation Your Name for Animation of...
Beautiful, touching and compelling, we may just have the best animated film of the year…
Beating out box-office sensation Your Name for Animation of the Year at the Japan Academy Awards, In This Corner of the World comes with a considerable pedigree. Director Sunao Katabuchi (Mai Mai Miracle) worked for Studio Ghibli before breaking out on his own, and his third feature film confirms his gift for telling unique and powerful stories centred on young women. His latest feature spans the 1930s and ‘40s, though most of the film takes place during 1944-45.
This film centres on Suzu (Non), a kind-hearted, artistic girl from Eba, a small seaside town in Hiroshima. At 18, she receives a marriage proposal from Shusaku (Yoshimasa Hosoya), a man she has never met. After the marriage is arranged, she moves to Kure, a town on the outskirts of the city, with Shusaku’s family. As the difficulties of living under war increase, official food rationing begins in Japan, and preparations for American air raids are well underway. A young housewife, Suzu takes charge of food distribution. Katabuchi (who also wrote the screenplay) clearly has the utmost respect and admiration for Suzu, and some of the film’s most touching moments detail her creativity in the kitchen, turning extremely limited rations into wholesome family meals. Much of the film is devoted to taking in Suzu’s experiences with her new life, which is filled with plenty of tender and humorous moments.
As the film is set in and around Hiroshima during the Second World War, it is safe to say that virtually everyone watching knows precisely what is coming. Katabuchi is clearly aware of this, and handles the situation well, using specific dates to create an air of suspense and foreboding. The specific date is frequently shown on screen, sometimes moving months ahead at a time, sometimes a single day. The somewhat unpredictable movement of time does a good job of keeping the horrors of the atomic bomb at bay, and allows the audience to prepare themselves for the horrors.
The threat comes thick and fast. |
finish your climb at the root of a large, stable tree, which can act as a nice super-safe anchor point (used to belay the climber that follows on the route from the top). The relief compares to nothing else!
On a separate note, I am 100% convinced learning to climb isn’t possible without good people around you. The climbing tradition and practices are passed on from generation to generation in a similar way good old fairy tales and family legends are transmitted by world of mouth.
A special thanks therefore goes out to our friend Paul, who helped tremendously with our first trad lead by being the calmest, but also most vigilant person to supervise us through the experience. And of course, simply by being there. I’ll never forget my first trad climb, and I’ll never forget who made it possible for me to feel confident enough to try it.
Paul is a qualified Southern Sandstone instructor and is a great person with whom to learn the basics of outdoor climbing on London’s nearby rocks. If you want to give this a try, don’t even think of calling anyone else to arrange a session!
You can contact Paul by sending him an e-mail on paul@on-up.co.uk or look him up on Facebook under the name Onwards Upwards.(MoneyWatch) A couple of years ago, we took a look at data related to the "sell in May" investment legend. The theory is that you should sell stocks at the beginning of May and then buy them back at the end of October. Follow this strategy, goes the fable, and you'll reap profits beyond what the average buy-and-hold investor will receive. Just like most other investment legends, this is one that's much more myth than fact. We illustrated this a couple of years ago, but we thought it would be good to take another look.
To test the theory, we created two portfolios. One buys the S&P 500 Index on Jan. 1, 1926, and holds that position. The other buys the S&P 500 on Jan. 1, 1926, and holds that position through April 30, 1926. On May 1, we swap the S&P 500 with 30-day U.S. Treasury bills and remain in T-bills until Nov. 1. Then, we trade back into the S&P 500. This process is repeated every May and November, ultimately ending with data March 2012.
Why the "sell in May" strategy is bogus
Another look at why the "sell in May" strategy fails
The results tell the story: If you had followed this strategy, you would have been worse off than if you just held stocks. The "sell in May" portfolio produced an annualized return of 8.3 percent, compare with an annualized return of 9.9 percent for the S&P 500.
Why does this myth persist?
It's true that stocks have performed better from November through April than they have from May through October. Since 1926, the average monthly return for May, June, July, August, September, and October was 0.72 percent, while the average monthly return for November, December, January, February, March, and April was 1.17 percent.
However, there was still an equity premium during this time period. As mentioned above, the average monthly return to stocks for the months May through October was 0.74 percent. From January 1926 through March 2012, the average monthly return for 30-day U.S. Treasury bills was 0.29 percent. If you follow this strategy, you have to put your money somewhere safe (such as T-bills) when you get out of stocks. But because stocks still outperformed Treasury bills even in the "worse-performing" months, an investor would ultimately lose out by following this strategy.
Another possibility is that purveyors of this myth looked at the data using different starting points. See below for annualized returns of "buy and hold" versus "sell in May" starting in different decades:
The moral of this story is that you should consult both the academic literature and the historical evidence before implementing any investment strategy, even one that has become accepted as the "conventional wisdom." In this case, we learned that while certain time periods produce better investment returns than others, that doesn't mean it's something you can profit from.
Image courtesy of taxbrackets.org?The 1980s were a golden time for sleazy people. Ronald Reagan was in office, power business suits were all the rage and greed was good. While corporate-minded douchebags swindled, lied, and cut throats at every company they could, 1980s action films were quick to capitalize on the middle class resentment of these assholes, and filled their action movies with some of the scummiest characters ever committed to celluloid for the sole purpose of being hated and loathed — and, not infrequently, gloriously killed off.
Now, being a bad guy isn’t enough to just qualify you as being a sleazebag. Mr. Joshua, in Lethal Weapon, is evil, but in the end, he’s just a guy doing his admittedly nasty job. What we’re talking about is the real low, scum sucking, ego-tripping, do-anything-for-a-buck types. Vindictive. Slimy. Sell their own mother if they thought it would make them a buck. Screw over everyone and anyone to get ahead, and never lose a second of sleep. People like these nine guys.
9) Lt. Eckhardt in Batman
?Lt. Eckhardt
is the first of a series of Harvey Bullock replacements in the Batman
movies, but he may just be the sleaziest. Eckhardt is a hard-living cop
who’d as soon put his cigars out on Gotham reporters than answer their
questions. He’s also on the take for crime-boss Carl Grissom. But when
Eckhardt has a confrontation with “A-1 nutboy” and Grissom henchman Jack
Napier, he ends up making the sleaziest and stupidest move of his life.
Eckhardt informs Grissom of Jack Napier’s relationship with Grissom’s
girlfriend, inadvertently paving the way for Jack’s change into The
Joker. It was a slimy move for sure, but Eckhardt always had a problem
thinking about the future.
8) Walter Peck in Ghostbusters
Walter Peck thinks he is better than anyone else. It’s clear in the way this EPA agent refuses to call Peter Venkman by the proper title of “Doctor,” even after he learns of Venkman’s degrees in Psychology and Para-Psychology. And when Peck helps usher in a potential supernatural catastrophe by shutting down the Ghostbuster’s Containment Unit, he refuses to accept responsibility for it. Thankfully, dickless here, was kicked out of the Mayor’s office just in time to get the fluffing of a lifetime from the exploded Stay-Puft Man.
7) Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future Trilogy
Biff Tannen, the date-rapingly awesome bully of Hill Valley High, received one of the greatest gifts of all time: A sports almanac from the future that shows the final results of every event for the next 50 years. So what does Biff do with his newfound shot at fame and fortune? He buys a casino and forces his high school love interest to get gigantic fake boobs. No matter the year, Biff Tannen is always a sleaze. And he’s also usually covered in manure.
6) Professor Joe Butcher in License to Kill
?Professor Joe Butcher is a televangelist, which goes a long way to making him seem sleazy already. But Butcher’s religious broadcasts and his meditation sanctuary are actually fronts for drug kingpin Franz Sanchez. Butcher’s calls for donations are actually coded messages that set prices for drug distributors across the world. Even more amazingly, his meditation center is actually a facility that hides cocaine in gasoline. You don’t need to be Richard Pryor to know that putting expensive drugs in a highly combustible substance is a bad mix. Prof. Joe, though, stays out of the way of the drugs and instead focuses on forcing himself on ex-CIA agent Pam Bouvier and stealing her money. Bless his heart.
5) Stathis Borans in The Fly and The Fly II
Stathis Borans is the former lover and current boss of Veronica in The Fly. We learn all this information when he uses a set of Veronica’s keys to break in her apartment and take a shower while he thinks she is out. There has never been a character that has been as sexually harassing as Stathis. At every opportunity, he reminds us that he would like nothing more than to be foul on Geena Davis’ Veronica. He is so repugnant that when the Brundlefly eventually vomits acid on Stathis’ hands and legs, the audience is less disgusted and more happy that this totally obnoxious jerk finally got a little something that was overdue in coming to him.
4) Terry Silver in The Karate Kid Part III
Terry Silver was created for the people who thought that the over-the-top theatrics of original Karate Kid villains Johnny and Kreese were too subtle. Terry Silver is a Vietnam vet who establishes a plan to corrupt Daniel Larusso to the Cobra Kai side of martial arts in retaliation for Kreese’s humiliation at the hands of Mr. Miyagi. In some ways, he’s the Emperor of the original Karate Kid trilogy. We’re not sure if that analogy speaks less of Star Wars or Karate Kid. Karate Kid Part III goes out of its way to establish how sleazy Terry is within the first two minutes of his appearance. He’s rich, has a butler, wears an awful pony tail, and oh yeah…he dumps illegal nuclear waste. Captain Planet had less ridiculous bad guys.
3) Carter Burke in Aliens
When you look at the group of characters sent to the terraforming colony in Aliens, one man stands out. Carter Burke. Burke is a company man, not a marine. He isn’t physically imposing or tough, but he does have one skill that everyone else on the team lacks: he is an amazing liar. Burke is responsible for the deaths of the entire terraforming colony by ordering the employees and crew to investigate the site of the Alien eggs from the first film. And when his initial plan to escape with an Alien sample fails, he lets two Facehuggers loose in Ripley and Newt’s room so that he can later abscond with fresh samples. Burke doesn’t care about any other human on his mission. He just wants to make money for his corporate masters so he can shine in their eyes. As punishment, when Burke was killed, he was reincarnated into a pretty awful NBC sitcom with Helen Hunt.
2) Bob Morton in Robocop
Bob Morton steals Murphy’s body, cuts off all extraneous organic pieces and melds him into a cybernetic being so he can become Robocop. In any other film, this would land him a role as the chief villain. Everyone else in Robocop is so repugnant that Bob come across as a slightly misunderstood good guy. Bob doesn’t care that he’s destroyed the remains of Murphy’s life. He really doesn’t care about helping the city of Detroit. All Bob really wants to do is move up the corporate ladder and step on Dick Jones’ face while he’s doing it. At least Bob left this planet doing what he loved most, snorting lines off of hookers’ bosoms while Red Foreman murders him.Exercise Studies Find Good News For The Knees
Enlarge this image toggle caption David J. Phillip/AP David J. Phillip/AP
Common perception has it that exercise can be hard on the joints. But several recent studies suggest that moderately intense, weight-bearing exercises — including long-distance running — do not increase the risk of arthritis.
Physician Harvey Simon, 67, has been running for over three decades. Back in college, they called him "Gazelle," despite his somewhat ungainly stride:
"I'm reasonably lean, but I'm uncoordinated and clumsy. My running stride is something awful to look at," he says, laughing. "But I haven't missed a day of running since Oct. 30, 1978."
No Worse For The Wear
After clocking a little over 100,000 miles over the years, Simon says his knees and hips are no worse for the wear.
"I may be lucky, I may be genetically gifted in that way, but my joints are fine," he says.
The questions remain: Is Harvey Simon an anomaly? Isn't all that pounding bound to do some damage?
Every time a runner strikes the ground he or she applies 8 times their body weight to the joints, says Simon. If you take a 150-pound person, each stride will impose a load of about 1,200 pounds to the body.
"That goes from the foot to the knee to the hip and spine, etc," says Simon. And that's a lot of weight. "Over the course of a mile — that's tons and tons of impact," he says. "So it's understandable that people suspect that may be harmful to joints."
But the most recent studies are showing that for many people, running isn't harmful. In an analysis for Harvard Men's Health Watch, in one long-term study of about 1200 residents of the town of Framingham, Mass., researchers looked for a correlation between arthritis and exercise:
"People who were physically active were no more likely to develop symptoms of arthritis or x-ray evidence of arthritis than people who were sedentary," says Simon.
Exercise For Healthy Joints
And then there's a study from Stanford University that tracked a group of long-distance runners for 20 years. Researchers compared their health to others of similar age who did much less exercise. They expected to find a lot of problems with the runners' knees, but it turns out they had healthier joints at the end of the study, says Dr. Eliza Chakravarty, a professor of rheumatology at the Stanford School of Medicine.
"It does sort of negate the idea that running is universally bad on the knees," says Chakravarty.
There are, however, some clear risk factors for osteoarthritis related to physical activity, says Steven Blair, an exercise scientist at the University of South Carolina.
"The primary predictor of joint injury is a previous injury," he says. "You may have damaged something as a kid that then causes you trouble later on."
Studies show that if you suffer an injury in a shoulder or knee you're 2 to 5 times more likely to develop arthritis in that joint.
Other risk factors include weight, age, or alignment problems. For example, if one leg is shorter than the other this can put unusual stress on the joints.
There are all sorts of individual exceptions, says Blair, and it's important for everyone to be careful and not over-do it.
But increasingly, he says, the studies are reminding us that the joints were made for moving.This major release of git has been brewing for a long time and I am excited to go on the hunt in the Changelog to find cool bits of awesomeness. As usual if you want to catch up with past git releases, I’ve been doing this exercise for a while, check them out: 1.8.2, 1.8.3, 1.8.4, 1.8.5, 1.9.
This piece will necessarily cover only a selection of the release, if you want the complete list of changes and bug fixes have a look at the full Changelog.
Some defaults changing: improving usability and resolving confusion
Let’s tackle the compatibility changes first. There are a few and I’d say these are welcome updates for misunderstandings that have bugged more than a beginner. They should not disrupt old experienced git users too much because they can very easily revert to their favorite setups by tweaking their.gitconfig a bit.
IMPORTANT! git push (with no arguments) defaults to simple push mechanics
The default behavior of bare git push with no arguments has traditionally been non-intuitive: All branches were sent to the remote as long as their name matched both locally and remotely. That’s what the matching option meant.
In Git 2.0 the default has been changed to simple which is narrower in scope – more specific and more intuitive – it will now only push:
The current branch to the branch with the same name only when the current branch is set to integrate with that remote branch on the same remote;
The current branch to the branch with the same name, if you are pushing to a remote that is not where you usually fetch from.
If you are nostalgic and got accustomed to the old default you can switch back setting the configuration variable push.default to matching again.
git add path now equates git add -A path
git add dir/ will notice paths you removed from the directory and record the removals. A great usability improvement. In older versions git add path used to ignore removals. You can be explicit with git add –ignore-removal path if you want to keep the old behavior.
git add -u and git add -A now operate on the entire tree and not on the sub-folder where you happen to run the command (this makes the two commands behave in the same way as the other git commands). You can still specify the. folder if you want the old behavior.
git svn default prefixes change
The default remote prefix for git svn has changed in Git 2.0 and it now places remote-tracking branches under refs/remotes/origin (instead of directly under refs/remote). This can be customized using the –prefix option of git svn.
Non-breaking changes grouped by command
The changes below do not break compatibility. They caught my eye as being useful or interesting.
git log has a new option –show-linear-break and more
git log now has a –show-linear-break option to display where a single strand-of-pearls is broken in its output.
now has a option to display where a single strand-of-pearls is broken in its output. The way git log –cc shows a combined diff against multiple parents has been optimized.
git rebase can now sign commits
git rebase will interpret a lone – as @{-1}, the branch that we were previously on.
will interpret a lone as, the branch that we were previously on. git rebase (with pull and other commands) learned to take the –gpg-sign option on the command line.
git commit gains a new cleanup mode and more
git commit –cleanup= gained a new mode, scissors. The –cleanup option determines how the commit message should be cleaned up before committing. The new mode scissors strips leading and trailing empty lines, trailing white space, collapses consecutive empty lines and truncates (doesn’t remove) the lines commented with #. More info on the various options here.
gained a new mode, scissors. The option determines how the commit message should be cleaned up before committing. The new mode strips leading and trailing empty lines, trailing white space, collapses consecutive empty lines and. More info on the various options here. git commit can be told to always GPG sign the resulting commit by setting commit.gpgsign to true (which you can override on the command line with –no-gpg-sign ).
git tag now can sort numbered versions
git tag –list output can be sorted using version sort with –sort=version:refname.
Other miscellaneous changes
git grep behaves now similarly to native grep when -h (no header) and -c (count) options are given.
behaves now similarly to native grep when (no header) and (count) options are given. git config can now read from the standard input with –file – (that is a
single dash).
can now read from the standard input with (that is a single dash). Trailing whitespaces in.gitignore files now give a warning and are ignored.
git pull can now be configured to accept fast-forward only with the new “pull.ff” configuration.
can now be configured to accept fast-forward only with the new “pull.ff” configuration. git reset -N will keep known paths as intend-to-add if the target tree-ish does not already know them.
will keep known paths as if the target tree-ish does not already know them. The bitmap-index feature from JGit has been ported, which should significantly improve performance when serving objects from a repository that uses it. See this EclipseCon deck for more info.
Conclusion
I hope you found this run down useful. Stay tuned for more on this channel! Follow me @durdn for more hacking and DVCS rocking.The Bottlehead Crack OTL tube amplifier is widely praised  for it’s smooth, but neutral and detailed sound. If you own a pair of Sennheiser HD600, HD650 or even the HD800 flagship model, this is what many will recommend you to buy. This is especially true if you ask the question on the Head-Fi forums.
Coming from the very neutral and lovely Objective2 amplifier, I wished for something more dynamic, more alive, simply with more feelings to the sound. Don’t get me wrong, I love the O2 and ODAC combo more than most and I even have two of them. That said, I always had the feeling that my HD650 wasn’t pushed to their full potential with the O2 amplifier. It didn’t quite make them sing somehow.
Test setup
SOURCE: Intel Core i5-3570K, 8GB, Geforce 670GTX, 128GB SSD
Intel Core i5-3570K, 8GB, Geforce 670GTX, 128GB SSD Music:Â Spotify Premium 320 Ogg Vorbis + Flac lossless files
Spotify Premium 320 Ogg Vorbis + Flac lossless files DAC: ODAC 24 bit/96 khz setting (build in a O2 amplifier with separate RCA’s for DAC output).
ODAC 24 bit/96 khz setting (build in a O2 amplifier with separate RCA’s for DAC output). Headphones: Â Sennheiser HD650 with custom cables
 Sennheiser HD650 with custom cables Comparison amplifier: Objective2 amplifier, not the same as the DAC is integrated into.
Objective2 amplifier, not the same as the DAC is integrated into. Music source: Spotify Premium – Ogg Vorbis 320 + Foobar2000 with FLAC lossless
The Basic Bottlehead Crack OTL
The Bottlehead Crack is a tube amplifier in kit form. You basically receive a bunch of parts and wires, along with four pieces of wood, a aluminium chassis and a couple of tubes. You have to combine the parts and solder them to get a working amplifier made and you also have to sand and paint/apply varnish to the wood. With basic soldering skills, this can be done by most hobbyists and DIY people alike. If you’re the ambitious type, there is plenty you can do to improve both the looks and performance of the Bottlehead Crack, as it’s highly modifiable. The documentation and manual you get with your kit is very detailed and has great pictures of every part of the process. It’s very easy to follow.
If you want to find out more about how it’s made, read my write-up about the process and see the final result here: Building the Bottlehead Crack kit (5 parts)
OTL is short for output transformerless, and this means there is no output transformer in the Crack, instead there is output capacitors. The output transformer is usually the biggest source of distortion in a tube amplifier and often what people refer to when talking about a tubey or liquid sound.
The amplifier needs to warm up for a few minutes before use. It takes even longer for the sound reaches it’s full potential after 10 minutes or so, when the transformer is heated. You have to get used to that, but that’s just the nature of a tube amplifier and many class A amplifiers too.
The OTL design is probably the reason why the sound is very precise and much less tube-like that you would expect from a tube amp. But it’s still very well l rounded and fluid, while preserving a good amount of details and a pretty decent soundstage. It’s a  tad dark and not at all hard on your ears. It’s definitely more relaxing to listen to, than the O2 amplifier, but it’s also a little bit less detailed in the treble and high mids. There is more power to the sub bass and the Crack has good control in this area. Where the Crack really shines, is in the mids. Highly detailed, but soft and fluent mids. Both male and female vocals sounds fantastic and very immersive and natural. The same can be said about acoustic instruments, especially guitars and piano. The instrument separation is very good and this just adds to the detail level. I know it’s very non technical term to use, but I would say it has great musicality compared to the more analytical approach of the O2 amp.
Due to the slightly dark sound of the HD650, I would have guessed it would fit an amp with a more neutral sound signature better, but somehow the sound of the Crack matches the HD650 perfectly. It doesn’t make them darker, it just makes them better and more natural sounding with less of the veil. Who knew this would happen?
$279 is a good price, but it’s still about $180 more than you can make a Objective2 amplifier for. That said, I do prefer the smoothness of the Crack compared to the more analytical sound of the O2, but I don’t know if it’s worth almost three times the price. On the plus side, the Bottlehead Crack kit is easier and much more fun to make than a Objective2 kit. And then there is something called Speedball that changes it all.
Bottlehead Crack + Speedball combo
The Speedball upgrades transforms the Crack to a whole other – and very different beast. The standard Crack is bit relaxed and laid back compared to the neutral and slight forward approach of the O2 amp. I guess this is what makes the Crack and HD650 combo more musical, if such a thing really exists.  Installing the Speedball circuits makes the Crack much more forward and aggressive. It attacks the music, rather than just going with the flow. The bass becomes more powerful, hits harder and it just has a freshness and slam to it. It’s like everything get’s a bit clearer and more refined. The soundstage is also widened slightly with better separation, I think this is partly due to a completely black background. That another big difference and a nice addition, the completely black background. The difference the Speedball makes, is really a night and day difference. I think even most ‘non-audiophiles’ will be able to tell the difference easily and it’s really a no-brainer if you’re going to build the Crack anyway.  If you order the Speedball with your Crack kit, it’s $115 and you save $10 this way. I would still recommend that you build the standard Crack before installing the Speedball kit, then you also will be able to appreciate the difference.
The funniest thing about the Speedball and Crack combo, is that the $394 paid is much better value, than the $279 for the standard Crack. You’ll have a very hard time finding anything coming close to the performance in that price-range or at twice the price.
Mundorf MCap 100uF Film Capacitors
After installing the Mundorf MCap 100uF film capacitors I thought I could here a difference, but I wasn’t quite sure. It seemed that the bass has a little  more punch and there was a little bit more air and separation around the instruments. Then I installed the 1uF MCap Supreme bypass film capacitors, and this time I was sure I could hear more detailed treble and wider soundstage. After spending 30+ hours with the film capacitors I’m pretty sure they are still getting even better. Just after installing the new caps, there was a very fine grain/texture to the treble that’s getting harder and harder to identify. Changing the capacitors in the Crack isn’t going to make a night and day change in the sound signature like the Speedball upgrade. But I’m convinced it does make a change for the better, with a more airy and detailed sound, especially in the high notes, but it’s a very subtle change. Let’s not forget how cool those big capacitors look though.
I also installed a WIMA 2,2 uF film capacitor to bypass the last electrolytic capacitor in the PSU. I didn’t notice a change in the sound, good or bad.
Conclusion
The standard Bottlehead Crack is a very good headphone amplifier for high impedance headphones like the Senn HD650. It’s at least as good as the O2, but with a more laid back and relaxing sound, maybe with ever so slightly less detail. I do prefer the sound of the Crack compared to the O2, but there is no denying the O2 is better value for money. However, this all changed when you apply Speedball upgrade to it. Then the Crack is playing in a whole other league. Punchy, fast and detailed bass, liquid smooth mids and highly detailed and exceptionally fine grained treble. This really combines the best of the solid state world, with the best of the tube world, with none of the drawbacks to my ears. It’s also a good match with the ODAC 24 bit DAC and I don’t feel like it’s inadequate in any way.
The Crack and Speedball combo is by far the best match to the Sennheiser HD650 I have ever heard, and it’s probably one of the best sounding setups I have ever heard too. Highly recommended if you’re up to a fun DIY project or if you can convince a  friend to make it for you.
Bottlehead Crack: 4/6
+ Smooth liquid and non fatiguing sound
+ Well controlled and deep bass
+ Good soundstage
- Â Slightly less details compared to O2
- Â Almost 3 times the price of an O2 amp
Bottlehead Crack
and Speedball: Â Â 6/6
+ Highly detailed, yet smooth mids and treble
+ Aggressive, fast, punchy and deep bass
+ Fantastic and well defined sub bass
+ Good instrument separation
+ Black background
+ Tremendous value for money
ÂMay 7, 2006
Dear Oprah,
Do you remember when you learned to read, or like me, can you not even remember a time when you didn't know how? I must have learned from having been read to by my family. My sisters and brother, much older, read aloud to keep me from pestering them; my mother read me a story every day, usually a children's classic, and my father read from the four newspapers he got through every evening. Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggily at bedtime.
So I arrived in the first grade, literate, with a curious cultural assimilation of American history, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapunzel, and The Mobile Press. Early signs of genius? Far from it. Reading was an accomplishment I shared with several local contemporaries. Why this endemic precocity? Because in my hometown, a remote village in the early 1930s, youngsters had little to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren't for small children. A park for games? Not a hope. We're talking unpaved streets here, and the Depression.
Books were scarce. There was nothing you could call a public library, we were a hundred miles away from a department store's books section, so we children began to circulate reading material among ourselves until each child had read another's entire stock. There were long dry spells broken by the new Christmas books, which started the rounds again.
As we grew older, we began to realize what our books were worth: Anne of Green Gables was worth two Bobbsey Twins; two Rover Boys were an even swap for two Tom Swifts. Aesthetic frissons ran a poor second to the thrills of acquisition. The goal, a full set of a series, was attained only once by an individual of exceptional greed — he swapped his sister's doll buggy.
We were privileged. There were children, mostly from rural areas, who had never looked into a book until they went to school. They had to be taught to read in the first grade, and we were impatient with them for having to catch up. We ignored them.
And it wasn't until we were grown, some of us, that we discovered what had befallen the children of our African-American servants. In some of their schools, pupils learned to read three-to-one — three children to one book, which was more than likely a cast-off primer from a white grammar school. We seldom saw them until, older, they came to work for us.
Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.
And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up — some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.
The village of my childhood is gone, with it most of the book collectors, including the dodgy one who swapped his complete set of Seckatary Hawkinses for a shotgun and kept it until it was retrieved by an irate parent.
Now we are three in number and live hundreds of miles away from each other. We still keep in touch by telephone conversations of recurrent theme: "What is your name again?" followed by "What are you reading?" We don't always remember.
Much love,
Harper
In May of 2006, 46 years after the publication of her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, reclusive author Harper Lee wrote the following letter to Oprah Winfrey, on the subject of reading and her love of books. It was subsequently published in Oprah's magazine, " O."An 83-year-old Largo man said he broke his back, needed 19 stitches in his leg and was hospitalized for 16 days after being attacked by a raccoon on his front driveway earlier this month.
"I never was afraid of a coon," said Robert Burris. "Never heard of one charging you or biting you."
Burris said it was about 6 a.m. on Oct. 4, when the attack happened. The Navy Veteran had gone outside to pick up his newspaper, when he noticed two raccoons nearby.
"I wanted to get them out of there. So, I just stomped my foot," Burris said. "Well, I stomped my foot and... the last one turned around and looked at me and here he come. I said, ‘oh no... I’m going to have to give you a football kick.’”
Burris said his kick missed the raccoon, he fell down and blacked out. The veteran said he does not remember the raccoon mauling his left leg. Burris' wife said she called 911.
"I heard him yell and I got up and came into the kitchen," said Bea Burris, 75. "He is standing there with blood flowing out of his shoe."
Bea said her husband's left leg needed 19 stitches and he broke a bone in his lower spine.
"I just wouldn’t leave him, I was scared to death that it would be the last time that I saw him," she said. "He spent at least four days in the ICU with it because of all the rabies shots and all the antibiotics and the pain pills that they gave him."
Burris said he wasn't afraid of raccoons before but now has a healthy respect for the animal. Looking back on the attack, the Largo man said one of the raccoons may've been carrying a baby on its back and that could be what triggered the attack.
"One of them had a black patch on the back like it was carrying a baby or something," he said. "They got their place. I’m not against a raccoon but hey, don’t feed them."
Jeffrey McChesney with Truly Nolen has been a pest expert in Pinellas County for 20 years and said he was shocked by the attack.
"I’ve never ever heard of such a thing here in Pinellas County of actually being attacked by raccoons," he said. "I’m really glad you’re okay."
McChesny said he had done some pest control work for the Burris' and when he found out about the raccoon attack he offered to pay for an animal trapper to catch it.
"We are not licensed animal trappers," he said. "However, we did contact one of our business affiliates that’s going to come out here and take care of this for them.”
"Thank you, very much," Burris said.
Burris said his back still hurts but he can get around with a walker. The Veteran was released from the hospital last Tuesday and is recovering at his Largo home.Pool photograph/Ezra, via Reuters
On Wednesday evening, Roy Halladay became an answer to two trivia questions (“Name the only pitchers to throw postseason no-hitters” and “Name the only pitchers to throw two no-hitters in the same season”), and pictures of his triumph were splashed across front pages nationwide. On Thursday night, Tim Lincecum had a strong outing that got him a nice applause from the fans in San Francisco. Yet Lincecum’s performance was actually both more impressive and more valuable than Halladay’s.
COMMENTS Rosenheck responds to readers A number of commenters have noted that I did not account for the quality of the opposing lineups in the piece. Yes, the Reds led the league in runs, while the Braves were fifth. However, Cincinnati’s regulars were healthy all year, while Atlanta’s battled injuries, reducing the Braves’ run output. One of the Reds’ biggest offensive advantages over the rest of the league was the strong performance of their bench players, which matters less in the playoff sprint than the regular season marathon. A few Cincinnati hitters clearly played over their heads this year — the catching duo leaps to mind — and should not be expected to retain their 2010 regular-season level of performance into the postseason or in 2011. And finally, Atlanta added Derrek Lee late in the year. Over all, the Reds’ lineup on Wednesday probably was stronger than the one the Braves put out the next day — but I’d guess by an average of only 0.15 runs per game or so, which is not nearly enough to negate Lincecum’s enormous strikeout advantage. For readers who want to learn more about the question of pitchers’ control over the outcomes of balls in play, which has perhaps been the single most studied question in all of quantitative baseball research over the last decade, here is a summary article with a series of links to some |
including [an effect] on our interstate relations."
The operation in Slovyansk came hours after the government reported that its forces had taken control of the town hall in the city of Mariupol, and repelled an attack on an army base in the eastern town of Artemivsk, the ministries said.
Pro-Russian rebel sources also reported the loss of the town hall in Mariupol. The city was the scene of an attack on Ukrainian troops last week that left three rebels dead, though they continued to hold the town hall, as they had since April 13.
"The town hall is liberated and can function normally," Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's interior minister, said on his Facebook page.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that Ukrainian forces also repelled nearly 100 pro-Russian rebels in an attack on the military base in Artemivsk, just north of rebel-held Donetsk.
"The attackers were repelled and suffered significant losses," said Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine's acting president.Let’s start with the most important part of this blog. I am taking a break from StarCraft starting whenever my run in WCS AM Season 1 ends. I am likely to return for LoTV. I don’t quite feel ready to give up on StarCraft just yet.
A few months ago, I posted about a blog about my plans for the rest of 2015. To summarize, I decided to stop commentating all together to focus on improving my play. I stated that if I had not improved significantly by the end of the year, I would be retiring. As is often the case, success is done in shades rather than absolutes. While I did not achieve the level of success I hoped for, I achieved a level of success that I had been unable to obtain for most of 2014. I managed to qualify for IEM San Jose, losing out in the winner’s bracket in a close 2-3 vs Scarlett and triumphing over Violet in the loser’s bracket 3-2, taking the 3rd and final qualified position for the American region. This alone, was a great accomplishment. Days later, at Homestory Cup, I went 1-2 with HyuN, nearly taking the series 2-0 and then defeated Lilbow 2-1 before ultimately being eliminated by Jaedong 0-2. While I did not manage to pass my group at Homestory, I showed a level of play that has eluded me for a long time and went head to head with some of the better players right now.
I continued to train hard for San Jose and for some reasons that I’m not entirely clear on, I played some of the worst games I’ve played in a long time. San Jose was pretty much a total failure in my mind because I failed to play up to my level and went out 0-4 vs Bomber and Super. Of course, my opponents were strong, but there’s no place in this scene for me if I can’t at least play my best, be competitive at LAN events and put on good games. Since then, I’ve been streaming consistently and figuring out where my place will be in the coming year. Overall, I made more progress than I had in a long time, but not enough to re-ignite the reasons I began so fervently down this progamer path in the first place.
After a bit of soul searching and re-negotiation of terms, I settled on a contract that worked well for me and compLexity. I found the answers that I needed in 2014 to justify continuing my career as a progamer. I have been on a path of consistent improvement (except for the blunder of San Jose and a few days preceding it). My practice partners noted on my sudden improvement and the game was quite a bit more fun than it had been in a long time. Despite this, I’m still worn out on StarCraft. I don’t recover from poor play or losses as I would like, and I don’t really want to play a lot of the time. StarCraft has become more of a job than an activity of passion.
In order to succeed, I need the inner drive to push myself and constantly try to innovate and topple my opponents. This drive just isn’t with me right now. I play a set amount of hours each day, and when I’m done (usually glad that I am), I pursue other activities. Part of this loss of motivation stems from the declining popularity of StarCraft. It has become harder to play as nearly every single non-pro gamer friend I have has stopped playing the game all together. StarCraft is no longer an activity that brings my friends together. Perhaps if I lived in a team house long term I wouldn’t feel this way. Even though I enjoyed my time in the ROOT house quite a bit, I think time off will help more than simply trying to push through. Especially because the coming months will be one of the best times to take a break.
LoTV, with its slew of changes both to balance and how the game is fundamentally played (starting workers, different resources per base), will be a nice reset that will reward those who are active early and adapting to what’s new.
As such, my current plan is to continue to play StarCraft on a consistent basis until I am eliminated from WCS Season 1 of this year. When I am eliminated, I will begin a break from competitive StarCraft play that will probably last until I have access to LoTV beta. While on break, I may do some commentary at my discretion, but will mostly be away from the competitive StarCraft scene. You may see me streaming or doing other related activities besides competing.
As always, thanks to compLexity and our great sponsors: Creative & Sound Blaster, CYBERPOWERPC, Newegg, Corsair Gaming, Twitch, DXRacer and Pwnit Wear.
Follow Kevin on twitter @coL_qxcTrump trolls on Reddit want the site's CEO to quit over his response to a bizarre sex scandal called #Pizzagate. Crazily enough, they might be right.
If you haven't heard, #Pizzagate is the hashtag used by trolls spreading the unhinged, bogus claim that Hillary Clinton was involved in a child sex ring running out of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor. Several employees of that pizza parlor received death threats as a result. It's exactly the sort of steaming pile of trash that Reddit's uniquely positioned to cultivate—it's just surprising it took so long to get here.
By order of Reddit CEO and founder Steve Huffman ("spez" on the site), the #Pizzagate subreddit was banned. Huffman got hit with major backlash for doing so, and in response, he edited some Reddit user comments. It was pretty innocent stuff, all told—he admitted over Thanksgiving to messing with the comments, replacing his username with those of /r/the_donald moderators ("/r/the_donald" being a Trump-supporting hub for topics like, "Cuck-in-Chief blames guns and defends Islam again."). The idea was to make it seem like the trolls were going after their own leaders when, in fact, they were flaming Huffman. Clever!
Except, not. Because now Redditors are furious, and want the CEO to step down.
"This is a horrendous ethics violation for a CEO. Fire yourself," Redditor Ant_Sucks writes, not unreasonably. Because loathsome as #Pizzagate is, there's something just as gross (even Trumpian!) about a CEO abusing his power to literally corrupt the words of others.
The perfect storm
Reddit has always been a bad place to exercise your right to free speech. Yet the site, ostensibly a series of online forums, remains one of the most popular in the entire world.
By default, it rewards popular opinions, with an algorithm that sorts the "best" comments according to the number of "upvotes" they receive measured against the "downvotes"—in other words, users vote for statements they like and against ones they don't. It's a messy system, in all sorts of ways: It rewards groupthink. It makes it easier to see diverse opinions in smaller conversations, because fewer people are voting on any given comment. And finally, it incentivizes users to game the site to accrue "points" (upvotes).
All of these concerns fold into the catastrophe we're dealing with now. As Gizmodo reported Tuesday, the site has now been overrun by Trump-loving trolls who've successfully turned the system against itself, so they can now occupy prime real estate on Reddit's r/all page—the page which displays the most popular topics from across the site. And that's where the real problems begin.
Bad problem, made worse
No one can blame Huffman for banning discussion about — big sigh — #Pizzagate, which is best described by Mashable's Gianluca Mezzofiore:
#Pizzagate refers to a fake news story that falsely claimed Hillary Clinton, aided by campaign chairman John Podesta, kidnapped, molested and trafficked children in the backrooms of a pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C.
Dozens of fabricated articles on #pizzagate and the child trafficking ring appeared on Facebook and conspiracy theory websites such as The New Nationalist and The Vigilant Citizen.
Reddit is not the town square. It is a privately owned website with rules that are subject to the whims of its leaders. Just as everyone calls on Facebook's leadership to take on greater responsibility over the spread of misinformation, there's no reason to expect less from Reddit. Trolls have played the system so their posts are constantly plastered over the home page—there's nothing wrong with fighting against that.
This doesn't just open a can of worms: It nukes one.
But not like this. Consider Facebook, and imagine if Mark Zuckerberg decided to change the text in a user's post, even if that user was spewing lies about a pizzeria sex den. The words wouldn't matter—there'd still be an outrage. There's a major difference between banning a topic (or even deleting a comment outright) and changing someone's words.
The latter is a violation of user trust that doesn't just open a can of worms: It nukes one. What we write online in 2016 is intrinsically linked to our identities, and it might be for all time.
Which isn't to say that we can't sympathize with Huffman's frustration. #Pizzagate is disgusting, as are so many threads on /r/the_donald. And the emergence of "fake news" as a major problem in online media has left journalists, academics and news consumers at wit's end.
"At a moment of exhaustion for virtually everyone who thinks that truthfulness matters, who worry about facts being trumped by lies, distortions, allegations, denials, and who worry about the level of violent threats being expressed through social media under the cloak of anonymity, I'm not too put out that [Huffman] let down his guard and reacted to the anonymous hate-filled crap directed at him," Brett Gary, a censorship and propaganda expert who teaches at New York University, told Mashable Tuesday.
"Is the Reddit CEO going to have to face a backlash? Probably," Prof. Gary said. But, he continued, "is this a crisis for free speech, given the larger crisis of truthfulness we're in? I don't think so."
He's not wrong. Yet, there's also a need to be principled about how we communicate online. Otherwise, there's a long road of outrage, fake news and pizza conspiracies ahead for all of us, all the time. And no one, no matter who they support, really wants that.On Sunday, tennis legend John McEnroe committed crimes against Feminism when he dared to say that tennis great Serena Williams, while being the greatest female player ever, is not as good as male players. McEnroe went on to rank Williams at around 700 in the men's circuit.
Despite all the glaring biological evidence to support McEnroe's innocuous and obvious statement, the left went ahead and predictably branded the tennis star a sexist.
He's not. He's merely a truth-teller.
In fact, in a video clip sure to make feminists' heads explode, Williams herself agreed that men's and women's tennis are entirely different games due to biology. Speaking with Late Night with David Letterman host David Letterman back in 2013, the Grand Slam queen even went on to explicitly state that she'd get her behind handed to her by male tennis star Andy Murray if the two were to play because, yes, he's a man and she's a woman.
“Actually it’s funny, because Andy Murray, he’s been joking about myself and him playing a match. I’m like, ‘Andy, seriously, are you kidding me?’ For me, men’s tennis and women’s tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports," Williams told Letterman.
"If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe ten minutes," she continued. "No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster and they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game."
"I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls, because I don’t want to be embarrassed," Williams added.
So, is Williams a sexist, too, or can we all just accept biology and move on?
Relevant comments start at the five-minute mark:I'm trying to link the signs and symptoms of eczema (especially atopic dermatitis) to its causes. In short, what is the mechanism of the disease?
In an answer of another question about eczema, @anongoodnurse has said (bolded words added by me):
Signs and symptoms: Eczema (or Atopic Dermatitis) is an incompletely understood skin disorder, in which the normal skin barrier function (permeability) is compromised, allowing the skin to dry out more than normal skin. Causes: The cause of the dryness in AD is thought by some to be (1) a deficiency of a naturally occurring fatty substance in the skin called ceramide. Others believe it's (2) an abnormal or missing protein which causes the skin barrier to be compromised, allowing allergens and irritants to cause immune responses more easily, triggering the itch/chronic inflammation (this might explain the response seen with topical steroids).My problem seems to stem from having found my favourite layout type. I say layout type, because the layout itself isnt fixed and will still be tweaked in future. But I no longer want to use Qwerty, and I also no longer want to use a standard 104 key keyboard.
For the past few months I have been trying out split matrix layouts, and while I have not fully gotten accustomed to them yet, I greatly prefer them. They are indeed more comfortable than the tiny keyboards that you guys seem to like so much. Really, I cannot understand why we have so many big Nordic members who will spend $500 and more buying and outfitting their HHKB, when the layout more appropriate to them would be a split keyboard at least 60 cm apart.
And now I no longer want to take part in group buys. Most classifieds no longer interest me. Most discussions and keycap threads are no longer relevant to me since I am using relegendables. Most of my older keyboards are no longer wanted. Ive spent too much time modding things that I no longer want to use. I am even putting up with black switches on my keyboards, because I dont feel like desoldering them (too much trouble). So I have clears and jailhouse blues on 104 key keyboards that I dont want to use, and own several point of sale keyboards that have nothing but blacks on them (which I do want to use).
I think I have turned into a curmudgeon like fohat. Wonder where this is going to go.Pakistan has, of late, launched a propaganda campaign designed to attract Kashmir youth towards the path of terrorism by spread of misinformation through the social media. Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a terrorist aligned with the Hizbul Mujahedeen (HM) and functioning in South Kashmir posted a video on a Face Book page about a month back. He was seen with eleven other terrorists of the same organisation dressed in army pattern combat fatigues, clicking photos and smiling into the camera with Burhan in the middle of the group.
This campaign by Burhan is being supported with stories of policemen running away from the force to join the HM. It is surprising that the Indian authorities are not countering this blatant misinformation with facts.
The Indian television news channels picked up the video and went into sensationalist overdrive. The incident was played over and over again with comments coming from many defence analysts, social activist and others.
The terror organisations based in Pakistan smelled a media coup and gave a go ahead for all out exploitation of the same. One more video of Burhan Wani meeting fellow terrorist with a hug and holding sophisticated weaponry with Grenades went viral. Indian news channels, once again, relayed the same religiously.
Print media was inundated with articles speaking of the Intelligence Bureau being worried and anxious; 60 youth, mostly educated, joining the HM after being motivated by Burhan Wani etc. Many of these articles were planted by the terrorist establishments through their agents in Jammu and Kashmir. The matter was widely circulated on the internet.
Burhan Wani suddenly became less terrorist commander and more poster boy of the HM. In a latest video he is seen exhorting the police personnel and Special Police Officers of the state to leave service and join the ranks of the HM to “fight for their land.” This campaign by Burhan is being supported with stories of policemen running away from the force to join the HM.
It is surprising that the Indian authorities are not countering this blatant misinformation with facts.
The fact is that indoctrination of Kashmir youth towards the path of terrorism is on the decline. Only 160 boys have joined terrorist ranks from 2010 to 2015 as against 651 in 2005-2010. When seen against the backdrop of the thousands who crossed over to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) during peak insurgency, this influx is not even a pin prick for the security forces.
The fact is that indoctrination of Kashmir youth towards the path of terrorism is on the decline. Only 160 boys have joined terrorist ranks from 2010 to 2015 as against 651 in 2005-2010.
One is not implying that the drift toward terrorism by the Kashmir youth is not a cause of worry. It is the duty of the government to ensure that not even one Kashmiri youth is misguided into following the path of violence.
The government, in a counter information campaign, needs to highlight the plight of those who crossed over to POK more than two decades back and have now become homeless refugees. They are desperate to get back to their homes along with the families that they have reared in POK but are unable to do so. Those unfortunate young boys who are now being misled to take the path of terrorism should be exhorted to learn from the mistakes committed by their elder generations reconsider their decision. They need to be made to understand that the path that they have chosen will lead to sure death and that too for no worthwhile purpose.
It is also necessary to expose the Pakistani design behind this propaganda campaign. Pakistan is now realising that it will not be able to sustain terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir from across the border for long. Successful infiltration is decreasing by the day and the number of foreign terrorists operating on the soil of Jammu and Kashmir is fast dwindling; it is now less than forty percent of the total terrorist strength operating in the state.
Pakistan can keep the so-called insurgency (under the garb of terrorism) alive only by recruitment of local cadre. Naturally, it is employing all possible means towards this end. The likes of Burhan Wani attracting gullible youth is one potent tool being used. The other is money and assurances of a good future in this world and beyond.
Burhan Wani is being projected like larger than life terrorist commander; the fact is that he and his associates in the videos measure poorly in comparison with the top the commanders of yore. They are young boys who look weak and effeminate when compared to the foreign terrorists who held sway earlier.
Media is a very important aspect when dealing with foreign sponsored propaganda. It is important for media to highlight the dangerous design of the likes of Burhan Wani.
These boys should realise that if the security forces could neutralise the far stronger, better trained and committed terrorists, they stannd no chance whatsoever. Burhan Wani’s brother has already paid the price of associating with him with his life, how much more pain will he cause to his family is something that he has to decide.
The debate that Indian media is generating about Burhan and his associates representing a new face of terrorism in the Kashmir valley is totally off the mark. Security forces in Jammu and Kashmir are well in control of the situation. Both terrorism and infiltration are on the decline and the likes of Burhan cannot change the circumstances in their favour.
There is, nevertheless, a need to remain vigilant and counter all designs and methods that the enemy can come up with to keep its nefarious agenda alive,
Media is a very important aspect when dealing with foreign sponsored propaganda. It is important for media to highlight the dangerous design of the likes of Burhan Wani. It has to be ensure that misinformation is exposed and the actual situation is brought to light. To glorify criminals in the eyes of gullible youth does not serve the purpose of the nation. The government also needs to realise that the terrorist agenda is now on a different level and the time has come to apply a counter strategy that is more in tune with the times.Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
Did you know that there are nearly 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now? And 20 percent of all families in the United States do not have a single member that is employed. So how in the world can the government claim that the unemployment rate has "dropped" to "6.3 percent"? Well, it all comes down to how you define who is "unemployed". For example, last month the government moved another 988,000 Americans into the "not in the labor force" category. According to the government, at this moment there are 9.75 million Americans that are "unemployed" and there are 92.02 million Americans that are "not in the labor force" for a grand total of 101.77 million working age Americans that do not have a job. Back in April 2000, only 5.48 million Americans were unemployed and only 69.27 million Americans were "not in the labor force" for a grand total of 74.75 million Americans without a job. That means that the number of working age Americans without a job has risen by 27 million since the year 2000. Any way that you want to slice that, it is bad news.
Well, what about as a percentage of the population?
Has the percentage of working age Americans that have a job been increasing or decreasing?
As you can see from the chart posted below, the percentage of working age Americans with a job has been in a long-term downward trend. As the year 2000 began, we were sitting at 64.6 percent. By the time the great financial crisis of 2008 struck, we were hovering around 63 percent. During the last recession, we fell dramatically to under 59 percent and we have stayed there ever since...
And the numbers behind this chart also show that employment in America did not increase last month.
In March, 58.9 percent of all working age Americans had a job.
In April, 58.9 percent of all working age Americans had a job.
Things are not getting worse (at least for the moment), but things are also definitely not getting better.
The month that Barack Obama entered the White House, we were in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and only 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.
Since only 58.9 percent of all working age Americans have a job now, that means that the employment situation in America is still significantly worse than it was the day Barack Obama took office.
So don't let anyone fool you with talk of an "employment recovery". It simply is not happening. The official unemployment rate bears so little relation to economic reality at this point that it has essentially become meaningless.
Look, how in the world can we have an "unemployment rate" of just "6.3 percent" when 20 percent of all American families do n0t have a single member that is working?
Here is how that 20 percent figure was arrived at...
A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.
So if one out of every five families is completely unemployed, then why is the official government unemployment rate not up at Great Depression era levels?
Could it be that the government is manipulating the numbers to make them look much better than they actually are?
Why don't they just go ahead and get it over with? They can just define every American that is not working as "not in the labor force" and then we can have "0.0 percent unemployment". Then we can all have a giant party and celebrate how wonderful the U.S. economy is.
And don't be fooled by the "288,000 jobs" that were added to the U.S. economy last month. For workers under the age of 55, the number of jobs actually dropped by a whopping 259,000.
If we were using honest numbers, the official unemployment rate would look a lot scarier. John Williams of shadowstats.com has calculated that the unemployment rate should be about 23 percent. I don't think that is too far off.
Meanwhile, the quality of the jobs in our economy continues to go down. The House Ways and Means Committee says that seven out of every eight jobs that have been "added" to the economy under Barack Obama have been part-time jobs. But you can't raise a family or plan a career around a part-time job. To be honest, it is very hard for a single person to even survive on a part-time wage in this economic environment.
As the quality of our jobs goes down, so do our incomes. The median household income has declined for five years in a row, and the middle class is falling apart.
Without middle class incomes, you can't have a middle class. Considering what we have been watching happen, it should be no surprise that the homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest level in 19 years or that the number of Americans receiving money from the government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.
For many more statistics like this, please see my previous article entitled "17 Facts To Show To Anyone That Believes That The U.S. Economy Is Just Fine".
At a gut level, most Americans understand that things are much worse than they used to be.
The Pew Research Center recently asked people what "class" they consider themselves to be. The results were shocking.
Back in 2008, only 25 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be "lower middle class" or "poor".
Earlier this year, an astounding 40 percent of all Americans chose one of those designations.
We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline, and no amount of propaganda is going to change that.
But based on the "happy numbers" being trumpeted by the mainstream media, the Federal Reserve is slowly bringing their quantitative easing program to an end.
When quantitative easing is finally totally cut off, we shall see how the financial markets and the U.S. economy perform without artificial life support.
Personally, I don't think that it is going to be pretty.Once upon a time, Bitcoin was the beginning and the end of the cryptocurrency market. Today, while still the largest, Bitcoin is merely one of dozens of important coins and tokens. From Ethereum to Bitcoin Cash to Particl to SALT, the market is flooded with other blockchain-based projects.
Although many of these coins compete with each other in various ways, they are not all identical. Regarding privacy, they generally fall into two main categories: public and private. Public coins offer a degree of anonymity but focus on other areas. Others place privacy first and foremost.
Anonymity vs. Privacy
Before delving into the details of various cryptocurrencies, let's take a moment to consider how anonymity and privacy work in the blockchain world.
All blockchain-based cryptocurrencies offer some degree of anonymity for users because they allow users to operate under pseudonyms. However, anonymity and pseudonymity are not the same thing as privacy. Bitcoin transactions can be traced, as can those for many other coins and tokens that were not designed with privacy in mind. Addresses can be linked and transaction amounts can also be traced. If someone can reveal the true identity linked to an address, privacy totally disintegrates.
Indeed, the very nature of a public blockchain makes transactions traceable. All transactions that occur on an open blockchain can be viewed by any person that has access to the blockchain. The degree by which they are traceable depends on the cryptography employed by the project team. Public coins not focused on privacy tend to be linkable and traceable, while privacy coins use a variety of stealth tactics to break one or both of those characteristics.
Public Coins and Utility Tokens
True privacy comes with advanced cryptography and is why most of the cryptocurrencies in use today offer no privacy features beyond basic anonymity, or rather pseudonymity. They are happy being public, in the sense that traceable and linkable transactions on their blockchain doesn't affect the product, only possibly the end user.
Popular public cryptocurrencies and tokens include:
Bitcoin : The cryptocurrency that put cryptocurrency on the map. While Bitcoin offers anonymity, it does not offer much in the way of true privacy. Transactions are linkable and traceable by design.
: The cryptocurrency that put cryptocurrency on the map. While Bitcoin offers anonymity, it does not offer much in the way of true privacy. Transactions are linkable and traceable by design. Litecoin : Litecoin was created as a response to what some Bitcoin users perceived as unacceptably slow transaction speeds and storage problems. Compared to Bitcoin, Litecoin offers considerable improvement in transaction rates and storage efficiency. However, Litecoin does not offer any major privacy features that aren't available in Bitcoin, as privacy is not a design goal.
: Litecoin was created as a response to what some Bitcoin users perceived as unacceptably slow transaction speeds and storage problems. Compared to Bitcoin, Litecoin offers considerable improvement in transaction rates and storage efficiency. However, Litecoin does not offer any major privacy features that aren't available in Bitcoin, as privacy is not a design goal. Ethereum : Ethereum was conceived to extend blockchain use to areas beyond financial transactions. Ether is probably the most popular alternative to Bitcoin at the moment, but it does not offer any special privacy features at this time.
: Ethereum was conceived to extend blockchain use to areas beyond financial transactions. Ether is probably the most popular alternative to Bitcoin at the moment, but it does not offer any special privacy features at this time. Ripple : XRP is a token developed for use on the Ripple exchange, which also supports other cryptocurrencies. Ripple was premined and then XRP was given away for promotion, and because Ripple is designed to provide resiliency against attacks on the blockchain, XRP may become more popular as the threat of Bitcoin hacking increases. However, apart from resistance to hacking, XRP offers no special privacy features.
Private Cryptocurrencies
Alongside the projects described above, there are popular tokens designed to be private by default by hiding transaction details. These cryptocurrencies are still public in the sense that they have public open ledgers, but transaction information is obfuscated in varying degrees to protect the privacy of the end users. It is also important to point out that there is a difference between secrecy and privacy. Every human has the right to privacy and fighting for that right doesn't mean you have something to hide.
Popular private cryptocurrencies include:
Monero : Monero provides privacy at all times through two features: Ring Signatures and Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT). Ring Signatures make it difficult to trace the parties involved in a transaction because transaction signatures are shared by a large group of people; as a result, associating specific users with a transaction is very difficult. RingCT (which, technically speaking, is actually a special type of Ring Signature, rather than a distinct feature) provides additional privacy by obscuring transaction amounts.
: Monero provides privacy at all times through two features: Ring Signatures and Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT). Ring Signatures make it difficult to trace the parties involved in a transaction because transaction signatures are shared by a large group of people; as a result, associating specific users with a transaction is very difficult. RingCT (which, technically speaking, is actually a special type of Ring Signature, rather than a distinct feature) provides additional privacy by obscuring transaction amounts. Particl : PART is a token created by Particl for use on its privacy platform and decentralized marketplace (which also supports many popular cryptocurrencies). Particl is a utility token with extremely robust privacy in mind. Built on the latest version of Bitcoin, Particl enhances the protocol with Confidential Transactions (CT) and RingCT. Like Monero, transactions are untraceable and amounts are unlinkable. However, unlike Monero, Particl gives the privacy control back to the user. The PART token provides multiple layers of privacy protection as it can seamlessly switch between public and private while never leaving the owner's control and never compromising their right to privacy.
: PART is a token created by Particl for use on its privacy platform and decentralized marketplace (which also supports many popular cryptocurrencies). Particl is a utility token with extremely robust privacy in mind. Built on the latest version of Bitcoin, Particl enhances the protocol with Confidential Transactions (CT) and RingCT. Like Monero, transactions are untraceable and amounts are unlinkable. However, unlike Monero, Particl gives the privacy control back to the user. The PART token provides multiple layers of privacy protection as it can seamlessly switch between public and private while never leaving the owner's control and never compromising their right to privacy. Dash : One of the first privacy-focused cryptocurrencies to emerge, Dash (formerly Darkcoin) seeks to prevent transaction tracing through a technique called coin mixing. Coin mixing is a third-party technique that may optionally be used with public cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, to add some privacy, but Dash incorporates mixing by default. The major criticism of Dash from a privacy perspective is that it depends on "masternodes," which is not advanced cryptography, rather third-party mixers. If you don't trust the masternode operators or the central servers many reside on, it is difficult to feel confident in the privacy of Dash.
: One of the first privacy-focused cryptocurrencies to emerge, Dash (formerly Darkcoin) seeks to prevent transaction tracing through a technique called coin mixing. Coin mixing is a third-party technique that may optionally be used with public cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, to add some privacy, but Dash incorporates mixing by default. The major criticism of Dash from a privacy perspective is that it depends on "masternodes," which is not advanced cryptography, rather third-party mixers. If you don't trust the masternode operators or the central servers many reside on, it is difficult to feel confident in the privacy of Dash. Zcash : Zcash's privacy strategy is essentially to erase the "memory" - that is, the transaction history - of coins whenever a transaction occurs. Like Monero and Particl, by obfuscating transaction history, Zcash makes it impossible to trace transactions. ZEC uses an advance cryptographic technique called zk-SNARKs to make their coins private. And like Particl, Zcash is developing uses for its privacy beyond the currency.
Although cryptocurrencies are often associated in the popular imagination with privacy, in reality, most cryptocurrencies provide only basic levels of pseudonymity. Essentially, crypto-coins like Bitcoin offer the same level of privacy that you get if you buy something using cash in a store where no one recognizes you. In this scenario, your transactions are anonymous, but the transaction amounts can easily be traced. And if someone is able to determine your identity, all privacy quickly evaporates.
However, a handful of cryptocurrencies, such as Particl, fall into a different category. Designed to provide true privacy and not just anonymity, they include special features that make it effectively impossible to trace users' identities and, for some of the coins, the transaction amounts. While some of these private cryptocurrencies have trade -offs (like masternodes in the case of Dash) that make them less attractive from a privacy perspective, others achieve privacy in a fully decentralized way.
Disclaimer: Particl is a client of BTC Media, which owns Distributed.com.Antoine Pettis, 20, is charged with sexually assaulting a woman who will soon be 102.Pettis wasted no time addressing the cameras as the bailiff brought him into Milwaukee County intake court, smiling and saying "Y'all gonna make me a celebrity."The Milwaukee man is accused of raping a 101-year-old woman in her home September 1.According to court records, Pettis broke into the woman's home near 36th and Florist on early on September 1. The woman woke up with Pettis in her bedroom. After slapping her several times in the face, Pettis allegedly grabbed the victim's wrists and raped her.Authorities say for just the second time in state history, investigators used the DNA of a relative to find their suspect.The state crime lab used the DNA found on the victim's nightgown to narrow down the list of possible suspects.Milwaukee police say they had Pettis' DNA on file from a paternity case last year.When interviewed Friday, police say Pettis confessed to the crime."In light of the allegations in the criminal complaint in the case ending 5094, which are truly shocking, so I am going to set cash bail in that case in the amount requested by the state - $100,000 cash," the judge said.Pettis expressed disbelief and refuses to sign the bond agreement. If convicted on all charges, he faces a maximum sentence of 58 years in prison.An Economic Rationale for the African Scramble: The Commercial Transition and the Commodity Price Boom of 1845-1885
NBER Working Paper No. 21213
Issued in May 2015
NBER Program(s):Development of the American Economy, Development Economics
This is the first study to present a unified quantitative account of African commodity trade in the long 19th century from the zenith of the Atlantic slave trade (1790s) to the eve of World War II (1939). Drawing evidence from a new dataset on export and import prices, volumes, composition and net barter terms of trade for five African regions, we show that Sub-Saharan Africa experienced a terms of trade boom that was comparable to other parts of the ‘global periphery’ from the late 18th century up to the mid-1880s, with an exceptionally sharp price |
yards rushing and receiving.
"Football gave me a good lifestyle for me and my family," Garner said. "But I might end up paying a big price for it. Other people already have paid a big price for it. People ask me all the time if I would do it all over again if I knew more about concussions. I say yes, but I would do it as a defensive back because I wouldn't have taken so many hits."
MORE: Notorious career-ending injuries
Garner's youngest child is Charlie, his only son. He's 10, and Garner calls him "C4" because Garner, his father and grandfather all were named Charlie. C4 is already showing uncommon athletic ability. He dominates his age group in basketball.
He also excels in seven-on-seven flag football, but he does not participate in contact football. Did his father make that decision?
"No, it's his choice all the way," Garner said. "He's old enough to hear some of the things about concussions. Maybe when he gets into high school, he might want to play. I won't stop him and I'll support him.
"But I'll encourage him to play defensive back and do everything I can to keep him safe. But, if he doesn't want to play, that will be fine with me."
Pat Yasinskas is a freelance writer based in Tampa. He previously wrote for ESPN.com, The Charlotte Observer and The Tampa Tribune.It is a cool trick. By giving this size hint, it gives ts and us the chance to reserve the space for the extend calls in the loop. According to the documentation
size_hint() is primarily intended to be used for optimizations such as reserving space for the elements of the iterator, but must not be trusted to e.g. omit bounds checks in unsafe code. An incorrect implementation of size_hint() should not lead to memory safety violations.
Note that the creation of SizeHint is necessary because the extend call in for loop is made with a Some value ( Optional implements the Iterator trait), and the size_hint for a Some value is (1, Some(1)). That doesn't help with pre allocation.
But looking at the code for Vec, this will have no effect (neither in HashMap and VecDeque ). Others Extend implementations may be different.
The execution of ts.extend(SizeHint(lo, hi, marker::PhantomData)); does not trigger a resize, since next returns None. Maybe some one should write a patch.Tony Abbott says St Patrick's Day is the only good day to go green. Courtesy: Youtube/Liberal Party of Australia
THE Prime Minister’s latest YouTube update comes with relief to everyone sick of seeing him in a blue tie every single day, and great offence to the Irish.
Unable to attend St Patrick’s Day business lunches in Melbourne and Sydney today, the Prime Minister instead delivered a video message that Irish leaders have dubbed “patronising”.
Focusing on the Irish sense of humour and love of drinking rather than business prowess, which the lunches are held in honour of, Mr Abbott calls St Patrick’s Day “the one day of the year when it’s good to be green”.
“As you can see I’ve got my green tie on for the occasion,” he says.
“The pubs and clubs homes and halls Australian will celebrate this day for the Irish. It’s a great day for the Irish, and for the English the Vietnamese the Cambodians, and everyone else who cares to come to a party.”
An Irish business leader told the Irish Timesthe community was disappointed by the clip.
“I would have hoped for a more business-focused message in a video that was designed for business functions,” he said.
“There are so many good stories of Irish people in business in Australia, Mr Abbott’s lack of awareness of any of that is astonishing.”
The video, supplied to the Irish Australian Chamber of Commerce, will not be played at either of the events it was intended for.
Mr Abbott ended the clip apologising he “can’t be there to share a Guinness or two, or maybe even three”.Abortion advocate David Boonin is more honest than some in his movement.
In his book “A Defense of Abortion,” the professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder admitted the reality of his position as he looked at an ultrasound photo of his unborn son.
Boonin wrote in the introduction:
In the top drawer of my desk, I keep [a picture of my son]. This picture was taken on September 7, 1993, 24 weeks before he was born. The sonogram image is murky, but it reveals clear enough a small head tilted back slightly, and an arm raised up and bent, with the hand pointing back toward the face and the thumb extended out toward the mouth. There is no doubt in my mind that this picture, too, shows [my son] at a very early stage in his physical development. And there is no question that the position I defend in this book entails that it would have been morally permissible to end his life at this point.
Pro-life writer Sarah Terzo pointed out how Boonin’s honest, yet disturbing position shows a “shocking disregard” for the life of his own son. Terzo wrote:
It is remarkable that Boonin could write an entire book defending something that he concedes could’ve taken the life of his own child. Somehow, the ultrasound picture of his own baby doesn’t sway him. Instead, he defends putting to death babies at the same age as his child in the picture. He shows a shocking disregard for life as he accepts that someone could have chosen to end the life of his son — and he is perfectly ok with that. Boonin’s position clearly shows the moral bankruptcy of the pro-choice stand. The belief that life is expendable and can be destroyed for another person’s convenience is the crux of the pro-choice position, whether pro-choice activists admit it or not. Like nothing else, reading this kind of admission helps pro-lifers realize we are truly standing against an evil ideology.
Boonin acknowledged in his book that unborn babies are human beings when he wrote: “Perhaps the most straightforward relation between you and me on the one hand and every human fetus on the other is this: All are living members of the same species, Homo sapiens. A human fetus after all is simply a human being at a very early stage in his or her development.”
Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter. Follow @LifeNewsHQ
At 24 weeks, his son would have been viable outside the womb. Babies at that stage have all of their organs in place. They can react to music, feel pain and probably even dream.
Yet, Boonin supports killing them anyway in an argument that would allow even his unborn son to be killed. As Terzo wrote, Boonin’s honesty sheds light on the brutal reality of abortion — a reality that has changed many people’s minds about the value of every human life.Maxim Shipenkov/Reuters Russia and North Korea keep getting closer.
The two nations will set up a bilateral business council, which will "improve the interaction of North Korean and Russian business communities," the vice president of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Vladimir Strashko said at a conference chaired by the head of Russia's Ministry for the Development of the Far East, according to RIA Novosti.
They "will create the Business Council for the most comfortable collaboration and cooperation of the North Korean and Russian business communities as early as next week," Strashko said.
North Korea and Russia reportedly "achieved results in extremely complicated bilateral issues": North Korea has begun to issue multi-entry visas to Russian citizens, the first round of ruble settlements have been done, and negotiations are underway on the North Korean government's formation of a special body to supervise joint projects with Russia, according to RIA Novosti.
The big takeaway here is that Russia and North Korea are increasingly strengthening their relationship.
Last week, Russia's Ministry for the Development of the Far East announced that Russian businesses doing trade through North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank could make payments in rubles. And before that back in October, the ministry announced that Russia was looking to expand economic changes with the hermit nation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, with North Korea's new Ambassador Kim Hyun-joon at a ceremony to hand over credentials at the Kremlin in Moscow in November. REUTERS/Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin And even before all of this, the two countries already had a rather unique relationship: North Korea outsources its labor force to work in Siberia in an effort to generate hard currency, and the country's military uses Soviet-era goods (for example: the hermit nation's submarine fleet consists of "largely obsolete Soviet-era" vessels.) The two countries are also boosting military ties.
Basically, the new "bilateral business council" venture is another step in North Korea and Russia's quiet, strategic diversification away from the West.Professor Shanthu Shantharam recently wrote a response to Viva Kermani’s well thought out article about injecting some honesty into the debate about genetically modified (GM) food and crops. Both pieces appeared the Indian publication Swarajya.
Shantharam’s response is typical of what we have come to expect from him: a mixture of abuse, personal attacks and gross misrepresentation of both issues and facts.
He says of Kermani’s piece:
The article seems to be borrowed from the manifesto of the global anti-GM propaganda machinery that has been in vogue for as long as the GM crops have been around.
It is highly convenient that he chooses to ignore the agritech cartel’s substantial army of public relations agencies, politicians, scientists and media figures who engage in pseudo-science to promote GM, misrepresent scientific findings, carry out well-planned strategies to attack scientists whose findings are not to the liking of the industry and who produce smear-pieces on prominent figures (see ‘Inside the Church of the Pro-GMO Activist‘). The industry has rolled-out what has become a very transparent playbook to depict those who express concern about GM as ideologues, ignorant and anti-science.
At the same time, it tries to portray critics as being authoritarian, elitist and undemocratic. This from an industry run by privileged multi-millionaire white men who belong to Fortune 500 companies. A taxpayer-subsidised industry driven by self-interest, profit and personal gain. An industry that uses well-paid figures and career scientists (like Shantharam who makes a living outside of India in a prestigious US university) to do its bidding in the media. And an industry that hides its corporate science behind the guise of proprietary and intellectual knowledge, while setting out to undermine democratic processes.
Whether it is the Science Media Centre in the UK, Jon Entine, Kevin Folta, Tony Trewavas, Bruce Chassey or any other number of individuals or institutions, the façade of independence has been peeled away and their links to the GMO agritech sector and/or fundamentalist right-wing neoliberal lobby groups exposed.
Shantharam claims that GMOs are safe as determined by all regulatory agencies in charge of assessing the safety of food. He says the safety of GMOs have also been vouched for by leading scientific organisations. The implication being that there is an overwhelming consensus on GM among respected scientific bodies.
A September 2014 report by Food & Water Watch goes to great lengths to show the backing that Shantharam claims exists only in his mind. He should read the report, which concludes there is no consensus on safety among institutions and independent scientists, nor within the scientific literature.
Moreover, Shantharam seems to assume supposedly independent, evidence-based, public watch dogs are actually doing their job to protect the public. He has nothing to say on how the agritech/agribusiness cartel has written the rules on intellectual property rights and trade rules, has been the guiding hand behind the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture in India and has co-opted, colluded with and infiltrated public bodies across the globe, from the UK, India and the EU to the US and the WTO.
Like all good neoliberal/agritech business apologists, he talks much about democracy and choice while saying nothing about how agritech corporations have subverted both, including the restriction of cotton seed options in India and Monsanto’s illegal entry into the Indian market.
The ‘free’ market and choice exist only in the warped delusions of neoliberal ideologues like Shantharam.
More specifically, in trying to promote the myth that GMOs are equivalent to conventional breeding, Shantharam says:
Kermani must realise that in the 10,000 year history of human effort to grow food, people have artificially modified all that was growing wildly to adapt them to their needs. Therefore, there is nothing natural about agriculture.
Again, this is another industry myth designed to be repeated at every available opportunity in the hope that if said often enough it will become accepted public ‘knowledge’. There is enough evidence (see this as well) to show that GMOs are not substantially equivalent to conventionally bred crops or food derived from them. Substantial equivalence was an industry ploy designed to avoid proper testing and regulation of GM.
According to Shantharam, GM crops are specially tested in accordance with international food safety standards prescribed by the Codex Alimentarius commission where global scientific experts meet to develop global standards for food safety testing. This is simply not true.
Steven Druker has demonstrated that such claims are false:
It’s evident that the system for regulating GE foods has been, and remains, markedly defective worldwide and that a large number of these products have entered the market absent the kind of safety testing that has been called for by the experts….
Despite saying, “Scientific literature is awash with thousands of high-class, peer-reviewed literature that testifies to the fact that GM crops are substantially equivalent to their non-GM counterparts, and therefore, they do not present any new unique safety concerns,” Shantharam cites no sources. Or perhaps he is relying on big list studies like Nicolia, which show nothing of the sort in terms of saftey.
He also argues that GM crops are being cultivated in almost 30 countries for the past 20 years without a single proven instance of any harm to any human or animal being. Where is his evidence? Can he show the data from any studies to support this claim? It is nothing but PR. And bad PR at that. (see section three of this report).
Shantharam says:
Kermani must read the scientific opinions of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to ascertain the safety of all GM crops that it has reviewed, and also two gigantic reports of GM safety research funded by the EU for more than 25 years. It is the politics of GM crops in the EU that completely ignores its own funded research reports.
Of course, we cannot say for sure to which reports he refers to as, again, he cites no sources. Perhaps he means the discredited ‘A decade of EU-funded GMO Research‘ or maybe GRACE, which is also seriously wanting.
He then says:
That the agricultural industry has saved more lives than all pharma industries put together can be asserted by a simple fact that the green revolution saved millions from starvation and death in the middle of the last century. GM crops are being cultivated in almost 30 countries for the past 20 years without a single proven instance of any harm to any human or animal being. How much more proof does one need of its safety?
Again, where is the data to support his claims? Perhaps he should read Raj Patel’s piece before making baseless claims about the green revolution. And maybe he should work his way through Rosemary Mason’s fully-referenced work to understand how agrochemicals are a major contributor to spiralling rates of illness and disease.
And when he is finished there, he might want to look at how the green revolution he cherishes so much and the geo-politicised, globalised system of food production it is wedded to is leading to the worldwide eradication of the small farm (the bedrock of complex cropping systems and sustainable, nutritional food production), bad food, poor health, rigged trade, environmental devastation, mono-cropping and diminished food and diet diversity, the destruction of rural communities, ecocide, degraded soil, water scarcity and drought, destructive and inappropriate models of development and farmers who live a knife-edge existence and for whom debt has become a fact of life.
Shantharam attacks Kermani for advocating organic farming, something he says has led and would lead again to food scarcity and starvation. Perhaps it is too much to expect Shantharam – who is after all only a microbiologist – to grasp historical and more recent contexts that have led to starvation, food deficit areas and food insecurity. He promotes the myth that a lack of food productivity led to famines or has led to present-day food insecurity. Maybe Shantharam should read academics who actually specialise in this area, which he does not.
While he might think a science PhD qualifies him to speak authoritatively on issues beyond his limited realm of expertise, Shantharam is not an economist, political scientist, trade policy analyst or historian, nor does he possess expertise in any other number of disciplines that would help him to develop a deeper understanding of development issues, history, hunger, malnutrition, poverty and sustainable, productive farming. His only concern is to lobby relentlessly on behalf of his corporate masters for a bogus GM techo-fix.
We just have to look at the outcome of GM technology since GM crops were commercialised over 20 years ago. Has it reduced pesticides use? No. Has it increased yields? No. Have companies who control the technology and its associated proprietary inputs (e.g. Roundup/glyphosate) made a financial killing? Yes (see this, this and this).
Despite Shantharms’s propaganda about the successes of Bt cotton in India, he might also want to look at how when his cherry-picked data and analysis of the story of GM cotton in India is put to one side, Bt cotton has been a failure and is a major contributory factor in farmer distress and suicide.
Monsanto has sucked over $900 million from Indian farmers for a failed technology and has done so illegally. By way of contrast, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant brought in $13.4 million in 2014 alone, according to Bloomberg. Yet, Shantharam still tries to spin the message of GM cotton success while poor farmers in India are under pressure from seed company agents and a pay a high financial and social cost.
While lobbying for GM he seeks to denigrate not only critics but genuine solutions. And regardless of Shantharam implying that GM will not be the only route to feeding the world, the very logic of capitalism is to capture markets and destroy competition (by any foul mean possible ) and to impose a certain model of agriculture on the world.
It is a capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India), whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable their model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill it seeks to impose.
Of course, much of this is being aided and forced through by directives from the likes of the World Bank with its ‘grow’ campaign or ‘enabling the business of agriculture’.
As a microbiologist, Shantharam seems oblivious to the reality of how the world actually functions. In his desperation, he resorts to smears and personal insults. Those who express valid concerns about GM are not to be so easily dismissed as ’ignoramuses’, ‘leftists’ or ‘anti-GM’. They are pro-democracy, pro-transparency and anti-corruption. People are demanding transparency, genuine independent testing and genuine independent evaluations of the health, social, economic and environmental impacts of GM. They also require fair and open debate.
Instead, what we get from Shantharam is industry-inspired dogma and spin underpinned by his usual pomposity that reaches its zenith by labelling anyone who questions his pseudo-facts, corporate science and PR clichés as “ignoramuses.”
When you are part of a problem and fuel and benefit from it, you will do your best to attack and denigrate anything or anyone that challenges your interests. It’s the usual case of a pro-GMO scientist-cum-lobbyist being blinded by technology and wedded to ideology.Pax Dickinson has been forced to resign as chief technology officer at Business Insider following an online firestorm over his long history of controversial tweets, according to a source who has been in contact with him. Dickinson got in hot water yesterday over his most recent string of tweets about feminism, misogyny, and women in tech. A look at his tweets from over the years uncovered many more instances of Dickinson bashing feminists, gays, and the poor, among others. An e-mail seeking comment from Dickinson was not immediately returned.
Update: Business Insider released the following statement:
A Business Insider executive has made some comments on Twitter that do not reflect our values and have no place at our company. The executive has left the company, effective immediately. Business Insider’s team is composed of more than 100 talented men and women of many backgrounds, and we highly value this diversity.
Betabeat notes that Dickinson is “still everything that’s wrong with tech.”Most of the graph was based on analyses of tree rings and other “proxy” records like ice cores and lake sediments. These indirect measurements indicated that temperatures declined in the middle of the millennium and then rose in the first half of the 20th century, which jibes with other records. But the tree-ring analyses don’t reveal a sharp warming in the late 20th century — in fact, they show a decline in temperatures, contradicting what has been directly measured with thermometers.
Because they considered that recent decline to be spurious, Dr. Jones and his colleagues removed it from part of the graph and used direct thermometer readings instead. In a statement last week, Dr. Jones said there was nothing nefarious in what they had done, because the problems with the tree-ring data had been openly identified earlier and were known to experts.
But the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom.
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The story behind that graph certainly didn’t show that global warming was a hoax or a fraud, as some skeptics proclaimed, but it did illustrate another of their arguments: that the evidence for global warming is not as unequivocal as many scientists claim. (Go to nytimes.com/tierneylab for details.)
In fact, one skeptic raised this very issue about tree-ring data in a comment posted in 2004 on RealClimate, the blog operated by climate scientists. The comment, which questioned the propriety of “grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record,” immediately drew a sharp retort on the blog from Michael Mann, an expert at Penn State University:
“No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto’ any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum.”
Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word. But I don’t see why the question was dismissed so readily, with the implication that only a tool of the fossil-fuel industry would raise it.
Contempt for critics is evident over and over again in the hacked e-mail messages, as if the scientists were a priesthood protecting the temple from barbarians. Yes, some of the skeptics have political agendas, but so do some of the scientists. Sure, the skeptics can be cranks and pests, but they have identified genuine problems in the historical reconstructions of climate, as in the debate they inspired about the “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past millennium.
It is not unreasonable to give outsiders a look at the historical readings and the adjustments made by experts like Harry. How exactly were the readings converted into what the English scientists describe as “quality controlled and homogenised” data?
Trying to prevent skeptics from seeing the raw data was always a questionable strategy, scientifically. Now it looks like dubious public relations, too.
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In response to the furor over the climate e-mail messages, there will be more attention than ever paid to those British temperature records, and any inconsistencies or gaps will seem more suspicious simply because the researchers were so determined not to reveal them. Skeptical bloggers are already dissecting Harry’s work. As they relentlessly pore over other data, the British scientists will feel Harry’s pain:
Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight.In America, when you attempt to buy government favors, it’s called lobbying.
When it came to the pharmaceutical industry, it worked like this: newly approved FDA drugs were over here. Potential users of the drug were over there. In between? Bureaucrats, medical boards, and elected officials whose votes could potentially be swayed — for a substantial donation, of course — if you knew people who knew people.
In the early 90s, the painkiller industry was stagnant, as it had been in the 80s, as it had been in the 70s. There wasn’t a whole lot of money to be made producing opioid painkillers since they were primarily used to treat cancer patients and people just out of surgery. And, well, to be frank, only so many people get cancer, and only so many people have surgery.
Sure, opioids made a profit for the pharmaceutical industry, but in limited quantities due to a limited demand.
The solution? Simple. Manufacture a demand. Establish not only a new system that gives doctors more freedom to prescribe narcotics for non-postoperative and non-malignant pain, but create an environment that actually demands it. Instead of fighting a losing battle against the existing medical framework, create an entirely new one — one that promotes opioid and opiate painkillers for everyday aches and pains — and work from within it.
To understand just how the American medical system became corrupted in the 2000s, you have to understand the role of Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the most powerful accreditation institution in the world.
The Joint Commission is the gatekeeper. They’re the last line of defense between the patients over here and the drugs over there. The Joint Commission is a nonprofit organization based out of a Chicago suburb, charged with setting the standards of care for hospitals in this country and accrediting more than 20,000 facilities in all but four states. They’re the ones tasked with inspecting hospitals and ensuring adequate care is being given and standards are being met. They also issue directives in care.
In 2001, the pharmaceutical lobby spent just under $100 million in lobbying efforts. It paid off. The Joint Commission promptly issued a new directive to its 20,000+ hospitals across the country:
It was time to start treating pain.
And who did the Joint Commission bring in to teach the hospitals how to treat the pain?
Purdue Pharma.
According to the United States General Accounting Office’s report to Congressional Request in December, 2003, the Joint Commission allowed Purdue Pharma to fund the “pain management educational courses” that taught the new standard of care for treating pain to JCAHO hospitals and facilities. And despite being cited twice by FDA for OxyContin advertisements in medical journals that violated the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act, Purdue was allowed to disperse materials to educate doctors on pain management.
With access to America’s hospitals, Purdue then began funding more than 20,000 pain-related “educational programs” through financial grants and direct sponsorships. They used these grants to provide presentations and demonstrations to entire hospital staffs and present at state and local medical conferences, providing doctors with continuing medical education (CME) units.
With pain management now mandated by the Joint Commission, Purdue began funding groups such as the American Chronic Pain Association (ACPA) and the American Pain Society (APS). These vocal groups began demanding doctors start taking pain management seriously, bringing their message everywhere from state legislatures to medical conferences.
Organizations funded by the pharmaceutical industry were created that rated doctors based on their willingness to treat pain and encouraged many family practitioners to begin prescribing outside of their normal scope of practice. The local family doctor suddenly felt pressure to prescribe powerful narcotics he or she might not have fully understood, or else risk a scathing review from a group like the American Pain Society that could irreparably harm his or her practice.
To ensure legal protection for prescribers, pharmaceutical companies began lobbying state legislatures who, with no medical background, began passing laws protecting doctors from malpractice claims for overprescribing.
With the Joint Commission and state legislatures having opened their doors, Purdue Pharma set its sights on the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). According to an investigation by John Fauber of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the FSMB accepted a $100,000 donation from Purdue for “printing and distribution” of pamphlets explaining safe use and prescribing of opioid medications. Presumably, in color.
Coincidentally, while it accepted $100,000 from Purdue, the FSMB began calling for doctors to be punished for not adequately treating pain.
The system was collapsed and the floodgates were opened. With the channels flowing so freely, Purdue began focusing on the last line of defense for the American public: the doctors.
If Americans were going to demand opioid painkillers, Purdue was going to be the one to supply it.There are signs of it everywhere, if you look closely. A streaming-video service that many older Internet users have probably never heard of sells for $1 billion. Facebook buys WhatsApp for a mind-boggling $19 billion. And a YouTube video creator with a ridiculous name makes an estimated $7.5 million per year and has close to 40 million subscribers.
In a nutshell, the media world as we know it (or used to know it) is in a state of flux unlike anything we’ve seen before—and that includes the invention of television itself. Many mainstream media companies, meanwhile, are still trying to come to grips with the concept of “cord cutting,” which is a little like worrying about a flat tire on your bicycle when you are stuck in the middle of a 12-lane highway.
The media economy used to be all about monetizing a handful of content channels, which were controlled by a handful of major media platforms like TV networks and newspapers. Now, the economy has shifted from being supply-based to being demand-based, and attention is the main currency. Internet users spend that currency in many different ways, and digital-only platforms like Facebook and YouTube (and Twitch and SnapChat) are the ones best equipped to monetize it.
David Pakman, former CEO of eMusic and now a partner with venture capital firm Venrock, did a good job of sketching out the shifting media landscape in a recent piece he published on Medium, in which he took a look at where Internet and mobile users, and particularly millennials, are spending their attention.
The macro shifts that Pakman is talking about have been described before, by people like Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker in her annual Internet Trends presentation, and in reports like the ones the Pew Center releases from time to time about the state of the media industry. Millennial users are spending a growing amount of their time on mobile devices, and vanishingly small amounts of their attention on traditional media sources like TV and newspapers.
So where is all of that millennial attention going? A huge proportion of it is being devoted to apps, Pakman says, with gaming and a variety of social networks taking up the majority of that time. Facebook dominates this new media landscape, not just because it has a billion users who spend an average of 40 minutes a day on the platform, but because it also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. The top four most popular iOS apps belong to Facebook.
Facebook’s dominance, and the control this gives the platform over traditional media companies is a big part of the attention shift of the past decade. But there is much more going on than just that. Tens of millions of people spend hours watching streaming e-sports through the Twitch service (which Amazon bought for $1 billion last year) or through YouTube, and millions more watch videos by YouTube creators like PewDiePie, a Swedish man who got 4 billion views last year.
Even that just scratches the surface of what has been happening with digital content, thanks to platforms like YouTube, Twitch, SnapChat and Instagram. There are streaming video creators who routinely draw more viewers than the NBA finals or the World Series, Pakman says, but these new forms of entertainment tend to get surprisingly little attention from the mainstream media.
“The audience sizes being drawn to these new platforms are massively dwarfing audience sizes of traditional media properties. You wouldn’t know that from reading the ‘media’ sections of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, who still produce thousands of stories discussing the rise and fall of cable TV programs… yet they comfortably ignore YouTube celebrities, Viners and Twitch broadcasters with much larger audiences.”
As Pakman points out, it’s also somewhat surprising that “none of the traditional media companies have invested in, built or acquired any of the hundreds of global properties which have hoovered our attention away from their legacy properties.” Why didn’t a TV network or mainstream media entity acquire Twitch, which pulls in a million simultaneous viewers on an average day? Why wouldn’t someone have bought or invested in Vine or Periscope or SnapChat? For that matter, why didn’t a media company buy Minecraft?
The underlying principle is simple: Where the attention goes, the money will inevitably follow. And right now, the attention of a large chunk of the population is being diverted away from traditional content and information channels, and platforms like Facebook and Google are busy vacuuming it up. Many existing media and content companies face a future in which they are just suppliers to these platforms — or even worse, find themselves cut out of the attention economy altogether.Last autumn, VG and Dagbladet, two of Norway's most-read tabloid newspapers, began exploring the possibility of collaborating on fact-checking.
In December 2016, a small team of journalists, developers and designers from the two organisations started working on the project, called Faktisk. Two more organisations came on board this spring – NRK, Norway's public broadcaster, and TV 2, the largest commercial television broadcaster in the country.
Faktisk, which launched officially in July, has been set up as an editorially independent, non-profit organisation that fact-checks claims made in public debates and on social media. Its team of eight, led by editor-in-chief Kristoffer Egeberg, come from its four founding media companies, although anyone can apply to join.
Fact-checks are published on Faktisk's website, as well as through Facebook, Twitter and the Norwegian national news agency NTB, which enables newspapers to re-use them by embedding them on their own websites.
"It's important to not underestimate fake news but at the same time we also need to focus on what builds trust, and fact-checking is the kind of journalism that builds trust," Helje Solberg, chairman of Faktisk's board, and editor of VGTV, told Journalism.co.uk.
"Faktisk is run as an open-source software that allows unlimited access for reuse and distribution of its structure and its content."
On the Faktisk website, verified claims can be filtered by label, such as 'partially true' or 'completely wrong', by theme, or by the individual who has made a statement. Each article includes elements such as the context in which an assertion was made, the evidence and data that led to the conclusion, and a reaction to the debunk from the public figure who has made the claim.
A recent fact-check, which three Faktisk staff members worked on, looked at a claim by the Human Rights Service foundation in Norway that former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland had not paid any tax, deeming it 'completely wrong'.
Solberg pointed out it was "crucial" to produce a thorough analysis quickly after the assertion was made in a public debate, and that speed will be particularly important going into the upcoming parliamentary elections taking place in September.
However Faktisk has been "built to last" beyond the elections, and its founders have pledged financial support to the project.
So far, the initiative has received 10 million NOK (£975,000) in funding from VG, Dagbladet, NRK, TV 2 and a number of foundations, which will keep the project going for more than a year, said Solberg. The four organisations have also committed to support Faktisk further by contributing one million NOK (£97,500) annually from 2018, and they will be seeking additional external funding.
"We think it's more likely [Faktisk] will have a long life with a broad alliance behind it."
The four companies are competitors in Norway's media landscape, but they have been able to collaborate on a common issue by establishing a set of criteria. Faktisk is a "project of mutual benefit", which each founder has to contribute to with something distinctive, be it financial resources or certain skills, she added.
"The case for collaboration is stronger than ever – it takes a lot of resources to develop new products and penetrate new markets, and we're not able to do it alone or in every situation.
"But you need to have clear strategic goals and be able to adapt and adjust in the process, and especially in a collaborative project, you need to be transparent and honest about what's going on."
Faktisk is in the process of expanding its formats, having so far focused mostly on text. A video reporter is starting later this month, and the team is also looking into other ways to present their work in a visual way that will appeal to mobile audiences, such as including the fact-checks in VG's Snapchat Discover editions more often.
Another work in progress is coming up with a clear set of goals and metrics for measuring the impact of its fact-checks.
"This teamwork has been inspiring and we haven't faced any big challenges so far, but it's still early days.
"Our alliance highlights the fact that the challenges we are facing are so fundamental that we need to work together, and we are confident that we can do both: compete and collaborate."
Update 17/08: An earlier version of this article said the Faktisk team had initially worked from VG's offices in Oslo. They actually worked from an office in the centre of the city.
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2020 dollars) to make electric and gasoline equally attractive.
If battery costs fall to $100, as Tesla Founder Elon Musk has targeted, oil would have to average $90.”
The WSJ article presents the Covert, Greenstone and Knittel study graph demonstrating the superior cost performance of fossil fueled vehicles versus EVs based on battery cost and oil prices.
The study also demonstrates the very significant changes in battery costs and oil prices that would have to occur to change the clear advantage that fossil fueled vehicles enjoy.
The impact of lower EV subsidizes has a significant and dramatic negative outcome on sales resulting in greatly reduced purchase of EVs as documented in numerous articles.
In the case of China the EV purchase “speed bump” is quite significant and described as:
“According to UBS, sales growth of new-energy vehicles including pure electric cars and plug-in hybrid automobiles, are expected to slow to 20 per cent for the whole year in 2017, compared to the 63 per cent year-on-year increase recorded in 2016.”
“In China, policies always have a huge impact on the auto market,” said UBS analyst Hou Yankun. “As government subsidies drop, the market is losing a major driving force to spur the growth [of the electric-car segment].”
This cutting of EV subsidizes by Beijing with the resulting decrease in EV sales is yet another defeat for California Governor Brown who amazingly regards China as his partner in “leading” the fight against global climate change even though China is committed to building over 700 new coal plants in the next decade.
The financial viability of EV producers is also in question as noted in an article from business financial watch guard UBS.
Despite the many unanswered questions and thorny issues facing EVs the UK government has decided to throw caution and any pretense of rational thinking to the wind and mandate an end to the sale of all diesel and petrol cars by 2040.
Exactly how this UK government mandate is to be accomplished and how much it will cost is now the subject of many articles in the UK which are spelling out the enormous costs and complexity that such a mandate will create since the government announcement completely evaded and ignored these critical issues.
The Telegraph article lays out the massive increase in UK electric system loads of 30 GW per year this “mandate” will create and explores the power plant options available and required to meet this growth which it quantifies as costing about 200 billion BP.
The article also provides information clearly demonstrating how difficult and unprecedented this UK government mandate will be in trying to accomplish a more than 30 million vehicle transition from petrol and diesel vehicles to EVs.
Additionally the article shows the extremely limited options that are available for UK residents to select from regarding their “choice” of EVs.
In another article The Telegraph notes the huge infrastructure costs associated with eliminating petrol and diesel cars in favor of mandated use of EVs.
Regarding Tesla’s and the UK government “zero” emissions claim for EVs Bjorn Lomborg notes:
“Like other electric cars, it has “zero emissions” of air pollution and CO2. But this is only true of the car itself; the electricity powering it is often produced with coal, which means that the clean car is responsible for heavy air pollution. As green venture capitalist Vinod Khosla likes to point out, “electric cars are coal-powered cars”.
The people of the UK might be forgiven for their considerable skepticism of yet another clueless government mandate dictated by their arrogant and ignorant politicians given the debacle of the decade old UK government mandate requiring the sales of increased numbers of diesel vehicles to address climate change.
Government incentives provided to push the increased sale of diesels in the name of climate change have resulted in diesels becoming 36% of UK cars up from only 14% in 2001.
After providing government incentives encouraging the sales of diesels driven by claimed benefits for climate change the UK government will now impose new pollution taxes on diesel vehicles and ban diesels from traveling on roads during rush hour.
The proposed banning of petrol and diesel vehicles with mandated conversion to EVs along with new diesel vehicle pollution taxes and driving restrictions now proposed by the UK governments climate alarmist politicians clearly signals to the populace that these officials are truly a complete bunch of idiots.
As WUWT noted the emissions performance of diesels is terrible and does not significantly reduce CO2 but definitely increases other harmful pollutants which are negatively impacting cites all over the UK. and Europe.
Further the government mandated diesel emissions debacle is growing elsewhere in Europe with major announcements that all major car manufacturers in Germany have colluded in hiding flawed emissions performance of diesel cars whose sales they have been promoting in the name of helping climate change.
Through these absurd actions the UK and European governments have demonstrated that they are absolutely incompetent at defining and implementing policy regarding climate and energy issues and that the politicians in charge are distinguished by their ignorance, gullibility and climate alarmist stupidity.
These outcomes clearly support that efforts by governments in the UK and Europe to address the transportation energy sector energy and climate issues need to be immediately curtailed and new approaches devised to explore these areas that hopefully involve other than the demonstrated political incompetence present in these governments.
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RedditThe Romney campaign revealed Friday afternoon that Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, paid a 14.1 percent effective federal tax rate in 2011, paying $1.9 million in taxes on $13.7 million in income, much of it from investments. (That $13.7 million in income most likely puts him in the top 0.01 percent of earners, by the way.)
Where does that effective tax rate put him in the universe of taxpayers? The Romneys paid a higher effective tax rate than the average middle-income American, though a significantly lower rate than the average rich, or very rich, American.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the middle quintile of taxpayers – earning between $33,542 and $59,486 a year – had an effective direct federal tax rate of about 12 percent in 2011. The top 1 percent of earners, making more than $532,613 a year, paid a direct federal tax rate of about 22.7 percent. And the top 0.1 percent of earners, making more than $2,178,886 a year, paid a direct federal tax rate of about 21.4 percent.
(We’re just using income, employee-side payroll and estate taxes in this comparison. A fuller picture would include state and local, employer-side payroll and corporate taxes.)
Still, the Romneys revealed that they paid more taxes than they really owed, pushing their effective federal rate higher. The couple made more than $4 million in charitable donations in 2011, but claimed a deduction for only $2.25 million of those donations “to conform to the governor’s statement” that he “paid at least 13 percent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.”
In light of that, expect Mr. Romney to take some heat for this statement, which he made to ABC News in July: “ I don’t pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president. I’d think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.”To many, what the Carolina Panthers did after this year's draft was more exciting than what they did during it.
If receiver Keyarris Garrett and linebacker Jeremy Cash turn into mid-round talents, the jewels of the Panthers' undrafted free agent class will be Dave Gettleman's latest steals. First, though, is the matter of making the roster, one that already includes tall wideouts and the original Shaq Thompson, not just a "poor man's version" of the versatile linebacker.
That's why, before the Panthers kick off the first of their two-day rookie minicamp Friday, it's worth learning more about North Dakota State fullback/tight end Andrew Bonnet.
The Panthers don't have anyone like him. But they used to.
While Richie Brockel never developed into much of an offensive threat, he left training camp with a job in each of the past five Septembers. The Panthers don't have a strong incumbent in that fullback/tight end/H-back/core special teams role, which is why they used one of their 30 official pre-draft visits on Bonnet and then signed him as an undrafted free agent.
"I think teams value guys that do stuff like this,” he said Tuesday from his home in Council Bluffs, IA. "I just don't think there's a ton of guys out there that can do what I do."
College Stats Rec Yds Rec TD Rush Att Yds Rush TD Bonnet (N. Dakota St.) 56 574 8 8 38 0 Brockel (Boise St.) 32 293 8 4 8 2
A utility man doesn't get much pub, but Bonnet (pronounced bon-IT) is in a good spot. The defending NFC champs are currently taking applications for a gig that doesn't have many qualified candidates.
"They're hard to find. It's not easy because you've got to remember there aren't any fullbacks at the college level,” Panthers general manager Dave Gettleman said at February's combine. "It's kind of a lost-art, dying breed kind of thing. But for us, it's a piece that we like, and it gives us flexibility."
Granted, Gettleman was answering a question about fullbacks. But as he continued, the reasoning behind his proclivity for a fullback/tight end hybrid became clearer.
"The common threads of all (NFL) fullbacks right now is they all can catch. They give you that threat," he explained. "[Defenses] have to pay attention. Because on third-and-2, play action, bang, you're dropping the ball to him in the flat and the guy's running 7 yards for a first down. You move the sticks."
After redshirting his freshman year in Fargo, Bonnet turned a partial scholarship into a full ride by the start of his junior season. He played 55 games and won five Football Championship Series rings with the Bison, who put Bonnet in all sorts of spots.
They lined him up in the backfield, as a wing, in the slot and out wide. They used him as a lead blocker and in pass protection. They sent him on screen routes and down the field.NSC's Unit Based Virtual Training is a follow up to the company's earlier delivery to the British army, Joint Combat Operations Virtual Environment. Photo courtesy of NSC
Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Britain's Ministry of Defense has selected NSC to manufacture and deliver its Unit Based Virtual Training program to the country's army.
The program, also known as UBVT, is a successor to the company's Joint Combat Operations Virtual Environment program previously procured by the British army. The virtual training equipment has been used to prepare approximately 16,000 soldiers for service.
"Building on the success of the Op JCOVE program, UBVT will provide a highly-developed managed service solution incorporating the latest simulation and innovative technologies to bring new standards of best practice and coherence to the management of exercises and training objectives," NSC chief executive Jeremy Spurr said in a press release.
Once delivered, the training equipment will allow recruits to practice firing weapons, conduct tactical maneuvers, operate heavy vehicles, and prepare for missions. The system comes equipped with military simulation game Virtual Battlespace 3, which is designed to immerse soldiers in realistic terrains to engage virtual enemies.
The game is also used by NATO partners and the U.S. Marine Corps to train combat personnel.
"Innovative systems like UBVT will raise exercise start standards and enable more challenging training, ultimately enhancing a soldier's effectiveness on the battlefield," Maj. Simon Roberts added.
NSC's contract with the U.K. Ministry of Defense is valued at $5 million. The company expects the system to remain in service with the British army until at least 2020.It seems that Apple in China will not support any warranty maintenance or repairs for iPhone 5c and 5c units bought in Hong Kong.
An staff member in the company's Shanghai store explained that iPhone 5s sold in Hong Kong was the generic model, A1530, which was different from the A1528 model sold in the Chinese mainland. Therefore, iPhone 5s bought in Hong Kong will not enjoy free parts replacement or repair--a common maintenance practice for Apple products--even if the product is still under warranty, according to a NetEase report. The rule also applies to the maintenance of iPhone 5c for similar reasons.
Whether iPhone 5s and 5c models bought in Hong Kong will receive warranty support in China in future remains "unknown", according to Apple's Genius Bar staff and customer relies.
It is unlikely, however, that mainland consumers will stop purchasing iPhone 5s and 5c in Hong Kong due to the notable pricing disparity between the two markets. In Hong Kong, the iPhone 5s 16GB model is priced at only HK$5,588 (US$721), compared to the 5,288 yuan (US$864) price-tag in China, giving huge profits for parallel traders.
The gold-colored iPhone 5s is still sought after by Chinese consumers. In Hong Kong, some digital shops posted advertisements outside their shops, saying they will purchase gold-colored iPhone 5s 16G model for up to HK$8,800 ($1,135.2) per set from consumers.
The silver and black iPhone 5s are less popular. In fact, China Telecom in Beijing cut the retail prices of iPhone 5s 16G to 4,988 yuan (US$815.5) a set, 300 yuan (US$50) cheaper than the official price set by Apple. The pricecuts only apply to the silver and black iPhone 5s, while the gold-colored model remains unchanged.New York
The Ku Klux Klan is rebranding. It’s less lynchings and cross burning these days, more novelty kitchenware (fancy an ‘Original Boyz N the Hood’ mug?), family barbecues and children’s TV shows. The traditional dress code — white robes, hoods, cone hats — still applies, by and large, but the rest of the Klan is having a makeover. ‘White supremacy is the old Klan, this is the new Klan,’ says John Abarr, a KKK chapter head from Great Falls, Montana. ‘The KKK is for a strong America. We’re not about violence. We’re about being proud to be white.’
Abarr met last year with the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, and has revised admission procedures for his ‘Rocky Mountain Knights’ to embrace Jews, gays, Hispanics and even blacks. Other, more conservative ‘grand wizards’ are appalled, but it’s not just Abarr: other Klansmen are trying to move with the times too. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — one of the biggest of some 163 ‘klaverns’ around America — is led by Pastor Thomas Robb, another apostle of a new touchy-feely KKK. Robb is an old-guard Klansman in his racial views, but has radical ideas about updating the KKK’s image. He calls himself ‘director’ rather than ‘grand wizard’ and — with his blonde daughter — presents a weekly internet TV show, This is the Klan, in which they give their slant on the news. For the kids, there’s The Andrew Show, presented by Robb’s cute-looking pre-teen grandson. Clearly reading from a script and holding his pet pug, Andrew discusses such hot-button topics as the inquities of racial mixing in Disney cartoons and gay prom queens. Robb also hosts $500-a-head summer camps for white families where the children play on the ‘Kids’ Korner’ playground or sing white-power songs around the barbecue while the grown-ups listen to talks from far-right extremists from around the world.
In a similar vein to Pastor Robb is Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, another relatively big klavern. Like Robb he brandishes the Bible, quoting very selectively. But he is also on LinkedIn and Twitter, where he presents himself in purple robes and pointed hat. Ancona insists his ‘Christian white group’ doesn’t hate anyone but is a ‘fraternal organisation’ that ‘does good works’.
Ancona and Robb say the KKK — whose free speech rights have been constitutionally guaranteed since it was created by a group of ex-Confederate soldiers in 1865 — is no longer about hate but love. Old Klansmen were obsessed with white supremacy but today’s grand wizards insist they’re just fighting for white survival. It’s possibly a meaningless difference but it allows them to exploit fears about immigration and statistics which show that in 2012, for the first time in history, whites accounted for a minority of the babies born in America. But the people Klansmen seem to hate most now are each other. Think of the scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which Brian foolishly mistakes the lads from the People’s Front of Judea for their nemesis, the Judean People’s Front, and you have some idea how much the ‘hang ’em and flog ’em’ Loyal White Knights now hate the wussy Traditionalist Knights. The continual battle for the crown of true heirs of the KKK can become comically nasty. At a rally in Memphis, Tennessee, last year, about 75 Klansmen pitched up to protest against plans to rename three parks that honoured Confederate generals. A rival Klan group turned up to protest against the first Klansmen and their support for racial hatred. If that wasn’t farcical enough, this second group was accompanied by members of a local chapter of the notorious black street gang the Crips.
Klan watchers say all that niceness is just a ruse, the last gasp of a dying movement. Certainly, for some Klansmen old habits die hard. A Tennessee member has just pleaded guilty to planting a burning cross outside the trailer home of a mixed-race couple. In April a 73-year-old former KKK leader, Frazier Cross, shot dead three people at two Jewish community centres in Missouri (unknown to him, none were actually Jewish). Frank Ancona condemned it as an ‘act of hate’ and other grand wizards also tutted.
Without the great unifying force of anger and the excitement of violence, the Klan is falling apart. Marketeers might call race hate their ‘unique selling point’. Take that away and you are left with infighting and silly outfits, and soon afterwards, with any luck, the Klan will disappear entirely.After her son Nick had lost in torturous fashion yet again Wednesday, after she had been put through an emotional wringer with him, Norlaila Kyrgios leaned against a metal barrier in the front row of the makeshift Louis Armstrong Stadium at the United States Open.
She asked for someone to retrieve Nick’s smashed racket.
He had mangled it in frustration after dropping the third set of a 6-3, 1-6, 6-4, 6-1 loss to his Australian countryman John Millman.
Norlaila Kyrgios is accustomed to attending to Nick like this, picking up after him in every way imaginable. Early each morning, leading to this tournament, she had power-walked from her Manhattan hotel to a laundromat near the corner of 58th Street and Second Avenue, carrying a bundle of her son’s dirty tennis clothes.
This is the lot in life for the devoted mother, seen recently on a tennis broadcast urging her temperamental son to “just try.” The role of tour mother to such an immensely talented, frustrating athlete can be a great delight and a considerable burden.Customer, waiter burned inside Norfolk restaurant during fiery cooking demonstration Copyright by WAVY - All rights reserved Two people were burned Tuesday night at a Rajput Indian Cuisine in Norfolk after a fiery dinner stunt went wrong. [ + - ] Video
NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) - A fiery cooking stunt that left two people burned inside a restaurant is being investigated by the Norfolk Fire Marshal's Office.
Firefighters and medics got called to Rajput Indian Cuisine, W. 21st Street, around 6 p.m. Thursday.
A female customer and a male waiter were burned during a "cooking accident," according to Battalion Chief Joe Milligan.
Milligan said the female customer suffered "significant burns to her face and head."
According to a person inside the restaurant at the time of incident who wished to remain anonymous, the waiter set fire to a sizzling entre that flared up in the woman's face. Fire officials say the waiter was burned on both of his arms.
"That's pretty crazy. I wouldn't expect to hear anything like that coming from there actually," said Katrina Lyautey, who works nearby. "I don't know if it was something new they decided to try. They should have been a lot more careful with that for sure. Fire is no joke."
Witnesses say the female victim was shivering and getting help from other customers before medics arrived.
Longtime customers say they want the business to explain why the fire came so close to the customer in the first place.
"That's a terrible thing to happen, especially when she's probably just out trying to have a good night and unfortunately that did not go as planned," said Lyautey.
Employees at the Rajput Indian Cuisine did not want to comment on the incident. One employee said the owner is currently out of the country.An American flag snaps high above the belching stacks of the brewery, a red-brick and wrought-iron fortress in the historic Soulard neighborhood, where the air is tinged with the smell of yeast.
The Anheuser-Busch dynasty is so ingrained in the identity of St. Louis that people here talk about the Busch family as if they are both royalty and relatives, making references to “Gussie” (August A. Busch Jr.) and “Augie” (August A. Busch III).
In a city that does not do much bragging, the mighty brewery has long been a reason to boast.
“St. Louis has a terrible inferiority complex,” said Susan Manlin Katman, sitting in the shade at an outdoor cafe in the trendy Central West End neighborhood. “We’re not North or South, East or West. So we tend to dwell on what we’re lacking, instead of what we have.”
Downtown St. Louis has witnessed a striking resurgence in recent years, with the opening of stylish pubs and restaurants and the refurbishing of residential lofts. With its French and German influences, St. Louis has a rich cultural history and an architectural flourish. It has exulted in the glories of Cardinal baseball heroes, from Stan Musial to Albert Pujols. The city also claims Forest Park, an urban nature preserve near downtown that is bigger than Central Park.
But for all that, its national acclaim is tied mostly to the brewery — it brings the tourists to town, along with the Gateway Arch. Almost anywhere in the world that residents of St. Louis travel, they are asked about the King of Beers and, of course, the Clydesdales, the mascots of the brewery.
InBev has pledged not to shut down any of Anheuser-Busch’s 12 breweries in the United States. But many here still feel here as if a treasure is endangered.
Photo
As Opal Henderson, a 78-year-old auto salvage yard owner, put it, “Why can’t those foreigners just stay at home and leave us what we have?”
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Mayor Francis G. Slay has a different view. “One of my first goals,” he said in a statement, “will be to try to convince InBev, which loves to cut costs, to move to St. Louis, where pretty much everything is cheaper than in Belgium.”
That is not likely to happen. Among the 6,000 St. Louis-area workers employed at A-B, as it is known here, the worry is that the new owner will try to cut jobs or wages.
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Mr. Liszewski, who operates a machine that puts labels on bottles of Bud Light, earns $27 an hour. He is a blue-collar man in work boots who has been able to pay off his house and buy land in Southern Illinois where he can hunt for deer. “It’s not just been a good life,” he said. “It’s been an excellent life.”
At the St. Louis Galleria, Alexis Littlejohn, a bank worker, said she believed that the new owners think they have a way to squeeze more profits out of the brewery. “If it didn’t make economic sense,” she said, “they wouldn’t be doing it.”
In the bars around the brewery district, there is a mixture of anger and fear, even among those who do not work for Anheuser-Busch.
Loyalty runs deep for the brewery and its workers. If you order a beer at Crabby’s saloon, it had better be an Anheuser-Busch product. They do not carry anything else.
The owner, Stephanie Hafertebe, certainly does not stock any Stella Artois, a beer made by InBev.
“Not so many years ago, union workers would walk out of a place if you served anything that wasn’t Anheuser-Busch,” Ms. Hafertebe said.
A couple of patrons were shooting pool. A cocker spaniel was crawling around the floor. On the jukebox, Frank Sinatra crooned, “I get no kick from Champagne.”
Tom Lucas, a 51-year-old auto mechanic with oil-stained fingers, sat on a barstool and drew hard on a cigarette.
St. Louis is a place where people can still smoke in taverns. But everything else seems to be changing. The idea of the brewery belonging to foreigners seemed unfathomable to many. People like Mr. Lucas may have to get used to it. But he does not have to like it.
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“It stinks,” Mr. Lucas said. “Augie would be rolling in his grave if he knew about this.”Three years ago, philosopher Thomas Nagel published a book called Mind and Cosmos, for which he was immediately pilloried by mainstream intellectuals, and which The Guardian called the most despised science book of 2012. Psychologist Steven Pinker was among the intellectual coterie to criticize the work, taking to Twitter to lament "the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker." Nagel made several controversial claims in his 2012 book, including the claim that if natural selection cannot account for curious features of the universe such as consciousness, moral values, and the human capacity for rational inquiry, then there must be some other mechanism that allows for these capacities, some hidden laws or forces that move in the direction for an improved moral and cognitive capacity. He dubs his perspective natural teleology.
Natural teleology (NT), the view that nature unfolds in a certain direction, is not widely accepted explicitly, but it is possible to discern a tendency toward this conviction among mainstream intellectuals. Most often, the view held by these intellectuals is that that the current time in which we live is the best of all periods and that our planet will be even more hospitable to conscious beings like ourselves in the future, thanks to our increased rational and moral capacities. NT is exemplified in any number of major works, including The Expanding Circle (1981), The Moral Landscape (2010), The Rational Optimist (2010), The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), and The Moral Arc (2015). Rather than believe God's invisible hand is guiding the universe, proponents of NT think that when we crunch the numbers, we find that human beings are becoming more intelligent and more moral all the time.
Immediately, there arise questions of value and of fact regarding the NT worldview, as well as certain logical questions about what implications to draw. Regarding the latter, suppose it is the case that intellectual capacity, as measured by IQ or the equivalent, is increasing. (As far as we know, this is correct, and is a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect.) Does it follow that our faculty for abstract reasoning will make the world any more livable? And since abstract reasoning is different than concrete reasoning (think of the difference between reasoning about an immediate situation as opposed to a hypothetical situation), it is conceivable that our intelligence will make us overconfident about the intuitions we already have about the world.
The intellectuals who profess NT presume themselves to have already won on questions of fact. Pinker's work The Better Angels of Our Nature, endorsed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO and philanthropist Bill Gates, was perhaps the most instrumental in making NT as a worldview palatable. The book establishes—through a series of quite impressive charts and graphs, and a litany of data—that, slice it any way you like, violence just looks to be declining. The trend seems to hold across millennia, centuries, and even down to the decade. Yet not long after the 2010 publication of his work, Pinker was accused of manipulating the data. Some of the contrary evidence has come out but has not been seriously addressed.
Take this graph of Pinker's, for example, which purports to show the per capita decline in violence over the second half of the 20th century. The long-term trend is apparent: large spikes in the 40s and 50s followed by ever smaller spikes down to our current century. Erik Kain in Forbes, however, found that the data set looks considerably different when we exclude the bloody early 40s, that is, minus the five armed conflicts that occurred the first decade of the second half of the 20th century. Now, what had previously looked like a signal of significant decline in violence looks an awful lot like noise. Kain goes on to show that Pinker's focus on per capita deaths attributed to war and armed conflict ignores the fact that the number of armed conflicts in the world has actually been increasing, even if the number of deaths per capita has been decreasing. We can return to questions of logic, asking whether something equivalent to the Flynn Effect exists for morality (whether we now have an increased moral capacity), and if so, if it follows that this capacity has actually led to an overall decline in violence and harm to other people in the real world. This has yet to be borne out. What is true is that the number of deaths per capita has decreased. However, if we assume, with anthropologist Brian Ferguson, that war and violence are fundamentally means by which elites (and in our world, state powers), gain control over material and social resources, there cannot be any other conclusion than that war and violence from pervasive political and economic powers have increased as scientific and technological innovations have provided more efficient means to control resources. That elites have not been able to kill larger numbers of people in the process because populations have grown so large, or because it's not necessary in order to gain access to world resources, is sort of a happy accident.
Turning to questions of value: Even if we all agreed with the data and assumed that these proponents of NT have relied upon appropriate metrics, it would still remain an open question as to whether we ought to accept the status quo that has brought about such great and wonderful changes in science, technology, and moral respect, or if we should actively push against it. The NT intellectuals are equivocal on this point. On the one hand, they have to acknowledge that several of the changes to our intellectual and moral culture have been brought about by pressing against prevailing norms with rational inquiry and social democracy. These independent thinkers, nonviolent resistors, women suffragists, African American civil rights protesters, and others, some of whom we call heroes, are all responsible for bringing about the rights we enjoy today. This much has to be granted by the NT intellectuals.
On the other hand, the NT intellectuals would prefer a moratorium on some of these moral issues. Glancing at Pinker's Twitter feed, for example, there is a link that reads, "Stop obsessing about inequality. It's actually decreasing around the world." And this is in spite of the fact that if you read the article Pinker retweets, its author Marian Tupy, a senior policy analyst for the Cato Institute, actually acknowledges that in America, "the income gap between the top 1 percent and the rest has grown." Yet he, and one assumes Pinker also, would prefer you look at the bigger picture, as though a decrease in income inequality worldwide should be enough to comfort a poor American living in a country with widening inequality. Standing with Pinker is the author Michael Shermer, who has just written The Moral Arc (which he regards as a kind of sequel to Pinker's book), and who has written of what he calls the pervasive myths of income inequality. Shermer assures us in a recent article that the "American Dream of Income Equality Still Lives." The data show otherwise.
The new tool of the mainstream intellectuals is data-mining that reinforces the way things already are while privileging the many ways in which people have worked to make things the way they are. This is a natural teleology that views Nature's arc as bent toward truth and justice, without a god overseeing any of it. The belief in NT functions to justify the status quo, and is no less silly (or perhaps more so) than the argument of 18th century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who believed that our world is, in spite of all apparent evil, the best of all possible worlds. Not even Thomas Nagel, whose natural teleology intellectuals like Pinker and Shermer inadvertently ape, believes that the direction of the universe tends toward goodness. Nagel wrote in Mind and Cosmos that since "the emergence of value is the emergence of both good and evil, it is not a candidate for a purely benign teleological explanation: a tendency toward the good. In fact, no teleological principle tending toward the production of a single outcome seems suitable." Perhaps it would have been better if mainstream intellectuals spent less time excoriating Nagel and more time minding that they not make similar mistakes, or worse.
Billie Pritchett is a writer and English lecturer with interests in moral and political philosophy, philosophy of social science, and phenomenology. He maintains his own blog called si hoc legere scis… and is on Twitter via @b_pritchett.This is a great picture, shared by GoDCer Mike, showing Harry Atwood, taking off from the South Lawn of the White House. This photo was taken on July 14th, 1911. Atwood had traveled all the way from Boston, at the time, the longest distance ever traveled by airplane. He had only learned to fly three months prior.
Below is an article, published in the Washington Post the following day, commenting on his visit to the White House.
Sailing over trees and shrubbery with the easy grace of some great creature of the skies, Harry Atwood called upon President Taft in the executive’s back garden yesterday, and received from him the medal presented by the Aero Club of Washington for the completion of the flight from Boston to Washington. Atwood’s final feat, performed for an exclusive few who had gathered near the southern portico of the White House, brought congratulations from the President, the officers of the Aero Club, and the army aviators.
He descended on a long, grassy stretch that extends from the White House to the fountain. On either side weresolid lanes of trees and shrubbery, which ranged from 2- to 60 feet high. A false turn when he alighted would have sent the biplane crashing into the branches.
There were no false turns. The biplane ran up to the rear portico as lightly and easily as an automobile might, stopping within 10 feet of the macadamized roadway that girts the lawn. President Taft who had been watching intently, his eyes shaded by his hands, with a beaming smile welcomed the aviator, as the aircraft came lightly to earth.
…
The biplane stopped within 25 feet of the President. As Atwood sat, resting for a moment before leaving the machine, the spectators crowded around him, and with extended hands assured him that he had outrivaled the famous landing of Grahame-White, his only predecessor in the matter of aeroplane visits to the White House.
Among the first to reach him was his mother, who was escorted to the side of the machine by William F. Gude. Mrs. Atwood’s eyes were filled with tears as she embraced her son.Planets that pivot between different degrees of obliquity might be unexpected candidates for extraterrestrial life, according to researchers from the US. Kept in flux by the gravitational pull of nearby gas giants, these wobbling worlds periodically point their poles towards their host star, staving off a scenario where the exoplanet is frozen if it is at a considerable distance from its parent star.
Tilted shifts
In the past, researchers have detected Earth-sized exoplanets that have extremely inclined orbits, especially when compared with planets in our solar system. A combination of torque from the host star and the gravitational influence of a nearby gas giant causes the smaller exoplanets to wobble back and forth. These periodic shifts would drastically vary the axis of rotation of the exoplanet across geologically short timescales, and it was thought that such planets would be unsuitable for life to exist. Astrobiologists looking for habitable exoplanets study the region around a star in which terrestrial planets could support liquid water on their surfaces, known as the “habitability zone”, the size of which is usually determined by a number of variables such as the orbital radius, planetary mass and host-star brightness.
In the new work, a team led by John Armstrong from Weber State University studied whether such tilted worlds could also host life, thereby extending the habitable zone in such systems. The team simulated 17 hypothetical exoplanetary systems – each containing one Earth-like planet orbiting at 1 AU, and one or two gas giants.
Frozen worlds?
What the team’s simulations showed was that climate effects generated on these tilted planets might prevent them from being over-run by ice, even if those planets are somewhat far from their stars, falling outside of the normal habitable zone. Such a global-scale freezing scenario is normally thought to be assisted by the ice-albedo feedback, in which expanding, light-coloured glaciers increase the amount of heat reflected back to space, thereby bringing about further cooling.
“Rather than working against habitability, the rapid changes in the orientation of the planet could turn out to be a real boon sometimes,” says Armstrong. The team’s modelling showed that the |
this challenge, we provide a set of merchants and their corresponding new buyers acquired during the promotion on the "Double 11" day. Your task is to predict which new buyers for given merchants will become loyal customers in the future. In other words, you need to predict the probability that these new buyers would purchase items from the same merchants again within 6 months.
The competition consists of two stages:
In the first stage, a data set containing around 200k users is given for training, while the other of similar size for testing. Similar to other competitions, you may extract any features, then perform training with additional tools. You need to only submit the prediction results for evaluation.
In the second stage, th top 50 teams from the first stage will have the opportunity to work on a much larger data set on Alibaba's cloud platform. You will need to submit your code in JAVA, then the distributed computation will be handled by the cloud platform.
Important Dates:
April 1, 2015: Competition announcement
April 15, 2015: Competition begins
May 15, 2015, 23:59 UTC: First Stage Competition ends
May 20, 2015: Second Stage Competition begins
June 20, 2015, 23:59 UTC:Second Stage Competition ends
June 30, 2015: Final result announcement
Awards
First Stage
First Prize: 4,000USD
Second Prize: 3,000USD
Third Prize: 2,000USD
Second Stage
Only the top 50 teams at the first stage are qualified for the second stage.
First Prize: 6,000USD
Second Prize: 4,000USD
Third Prize: 2,000USD
The top 3 teams may present their solutions at the IJCAI workshop "Social Influence Analysis", with additional 3,000USD as registration and travelling allowance.
Extra Online Competition
The top 3 teams at the second stage will have the opportuntiy to deploy their algorithms on Tmall.com for the ''Double-11'' promotion, 2015. And the winner will be awarded by 50,000USD.
Remark1: The problem would be related but different from the first two competitions. Detail will be announced before September 2015.
Remark2: Participants at this stage would work onsite as interns for around two months. Besides the award, salary and housing allowances will be also provided.
For more information, please contact Alibaba Contest Organizer at this email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.BREAKING: Leftist Mob Shuts Down Milo Yannopoulos Speech at DePaul – ACTIVIST SWINGS AT MILO (VIDEO)
#BlackLivesMatter Mob Shuts Down Milo Yannopoulos Speech at DePaul University
Police and security sat back as the mob shut down the free speech event.
THE EVENT WAS CANCELLED!
CANCELLED: @BernieSanders supporters SHUT DOWN Milo (@Nero) event at DePaul with sit-in and threats of violence. pic.twitter.com/PiJhYkIhQv — ViveLaFrance (@vivelafra) May 24, 2016
THE LIVE STREAM IS HERE—
From the video: There is only one “World’s Most Fabulous Super-villain”, and he is at DePaul for One Night – LIVE! His Topic: Feminism is Cancer!
For all of the social justice warriors/feminists who have nothing better to do than talk about their feelings in their gender studies classes:
We will be providing safe spaces, coloring books/materials, pacifiers, and diapers for those who get too triggered at our event. DEAL WITH IT DARLINGS!
Hosted by The DePaul College Republicans, See you there!
There was a massive crowd lined up to get into the event Tuesday night.
But Black Lives Matter and Bernie Supporters shut down Milo’s speech on campus.
Right before Milo left the stage a Black Lives Matter activist threatened to punch him!
@Nero Milo leads entire crowd to DePaul University Prez's ofc to protest SJW fascists shutting down his show. https://t.co/p1CaPnuhSd — Laud Report (@laudreport) May 25, 2016
HERE’S VIDEO OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTER ACTIVIST TAKING A SWING AT MILO–
Milo asked the police if they were going to do anything after the threat but they ignored him.
** The crowd was even chanting “Do your job! Do your job!” at the police but they did nothing!
A protest walk took place after the event was canceled.
Milo led the protesters to the DePaul president’s house after the event was canceled!
More from the protest walk —Rossiya Segodnya photographer Andrei Stenin, who went missing in eastern Ukraine on August 5, has been arrested by the Ukrainian Security Service, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister said Tuesday.
KIEV, August 12 (RIA Novosti) – Rossiya Segodnya photographer Andrei Stenin, who went missing in eastern Ukraine on August 5, has been arrested by the Ukrainian Security Service, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister said Tuesday.
“He [Stenin] was arrested by our security services,” Anton Herashchenko, an aide to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, said in an interview with Baltkom radio. “We think that Andrei Stenin may be guilty of aiding terrorists.”
The advisor to the interior minister stressed, however, that he had no information on Stenin’s exact location at the moment.
The Rossiya Segodnya journalist went missing while on assignment in eastern Ukraine. An unnamed source told RIA Novosti that the photojournalist had been abducted by Ukrainian militia forces and was in the custody of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in the city of Zaporozhye. The SBU later denied the allegation.
On August 9, Rossiya Segodnya submitted a request to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry to take urgent measures to find Stenin. The ministry responded to the request three days later under heavy pressure from an OSCE representative for freedom of the press, saying it was looking into the case.
Stenin’s abduction is not the first incident of a media representative being detained, attacked or killed in the restive Ukrainian regions. In June, a cameraman for Russia’s Channel-1 television was fatally wounded in the stomach. Prior to the killing, a reporter and a sound engineer from Russia’s VGTRK media holding were killed in a mortar attack near Luhansk. Late May, Russian human rights activist Andrei Mironov and Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli died near the city of Slaviansk.
Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry urged the Kiev authorities to immediately take all measures necessary to locate and release Stenin, as well as to ensure safe working conditions for Russian and foreign media employees.
Please support Andrei Stenin’s release by sharing the hashtag #FreeAndrew in social networks. Andrei is a professional war photographer reporting from the most dangerous war zones in the world. You can view Andrei’s pictures from Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya here and his most recent shots from eastern Ukraine here.President Obama ’s fruitless three-year search for compromise with the Republicans ended in a thunderclap of a speech on Tuesday, as he denounced the party and its presidential candidates for cruelty and extremism. He accused his opponents of imposing on the country a “radical vision” that “is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity.”
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential front-runner, has embraced a House budget plan that is little more than “thinly veiled social Darwinism,” the president said, a “Trojan horse” disguised as deficit reduction that would hurt middle- and lower-income Americans.
“By gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training, research and development, our infrastructure — it is a prescription for decline,” he said, speaking to a group of Associated Press editors and reporters in Washington.
Mr. Obama has, in recent months, urged Republicans to put aside their destructive agenda. But, in this speech, he finally conceded that the party has demonstrated no interest in the values of compromise and realism. Even Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes in multiple budget deals, “could not get through a Republican primary today,” Mr. Obama said. While Democrats have repeatedly shown a willingness to cut entitlements and have agreed to trillions in domestic spending cuts, he said, Republicans won’t agree to any tax increases and, in fact, want to shower the rich with even more tax cuts.
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The speech was the first time that Mr. Obama linked Mr. Romney, by name, to his party’s dishonest budget and discredited trickle-down policies. As Mr. Obama pointed out, Mr. Romney described as “marvelous” a budget that would drastically cut student financial aid, medical research, Head Start classrooms and environmental protections. Mr. Obama further ridiculed the budget’s deficit-cutting goal as “laughable” because it refuses to acknowledge the need for new revenues.The Times is to cease publishing a satirical podcast, The Bugle, that ruthlessly mocked the paper's owners over the phone hacking scandal.
It attracted a growing audience over the summer as it directed withering comedic barbs at Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, along with other senior executives at News Corporation.
Andy Zaltzman, who stars in the weekly show with John Oliver, said he was informed on Tuesday that their efforts would not be supported by the paper next year.
In a statement, The Times did not explain the reason for the cancellation but said the show's final episode would be 30 December.
"It has been a pleasure to work with John and Andy and we wish them every success for the future," the statement read.
The show's producer, Chris Skinner, said the decision had been made for financial reasons and not because the comedians had attacked the boss.
"I think the show has felt a bit of a funny fit ever since the paywall was introduced," he said.
"It's not been a great year for the company, and I'm not surprised that they are cutting costs." He said the other regular podcast the paper produces, a soccer show, would continue.
Despite attracting hundreds of thousands of weekly downloads and an increasing number of US listeners, The Bugle never gained a permanent sponsor. "Listening figures are up, but media sales in the UK are down," he said.
The cancellation, announced yesterday on Twitter (see above), was announced just as James Murdoch became embroiled still further in the scandal.
It was revealed that he had not properly read a crucial 7 June 2008 email from the News of the World's editor, Colin Myler.
The show will lose its home in a studio at The Times's Wapping offices. But Zaltzman said it would continue, adding: "No idea where we'll end up, but I think a subscription model might work," he said. "We might indeed start raiding your wallet."
Source: New York TimesBreath of the Wild is an exciting game for speedrunning, inspiring attempts before the game was released and early world records. The game’s unique structure and pace is now bringing famous speedrunner Narcissa Wright out of retirement.
Narcissa Wright is a speedrunner best known for her work on games like Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker. In 2014, she completed Ocarina of Time in 18 minutes, ten seconds. It was a world record at the time and thought to be unbeatable, although many glitches since then have allowed other runs to surpass it.
In 2016, Wright’s life was full of change. She came out as a transgender woman and began to develop wrist injuries that led her to retire from full time speedrunning. Personal harassment lead her shut down her Twitch account temporarily as well. There are people who continue to intentionally misgender her or toss invectives her way even now. With the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of Wild, though, Wright intends to return to streaming and speedrunning, starting as soon as the game’s launch day.
Her initial plan is to explore the game slowly, enjoying the journey, and discovering a route through the game, a process that some speedrunners started before release.
“I want to explore the world and understand more about the structure of the game,” Wright told Kotaku. “I think that could lead into speedrunning.”
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Wright’s forays into previous Zelda titles were demanding. Speedrunners put untold hours into games, working hard to perfect tricks and explore every potential pathway to help them complete the game as fast as they could. The looser structure of Breath of the Wild has caught her interest.
“I think that whole shakeup is awesome, removing the linearity,” Wright said. “The fastest route will be relatively fast, and that doesn’t take away from the rest of the game.”
The first completed speedrun of the game clocked in at 3:39:39, and the game’s community Discord has been thrumming with puzzle skips and route experimentation. For Wright, the process will initially focus on discovery and less explicitly on competition and leaderboards.
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“I think I have what it takes to get a very good time,” Wright said.” But I don’t want to necessarily be playing purely out of competitive spirit.”
In spite of plans to return, Wright has concerns about her wrist injuries, which may limit how long she is able to stream the game.
“The wrist thing makes me nervous,” Wright said. “I think it could lead to me feeling incredibly depressed, if I’m not able to really play that much.”
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Still, the return to Zelda provides an opportunity to find something of a new beginning.
“In 2016, things were tough. I was lashing out sometimes,” Wright notes. “I just want to diffuse everything, bring back a more chill, comfortable stream and just have a wonderful time.”Example usage of json-rpc in Python for Monero
Monero is a secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency. For more information or questions, please go to getmonero.org and r/Monero, respectively.
The two main components of monero are simplewallet and bitmonerod. The first one is the wallet, as the name suggest. The second one is monero deamon, which is responsbile for interacting with monero blockchain.
Most important functions of Monero's simplewallet and bitmonreod can be executed by means of JavaScript Object Notation Remote Procedure Calls (json-rpc).
Using these procedures, other applications can be developed on top of the simplewallet and bitmonerod. For examples, a GUI wallet, an web applications allowing for accessing wallet balance online, and block explorer.
Since there seem to be no tutorials and/or examples of how to use json-rpc to interact with both bitmonerod and simplewallet, the following examples in Python were created. Hopefully, they will allow others to start developing some python programs on top of Monero.
simplewallet
The examples demonstrate how to call the most popular procedures that simplewallet exposes for other applications to use, such as:
getbalance
query_key
get_payments
getaddress
incoming_transfers
transfer
The basic documentaion of the procedures can be found here.
Prerequsits
Before executing this code make sure that simplewallet is running and listening for the incoming rpc calls. For example, you can run the simplewallet in rpc mode as follows:
/opt/bitmonero/simplewallet --wallet-file ~/wallet.bin --password <wallet_password> --rpc-bind-port 18082
The code was written, tested and executed on Ubuntu 15.10 with Python 3.4.3 and requires the Requests package.
Basic example 1: get wallet balance
import requests import json def main (): # simple wallet is running on the localhost and port of 18082 url = " http://localhost:18082/json_rpc " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} # simplewallet' procedure/method to call rpc_input = { " method " : " getbalance " } # add standard rpc values rpc_input.update({ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }) # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( url, data = json.dumps(rpc_input), headers = headers) # amounts in cryptonote are encoded in a way which is convenient # for a computer, not a user. Thus, its better need to recode them # to something user friendly, before displaying them. # # For examples: # 4760000000000 is 4.76 # 80000000000 is 0.08 # # In example 3 "Basic example 3: get incoming transfers" it is # shown how to convert cryptonote values to user friendly format. # pretty print json output print (json.dumps(response.json(), indent = 4 )) if __name__ == " __main__ " : main()
Generated output:
{ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 ", " result " : { " unlocked_balance " : 4760000000000, " balance " : 4760000000000 } }
Basic example 2: get a payment information having payment id
import requests import json def main (): # simple wallet is running on the localhost and port of 18082 url = " http://localhost:18082/json_rpc " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} # an example of a payment id payment_id = " 426870cb29c598e191184fa87003ca562d9e25f761ee9e520a888aec95195912 " # simplewallet' procedure/method to call rpc_input = { " method " : " get_payments ", " params " : { " payment_id " : payment_id} } # add standard rpc values rpc_input.update({ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }) # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( url, data = json.dumps(rpc_input), headers = headers) # pretty print json output print (json.dumps(response.json(), indent = 4 )) if __name__ == " __main__ " : main()
Generated output:
{ " result " : { " payments " : [ { " tx_hash " : " 66040ad29f0d780b4d47641a67f410c28cce575b5324c43b784bb376f4e30577 ", " amount " : 4800000000000, " block_height " : 795523, " payment_id " : " 426870cb29c598e191184fa87003ca562d9e25f761ee9e520a888aec95195912 ", " unlock_time " : 0 } ] }, " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }
Basic example 3: get incoming transfers
import requests import json def main (): # simple wallet is running on the localhost and port of 18082 url = " http://localhost:18082/json_rpc " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} # simplewallet' procedure/method to call rpc_input = { " method " : " incoming_transfers ", " params " : { " transfer_type " : " all " } } # add standard rpc values rpc_input.update({ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }) # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( url, data = json.dumps(rpc_input), headers = headers) # make json dict with response response_json = response.json() # amounts in cryptonote are encoded in a way which is convenient # for a computer, not a user. Thus, its better need to recode them # to something user friendly, before displaying them. # # For examples: # 4760000000000 is 4.76 # 80000000000 is 0.08 # if " result " in response_json: if " transfers " in response_json[ " result " ]: for transfer in response_json[ " result " ][ " transfers " ]: transfer[ " amount " ] = float (get_money( str (transfer[ " amount " ]))) # pretty print json output print (json.dumps(response_json, indent = 4 )) def get_money ( amount ): """ decode cryptonote amount format to user friendly format. Hope its correct. Based on C++ code: https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/blob/master/src/cryptonote_core/cryptonote_format_utils.cpp#L751 """ CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT = 12 s = amount if len (s) < CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT + 1 : # add some trailing zeros, if needed, to have constant width s ='0'* (CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT + 1 - len (s)) + s idx = len (s) - CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT s = s[ 0 :idx] + ". " + s[idx:] return s if __name__ == " __main__ " : main()
Generated output:
{ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " result " : { " transfers " : [ { " tx_hash " : " <66040ad29f0d780b4d47641a67f410c28cce575b5324c43b784bb376f4e30577> ", " tx_size " : 521, " spent " : true, " global_index " : 346865, " amount " : 0.8 }, { " tx_hash " : " <66040ad29f0d780b4d47641a67f410c28cce575b5324c43b784bb376f4e30577> ", " tx_size " : 521, " spent " : true, " global_index " : 177947, " amount " : 4.0 }, { " tx_hash " : " <79e7eb67b7022a21505fa034388b5e3b29e1ce639d6dec37347fefa612117ce9> ", " tx_size " : 562, " spent " : false, " global_index " : 165782, " amount " : 0.08 }, { " tx_hash " : " <79e7eb67b7022a21505fa034388b5e3b29e1ce639d6dec37347fefa612117ce9> ", " tx_size " : 562, " spent " : false, " global_index " : 300597, " amount " : 0.9 }, { " tx_hash " : " <79e7eb67b7022a21505fa034388b5e3b29e1ce639d6dec37347fefa612117ce9> ", " tx_size " : 562, " spent " : false, " global_index " : 214803, " amount " : 3.0 }, { " tx_hash " : " <e8409a93edeed9f6c67e6716bb180d9593e8beafa63d51facf68bee233bf694d> ", " tx_size " : 525, " spent " : false, " global_index " : 165783, " amount " : 0.08 }, { " tx_hash " : " <e8409a93edeed9f6c67e6716bb180d9593e8beafa63d51facf68bee233bf694d> ", " tx_size " : 525, " spent " : false, " global_index " : 375952, " amount " : 0.7 } ] }, " id " : " 0 " }
Basic example 4: make a transaction
import requests import json import os import binascii def main (): """ DONT RUN IT without changing the destination address!!! """ # simple wallet is running on the localhost and port of 18082 url = " http://localhost:18082/json_rpc " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} destination_address = " 489MAxaT7xXP3Etjk2suJT1uDYZU6cqFycsau2ynCTBacncWVEwe9eYFrAD6BqTn4Y2KMs7maX75iX1UFwnJNG5G88wxKoj " # amount of xmr to send amount = 0.54321 # cryptonote amount format is different then # that normally used by people. # thus the float amount must be changed to # something that cryptonote understands int_amount = int (get_amount(amount)) # just to make sure that amount->coversion->back # gives the same amount as in the initial number assert amount == float (get_money( str (int_amount))), " Amount conversion failed " # send specified xmr amount to the given destination_address recipents = [{ " address " : destination_address, " amount " : int_amount}] # using given mixin mixin = 4 # get some random payment_id payment_id = get_payment_id() # simplewallet' procedure/method to call rpc_input = { " method " : " transfer ", " params " : { " destinations " : recipents, " mixin " : mixin, " payment_id " : payment_id} } # add standard rpc values rpc_input.update({ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }) # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( url, data = json.dumps(rpc_input), headers = headers) # print the payment_id print ( " #payment_id: ", payment_id) # pretty print json output print (json.dumps(response.json(), indent = 4 )) def get_amount ( amount ): """ encode amount (float number) to the cryptonote format. Hope its correct. Based on C++ code: https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/blob/master/src/cryptonote_core/cryptonote_format_utils.cpp#L211 """ CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT = 12 str_amount = str (amount) fraction_size = 0 if '.'in str_amount: point_index = str_amount.index( '.') fraction_size = len (str_amount) - point_index - 1 while fraction_size < CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT and'0'== str_amount[ - 1 ]: print ( 44 ) str_amount = str_amount[: - 1 ] fraction_size = fraction_size - 1 if CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT < fraction_size: return False str_amount = str_amount[:point_index] + str_amount[point_index + 1 :] if not str_amount: return False if fraction_size < CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT: str_amount = str_amount +'0'* (CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT - fraction_size) return str_amount def get_money ( amount ): """ decode cryptonote amount format to user friendly format. Hope its correct. Based on C++ code: https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/blob/master/src/cryptonote_core/cryptonote_format_utils.cpp#L751 """ CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT = 12 s = amount if len (s) < CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT + 1 : # add some trailing zeros, if needed, to have constant width s ='0'* (CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT + 1 - len (s)) + s idx = len (s) - CRYPTONOTE_DISPLAY_DECIMAL_POINT s = s[ 0 :idx] + ". " + s[idx:] return s def get_payment_id (): """ generate random payment_id generate some random payment_id for the transactions payment_id is 32 bytes (64 hexadecimal characters) thus we first generate 32 random byte array which is then change to string representation, since json will not not what to do with the byte array. """ random_32_bytes = os.urandom( 32 ) payment_id = " ".join( map ( chr, binascii.hexlify(random_32_bytes))) return payment_id if __name__ == " __main__ " : main()
Generated output:
#payment_id: 4926869b6b5d50b24cb59f08fd76826cacdf76201b2d4648578fe610af7f786e { " id " : " 0 ", " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " result " : { " tx_key " : " ", " tx_hash " : " <04764ab4855b8a9f9c42d99e19e1c40956a502260123521ca3f6488dd809797a> " } }
Other examples are here
bitmonreod
The baisc bitmonerod rpc calls are as follows:
getheight
query_key
mining_status
getlastblockheader
getblockheaderbyhash
getblockheaderbyheight
getblock
get_info
get_connections
Prerequsits Before executing this code make sure that bitmonerod is running. Just like before, the code was written, tested and executed on Ubuntu 15.10 with Python 3.4.3 and it requires the Requests package.
Basic example 1: get a mining status
import requests import json def main (): # bitmonerod' is running on the localhost and port of 18081 url = " http://localhost:18081/mining_status " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( url, headers = headers) # pretty print json output print (json.dumps(response.json(), indent = 4 )) if __name__ == " __main__ " : main()
Generated output:
{ " status " : " OK ", " threads_count " : 2, " speed " : 117, " active " : true, " address " : " 48daf1rG3hE1Txapcsxh6WXNe9MLNKtu7W7tKTivtSoVLHErYzvdcpea2nSTgGkz66RFP4GKVAsTV14v6G3oddBTHfxP6tU " }
Basic example 2: get block header having a block hash
import requests import json def main (): # bitmonerod is running on the localhost and port of 18081 url = " http://localhost:18081/json_rpc " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} # the block to get block_hash ='d78e2d024532d8d8f9c777e2572623fd0f229d72d9c9c9da3e7cb841a3cb73c6'# bitmonerod' procedure/method to call rpc_input = { " method " : " getblockheaderbyhash ", " params " : { " hash " : block_hash} } # add standard rpc values rpc_input.update({ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }) # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( url, data = json.dumps(rpc_input), headers = headers) # pretty print json output print (json.dumps(response.json(), indent = 4 )) if __name__ == " __main__ " : main()
Generated output:
{ " result " : { " status " : " OK ", " block_header " : { " difficulty " : 756932534, " height " : 796743, " nonce " : 8389, " depth " : 46, " orphan_status " : false, " hash " : " d78e2d024532d8d8f9c777e2572623fd0f229d72d9c9c9da3e7cb841a3cb73c6 ", " timestamp " : 1445741816, " major_version " : 1, " minor_version " : 0, " prev_hash " : " dff9c6299c84f945fabde9e96afa5d44f3c8fa88835fb87a965259c46694a2cd ", " reward " : 8349972377827 } }, " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }
Basic example 3: get full block information
import requests import json def main (): # bitmonerod is running on the localhost and port of 18082 url = " http://localhost:18081/json_rpc " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} # the block to get block_hash ='d78e2d024532d8d8f9c777e2572623fd0f229d72d9c9c9da3e7cb841a3cb73c6'# bitmonerod' procedure/method to call rpc_input = { " method " : " getblock ", " params " : { " hash " : block_hash} } # add standard rpc values rpc_input.update({ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }) # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( url, data = json.dumps(rpc_input), headers = headers) # the response will contain binary blob. For some reason # python's json encoder will crash trying to parse such # response. Thus, its better to remove it from the response. response_json_clean = json.loads( "
".join( filter ( lambda l : " blob " not in l, response.text.split( "
" ) ))) # pretty print json output print (json.dumps(response_json_clean, indent = 4 )) if __name__ == " __main__ " : main()
Generated output:
{ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " result " : { " block_header " : { " difficulty " : 756932534, " major_version " : 1, " height " : 796743, " prev_hash " : " dff9c6299c84f945fabde9e96afa5d44f3c8fa88835fb87a965259c46694a2cd ", " depth " : 166, " reward " : 8349972377827, " minor_version " : 0, " timestamp " : 1445741816, " nonce " : 8389, " orphan_status " : false, " hash " : " d78e2d024532d8d8f9c777e2572623fd0f229d72d9c9c9da3e7cb841a3cb73c6 " }, "json": "{
\"major_version\": 1,
\"minor_version\": 0,
\"timestamp\": 1445741816,
\"prev_id\": \"dff9c6299c84f945fabde9e96afa5d44f3c8fa88835fb87a965259c46694a2cd\",
\"nonce\": 8389,
\"miner_tx\": {
\"version\": 1,
\"unlock_time\": 796803,
\"vin\": [ {
\"gen\": {
\"height\": 796743
}
}
],
\"vout\": [ {
\"amount\": 9972377827,
\"target\": {
\"key\": \"aecebf2757be84a2d986052607ec3114969f7c9e128a051f5e13f2304287733d\"
}
}, {
\"amount\": 40000000000,
\"target\": {
\"key\": \"c3a6d449f3fa837edbbc6beac8bc0405c6340c4e39418164b4aa1fa2202573f2\"
}
}, {
\"amount\": 300000000000,
\"target\": {
\"key\": \"cfce614b779ab2705fc5f94a022eb983a2960ba9da02d61f430e988128236b0a\"
}
}, {
\"amount\": 8000000000000,
\"target\": {
\"key\": \"b445b474d19ae555e048762e12ac8c406a4a6d7b0f37993dc8dabe7a31ef65b8\"
}
}
],
\"extra\": [ 1, 243, 56, 214, 120, 176, 255, 133, 1, 251, 134, 27, 135, 49, 198, 55, 249, 146, 222, 116, 48, 103, 249, 229, 195, 120, 162, 127, 62, 35, 57, 231, 51, 2, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 25, 79, 41, 47
],
\"signatures\": [ ]
},
\"tx_hashes\": [ \"cc283dcae267c622d685b3e5f8e72aaba807dad0bb2d4170521af57c50be8165\", \"d2873b1c1800ce04434c663893a16417e8717015e9686914166f7957c5eabd68\"
]
}", " tx_hashes " : [ " cc283dcae267c622d685b3e5f8e72aaba807dad0bb2d4170521af57c50be8165 ", " d2873b1c1800ce04434c663893a16417e8717015e9686914166f7957c5eabd68 " ], " status " : " OK " }, " id " : " 0 " }
Basic example 4: get blockchain information
import requests import json def main (): # bitmonerod is running on the localhost and port of 18082 url = " http://localhost:18081/json_rpc " # standard json header headers = {'content-type':'application/json'} # bitmonerod' procedure/method to call rpc_input = { " method " : " get_info " } # add standard rpc values rpc_input.update({ " jsonrpc " : " 2.0 ", " id " : " 0 " }) # execute the rpc request response = requests.post( |
on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn on May 21, 2003, the day after the release of Poodle Hat.
on May 21, 2003, the day after the release of. Yankovic also performed a modified version on Nickelodeon Magazine's 10th Anniversary special. He had to edit the song, however. The second verse as well as the second chorus were cut and instead of saying "gay", he and his band said "hey," and the reference to the Playboy Channel was also cut from the song.
A reference to this song is made in the comic Vicious Whisper, released by Aaron Alexovich alongside the comic Serenity Rose both of which are published by Slave Labor Graphics. In the comic, an actual fan of the series poses the question "look... if you had... one shot... to sit on your lazy butt and watch all the TV you wanted, would you take it? Or just let it slide?" Presumably, because Aaron A. did not notice the reference to the song, Vicious Whisper answers this question honestly in an in-depth speech.Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division is the principal tenant command located at Naval Support Activity Crane. NSA Crane is a United States Navy installation located approximately 35 miles southwest of Bloomington, Indiana and predominantly located in Martin County, but small parts also extend into Greene and Lawrence counties. It was originally established in 1941 under the Bureau of Ordnance as the Naval Ammunition Depot for production, testing, and storage of ordnance under the first supplemental Defense Appropriation Act. The base is named after William M. Crane. The base is the third largest naval installation in the world by geographic area and employs approximately 3,300 people. The closest community is the small town of Crane, which lies adjacent to the northwest corner of the facility.
Operations [ edit ]
With an increasing demand in the 1990s and 2000s by the U.S. military for bases to support multiple functions rather than being sole-purpose installations, Crane has taken on a broad variety of development and support operations. These include expeditionary warfare systems, fleet maintenance and modernization, radar, power systems, strategic systems, small arms, surface and airborne electronic warfare, night vision systems, and undersea warfare systems. Crane is also involved in systems development for the upcoming DD(X) class of destroyer for the U.S. Navy and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
Diagram showing the NSWC Crane focus areas
Operations at NSWC Crane are divided into three distinct focus areas: Strategic Missions, Electronic Warfare, and Expeditionary Warfare[1].
Strategic Missions [ edit ]
"Deter - Defend - Defeat"
The Strategic Missions Focus Area encompasses the full range of DoD activities that alter an adversary's will and ability to attack the United States and its interests.
Critical Infrastructure Protection
Crane is the acquisition engineering & technical support agent for the Navy's Strategic Programs Office for fielding of the Integrated Nuclear Weapons Security System
Full Spectrum Radar Engineering Support
Crane provides a broad range of systems engineering expertise for the sustainment and modernization of the Air Forces Ballistic Missile Early Warning Systems
Flight Systems
Crane supports systems engineering design, analysis, test and evaluation of flight systems for Strategic platforms
Launcher Systems
Crane provides high reliability product and subsystem engineering and logistics to the Navy's Strategic Systems Programs Strategic Weapons System and Attack Weapon Control System
Modeling and Simulation
The Flight Systems Division (Code GXM) models and simulates electronic components and subsystems of the Navy's Strategic Weapons System including Attack Weapon Control System and Counter Measurement System. Analyses include Signal Processing, Signal Integrity (SI) and Electromagnetic Compatibility/Electromagnetic Interference (EMC/EMI) using Signal Modeling and Simulation (M&S) techniques, Circuit M&S techniques and Method of Moments (MoM). Particular signal M&S tools include Matlab/Simulink and particular circuit M&S and MoM tools include Agilent Technologies Advanced Design System (ADS) with Agilent Momentum.
The Platform and Launch Systems Division (Code GXP) models and simulates:
Components and subsystems of the Submarine, Launch Tube and Missile including missile Launch Test Vehicle (LTV), Ballast Transport Fixtures and Hydrophones. Analyses include Stress, Thermal, Modal and Acoustic using Finite Element Method (FEM). Particular FEM analysis tools include ANSYS and ABAQUS. Components and subsystems of the Common Missile Compartment (CMC) involving Missile Heating and Cooling (MHC) and Underwater Launch (UWL). Analyses include Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) using Finite Volume Method (FVM) and FEM. Particular CFD tools include ANSYS Fluent and ABAQUS CFD. Electronic systems and subsystems of the Platform and Launch Tube. Analyses include Electromagnetic Compatibility/Electromagnetic Interference (EMC/EMI) using Circuit Modeling and Simulation (M&S) techniques and coupled Boundary Element Method and Finite Element Method (BEM/FEM). Particular circuit M&S tools and BEM/FEM tools include ANSOFT Simplorer and ANSOFT Q3D Extractor.
The Technology and Infrastructure Protection Division's Strategic Test and Validation Systems Branch Code GXQP models and simulates Strategic Weapon Systems Coordination. Analyses are performed for requirements verification using Matlab/Simulink.
The Radar Systems Engineering Division (Code GXR) models and simulates:
Electronic components and subsystems of Microwave and Radar equipment. Analyses include Electromagnetic Compatibility/Electromagnetic Interference (EMC/EMI) and Signal Integrity (SI) using Circuit Modeling and Simulation (M&S) techniques and Method of Moments (MoM). Particular circuit M&S and MoM tools include Agilent Technologies Advanced Design System (ADS) with Agilent Momentum. Electron Guns inside Microwave Tubes. Analyses include calculation of Electric Potential and Electric Field using Finite Element Method (FEM). Particular FEM analysis tools include ANSOFT Maxell 2-D and 3-D steady state and transient electromagnetic fields solver. Waveguides and Antennas. Analyses include determination of antenna patterns/performance using FEM and Method of Moments (MoM). Particular FEM and MoM analysis tools include ANSOFT HFSS, Agilent EMPro, FEKO and CST Microwave Studio.
Electronic Warfare [ edit ]
"Control the Spectrum - Control the Fight"
Electronic Warfare supports any military action using electromagnetic energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum or attack an adversary
Development
Crane develops and manufactures all of the infrared countermeasures used on U.S. Navy aircraft
Test and Evaluation
Crane developed and operates the only COMOPTEVFOR certified test facilities to support EW T&E events such as Developmental Tests, Operational assessments, and Operational Tests
Sustainment
Crane is the only DOD Engineering, Logistics and Maintenance Capability for Air, Ground, Surface and Submarine EW Systems within one Facility
Training
Crane is helping the Army to improve their capabilities of countering improvised explosive devices (IED).
Modeling and Simulation
The Expeditionary Electronic Warfare Division models and simulates: Counter Radio Controlled IED Electronics Warfare (CREW) systems; radio control trigger devices for IEDs; and, the RF prorogation paths involved in the engagement and defeat of RCIEDS, allowing former field tests to be run in a controlled laboratory environment.
The IR/RF Systems Technologies Division's Navy Infrared Countermeasures Effectiveness Laboratory, (NICEL), models and simulates threat IR missile vs. aircraft engagements to support aircraft countermeasure development.
The Maritime Electronic Warfare Systems Division models a systems engineering sustainment system that automates Electronic Warfare (EW) Systems sustainment activities. The model is created using the IBM Rational Rhapsody tool using the SysML modeling language and DoD Application Framework (DoDAF). The sustainment model implements life-cycle activities including logistics delays based on real or proposed replacement part reliabilities, quantities, and locations, along with workflows and processes to support a performance-based sustainment (PBS) solution for Electronic Warfare Systems. Using SysML and DoDAF, the interactions between Crane employees, automated tools, the Electronic Warfare systems, and data to accomplish PBS are simulated.
The Maritime Electronic Warfare Systems Division provides modeling and simulation for shipboard Electronic Warfare (EW) Systems. Scenarios have been constructed to characterize the effects of various threats on EW systems and to develop technology for increasing system performance. Antenna patterns measured in the anechoic environment are used to both enhance models and validate simulations.
Expeditionary Warfare [ edit ]
"Rapid Response - Proven Solutions"
Special Missions supports military forces engaged in Special Operations, Irregular Warfare and Riverine Operations
Mobility and Maneuverability
Crane designed, built and fielded the first Counter-Sniper Enclosure for USAF Force Protection HMMWVs in 6 weeks
Special Munitions and Weapons
Crane is USSOCOM's PM for the development, acquisition, fielding and sustainment of the SOF Combat Assault Rifle (SCAR)
Sensors and Communications
SOPMOD has surged more than $60M in ground combat end items to Special Operations in the field during OIF/OEF
Training
Crane provided Small Arms operations & maintenance training to over 500 personnel in FY06
Modeling and Simulation
Special Missions Human Systems Integration activity uses Concept Modeling tools to analyze gunner tasks to provide improved training and testing methods.
The Small Arms Weapons Systems Division utilizes a weapon shock simulator to augment live-fire on weapon accessories and other weapon mounted electronics to ensure proper survivability. Measured shock profiles from actual weapons are used with the simulator to test the survivability of batteries, electrical connections, and optical components. This division also uses a six-axis platform that simulates sea states for testing auto-tracker software. The Electro-Optic Technology Division uses modeling tools in a number of applications. Examples include using a variety of commercially available tools to do the following:
evaluate the performance of Infrared systems, to accurately predict atmospheric effects on specific optical/electro-magnetic wavelengths
predict turbulence effects on optical transmission and imaging at different altitudes
simulate a realistic system level minimum resolvable temperature difference (MRTD) test result
model laser beam propagation through the atmosphere over distance to a target
calculate spatial frequencies based upon range, scene, and sensor
predict electro-optical sensors and I2 tubes Minimum Resolvable Contrast (MRC)
predict the Contrast Threshold Function (CTF) of a human interacting with an imaging system in order to predict task range performance
predict an imaging system modulation transfer function (MTF)
predict electro-optical weapon and navigation systems performance
model laser-based active imager performance
predict mission effectiveness versus sensor system versus environmental conditions
use Concept Modeling tools to analyze warfighter tasks to provide improved sensors, interfaces, communications, and testing methods
Additional modeling capabilities within the Special Missions Focus Area use common modeling tools (i.e. Finite Element Analysis, MATLAB, COMSOL, etc.) as well as tools developed within the government to better understand electro-optic phenomena, warfighter technology applications, benefits and trade spaces of new technologies, etc.
History [ edit ]
In the late 1940s an ammunition quality evaluation unit was added by the Bureau to expand its quality control system. As the complexity and sophistication of weapons increased in the 1950s and 1960s, Crane's activities, capabilities and expertise expanded in scope under the newly formed Bureau of Weapons to include small arms, sonobuoy surveillance, microwave tubes, POLARIS missiles and other scientific and engineering support to the Bureau.
Chart showing evolution of technical capabilities over time at Crane
In the 1960s, Crane came under the command of the newly established Naval Ordnance Systems Command and began providing technical support for weapons systems including logistics, in-service engineering, repair, overhaul, and design. In the 1970s Crane's support began to include batteries, rotating components, electronic components, failure analysis, and standard hardware and new technologies related to night vision systems.
In 1974, Crane came under the Naval Sea Systems Command that was established from the merger of the Naval Ordnance Systems Command and Naval Ship Systems Command. Shortly after in 1975, Crane's name was changed to the Naval Weapons Support Center that more accurately reflected the true function of the installation.
In 1977, a major change occurred with the designation of the United States Army as the single-service manager of conventional ammunition. This resulted in the establishment of the tenant command, Crane Army Ammunition Activity (CAAA) that took over the loading, assembly and storage of ammunition at the installation. CAAA and Crane's strong partnership continues today.
In 1992, Crane's name was changed to the Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center when the warfare centers were established under the related systems commands. Today grown from its ordnance roots, Crane is recognized worldwide as a modern and sophisticated leader in diverse and highly technical product lines.
In 2005, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended to retain most existing operations at Crane, with weapons and armaments research, development & acquisition, and test & evaluation, but moving gun/ammunition, combat system security, and energetic materials to Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake[2]. This BRAC change resulted in a net loss of 672 civilian jobs from the base[3].
Tenants [ edit ]
Naval Support Activity Crane hosts a number of different commands and divisions. These are:
Geography [ edit ]
The base is the third largest naval installation in the world, comprising approximately 280 square kilometres (108 sq mi) of territory. Lake Greenwood, a 320-hectare (800-acre) lake, is entirely encompassed by the base. White oak wood for reconstruction of the USS Constitution is harvested at this base from a grove of trees known as "Constitution Grove".[4]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
As I reported in Sunday’s Times, the iPhone has been a golden ticket for some developers who have cashed in on the platform with popular applications.
But the chances of hitting the iLotto have grown increasingly slim. As more developers seek their fortune in the glossy curves of the device, the App Store is becoming crowded. Competition is spiking, driving down application prices — and the chances of becoming the next iMillionaire.
Could the iPhone 3.0 change that? Some developers think so.
Apple’s new version of phone software, expected to be released publicly this summer, will allow developers to employ several new ways to monetize content and build new business models beyond mobile advertisements and charging a flat fee per download. In particular, developers will be able to sell subscriptions and allow users to make individual purchases from within the application itself.
Those changes might only benefit professional developers and larger gaming companies like Sega and Electronic Arts with the resources to deliver extras worth paying for, like secret gaming levels and expansion packs, warns Erica Sadun who has authored several books about coding for the iPhone, including one on the newest software changes.
“These are advances that will better benefit the larger developers than the smaller developers,” she said.
But Nicole Lazzaro, a game design consultant, described the upgrades as “a big win for developers.”
“Right now, it’s pretty hard to make back your development cost at a $1 per application,” she said. “You have to sell quite a few applications to do that.” With the changes, she said, developers can still entice iPhone owners with a lower upfront price and introduce upgrades and offers within the application that will generate additional revenue over time.
Some independent developers — such as Kostas Eleftheriou, one of the creators behind iSteam, a nifty digital parlor trick that fogs up the face of an iPhone like a bathroom mirror — think the upgrade will spur a new wave of creativity.
“There will be a sudden storm of apps that were not possible before,” he said, referring to the addition of peer-to-peer networking, multimedia messaging and cut-and-paste functionality. “The new features will be available for everyone, not just big companies.”Greek word for hospitality
This article is about the ancient Greek concept of hospitality. For other uses, see Xenia (disambiguation)
Theoxenia is considered a junior synonym of Ethmia. "Theoxenia" redirects here. The moth genusis considered a junior synonym of
Jupiter and Mercurius in the House of Philemon and Baucis (1630–33) by the workshop of (1630–33) by the workshop of Rubens : Zeus and Hermes, testing a village's practice of hospitality, were received only by Baucis and Philemon, who were rewarded while their neighbors were punished.
Xenia (Greek: ξενία, translit. xenía, meaning "guest-friendship") is the ancient Greek concept of hospitality, the generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home and/or associates of the person bestowing guest-friendship. The rituals of hospitality created and expressed a reciprocal relationship between guest and host expressed in both material benefits (such as the giving of gifts to each party) as well as non-material ones (such as protection, shelter, favors, or certain normative rights).
The Greek god Zeus is sometimes called Zeus Xenios in his role as a protector of guests. He thus embodied the religious obligation to be hospitable to travelers. Theoxeny or theoxenia is a theme in Greek mythology in which human beings demonstrate their virtue or piety by extending hospitality to a humble stranger (xenos), who turns out to be a disguised deity (theos) with the capacity to bestow rewards. These stories caution mortals that any guest should be treated as if potentially a disguised divinity and help establish the idea of xenia as a fundamental Greek custom.[1] The term theoxenia also covered entertaining among the gods themselves, a popular subject in classical art, which was revived at the Renaissance in works depicting a Feast of the Gods.
Overview [ edit ]
Xenia consists of two basic rules:
The respect from host to guest. The host must be hospitable to the guest and provide him/her with food, drink, bath and gifts when they leave. It is not polite to ask questions until the guest has finished the meal provided to them. The respect from guest to host. The guest must be courteous to the host and not be a burden. The guest should also provide a gift if they have one.[2]
Xenia was considered to be particularly important in ancient times when people thought gods mingled among them. If one had poorly played host to a stranger, there was the risk of incurring the wrath of a god disguised as the stranger. It is thought that the Greek practice of theoxenia may have been the antecedent of the Roman rite of Lectisternium, or the draping of couches.
While this particular origin of the practices of guest-friendship are centralized around the divine, however, it would become common practice among the Greeks to incorporate xenia into their customs and manners for very much all of ancient Greek history. Indeed, while originating from mythical traditions, xenia would very much become a standard practice throughout much (if not, all) of Greece as customarily proper in the affair of men interacting with men as well as men interacting with the Gods.
In the Iliad [ edit ]
The Trojan war described in the Iliad of Homer resulted from a violation of xenia. Paris, from the house of Priam of Troy, was a guest of Menelaus, king of Mycenaean Sparta, but seriously transgressed the bounds of xenia by abducting his host's wife, Helen. Therefore, the Achaeans were required by duty to Zeus to avenge this transgression, which, as a violation of xenia, was an insult to Zeus' authority.
Diomedes and Glaucus meet in No man's land. However, Diomedes does not want to fight another man descendant from the Gods, so he asks Glaucus about his lineage. Upon revealing it, Diomedes realizes that their fathers had practiced xenia with each other, and they are guest-friends. Therefore, they decide not to fight, but to continue their hereditary guest-friendship by trading armor.[3]
Another example of xenia in the Iliad is Hector talking to Ajax. They are talking about exchanging presents so that people will remember them for dropping their hatred and becoming friends.[4] While this is not a traditional example of xenia, it does demonstrate the power of friendship in the Greek culture.
In Book 9, Achilles invites Odysseus into his home and asks Patroclus to make the strongest wine for them to drink. Patroclus also brings meat with the wine. The men eat and have light chatter before Odysseus delivers Agamemnon's offer to Achilles.[5]
In Book 18, Hephaestus hosts Thetis in his home. Xenia is important between humans and also between gods. Hephaestus is worried about making Thetis feel at home in his home so he lays out entertainment and puts away his tools.[6]
In Book 24, the last book of the Iliad, Priam supplicates Achilles to try and get his son, Hector back. Instead of turning him out as the enemy, Achilles abides by the rules of xenia and allows him to stay.
In the Odyssey [ edit ]
Xenia is an important theme in Homer's The Odyssey. Every household in the epic is seen alongside xenia. Odysseus' house is inhabited by suitors with demands beyond the bounds of xenia. Menelaus and Nestor's houses are seen when Telemachus visits. There are many other households observed in the epic, including those of Circe, Calypso, and the Phaeacians. The Phaeacians, and in particular Nausicaä, were famed for their immaculate application of xenia, as the princess and her maids offered to bathe Odysseus and then led him to the palace to be fed and entertained. After sharing his story with the Phaeacians they agree to take Odysseus to his home land. In a new rule, he states that you should not beat your host in a competition because it would be rude and could damage the relationship.[7]
Because Odysseus was indirectly responsible for Poseidon's sinking one of their ships, the Phaeacians resolved to be less trusting of subsequent travelers. However, Polyphemus showed lack of xenia, despite Odysseus' reminders, and refused to honor the travelers' requests, instead eating some of Odysseus' men. The suitor Ctesippus mocks xenia by hurling a hoof, disguised as a "gift", at Odysseus. When Ctesippus is speared by Philoetius, the cowherd claims this avenges his disrespect.
In Book One, Telemachus shows xenia to the disguised Athena by graciously welcoming her into his own home and offering her food. He even moves her chair away from the suitors who are rude. Eumaeus the Swineherd shows xenia to the disguised Odysseus, claiming guests come under the protection of Zeus. When one of the suitors Ctesippus mocks the disguised Odysseus and hurls an ox's hoof at him as a "gift", mocking xenia, though Odysseus dodges this, Telemachus says if he had hit the guest, he would have run Ctesippus through with his spear.[8] The other suitors are worried, saying Ctesippus is "doomed" if the stranger is a disguised god. As well as this, whenever Homer describes the details of "xenia", he uses the same formula every time: for example, the maid pouring wine into the gold cups, etc.
An example of bad xenia occurs when Homer describes the suitors. They continue to eat Penelope and Telemachus out of house and home. They are rude to not only each other but to Telemachus and the guests, such as disguised Athena and Odysseus.
In the Odyssey, Calypso, a fair goddess, had wanted to keep Odysseus in her cavern as her husband, but he refused. Circe had also failed to keep Odysseus in her halls as her mate. Although both of these women had fine homes and fine things to offer him, their hospitality was too much for Odysseus. He instead left each with the goal of returning to Ithaca and reclaiming his family and his home. Sometimes Hospitality was unwanted[9] or was given unwillingly.
In the Argonautika [ edit ]
While the Argonautika takes place before the Iliad and the Odyssey, it was written by an Alexandrian librarian, Apollonius of Rhodes. Since the story takes place during Greek times, the theme of xenia is shown throughout the story. For example, in Book 2, the King of Bebrykians, Amykos, makes the Argonauts fight to be able to leave. Polydeukes volunteers himself to participate in the boxing match.[10] This is a clear violation of xenia, and the Argonauts become worried when they reach their next destination later on in Book 2, when the Argonauts are on an island after a storm caused by Zeus. The Argonauts call out, asking for the strangers to be kind to them and treat them fairly. They realize that Jason and the men on the island are related by Jason's father's side of the family. The men provide clothing, sacrifice with them, and share a meal before the Argonauts leave the island in the morning.[11]
Another example is when Jason talks about going to Aietes' palace. He says that they will receive a warm welcome and surely he will follow the rules of xenia.[12]
The final example of xenia in the Argonautika is the first time the Argonauts reach Aietes' palace. It is also the first time Medeia is depicted in love with Jason due to Eros. Aietes has a feast prepared, and the Argos are served after their meal Aietes begins to ask questions about the Argonauts' purpose and voyage to his kingdom.[13]
Political alliances [ edit ]
Historian Gabriel Herman lays out the use of xenia in political alliances in the Near East.
Solemn pronouncements were often used to establish a ritualised personal relationship, such as when "Xerxes, having been offered lavish hospitality and most valuable gifts by Pythios the Lydian, declared "...in return for this I give you these privileges (gera): I make you my Xenos....the same set of words could be applied in non-face-to-face situations, when a ruler wished to contract an alliance through the intermediary of messengers."[14] Herman points out that this is correspondent to pacts made by African tribal societies studied by Harry Tegnaeus (in his 1952 ethno-sociological book Blood Brothers) where "the partners proclaim themselves in the course of the blood ceremony each other's 'brothers', 'foster-brothers', 'cousins'. The surviving treaties of 'fraternity' 'paternity' and 'love and friendship' between the petty rules of the ancient Near East in the second half of the second millennium B.C. incorporate what are probably written versions of such declarations."[14] (Herman also sees an echo of this in the medieval ceremony of homage, in the exchange between a would-be-vassal and the lord.)[14]
Herman goes on to point out "No less important an element in forging the alliance was the exchange of highly specialized category of gifts, designated in our sources as xénia (as distinct from xenía, the term of the relationship itself) or dora. It was as important to give such gifts as to receive, and refusal to reciprocate as tantamount to a declaration of hostility. Mutual acceptance of the gifts, on the other hand, was a clear mark of the beginning of friendship."[14] Herman points to the account of Odysseus giving Iphitos a sword and spear after having been given a formidable bow while saying they were "the first token of loving guest-friendship".[14] Herman also shows that Herodotus holds "the conclusion of an alliance and the exchange of gifts appeared as two inseparable acts: Polykrates, having seized the government in Samos, "concluded a pact of xenia with Amasis king of Egypt, sending and receiving from him gifts (dora)".[14] Within the ritual it was important that the return gift be offered immediately after receiving a gift with each commensurate rather than attempting to surpass each other in value. The initial gifts in such an exchange would fall somewhere between being symbolic but useless, and of high use-value but without any special symbolic significance.[14] The initial gifts would serve as both object and symbol. Herman points out that these goods were not viewed as trade or barter, "for the exchange was not an end in itself, but a means to another end." While trade ends with the exchange, the ritual exchange "was meant to symbolize the establishment of obligations which, ideally, would last for ever."[14]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Some of this material comes from lectures by Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver, recorded and distributed by The Teaching Company.
Vandiver, Elizabeth, Ph.D. (Lecturer). (1999). The Iliad of Homer. [Audio CD] Vandiver, Elizabeth, Ph.D. (Lecturer). (1999). The Odyssey of Homer. [Audio CD] Vandiver, Elizabeth, Ph.D. (Lecturer). (2000). Greek Tragedy Part I. [Audio CD]Ted Chiang on Writing
Avi: Could you introduce yourself?
Ted: My name is Ted Chiang. I'm a science fiction short story writer.
Were there any formative experiences that led you to become a
science fiction writer?
Probably the most formative experience was reading the Foundation
Trilogy when I was about twelve years old. That wasn't the first science
fiction I had ever read but it's something that stands out in my memory
as having had a big impact on me. Reading Asimov and then Arthur C.
Clarke when I was twelve definitely put me on the road to being a
science fiction writer.
When did you actually decide to go pro?
It depends on what you mean by going pro. I started submitting
stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years
before I sold anything. I don't make my living writing science fiction
so in that sense I'm still not a pro. Writing for publication was always
my goal, but making a living writing science fiction wasn't. When I was
a kid I figured I would be a physicist when I grew up and then I would
write science fiction on the side. The physicist thing didn't pan out,
but writing science fiction on the side did.
How has being a technical writer affected your fiction writing?
I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction
writers, because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come
home and write fiction. Nowadays I work as a freelance writer, so I
usually do contract technical writing part of the year and then I take
time off and do fiction writing the rest of the year. It's too difficult
for me to do technical writing at the same time as fiction writing -
they draw on the same parts of my brain. So I can't say it's a good day
job in that sense, but it's a way to make money.
Could you give a walk-through of your writing process?
In general, if there's an idea I'm interested in, I usually think
about that for a long time and write down my speculations or just ideas
about how it could become a story, but I don't actually start writing
the story itself until I know how the story ends. Typically the first
part of the story that I write is the very ending, either the last
paragraph of the story or a paragraph near the end. Once I have the
destination in mind then I can build the rest of the story around that
or build the rest of the story in such a way as to lead up to that.
Usually the second thing I write is the opening of the story and then I
write the rest of the story in almost random order. I just keep writing
scenes until I've connected the beginning and the end. I write the key
scenes or what I think of as the landmark scenes first, and then I just
fill in backwards and forwards.
How do you classify your writing? I feel like it's a kind of
philosophical fiction, because it's actually making people think, waking
them up and making them wonder about things.
That's one of the things that science fiction is particularly good
at, that's one of the reasons I like science fiction. Science fiction is
very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the
nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things
that we think we know. When philosophers propose thought experiments as
a way of analyzing certain questions, their thought experiments often
sound a lot like science fiction. I think that there's a very good fit
between the two.
I also think religion plays a very important role in your work.
I do think that religion is a very interesting phenomenon;
obviously it affects many people very profoundly. There is a similarity
between science and religion in that they're both attempts to understand
the universe, and there was a time in the past when science and religion
were not seen as incompatible, when it made perfect sense to be both a
scientist and a religious person. Nowadays there is much more of an
attitude that the two are incompatible. I think that's sort of a 20th
century phenomenon.
You have very specific views on the difference between magic and
science. Can you talk about that?
Sure. Science fiction and fantasy are very closely related genres,
and a lot of people say that the genres are so close that there's
actually no meaningful distinction to be made between the two. But I
think that there does exist an useful distinction to be made between
magic and science. One way to look at it is in terms of whether a given
phenomenon can be mass-produced. If you posit some impossibility in a
story, like turning lead into gold, I think it makes sense to ask how
many people in the world of the story are able to do this. Is it just a
few people or is it something available to everybody? If it's just a
handful of special people who can turn lead into gold, that implies
different things than a story in which there are giant factories
churning out gold from lead, in which gold is so cheap it can be used
for fishing weights or radiation shielding.
In either case there's the same basic phenomenon, but these two
depictions point to different views of the universe. In a story where
only a handful of characters are able to turn lead into gold, there's
the implication that there's something special about those individuals.
The laws of the universe take into account some special property that
only certain individuals have. By contrast, if you have a story in which
turning lead into gold is an industrial process, something that can be
done on a mass scale and can be done cheaply, then you're implying that
the laws of the universe apply equally to everybody; they work the same
even for machines in unmanned factories. In one case I'd say the
phenomenon is magic, while in the other I'd say it's science.
Another way to think about these two depictions is to ask whether the
universe of the story recognizes the existence of persons. I think magic
is an indication that the universe recognizes certain people as
individuals, as having special properties as an individual, whereas a
story in which turning lead into gold is an industrial process is
describing a completely impersonal universe. That type of impersonal
universe is how science views the universe; it's how we currently
understand our universe to work. The difference between magic and
science is at some level a difference between the universe responding to
you in a personal way, and the universe being entirely impersonal.
I feel that one can look upon language as a connecting link
between magic and science, so potentially a scientist could be led back
to the world of magic by the very fact that he is using language. Maybe
if he overuses it, or "overclocks" his language use, that might lead him
to some kind of magical experience.
When you say he has a magical experience, are there effects in the
external world?
No, there might be effects on his body, somatic effects, but not
on the external world.
Ah, okay. It's probably worth making a distinction between
subjective magic and objective magic, or between spiritual magic and
practical magic.
Or between white magic and black magic.
Right. In practical magic, the goal is to affect the external
world. That's the kind of magic I meant when I was talking about turning
lead into gold. In spiritual magic, the only goal is to affect the
internal state of the practitioner. It sounds like you're talking about
spiritual magic as opposed than practical magic.
Yes, let me give you an example. So, Fred Hoyle came up with the
mechanics of how stars produce heavier elements that end up in us being
here. There was an Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell; I listened to
one of his interviews, and he was describing an ecstatic experience he
had on the way back to the Earth from the Moon. He had a very intense
bodily experience of that fact, that the matter in his body was made in
an older generation of stars. It was a kind of revelatory experience,
and it was based on a piece of scientific knowledge.
Okay. I don't think his experience was fundamentally different from
the ecstatic experiences that religious people have had for millenia,
whether they achieve it through prayer, or meditation or some other type
of practice, they achieve an epiphany or some kind of revelation. It
sounds like you're talking about a similar type of experience that
scientists might have.
Yes, he did say that when he got back to Earth, he researched the
experience he had, and it matched something called savikalpa samadhi in
a yogic Sanskrit text, but he didn't know about that beforehand, and his
experience was based on a fact of physics. So my question is, can
scientific knowledge lead to new kinds of experience, or are they just
religious experiences in a different form?
I don't think that there's anything that requires that what the
person was thinking about actually be true, for that person to have this
experience. The fact that we're made of elements that were born in the
heart of stars, that happens to be true, and that contributed to this
astronaut's experience, but someone could have the exact same experience |
,'' Cousins said. "I asked him about different concepts and how he thinks certain plays should be read and your footwork on it.
"He's been very helpful, very positive. He's taken the high road.
"This doesn't change the fact that he's our franchise quarterback.''
Shanahan also praised Griffin.
"He's been great, done everything we've asked him to do and he's been up-tempo and taking advantage of the reps that he gets,'' Shanahan said.
Shanahan has seen progress from Cousins, the former Michigan State star who has completed 61.6% of his passes for 573 yards with four touchdowns and five interceptions in six career NFL games.
"He's had a good week of practice with all the extra reps that he's gotten, he's feeling more comfortable,'' Shanahan said.
"It's a great opportunity for him to showcase his skills so people can see him under fire.
"He's looking forward to getting his opportunity. And hopefully, he takes advantage of it.''
Cousins led the Redskins to a 38-21 victory against the Cleveland Browns Dec. 16, 2012, completing 26 of 37 passes for 329 yards with two touchdowns and an interception after Griffin suffered a sprained knee the previous week.
Cousins has completed 12 of 25 passes for 107 yards with a pair of interceptions in two mop-up appearances this season.
Asked how he benefited from receiving first-team repetitions for the first time since the preseason, Cousins said, "I got reps. I got better. We'll find out Sunday how it really went.''
The 6-3, 209 Cousins has always prepared each week as if he would be the starter. But there is nothing like the real deal.
"You literally have to trick yourself into thinking you're the starter,'' he said. "Now I don't have to trick myself – I am the starter.''
How do his teammates feel Cousins has looked?
"Kirk is approaching this like he's going out to make his case to be a starter,'' fullback Darrel Young said. "His approach to the game is like a starting quarterback.
"He's going to have a hell of a future.
"And I respect Robert for the way he's been helping Kirk get ready.
"It's humbling. But I think next year we're going to see a whole different Robert Griffin.''
PHOTO GALLERY: Streaks to watch in Week 15LAST month Kai Krause, a computer-graphics guru, caused a stir with a map entitled "The True Size of Africa", which showed the outlines of other countries crammed into the outline of the African continent. His aim was to make "a small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy"—in particular, the fact that most people do not realise how much the ubiquitous Mercator projection distorts the relative sizes of countries.
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A sphere cannot be represented on a flat plane without distortion, which means all map projections distort in one way or another. Some projections show areas accurately but distort distances or scales, for example; others preserve the shapes of countries but misrepresent their areas. You can read all the gory details on Wikipedia.
Gerardus Mercator's projection, published in 1569, was immediately useful because it depicts a line of constant bearing as a straight line, which is handy for marine navigation. The drawback is that it distorts the shapes and areas of large land masses, and the distortion gets progressively worse as you get closer to the poles. (Africa looks about the same size as Greenland under the Mercator projection, for example, even though it is in fact 14 times bigger.) This was not a big problem for 16th-century sailors, of course, and the Mercator projection remains popular to this day.
In Mr Krause's map (above) he seems to have used the shapes of the countries from a Mercator projection, but has scaled up the outline of Africa, without changing its shape, to show the appropriate area. An alternative and arguably more rigorous approach would be to repeat the exercise using an "equal area" projection that shows the countries' areas correctly while minimising shape distortion. These two properties are the hardest to balance when showing the whole world on one map. I decided to rework Mr Krause's map using Gall's Stereographic Cylindrical Projection (1855) with two standard parallels at 45°N and 45°S. Distortions are still evident at the poles, but for most countries shape is maintained, and their areas are shown correctly. As you can see (below), the results are distinct from Mr Krause's map. But however you look at it, his point is a good one: Africa is much bigger than it looks on most maps.Well-known playboy and occasional critic of his father’s regime, Kim Jong-nam has been kicked out of luxury hotel in the Chinese gambling hub of Macau, according to a Russian newspaper.
The Arguments and Facts weekly claimed Jong-nam ran up a bill of £9,500 but was unable to pay because his credit card had been cancelled.
Jong-nam’s decadent lifestyle saw him ditched as the heir-apparent in favour of his younger half-brother Kim Jong-un.
“He gave us his Visa Gold card but it ended up having no money on the account,” the mass-circulated paper quoted an unnamed source at the hotel as saying.
The management of the five-star Grand Lapa Hotel, run by the Mandarin Oriental chain, then expelled the 40-year-old from his 17th-floor room, the paper said.
“We have no comment on this issue at this moment. Our PR department people are not here and they are not dealing with this,” the duty manager of the hotel told the Daily Telegraph on Friday.
When pressed, the duty manager, who gave his name as Marcos, abruptly put the phone down.
Jong-nam’s cash flow problems follow a recent interview he gave to a Japanese newspaper in which he claimed his father, who died in December last year, was against passing on his power to a third generation.
“[Heredity succession] does not fit socialism and my father was against it,” he told the Tokyo Shimbun last month.
Speculation is now rife that Pyongyang’s politburo severed the state funds awarded to the country’s infamous prodigal son, who is a frequent visitor to the southern Chinese special administrative region of Macau and well known in the small territory’s numerous casinos and plush restaurants.
Jong-nam was being groomed to succeed Kim Jong-il - but he deeply disappointed and embarrassed his father in 2001 when he was caught trying to visit Japan’s Disneyland on a false passport.
The same official said Jong-nam's luxury apartment that he rented for his wife was paid for by the Chinese secret service while his spending money came primarily from North Korea.Looking for news you can trust?
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Here’s the recipe for saving sea turtles from drowning in the longline fishery. Switch out the classic J hooks for circular hooks. Add a little training and the tools to release turtles accidentally hooked.
A new report by the World Wildlife Fund and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) finds the new hooks dramatically reduce the bycatch of marine turtles without impacting fishing activity. They analyzed 4 years of data from 8 Eastern Pacific countries: Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. They found up to 89% reductions in the marine turtle bycatch per thousand hooks, and that 95% of all turtles caught in longline fishing were recovered alive. Circle hooks performed as well as J hooks in the catch rates of tuna, billfishes and sharks fishery.
Okay, well the tuna, billfishes, and sharks fisheries compose a whole other thorny issue. One as deserving of solutions as the sea turtles. The big fish of the sea are in superserious trouble and also need a reprieve from the hooks, like, right this second...
But in terms of this sea turtle story... “Our goal is to reduce the incidental catch of marine turtles from the long-line fishing operations without affecting the fisheries activity which is a main source of food and income for local communities,” explained Martin Hall, Principal Researcher for the IATTC.
So, thumbs up on the turtle hooks. Thumbs up on helping local communities with food and income issues. Big thumbs down on continuing to overfish the big fish.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.'Beauty and the Beast's' "gay moment" may have passed muster, but it's unclear whether the Oscar best picture winner will score a release in the country.
On March 17, the day that Disney's Beauty and the Beast opened on 20,000 screens across China, The People's Daily tweeted: "Controversial gay moment kept in Disney’s #BeautyAndTheBeast... requires no guidance for minors."
It was a modestly encouraging sign for the country's LGBTQ community. Not only was China's notoriously strict censorship regime allowing the film — which includes a three-second "gay moment" — to screen in full, the Communist Party's official newspaper appeared to be boasting about it.
"Our appreciation mostly goes to the filmmakers," says Chinese indie director and activist Fan Popo, whose LGBT documentary Mama Rainbow was pulled from Chinese streaming services in 2014. "So many international films are 'a little bit gay' these days, if the censors insisted on blocking all of it, one day soon there wouldn't be American film showing in China."
Local insiders say China's censors are now contending with a fresh test of their newfound tolerance: Oscar best picture winner Moonlight. But few expect Barry Jenkins' elegant award winner to get the same liberal treatment BATB received. Says one source close to state-backed distributor China Film Group: "They think Moonlight is unsuitable for the China market and not politically correct."
Shortly after the Oscars telecast last month, China's Netflix-like streaming video giant iQiyi scooped up exclusive online rights to Moonlight, La La Land and best foreign-language film The Salesman. But sources tell THR that the Moonlight acquisition was made without prior censorship clearance and iQiyi's online release plans remain uncertain (the company declined to comment). Moonlight was also recently tipped to screen at the upcoming Beijing International Film Festival in April, but organizers say the selection is "still unconfirmed."
Depicting gay relationships on TV is banned in China, but no rules explicitly prohibit such stories in feature films or online. Regulators have shown their discomfort with the subject on several occasions, however, pulling popular gay-themed dramas from the web, and blocking movies via the invocation of "pornographic" or "sensitive" material. Such was the argument when Brokeback Mountain was denied a release in China in 2006, despite the star status of Taiwanese director Ang Lee in the country. More often, no explanation is ever given at all — the movies simply don't screen.
So why would Beauty and the Beast cruise through the system — along with Power Rangers, which features Hollywood's first queer-questioning superhero protagonist — while Moonlight remains in limbo?
"Each of these decisions is a calculation," says one Beijing-based exec. Beauty and the Beast was a major studio title widely projected to be a hit (meaning more revenue for local cinemas and distributors), while the film's gay content could easily be missed with a well-timed sneeze. Disney's deep local government connections also certainly helped.
"Money outweighed the political sensitivities," the exec adds (so far, BATB has earned just shy of $80 million in China).
A24, the company that financed, produced and is handling international sales on Moonlight, is currently working with a Chinese partner to try to arrange a theatrical release in China. ("At this moment, there is no tangible update," said a spokesperson on behalf of the company.)
Though official word has yet to arrive, Fan says he's not optimistic about Moonlight's chances — although a surprise wide release would indeed be "great news" for China's gay community.
"It would also be good news for the whole Chinese movie audience," he adds. Civil rights questions aside, Fan says: "Moonlight is a beautiful and thoughtful film."
A version of this story first appeared in the March 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.Home / Browse / Charleston Schools, Desegregation of
Desegregation of Charleston Schools
Much has been written about the Little Rock School District desegregation in 1957. However, the Charleston Public School District quietly and successfully integrated first through twelfth grades, without any publicity until about three weeks after school had opened for the fall term in 1954. Charleston was the first school district in the former Confederate states to integrate all twelve grades, and because of this, Charleston School District has been named a National Commemorative Site by the U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service.
Following the May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that deemed state laws mandating public school segregation unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Charleston School Board made a historic decision. In the spirit of civic obedience, on July 27, 1954, the five-member board—consisting of President Howard Madison Orsburn, George Ferrell Hairston, Archibald R. Schaffer, Herbert E. Shumate, and Homer Keith—voted unanimously to “disband the Colored School and admit the Colored children into the grade and high school when classes open for the fall semester.”
When the fall semester opened on August 23, 1954, in the small town of Charleston (Franklin County), located in western Arkansas about twenty miles east of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on Highway 22, eleven African-American students attended classes with some 480 white students. Three were enrolled in the ninth grade and eight in the elementary grades. Those outside of the town were unaware that this small school district had made history.
Following the May U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the Charleston School Board and Woodrow W. Haynes, superintendent of Charleston Public Schools spent the early part of the summer persuading civic and business leaders, including the local newspaper, not to discuss the integration plans with any out-of-town news source. The story was not reported to the media until September 13, 1954, by which time black students had been admitted to Fayetteville High School in Washington County. On this same day, Charleston School Board president Howard Madison Orsburn revealed to reporters that Charleston schools had integrated peacefully three weeks earlier. The secrecy surrounding the event may have saved Charleston from the problems that plagued other school districts during the early years of integration.
Economics, not just morality, also played a role in Charleston’s decision to desegregate. Prior to the 1954 integration, the district had paid around $4,500 a year to enroll, transport, and pay expenses for black high school students sent to the all-black Lincoln High School in Fort Smith. The local Rosenwald School provided education for first through eighth grade and was the Charleston black community’s first tax-supported school, but black students wanting to graduate from high school had to be transported to Fort Smith. The 1954 integration decision closed the Rosenwald School, which needed repairs the district could not afford, and removed the necessity of transporting the ninth-through-twelfth-grade students to Fort Smith.
Early in the morning of the first day of classes, August 23, 1954, Superintendent Haynes found a racial slur written on an outside school wall. Determined to achieve a successful merger, he and the janitor cleaned it off prior to the arrival of the students, and no one else saw it. There were, however, a few repercussions from Charleston’s integration. Some schools refused to play Charleston in football because black students were on the team. Also, Charleston was excluded from some band competitions because of black members.
On June 26, 1958, Superintendent Haynes had announced his departure from Charleston, his home town, for a college administrative position in northeast Arkansas. At the July 5 meeting, Schaffer, a member of the school board since 1949, resigned effective July 1, 1958. Orsburn, who had served on the board for many years, also resigned effective the same date. Dale Bumpers, future U.S. senator, and Gene VanMeter were appointed to fill the un-expired positions of Schaffer and Orsburn.
In the fall of 1957, the worldwide publicity surrounding the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) bolstered the determination of a very small group of Charleston segregationists to reverse the 1954 integration. They organized and selected two candidates to run for the school board positions that had become vacant, and they campaigned and advertised extensively. The segregationists’ hopes were extinguished when they were overwhelmingly defeated by a 2-1 margin in the December 6, 1958, election.
The first two black graduates of Charleston High School were Barbara (Williams) Dotson and Joe Ferguson in 1961. Charleston High School was designated as a National Commemorative Site through legislation authored by Senator Bumpers in 1998, prior to his retirement. Interpretative exhibits, both inside and outside of the Annex Building, which is located on the east end of the school campus, tell the story of the school desegregation. A National Park sign is in front of the building at curbside on the south side of Main Street. The present-day Charleston School District serves a diverse population that includes students of various races and ethnicities.
For additional information:
Doing What Was Right. VHS. TeleVision for Arkansas, 2004.
Hughes, David. “At long last, integration of ’54 to go on the map.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. November 15, 1998, pp. 1B, 7B.
Mary Belle Ervin
Charleston High SchoolPITTSBURGH -- The Steelers are targeting cornerbacks in free agency, having reached out to representatives for at least three of them during the period that teams and agents of prospective free agents are allowed to talk but not consummate any deals.
The Steelers have inquired about Tennessee’s Alterraun Verner, Carolina’s Captain Munnerlyn and Miami’s Nolan Carroll, according to multiple sources, and it looks like they are serious about replenishing one of the thinnest positions on their roster through free agency as well as the draft.
Pittsburgh has only three cornerbacks on the roster with meaningful NFL experience. And Ike Taylor’s future is uncertain with the 11th-year veteran scheduled to make $7 million in base salary in 2014.
Verner is one of the top cornerbacks in the free-agent class, and the fourth-year veteran is set to cash in after intercepting five passes and making the Pro Bowl last season. Verner, who has ties to Steelers assistant coaches Mike Munchak and Carnell Lake, will probably be too pricey for the Steelers, who are less than $4 million under the cap but can create more room by releasing Taylor.
Munnerlyn and Carroll may be the more realistic options for the Steelers from an economic standpoint, as neither is among the cornerbacks who will command top dollar on the open market.
The 5-foot-8, 195-pound Munnerlyn, who turns 26 next month, recorded 73 tackles and three sacks while also intercepting two passes last season for Carolina. The 6-1, 205-pound Carroll recorded 47 tackles and intercepted three passes last season for the Dolphins, and he is young, having turned 26 in January.
The Steelers are familiar with Carroll having hosted him for a pre-draft visit in 2010. The Dolphins picked Carroll in the fifth round that year while Munnerlyn was a seventh-round pick by the Panthers in 2009.
The free-agent signing period starts Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET, and that is when teams are also allowed to host free agents for visits.Anderson Cooper sounded perplexed that Kellyanne Conway would call Senator Bob Corker’s tweeted criticism of President Trump “incredibly irresponsible.”
“She finds tweets like Senator Bob Corker’s ‘incredibly irresponsible,’ saying world leaders see it. Let’s just let that sink in for a moment,” Anderson said during his CNN show “360” Monday night.
The Republican senator from Tennessee — who is also the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee — has been increasingly critical of Trump and his temperament. After the POTUS recently tweeted that Corker had “begged” him to endorse him for re-election but “didn’t have the guts to run,” Corker responded, “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
Also Read: Sen. Bob Corker Rips Trump After Twitter Diss: 'White House Has Become an Adult Day Care Center'
Conway fired back, saying that “world leaders see it,” adding, “I find tweets like this to be incredibly irresponsible.”
“Bob Corker’s tweets are incredibly irresponsible, and she’s concerned that world leaders see it… A tweet… incredibly irresponsible,” Cooper said Monday night. “Let me just remind you she works for the President of the United States, who tweets in the pre-dawn hours and all throughout the day — seemingly whatever pops into his mind, whether those things are true or not. But with a straight face, she now says that Senator Bob Corker is the ‘incredibly irresponsible’ one.”
Also Read: Trump Says Tillerson Is 'Wasting His Time' in Talks With 'Little Rocket Man'
Anderson asked, “Does she hold the President to the same criticism, concerned that world leaders are watching? Well,” he answered, “No, she doesn’t.”
Watch the clip below.
Conway calls Corker tweet “irresponsible”
Cooper: Let that sink in a bit #KeepingThemHonest https://t.co/jyITUJEBir https://t.co/FbDm6ekHx2 – Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) October 10, 2017Samuel L. Jackson has never been one to hold his tongue, and a recent interview with Sam Rubin was no exception, after the longtime KTLA entertainment reporter mistook the “Robocop” actor for Laurence Fishburne.
Jackson was ostensibly doing the interview with the Los Angeles station to promote the upcoming “RoboCop” remake — a topic that took a back seat after the station’s Rubin seemed to confuse him with “The Matrix” star.
Also read: Samuel L. Jackson on Obama: ‘Be a Leader. Be F—king Presidential’
“Did you get a lot of reaction from that Super Bowl commercial?” Rubin asked, an apparent reference to Fishburne’s “Matrix”-themed ad on big game day.
“What Super Bowl commercial?” a perplexed Jackson asked before putting two and two together.
See video: Samuel L. Jackson: ‘I Am Quitting Acting’
“You’re as crazy as the people on Twitter!” Jackson shot back, in what might be one of the cruelest insults to be hurled in this age of social media. “I’m not Laurence Fishburne!
“We don’t all look alike!” Jackson continued.
See video: Samuel L. Jackson Tries to Make Reporter Drop an N-Bomb
“I am guilty!” Rubin replied, in an attempt to put an end to the issue, but no dice, as Jackson continued to lay into him.
“You’re the entertainment reporter for this station and you don’t know the difference between me and Laurence Fishburne?” Jackson asked. “There must be a very short line for your job.”
Rubin later apologized, calling his gaffe a “very amateur mistake” and insisting that he does, in fact, know who Samuel L. Jackson is.
“First and foremost, I do know who Samuel L. Jackson is,” Rubin said on air. “I pride myself on the fact that, unlike a lot of people who do this kind of work, more often than not, I really do know what I’m talking about but I didn’t 30 minutes ago. And I’m really embarrassed about it, and I very much apologize to Samuel L. Jackson and anyone else who was offended by what was a very amateur mistake.”
Watch Rubin’s boo-boo and his subsequent apology below.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 mum of a young British man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump said she does not "for one minute" believe he meant any harm.
Michael Sandford is currently being held in custody in Las Vegas after allegedly trying to grab a police officer's gun to shoot the presidential candidate at a rally.
Mum Lynne Sandford was able to visit her son for the first time on Thursday - more than two months after he was arrested on June 18.
The 20-year-old of Dorking, Surrey, allegedly tried to snatch an officer's weapon during a rally at a Las Vegas casino, later telling officials that his plan was "to shoot and kill Donald Trump".
(Image: Reuters)
Ms Sandford spoke to her son, who she says does not remember what happened, through a wire divide at the Lloyd D George courthouse in Las Vegas on Thursday.
She told the Press Association: " He's so sorry for everything. He's very remorseful and glad that nothing happened, nobody got hurt, and he just feels terrible about the whole thing and the effect that it's having on the family.
"He desperately misses us and loves us and he just wants to come back to the UK.
"We spent the whole meeting hand-in-hand through the wire mesh, at the end we put our cheeks together and I was crying and he felt one of my tear drops come through the mesh, so we actually had contact after all."
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The 46-year-old said her son had never shown an interest in politics, and when asked if she believed he had intended harm, replied: "Not for one minute."
"He has actually said to me: 'It's imperative you understand, mum, I would never under normal circumstances do anything like this. You know that don't you?' and I said 'yes of course I do'.
"I know something went very wrong with his mind at that time."
(Image: PA)
Ms Sandford said that her son had a number of mental health conditions - including autism, severe OCD, anxiety, depression and previously anorexia - and had previously tried to take his own life twice.
She and her son had only "erratic" contact after he travelled to New Jersey, and the next time she saw him was on TV being frogmarched out of the Trump rally.
Continuing she said: "He feels in limbo because the trial keeps getting put back. He doesn't know how to cope with each day, let alone any longer than that.
"In some ways he's very young - like a little boy in a man's body.
"This was completely out of character: he's never hurt anybody, never had any inclination to hurt anybody. He's always been the opposite: very kind, very polite and well-mannered and considerate."
(Image: Reuters)
(Image: Reuters)
Mr Sandford's British lawyer, Saimo Chahal QC said the 20-year-old had two options - to have a jury trial or to accept a plea bargain that has been offered.
More than £32,000 has been raised on a crowdfunding page set up to help the family pay for legal fees.
Mr Sandford has been charged with being in the country illegally and disrupting government business. He faces up to 10 years in US prison if found guilty.
His trial starts on October 3.1 of 14 View Caption
Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune Dr. Daniel J. Kwak asks questions of state epidemiologist Sam LeFevre during a meeting at Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune Dave and Wendie Casper pose for a portrait with their kids Jaden Karren, 10, and Kylie Kar Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune Wendie Casper talks about her experiences giving birth to her children in Vernal Wednesday (Al Hartmann | Tribune file photo) Midwife Donna Young and her daughter Holt, look at a grave markers of stillborn and newborn c Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune State epidemiologist Sam LeFevre speaks during a meeting at the TriCounty Health Departmen Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune State epidemiologist Sam LeFevre speaks during a meeting at the TriCounty Health Departmen Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune Members of the TriCounty Health Department listen as state epidemiologist Sam LeFevre spea Prevalence of all birth defects State and TriCounty Health Department researchers documented spikes and plunges in birth defects a Al Hartmann | Tribune file photo Midwife Donna Young and her daughter Holt, look at a grave markers of stillborn and newborn ch Al Hartmann | Tribune file photo Midwife Donna Young looks at a grave marker of a stillborn child in Rock Point Cemetery in Maes Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune Dr. Daniel J. Kwak asks questions of state epidemiologist Sam LeFevre during a meeting at Rate of infant deaths in the tri-county region Health department analysts found a total of 118 infant deaths and 85 stillbirths beFirst, there was the novel written without using the letter "e". Now a French author has produced what he claims is the first book with no verbs.
Perhaps inevitably, critics have commented unfavourably on the lack of action in Michel Thaler's work, The Train from Nowhere, which runs to 233 pages. Instead of action, lengthy passages are filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikeable passengers on a train.
In a typical piece of prose, Mr Thaler writes: "... Those women there, probably mothers, bearers of ideas far too voluminous for their brains of modest capacity."
A less-than-glowing review in the respected magazine Le Nouvel Observateur described his book as "disagreeable" and said its scathing descriptions of women travellers displayed "a rare misogyny".
Yet he is equally disparaging of male passengers. He describes one as a "large dwarf or small giant - a young buck with a gelled mop with ideas, at first glance, shorter than his hair, and not longer than the bristles on a toothbrush, perhaps shorter".
The author, a doctor of literature who admits that "Thaler" is a pseudonym, and who has not previously written books under the name, said it was liberating to write without verbs, which he describes as "invaders, dictators, and usurpers of our literature".
"My book is a revolution in the history of literature. It is the first book of its kind. It's daring, modern and is to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art," said Mr Thaler, an eccentric who refuses to reveal his real name or age, beyond admitting to being in his sixties.
"The verb is like a weed in a field of flowers," he said. "You have to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish.
"I am like a car driver who has smashed the windscreen so he cannot see into the future, smashed the rear-view mirror so he cannot see the past, and is travelling in the present."
Mr Thaler says that he hopes Le Train de Nulle Part, which costs €20 (£14) will be translated into English.
In France, with its long and distinguished literary heritage, the reading public is struggling to fathom whether the work is any more than an exercise in semantics and strangled grammar.
It remains to be seen whether Mr Thaler's book grows to be as admired as La Disparition (The Disappearance), which Georges Perec wrote in 1969 without using the letter "e". Mr Perec, who tried to expand literature by borrowing formal patterns from other disciplines such as mathematics and chess, followed it up with Les Revenantes (The Ghosts), in which the only vowel he used was "e".
Chrystel Manfredi-Matringe of Adcan, which published Le Train de Nulle Part, said: "Monsieur Thaler takes an immense pleasure in language and words, but he also likes being provocative. Some critics have said, unfairly, that he is a misogynist but it's not true. He is a very charming, courteous man who loves women.
"His book attacks both sexes. Each person in it, male or female, displays a type of modern behaviour which he finds shocking and abhors."A recent New York Times story that slams the free market approach to education policy is rife with inaccuracies. Amazingly, the author of the piece misrepresents the very data she is using to build her erroneous case against school choice.
"Free Market for Education? Economists Generally Don't Buy It," claims Susan Dynarski, a professor of education, public policy, and economics at the University of Michigan, in The Times. This is a betrayal of expectations, according to Dynarski, because economists generally understand that free markets produce better outcomes than central planners (much to the chagrin of education professors). Economists are usually the ones calling for less regulation and more unrestricted capitalism; if they're super conflicted about markets in education, that would be a serious indictment of the school choice approach. Dynarski writes:
You might think that most economists agree with this overall approach, because economists generally like free markets. For example, over 90 percent of the members of the University of Chicago's panel of leading economists thought that ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft made consumers better off by providing competition for the highly regulated taxi industry. But economists are far less optimistic about what an unfettered market can achieve in education. Only a third of economists on the Chicago panel agreed that students would be better off if they all had access to vouchers to use at any private (or public) school of their choice.
That does sound bad for school choice—it suggests that two-thirds of surveyed economists disagree that students with vouchers would be better off.
But Dynarski is applying spin. Here is the survey:
A chunk of economists—37 percent—couldn't say for sure whether vouches would improve educational outcomes. That's not so surprising: education reform is a complicated issue and economists are thorough, cautious people. Moreover, it's true that vouchers don't always make things better for every kid—providing more choices is not the same thing as magically reversing decades of poverty, racial inequality, and bad incentives.
But among economists who did take a position on the issue, school vouchers were a big winner. As Slate Star Codex explains:
36% of economists agree that vouchers would improve education, compared to 19% who disagree. The rest are unsure or didn't answer the question. The picture looks about the same when weighted by the economists' confidence. A more accurate way to summarize this graph is "About twice as many economists believe a voucher system would improve education as believe that it wouldn't." By leaving it at "only a third of economists support vouchers", the article implies that there is an economic consensus against the policy. Heck, it more than implies it – its title is "Free Market For Education: Economists Generally Don't Buy It". But its own source suggests that, of economists who have an opinion, a large majority are pro-voucher. (note also that the options are only "agree that vouchers will improve education" and "disagree that vouchers will improve education", so that it's unclear from the data if any dissenting economists agree with the Times' position that vouchers will make things worse. They might just think that things would stay the same.) I think this is really poor journalistic practice and implies the opinion of the nation's economists to be the opposite of what it really is. I hope the Times prints a correction.
I would also note that I read through most of the surveyed economists' comments, and it seems pretty clear that those who were "uncertain" did think school vouchers would improve outcomes for a lot of kids; they just thought it was hard to quantify the overall effect. "I think the majority of public school students would be better off, but certainly not all," wrote one economist. "The question is ambiguous about the percent." You can judge for yourself whether the responses should be further weighted toward the pro-voucher position.
But that's not even everything that's wrong with the article. Having smeared school choice as something the Trump administration will push despite the learned skepticism of "economists generally," Dynarski then goes on to point out a number other policy issues where the consensus is against the free market:
While economists are trained about the value of free markets, they are also trained to spot when markets can't work alone and government intervention is required. A classic example is pollution. Factories and cars that spew toxins ruin the air for everyone. Pollution is what economists call a "negative externality": Drivers get the benefits of the gas they burn when they drive to work, but everyone else gets the bad emissions. Economists recommend governments use taxes and regulations to minimize this negative externality. In most markets, in fact, economists advocate striking a balance between free competition and regulation. While they vary considerably in where they would strike that balance, it's unusual for an economist to claim that private markets can serve every need without any government intervention at all.
At this point I'm not sure readers should trust Dynarski's impression of what economists think—and in fact, there are plenty of economists who say markets and property rights would reduce all sorts of environmental problems—but let's assume she's right: Economists agree that there are some things the free market just can't handle on its own.*
Earlier, Dynarski associated the free market position with school vouchers. Now she is saying that the free market position is "private markets can serve every need without any government intervention at all." That's an incredible contradiction. Dynarski, I suppose, wants her readers to believe that school vouchers are an anarcho-capitalist delusion that would gut public education and leave children to become feral and illiterate. In reality, school vouchers represent exactly the sort of "balance between free market competition and regulation" that economists support. Under a voucher system, education is still publicly funded. Many schools are still run by the government. Those that are not explicitly run by the government are still subjected to considerable regulation.
Dynarski is making the case that smart, reasonable people support market competition as long as it's accompanied by significant government intervention. Dynarski is also, for some reason, making the case against school vouchers—even though vouchers are the perfect example of the kind of thing she claims is smart and reasonable.
Supporters of school choice are not extremists. They do not want to destroy public funding for education, or leave children to fend for themselves. They have merely observed that a specific model—forcing kids to attend a specific school that comports with the zip code assigned to them at birth—is inefficient, immoral |
railings and traffic light. She then drives into Chertsey Street, narrowly avoiding pedestrians in the road.
"Officers then found the vehicle in a car park near to Woodbridge Road with Brown still in the driver's seat with the keys in her hand."The Swedish web host PeRiQuito AB, PRQ, is one of the most controversial web hosts on the planet, valuing free speech so highly that it serves up web content for Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks and even sites like Pedophile.se. Yesterday, though, Swedish police paid a visit.
Forbes reports that Stockholm police raided the company yesterday. The process brought about technical issues for PQR, which shut down its own website and a swathe of torrent sites like Pirate Bay, but the police also seized a number of servers.
It's currently not clear which servers were taken. There're certainly plenty to choose from: among PQR's 2,000-or-so customers are WikiLeaks, the North America Man-Boy Love Association, Pedophile.se, the Chechen rebel site Kavkaz Central, and the defamation-accused Italian blog known as Perugia Shock.
PQR was founded by Pirate Bay members back in 2004, and has been raided by police twice before: in 2006 to gain evidence about Pirate Bay and 2010 during a more general file sharing investigation. The nature of the PQR business — a no-questions-asked set-up where clients often remain anonymous — means that even it doesn't know why the raid happened yet. [Nyheter24 via Forbes]VIDEO: Cop Shoots Suspect Outside Dallas Airport Baggage Claim
Marine with 2 Purple Hearts Drowns After Rescuing 2 Teens from Dam
A suspected bike thief in Oregon learned the hard way that you don't mess with cowboys.
The Eagle Point Police Department posted about the unbelievable incident on their Facebook page on Friday.
According to the department, a man tried to steal a woman's bike in the parking lot of an Eagle Point Walmart.
That's when local rancher Ray Borba, armed with only a rope, leapt into action.
Photos show that Borba put his lassoing skills to use, wrangling the would-be thief and restraining him until police arrived.
“He jumped on his horse that was at the ready and pulled out his lasso,” Alyssa Borba, Robert’s wife, told Fox 13. “This is what he does [for a living], so he could do it quick.”
Police arrested Victorino Arellano-Sanchez, whom they described as a transient from the Seattle area, on a theft charge.
In their Facebook post, the department called Borba a hero and thanked him for saving the day.
Watch the "Fox and Friends Weekend" report above.
Family: Girl, 15, Committed Suicide Over Nude Images Leaked on Snapchat
WATCH: Bieber Thrown to Ground After Attacking Man Who Wanted Autograph
Unlucky Criminals Tried to Rob a McDonald's Filled With Special ForcesBroadband-Hamnet NEWSFLASH Written by Administrator
9/21/2015 Notice: There is a serious risk to certain Ubiquiti hardware when used with software not written to match their new boot loader. The issue occurs when recent Ubiquiti devices with a new bootloader version are used with firmware not specifically modified for this change.
OpenWRT is the original software for Broadband-Hamnet software designed for Ubiquiti products.
At present, the issue is under investigation.
To prevent unrecoverable damage to your Ubiquiti devices, we STRONGLY recommend waiting until the limits, methods to avoid the risk and specific steps are posted. If you purchase new UBNT gear, and it has 5.6 version firmware, you will need to flash it to older 5.5 UBNT firmware FIRST, and then load our firmware.
Further details of the actual issue are here: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/airmaxm
Welcome to the Broadband-Hamnet™ web site Written by Jim Kinter, K5KTF Broadband-Hamnet™ (formerly called HSMM-Mesh™) is a high speed, self discovering, self configuring, fault tolerant, wireless computer network that can run for days from a fully charged car battery, or indefinitely with the addition of a modest solar array or other supplemental power source. The focus is on emergency communications. In its current form it is built using the Linksys WRT54G/GL/GS wireless routers and operates on channels 1-6 of the 2.4GHz ISM band, which overlaps with the upper portion of the 13cm amateur radio band. Other platforms and bands include several types of Ubiquiti equipment in the 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.7GHz band. Adidtional features let signals come in on one band and leave on another without additional configuration. All mesh nodes on all bands exchange data so long as they are within range. We will be adding support for Ubiquiti 3.4GHz gear as well. OLSR is used for auto linking of the mesh node radios. OpenWRT firmware tools are used for firmware development. Broadband-Hamnet™ is currently being designed, developed and deployed as an amateur radio broadband communications system. It originated in Austin, Texas but has spread all across the USA and many other countries around the world. Glenn KD5MFW, David AD5OO, Bob WB5AOH and Rick NG5V are the gents spearheading the efforts, while yours truly, Jim K5KTF keeps the website up and running to provide information about the project. There is a distributed development community with users in a number of areas of the USA and other continents. If you have questions, our forums would be a great place to research and ask questions. You will need to register and login to post to them but reading online is available without an account. Expanded search abilities are now available to find topics and keywords. Just use the search option at the top of most pages. First time visitor? This technology is amazingly popular, having a true Worked all Continents, (including Antarctica) thousands of users overseas, and a huge number of users in the USA. Anyone can read from the site. If you want to see how many users have registered to post on the forums, click the forums link in the main menu and scroll all the way to the bottom. As of 1/2/2018, there are almost 8,000 registered users for the site. In the upper left corner of the home page, logged in users and guests are shown. These numbers regularly run between 50 and many hundreds of concurrent guests.
Regardless of your experience level, please take a moment to learn a bit about how our firmware works. The biggest source of confusion is the notion that our project is application software. It is not an application, but rather a network. As a network, it can transport data or use application software residing at another location just like your home or office network The page linked above contains a significant list of what it is/is not and will give you a good overview of Broadband-Hamnet™ operations. Mesh networks are different than normal WiFi. Microwave networks are different than UHF/VHF or HF networks. Different rules apply concerning propagation and RF safety. Adding an amplifier rarely improves communications and is never your first choice. You may want to read the linked page completely, do some exploring around the web site and then go back to re-read info on the link above to lock in your understanding. As you begin to think about how a network can be used, your options for employing Broadband-Hamnet™ will continue to expand.
Get on the map Written by Jim Kinter, K5KTF If you have a mesh node (or 3) installed, and would like to have it put on our Googlemap http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/googlemapped-mesh-nodes.html (viewable by registered and logged in users), fill out the form.
That way, any nearby meshers (or potential meshers) will have an idea which way to point.
General Disclaimer Written by David Rivenburg, AD5OO In order to gain benefit from this system you must be fluent in TCP/IP networking or be a highly motivated self-starter who can independently acquire that fluency. At this stage there are relatively few developers and users, and they are already stretched thin with their current contributions. While we have made the system as easy to use as possible, it can still be a complex system and we cannot offer any basic network training. As our user and developer base grows we may collectively be able to offer such support but at this time you are responsible for your own education in the fundamentals of computer networking.
HSMM-MESH™ is not a fully mature, time tested, finished product. However, its basic functionality is proven and it is quite useful in its current state. It provides a network infrastructure upon which numerous applications can be built. This project is in its infancy and requires contributions from its users and developers before it will be suitable for a wider audience. If you have a specific application in mind, hop on board and help us grow the capabilities of the mesh.
HSMM-MESH™ is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It may or may not be suitable for your application. You will be better served by changing your application to fit the mesh than the other way around. Using a mesh node is relatively easy. Setting up its internal structure and services to create the mesh is not easy, but it is very easy to break if not done correctly. While it is essential to have an understanding of general networking principles to use the mesh effectively, the mesh is not a conventional network. You will have to learn some new ways of thinking about networking. I strongly recommend reading the HSMM-MESH Design Philosophy article for an overview of how the system is designed.
All that being said, this is a new way to HAVE FUN with ham radio! For $60 you will not be able to find a more capable radio than that contained in a WRT54G. If you have grown weary of the colossally slow pace of digital communications with HF and VHF radio, give HSMM-MESH™ a try!
Unfortunately, all this needs to be said as well:
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE TRADEMARK HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE TRADEMARK OWNERS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Legal Information regarding Broadband-Hamnet™ Written by Glenn Currie, KD5MFW Broadband-Hamnet™ is intended for amateur radio use and passing amateur radio traffic. It is NOT intended to replace your personal Internet connection. It is a “feature” that Broadband-Hamnet™ can be connected to the Internet. General Internet access is not its primary purpose. Use your personal Internet connection under Part-15 FCC rules, to serve that purpose.
There are many ways to use Broadband-Hamnet™, in compliance with Amateur Radio Part-97 FCC rules - without connecting to the Internet. The system is designed to be a robust, stand alone wireless network - that CAN be connected to the Internet.
If an operator connects their mesh network to the Internet, here are some ways, under FCC Part-97 rules, that it can be used: Echolink, Winlink/RMS Packet, tunnel meshing, remote control of radios/equipment, video relay, VoIP connections, APRS.
The operator of a mesh node has to make an active software configuration selection to pass Internet traffic onto the mesh network. Providing an Internet link is NOT the default mode in the Broadband-Hamnet™ software. Additionally, the operator must attach a live Internet connection to the mesh node to pass Internet traffic.
If an operator takes these multiple active steps to connect their radio to the Internet, then they will need to understand what traffic is being passed and that it is covered by their Amateur Radio license.
If they join a mesh that has Internet access, each radio operator should do what is needed to keep operations legal.
If you need help operating your radio correctly, others can try to help, but ultimately, it is your license and your responsibility to operate legally.
As with ANY piece of Ham radio gear, Broadband-Hamnet™ COULD be used illegally, and it is the control operator's duty to make sure it is being used in accordance with FCC Part-97 Amateur Radio rules.
This website is not in a position to offer any definitive legal advice. Only a duly appointed person, empowered to interpret the rules and regulations, can do that. That means that for most of us, our opinion has no legal standing – no more than any personal opinion on tax law.
Since we cannot offer any definitive legal advice, we wish to avoid the fruitless legal arguments that have raged in multiple ham radio forums, and only served to get people upset. To do so, would be to expend resources that cost real money, for no useful purpose.
The moderators and administrators of the website will limit non-productive lines of discussion, and/or may pull postings of such nature. Rulings made by a moderator/administrator of this website are final.
SPONSORED AD:Professor Ken Gemes (Birkbeck) – Nietzsche on the Value of Truth
Nietzsche claims that the with the rejection of religious underpinning of the value of truth (the truth as God’s word) we can now raise the question of why and to what extent we should value truth. He argues that our need for meaning conflicts with our will to truth since that will tends to destroy all mythologies including the mythology of value – our will to truth reveals that values are not in the world but are merely our projections onto the world. This knowledge eviscerates the world of meaning. This does not mean that Nietzsche rejects the value of truth but that he rejects the notion, inherited from the Judeo-Christian world view, that truth is an unconditional value. Such a notion of truth, destructive of all myth and meaning, is unliveable. The very claim that the truth is valuable, even if not unconditionally valuable, is itself one of those myths that help give life meaning.hidden
Delhi government has decided to bring all autorickshaws and taxis under one app facilitating commuters to book them through smartphones during a 15-day trial of odd-even scheme starting January 1.
Transport Minister Gopal Rai said that PoochO app will be launched on December 22, a day when 'Car-Free Day' will be organised on Vikas Marg in East Delhi's Lakshmi Nagar area.
On Friday, Rai held a meeting with representatives of city's auto and taxi unions to roll out a plan so that people won't have to face problems in hiring taxis and autorickshaws from January 1 to 15.
There are around 80,000 autorickshaws and 30,000 taxis plying in the national capital. After the launch of PoochO app, commuters will be able to book autos and taxis using their smartphones on the lines of app-based private taxi service providers.
"Under PoochO app, we will launch two separate Apps, one for passengers and another one for drivers. Government will run an awareness campaign for drivers of taxis and autos to register themselves before December 22. They can send their details on mobile number 9958694311 for their registration," Rai told a press conference in New Delhi.
The Minister said that city's autos and taxis will come under PoochO app which can be downloaded on phones from Google Play store and thereafter, people will have to ensure GPS of their phone is on, and can find out the nearest auto to them through maps.
In July last year, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung had launched PoochO app which allows people to access the DIMTS database of registered drivers' mobile numbers and call them up to book a ride.
The Minister said that PoochO app will only work on those auto and taxis having Global Positioning System (GPS), adding that there are around 75 percent of autorickshaws which are GPS-enabled.
"In today's meeting, we have also asked auto and taxi drivers to be in queue at 'Halt & Go' stands so that traffic could not be disturbed on roads," he said.
According to the Minister, government will organise Car-Free Day on Vikas Marg in Lakshmi Nagar area of East Delhi. A cycle rally will also be held that day. Delhi government yesterday decided to add an additional fleet of 6,000 buses to the capital's roads to enhance public transport besides increasing frequency of metro trains and allowing more autos on the roads.
AAP government has decided to strictly implement National Green Tribunal's order to slap a fine of Rs. 5,000 against officials concerned including park in-charges if burning of leaves and garbage was detected in their areas.
PTI
Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.The National Center for Lesbian Rights is suing the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association for allegedly discriminating against three bisexual male players who weren’t gay enough to play in the 2008 Gay Softball World Series. According to the plaintiffs, NAGAAA officials asked five members of team D2 to specify whether they were “heterosexual” or “gay”, which makes me wonder: Did eating pussy in college make me too straight to play in a gay softball league?
The suit alleges NAGAAA asked the players “intrusive questions” about their sex lives and whether players identified as “predominantly attracted to men” or “predominantly attracted to women” while in a room filled with 25 strangers (most of who had come just to watch). When one of the players responded that he was both heterosexual and gay, an NAGAAA official allegedly said, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.”
The predominantly-white NAGAAA committee then disqualified three bisexual men of color (and not the two white guys) and recommended disciplinary measures against the D2 team and San Francisco league, including forcing them to forfeit their second-place World Series win. The NCLR says that no apology has been issued to the men nor has any disavowal been made of their public sexual questioning. NCLR is suing to rid the NAGAAA’s rules of discrimination against any sexual identities.
In response, NAGAAA’s attorney Beth Allen asked, “Why is [the NCLR] asserting this claim on behalf of three poor beleaguered straight men? I don’t get it.” And she’s right, neither Ms. Allen nor the NAGAAA get it. The players aren’t gay nor are they “beleaguered straight men”—they’re bisexual, an identity that’s regularly discounted by straights and gays who don’t know where to place them.
It reminds me of the recent, botched introduction of bisexual wrestler Orlando Jordan. TNA Wrestling had no idea how to convey the star’s bisexuality to an audience, so they had him sit between a twink and a vixen (as if he’d suddenly become gay or straight just by making out with either one).
What evidence could D2’s accusers possibly have provided to prove the three disqualified team members weren’t gay? Did they bring in old boyfriends or ask Broadway trivia questions? Is there a penis-to-pussy eating ratio that designates whether one of us is LG or B? No, attraction is intangible and trying to quantify it is absurd and dehumanizing.
Yes, a Gay World Series becomes meaningless if a bunch of straights can go gay-for-play. But the NAGAAA itself says that it exists to promote “amateur sports competition, particularly softball, for all persons regardless of age, sexual orientation or preference, with special emphasis on the participation of members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community.” So why, then, are their own policies so ill-equipped to address bisexual men? Especially ones of color who may not fit within the neat and tidy boxes of GLBT?
NCLR executive director Kate Kendell said the suit “makes very clear that the core issue in the case is that sexual orientation discrimination is harmful, demeaning, and stigmatizing.” And she’s right. The sports field is supposed to be an equalizer where ability trumps identity. Even Ms. Allen agrees that the NAGAAA strives to create an environment where queer athletes can “play ball together… [and not] face any type of discrimination.” By trying to create teams of purely gay players, the NAGAAA has created the very discriminatory environment they sought to avoid.Ukrainian military and separatist representatives exchanged dozens of prisoners under cover of darkness at a remote frontline location Saturday evening, kicking off a process intended to usher in peace to the conflict-ridden east.
One hundred and thirty nine Ukrainian troops and 52 rebels were exchanged, according to a separatist official overseeing the prisoner swap at a no man's land location near the village of Zholobok, some 20 kilometres west of the rebel-held city Luhansk.
A busload of Ukrainian soldiers in military fatigues was transported earlier in the day from the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk to a rural spot some 140 kilometres to the northeast, before joining up with other groups of fellow captives.
After arriving at the location near Zholobok, the troops were made to line up and listen to a speech by a rebel representative, who ordered the men to leave the territory claimed by the separatist movements in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The soldiers — some of them using crutches, while one was carried on a stretcher — then walked for around 3 kilometres to a rendezvous point.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on his Twitter account that he was informed the process had begun by the national security service. His spokesman, Svyatoslav Tsegolko, later said one more Ukrainian soldier prisoner was to be freed in the coming days.
Rebels claim government maltreated prisoners
The peace agreement signed last week in Minsk foresees an exchange of all prisoners in the conflict. It is unclear how many are held in total on both sides, although the Donetsk separatists have said Ukraine is holding about 580 rebels as prisoners.
Rebels said the bulk of the Ukrainian soldiers being released Saturday were captured during recent fighting for the strategic town of Debaltseve, which was taken over by separatists in the past week.
There is not a single day in the Ukrainian conflict when we can feel sure what the next day will bring. - Heidi Tagliavini, envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
The self-styled Donetsk People's Republic added in a statement that most of the people handed over by Ukrainian authorities were civilians.
But "fewer than 50 percent of those exchanged (by the Donetsk People's Republic) were military prisoners," the statement said.
The rebel statement cited what it said were observers at the swap saying many of the prisoners released by the Ukrainian government showed signs of maltreatment.
"Some prisoners could not make their own way independently. Meanwhile, all of the military prisoners transferred to the Ukrainian representatives were in good shape," it said.
An Associated Press journalist saw at least one person released by government forces being pushed in a wheelchair.
Ukrainian soldiers subjected to physical and verbal abuse
Ukrainian authorities didn't immediately respond to the rebels' claims. They have earlier complained bitterly that their troops have been severely mistreated by their rebel captors. Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner after the separatists seized the airport in Donetsk from government forces in January were forced to parade through the city and subjected to physical and verbal abuse by fighters and residents.
Video footage filmed and uploaded to the Internet by rebels earlier this month showed badly wounded Ukrainian troops attacked at a position near Debaltseve being beaten by separatist combatants.
Also Saturday, Ukraine's military and the Russia-backed separatist rebels accused each other of continuing to mount attacks a week after a cease-fire was called.
Ukrainian security spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko said that one serviceman was killed and 40 wounded in attacks over the past day. He did not state a total number of attacks, but said there were 10 mortar attacks on Ukrainian forces in the village of Shyrokyne on the fringes of the strategic port city of Mariupol.
Lysenko said rebels continued to move equipment toward Mariupol. Concerns persist that rebels aim to seize the city which would aid establishing a land corridor between mainland Russia and the Russia-annexed Crimea peninsula.
Shelling amid calls for peace
The rebels claimed Ukrainian forces launched 15 shelling attacks overnight, including on parts of Donetsk, the largest rebel-controlled city.
The agreement reached in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France called for the guns to go quiet on Sunday.
The warring sides were supposed to begin drawing back heavy weapons from the front lines on Tuesday, but international monitors say they've seen no sign of that yet.
Russian and Ukrainian military officials overseeing the hoped-for peace process announced Friday that the Ukrainian government and the rebels had worked out a plan to begin the weapons pull-out.
Heidi Tagliavini, an envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who led the talks with Russia and Ukraine that also included rebel figures, remained cautiously hopeful.
"There is not a single day in the Ukrainian conflict when we can feel sure what the next day will bring," she said.Creating a Prosperous Society Where People Love Their Work
Are you most productive doing what you love, or doing something you are indifferent to or hate? If you could try your hand at doing anything, would you be doing what you’re doing? Are you on track to eventually spend your life in the work of your dreams, or is it clear that will likely never happen?
There will always be lousy but necessary jobs that few people want to do. The garbage must be picked up, the toilets must be cleaned and the bed pans must be emptied. But a society is a better society when more people are doing what they love, or at least working for themselves, out from under close supervision. Almost no one likes being micromanaged, and normal jobs are called wage slavery for a reason.
We want people to stretch themselves, we want them to reach for their dreams, we want them to get up each morning looking forward to the day’s work. We want that for the cold hard calculated reason that such people are more productive, and we want it for the warm soft calculated reason that we’d rather live in a society with as many such people as possible because they’re a lot more enjoyable to spend time around than people who hate their jobs.
It’s not hard to create a society which makes it more likely that people can do what they want. It’s not hard to create an economy which encourages people to start new businesses or to launch new careers. But such a society cannot exist if we prefer to be mean, if we want to punish people for failure. It cannot exist if we see someone else’s success as our failure or if we allow envy to infect our public policy.
People fail to pursue their dreams because they fear failure or because the opportunities aren’t available. Fear of failure is rational: pour everything into a new business which fails, and many businesses fail, and you can be left with no money, no source of income, and lose everything. In a country without universal health care, you could even lose your life if you lose your insurance and become ill or have an accident.
So the first thing a society needs to do is have in place a basic social net: a basic income below which people cannot drop, so they will not become homeless if they fail. Universal health care so they can pursue their dreams without being chained to a health insurance premium. Bankruptcy laws which allow most debts to be wiped away in the event of failure, not just so that people don’t lose everything, but so they can try again. Many entrepreneurs fail more than once before they create a business which works, and we want that, we want bankruptcy. We also want bankruptcy because it is important that lenders do their due diligence and accept the real risk of lending, rather than insisting that the government act as their bill collector. It is not in the government’s interest for people to become impoverished, as impoverished people cannot contribute to society nearly as well.
Credit and calculable law are needed for entrepreneurship. People must be secure in the title to their property so they can borrow against it. They must know that contracts are generally upheld and that basic physical safety is taken care of. Taxation must be calculable, though it doesn’t have to be low. Eras with top marginal income tax rates in from 80% to over 90% have had far more growth than our own low tax periods, and much higher corporate tax rates do not correlate with low economic growth either. After all, first you have to make a profit, or make so much money you’re in the top bracket. As the saying runs, it’s a good problem to have.
Credit in in the modern era is ultimately a product of government. Banks create money when they lend, they do not lend money they have on deposit, though the amount of money they can lend may be some multiple of what they have on deposit. Since the ability to create money is a government grant, and since a government grant is a grant from the people of a nation, the government has the right to influence or even set interest rates. This ability is already used, with central banks setting overnight rates, treasuries influencing bond rates at different durations, and so on. Mortgages in many countries will simply not be issued if they do not meet requirements set down by governments, and so on.
If we want people to do things, we have to make sure the money is available for them to do it. This can mean credit, or it can simply mean the government paying for or subsidizing what is needed. In many countries health care is provided out of taxes. At one time, post-secondary education was virtually free for those who qualified, because governments understood that educated people make more money, create more jobs and contribute more in general. With progressive taxation a government can easily provide free or very cheap education knowing that it will take a portion of every extra dollar earned as a result of that education. Rationing education is short-sighted and foolish, even on a pure cold-cash calculation.
A basic income is another thing governments do and can offer. In the modern day this is generally done through a complicated hodge-podge of systems, from welfare to unemployment insurance to student loans and tax breaks. This is vastly inefficient, and should be simplified. If we aren’t willing to let anyone go without basic lodging and food we should simply guarantee the necessary level of income to anyone over the age of 18 or whatever age children usually leave home. It is simple enough to do it in a way so that everyone is still better off working, it is vastly cheaper than paying an army of social workers to determine who is worthy, and it assumes the most basic tenet of liberty: that adults have the ability to know what they want to do. Nothing is more counter-productive than policies which, say, restrict welfare recipients from going to university, so they can’t improve themselves and have a better chance to contribute to society.
Knowing that they will always have enough to keep a roof over their head and food in their belly people are far more likely to pursue their dreams, to do the work they really want to and to start new businesses. It is true that some people will take advantage of such a system, it is also true that such a system will have much lower administrative costs than current systems. And since the basic income will not be a great income, but only basic, it will not be attractive to many.
It will also put pressure on businesses to treat their employees better. If a business cannot make a job more attractive than living at barely above subsistence then perhaps that job shouldn’t exist. Do all the fast food jobs really make our societies richer? If a job really needs to be done, like janitorial work or garbage collection or cleaning the bums of our parents and grandparents, then does it not deserve to be compensated well? If your CEO doesn’t show up for work, or if the janitor who cleans the toilets doesn’t show up, who do you miss most? And do you really want the person looking after your parents in an old-folks home or hospital to hate their job?
Most money from a basic income, assuming high progressive rates on the rich and the same corporate tax rates as were the norm in the 50s and 60s, will wind up back in the government coffers in any case, after it goes through multiple hands and supports many jobs.
These are the first two thing required to increase the number of people who do work they want to do, or at least don’t hate—freedom from fear of devastating loss and the availability of opportunities to gain the necessary skills, education and credit.
The third thing is to reform laws so people can do what they love.
Consider Silicon Valley in California, one of the greatest entrepreneurial hotspots in the world. New tech business after new tech business has been started there, from Hewlett Packard to Apple. Millions of jobs have spun out from Silicon Valley to the rest of the world. What made Silicon Valley possible? Well the first thing is government money, both to buy products like early computers and to support Stanford University, which histories of the Valley put at the heart of its culture. But another reason Silicon Valley happened in California and not in Massachussets, say, around MIT (though there is a tech corridor around MIT) is this: California law makes non-compete agreements illegal.
A non-compete agreement is a legal contract which states that someone can’t work in a business which competes with their current employer, generally for a few years. So if you have a great idea for a new product in the same line of business you can’t quit and go set up a new company.
Silicon Valley’s history is of startup after startup directly competing with the company the founders left. There would be no Silicon Valley as we know it if California allowed non-competes.
This is a general principle. If law does not allow people to do what they want, well then, they can’t do it. Barriers to entry, barriers to the creation of new businesses are too much to deal with in this article, but just note that what is good for a specific business is rarely good for business as a whole. If I own a business I don’t want my employees to leave and compete against me. That’s bad for me. But it’s good for whatever business I’m in for their to be more competitors and new products and it’s good for society as well.
Likewise laws on protected works and intellectual monopolies in terms of copyrights and patent law can stifle the creation of new businesses. If a person or company is forbidden from creating a product or must pay overly high licensing fees, the business will not happen. There is a balance here, some protection for actual inventors and creators is needed, but in our current society we are very far from the correct balance, and much law that seems to protect creators in fact only creates intellectual rents, stifles the economy and inhibits competition. To cover intellectual properties properly would take another huge article, so I won’t go into it futther here. The basic principle is simple: if it’s illegal to start a business or engage in a career, or it costs too much to be worth it, people won’t. Every time we pass a law which protects incumbents from competition or which protects the work of the past, we ossify our economy and make it harder for people to do the work they want to do, sticking more and more of them in jobs they hate.
The more people who are both free and able to work in jobs they enjoy; who are able to start new businesses; who are able to pursue professions they prefer, the better off everyone will be. This is true both in pure economic terms and in softer terms: happy people are healthier and they are far more fun to be around than unhappy people.
In economies which are running cold, people turn mean. Seeing scarcity all around, they feel that they are in competition for scarce good jobs, scarce good education and scarce happiness. They start blocking other people and insisting that everyone pay upfront intead of behind. Bosses, knowing that there aren’t enough jobs, become mean as well, treating employees badly, knowing they have nowhere to go and confident that if they lose one, or a hundred, or a thousand employees to mistreatment, more will be ready to work, impelled by fear of hunger and poverty.
We can’t all be rich, but we can all be prosperous, and we become prosperous as a group, as a society, not blocking each other, but by opening up opportunity for all, treating everyone as adults, and understanding that other people’s success is our success in the broadest sense. It is certainly true that in a competitive market environment there will be losers and if your closest competitors win, you can lose as a result, but for everyone else in society, the success is beneficial so long as those who succeed to not shut the avenues to success behind them. And if failure does not mean disaster, if there are second and third and fourth acts in life and those who try are allowed to try again, then the fear that both stops people from trying and makes those who are successful try and stop those behind them is greatly reduced.
Societies are prosperous together. Individuals are rich separately. Let us remember this, and remember that fundamental economic success for societies requires generosity and kindness, not parsimony and cruelty.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.A long-lost medieval cookbook, containing recipes for hedgehogs, blackbirds and even unicorns, has been discovered at the British Library. Professor Brian Trump of the British Medieval Cookbook Project described the find as near-miraculous. "We've been hunting for this book for years. The moment I first set my eyes on it was spine-tingling."
Detail of a unicorn on the grill in Geoffrey Fule's cookbook, England, mid-14th century (London, British Library, MS Additional 142012, f. 137r).
Experts believe that the cookbook was compiled by Geoffrey Fule, who worked in the kitchens of Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England (1328-1369). Geoffrey had a reputation for blending unusual flavours – one scholar has called him "the Heston Blumenthal of his day" – and everything points to his hand being behind the compilation.
After recipes for herring, tripe and codswallop (fish stew, a popular dish in the Middle Ages) comes that beginning "Taketh one unicorne". The recipe calls for the beast to be marinaded in cloves and garlic, and then roasted on a griddle. The cookbook's compiler, doubtless Geoffrey Fule himself, added pictures in its margins, depicting the unicorn being prepared and then |
should also consider buying it. – IndieGames.com …great writing, and almost every character you meet or play will have understandable backstories, motivations and traits. – IGN [Unrest is] SUPER NEAT. An RPG with interesting narrative choices and consequence, and no bullshit. – Anthony Burch Unrest captures something of the lives of people rather than the bombast of heroes and protagonists. – Rock Paper Shotgun …really cool. I’m so thrilled that [Unrest] even exists – Jesse Cox You know in Mass Effect when you had to stop and ponder a big decision? Unrest is a whole game of that, only moreso.
– Shamus Young
Its ethical dilemmas are reminiscent of Papers, Please – Edge …will fascinate and haunt you long after you put the game down. – Softpedia The lives of its damaged, refreshingly human characters stayed in my mind for many days after the credits rolled. – Gamespot Unrest is a short, smart work. – Kill Screen I love it…something worth experiencing. 9/10 – Gameranx …succeeds by making us think, empathize, and question morality. – Pulp365 Pyrodactyl’s promises of deep interactivity and role playing freedom have, in fact, been fulfilled – The Cloud Monster
Merchants in the village Bhimra’s Central Palace Blockade near the grand temple Concept art: Bhimra, as seen from the market district Shyam, the mercenary captain The interior of a grand temple The conversation interface The five player characters in Unrest
Q. Tell me what Unrest is about. Why should I play it?
A. Unrest is about exploring a fantasy interpretation of ancient India through the perspective of ordinary people. It also offers a great degree of player freedom along with multiple endings to each scenario. On top of that, it has a detailed conversation system which tracks NPC opinion of the player using 3 values – Friendship, Respect and Fear.
Q. Does it have mod support and a narrative that continues if a player character dies?
A. Indeed, the game has all of these things! Funny you asked, actually.
Q. Where can I buy it? Is there a demo?
A. You can buy it from Steam ( GoG exists, but our publisher KISS Ltd has not paid us for any sales on the platform for over an year. We’re trying to regain control of the game there – until then, Steam is the only option). There is a demo available on Steam.
Q. How did this game get made? What’s the release date?
A. Unrest was made possible by our awesome backers via Kickstarter. The official release date is July 23, 2014.
Q. Is the game a documentary, or otherwise historically accurate? I enjoy reading legal disclaimers, by the way.
A. Unrest is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.S.F. man’s winning robbery defense: Entered home to board spacecraft
A 41-year-old San Francisco man was acquitted of robbery and other felonies after telling a jury he entered a Mission District home only because a methamphetamine-fueled psychosis led him to believe he needed to board a spaceship to flee the imminent destruction of the earth, the public defender’s office said Wednesday.
Santino Aviles was acquitted Monday of robbery, attempted robbery, assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and battery with serious bodily injury, his attorneys said. He was convicted of misdemeanor battery and assault, while the jury couldn’t agree on a burglary charge.
In May 2014, defense attorneys said, Aviles ran to a Mission District building while under a delusion that it looked like a spaceship docking station and that he was being chased. “Aviles was suffering from hallucinations and false perceptions associated with methamphetamine psychosis,” attorneys said.
A resident in the building allowed him inside, but later got suspicious and told him to leave after he tried to get to the building’s roof, the public defender’s office said. The office said Aviles, still fearing he was being chased, climbed on a fire escape and entered an apartment with an open window, taking off his shoes and shirt and passing out on a couch inside.
At his trial, Aviles testified that when he woke up, he threw an inflatable exercise ball onto the fire escape in hopes of floating through the galaxy with it. He also loaded a backpack in the apartment with a passport and earthquake kit, attorneys said.
The resident of the apartment and his girlfriend woke up, found Aviles, started punching and hitting him, and called 911, defense attorneys said. “The arresting officer testified that Aviles appeared delusional, paranoid and hallucinating while in handcuffs,” the attorneys said.
“Mr. Aviles did not enter the building to rob or hurt anyone,” Deputy Public Defender Jacque Wilson said. “This was not the act of a violent criminal but a frightened man in the midst of a mental health crisis.”This is a story of hope and reality. First the hope from Bloomberg News 10 days ago with the very hopeful title of Oliver Stones' W May End Political Films' Drought:
``W.'' distributor Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. is betting the movie can break a box-office drought for political films. None of the five released in the weeks ahead of the Nov. 4 election has brought in more than half of the $55.3 million in sales generated by Walt Disney Co.'s ``Beverly Hills Chihuahua,'' the current box-office champ, since Oct. 3. ``A lot of eyes are on `W.,''' said Gitesh Pandya, editor of New York-based Box Office Guru LLC. ``There's certainly a lot of interest in it from the right and the left.'' The film ``has a shot at finding box-office success,'' he said. The movie, which opens tomorrow, may take in about $34 million in its first four weeks in U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Los Angeles-based Cantor Fitzgerald LP's HSX Research, which tracks film performance. Controversial films help Lions Gate attract top talent, said Tom Ortenberg, who is responsible for movie-release strategy for the Santa Monica, California-based studio. ``Prestige pictures can be big moneymakers.''
And now the "sad" reality as presented by Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily:
There's been tremendous interest by the public in the box office fate of Oliver Stone's W. for its second weekend in release. Well, it ran out of steam. QED International/Lionsgate's Bush biopic sank 58% to No. 7 with a $5.3M weekend from 2,050 dates and new cume of $18.7M. The $30M negative cost film should end up with $23M domestic box office gross by the end of its North American run. That means, with a $25M P&A investment and Lionsgate's distribution fees, the film won't recoup.
In short, W. bombed bigtime. Perhaps the investors (suckers) in this flick should have paid attention to James Murray of NewBusters who accurately predicted the fate of this bomb way back in March:
These people never learn. Other than some diehard BDS sufferers, who in their right mind is going to pay to see an Oliver Stone depiction of George W. Bush? Fair or not, the president suffers from low poll numbers and we've heard for some time that America suffers from Bush fatigue, so it's curious why any studio would greenlight such a project and begin filming while he's still in office. Hollywood apparently has learned nothing with the seemingly endless string of antiwar flicks bombing, so now we'll get the moonbat look at Bush. One can only imagine how Dick Cheney, Donaly Rumsfeld and the nefarious cabal of neocons will be portrayed. Bush has been the most scrutinized president in modern times thanks to the explosion of the blogosphere, so it's not as if Stone would be able to shed any new light on his life or presidency. You can be sure, however, he will be taking creative license.
No surprise that W. would bomb. Here is one of the reviews on IMDB from someone who wasted his money on this disaster:
Just got home from "W", the Oliver Stone piece of *beep* film.
I kid you not, THIS FILM HAD ABSOLUTELY NO PLOT!!!! ZERO!!!
NOTHING!!!! 1
It has scenes about the Iraq war and talk about it, but thats it...
It has scenes about the relationship with his father and talk about it, but thats it....
It has scenes about his election and talk about it, but thats it!!!!
NOTHING!!!
THE MOVIE WAS THE BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME. I saw 4 people walk out of it!!! I wish I didn't sit through it. It ended so stupid too. Bush has a baseball hit to him and he's ready to catch it, but doesn't.
I assume it's an art film about politics and Bush, but the movie did not play write. It looked slapped together at the last second...
Wow..Ok, I'm done ranting, but dont see this *beep*
So it looks like the people who walk into the theaters to see W. are walking out later and asking themselves Y.No matter how small, your business should receive the same attention and treatment a large business would. The main objective of starting any business is usually to grow effectively and eventually step into a wider (and often more demanding) market. Whether you run a small business and have employees or you do it on the side in your basement, a plan is a must if you want to grow and get more business.
Being a business student myself, I have learned a few things through textbooks and some while I ran my own business. Here are some things that I think will help create an effective plan that will guide you through the success of your freelancing business:
Know Your Market – What’s Your USP?
The first thing to do is find out if there is demand for the services or products you offer. What is it that sets it apart from other similar services? Why should I get service from you and not from the guy next door (who’s offering the same thing)? What’s your USP (unique selling point)?
Make sure that your plan is crystal clear. The marketing plan is for you to analyze and build your business upon in terms of exposing your service. Build an effective strategy to target your clients. Keep a chart of your current clients and make a list of prospective clients as well. Having a clear picture of when and who will serve as a roadmap for you to garner future business from current clients and get new business from the prospective clients.
Ahh, The Goals!
Set attainable goals and write them down. Where do you want to be after a year? Your goals are the building blocks of your business and the foundation as this is what the whole plan lays on. Whether you are starting from your basement or have a reputed firm don’t ever stop brainstorming.
Manage Your Money Well
Set a budget. As we know, money pulls in money. To be an effective marketer you need to analyze how to get the bang for your buck. Build a strategy so you pay less to market yourself and get more out of it. There is always a way, we just need to look for it. Put ideas into action.
If it is not of absolute importance, chances are you don’t need it. Spend money on things that will get you more in return.
Deadlines?
Set deadlines for each of your goals. Having multiple goals only for the sake of having them is not a good idea. “I will get this and this and this done“… great, but the question is “when”. So set a timeline on when you plan to achieve your goals or seal the deal.
Gotta Deliver
People want to pay either for the services you provide or because they put their trust in you (and it’s usually both), you do need to give what you initially stated you would. Never promise something you cannot deliver.
Know Your Limits – Outsource
Do not try and take on too much. If there are things that are keeping you from getting something done on time, do not hesitate to hire other freelancers, outsource what you cannot do, or what you don’t enjoy doing. Have you ever considered getting a VA (virtual assistant)? You know your business is growing when you need to hire people. It’s a good thing!
Is The Customer Always Right?
And finally, get out of the age old saying “the customer is always right!” You can disagree with me but the customer isn’t always right, there are blog posts all over the net on this topic. Stand your ground when you know the client/customer is wrong. If you fulfilled your part of the deal, the client needs to fulfill his or her part as well. Communication is a 2-way street, but a contract is always a good thing to have.
Hope you enjoyed these simple tips on giving your freelancing career a little boost. I’ve been blogging for some time and have been contemplating a freelance career for a while now (I’m still ‘on the side’). I would appreciate if you could share some tips with me and help me out on how I can start and boost my freelancing career.
Hope you enjoyed this post. Share your thoughts and add your own tips and tricks for all of us to enjoy and apply.
Until next time,
Ritu
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About the author: If you like what Ritu writes, check out Work N Play, a blog about blogging, technology and a lot of other things. ;)This Summer in HTML 5 – Episode 33
I hope you enjoyed your summer. My oldest son started kindergarten today. Let's talk about HTML 5.
When last we checked, HTML 5 was humming along towards Last Call in October. Much has been made of this date; I won't bore you with the details, except to say that HTML 5 is very close to entering the next phase of its existence. Regular readers of this blog already know that parts of HTML 5 are already shipping in major browsers. The recently-released Firefox 3.5 supports <audio> and <video>, offline web applications, the drag-and-drop API, and the <canvas> text API. (Technically Firefox 3.0 supported the <canvas> text API too, properly cordoned off in its own vendor-specific functions because the API was not finalized at the time. You can paper over the differences fairly easily.)
So what new and exciting stuff has been added to HTML 5 this summer?
Microdata
At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl. "This porridge is too hot!" she exclaimed. So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl. "This porridge is too cold," she said. So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge. "Ahhh, this porridge is just right," she said happily and she ate it all up. — The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears
r3074 introduces the concept of microdata. Microdata is designed to allow authors to include additional semantics in their pages for which there is no appropriate HTML element or attribute. For example, HTML is not expressive enough to mark up a contact in an address book (complete with individual fields for name, street address, email, and phone number) or an event on a calendar (complete with start date, end date, and location). Instead of creating new elements and attributes for every possible vocabulary, you can use the microdata attributes to enhance existing elements.
There are a number of other technologies with goals similar to microdata, including microformats and RDFa. As Ian Hickson explained in the message "Annotating structured data that HTML has no semantics for" that introduced microdata, microformats are fine for specific formats but are not flexible enough to be parseable by a generic parser, while RDFa relies on CURIEs and XML namespaces in a way that would require changes to HTML parsing algorithms to work interoperably between text/html and application/xhtml+xml. (Forgive me if I didn't explain that very well. There was a lot of yelling and very little explaining once it became clear that RDFa was not going to be included in HTML 5, so I probably missed some of the nuances.) Work is ongoing to create an RDFa-in-HTML specification.
ARIA
ARIA stands for "Accessible Rich Internet Applications." It is an emerging standard for making web applications more accessible to people using assistive technologies (including, but not limited to, blind people who browse the web with the help of screenreaders). The basic technique is for authors to define "roles" and "states" on individual elements to indicate what sort of control the element represents. For example, HTML has no "treeview" control, but JavaScript libraries like Dojo let you include a treeview in your web-based application with a combination of generic HTML elements, a few images, and a whole lotta JavaScript. ARIA gives you a way to say that the "treeview" HTML element (which is probably just a <div> ) is acting as a treeview (that's its "role"). Each item in the treeview can be in the "expanded" or "collapsed" state, and the state changes as the user interacts with the control. Major browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer (8) and Firefox (2+) will notice the custom role on the element and announce to assistive technologies that this <div> element is acting as a treeview. (In fact, Dojo already supports these roles and states, due to work funded by IBM.)
r3657 adds the section Annotations for assistive technology products to HTML 5. There are still a number of unanswered questions about how the custom semantics defined by ARIA interact with the native semantics defined by HTML 5.
Everything Old is New Again
As regular readers of this blog already know, HTML 5 goes to great lengths to specify existing browser behavior, even to the point of "willfully violating" other specifications. Vast stretches of the HTML 5 specification are devoted to elements, attributes, and scripting features that nobody likes but everyone is required to support. To that end, r3502 defines the <listing>, <plaintext>, <acronym>, <xmp>, and <dir> elements; r3133 and r3141 define the <marquee> element; r3155, r3403, r3409, and r3410 define document.all.
Other important changes include the location.reload() method (r3220), the textarea.textLength property (r3177), a new rollback() method for synchronous SQL transactions r3210), and the ability to upload multiple files at a time from a web form (r3544 and r3545).
Features Removed
"The food here is terrible!" "I know, and such small portions!" (variously attributed)
Everyone complains that HTML 5 is too big, but nobody has any reasonable solution for making it smaller. (Splitting it into multiple specifications to make it "smaller" is like cutting a pie into slices to give it fewer calories.) However, based on implementor feedback, HTML 5 has shed a few pounds features this summer. To wit:
r3555 removes the <datagrid> element and its associated APIs. Originally envisioned as a two-dimensional editable "spreadsheet-lite," it was never implemented in any browser.
element and its associated APIs. Originally envisioned as a two-dimensional editable "spreadsheet-lite," it was never implemented in any browser. r3621 removes the <bb> element, which was originally designed to support "installing" web applications as standalone programs. There were a number of security-related concerns, and browser vendors flatly refused to implement it.
element, which was originally designed to support "installing" web applications as standalone programs. There were a number of security-related concerns, and browser vendors flatly refused to implement it. r3342 removes any mention of what an optimal video codec would look like. Contrary to popular belief, this revision does not remove the <video> element itself; the <video> element is alive and well and implemented in Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, and an experimental build of Opera. However, it is true that there is no single video codec that is supported out-of-the-box by all browsers. Firefox and Opera only support Ogg Theora, Google Chrome supports H.264 and Theora, and Safari supports whatever QuickTime supports (which doesn't include Ogg Theora unless you install a third-party plugin).
Administrative Stuff
"Man didn't the right form." "What man?" "The man from the cat detector van." "The loony detector van, you mean." "Look, it's people like you what cause unrest." — Monty Python's "Fish License"
When web servers send you HTML, they are supposed to label it as such with the HTTP Content-Type header. Each content type (an HTML page, a JPEG image, an MPEG-4 video) has its own "MIME type." MIME types must be registered with the IANA.
r3552 adds the registration information for text/html, application/xhtml+xml, text/event-stream, text/cache-manifest, and application/microdata+json. r3582 adds the registration information for text/ping.
Standards frequently include references to other standards. References can be "normative" or "informative." To quote RFC 3967 (a standard about creating standards), "a normative reference specifies a document that must be read to fully understand or implement the subject matter in the new [standard], or whose contents are effectively part of the new [standard], as its omission would leave the new [standard] incompletely specified. An informative reference is not normative; rather, it provides only additional background information." r3580 adds a list of references to HTML 5.
Tune in next week as we return to our regular weekly schedule of "This Week in HTML 5."“Let's Reboot” takes a look back at a classic in need of a new outing or a beloved series gone stale and asks how it might be best redesigned or given a kick up the backside for today's gaming audience. The Rules: Assume a free hand, and a decent budget, but realistic technology and expectations. This week's sacred cow – the cyberpunk adventure from 1994 that sparked the 'Shock series.
Ken Levine. Kenny Lovin'. Kenbo Baggins. The Manly Jowelbeast. I recall an interview with King Divine, in which he said that System Shock 2 was not, contrary to all common sense, a perfectly-realised vision of the authors' intent. That the monotonous corridors of System Shock 2's Von Braun were as much a product of technical limitations, as the thundering powerhouse of the creativity behind it. Learning this, I had a brief teenage response. I felt like a Belieber trying to process Justin tweeting, “Did I say I love my fans? Naw. They're dicks, and that includes hypothetical ones like Anne Frank. #worldwarPOOmorelike”
I wanted to defend SS2 against one of the guys who made it.
That's an argument I'd probably lose, so let's just reboot the bugger. Commence spoiler warning klaxon for System Shock 1, 2 and BioShock Infinite: AROOGA AROOGA AROOGA etc.
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A ROGUE AI LIKE SHODAN?
"What can we do with Shodan that hasn't already been pre-empted by GLaDOS?"
You can hear Shodan's tame, morality-restricted voice during the optional intro to System Shock 1. And at the risk of spoiling a 14-year-old game, at the end of System Shock 2, she collapses cyber and meat-spaces to occupy the body of Rebecca, turning her into a kind of hard-wired fusion of Tron's MCP and Bonnie Tyler. One of the best moment of going back to SS1 is watching that optional intro, and hearing her voice change as she narrates the story of the hacker removing her morals.
But what can we do with Shodan that hasn't already been pre-empted by GLaDOS' tale of unexpected humanity, humility, and anti-redemption?
How not to do Shodan:
1. Law Of The West-style conversation simulator, in which Shodan and minor SS2 character Tommy share awkward chats as the AI discovers her new sexual urges ;
2. Multiple body-swap comedy in which she learns how difficult it is to be a Californian teenager, a rock star, and a single mum;
3. Endlessly looping animated GIF of Shodan's face slowly appearing and disappearing from Anton Corbijn's iconic 1981 photo of Kate Bush.
Look: it's fine, but it's not a video game.
So, why not make Shodan the playable character? She's totemic enough to step around that pervasive bullshit about gamers not wanting to play women, in case we all start spontaneously trans-identifying, or something.
Plus, in the body of Rebecca, she's a total unaugmented newcomer to meatspace, a perfect way to put her at the bottom of the skill tree. Stranded in her new body, her only access to computers would be hacking - a process that would be disgusting to her. Imagine having to use arthritic bones, where once was a sheer force of will.
"Potato-GLaDOS was sympathetic. Shodan's tale could be a study in psychopathy."
This might seem like I'm trying to turn System Shock into a comedy. Insane, ambitious evil is innately comical when it's powerless - but that's forgetting her sinister history with comedy. She was powerless in SS2. She needed you, and it actually was pretty funny that even then, she couldn't hold back the insults.
Besides, even Portal 2 didn't plunder the comedy mine of malevolent impotence too deeply. For potato-GLaDOS, it was a chance for sympathy. Shodan's tale could be a study in human psychopathy: there are real people who think like Shodan. The bastards run the world. And being a psychopath would reduce the sense of disconnect, when the inevitable “snap their spines, slashing blood across the screen” moment comes, as it probably must.
You'd need a mutual cause to give Shodan an air of possible redemption - and as the player, we'd need to believe there's genuine conflict between the megalomaniac AI, and the new unaccustomed waves of hormones and humanity.
(Again, GLaDOS has taken the best line, with “Caroline deleted”. Note to self: ask Valve if System Shock can be part of the Half-Life multiverse. Half-Life 3, maybe. Cool? Cool.)
BUILD A GRAND UNIFYING THEORY OF *SHOCK
Bioshock Infinite's Sea of Doors was a massive pull-back-to-reveal that can't ever be matched in the Bioshock universe. You really get the feeling it was a final defiant piss on the franchise that was Irrational's way of saying, “Oh, you just try another Bioshock 2.”
Is there room for another, crashing, pull back? Can we fold System Shock into the world of lighthouses, men, and doors? “There's always a sentient thing, there's always a location. And space. That's just how it works in this, even more generalised, multiverse.” Shodan collapses meat and cyber in the same way Elizabeth collapses branching universes - they could be distant relatives.
OK. Maybe not. In that case, I've got another idea:
OH MY GOD GUYS WHAT ABOUT A MINI-SERIES
Bioshock Infinite didn't feel to me to be quite as important as it wanted to be. I'm aware that there are dozens of people more intelligent, sexy and taller than me who feel otherwise. But taken on plot alone, it felt like a Doctor Who season finale. This similarity includes the fact that my family still look at me like a demented adult baby because I tell them to shut up on Christmas day while we all watch a kid's TV show. Only, you know, with this it's my choice of career.
Moving on - I would love the same prolonged sense of “what's going on?” that Doctor Who gives. I loved the post-ending discussions of Bioshock Infinite more than I liked the actual ending. Imagine three months of constant System Shock speculation, forum chat, talking to strangers in ATM queues. I know the episodic thing is tough, and nowhere more so in the world of shooters. Half-Life, Sin, s'up. So why not stuff shooting - shall we just give System Shock to TellTale?
You want a real 1999 mode? In 1999, LucasArts had just made Grim Fandango.
"Cyberspace is a location with unrealised potential, a place where imagination is tangible."
WHERE IS IT SET?
Irrational have built a fantastical rod for their back with locations. But we've already got a location with unrealised potential, here. Cyberspace. A revamped Cyberspace could go further than the aesthetics of Monolith's Tron 2.0. It could be a place where imagination is tangible. And god knows, you could seed endless stuff in the environment when it's all conjured by the perception of an unreliable narrator. In fact, this could be the solution to the another annoying problem:
FIND THAT ALTERNATIVE TO AUDIOLOGS
I really don't like audiologs. I don't like the acting in them, because there's something about pretending to record their thoughts in this way that always rings hollow. And I don't like the fact that finding one creates an artificial zone of in-game safety, because you know the writers will get snippy if combat happens over their precious story.
(Either that, or they make it so the audiologs fade out as you walk away, and that can sod off twice as hard.)
CONCLUSION
OK: so I've been all over the place, here. But I've settled on this - a serialised TellTale adventure, in the vein of Walking Dead, that flips between the perspectives of a disempowered Shodan and a Rebecca finding her feet in Cyberspace. They're racing to Earth - Shodan to become a god, Rebecca to get her body back. Of course, many exciting things will happen on the way, but I'm not the details man. Someone start the Kickstarter and send me ten million when it's the most popular game in the world. I'm off to eat a bunch of grapes.There have been Griffiths and Kantarovski brothers on the books of the Newcastle Jets before, and now from the Hyundai A-League 2017/18 Season Club fans will be able to barrack for the Petratos brothers.
Dimitri Petratos, 24, will join the Jets from Brisbane Roar on a three-season contract commencing from next campaign, while his brother Kosta, 18, will also link with the Jets on an initial one-season deal from Perth Glory.
Despite only being in his mid-twenties Dimitri Petratos is a highly experienced Hyundai A-League attacker who is now in his seventh season in the competition.
All told Dimitri has made 122 Hyundai A-League appearances and scored 20 goals in the Hyundai A-League across stints at Sydney FC and Brisbane Roar.
Just a few weeks ago Dimitri fired home one of the best free kicks in Hyundai A-League history as Roar sought to mount a comeback away to Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park.
Joining his brother as an attacking option for Newcastle next season will be former FFA Centre of Excellence man Kosta Petratos.
Kosta made his Hyundai A-League bow for Glory last season and has featured twice for the purple-whites so far this campaign.
The pair will see out the current Hyundai A-League season at their respective Clubs before joining the Jets for pre-season training midway through the year.
Newcastle Jets Head Coach Mark Jones said he is excited to work with both players.
“Dimitri will be a great asset to the Club,” Jones said. “It is good that some of the best players in the country want to come and play for the Jets.”
“Kosta is an emerging talent,” he continued. “I have always said that I am keen to work with the best young kids in the country to develop them into Hyundai A-League players and beyond.”2009 studio album by Built to Spill
There Is No Enemy is the seventh full-length studio album by indie rock band Built to Spill (their fifth on Warner Bros. Records). The album was released on October 6, 2009, and is the last to feature long-time drummer Scott Plouf and bassist Brett Nelson, who left the group in 2012. It features guest musicians Sam Coomes, cellist John McMahon, Scott Schmaljohn (of Treepeople), Paul Leary, and additional keyboards by Roger Manning.[13]
On September 30, 2009, the band streamed the full album on their official MySpace profile.[14]
On February 15, 2010, ATP Recordings released the album in the UK and Europe with the exclusive, previously unreleased bonus track "Water Sleepers".
Track listing [ edit ]
All songs written by Built To Spill with "some words by Karena Youtz."
"Aisle 13" - 3:17 "Hindsight" - 3:38 "Nowhere Lullaby" - 3:59 "Good Ol' Boredom" - 6:31 "Life's a Dream" - 4:53 "Oh Yeah" - 5:21 "Pat" - 2:40 "Done" - 6:53 "Planting Seeds" - 4:26 "Things Fall Apart" - 6:15 "Tomorrow" - 7:40 [15]
Musician [ edit ]
Built To Spill [ edit ]
Doug Martsch - vocals, guitar
Brett Nelson - guitar, bass
Scott Plouf - drums
Jim Roth - guitar
others [ edit ]
John McMahon - cello, lap steel
Roger Manning - organ
Sam Coomes - mellotron, organ
Paul Leary, Scott Schmaljohn - guitar
Danny Levin - hornsRUGBY league bad boy Anthony Watts has been slapped with an eight-week ban for contrary conduct after he was accused of biting a rival's penis.
The Gold Coast Rugby League judiciary handed down the penalty on Tuesday night after a one-hour hearing.
Watts, a former NRL star who now plays for the Tugun Seahawks local league team, was charged with contrary conduct after allegedly biting a Bilambil Jets opponent on the penis during a match on September 1.
TV footage showed the Jets player apparently reeling in pain.
The Watts incident caught the attention of the Taiwanese animators. Check out the video above...
Watts and Gold Coast rugby league officials emerged from the one-hour hearing on Tuesday night refusing to comment.
An official from Watts' club Tugun Seahawks, who accompanied the league bad boy to the meeting, would say only that the player had received 'a fair hearing'.
Officials said the Queensland Rugby League would be making a statement on Wednesday morning.
But Watts' lawyer, Mark Williams, of Potts Lawyers, confirmed the eight-week suspension.
"Mr Watts has seven days to lodge an appeal and intends on seeking legal advice on this," Mr Williams said.
Watts had denied deliberately biting a Bilambil Jets opponent during a local league match last month.
Mr Williams had earlier told media that while Watts 'absolutely denies that any biting of any nature has taken place... if there has been any contact made to that particular area of this gentleman's body, our client apologises'.
One league official told The Courier-Mail the alleged victim, who dropped his pants to complain to the referee, suffered a "pretty nasty" wound.
"He'll have to make sure the wound won't get infected. There was some skin removed," he said.
The one-time North Queensland Cowboy and Sydney Rooster was also charged with striking his opponent and was ruled out of last weekend's grand final, win by the Seahawks.
In June, Watts told The Sunday Mail he had abandoned all hopes of resurrecting his NRL career in favour of joining the Finks, which he described as being "like being in a footy team".
His induction to the gang capped a downward spiral including drug and alcohol battles and weapons and assault charges after his elite career slipped away.
Mr Williams said his client played "a full contact professional sport and during play, contact is made to all parts of people's bodies".
"Whether it is real or imagined, contact can occur and that is a very real risk," he said.
An opposition team official, who rejected concerns Finks members intimidated opposition supporters at matches, said Watts was "a quality footballer... but just a loose cannon".
"It's a shame because he can be a very nice bloke."Debra Pritchett planned to meet her friend on Jan. 31, 1998 at Austin's Party Palace in Mobile for a night of fun.
Debra Pritchett (www.namus.gov)
But the hazel-eyed mother of three never showed up.
That's what her husband Clarence Pritchett, then 35, told investigators the next morning when he reported the disappearance of his 25-year-old wife. She has never been found and no one has been charged in the case.
Clarence, the main suspect in her disappearance, pleaded guilty to attempted murder seven years later for shooting at Debra's ex-husband in September 1996 with a.30-30 rifle.
What happened to Debra remains a mystery.
"We don't have a body nor do we have any physical evidence," said Mobile County Sheriff's Lt. Paul Burch, who investigated the case. "You have to have one or another. You have to have something to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this person did it."
Attempts to contact Clarence for this report were unsuccessful.
The case may be cold, but details about Debra can be found on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known as NamUs. The powerful website allows the public to enter or search information provided by law authorities.
An investigation by Reveal, a nationally syndicated radio show, showed that the website's potential is often for naught. The report showed that inaction and carelessness on behalf of local and state authorities hinders the identification of these cases, known commonly as Jane and John Does.
Using cleaned up data from NamUs, Reveal created a program that makes it easier to search for information and compare the missing and unidentified cases side-by-side.
In Alabama, a total of 152 people are listed as missing. Circumstances around 35 unidentified dead found in Alabama are there as well.
Rabbit trails
Bill Yates, the chief deputy coroner in Jefferson County, said that almost all remains are identified within the first few days. Less than five percent of unidentified bodies that come in remain so.
Separate from the state, Jefferson County has its own death investigators due to the county's |
has a subscription will have it extended by the number of months provided included in their gift. Though it doesn't say on the support page, an Ausdroid reader has shared screens showing the option to give 1, 3, or 6 months worth of music. The prices reflect those in Australia and show that Google isn't offering any sort of discount when you gift out a larger bundle.
The subscription will arrive in an email, similar to how promotional codes currently work. If, by chance, you receive a gift that you don't want, let the sender know so that they may request a refund.
The feature is still rolling out. I am not yet able to access it within the Play Music Android app, nor does play.google.com/music/gift lead me anywhere other than a dead end. But Play Music gift subscriptions are on the way, and hopefully that won't be all.
The broad title of the support page, and the line "At this time, you can't send other digital content as gifts or lend digital content from one account to another" gives hope that maybe, just maybe, we will eventually be able to gift apps, albums, books, and other content down the road.NiranV Dean released Black Dragon 2.3.9.7 (or 3.7.5.31492, if you go via Help > About Black Dragon / the log-in splash screen) on Tuesday April 22nd. The release marks Black Dragon’s completion of the third-party viewer self-certification process and inclusion in the Third-party Viewer Directory.
The release brings Black Dragon up to parity with the Lab’s 3.7.? code base (I assume 3.7.6, but this is not made clear in the release notes), and includes a number of updates listed as:
Added: ‘Godray’ effect, without switch yet
Added: Machinima Background texture
Changed: Disabled Show Title info in Sound tab
Changed: Updated to Tofu’s latest BlurLight shader. Doesn’t use newly added RenderShadowGaussian…
Changed: Allow minimum Sun Size down to 0.01.
Of these, the “Godray” addition is perhaps the most interesting, adding as it does rays of sunlight to the sky which, under certain lighting conditions appear to be very effective. The option is still a work-in-progress, and so there is currently no toggle / switch in the UI for enabling / disabling it (it is off by default) – expect one to be added in due course as the work is finished-off.
However, for those comfortable with editing shader files, Niran has provided notes on how to enable the function via a thread on SL Universe. I confess, the instructions didn’t work for me – which is probably more down to operator error than anything – but the images supplied by Niran look pretty impressive, as does a video he’s produced of the capability, which comes from the mind of Tofu Buzzard.
Niran is currently working on a UI refresh designed to offer a minimalist approach to displayed information while retaining ease-of-use and maximising the in-world viewing area. No time frame for this appearing in a release is available at present, but once it does appear, I’ll hopefully be able to provide a more detailed review, together with a better look at the “Godray” functionality. For now, and in the case of the latter, I’ll leave you with Niran’s video.
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AdvertisementsMUMBAI: The worst fears of RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on the restructuring of bad loans look to becoming true. Banks had sought to recast dodgy loans over the past few years — taking haircuts and extending repayment periods — in order to make their books look better. They have only managed to kick the can down the road.Defaults by borrowers given such a helping hand are soaring. The failure of these loans jumped 90 per cent in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year amid a sluggish economic environment and what look like poor business practices.Restructured loans worth Rs 56,995 crore were classified as having failed at the end of the March quarter, almost twice the Rs 29,980 crore in the year-ago period, according to data from RBI’s corporate debt restructuring cell."We had expected 30-35 per cent of the loans restructured to go bad, but the prolonged slowdown has taken a toll on companies," said a banker involved with the restructuring programme. "The packages were drafted on certain assumptions which have not paid off. Many of these cases should not have been restructured at all as we were sure of no turnaround, but to protect the bank balance sheets some excesses were done."When faced with mounting bad loans during 2011-14, Indian banks resorted to restructuring, which helped them avoid having to report these as non-performing assets (NPAs). That reduced the funds they had to set aside for potential defaults.Although meant only for viable businesses, the programme was extended indiscriminately, drawing criticism from Rajan in November."This is shortsighted, especially on the part of the banks," the RBI governor had said. "Regulatory forbearance, which is an euphemism for regulators collaborating with banks to hide problems and push them into the future, is a bad idea. Moreover, forbearance allows banks to postpone provisioning for bad loans. So when eventually the hidden bad loans cannot be disguised any more, the hit to the banks’ income and balance sheet is larger and more unexpected."Loans of companies such Bharati Shipyard, ABG Shipyard, GTL, Essar Steel, Winsome Diamond, REI Agro, Surya Vinayak Industries, Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds, Sterling Oil Resources, Varun Industries, Electrotherm India Ltd, KS Oil, Deccan Chronicle and Kingfisher Airlines amounting to over Rs 30,000 crore have gone bad.Banks had restructured debt amounting to Rs 2.86 lakh crore at the end of March 2015, up 18.22 per cent from Rs 2.42 lakh crore a year ago.As much as 40 per cent of loans restructured between 2011 and 2014 have turned bad, forcing banks to provide for such loans, said Crisil, the local unit of rating company Standard & Poor’s. It forecasts that banks’ gross bad loans may rise another 20 basis points to 4.5 per cent of total loans — or byRs 60,000 crore to Rs 4 lakh crore. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.Lenders such as ICICI Bank Punjab National Bank and Dena Bank saw a spike in non-performing loans and slippages from restructured loans in the fourth quarter ended March. ICICI Bank’s gross NPA ratio for the quarter ended March widened to 3.78 per cent from 3.03 per cent a year earlier. At Dena Bank, this expanded to 5.45 per cent from 3.33 per cent while for Punjab National Bank it rose to 6.55 per cent from 5.25 per cent.Rajan isn’t convinced that the worst is over on the bad loans front.Kieran Keane and Jarrad Butler on the training ground this week.
Kieran Keane and Jarrad Butler on the training ground this week.
JARRAD BUTLER WILL make his debut when Connacht begin life after Pat Lam this weekend.
New head coach Kieran Keane has included 26-year-old Butler in his starting XV for their Guinness Pro14 clash with Glasgow Warriors at the Sportsground [KO 7.35pm, TG4].
The former Australia U20 international back-row forward will play his first competitive game for his new team since signing a three-year contract in the summer after three seasons with the Brumbies.
The Connacht team to face Glasgow includes four current Irish internationals — Finlay Bealham, Ultan Dillane, Kieran Marmion and Matt Healy — as well as captain John Muldoon, who leads the side in his 15th season with the province.
Connacht:
15. Darragh Leader
14. Cian Kelleher
13. Eoin Griffin
12. Bundee Aki
11. Matt Healy
10. Jack Carty
9. Kieran Marmion
1. Denis Buckley
2. Tom McCartney
3. Finlay Bealham
4. Ultan Dillane
5. James Cannon
6. Eoghan Masterson
7. Jarrad Butler
8. John Muldoon
Replacements:
16. Shane Delahunt
17. Peter McCabe
18. Conor Carey
19. Sean O’Brien
20. Eoin McKeon
21. Conor McKeon
22. Craig Ronaldson
23. Tom Farrell
Glasgow Warriors:
15. Ruaridh Jackson
14. Lelia Masaga
13. Alex Dunbar
12. Sam Johnson
11. Lee Jones
10. Peter Horne
9. Ali Price
1. Jamie Bhatti
2. George Turner
3. Zander Fagerson
4. Tim Swinson
5. Scott Cummings
6. Ryan Wilson (captain)
7. Matt Smith
8. Adam Ashe
Replacements:
16: James Malcolm
17. Oli Kebble
18. Adam Nicol
19. Greg Peterson
20. Matt Fagerson
21. Henry Pyrgos
22. Adam Hastings
23. Leonardo Sartoi dont know how start this... i wait so much for this gift and finally arrives today from sweden!!!
when i came home today there was a little green box, i almost open it outside!
well, when i open it, was just like magic, all the things are so awesome! is like you know me!
i get an awesome My Little pony Tshirt, i totally love it! you nail it. a pair of cupcakes hair pins, are so cute and pink! <3
a pair of strawberry hair pins, i love strawberrys!!
a bag of candy, i can wait to try some.(I LOVE candy)
a Charmmy Kitty Necklace, i love it, because, who cant love that little kitty?
a pair of Hello Kitty earrings, i cant wait to use them, are so cute!
one rilakkuma lock, i love that bear, is so cute and lovely.
hello kitty cookie cutter, omg this is the best of all, i want that cookie cutter for so long, but i only can find it online, so i never bought it. i love to bake cookies, so i gonna use it the next time i bake some.
youre awesome, i cant pick a better items for my self, i really really thrilled with all you send.
YOU ARE THE BEST SS EVER!!Imagine being able to take a photo or video of something, and get instant feedback on its chemical composition. You might want to know whether that $10 drink you ordered actually contains any alcohol, or whether the fruit you've bought from the supermarket is covered in pesticides.
Well, such a camera is on the horizon. Electrical engineers from Tel Aviv University in Israel have invented a device that could transform smartphone cameras into hyperspectral sensors, capable of detecting the chemical ingredients of an object or fluid simply by analysing a photo or video of it.
Hyperspectral imaging scans for light frequencies that humans can’t see in order to identify the unique chemical signatures of different substances.
Satellites use this type of imaging technology to detect water and nutrients in soil, helping farmers manage their crops, or mining companies locate mineral and gas deposits underground.
This type of chemical sensing can already be done with large, sophisticated cameras, but the team says their device - which combines a newly patented optical component and image processing software - can conceivably be integrated into a smartphone. Their optical component is based on existing microelectromechanical or MEMS technology, which relates to very small machines, less than a millimetre in size, consisting of a microprocessor and other components, such as sensors.
They say their device, which can be mass produced, is compatible with all standard smartphone cameras.
“We predict hyperspectral imaging will play a major role in consumer electronics, the automotive industry, biotechnology, and homeland security,” said lead inventor, David Mendlovic, in a press release.
It sounds good, in theory, but for the captured images to mean anything, they'll need to be paired up with a database containing information on the hyperspectral signatures of a range of different chemicals, points out Ben Coxworth from Gizmag points.
With a database of chemical signatures, the researchers can extract information from their images, and match this against existing data to determine what chemicals a given object might contain.
Mendlovic, along with doctoral student, Ariel Raz, have spun out a company called Unispectral Technologies, and are trying to partner with companies that can analyse its camera's images to build-up such a database.
The basic system was demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, and the team is now developing a working prototype, which Gizmag says could be ready by June.
According to the Tel Aviv University press release, Unispectral has financial support from the Momentum Fund, which is backed by the large Indian engineering company Tata Group, as well as the flash memory firm SanDisk.
Source: GizmagMontrose veterinarian accused in murder-for-hire plot dies by suicide
Houston Police investigate the scene where a woman facing murder charges jumped to her death at 2200 Willowick Road Monday, March 27, 2017 in Houston. ( Godofredo A. Vasquez / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Police investigate the scene where a woman facing murder charges jumped to her death at 2200 Willowick Road Monday, March 27, 2017 in Houston. ( Godofredo A. Vasquez / Houston Chronicle ) Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Montrose veterinarian accused in murder-for-hire plot dies by suicide 1 / 29 Back to Gallery
A prominent Montrose veterinarian accused of making an intricate murder-for-hire plot to kill her ex-husband killed herself Monday morning by jumping from her seventh-floor condo in west Houston, authorities said.
Veterinarian Valerie Busick McDaniel and her boyfriend, Leon Phillip Jacob, were arrested earlier this month after doling out $20,000 in cash and two pricey Cartier watches to an officer posing as a hitman, prosecutors alleged in court.
Days later, the 48-year-old Montrose veterinarian was released on $50,000 bail.
TARGETED: Lawyer says husband was intended victim in murder plot
Afterward, McDaniel's ex-husband - the target of the scheme - said he feared for his safety.
McDaniel and her husband, who divorced last year, have an 8-year-old daughter together.
A Houston homicide detective at McDaniel's condo on Friday said the woman who apparently had jumped to her death was a resident whose parents also live there.
Sources confirmed to the Houston Chronicle that the victim was McDaniel.
Later in the day, a supervisor at the Harris County medical examiner's office confirmed that the office has McDaniel's body, and the district attorney's office confirmed that McDaniel had jumped to her death.
Detective J.P. Villareal said police found the body in the courtyard area between the building and its pool after a building employee called 911 shortly before 11 a.m. Monday.
There were no witnesses, Villareal said, and no one else was home at the time. Police do not suspect foul play.
McDaniel was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday before state District Judge Jim Wallace for a status update on her criminal case. She also was on the docket this week in family court because her ex-husband filed a temporary restraining order against her after the allegations surfaced.
More about McDaniel: Murder-for-hire suspect likened to 'angel on Earth'
Paramedics from the Houston Fire Department and Houston Police Department officers responded to the scene at 10:45 a.m., according to an HPD spokesman.
At 1:15 p.m. investigators from the medical examiner's office and HPD ducked under the crime-scene tape to inspect the scene near the building's pool. Forensic investigators stretched boots over their shoes before entering the bloody area.
Investigators retrieved her body about 2:30 p.m. from the garden area between the swimming pool and the building, an upscale 15-story condominium complex in River Oaks where McDaniel lived with her parents on the seventh floor.
Family members including McDaniel's mother appeared in front of the building as visitors arrived, embracing one another.
>>>Scroll through the above gallery to see Houston's most shocking crimesThe Toronto Police Association is challenging the chair of the civilian oversight board’s vision of policing, saying he used “misleading comments” when describing what the future of policing could look like in this city. In an interview with The Star published last week, Alok Mukherjee spoke of the need for “renewal” and “transformation” in the Toronto Police Service.
Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee has been criticized by the Toronto Police Association for suggesting that much of police officers' work is not "crime fighting." ( RICK MADONIK / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO )
The traditional model of policing has “outlived its utility and relevance,” Mukherjee told the Star. He said organizational changes could lead to the disarming of some officers, since 80 per cent of police work today isn’t fighting crime but dealing with such things as domestic violence, youth safety and people with mental illness. The TPA board of directors on Wednesday fired back in a two-page “Just the Facts” statement that was being circulated in police divisions across the city. Among other things, the statement takes issue with Mukherjee’s assertion that 80 per cent of work isn’t crime fighting. “His observation is incorrect and does not reflect the multi-dimensional nature of police work,” the statement says.
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“Contrary to Dr. Mukherjee’s observations, domestic violence and youth safety issues are generally criminal in nature. Police response to persons with mental illness is often criminal in nature, particularly when the person is in crisis, damaging property or threatening to hurt themselves or others.” The TPA represents about 8,000 civilian and uniform members. As for disarming officers, the statements notes that seven people were shot and two were stabbed during the Civic Holiday weekend. Last year, there were more than 200 reported shootings, which resulted in 22 homicides. “Our officers have been killed during seemingly routine calls including traffic stops and neighbour disputes. They deal with armed gangs and violent criminals on a daily basis,” says the statement. “Situations can quickly escalate and police officers have the right to use whatever force is necessary to ensure public safety.”
The TPA also argues the police $1.08 billion budget has not increased disproportionately when taken as a percentage of the total municipal budget, fluctuating between 10 and 11 per cent of the gross city budget. While the TPA didn’t explicitly mention the board’s decision not to renew Chief Bill Blair’s contract when it expires in April, the statement alluded to it with a closing shot at the chair. “Where Dr. Mukherjee and the Association do agree.. is that there is a need for organizational change at the top, and that might well begin with the Toronto Police Services Board.”A group of friends worry their team won't win (Shutterstock)
Public health officials are urging Americans to exercise caution if they choose to participate in “drinking games” during the first Republican primary debate this Thursday in Cleveland, Ohio.
“You simply can’t drink every time one of these guys says something silly,” said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy during a Wednesday morning press conference. “We’ve got three candidates who are prone to gaffes — Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Scott Walker — and then a half-dozen obscure goofballs vying with Donald Trump for a little media attention. It’s just a formula for disaster.”
Murthy suggested that people play a safer variation of the traditional debate drinking game by only consuming alcohol when one of the candidates says something reasonable.
“We’re not saying that people shouldn’t have fun participating in the rotting vestiges of our once-great democracy,” he said. “Just do it responsibly. Instead of, say, shotgunning a beer when Ben Carson compares abortion to a planet-killing meteor wiping out humanity, consider taking a shot if Jeb Bush acknowledges that human activity is contributing to climate change,” he said. “And that drink might even have some therapeutic value when he goes on to argue that we shouldn’t do a damn thing about it.”
According to Dr. Lawrence Goldfarb, a toxicologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an average man should consume no more than four units of alcohol per day and an average woman should consume no more than three. “So even if you only drank when someone made a dopey, half-baked Neville Chamberlain analogy, you’d still be ingesting potentially dangerous quantities,” said Goldfarb. A “unit” of alcohol equals around 12 ounces of beer, five ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor.
First responders are preparing for a repeat of 2012, when emergency rooms were inundated with a surge of alcohol-related admissions. A study conducted by researchers at the Tufts University School of Medicine estimated that there were 70,000 additional hospitalizations, on average, following each of the 104 “clown car” debates during that election cycle. “That just counts alcohol poisoning and other drug overdoses,” explained Dr. Pritam Baruah, one of the authors of the study. “The numbers don’t include injuries from motor vehicle accidents or people’s misguided attempts to wash their brains out with bleach.”
“The data show that it’s not a clown car at all,” added Baruah. ” It’s a clown bus, and far too many smug liberals are being inadvertently thrown under its wheels by their self-satisfied friends on Twitter.”
Coastal cities and liberal college towns were among the hardest hit. “The last time these guys competed in the marketplace of ideas, it looked like a war-zone in here,” said Jack Murphy, an ER physician at the Ann Arbor Regional Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich.
“They brought in one semi-conscious kid — he was maybe 25 — who kept repeating, ‘energy, you idiot!’ over and over again like some kind of slurred mantra,” recalls Murphy. “It wasn’t until we’d pumped his stomach and given him five units of plasma that it became clear that the idiot was former Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Department of Energy was the third agency he’d wanted to shut down.”
“We saved most of them,” Murphy added, looking wistfully around his ER as technicians stocked extra supplies. “But we couldn’t save them all.” There were at least 372 fatalities resulting from alcohol poisoning during the 2012 Republican primaries, according to the Tufts study.
But public health experts warn the threat to public health may be even greater this Thursday because the officially sanctioned primetime debate will be preceded by an earlier forum for seven candidates who didn’t have enough support in the polls to qualify for the main event. “You’re looking at a solid, five-hour block of wingnuttery that starts right smack in the middle of happy hour on the East Coast,” said Murphy. “We’re certainly preparing for the worst.”
They also pointed to the potential for higher numbers of admissions due to expanded health insurance coverage under Obamacare.
At the iconic Townhouse Tavern in Washington, DC — believed to be the birthplace of the progressive “Netroots” movement — bartender Rex “Tweety” Matthews was also expecting a raucous night. “Hell, they’re calling the first debate the ‘kids’ table’,” he said. “How can any progressive resist knocking back a few and exchanging some totally inappropriate Josh Duggar jokes even before the evening really gets started?”
The primetime debate will be broadcast on Fox News at 9 p.m. EDT. Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace will moderate. The “kids’ table” debate starts at 5 p.m. EDT, and will be moderated by Bill “Eddie Haskell” Hemmer and Martha MacCallum.
Joshua Holland is the host of Politics and Reality Radio. Follow him on Twitter.The first ever Drone Wars was held at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum. (Published Saturday, April 4, 2015)
The buzz of drones could be heard all day in Addison on Saturday.
The first ever Drone Wars was held at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum.
The popularity of drones has hit an all-time level, so those at the museum were pretty sure Drone Wars would be a hit.
“We didn’t know what kind of reaction we would have, but this has been overwhelming,” said Cavanaugh Flight Museum executive director Doug Jeanes. “It’s just exciting and fun.”
Close to 50 participants signed up for Drone Wars. Organizers set up two obstacles for them to test their skills. They had three levels beginners, intermediate, and experienced.
Even though drones seem innocent, federal regulators have been adding more and more regulations on what you can do with them.
“If you are going to flying them outside the rules are it has to be line of sight,” said Cavanaugh Flight Museum marketing director Scott Slocum. “You have to see the drone at all times. You cannot go higher than 400 feet, and you can’t go closer than five miles to an airport.”
With several high profile cases of drones ending up in places they should not, organizers of Drone Wars hope the event will teach users the rules.
“We want to educate people about this,” said Slocum. “I believe, this is my opinion, but in my daughter’s lifetime there will be drones flying around doing tasks for us. That’s going to be a common thing.”
Slocum says as the popularity of drones continue to rise he expects even more changes on how they can be used in the future.
“I think there will be more refined regulations,” said Slocum. “It will be in such a way, if you are making money with it and you are a professional and doing something it, you will be regulated. You will be licensed, so that way the safety measures will be in place just like if you are flying an airliner.”
Drone War organizers say they definitely plan to have more events like these in the future.WARNING: Some of the information shared here is graphic in nature.
We are intensely busy reading, drafting, formatting, typing, crying (a little) and prayerfully lacing together the stories that our amazing foster alumni have so bravely shared in our book (their book), “This Is Mine: My Story, My Life“. You will meet some very determined, independent, amazing individuals who have triumphed over great adversity and have stepped forward to share their journey with you. Each person has their own unique style of writing about their life, and we have preserved their story for you to experience their individuality. Let us introduce you…
Meet Phyllis Amalfitano Kessler Guilmette Thompson:
When I was taken from my mother, I was found broken, burnt, nonverbal and locked in a basement, with a boy just a few years older than me. For years as a young child, the identity of this young boy plagued my dreams and instilled a child-like fantasy of lost brother and sister running down the street into each other’s arms.
Meet MindOfAGeisha:
The day I was placed in foster care was a very odd day for me. I was ten years old, traumatized, and very afraid. I think back now and realized I had every reason to be scared, foster care would later on drag me through hell and back…
Meet Helen Ramalgia:
…hands busted through the screen door and took me to a car. We went to a Juvenile Detention Center where we lived for several months to keep us safe from our father. They had to lock me up to keep the man who was supposed to love and protect me, from killing me.
Meet ShirleyAlexis:
It is the distorted face of my Abuser, that I see today, in my Nightmares and Flashbacks, as I endure re-living the event of when she was holding me underwater…
Meet Nikki J:
For years, my big brother and I had taken care of our three younger siblings. We were forced to grow up at a young age ourselves and then one day we were all ripped apart. Trying to learn to become a child again, was nearly impossible.
NEVER give up on your kiddos or youths. Learn and listen to their stories. We all have our unique story, even if it’s just a sentence different. Treat them as your own child and give them as much love and support without, of course, invading their personal space and life.
The Future of The 90/Ten Project
These amazing individuals have a painful past, a promising future and a powerful presence today. They invite you into their lives for just a moment, to learn from them, and to use their life experience to make things better for others. We will be donating 90% of the proceeds of this book to organizations that currently serve children in foster care to provide extra support for birthdays, holidays, and special needs. We hope to have the book finalized, formatted, and complete for Thanksgiving. Thank you for your amazing support."Bennie and the Jets" (also titled as "Benny & the Jets") is a song composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.[1] The song first appeared on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album in 1973. "Bennie and the Jets" has been one of John's most popular songs and was performed during John's appearance at Live Aid. The track is spelled Benny on the sleeve of the single and in the track listing of the album, but Bennie on the album vinyl disc label.[2]
Single release [ edit ]
"Bennie and the Jets" was featured on side one of the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, and Elton John was set against releasing it as a single, believing it would fail. CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, began heavy airplay of the song and it became the #1 song in the Detroit market.[3] This attention caused other American and Canadian Top 40 stations to add it to their playlists as well and as a result, the song peaked at #1 on the US singles chart in 1974. In the US, it was certified Gold on 8 April 1974 and Platinum on 13 September 1995 by the RIAA,[4] and had sold 2.8 million copies by August 1976.[5]
"Bennie and the Jets" was also John's first Top 40 hit on what at the time was called the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, where it peaked at #15, the highest position out of the three of his singles which reached that chart.[6] The acceptance of "Bennie" on R&B radio helped land John, a huge soul music fan, a guest appearance on the edition of 17 May 1975 of Soul Train, where he played "Bennie and the Jets" and "Philadelphia Freedom". In Canada, it held the #1 spot on the RPM national singles chart for two weeks (13–20 April), becoming his first #1 single of 1974 and his fourth overall.[7][8]
Song composition [ edit ]
The song tells of "Bennie and the Jets", a fictional band of whom the song's narrator is a fan. The song is written in the key of G major. In interviews, Taupin has said that the song's lyrics are a satire on the music industry of the 1970s.[citation needed] The greed and glitz of the early 1970s music scene is portrayed by Taupin's words:
We'll kill the fatted calf tonight, so stick around, you're gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound.
Taupin also goes on to describe the flashy wardrobe of "Bennie", the leader of the band:
She's got electric boots, a mohair suit You know I read it in a magazine Ohh...
Produced by Gus Dudgeon, the song was recorded during the "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" sessions in France at Château d'Hérouville's Strawberry Studios,[9] where John and Taupin had recorded their previous two albums, Honky Château and Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player.
After recording the song in the studio, John and the band worried that it was too plain and unoriginal. In the Eagle Vision documentary on the making of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John recalled, "I fought tooth and nail against 'Bennie' coming out as a single." According to guitarist Davey Johnstone, "'Bennie and the Jets' was one of the oddest songs we ever recorded. We just sat back and said, 'This is really odd.'" While mixing the album, Dudgeon came up with the idea of creating a "live from Playhouse Theatre" sound for the track. He added reverb effects, applause and other audience sounds from John's previous concerts and a loop from the Jimi Hendrix live album Isle of Wight, plus whistles, giving it the "live concert recording" feel that has since become a sort of trademark.[citation needed]
John rarely plays the song verbatim to the studio version, and often makes subtle or even drastic changes. Live, the piano solo in the middle of the song has been played in all sorts of variations, from very close to the original to wildly improvised and extended versions, such as the elaborate version during a Central Park concert in 1980 and another memorable take on it during the "Elton and his band" part of the show recorded for what would become Live in Australia in December 1986. (It can be seen on various Laserdisc releases of the show.) He has also been known to end the song in a wide range of styles, including classical, swing, boogie-woogie and even using the signature five-note phrase from John Williams' score for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Personnel [ edit ]
Music video [ edit ]
In May 2017, an official music video for "Bennie and the Jets" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as a winner of Elton John: The Cut, a competition organized in partnership with AKQA, Pulse Films, and YouTube in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of his songwriting relationship with Bernie Taupin. The competition called upon independent filmmakers to submit treatments for music videos for one of three Elton John songs from the 1970s, with each song falling within a specific concept category. "Bennie and the Jets" was designated for the choreography category, and was directed by Jack Whiteley and Laura Brownhill. The video was influenced by early cinema and the work of Busby Berkeley, portraying characters as participants on a talent show auditioning for Bennie.[10][11]
Chart performance [ edit ]
Covers [ edit ]
Mondegreens in the song [ edit ]
The song contains the line "She's got electric boots, a mohair suit", which is often misheard as "She's got electric boobs, and mohair shoes".[25][26] A scene in the film 27 Dresses shows that this is but one of many mondegreens that listeners have invented for this song.[27]
References in popular culture [ edit ]
The original Winnipeg Jets NHL team's mascot was named Benny, [28] partially in reference to this song, but primarily after the original owner of the (WHA) team, Ben Hatskin.
partially in reference to this song, but primarily after the original owner of the (WHA) team, Ben Hatskin. The band TV Girl released an EP on 25 July 2011, entitled "Benny and the Jetts". It features four songs, the first of which is also titled "Benny and the Jetts", which describes a girl that the singer once knew who was always listening to the song. [29]
Axl Rose cited it as a song that meant a lot to him as a teenager. [30]
The film 27 Dresses has a scene where Jane (Katherine Heigl) and Kevin (James Marsden) get drunk in a bar and sing this song with everyone in the bar. [31]
has a scene where Jane (Katherine Heigl) and Kevin (James Marsden) get drunk in a bar and sing this song with everyone in the bar. The song was used in a scene in My Girl 2.Campaign gathers enough support to put medical marijuana on ballot
JEFFERSON CITY - Missourians could vote to legalize medical marijuana this November after a campaign gathered enough signatures to help put it on the general election ballot.
New Approach Missouri delivered more than 250,000 signatures from Missouri voters to the Secretary of State's Office Sunday. Missouri law requires campaigns to turn in 167,000 valid signatures from registered voters in six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts.
"What this shows is there's been an out pouring of support to help make Missouri the 25th state to allow doctors to prescribe medical marijuana to patients with serious illnesses," New Approach Missouri Spokesperson Jack Cardetti said.
New Approach Missouri is the only campaign that was able to gather enough signatures to help put the issue on the ballot. The ballots were delivered to the Secretary of State's Office by a U-Haul with boxes full of signatures.
The group began collecting signatures in January.
If passed by voters, the proposal would provide potential treatment to Missouri patients who suffer from cancer, epilepsy, PTSD, Alzheimer's and other serious illnesses.
"Doctors cannot even talk about the treatment with their patients. This is another medical treatment option. It allows patients and their doctors to decide what the best treatment option is and have that conversation," Cardetti said.
The Missouri Department of Health would license and regulate those who are allowed to grow and dispense marijuana. According to New Approach Missouri's proposal, medical marijuana would be taxed 4 percent, generating an estimated $20 million annually.
The Missouri Secretary of State has until Aug. 9 to verify the petition.(CNN) Another member of a group selected to perform at Donald Trump's inauguration is protesting.
Jan Chamberlin, a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, is quitting the group and saying that she could never sing for Trump.
She sent a resignation letter to the choir president this week.
"I've tried to tell myself that it will be all right and that I can continue in good conscience before God and man," Chamberlin wrote in a Facebook post. "I only know I could never 'throw roses to Hitler.' And I certainly could never sing for him."
Chamberlin said she has concerns about the choir's reputation after performing at the inauguration.
"Looking from the outside in, it will appear that Choir is endorsing tyranny and fascism by singing for this man," she wrote.
"Tyranny is now on our doorstep; it has been sneaking its way into our lives through stealth. Now it will burst into our homes through storm," Chamberlin added.
The choir did not return a request for comment. Boris Epshteyn, a spokesman for Trump's inaugural festivities, simply said, "We're honored to have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform in the |
.
66 min SUBSTITUTIONS: Naumoff and Gligor replace Abbas and Antonis for Sydney.
68 min SUBSTITUTIONS: West Ham changes now as Poyet and Whitehead come on for Diame and Noble.
69 min CHANCE! Gameiro has the chance to make it four as he gets in behind the West Ham defence, latching onto a pass from Ibin-Isei. The forward is on his own and has to shoot from a tight angle, but he forces Adrian into a save which the keeper can only parry, but he manages to gather at the second attempt.
71 min SUBSTITUTION: Potts replaces O'Brien for the Hammers.
74 min CHANCE! Vaz Te collects a cross from Downing at the back post and he manages to turn Bojic inside and out, and advances on goal but he can only fire his effort into the side netting.
77 min The tempo of the game has dropped slightly in the last few minutes. The changes from both sides have disrupted the flow of the game and that will suit Sydney just fine, to allow them to try to hold out for a good win over Premier League opposition.
79 min Downing and Potts link up well down the right and the young full-back lifts a dangerous cross to the back post looking for Vaz Te. However, Bojic does extremely well to beat the winger in the air and clear the danger under immense pressure.
80 min Ibin-Isei and Gameiro nearly combine yet again as the Ibin-Isei tries to slide the forward beyond the West Ham backline. This time the offside flag goes up to deny the forward a chance at scoring his hat-trick, but he certainly has been the best player on the park this morning.
82 min SUBSTITUTIONS: Fanimo and Howes replaces Downing and Adrian for the Hammers, while Jurman makes way for Gersbach along with Ibin-Isei for Burgess.
84 min The tempo is more or less at a stand-still and Sydney seem just content to knock the ball around at the back to see out the victory. Allardyce looks very displeased in the dugout as his side look to be heading for their second defeat of the tour.
86 min West Ham's poor afternoon is probably summed up by Vaz Te as he collected the ball on the right and just put his foot through the ball for a cross, which lands nowhere near a teammate and allows Sydney to kill more time.
90 min There will be five minutes of added time.
90 + 3 min West Ham win a free kick 25 yards from goal which Vaz Te decides to take. The winger's goes for goal and his effort deflects off the wall and goes wide of the target. The resulting comes to nothing and that should allow Sydney to see out the win.
90 + 5 min FULL-TIME: Sydney FC 3-1 West Ham United
5am West Ham fall to the second defeat of their tour of New Zealand and that means they are yet to register a win during their pre-season campaign so far. Alarm bells could be ringing for Sam Allardyce and he will be far from impressed with what he saw this morning.Everyone knows “the Google guys” — Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the multibillionaire founders of the world’s most popular search engine. But another Google guy was there from the company’s creation 12 years ago — Craig Silverstein, a slightly built, witty software engineer who was Google’s first employee.
Like Page and Brin, Silverstein was a computer science graduate student at Stanford in the late 1990s, when he got wind of the search algorithm that would ultimately become Google. Silverstein wasn’t a close friend of either Page or Brin at the time, but with a more formal background in search than either of the founders, he saw the world-changing potential of their work. And he knew he wanted to be part of it.
Like the founders, Silverstein never did get his doctorate, but the past dozen years haven’t exactly been wasted time. Silverstein worked side by side with the founders to establish Google’s distinct culture and wrote his fair share of the nascent search engine’s base code. As Google’s first employee, his net worth has been estimated somewhere north of $800 million.
Now based in Google’s New York offices, where he is working on making some of the internal programming code that Google developed available free for programmers around the world, Silverstein sat down with the Mercury News during a recent visit to the Googleplex in Mountain View. From attributing Google’s success to “luck,” to defending charges that the company “sold out” in its proposed deal with Verizon over net neutrality, Silverstein’s tenure allows him to say things most Googlers can’t. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How did the initial generation of Googlers create the company’s unique culture?
A: You don’t hatch it. It’s not like you sit around saying, “I wonder what I want the culture to be.” You have a culture in mind that you want it to be, that reflects your own personality, and then you hire to fit it. We all pretty much wanted the same culture, which was all the best parts of grad school, basically “… a lot of self-starting, the ability to pick your own projects, the idea that you are encouraged or supposed to find better ways of doing something. You are not supposed to take the received wisdom for granted about the way to do something.
Q: What were your contributions to that culture?
A: The M&Ms. (Google is full of well-stocked break rooms that include candy and other snacks.)
Q: But seriously?
A: There are these cultures you see in some companies — they are just very negative, where the way that you show you are the hot shot engineer is by showing how stupid everyone else’s idea is, or how bad everyone else’s code is. And honestly, we see that more at Google now then we used to when it was small. And part of it is we’ve got people who were used to these other cultures; it’s a very prevalent, sort of alpha-dog culture you see in the programming world. But it’s never been part of Google’s culture. And I think even when you see it now, it’s not as respected. The respected voices say, hey cut it out. And I think that comes from Larry and Sergey, but especially me, since I was the one doing a lot of the hands-on programming very early. Larry and Sergey used to spend a lot of time on the other issues that I wasn’t worrying about at all, like getting money. So I think the culture here is much friendlier.
Q: Some critics say a more idealistic Google of five years ago never would have made the deal with Verizon.
A: It would not have happened five years ago because we never would have been involved in something so political five years ago. Certainly, we now have critics based on political issues that we wouldn’t have had a long time ago, just because we were too small to interest political thinkers. Whether we wouldn’t have made a decision like that, which is kind of a compromise, five years ago — I think people misjudge us if that’s what they think. We’ve always been pragmatic. Our goal has always been to get things done. That’s not to say we don’t have ideals. Our feeling is that what we did with Verizon is consistent with our beliefs and consistent with our past policies.
Q: As Google’s leadership has grown older, has its leadership needed to be less idealistic?
A: I’ve seen enough of what’s gone on in the past decade to feel confident that the culture comes from the top, and the top hasn’t changed at Google for a very long time. And so for people to say the culture has changed — “Now they’re this big materialistic company, where before they were idealistic” — to my mind suggests that the people at the top have changed; they’ve become different people. If they were going to change, they would have changed at the IPO when they became multibillionaires. Why would they change now? It doesn’t make any sense. They didn’t change then; they haven’t changed now, and I feel the culture has been very consistent, and I feel it will be very consistent as long as the same people are at the top.
Q: Has all that money changed the early Googlers?
A: Certainly some people have changed, but it’s not clear whether they’ve changed or they are just able to do what they’ve always wanted to do. There are people who have retired and traveled around the world, and there are people who have left and done charity stuff, and there are people who have left and become angel investors, and there are people who are still here, punching the clock every day, just like they always did. There are people who are mostly the same, and now they fly first class.
Q: How have the work lives changed of the early hires who stayed at Google?
A: What all the early hires do has changed a lot. We have all specialized in areas we never would have thought we would be in. We are all managing more than we would have thought of at that time. But because of the kind of people we were looking for, flexibility being a large part of that, all these changes have happened, but nothing that’s important really changes.
Q: What are you most proud of at Google?
A: I feel a lot of our success is due to luck. I guess what I’m most proud of is successfully keeping the culture as well as we have, given all the success and growth that we’ve had. I’m proud of that. We haven’t done perfectly, but we’ve done a lot better than I ever thought we would.
Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories.Fox News host Tucker Carlson and contributor Kirsten Powers bitterly clashed over the United States’ supposed “moral obligation” to illegal immigrant refugees around the world, with Powers invoking Christian principles and Carlson countering that “this is not a theocracy” and no one has “a moral right to American tax dollars and physical asylum in the United States.”
Carlson — who is also editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller — and Powers appeared on Fox’s “Outnumbered” on Thursday to discuss growing opposition to President Obama’s handling of illegal immigration. As tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children cross the border claiming refugee status, opposition to allowing hordes of asylum-seekers into the country at all has also grown more pronounced.
“Fifty-three percent of Americans believe that Americans do not have a moral obligation to offer asylum to people who come to the U.S. to escape violence or persecution in their home country,” Powers lamented. “That’s un-American.”
Carlson immediately pushed back. “So you’re saying that the United States has an obligation — anyone who’s suffering around the world has a right to come here and be supported by you and me?” he asked.
“Yes!” Powers replied. “Hey, ever been to the Statue of Liberty?”
“So you’re saying — in Congo for example, where there’s been a war for 20 years — every Congolese has a moral right to come here and we have a moral obligation to pay for it?” Carlson continued.
Powers invoked several other American tropes, including the image of a “shining city on the hill.” But Carlson pressed on.
“So I have a moral obligation to share my earnings and my country with people I’ve never met because they are suffering?” he asked.
“Yes, you absolutely do,” Powers said forcefully. “Are you a Christian?”
“I am absolutely a Christian,” Carlson responded.
“Ok, have you read the Bible?” she continued. “Because this —”
“This is not a theocracy!” Carlson went on. “The country is not run according to Christian precepts here!”
“What you’re saying is the U.S. government has a responsibility,” he explained. “Now you may have a Christian obligation. You can give charity money. That’s a massive difference.”
Carlson and Powers continued to fight over whether “every person” suffering worldwide should be welcomed by the United States.
“Does any other country have this obligation, or just ours?” Carlson asked.
“Other countries, of course they can!” Powers said. “But we’re talking about our country! Are you saying that people who have been fleeing persecution throughout history have not come to the United States?”
“No, of course they have,” Carlson said. “But they don’t have a moral right to American tax dollars and physical asylum in the United States. They just don’t.”
Follow Brendan on TwitterWhy do we see aggressive behavior in all animal species, including in humans? What is its usefulness?
From an ethological point of view, aggression is a behavior which allows for a hierarchical status to be established within a group, facilitates the access to resources, allows one to defend against the attackers, ensures the territorial defensive or the conquest of other territories, helps one to protect the individuals from the native group, favors us in the contest with other males for the conquest of females, helps us to protect our sexual partner and to dispirit our rivals from other assaults in the future and so on. Practically speaking, the role of aggression is crucial for the existence, protection and evolutionary adaptation of the individual and the group [Kaufmann, 1965; Buss, Shackelford, 1997, apud Goetz, 2010, p. 17; Buss, Duntley, 2002].
There have been numerous and substantial potential advantages of aggression which have ensured the survival and the reproductive success of individuals so much, that, respectively, there have been enough reasons for the consolidation of these behavioral mechanisms on different stages of evolution, on a genetic level. We try to assign rational motivations to these acts; we label them as being immoral. However, they are, primarily, evolutionary adaptations, even if they seem to be ill-suited nowadays, and some manifestations of the instinct of aggression, such as homicides, military interventions, rapes, massacres, genocides and identity conflicts, are downright horrible [Duntley, Buss, 2011].
Let us examine a practical and recent example from the living world and see how the aggressive behavior can be advantageous for the ascension of a species. It’s about Dikerogamarus villosus, a species of shrimps which is also called “the killer shrimps” – a particular rapacious species, that succeeded in spreading panic among the European hydrobiological experts. These shrimps usually populate the rivers of East Europe, but in recent years, they have emigrated into the water of the Western Europe, where they proved to be a “total killer” of the microfauna from the local waterbodies.
This little crustacean of only 3 cm in length and with powerful mandibles kills and cripples, unselectively, everything it meets along the way and can knock down other species of shrimps, the offspring of fish and amphibians, small fish, aquatic insects, worms and other beings that are unable to run or protect themselves. The thing that surprised the researchers was that the “killer shrimp” kills more than he needs in order to feed himself; he kills in order to exterminate all the other potential competitors. We could say that he kills in a “genocidal” manner.
Due to his ferocity and high prolificacy, the “killer shrimp” colonized new and new aquatic spaces in Western Europe almost unrestrictedly (with a speed of about 124 km per year); he destroyed the populations of other species of shrimps (species that were also invasive), he imposes his status of an absolutely dominant species in the limits of the European aquatic microfauna and he smashes the ecological links that has stabilized themselves over the decades [1] [Macneil et al., 2013]. This is how, due to an extraordinary aggressiveness, a species manages to eliminate its competitors, to invasively expand its living area and to multiply, in order to raise its evolutionary opportunities for a long period of time.
Of course, aside from competition through aggressiveness, there are other strategies in the living world which are used by some species (and nations) to ensure their survival and to gain evolutionary advantages, strategies like cooperation, reciprocal altruism, coalition formation etc., but no other strategy seems to be so omnipresent and efficient as the one that implies fighting for survival through… fighting.
The aggression has foreshadowed the history of the human society itself. First, during the prolonged period of our species evolution, then in the process of geographical expansion and social affirmation, the aggressive behavior represented a compulsory factor for the ensuring of the existence and perpetuation of an individual, a group or a nation. This behavior had an adaptive role, i. e. it facilitated the survival and the reproduction of the individuals and the groups which demonstrated a higher capacity of combativeness and which used the aggression as a tool for protection and conquest.
There are studies showing that overconfident states predominate in the population at the expense of unbiased or underconfident states. Overconfident states win because: (1) they are more likely to accumulate resources from frequent attempts at conquest; (2) they are more likely to gang up on weak states, forcing victims to split their defences; and (3) when the decision threshold for attacking requires an overwhelming asymmetry of power, unbiased and underconfident states shirk many conflicts they are actually likely to win. These “adaptive advantages” of overconfidence may, via selection effects, learning, or evolved psychology, have spread and become entrenched among modern states, organizations and decision-makers. This would help to explain the frequent association of overconfidence and war, even if it no longer brings benefits today [Johnson et al., 2011].
Political scientists admit the fact that the shy and peaceful nations stood to lose during territorial competition, just as the fractions which exhibit weakness and insufficient incisiveness stand to lose during competitions for power. On a political or geopolitical level, those who use the tool of violence and pressure have a higher chance of reaching their goals, and a force cialis online which has political power can be combated, usually, only by another force which is fiercer. On a historical scale, the global dominance of the Occident itself must be understood as a function of the capacity of the Westerners to impose themselves through violence [2].
On the other side, according to the Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost, the fall and the conquest of the Roman Empire happened because of the pacification of the most Rome’s population, which had lived in luxury and laziness for a couple of centuries, so that it would not be able, eventually, to resist the blows of extremely aggressive barbarian hoards. The bravest Romans were being recruited in the professional army and they often died without leaving offspring in Roma; instead, many weak, lazy and peaceful individuals stayed in towns, individuals who had promoted the culture of subordination and pacifism. The genes of these people had a larger distribution, as well as their habits.
Thus, in a couple of centuries, somehow paradoxically for a Rome that had conquered the world through boldness and sword, the number of the Romans who were used to a life which was dependent on luxury and non-violence has essentially exceeded the number of the Romans that had a combative spirit. There took place something that Frost terms as “genetic pacification” of a population – a phenomenon that proved to be fatal for the empire in the conditions of foreign invasions [Frost, 2010].
With all the vulnerabilities that Frost’s theory contains, the emphasis that the author lays on the defensive state of a nation is interesting. Non-violence, as a spirit and tradition, besides being very useful for the development of a society in times of stability, proved to be a handicap during a crisis, in a period when violence equals success.
Thanks to the communities, the nations and the states that showed a combative character and got engaged in endless fights, violence and aggressiveness remained, as behavioral states, up to now; the aggression stepped from prehistory into history. The American sociologist Charles Tilly has argued, in his writings, that “war made the state, and the state made war” and that the aggression is the only way in which a nation can survive and perpetuate itself throughout history. These states and nations, which were capable of developing and sustaining great armies, have dominated on a geopolitical level, while the weakly militarized nations, as well as the ones with a low demography, were conquered and destroyed or absorbed by the others [Tilly, 1985].
In this context, I shall also mention that, according to some researchers from the field of national history, like Eric Hobsbawm, the capacity to conquer is one of the three basic criteria that allow a nation to become and to consider itself a nation [Hobsbawm, 1997, p. 41]. In the works of the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga, we could find the following sententious statement: „At the core of all actions and manners of the old state is the remembrance of the conquest.“
In political sciences, the so-called Just War Theory, the theory which states that violence is a „necessary evil“ and that it represents an immuable reality of history, is quite influently. At their extremes, the idylic pacifism and the roaring militarism would be much more ephemere conditions in the millenial history of humanity [3].
This variety of aggression‘s expressions in history – from pacifism to militarism -, is nothing more than a gradation of the manifestation of a behavioral phenomenon that is as lively as possible and that does never really disappear, but which can only be partially and temporary shaped and moderated, under the influence of the social context. However, there is something important which has to be observed and that is the fact that, sooner or later, the aggression breaks out.
© Dorian Furtun?, ethologist
Sources:
Photo: Romans / Flickr / https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanh1/4123999205Dikerogammarus villosus // http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dikerogammarus_villosus
1. Dikerogammarus villosus // http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dikerogammarus_villosus
2. Why Violence Works // By Benjamin Ginsberg. The Chronicle of Higher Education. August 12, 2013 / http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Violence-Works/140951/
3. Just war theory // http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory
• Buss D.M., Duntley J.D. Murder by Design: The Evolution of Homicide // Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2002 / http://www.philosophy.dept.shef.ac.uk/AHRB-Project/Papers/Non-pdf-papers/Buss.html
• Buss D.M., Shackelford T.K. Human aggression in evolutionary psychological perspective // Clinical Psychology Review. Vol. 17. 1997. P. 605-619.
• Duntley J.D., Buss D.M. Homicide adaptations // Aggression and Violent Behavior. Vol. 16. 2011. P. 399-410.
• Frost P. The Roman State and Genetic Pacification // Evolutionary Psychology. Vol. 8(3). 2010. P. 376-389.
• Goetz A.T. The evolutionary psychology of violence // Psicothema. Vol. 22(1). 2010 Feb. P. 15-21.
• Hobsbawm E. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press. 1991.
• Johnson D.D.P., Weidmann N.B., Cederman L.-E. Fortune Favours the Bold: An Agent-Based Model Reveals Adaptive Advantages of Overconfidence in War // PLoS ONE. Vol. 6(6). e20851. 2011. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020851
• Kaufmann H. Definitions and methodology in the study of aggression // Psychol. Bull. 1965. Nr.64. P.351-364.
• Macneil C., Boets P., Lock K., Goethals P.L.M. Potential effects of the invasive ‘killer shrimp’ (Dikerogammarus villosus) on macroinvertebrate assemblages and biomonitoring indices // Freshwater Biology. Vol. 58, Issue 1. January 2013. P. 171-182.
• Tilly Ch. War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. in “Bringing the State Back In”, edited by Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). P. 169-191.
Comments
commentsRepublicans in Congress apparently want to revive the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump fight, but they still have a major water problem.
While the political wrangling may well continue, from a practical standpoint, the federal government’s inability to secure water permits for its work at the Nevada site creates hurdles that will likely still make the project a no-go.
This provides a blueprint for confronting NSA spying. By denying water to the spy agency’s data center in Utah, the state can effectively shut it down, just like Nevada shut down construction of the proposed nuclear waste site.
The feds pushed to put a massive nuclear waste dump on Yucca Mountain, less than 100 miles from Las Vegas, for decades. The project was wildly unpopular in the Silver State, and the Nevadans fought it for years.
The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site was left for dead after Obama took office in 2008. A recent report at Slate.com follows conventional wisdom, asserting that the president killed the project as a political favor to fellow Nevada Democrat Sen. Harry Reid, and the official excuse was lack of funding.
But this narrative doesn’t tell the true story. The feds shut down the project because the state of Nevada successfully blocked it by refusing to grant water rights for the dump’s construction and operation.
The Yucca Mountain saga started in 1984 when the DOE selected it, along with nine other locations, as potential nuclear dumping grounds. After a great deal of political maneuvering by powerful state interests that didn’t want a nuclear waste dump within their borders, Congress short-circuited the selection process and designated Yucca Mountain as the sole location for consideration.
It soon became clear Yucca Mountain could not meet EPA guidelines. Instead of pulling the plug on the location, Congress exempted Yucca Mountain from EPA radiation standards and directed the agency to create new “reasonable” standards specific to Yucca Mountain. In other words, the feds scrapped their own regulations, ostensibly put in place for public safety, in order to keep their pet-project moving.
As an Idaho Law Review study of the project put it, “Each time DOE uncovered a new hurdle relating to the unsuitability of Yucca Mountain, the nuclear industry and Congress attempted to fix it through legislation. Rather than addressing the repository project in an objective, technically sound way, politics held sway.”
Pres. Bush submitted a recommendation to designate Yucca Mountain as the dump location in 2002 and Congress quickly approved it. Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn immediately filed an Official Notice of Disapproval, vetoing the site selection. Congress overrode it.
But there was another hurdle thrown up by the state that would prove much more effective in stopping the nuclear dump project at Yucca Mountain. In 1997, the Department of Energy filed five water permit applications in anticipation of congressional approval of the facility. The state refused to grant the permits, calling the project detrimental to the public interest, a violation of Nevada water law. The permit denials set off a squabble over water rights that lasted several years.
The state did approved water use at the site for basic functions such as showers, restrooms, and fire emergencies, but the DOE ignored these parameters and began using water to drill bore holes. In the summer of 2007, State Engineer Tracy Taylor issued a cease-and-desist order blocking further water use for drilling. The feds filed an emergency injunction challenging the order based on what they termed “federal preemption.” The DOE motion asserted that the state wasn’t just protecting its water rights, but trying to block a federal project.
However, in this particular instance, the state is using the water permit process to attempt to veto a federal project. Such action is contrary to law and, if allowed to continue, will not only stand as an obstacle to congressional intent, but will also place great hardship on the United States.
The judge denied the DOE motion.
The court found that the issues presented by the DOE did not involve federal preemption of state water law. In the U.S. district judge’s opinion, “The validity of Western states’ groundwater rights and the right to regulate water in the public interest is not a right to be taken lightly, nor is it a right that can cavalierly be ignored or violated by a federal agency.”
Regarding the federal preemption argument the judge wrote, “At present…the only public interest issue is whether state officials can be precluded from exercising their lawfully mandated duties, or whether a federal agency can run roughshod over a state’s rights or interest without specific authority and mandate to do the precise activities it wishes to do.”
The feds appealed, but when Pres. Obama officially scrapped the project in 2010, the DOE withdrew the applications for water.
Now the Republicans want to revive the project. They claim Obama “illegally” killed Yucca Mountain. The newly seated Congress may well resurrect the political debate, but the fact remains, Nevada still doesn’t have to allow the DOE to use its water. Even if they win the political skirmish, the politicos in D.C. still have a practical problem: no water means no waste dump.
State action has effectively blocked the project.
Although the Slate.com article primarily frames the issue in political terms, even it admits the resource issue looms large.
Critics, meanwhile, point to another important finding, one that has more to do with the practicality of building Yucca than with its theoretical performance: that the project can’t proceed without the government acquiring crucial land and water rights, something that appears all but impossible given Nevada’s steadfast opposition to the project.
This proves that Utah can shut down the NSA data center in Utah by denying it the water needed to operate. A bill pending in the Utah legislature would do just that.
The history of Yucca Mountain validates the OffNow project. We not only know that the strategy rests on a legally sound basis (the anti-commandeering doctrine), we know that it works from a practical standpoint.
Like this: Like Loading...A lesson in today's skim-the-headlines world of social media. Read the full article folks.
From the Sunday NY Times article, “Stung in 2008, Hillary Clinton Builds Formidable Team in Iowa,” this little gem had me chuckling and to my mind really just about sums up the hapless fortune of this wooden, forced and Wall St-funded campaign:
The careful, ground-up organizing seems designed to counter the kind of threat to Mrs. Clinton that has emerged from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose hard-left policies have inspired huge crowds at rallies. Many at the Clinton house party in Newton said Mr. Sanders was the candidate they were most drawn to. “I like everything he says,” said Dean Lane, who farms 1,800 acres of corn and soybeans. “I’m a pretty wealthy farmer,” he added. “I think it’s ridiculous the way we treat poor people. Nobody wants to pay a dime in taxes.” Few of the 45 in attendance signed the Clinton commitment cards or said they were ready to volunteer for her.
Ostensibly this was to be a bold-faced, "we're serious about not letting this happen again," but it turned out that, as many Clinton supporters here have readily admitted, there's just not a lot of enthusiasm for her candidacy. And if Sanders loses there will be even less if she gets the nomination, and that should deeply concern the Dem party machine.
Oh yes, there's plenty of name recognition. And there's many, including myself, who'd love to see a female President. But when you add it all up, the First Lady from 23 years ago and well-known corporatist and noted hawk represents a very damaging case. Like it or not, she will be the face for continued monarchy in the United States, and she also wears the vest of Protectorate for her biggest donors on Wall St, and not for the vast 99% on Main St still slogging through this grinding economic crisis. This will be all too abundantly clear once the public begins seeing them side by side and determining which of the two is more believable and genuine.
If Sanders continues to get the kinds of support he keeps building day by day, week by week, then the Dem party chiefs are going to have to contend with a very serious dilemma, should they have already decided to throw all their weight behind Clinton. Her negatives will continue to rise, I predict, inversely to Sanders' positives which will increase at 2 or 3x that.
At some point the few sane and rational ones will have to stand up and ask the old guard if they're prepared to go down with the ship and blow a huge opportunity to return this party back to its roots. Middle America is opening their arms to Sanders in a big and impassioned way. If all that energy gets supplanted by Wall St and corporate campaign donors and the Machine doubles down on the Monarchy Candidate we will hear the greatest, penetrating sucking-sound of a vacuum ever heard.
What about the numbers showing Clinton way ahead of Sanders? I think they're going to drastically change once folks get to finally see Sanders, while at the same time having to see yet more and more of Clinton. I predict then the changes in poll numbers will be dramatic and fast.
As far as I can see there's a gathering storm that represents the zeitgeist, and this was a little twinkling premonition out there at the house party in Iowa.A Yakuza 0 Western release has finally been confirmed for early 2017. The prequel to Sega’s Japanese crime saga will come to the PlayStation 4 in Europe and North America in both physical and digital releases. Yakuza 0 takes players back to the Tokyo of 1988, as a young Kazuma Kiryu dives into the world of the yakuza crime organisations. Fans will also get to take control of a series regular – the unhinged “Mad Dog” Goro Majima.
As usual for Yakuza, the game will release with Japanese audio and English subtitles. After a long 3 year wait, the West finally saw a digital-only release for the PlayStation 3’s Yakuza 5 last year. We praised the title in our review, but for some it was too little too late, especially with those turned off by a full-priced PS3 game being download only in late 2015. Now it seems that Sega is once again looking to support the series in the West, though only time will tell how localisation efforts for Yakuza 6 or remake, Yakuza: Kiwami will turn out.Jailed sex offenders are earning an income thanks to YouTube placing adverts for big-name brands on their videos.
Adverts for Ford, TSB, Netflix and Philips all appeared on content posted by Larry Nassar, a former US gymnastics team doctor who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for child pornography.
According to the conditions of the streaming site, 55 per cent of ad revenue is kept by the content creator.
An investigation by The Times has revealed that this likely means Nassar has been provided a significant revenue.
The doctor also pleaded guilty to seven charges of sexual assault in November — including three on girls under the age of 13
Larry Nassar's videos mostly feature him toughing young gymnasts for the purpose of'medical examinations'
The doctor also pleaded guilty to seven charges of sexual assault in November — including three on girls under the age of 13.
More than 140 women, including Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas, have accused him of abuse.
Nassar is to be sentenced for these crimes next month.
'He abused my trust, he abused my body, and he left scars on my psyche that may never go away,' McKayla Maroney - another Olympian - told the sentencing court.
'He needs to be behind bars so he will never prey upon another child.;
Accusations against Nassar received extensive coverage after he was removed from his post in 2015.
More than 140 women, including Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas, have accused him of abuse
But YouTube, which is owned by Google, has retained his channel and continued placing adverts in his videos.
The mostly feature him toughing young gymnasts for the purpose of'medical examinations'.
One shows a young girl's bottom being manipulated by Nassar to demonstrate different muscles.
Dr. Larry Nassar, 54, appears in court for a plea hearing in Lansing, Michigan
Other brands that features on Nassar's channel included New Statesman, Lavazza and the Olympic Channel.
Nassar is alleged to have abused his young victims while giving them massages and medical treatments — similar to those show in his YouTube videos.
The sex offender uploaded a total of 133 videos, which have been viewed 639,240 times, generating up to £867 a year.
It comes after YouTube was criticised for failing to properly moderate the service.
This week, seven of Nassar's videos were flagged as inappropriate by one of YouTube's 'trusted flaggers', whose role is to police the site.
But Nassar's videos remained online even after the flagger highlighted his convictions.
Other adverts for well-known brands were also said to have appeared on videos that apparently feature convicted sex offender Jeff Williams, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
They included adverts for Center Parcs, Spotify, Brompton Bicycles ad the National Citizen Service (NCS).
The trusted flagger then sent a file of evidence pertaining to Williams to senior member of staff at YouTube in October — but the videos remained on the site.
The NCS last night said they had discontinued its YouTube advertising, adding that the delivery of its message in a safe and appropriate environment was 'of the utmost importance'.
Breakdown: He broke down in tears while he confessed to'sexually penetrating' his victims and will face 25 to 40 years in prison for each count
TSB said it had taken immediate action and was shocked to see its adverts had been placed inappropriately.
Ford demanded that its adverts be removed immediately.
Lavazza said their advert was a 'rogue placement and not in line with their coffee-associated brief'.
Philips said they will investigate and Center Parcs said they would take steps to address the issue.
A spokesman for YouTube told The Times: 'We take child safety on YouTube very seriously. When we find behaviour on YouTube like uploading, commenting or engaging in any type of activity that targets or sexualises minors, we take action and terminate user accounts.'
YouTube also said that it works closely with leading child safety organisations to report illegal activity to law enforcement.Why CAR has descended into violence
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made up a trap and ignored reasons why it wouldn’t work “because plot”. Now PCs have an in-character expectation that there armor will work against environmental hazards, except when it (seemingly arbitrarily) doesn’t, without any real explanation. And there’s an easy solution: just make it a trap (any kind of trap) that doesn’t rely on spores.
Spoiler: Issue #2 with part II: the moving laser wall in B3 is, I believe, the first official instance of what is effectively a critical failure being included in a Paizo published Starfinder product. If the PC rolls a natural 1 on their save, not only do they fail the initial save but have to make a secondary save that, if they fail, causes them to suffer 20d6 fire damage at level 5. Once more: huh? No other trap in the (albeit short) history of Starfinder functions this way. No other trap effectively kills a PC if they roll a natural 1 on a save (and fail a follow on save) vs failing a save normally. For something like less than 5% of the PCs playing the adventure path, though, congratulations, your character is now dead because a trap functioned, frankly, like no other trap in Starfinder functions with no explanation and no reason given. This isn’t fun for the players (or for the GM to try to explain), this isn’t creative or “different. This is the type of thing I’d expect to find in a poorly edited scenario and is beneath Paizo’s usual high standard of writing/editing in official publications.
Spoiler: I also wasn’t a huge fan of how the module (on pg. 18) expects the PCs to make plans on the asteroid for how to follow the cult, about which the module says “the PCs have no way of
knowing where the cultists fled or who exactly deleted the name of their destination…” And then, thank goodness, the Corpse Fleeting sitting in orbit attacks them so they know they’re back on the right path. While it’s challenging for the PCs to figure out the Corpse Fleet is probably behind all this from the limited clues left in the base, if it’s supposed to be hard then let it be hard. Creating a situation where the PCs are plausibly supposed to think they failed before being “rescued” by the story having the bad guys attack them or Chiskisk call in to tell them to go to Eox seems very railroad-y, and takes the feelings of success (or failure – because it wasn’t a real failure) away from the PCs because apparently their actions to determine what happened to the cultists or the data didn’t really matter.
Part III
Spoiler: First, the good. Eox is really, really cool. Waneda Trux was one of my favorite characters to roleplay as a GM – although the PCs didn’t go back to her as much as I had hoped for. Third, the last three combats in Part III, particularly the ellicoth, were very good. But, like the first two parts, this part had some problems. In no particular order – first, there isn’t a word about what the PCs can find if they do an Eoxian planetary infosphere search on the Corpse Fleet or hubs of Corpse Fleet supporters in The Splice. Other than simply telling the PCs “you don’t find anything” no matter how high they roll (which is unsatisfying), the module offers no clues as to if/how connected the Corpse Fleet is online with recruiting potential supporters (which the PCs wanted to pose as to gain information). [spoiler] Second, the PCs managed to capture one of the three ghouls ransacking Gretal’s apartment in area F (pg. 27-28), but the scenario doesn’t give any information on what they know or how they know it regarding Gretal’s report to the Ministry of Eternal Vigilance. Is there a leak somewhere? Where? How were the ghouls contacted? By whom? Great questions my PCs asked that I had absolutely no answers to.
Spoiler: Third, we know from pg. 21 that “Captain Vesh also stole synthetic flesh from the vats at Fleshworn Fabrications, left an obvious Corpse Fleet badge at the scene of the crime, and sprinkled some of Xerantha’s shed osteoderms into the empty vat for good measure.” But when the PCs go to area G to investigate the meat theft and ask to look at the security camera footage – the scenario makes no mention of any security cameras. The scenario does mention, on pg. 29, that PCs climbing the fence or flying into the facility causes “motion sensors (to) set off an alarm throughout the factory if anyone attempts to bypass the gates in this manner.” So how did Captain Vesh get in to steal the synthetic flesh and plant the evidence? It isn’t clear.
Spoiler: And, lastly (and probably least), there’s no reason given why the PCs couldn’t buy or rent a flying vehicle (examples on pg. 229 of the core rulebook) to travel out to Xerantha’s place, which makes the final encounter a bit difficult.
All in all, there’s a lot above that lists what’s wrong with this part of the AP. While most of my reviews of the SFS scenarios/Starfinder APs aren’t this negative, I felt like this one consistently missed the mark on explaining why things were the way they were or filling in very notable gaps that the PCs could be expected to take during their various investigations. Once everybody agreed to stay on the railroad tracks, not ask too many questions, and “go with it” my group still had a good time, but I was really hoping for more (and felt like I got more out of Parts 1 and 2 of the Dead Suns AP). Hoping for better things from Part 4.The B.C. senior gunned down during a robbery attempt in Mexico had encountered thieves before in the Pacific coast town of Melaque, but never pushed back until last week, his granddaughter said.
Canadian consular officials are working closely with authorities in Mexico following the death of Robin Wood, who was shot and killed after challenging two intruders who broke into the vacation home of a friend, Arvid Chalmers.
Heron Pedrick, Wood's granddaughter, told CBC's Ben Hadaway that her grandfather, who was 67, had been robbed in the past in Mexico — his computer was stolen on the street, and someone had broken into his apartment once.
"After all these things, he stood up to them," Pedrick said about the recent incident. "He stood up for himself and … he was killed.
YOUR STORY Have you been to the state of Jalisco in Mexico or the city of Melaque? Share your story with CBC News.
"He loved Mexican people and loved Mexico, so it is a real shame that it had to end like this," she said.
Police said Wood had attended a concert Tuesday evening, and when he returned to the home around 1 a.m., he found two burglars inside, CBC correspondent Ioan Grillo reported.
Both Wood and Chalmers are from Salt Spring Island in B.C. Chalmers has run a real estate business for 35 years on Salt Spring Island and spends his winters in Mexico.
Late Tuesday, Jean-François Lacelle of Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs told CBC News that consular officials are working on the case, and "stand ready to provide consular assistance to [Wood's] family during this difficult time."
Killings of foreigners still uncommon
Chalmers initially confirmed Wood's death in an email, according to the Salt Spring Island community newspaper the Gulf Islands Driftwood.
"Unfortunately it is true," Chalmers wrote in a brief email from Mexico on Tuesday afternoon. "We had a home invasion …by two robbers, one of whom had a pistol. Robin got involved and was shot as a result.
"The robbers left and I called the police, however, we did not get to Cihautlan [the nearest major hospital] in time."
Melaque is located between Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco, just north of Manzanillo, and is a favourite destination of so-called snowbirds from Canada.
Police told CBC News that robberies in the area and associated murders are common.
Death called'senseless'
Source: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (CBC)
However, Grillo reported, killings of foreigners in tourist regions are still rare.
"This happened not in a tourist place [like Cancun], but in a house downtown," he said. Of the four million Canadians who visited Mexico between 2006 and 2010, 15 have been killed, Grillo noted.
According to the Gulf Islands Driftwood, Wood is the former owner of the Beddis Road Garage and a mechanic at the old Payless Gas station on Rainbow Road.
Wood was well known and well liked on Salt Spring Island. His close friend, Kerry Chalmers, called his death "senseless." "He was the first person to give you the coat off his back, and … if somebody really needed something, he would have given it to them."
Wood's Facebook page has also been flooded with condolences.
Do reports of killings in foreign countries make you less likely to travel to them? Have your say.
According to the Gulf Islands Driftwood, one poster, Anna Hughes, a Gulf Islands Secondary School graduate who lives in Victoria, wrote "thinking of you Robin and your smiling face always, many thoughts out to family and friends. So sorry to hear this news, your kindness is forever in my heart."Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE will face a tough decision on the Supreme Court if she wins the presidency on Tuesday.
The Democratic nominee must decide whether to keep Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, or move in a different direction.
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Liberals are ramping up pressure on her to jettison Obama’s centrist nominee and pick a younger and more liberal judge.
They also want Clinton to expand the racial and gender diversity of the court to better represent the constituencies Democrats are depending on this Election Day.
Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is a 63-year-old white male from Illinois who has won support from Republicans in the past. Despite that support, Senate Republicans have refused to grant him even a hearing since Obama nominated him to the court in March.
Centrist Senate Democrats facing tough reelections in 2018 want to avoid a knock-down, drag-out fight over the court next year and instead focus on bipartisan economic legislation that can become law and give them accomplishments to run on.
Some prominent Senate Democrats, such as Democratic Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (Nev.) and Whip Dick Durbin Richard (Dick) Joseph DurbinKids confront Feinstein over Green New Deal Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl Overnight Energy: Trump ends talks with California on car emissions | Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal | Climate PAC backing Inslee in possible 2020 run MORE (Ill.), say Clinton should stick with Garland and re-nominate him next year if he fails to win confirmation in the lame-duck session after the election.
Clinton has been careful in discussing the Supreme Court vacancy.
In September, said she may pick someone other than Garland. In an interview on the “Tom Joyner Show,” she said that she would “look broadly and widely for people who represent the diversity of our country” in making a selection.
New York Senator Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE, who is poised to become the next Senate Democratic leader, has steadfastly refused to say what Clinton should do.
Liberals are seizing on comments by Republican senators to argue that Clinton should go big and tap a judge who can anchor the court’s left for years.
“[Republicans] made it clear they’re going to oppose anything she puts up, and so I think she ought to put up candidates that have two qualities. One, that they’re young and, two, that they represent the jurisprudence that she supports, and I don’t think Garland is either of those,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group.
Many Democrats as well as Republicans see the future ideological balance of the court as one of the biggest prizes of the 2016 election, with the next president likely to appoint as many as three new justices.
A Pew survey over the summer found that 65 percent of registered voters said the composition of the Supreme Court would be a “very important” factor in deciding their vote, more important than trade, the environment or abortion.
Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice and an influential liberal voice in Supreme Court battles going back for years, said she’ll back Garland if Clinton chooses to keep him as her nominee.
But she emphasized that there will be a huge confirmation fight no matter who is the nominee and that Clinton should make sure that she feels fully invested in whomever she picks.
“Getting a Supreme Court justice confirmed will be the biggest fight of Hillary Clinton’s life and may be the biggest fight of the first several years of her administration. Whomever she chooses has to be someone she wholeheartedly supports, with every fiber in her body,” Aron said. “She’ll have to put her all into getting this candidate confirmed."
“If it’s Merrick Garland, so be it, but it’s got to be someone she cares about,” she added. “Someone she can really wrap her arms around.”
On one issue, at least, Garland’s record could make him a tough choice for Clinton.
She said at the second presidential debate that she wants to appoint a justice that would reverse Citizens United, the landmark Supreme Court case that allowed outside groups to flood political races with tens of millions of dollars.
But there are doubts on the left as to whether Garland can be relied on to strike down the controversial 2010 ruling.
He joined a unanimous ruling in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 that allowed unlimited contributions to super PACs, a decision that came after Citizens United.
Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, speculated in an article earlier this year that Garland might not be willing to overturn Citizens United because it was decided relatively recently.
Another potential strike against Garland given Clinton’s statement in September that she would “look broadly and widely for people who represent the diversity of our country” is the fact that he’s a white man.
Clinton has pledged to appoint an equal number of men and women to her cabinet, evening the gender ratio that traditionally has skewed male.
The high court is another institution that has been dominated by white men. Only three of the eight sitting members are women.
The left is pushing for Clinton to nominate a woman, an African-American, or an Asian-American.
“We have a Supreme Court that’s been dominated by white males throughout its entire history, and it’s time to make sure that we build a Supreme Court that is more reflective of the life experiences of the entire country,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, a liberal advocacy group.
Clinton was out of the administration and not involved in Obama’s selection of Garland, but she may feel some pressure to stick with him purely out of personal compassion.
He has put his life on hold for months to win the job, and his record on the appellate court is widely regarded as first rate.
Garland’s biggest selling point amongst Senate Democrats is that he is viewed as a consensus candidate who can attract Republican support. But liberals now argue the calculus has changed.
“If there‘s anybody who thinks it’s possible for Hillary Clinton to have less of a Supreme Court fight next year, they’re delusional and living in a fantasy land,” Chamberlain said. “The Republicans plan to block whomever Hillary Clinton nominates to the Supreme Court, period.”
Liberals say if a court war can’t be avoided Clinton should get as much as she can from the political capital she’ll have to spend.
These advocates point to recent comments by Sens. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE (R-Texas) and Richard Burr Richard Mauze BurrHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Five tantalizing questions about Mueller’s investigation MORE (R-N.C.) floating the possibility of keeping the seat held by Scalia open indefinitely.
“If Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court,” Burr told a group of supporters late last month.
Cruz argues there’s long precedent for operating the court with fewer than nine justices.
Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) predicted earlier this month that Republicans would stand firm against any of Clinton’s nominees, though an aide later walked back the comment.
This tough talk from Republicans has undermined one of Garland’s most politically appealing attributes, his past support from the GOP side of the aisle.
Obama nominated Garland in March as a consensus candidate whom the Senate approved to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals with 76 votes.
Sen. Orrin Hatch Orrin Grant HatchThe FDA crackdown on dietary supplements is inadequate Orrin Hatch Foundation seeking million in taxpayer money to fund new center in his honor Mitch McConnell has shown the nation his version of power grab MORE (Utah), a former Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called Garland a “consensus nominee” in 2010 and pledged to help him muster support if nominated to the Supreme Court.
But after Obama tapped Garland, Hatch reversed himself and supported his leadership’s decision not to give the nominee hearings or a vote.
Allie Bice contributed reporting.The pregame hype was all about Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning.
The result reflected much more.
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Brady wasn’t just better than Manning in their 16th career quarterbacking duel. Just about every other aspect of the New England Patriots was superior in Sunday’s 43-21 rout of Denver at Gillette Stadium.
Offensive line? Check.
Secondary play? Check.
Tight end production? Special teams? Run defense?
Check. Check. Check.
Brady’s 333-yard, four-touchdown effort simply made it checkmate.
"This was definitely embarrassing," Broncos wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders acknowledged.
And to think the Patriots entered this game as a three-point underdog.
Instead, we got the most lopsided result in the storied history of the Manning-Brady rivalry since the first time these two faced off in Week 3 of the 2001 season. This matchup was essentially over with 11:20 remaining in the fourth quarter after Denver couldn’t convert on a fourth-and-goal from the Patriots’ 8-yard line.
Manning did extend his NFL record for career 400-yard passing games with a 438-yard effort. However, there isn’t a bigger critic of his performance than Manning himself.
"When the quarterback stinks, usually you’re not going to win too many games," he said.
The Broncos haven’t suffered a beating like this since losing to Seattle in Super Bowl 48. Coincidentally, the Seahawks also scored 43 points in last February’s blowout. But unlike against the Seahawks, where the Broncos were dominated from the get-go, Denver actually held a 7-6 lead over New England early in the second quarter.
Then the wheels began to fall off.
Manning didn’t see Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich drop in zone coverage when trying to target wide receiver Demaryius Thomas. Ninkovich intercepted the throw and returned it 11 yards to the Broncos’ 34. Five plays later, Brady gunned a 5-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Julian Edelman.
That was just the start of a monster stretch for a player Brady affectionately calls "Mini-tron." When the Broncos punted on their next series — which was an adventure in itself as Britton Colquitt disrupted the coverage unit’s timing by dropping the football before his 53-yard kick — Edelman proceeded to register the longest punt return for a touchdown in Patriots history. In fact, his 84-yard score seemed like it covered double that span as Edelman weaved his way across the field and into the end zone.
Denver’s special-teams woes continued on its next possession as rookie Brandon McManus clanked a 41-yard field-goal attempt off the right upright. McManus, who entered the game with a sore groin, wouldn’t get a chance for redemption later in the quarter. Rather than give McManus the chance for a 52-yard attempt with a stiff wind at his back, Broncos head coach John Fox opted to try converting a fourth-and-six from New England’s 34. The attempt was stymied by linebacker Akeem Ayers, who looped from the outside through the left guard/center gap to sack Manning for a 9-yard loss.
The Broncos spent heavily in the offseason on three free agents (defensive end DeMarcus Ware, safety T.J. Ward and cornerback Aqib Talib) trying to upgrade their defense. The improvements have paid dividends, but the unit simply had no answers Sunday when Brady began getting hot.
On a second-and-21, Edelman escaped Talib’s coverage for a 26-yard reception. Running back Shane Vereen helped Brady continue the onslaught with an 18-yard grab on a wheel route and then a 5-yard touchdown catch just before halftime as Broncos safety Rahim Moore had dropped too deep in coverage to defend the pass.
The Broncos looked as if they might make a run when scoring on their opening third-quarter possession and then limiting the Patriots to a field goal. But another Manning interception — this one by Patriots cornerback Brandon Browner — led to another New England touchdown on the next play when Brady connected with wide receiver Brandon LeFell on a 10-yard scoring strike.
Even when the Broncos responded with a touchdown, the Patriots answered again with one of their own. A one-handed grab near the goal line — left-handed, no less — highlighted tight end Rob Gronkowski’s nine-catch, 105-yard outing. Gronkowski followed that 20-yard reception with a 1-yard TD reception that put the Patriots ahead by 22 points early in the fourth quarter.
Such overall production shows just how far the Patriots have come since a 2-2 start that triggered public debate about whether Brady was still an "elite" quarterback. New England is averaging 40.2 points in its current five-game winning streak. With the exception of Gronkowski, the Patriots are doing this with a group of skill-position players that Brady described as a "bunch of grinders" and an equally superstar-free offensive line that effectively neutralized Denver’s pass-rushing duo of Von Miller and Ware.
"There’s no magic trick. You’ve just got to believe in what you’re doing," Brady said. "Put the work in and try to execute against good teams. This team challenged us. They have a lot of good players, a lot of good rushers and a lot of good scheme stuff."
What New England’s defense accomplished was even more impressive. Tight end Julius Thomas had a touchdown catch, but it was the only time he was targeted in the first three quarters because of New England’s staunch coverage. Broncos starting running back Ronnie Hillman generated a mere 16 yards on 10 carries, marking a far cry from last November’s matchup when Denver’s Knowshon Moreno gashed New England for 224 rushing yards.
Patriots defensive tackle Vince Wilfork credited Patriots head coach Bill Belichick with creating a loud practice environment with faux crowd noise that "made it as realistic as possible for us. We had to force ourselves to communicate in practice. Everybody came to work ready to work and focused."
"We just knew what the game plan was and if we just execute it well and communicate well, then we’ll be in good shape," said Wilfork, referring to a Patriots approach that changed coverage looks throughout the game trying to keep Manning off-balance. "We did that. It wasn’t perfect. But at the same time, the majority of the time we did what we wanted to do, and we played the game how we wanted to play it."
Brady said Belichick reminded the team in his post-game speech that "seven wins doesn’t get you anything." But by dominating a quality team like Denver, this seventh victory invoked memories of those championship Patriots teams that clicked in a complete fashion. There were 17 players from New England’s Super Bowl-winning teams of 2001, 2003 and 2004 who were honored at halftime of Sunday’s contest.
Maybe the 2014 Patriots (7-2) will someday celebrate a Lombardi Trophy. Securing the AFC’s best record and a head-to-head tiebreaker edge over the Broncos (6-2) for home-field advantage during the postseason is a big step toward making their own imprint in NFL history just like Brady and Manning have done themselves.Back in May, before they stepped on the Maryland campus for summer workouts, I took a leap of faith regarding the five freshmen and one senior transfer who were joining Mark Turgeon’s teetering basketball program.
In this very space, I wrote how they were going to be better than the five players who had over the course of the previous month announced they were leaving the Terps with remaining eligibility.
Talk about an early return on your investment.
The excitement about Maryland’s victories over Arizona State and No. 13 Iowa State in the CBE Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City is not simply about the present for Turgeon’s program.
It's more about the future.
Since the newcomers had yet to arrive in College Park, my feelings in the spring were based largely on the players who had left. Though his gut told him otherwise, their departure had made Turgeon second-guess, at least publicly, the way he was doing things at Maryland.
In retrospect, he was not doing things any differently than he did at Texas A&M and Wichita State.
His former players were.
It’s only a five-game snapshot, and those who might still be skeptical that the Terps have turned things around will point to a long season ahead in the rugged Big Ten. But it's been enough time to gauge how different Maryland looks compared to a year ago.
It’s not just the freshmen and fifth-year guard Richaud Pack who are responsible for this quick turnaround.
Junior forward Jake Layman is playing some of the best basketball of his career.
Look through pictures of the Terps men's basketball team during the 2014-15 season. See our Terps 2014-15 Season Guide
Until the last 10 minutes of Tuesday’s 72-63 win over Iowa State, so was senior guard Dez Wells.
Senior forward Jon Graham and sophomore center Damonte Dodd are showing how defense wins games.
Yet the reason the Terps took home a trophy from Kansas City has largely to do with their freshmen.
Melo Trimble’s 31-point outburst on Monday night against Arizona State was among the top performances this season in college basketball. He followed it up with a less spectacular, still solid game Tuesday.
Trimble had 11 points, three assists, three rebounds and three steals and won the tournament’s MVP award. He also helped frustrated Iowa State sophomore Monte Morris into a foul-plagued, 1-of-8 shooting night.
Michal Cekovsky had two strong games in Kansas City, particularly Tuesday when he and Dodd shut off the inside from the Cyclones, who were forced to jack up shots from the perimeter.
The 7-footer from Slovakia had eight rebounds, four points and two blocks against Iowa State, and he combined with Dodd for 13 rebounds, eight points and three blocks. In the two games, they had 20 points, 21 rebounds, eight blocks.
Freshman guard Dion Wiley had some moments too. Coming off an 0-for-6 shooting night in Thursday’s win over Fordham, Wiley made 4 of 5 in Kansas City, including a corner 3-pointer to help build a big second-half lead against the Cyclones.
Then there was Jared Nickens. The lowest-rated member of Maryland’s recruiting class, the 6-7 Nickens came in with a chip on his shoulder that Gary Williams would have been proud of and a sweet offensive game that now includes a little mid-range floater to complement his textbook 3-point shot.
If Trimble was why the Terps outlasted hot-shooting Arizona State, then Nickens was why they upset Iowa State. With Richaud Pack struggling with his shot in Kansas City after being Maryland’s best player the first three games, Nickens calmly came in and buried a 3-point shot from deep along the right wing.
By the time he was done, a player that special assistant Juan Dixon has said “reminds me of myself, except he’s a lot taller” had tied Layman for game-high honors with 15 points, He made 6 of 10 shots, including 3 of 7 on 3s. He even talked a little trash with Iowa State star Georges Niang.
The Terps, 5-0 for the first time in eight years, return home for Friday night’s game against Monmouth a different team than the one that left. By next week, barring any upsets either Friday or Sunday (against VMI), Maryland should be ranked nationally for the first time since the end of the 2009-10 season.
That was also the last time the Terps made the NCAA tournament.
The memory of a frustrating 17-15 season a year ago and its tumultuous aftermath were pushed further in the distance by what transpired at the Sprint Center. Fans on Twitter wrote how last year’s team would never have overcome the rocky start (down 7-0) to Arizona State even to get a chance to play Iowa State.
A thank-you note is in order from Turgeon.
It should go out not only to the players who came in and have made Maryland basketball fun to watch again -- it should also go to those who left.
How did they know they were doing him a favor?In his review of the 1992 film Batman Returns, Roger Ebert wrote of the Penguin: “[He’s] a curiously meager and depressing creature; I pitied him, but did not fear him or find him funny.”
Little harsh — though not far from the truth, considering Oswald Cobblepot’s repute in the pecking order of Batman’s rogue gallery has always been for the birds.
Detective Comics writer John Layman looks ready to shake up that notion. In issue #18 we see a tale of two Penguins, foreshadowing of a regime shift, and a certain self-mutilating maniac on the loose. Is it good?
Detective Comics #18 (DC Comics)
From the get-go we learn that while Penguin was off causing a ruckus with the Joker during the “Death of the Family” story arc he placed right-hand man Ignatius Ogilvy in charge of his seedy operations.
Now that Penguin is back, seems Ogilvy isn’t quite ready to cede his newfound dominion:
Apparently with great power comes greatly impaired vision… as Ogilvy’s new left-eye monocle would suggest.
Layman puts Penguin through the wringer in this issue and one has to wonder if this is criticism of the character’s concept as a whole or the presaging of some grand retaliation. One thing’s clear though: if Penguin keeps getting smacked around like this he’s going to end up with more traumatic brain injuries than the entire roster of boxers’ in Gotham City history. Combined.
He gets bitchslapped by a common thug bodyguard here:
And smashed by Batman later on:
His only defense seems to be saying, “You’ll pay for this,” and rubbing his blood-slavered chin. In his defense, they’re vehement chin rubs. Maybe he’s using Homer Simpson’s version of Muhummad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope” technique in that at this rate his enemies will soon tire themselves out from punching him in the face repeatedly or maybe even slice their knuckles on his beak-like proboscis.
So what else happens in this issue, without spoiling too much? Not much, really. Batman busts a few street crooks’ heads while looking for newly loosed serial killer Victor Zsasz, who we learn might be working for Ogilvy.
Oh yeah, and there’s a one panel mention of Damian’s death. And:
SPOILER ALERT — ABANDON ALL UNAWARENESS YE WHO ENTER HERE:
Ogilvy’s looking to shake up the scene by sabotaging Cobblepot’s criminal empire and supplant the arctic birdman himself and what does he decide to call himself?
Real good way to separate yourself from your predecessor, guy.
6.5 Eye-pleasing, gritty art
Great action for those who derive sick pleasure from seeing Penguin beaten Not much happens besides the aforementioned Penguin beatings.
Is It Good?
Other than Penguin serving as a pot-bellied punching bag and the reveal of Zsasz, not much transpires. I know we’re probably being set up for some interesting turn of events but given the lack of action throughout this issue is ostensibly just the stepping stone on the path to something (hopefully) more interesting.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a message on his social media platform asking for forgiveness.
"Tonight concludes Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews when we reflect on the past year and ask forgiveness for our mistakes," he wrote Saturday night. "For those I hurt this year, I ask forgiveness and I will try to be better."
Zuckerberg continued, "For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask forgiveness and I will work to do better. May we all be better in the year ahead, and may you all be inscribed in the book of life."
Tonight concludes Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews when we reflect on the past year and ask forgiveness... Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday, September 30, 2017
Zuckerberg made the remarks as Facebook is under scrutiny. The company has said it would disclose ads to Congress that were purchased by Russians on the social media platform in the country's effort to influence the 2016 U.S. election.
As of late last week, Facebook was still in the process of handing over all of the ads to congressional investigators, according to a source familiar with the Facebook investigation, CBS News' Jeff Pegues reported.
At least one of the ads specifically mentioned Black Lives Matter and was targeted to reach Ferguson and Baltimore, a CBS News source confirmed. CNN first reported that the advertisement was one of the 3,000 Russian fronts purchased during the election.
"I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity," Zuckerberg said earlier this month. "I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy -- that's not what we stand for."
Facebook turns over Russian ads to Capitol Hill
He said his company found and shut down thousands of fake accounts that attempted to influence elections around the world.
"I wish I could tell you that we are going to be able to stop all interference. But that just wouldn't be realistic," he said. "There will always be bad actors in the world and we can't prevent all government from interference."
Twitter also recently announced that it provided congressional investigators with a "roundup" of ads from accounts used by Russia's state-sponsored television network, RT. Twitter said it found about 200 accounts linked to Facebook accounts that Facebook had identified as being connected to Russian efforts to influence users.On May 15 this year, the Australian Greens Leader, Senator Christine Milne, unsuccessfully introduced a bill to create a national anti-corruption body. She makes a powerful case, raising many very concerning examples. Every Australian should read what she had to say.
“The federal government is the only jurisdiction without the infrastructure to confront corruption. Every time wrongdoing is exposed, one-off reviews or ad hoc investigations are launched.
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the people blockading at Bentley against Metgasco because today the New South Wales government has suspended the licence that was granted because there was no consultation with local people and because, through the Independent Commission Against Corruption investigations, it is pretty obvious that the licences were given wrongly. But it should not take ordinary citizens taking the action that they have to hold governments to account, to make sure that licences are not given as a result of money paid behind the scenes or undue influence or favours in any other way.
And now for the third time the Greens have this bill before the parliament to create this office to crack down on public sector corruption and promote integrity in our public institutions. In fact I cannot see why anybody would oppose setting up a national ICAC, and I will be very interested to hear what excuses are offered. It is pretty obvious that corruption does not end at the border of New South Wales; it does not end at any other state border. When you consider the likelihood of corruption in the federal arena, it is pretty overwhelming. So many major projects are dependent on some federal licence being given, some engagement with a federal agency. Therefore, there is a huge temptation for people, both at the political level and in the bureaucracy, to engage in talking with lobbyists-and who knows where it will end up.
I want to give an example that is on the go right now. You have the financial services industry, which did not like one little bit the fact that in the last government Labor and the Greens moved to change the law to require those people in the financial services industry to act in the best interests of their client. Now what is wrong with someone being required to act in the best interests of their client? You would expect that to be the case. But what has been revealed is that in a whole lot of the managed investment schemes, for example, the financial advisers were not telling the people they were selling the products to of the massive kickbacks that they, the financial advisers, were getting as a result of recommending that product. So what happened? The financial advisers became rich, but the people who bought the product, well those people lost and lost out badly.
When I think of the tragedy of the people who were sucked into buying from Great Southern Plantations, Gunns and the rest, you have to ask the question: how |
? I’m not sure. Anxiety and depression can be paralysing states of mind in themselves. Anything that helps you gain some perspective could be empowering.
Yet I can understand the worry that an insistence on mindfulness could delegitimise anger that might have a rational and social cause, offering the wrong answer to the question: “Should the world change, or should I change?”
I started thinking about this the other night when I was watching What Happened, Miss Simone?, Liz Garbus’s documentary on Nina Simone. The film is full of extraordinary live clips, including one jarring occasion when Simone sings “I Loves You, Porgy” on Hugh Hefner’s television show Playboy’s Penthouse, surrounded by gowns and cigarette holders, her eyes full of burning sorrow. What struck me about many of the performances was her vivid, righteous anger. Her daughter spoke of her being diagnosed fairly late in life with bipolar disorder, and that can’t be ignored – but still, what rang out like a bell from the life story that was told was how much of her fury was justified, and how it found an outlet in both political activism and creativity.
Playing the piano from early childhood and dreaming of a life as a classical pianist, she witnessed her own parents being asked to sit at the back as she gave a recital in church, was rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and took refuge in nightclubs; she was an unorthodox jazz/blues artist with classical technique, uniquely gifted, but thwarted and resentful. Finding common cause with leading figures in the civil rights movement, she then lived through their murders. And all of this fuelled her anger, which fuelled her creativity, flaming out in such defiantly expressive songs as “Mississippi Goddam” and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”.
Simone expressed all this rage at no small cost to herself and her career. I remember John Lydon singing that “anger is an energy”. For Nina Simone it clearly was, and we reaped the benefit in those songs, that imperious voice, those flashing eyes. So I understand the fear some people have that mindfulness might dull that edge, blunting the emotions and creativity. We think we seek calm, but is it really what we want?I compiled this list of design blogs back in 2007. Many are no longer updated, and I’ve since unsubscribed from quite a few. Here’s a more current selection.
It can take time finding talented graphic designers, but it’s fair to say the best have a healthy online presence. So to make things easier, here are some graphic design blogs worth a look. I’ve listed them by Google PageRank — Google’s way of determining a website’s authority, but don’t read into it too much — many have an authority far beyond a single digit.
Design Observer: writings about design & culture
Smashing Magazine – a weblog dedicated to web-developers and designers
Core77 / design magazine + resource /
Authentic Boredom – by graphic designer, Cameron Moll
Coudal Partners: a forum for creativity and experimentation
CR Blog – News and views on visual communications from the writers of Creative Review
Dexigner – popular design portal featuring the latest design news
Hicksdesign – Journal of a small creative agency based in Witney, Oxfordshire, UK, authored by Jon Hicks
I Love Typography, devoted to fonts, typefaces and all things typographical.
Mark Boulton: Design Thinking. Web Delivery. By a designer based in Cardiff, UK.
Quipsologies – Corralling the most relevant and creative on- and off-line bits that pertain to the design community.
Russell Davies – incredibly diverse UK-based blog on topics associated with design
Speak Up > Design Dialog
Subtraction 7.0 – NYTimes.com’s Design Director, Khoi Vinh, blogs about design and other relevant info.
swissmiss – tina roth eisenberg | swiss designer gone nyc
Typographica. A Journal of Typography.
Veer: The Skinny – provides visual elements for use in professional creative work
Veerle’s blog 2.0 – Webdesign – XHTML CSS | Graphic Design
Logo Design Love: a website dedicated to all things logo.
Ace Jet 170 – Found type, print and stuff
AisleOne – Design, typography and everything else.
Chris Glass, The Last 10 Days. A creative fella’s journal from Ohio.
Creative Curio – Learn, discuss and explore the realm of graphic design.
Design Notes published by Michael Surtees who tries to see life filtered through design as opposed to placing design on a pedestal
Designers who Blog – features blogs discussing graphic design, web design, illustration, marketing, photography, branding, writing and advertising
Design is Kinky – a proudly Australian blog on design
DesignM.ag — Articles and Resources for Web Designers
Design View: Articles, Essays and Opinions by Andy Rutledge
Grain Edit – covers contemporary graphic design / illustration, as well as design from the from the golden era of advertising (1950s–1970s).
ideasonideas, a blog that invites dialogue on issues relevant to communication designers and brand strategists
Inspiration Bit – Get inspired and learn from the latest technology, art and design buzz on the Web.
ISO50 – The Visual Work of Scott Hansen
Jasongraphix :: A journal of art, thoughts, and projects by Jason Beaird
Noisy Decent Graphics by Ben Terrett, a Graphic Designer in London
Positive Space :: The Graphic Design Blog
Spoon Graphics – the personal project of Chris Spooner, a UK based Graphic / Web Designer.
Swiss Legacy – Graphic design and typography
The Dieline – packaging design blog
things to look at – plenty of images, and oddly, things to look at
Type for you. A blog on typography, by Pedro Serrão, a graphic designer from Porto, Portugal.
TypeNeu dedicated to typography, fonts, lettering and typefaces
AdGoodness – advertising and design blog from Frederik Samuel
Andy Budd :: Blogography – based in Brighton, England
Computerlove – Contemporary Creative Culture
David the Designer – don’t underestimate the knowledge this man has acquired (and don’t call him Dave)
Elliot Swan survived three days without the internet
FormFiftyFive – Design Inspiration – the pet project of designers Glenn Garriock and Jack Daly
graphicPUSH – “a sporadically but faithfully updated design blog”
Graphic Design Blog – graphic design, freelancing, illustration, advertising, web design
NOTCOT.ORG – for your ideas + aesthetics + amusement.
Daniel Gray
We Made This (It’s Our Blog)
Just Creative Design – by Jacob Cass
Truly Ace – Graphic Design Blog
—
Update:
Don’t forget to check out the blogs I subscribe to — changed a lot since this post was published.VALPARAISO, Ind. (CBS) — An alligator bit a 7-year-old boy at a theme park in Northwest Indiana over the weekend, after a visitor fished the reptile out of its habitat and invited children to pet it.
Ryan Strand, of Concord, N.C., was bitten by the alligator on Sunday evening at the Zao Island family entertainment center and amusement park. He was treated at the scene by emergency medical services, then taken to a hospital by his mother for additional care on his right index finger.
Katy Hurst, a manager at the venue, called police immediately after the incident at 6:45 p.m. Sunday.
At the indoor-outdoor amusement venue, alligators are kept in an outdoor pond surrounded by a fence along U.S. Route 30. Visitors can feed them hot dog chunks by dangling them from string attached to provided poles.
Hurst told police a man fashioned a noose out of one of the strings and used it to fish an alligator out of the enclosure. He then invited nearby children to pet it.
When it bit Ryan, the man put the alligator back into the exhibit and drove away in a dark-colored, extended cab pickup along with a woman and four children, one whom he carried through the parking lot, police said.
A Zao Island employee was able to identify the woman as a 24-year-old Portage, Ind., resident, but police said she was uncooperative. Police said she would not answer her phone until a relative still at Zao Island encouraged her to do so. When she did speak to police, she would not provide the man’s name.
The theme park also features miniature golf, batting cages, rides and arcade games. Representatives of the park declined to comment about the incident Monday.Objection! Leading the witness, your honor!
Since the Washington Post's report Monday that President Trump shared classified information with the Russian ambassador during an Oval Office meeting last week, the major media seems to smell blood in the water. Over the last 24 hours, almost every interview with Democratic politicians has included a question about whether we're getting closer to impeaching the president.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer is leading the charge, bringing up impeachment three separate times Tuesday evening alone.
During an interview with Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) about a New York Times report alleging Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to drop the agency's investigation into General Michael Flynn, Blitzer asked hopefully, "Are we getting closer to the possibility of yet another impeachment?"
Blitzer also flatly told Sen. King that if the Times' report is accurate, it's "an impeachable offense," not even phrasing the statement as a question.
Moments later, Blitzer asked Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) if the New York Times report would provide enough ammunition for impeachment proceedings against Trump. "Is that impeachable if it is an obstruction of justice?” Blitzer asked.
And that's just Tuesday night.
As the montage above shows, many in the media are frequently attempting to bait their Democratic guests into calling for impeachment proceedings.
Take a look.
UPDATE... the drumbeat continues:I have made some progress on achieving my goal of forcing no-leak Tor access to the internet using the pfSense firewall. It's not quite as thorough of a solution as I have wanted, but it's still useful because it serves the job of isolating my entire network from the internet, and only allowing connections via Tor. In the process of setting this up, I've discovered several leaks I was not aware of, and some of them were even bypassing the VPN somehow. It's been a learning experience overall, and I think I have a workable version of a simple solution, just like I wanted, thanks to pfSense. Here's what I have done in detail, in case someone finds this discussion wanting to make Tor safer with pfSense:
1. Configure Tor to Use a Tor bridge: Vidalia -> Settings -> Network -> Bridge Settings. This will make it possible for the pfSense firewall to allow connections only to the Tor bridge IP address, and block all other connection attempts. Adding several different Tor bridges will ensure you have connectivity if one of them goes down. Using 3 different Tor bridge IP's is recommended, but only 1 is necessary to try this out. It is much easier to find mistakes if you start with only 1 Tor bridge. More can always be added later.
The format given by the official Tor bridge service (search the web for "Tor bridge") is intended for direct addition to the "torrc" config file. Remove the word "Bridge" and add each IP and port pair one line at a time in Vidalia. That is not explained anywhere that I could find, which is strange because Vidalia is supposed to make this easy.
2. pfSense Firewall -> Rules -> LAN: Click the green icon to disable the "Default allow LAN to any rule". The rule is usually at the bottom of the rules list. That disables all communication to the internet. Don't delete it, because you might want to re-enable it in the future (it is easy to re-add it if you delete it). Next, we allow only Tor to communicate with the internet.
3. pfSense Firewall -> Rules -> LAN -> add new rule (click the + sign): Allow the Tor bridge IP's, and make sure the "Anti-Lockout Rule" is at the top of the rules list, and the "Default allow LAN to any rule" is at the bottom of the list (and disabled).
Action: Pass
Disabled: unchecked
Interface: LAN
Protocol: TCP
Source: not: unchecked
Source: Type: any
Destination: not: unchecked
Destination: Type: Single host or alias
Destination: Address: Enter the Tor bridge IP address here
Destination port range: from: Enter the Tor bridge port here (usually 443)
Destination port range: to: Enter the Tor bridge port here (usually 443)
Log: checked
Description: Allow Tor bridge
4. pfSense Firewall -> Rules -> LAN: A prompt will appear above the list of firewall rules asking you to apply your changes. Click "Apply".
5. pfSense Diagnostics -> States -> Reset States: Existing connections will not be stopped when you change firewall rules, so you must close those connections before you can see the results of your firewall changes. Click the "Reset" button, then you can immediately reload the Reset States page manually. Because the connection was disrupted by clicking the reset button, the page will not be able to load on its own. When it loads, the reset is done (almost instantaneously).
6. Edit your Tor torrc configuration file, and add "DNSPort 53" on a new line at the bottom, without quotes, then save the file and restart Tor. The built-in torrc editor in Vidalia did not work for me, so I only used Vidalia to find the path to the torrc file, and then I edited it with a regular text editor. You can find the path in Vidalia -> Settings -> Advanced -> Tor Configuration File. On Windows, it might look like "C:\Users\Somebody\AppData\Local\Vidalia\torrc". To use the built-in torrc editor, click the button that says "Edit current torrc".
7. Configure your OS's DNS settings to use 127.0.0.1 as the primary DNS. If you are forced to enter a secondary DNS, you can enter 127.0.0.2 (it doesn't work and it doesn't do anything).
8. Test your setup just to verify that you have internet access. Use a safe computer on a safe connection so that it's OK if something goes wrong and your IP address leaks out.
9. In pfSense, check the firewall logs in Status -> System Logs -> Firewall. You should see a lot of stuff getting blocked, and only a few things passing through. Make sure those things passing through are supposed to be passing through, and also that it's ONLY passing through the Tor bridge IP's. If there is a problem, you will see it in the firewall log. Check the log frequently to be sure everything except Tor is being blocked. pfSense is good at that, so there's not much to worry about.
10. Turn on Flash, JavaScript, and all the nasty little backdoors that Tor users fear, and use the "full anonymity test" for your web browser at http://ip-check.info/?lang=en. In every test I have run, only VPN and Tor exits have been detectable, which is exactly the way it's supposed to be!
Because pfSense is blocking EVERYTHING except Tor, there is no way for any PC on your network to learn what IP it is using to access the internet. Because every bit of data leaving and entering your PC and your LAN must pass through Tor, there is no way anyone else can learn what your true IP is either. I setup my pfSense system with 2 separate ethernet ports, so there is physical isolation between the LAN and the WAN.
I'm sure this setup isn't 100% bulletproof, but as far as I can tell, as long as pfSense doesn't get hacked, it would be OK for any PC on my network to get hacked, and the hacker would not be able to learn my IP address (and location). Because I'm not using Tor Browser, my activities online are still trackable with cookies, JavaScript, browser profiling, etc. Although no one knows my name and where I live if I don't tell them, the ability to track my internet usage means that, in the strictest sense, I'm not using the internet anonymously.
If I wanted to be completely anonymous AND untrackable, I would have to switch to using Tor Browser, or even better, Whonix. I may do that when my tasks require that much protection, but for most things most of the time, I don't care if people know which websites I'm visiting. In my case, that information isn't a problem for me. It might be for you.
To have a full-featured internet experience (with Flash, JavaScript, etc) combined with the ability to conceal my location, is good enough for me 99% of the time. I can always switch to Whonix or Tor Browser if I need more privacy than that. The pfSense firewall will still do its job of blocking everything that's not Tor, if something goes wrong with Tor Browser or Whonix. I see that surprise bugs have been found in Tor Browser before, and pfSense would have prevented the bug from doing any damage. Here's more info about one of those bugs:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/firefox-security-bug-proxy-bypass-tbbs
I'm sure my setup can be improved. I've noticed that sometimes my PC tells me I've got no internet access when I actually do. That's probably because pfSense is blocking DHCP. As long as stuff keeps working, then the more the merrier :)Hezbollah leader calls for international law against insulting Islam and says people who support offensive Mohammed film'should be punished'
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised speech condemning anyone who supports the anti-Islam film
Tony Blair: The film may be wrong and offensive but it's laughable in terms of film-making
In a move that could escalate tensions around the Arab world, the leader of the Hezbollah militant group called for protests against the movie and said the U.S. must be held accountable for the film.
In a televised speech, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah pushed for the creation of an international law that would ban insults of Islam and other religions, citing similar laws that exist to prevent anti-Semitism.
His outrage stems from the anti-Islam film produced by a mysterious convict based in California, that has since sparked protests outside American embassies in the Middle East and across the globe.
Arguing for action: Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah pushed for the creation of an international law that would ban insults of Islam in wake of the offensive film that prompted global protests
'Those who should be held accountable, punished, prosecuted and boycotted are those directly responsible for this film and those who stand behind them and those who support and protect them, primarily the United States of America,' Mr Nasrallah said.
He called for protests on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, urging protesters to call on their leaders to express their anger too.
'We should not only express our anger at an American embassy here or there. We should tell our rulers in the Arab and Muslim world that it is "your responsibility in the first place" and since you officially represent the governments and states of the Muslim world you should impose on the United States, Europe and the whole world that our prophet, our Quran and our holy places and honor of our Prophet be respected,' he said.
In Pakistan, police fired tear gas and water cannons at the protesters in Karachi after they broke through the barricade and reached the outer wall of the U.S. Consulate.
The protesters threw stones and bricks, prompting the police to beat back the crowd with their batons. The police and private security guards outside the consulate also fired in the air to disperse the crowd.
One protester was killed during the clash, said Ali Ahmar, spokesman for the Shiite Muslim group that organized the rally.
The protests were set off by a low-budget, crudely produced film called 'Innocence of Muslims', which portrays Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester.
Tensions flare: Pakistani Shiite Muslim protesters throw stones toward the police as they attempt to reach the US consulate during a rally against an anti-Islam movie in Karachi
Emotions run high: Thousands of protesters shout slogans during a march in Lahore, Pakistan, against an anti-Islam film made in the U.S.
Call for action: Protesters in Lahore are demanding that the Pakistan government immediately end diplomatic relations with all Western countries and recall its envoys to protest the film
A 14-minute excerpt of the film, which is both in English and dubbed into Arabic, has been available on YouTube, although some countries have cut access to the site.
The violence began Tuesday when mainly Islamist protesters climbed the U.S. Embassy walls in the Egyptian capital of Cairo and tore down the American flag from a pole in the courtyard.
Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, also was killed Tuesday along with three other Americans, as violent protesters stormed the consulate in Benghazi.
President Barack Obama has vowed that the attackers would be brought to justice but also stressed that the U.S. respects religious freedom.
The President's response was echoed by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who called into BBC's Radio 4 Monday morning to discuss the continued violence.
Mr Blair, now Middle East envoy for the Quartet of powers, said: 'The film, it may be wrong and offensive but it is also laughable as a piece of film-making.
Urging understanding: Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said 'The film, it may be wrong and offensive but it is also laughable as a piece of film-making.'
'What I am afraid is very dangerous and actually is wrong is the reaction to it.'
Mr Blair said such problems were an inevitable consequence of the Arab Spring that has overthrown repressive regimes in Libya and elsewhere.
'I just see a region that is in the process of huge transition. There is essentially a struggle between the forces of modernisation, who want an open society, a properly functioning economy, who recognise the 21st century is the 21st century, and then those of reaction based on a perverted view of religion, that want to pull the whole thing backwards,' he said.
'When you lift the lid off the repression what comes out are a whole lot of religious, ethnic, tribal influences that themselves have to be countered and moulded into something that is compatible with the modern world.'
Going global: The protests spread to Indonesia as American flags were burned outside of the U.S. embassy in Jakarta
Aiming for Americans: By protesting with English posters, these Pakistani students tried to get their point across to an international audience
Mr Blair said he had changed his view since his time in Number 10, when he used to avoid discussions about faith.
'What the politicians often want to do - for totally understandable reasons, I used to feel this myself - is religion is such a tricky subject for us that we want to stay away from it,' he said.
'But one element of resolving this is about a view of religion that is also open-minded and pluralistic.
'And what you actually require for democracy to function properly is a view of democracy in which religion has its place but where you have democracy-friendly religion as well as religion-friendly democracy.'Given that the Kings have been regularly embarrassing on defense this season, Sacramento's road trip finale on Saturday -- a game against the Magic capping off four games in five nights after long travel -- was ripe for becoming abysmal. Instead, the Kings defended well enough to win, holding one of the league's worst offenses to just above league average efficiency.
I charted the game in a defensive box score to get a sense of just who is giving up lots of open shots. This is a really small sample size, and we won't be doing this for many games. But as an exercise in studying who is losing their man with regularity, I thought it was helpful.
I gave partial credit (or blame) where I felt it appropriate based on what the Kings look like they should be doing. The 'team' entry picked up stats mostly on fast breaks where there was no single King really to blame, or on offensive rebound attempts that weren't the clear fault of a King. 'Open' indicates how many times the player gave up an open shot, whether it went in or not. 'TOV' indicates how often the player had a role (half or full) in a Magic turnover. (I didn't list the obviously unforced errors.)
Player 2PA 2PM 3PA 3PM FTA FTM Points Shots Open TOV Thomas 3.5 10.5 2 6 1 2 14 17.5 3 3.5 McLemore 4 4 0 1 6 6 14 8 1 0.5 Gay 5.5 8 1 2 2 2 16 11 5.5 0.5 Thompson 7 7.5 1 2 0 1 17 9.5 3.5 2.5 Cousins 3 12 0 1 4 8 10 15 2 5 Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Outlaw 1 1 1 1 0 0 5 2 1 0 Acy 1 4.5 0 3 0 1 2 7.5 3 2 Gray 0 1.5 0 0 0 0 0 1.5 0 0 Fredette 1 3 1 1 0 0 5 4 1 0 Thornton 3 5 2 4 0 0 12 9 6 0 Team 2 2 0 0 1 3 5 2 4 0
There are a couple of data errors in here on double-check (I counted some missed long two as a missed three, and missed two other missed two-point attempts that likely came off of offensive rebounds for Orlando), so grain of salt with all of it. But there are some things that the data and a close look at the game show.
* DeMarcus Cousins did a good job defensively. While Nikola Vucevic struggled, Cousins only gave up two total open shots, had a hand in five Magic turnovers and his marks (both bigs and guards he had to step up on off the pick-and-roll) shot 3-13 from the floor. Again, part of this is that Vucevic looked off and the Magic are poor offensively. But he did his job most of the night on defense. Was he responding to Michael Malone's harsh criticisms of the team?
* Marcus Thornton might have saved the game on offense... but man, he was just not there defensively, giving up six open shots in 22 minutes. His marks shot 5-9. What's bad is that as a smaller two-guard he can't afford to lose his guy because he doesn't have the length to make it up.
* Rudy Gay was pretty bad on defense, conceding 5.5 open shots. Tobias Harris was tormenting Gay for a couple of stretches. He, Ben McLemore and Thornton have a bad habit of floating way off of their man without actually doing anything of use in defending the ball. McLemore didn't give up open shots because of it, but his guys still shot well (4-5).
* Isaiah Thomas played huge minutes again (43), but the Magic really attacked him. It burned the Kings early as Isaiah struggled to challenge anything; Jameer Nelson was shooting over him. But overall I thought I.T. did a good job fighting over screens and releasing Cousins and Jason Thompson to get back on their man. There were few successful pick and roll finishes for Orlando; most of the damage was on off-ball cuts and pull-up jumpers.
* Whereas Gay, Thornton and McLemore float, Quincy Acy actively helps... sometimes when he probably shouldn't. So he left his guy (Harris once, Glen Davis a couple times) wide open. But I enjoyed seeing his activity level. He's not giving up buckets for lack of trying, and he got lucky a couple times when the Magic missed open shots.
* Like Thornton, Jason Thompson had a good game offensively but got totally scorched on defense. I'm starting to think the next piece the Kings need is a plus-defense power forward -- an Ibaka type -- just to see if that fixes a lot of the defensive problems on the pick and roll and in stopping face-up fours. Of course, Ibakas don't exactly grow on trees, nor do the Kings have a ton of salary space for one if they did.
* Derrick Williams must have done a good job on defense, because he played 12 minutes and his guy never took a shot. He guarded Harris and Maurice Harkless.
* Malone played 11 guys. I didn't really expect this from the coach this deep into the season, but with such a weird, deeply shallow roster, I can't blame him.According to a report just published, Bethesda is creating an MMO based on the Elder Scrolls universe.
The website Tom's Guide has published an article claiming that an Elder Scrolls MMO is in production, citing an anonymous industry source. The source also told the site that the game would take place a millennium prior to the events of Skyrim, and the author speculates that this would place it in the "Second Era" of Elder Scrolls. This would mean the MMO takes place hundreds of years before any game in the series.
The article gives a few more details on the purported MMO, including the plan to have "three playable factions," each represented by an animal -- lion, dragon, and bird of prey.
The article goes on to speculate that it will be shown at the upcoming E3 and at Quakecon 2012.Comedian and former presidential candidate Roseanne Barr shared her thoughts on the 2016 race, saying the U.S. would be “lucky” to elect a President Donald Trump “because then it wouldn’t be” Hillary Clinton.
Ms. Barr, featured in the new documentary “Roseanne For President!” that hits theaters next month, told The Hollywood Reporter that the U.S. election system is “fixed” and that she at least respects Mr. Trump for financing his own campaign.
“I think we would be so lucky if Trump won. Because then it wouldn’t be Hillary,” the actress said. “She’s friends with everybody that gives her any [expletive] money. The fact is, you don’t get to be the nominee without taking a lot of dirty money. You might be the best [expletive] person on earth, but if you’re hanging out with criminals who do bad things, that matters a lot.
“I like Trump because he financed his own [campaign],” Ms. Barr continued. “That’s the only way he could’ve gotten that nomination. Because nobody wants a president who isn’t from Yale and Harvard and in the club. ‘Cause it’s all about distribution. When you’re in the club, you’ve got people that you sell to. That’s how money changes hands, that’s how business works.
“[Americans] say they believe that people should take money out of politics and then, you know, they send their paycheck to Bernie and off he goes to hang out with the pope on a private jet on that money. The [expletive] Pope, are you [expletive] me?! And nobody just gives you money, they’re not like, ‘Here’s three million, you look good, your hair is nice.’ No. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’m giving you this money so you can pimp my products when it comes time.’”
She added that Mr. Sanders is “kind of running on war.”
Ms. Barr, who ran for president in 2012, first as a Green Party candidate and then as the Peace and Freedom Party nominee, said Hillary Clinton does the “opposite of what she says.”
“Where are the women’s rights?” Ms. Barr asked. “She talks about women’s rights, but I’m not sure that she acts in that interest.”
She said she appreciated Mr. Trump for his overall stance on illegal immigration.
“To me, he’s saying that the order of law matters,” she said. “When a president can just pass laws all on his own, that is a little bit different than what America was supposed to be about. And Trump is saying people will have to be vetted, we’ll have to have legal immigration. It’s all a scam. I mean, illegal immigration. When people come here and they get a lot of benefits that our own veterans don’t get. What’s up with that?”
Asked if she would still consider herself a feminist, Ms. Barr argued in favor of coming up with another word for the women’s movement.
“You wonder if you should even use the F word anymore,” she told THR. “And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should just let it go because a new word is needed and always in a revolution you need to update. You can’t use dusty old terms that have lost their meaning and become co-opted and a canned rhetoric. It’s time for a new word and it’ll come ‘cause it always comes when it’s most needed.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.“The US’s electric bill could be halved through energy-efficiency measures and renewables that would mostly pay for themselves in a year. That’s not a free lunch. It’s a lunch you’re paid to eat.”
“There’s no reason that energy policy need be a multiple-choice test asking: Would you prefer to die from a) climate change, b) oil wars, or c) a nuclear holocaust? I choose d) none of the above.”
“I’m not an environmentalist. I’m a cultural repairman. It’s all about efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, prosperous and life-sustaining.”
– Amory Lovins, quoted in Lucy Siegle, “This Much I Know: Amory Lovins,” The Guardian, March 23, 2008.
Eleven years ago, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute was interviewed by The Guardian on his energy views, first formulated in Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?A Ted Cruz super PAC made a curious donation back in June 2015…
It gave half a million dollars to former tech executive Carly Fiorina's super PAC, Carly for America. The Washington Post first broke the story back in late July.
Super PACs that explicitly support a candidate almost never give in support of other rival candidates. On top of that, at the time, Fiorina was one of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's main Republican opponents in the 2016 presidential race.
That's why the donation was such a mystery — even The Washington Post piece didn't offer an explanation. It was so uncanny that the Federal Election Commission flagged the activity.
But recent events have sparked conspiracy theories that connect the dots between Cruz, Fiorina, and the $500,000 gift…
A Ted Cruz Super PAC Cover Up?
One theory is that the donation may have been hush money — part of a cover up for Cruz's alleged sex scandal.
You see, the controversy behind the donation resurfaced after Cruz's recent affair allegations by the National Enquirer. Fiorina's deputy campaign manager Sarah Isgur Flores is one of the alleged mistresses in the supposed sex scandal.
Some suspect the donation was "hush money" to keep Fiorina quiet about the alleged affair.
The plot gets even dicier since Fiorina endorsed Cruz after suspending her campaign back in February. Watch the video below to see Fiorina and Cruz responding to Cruz's affair allegations on March 23. Notice how neither Cruz nor Fiorina explicitly deny the allegations of adultery, with Cruz instead calling the National Enquirer story "garbage."
Another theory suggests Fiorina's suspended campaign is illegally coordinating with another anti-Trump super PAC, Make America Awesome. Under FEC guidelines, it's illegal for campaigns to coordinate with super PACs in any way.
After Fiorina suspended her campaign, Liz Mayer, a former Fiorina campaign employee, set up "Make America Awesome," which uses the address: PO Box 26141, Alexandria, VA, 22313 – the same address as Fiorina's campaign headquarters. Make America Awesome is the super PAC that spread the promiscuous photo of Melania Trump in GQ Magazine last week. The theory posits that the Fiorina and Cruz camps are collaborating with Make America Awesome to attack Trump…
In an email to CBS in October 2015, Keep the Promise President Kellyanne Conway responded about the donation:
Keep the Promise I made the donation in June to Ms. Fiorina at that time because we thought she had important things to say that weren't being heard, including her poignant and effective criticism of Mrs. Clinton, at the time, the likely Democratic nominee. However, we are all in for Ted Cruz for President, as our current activities demonstrate, and will continue to support him and his message all the way to the White House."
What do you think about the strange donation a Ted Cruz super PAC made to his former rival? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Follow me on Twitter @cgsaucier or like Money Morning on Facebook.
Beyond Obamacare: As controversial as Obamacare has been, it doesn't go nearly far enough for Bernie Sanders. His healthcare plan proposal, "Medicare for All," is essentially the single-payer type of system common in much of Europe and Canada. In short, the government runs the healthcare system and everyone is covered for everything. Sounds great. But you'll be shocked when you see what it's going to cost…By
21st Century Wire says…
This should remind Americans what happens when the federal government tries to control and regulate a market. Dysfunction and distortion occurs.
The failure of this new digital technocratic healthcare web portal actually has nothing to do with the quality of the website, but has everything to do with the quality of the product, and even more so whether or not it actually fills a need.
A bureaucratic damage control PR exercise is already in motion:
“HealthCare.gov received 14.6 million unique visits in the first 11 days, showing the intense demand for quality, affordable health insurance,” Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in an e-mail. “While traffic is down somewhat from its peak on day one, it remains high as Americans continue to seek to learn more about their new coverage options. We will be releasing enrollment figures on a monthly basis similar to how we release data for the [Children’s Health Insurance Program] and Medicare programs.” (see Washington Post article below)
Unlike the Washington Post, Forbes actually reported the truth: Obamacare’s website is crashing because it doesn’t want you to know how costly its plans are.
“A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. |
the carriers take for granted. Congratulations you've wasted $150bn unless others step up and throw in an equal amount to finish the job.
No, the carriers are nervous with what they already see. What the hack with a calculator failed to see is the other 70% of the iceberg when he thought his calculations through.So you run FTTH and neglect everything else that the carriers take for granted. Congratulations you've wasted $150bn unless others step up and throw in an equal amount to finish the job. Were the industry to end up with FTTH landing in their laps, there would by plenty of players willing to step up to that and spend the additional money needed to make money from it. They would even be willing to compete for a piece of that action through some kind of auction. Not all that different than buying up spectrum at auction.
whocares0
Premium Member
join:2003-07-26
.. whocares0 Premium Member I would preferr to have the FIBER for all because
1, While the ck/rebate would be nice it is a 1 time thing,
while fiber would be used all year.
2, even Cnn this morning used an expression about out or national debt,(that was started in the senate)
not saying our nat'l debt was millions of dollars, nor Billions of dollars, but now the snate is saying our national debt is with this proposal,it would skyrocket into the ""TRILLIONS" of dollars.
jazzy1120
heels_fan
1.20.09 The start of Socialism
Premium Member
join:2003-02-07
Columbia, TN heels_fan Premium Member Re: I would preferr
The Outstanding Public Debt as of 04 Feb 2008 at 02:41:02 PM GMT is
$9,243,532,400,444.54
And has continued to go at a rate of $1.5 Billion dollars a day since Sept 29, 2006
»www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ The national debt has been in the trillions of dollars. for instance, going back to 2006, it was 8.3 Trillion dollarsThe Outstanding Public Debt as of 04 Feb 2008 at 02:41:02 PM GMT is$9,243,532,400,444.54And has continued to go at a rate of $1.5 Billion dollars a day since Sept 29, 2006
dez_nutz
join:2007-02-21
Arab, AL dez_nutz Member Re: I would preferr The national debt has been in the trillions since the late 80s. I wasn't sure what point he was trying to make with the comment but after you responded figured I wasn't alone in thinking he meant it was first time it hit trillions.
Lumberjack
Premium Member
join:2003-01-18
Newport News, VA Lumberjack to whocares0
Premium Member to whocares0
Either way it's a complete waste.
1) You'll have to pay tax on your rebate (this has happened before).
2) Fiber to the home would be nice, but I doubt it will be that cheap AND then the people that could buy sneakers at Walmart aren't the same crowd that can pay for high speed internet. So that would be smack to the face.
3) Either way the government is horrible at managing money and the real solution is to fix our horrible tax system.
4) The government never does anything correct with money in the first place, so lets not let them get that much money to give away.
bamboox
join:2000-12-15
Renton, WA bamboox Member Re: I would preferr said by Lumberjack:
1) You'll have to pay tax on your rebate (this has happened before).
1) You'll have to pay tax on your rebate (this has happened before). That's not quite accurate. You generally don't have to pay income taxes on tax rebates since it's not income. A tax rebate simply means that the government is retroactively reducing your tax bill and hence sends you a check back.
whocares0
Premium Member
join:2003-07-26
.. 1 edit whocares0 Premium Member Re: I would preferr ok for you "'OLDER THEN I AM" guys, when was the last time that the US Gov't had a "SURPLUS ($$$) and not a debt,?
I'am guessing 1950's,maybe 1960's???
RadioDoc
join:2000-05-11
La Grange, IL RadioDoc Re: I would preferr If you are talking zero debt at all, that hasn't happened for about 175 years. If you are talking no budget deficit, that was during the Clinton administration. There is nothing wrong with having a bit of public debt...that's what things like US Treasury Bonds and Bills are. It's when they are not backed by anything more than a promise to pay that it becomes a problem.
whocares0
Premium Member
join:2003-07-26
.. whocares0 Premium Member Re: I would preferr said by RadioDoc:
If you are talking zero debt at all, that hasn't happened for about 175 years. If you are talking no budget deficit, that was during the Clinton administration. There is nothing wrong with having a bit of public debt...that's what things like US Treasury Bonds and Bills are. It's when they are not backed by anything more than a promise to pay that it becomes a problem.
If you are talking zero debt at all, that hasn't happened for about 175 years. If you are talking no budget deficit, that was during the Clinton administration. There is nothing wrong with having a bit of public debt...that's what things like US Treasury Bonds and Bills are. It's when they are not backed by anything more than a promise to pay that it becomes a problem. RadioDoc THANK YOU, If you are talking zero debt at all, that hasn't happened for about 175 years.
NO i didn't call you an old man or imply that you were a 175 yrs old,(rofl) I just asked a question. oh ok,If you are talking zero debt at all, that hasn't happened for about 175 years.NO i didn't call you an old man or imply that you were a 175 yrs old,(rofl) I just asked a question.
longstreet
join:2004-11-14
Plano, TX longstreet to whocares0
Member to whocares0
said by whocares0:
ok for you "'OLDER THEN I AM" guys, when was the last time that the US Gov't had a "SURPLUS ($$$) and not a debt,?
I'am guessing 1950's,maybe 1960's???
ok for you "'OLDER THEN I AM" guys, when was the last time that the US Gov't had a "SURPLUS ($$$) and not a debt,?1950's,maybe 1960's??? The end of the previous Clinton administration saw lots of surplus.
dez_nutz
join:2007-02-21
Arab, AL dez_nutz to bamboox
Member to bamboox
For states like Alabama that tax income after federal tax is withheld, there is a chance the rebate will be taxed by the state because it is a tax break. In 2001 I am pretty sure they didn't tax the rebate but who knows about this one (if it ever goes through)
whocares0
Premium Member
join:2003-07-26
.. 1 edit whocares0 Premium Member Re: I would preferr said by dez_nutz:
For states like Alabama that tax income after federal tax is withheld, there is a chance the rebate will be taxed by the state because it is a tax break. In 2001 I am pretty sure they didn't tax the rebate but who knows about this one (if it ever goes through)
For states like Alabama that tax income after federal tax is withheld, there is a chance the rebate will be taxed by the state because it is a tax break. In 2001 I am pretty sure they didn't tax the rebate but who knows about this one (if it ever goes through) dez=nuts I HATE THAT, i know during my working career, when i was temp in Atl,a state tax was taken out out my ck, wait a minute your telling me your going to charge me,just to live in the state while i work here temp? paid in $1,000,(1 ck) was there for less then a months, got back $600.00
HAVE heard some have it worst, (N,Y.C) Fed'l state, city? dang
glad that isn't here,
jazzy1120 I HATE THAT, i know during my working career, when i was temp in Atl,a state tax was taken out out my ck,paid in $1,000,(1 ck) was there for less then a months, got back $600.00HAVE heard some have it worst, (N,Y.C) Fed'l state, city? dangglad that isn't here,jazzy1120
22773138 (banned)
join:2006-08-29
Texas 22773138 (banned) Member Re: I would preferr It could be worse. Some states tax athletics when they play a game in their state. They don't have to even live in the state. Talk about taxation without representation.
Lumberjack
Premium Member
join:2003-01-18
Newport News, VA Lumberjack to bamboox
Premium Member to bamboox
Not sure how long ago this was done before but I remember thinking exactly as you describe then I TurboTax said "did you get that $300 rebate?" and when I answered yes it added it as income...
Perhaps this time it's a real "rebate" and maybe last time it was an "early refund". I'm just saying, don't be too shocked if you end up having to pay tax on whatever they send regardless of what term they use now.
dez_nutz
join:2007-02-21
Arab, AL dez_nutz Member Re: I would preferr It was in 2001 and it should really be looked at like an advance on your refund for the end of the 2001 tax year. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 created a new 10% bracket that lowered income taxes owed to the fed gov for the middle class, and was retroactive to Jan 1 2001 so you already paid it in. It also increased your net pay or take home. All this was done to curb a recession due to the bursting of the tech bubble.
To add more to the deficit and debt thing, this didn't help on top of having to increase military spending due to 9/11. That triggered the huge change in the deficit because Clinton increased taxes and slashed military spending in his term. I am not defending Bush nor blaming Clinton for 9/11. The continued change to the deficit chart posted is also due to the war on the terror on top of the tax cuts. Since opinions and views are different on that there is no need to continue about it.
longstreet
join:2004-11-14
Plano, TX longstreet to whocares0
Member to whocares0
Here's a chart, read it and weap.
longstreet 1 edit longstreet to whocares0
Member to whocares0
Granted those 'tax cuts' are for the top 1% of wealth in the country.
The rest of us get nothing and I make alot of money.
dez_nutz
join:2007-02-21
Arab, AL dez_nutz Member Re: I would preferr said by longstreet:
Granted those 'tax cuts' are for the top 1% of wealth in the country.
The rest of us get nothing and I make alot of money.
Granted those 'tax cuts' are for the top 1% of wealth in the country.The rest of us get nothing and I make alot of money.
Basically between 2000-2003, if you are single and your salary was between 29k and 63k a year, in 2000 you would be paying 28%, in 2001 you would have paid 27.5%, in 2002 you would pay 27%, and in 2003 the final drop to 25%. Which for someone making 349.7 k or more in 2007 there rate dropped from 39.5% to 35%, which seemed like total bs to me. There is also the AMT to figure in but for my point it did affect your net income just not as much as someone making 10x what you did.
Aside from the less tax thing it also upped the child tax credit and dropped the marriage penalty. God knows when your not in the top brackets, married, and have a child every dime helps. I don't see how this would have resulted in you not making anything from it. Even if you didn't get a refund check, they added the 10% bracket for $6000 or less and decreased the income tax percentage. This was a step process from 2001 to 2003 and lowered the % for all brackets.Basically between 2000-2003, if you are single and your salary was between 29k and 63k a year, in 2000 you would be paying 28%, in 2001 you would have paid 27.5%, in 2002 you would pay 27%, and in 2003 the final drop to 25%. Which for someone making 349.7 k or more in 2007 there rate dropped from 39.5% to 35%, which seemed like total bs to me. There is also the AMT to figure in but for my point it did affect your net income just not as much as someone making 10x what you did.Aside from the less tax thing it also upped the child tax credit and dropped the marriage penalty. God knows when your not in the top brackets, married, and have a child every dime helps.
longstreet
join:2004-11-14
Plano, TX longstreet to whocares0
Member to whocares0
I'm not referring to previous years as you are.
Like I said, the cut was for the top 1% in the year 2007.
Since this year deals with the money I get back, I would have liked to see my % drop for my bracket, but only the ultra-rich got that.
dez_nutz
join:2007-02-21
Arab, AL dez_nutz Member Re: I would preferr said by longstreet:
I'm not referring to previous years as you are.
Like I said, the cut was for the top 1% in the year 2007.
Since this year deals with the money I get back, I would have liked to see my % drop for my bracket, but only the ultra-rich got that.
I'm not referring to previous years as you are.Like I said, the cut was for the top 1% in the year 2007.Since this year deals with the money I get back, I would have liked to see my % drop for my bracket, but only the ultra-rich got that.
Right now it's all scheduled to go back pre-2001 levels in 2010 if that makes you feel any better. The stimulus plan from what I can see is going to go down in rebate check value for people who make over 175k, so the 1% wont get a rebate check. I take it your one of the millions of people stuck in the 15% bracket, that the last change was in 1986 when 28% bracket was broken into the 15 and 28%... Similar to the 2001 15 to 15 and 10%. I figured with your statement "I make a lot of money" you would have fallen into the 28% bracket. There are lot more than 1% of the US population above the 15% bracket though. The previous years tax cuts ended in 2003 and hasn't changed. All that has changed is the ceiling on the different brackets which are adjusted for inflation. Basically the changes in 2001 are affecting the returns from 2001-2010 unless they make the tax cut permanent.Right now it's all scheduled to go back pre-2001 levels in 2010 if that makes you feel any better. The stimulus plan from what I can see is going to go down in rebate check value for people who make over 175k, so the 1% wont get a rebate check.
Hornman1
@covad.net Hornman1 to whocares0
Anon to whocares0
said by whocares0:
to have the FIBER for all because
1, While the ck/rebate would be nice it is a 1 time thing,
while fiber would be used all year.
2, even Cnn this morning used an expression about out or national debt,(that was started in the senate)
not saying our nat'l debt was millions of dollars, nor Billions of dollars, but now the snate is saying our national debt is with this proposal,it would skyrocket into the ""TRILLIONS" of dollars.
jazzy1120
to have thebecause1, While the ck/rebate would be nice it is a 1 time thing,while fiber would be used all year.2, even Cnn this morning used an expression about out or national debt,(that was started in the senate)not saying our nat'l debt was millions of dollars, nor Billions of dollars, but now the snate is saying our national debt isjazzy1120
They have done nothing. BILLIONS of dollars. So we should give them more of our money?
This is the stupidest thing I have heard of in recent memory. I know who ever brought this up surely didn't realize that the companies in question have done nothing except sue other smaller companies and municipalities who decided to do it on their own. What did they sue these people for? Restraint of trade! Of course.
THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN PAID FOR THIS WORK! And they continue to get more money from us. OK, now they are throwing us a bone or two to keep us quiet. After almost TEN YEARS! But they will not give us real speed until they are in control of fees and access and content. This is not conspiracy theory, it is fact and in the public record.
Please check out this web site instead of whining, speculating and talking about "Free Market Theory," which is totally bogus. I'm not a Socialist or a Communist, but I'm not a Fascist either. Unbridled Capitalism is Enron and Hedge Funds and Real Estate loans that don't make sense but pay big commissions and cause bankruptcy. Let the buyer beware? Hey all you retards who talk about the Free Market. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AND THERE NEVER WILL BE. or should i say, God help us if there was.
Capitalism is not a social institution. It is a business model that needs restraints to protect the society from Fascism. It will not solve or deal with social problems, especially on a large scale. It is Jr. High School thinking. Oh boy, you mean I can do anything I want? Like Libertarianism, it is a giant cop out of social responsibility.
The reason I bring it up is that this is a perfect example of what the businesses who are getting these tax breaks say: the money will trickle down to the public and do the social good of providing the internet to everyone. But is that what happened? NO. And now they are lining up for another round from some very willing people on this forum. This is how Fascism takes hold, a little at a time.
Just like in Iraq, where our Free Market mercenary companies, who had no bid contacts are making Billions of Dollars off the lives of our troops. War profiteering. Where does that fit into the Free Market concept? How does Capitalism solve that social issue?
National Debt? Who cares as long as the right bottom lines are good each quarter. Hey, the people who did this will be retired to their speaking engagements and golf when the real $hit hits the fan. Wow, give our measly rebates back to the government. What a concept. The fact is, the big telephone and cable companies started to get paid for this work almost ten years ago in the form of huge tax breaks and subsidies. In exchange for those BILLIONS of dollars over the years, they were supposed to get to work and give everyone access to the super highway, which is 100/100.They have done nothing. BILLIONS of dollars. So we should give them more of our money?This is the stupidest thing I have heard of in recent memory. I know who ever brought this up surely didn't realize that the companies in question have done nothing except sue other smaller companies and municipalities who decided to do it on their own. What did they sue these people for? Restraint of trade! Of course.THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN PAID FOR THIS WORK! And they continue to get more money from us. OK, now they are throwing us a bone or two to keep us quiet. After almost TEN YEARS! But they will not give us real speed until they are in control of fees and access and content. This is not conspiracy theory, it is fact and in the public record.Please check out this web site instead of whining, speculating and talking about "Free Market Theory," which is totally bogus. I'm not a Socialist or a Communist, but I'm not a Fascist either. Unbridled Capitalism is Enron and Hedge Funds and Real Estate loans that don't make sense but pay big commissions and cause bankruptcy. Let the buyer beware? Hey all you retards who talk about the Free Market. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AND THERE NEVER WILL BE. or should i say, God help us if there was.Capitalism is not a social institution. It is a business model that needs restraints to protect the society from Fascism. It will not solve or deal with social problems, especially on a large scale. It is Jr. High School thinking. Oh boy, you mean I can do anything I want? Like Libertarianism, it is a giant cop out of social responsibility.The reason I bring it up is that this is a perfect example of what the businesses who are getting these tax breaks say: the money will trickle down to the public and do the social good of providing the internet to everyone. But is that what happened? NO. And now they are lining up for another round from some very willing people on this forum. This is how Fascism takes hold, a little at a time.Just like in Iraq, where our Free Market mercenary companies, who had no bid contacts are making Billions of Dollars off the lives of our troops. War profiteering. Where does that fit into the Free Market concept? How does Capitalism solve that social issue?National Debt? Who cares as long as the right bottom lines are good each quarter. Hey, the people who did this will be retired to their speaking engagements and golf when the real $hit hits the fan.
Hornman1 Hornman1 Anon Re: I would preferr
»www.savetheinternet.com/=faq I forgot the web site. Check this out and see what is really going on.
questionable1
join:2005-10-18
Phoenix, AZ questionable1 Member First post? I don't know about that guy but I can really use the money. My fiances' medicine costs over 4k a month... insurance pays everything but 500... That would be 1 month i could breath easy.
Honestly I'm all for higher speeds and getting stuff to everyone, but I'm not going to say no to something like this
pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium Member
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD pnh102 Premium Member Rebate Checks + Permanent Tax Cuts People always make better use of money than government.
Of course, the rebate checks are just a feel-good measure that won't really do squat for the economy. I know our checks will simply go towards existing debt. If you want real stimulus, lower all business taxes to 0, cut out most BS government regulations and make the other tax cuts permanent.
MarkyD
Premium Member
join:2002-08-20
Oklahoma City, OK MarkyD Premium Member FTTP/FTTH does not mean higher speeds. Take AT&T for example. The max I can get over my FTTP is 10/1.5 for nearly $60 a month. FTTH does not necessarily mean ground breaking throughput.
ztmike
Mark for moderation
Premium Member
join:2001-08-02
Michigan City, IN ztmike Premium Member W. Bush>moron. Welcome to the world of W. Bush. The WORST president in U.S history.
Freezone
join:2000-09-29
Southfield, MI Freezone Member Most people are not going to blow it?
At least with the food stamp idea the money would have been spent right away. Since I always owe the IRS I will not see a check at all anyway Or are they are going to pay down their personal debt. Those checks will do little to help the economy if it goes towards paying down credit debt.At least with the food stamp idea the money would have been spent right away. Since I always owe the IRS I will not see a check at all anyway
woody7
Premium Member
join:2000-10-13
Torrance, CA 113.9 12.4
·Charter
·Time Warner Cable
woody7 Premium Member pffftttt......... So we give even more money to the telcos and cablecos, and it still won't happen. Between the tax breaks and bogus fees for so many years, this really should be a non issue.Who got us into this mess, and why are we bailing them out? I'm not for recession, but why are we bailing them out without some kind of stipulation at least? Some of these lending issues border on the criminal. What is next, bailing them out for "student" loans? End of rant
atuarre
Here come the drums
Premium Member
join:2004-02-14
EC/SETX SWLA atuarre Premium Member WRONG Most YOUNG Americans will blow that money. The older ones may save it, or use it to pay down some debt, but young Americans are probably going to blow it on something stupid.
gatorkram
Need for Speed
Premium Member
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC 1 recommendation gatorkram Premium Member I have a dream... Wouldn't this be great?
FTTH for everyone....
The current providers could save a lot of money not having to upgrade all their last mile equipment and networks, and focus solely on providing access over the new network...
Oh man... Wouldn't it just be crazy, if you could pick from 100s of different providers... Real competition...
Of course, lots of you will say, oohhh nooosss we don't want the government having control over our internets..... ahhhh the sky is falling, the world is coming to an end...
Don't kid yourself, they already have as much or as little control and access to the pipes as they want...
BUILD THE NETWORK! Who cares how much it cost? I for one don't.
For once in a long time the government could do something again for the people...
sharkpedal
join:2005-05-04
PA sharkpedal Member WIIFM
I still think the rebate checks are a joke and Bush did this in 2000 and it was stupid. To quote Lewis Black the only way to stimulate the economy with the checks is if we all go out and spend it at the same time.
"I just got a $300 check from the US Govt...I knew this wasnt gonna work because nobody, NOBODY got a $300 check and looked at it and went 'Son of Bitch...free at last!'...G'd dammit, $25 for the house payment, $4 for the car payment, 8 cents for gas....I'm home free!!!" - Lewis Black Whats in it for me seems to be the appropriate question here. I already am wired for Fiber and use it. Let me figure out how to buy my own "Sneakers at Walmart" (and by the way, how the f do they know I shop thereI still think the rebate checks are a joke and Bush did this in 2000 and it was stupid. To quote Lewis Black the only way to stimulate the economy with the checks is if we all go out and spend it at the same time."I just got a $300 check from the US Govt...I knew this wasnt gonna work because nobody, NOBODY got a $300 check and looked at it and went 'Son of Bitch...free at last!'...G'd dammit, $25 for the house payment, $4 for the car payment, 8 cents for gas....I'm home free!!!" - Lewis Black
dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ dvd536 Premium Member Re: WIIFM said by sharkpedal:
I still think the rebate checks are a joke and Bush did this in 2000 and it was stupid. I still think the rebate checks are a joke and Bush did this in 2000 and it was stupid. That was just a tax advance[this one probably will be too]
Hmmmmm
@ameritech.net Hmmmmm to sharkpedal
Anon to sharkpedal
said by sharkpedal:
I still think the rebate checks are a joke and Bush did this in 2000 and it was stupid.
I still think the rebate checks are a joke and Bush did this in 2000 and it was stupid. really stupid part of what happened the last time the Feds handed out "free" money.
I clearly recall them sending a letter to everyone in advance telling them that they were going to be getting check for $300. And how wonderful getting that Whopping Great Check was going to be.
You know, rather than simply mailing them the check and letting them figure it out. God only knows how many millions were wasted in mailing out all those stupid "heads up!" letters.
Personally, I thought that was the government's way of letting me know, oh-so-subtlely, that putting them in charge of any amount of money is a HUGE mistake. Because they have zero incentive to control their costs.
I mean, any private company with shareholders to answer to would have had their entire BOD burned at the stake is they pissed away money needlessly mailing out millions of letters like that. You forgot thestupid part of what happened the last time the Feds handed out "free" money.I clearly recall them sending a letter to everyone in advancethem that they were going to be getting check for $300. And howgetting that Whopping Great Check was going to be.You know, rather than simplyand lettingfigure it out. God only knows how many millions were wasted in mailing out all those stupid "heads up!" letters.Personally, I thought that was the government's way of letting me know, oh-so-subtlely, that putting them in charge ofamount of money is a HUGE mistake. Because they have zero incentive to control their costs.I mean, anycompany with shareholders to answer to would have had their entire BOD burned at the stake is they pissed away money needlessly mailing out millions of letters like that.
FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ FFH5 Premium Member Sorry - just give me the money I can spend it better than giving it to some government bureaucracy to dole out for infrastructure improvements. Especially after that bureaucracy sucks out the usual 30% in overhead to pay for their worthless drone jobs.
Hornman1
@covad.net Hornman1 Anon Re: Sorry - just give me the money said by FFH5:
I can spend it better than giving it to some government bureaucracy to dole out for infrastructure improvements. Especially after that bureaucracy sucks out the usual 30% in overhead to pay for their worthless drone jobs.
I can spend it better than giving it to some government bureaucracy to dole out for infrastructure improvements. Especially after that bureaucracy sucks out the usual 30% in overhead to pay for their worthless drone jobs.
So are these the people you would get to build up the infrastructure? They have done nothing and they have sued private companies and municipalities for trying to do it on their own. I guess that is what you call overhead?
The big companies want to control access and content and they will not give us more than a taste until they either have that Control or are defeated by our friends in and out Congress who are fighting for us. Control also means a toll both on the on ramp for the super highway.
Do you suppose they are going to give us speeds that might potentially put some of their great networks out of business? Are they going to give us the capability of having our own HDTV stations? Not hardly.
What you are hearing these days about success of our internet is mostly lies. Lies brought to you by the same people who brought you Iraq, the "Foreign Power" of Al Qaeda, and have relieved us of our need for habeas corpus and personal privacy. All through fear and intimidation.
Check out #6 and the whole sight here:
»www.savetheinternet.com/=faq I have news for you. The cable and telephone companies have already taken the money from you and they won't give it back. They were given huge tax breaks back in the nineties to do the job. If they had started then it would be done by now. That is why Japan has it. They actually did their job.So are these the people you would get to build up the infrastructure? They have done nothing and they have sued private companies and municipalities for trying to do it on their own. I guess that is what you call overhead?The big companies want to control access and content and they will not give us more than a taste until they either have that Control or are defeated by our friends in and out Congress who are fighting for us. Control also means a toll both on the on ramp for the super highway.Do you suppose they are going to give us speeds that might potentially put some of their great networks out of business? Are they going to give us the capability of having our own HDTV stations? Not hardly.What you are hearing these days about success of our internet is mostly lies. Lies brought to you by the same people who brought you Iraq, the "Foreign Power" of Al Qaeda, and have relieved us of our need for habeas corpus and personal privacy. All through fear and intimidation.Check out #6 and the whole sight here:
Dogfather
Premium Member
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA 1 recommendation Dogfather Premium Member Rebate checks It's not the job of Joe Taxpayer to wire rural America. These rebates are to stimulate the economy, not go straight into the pockets of telcos and cable operators.
Telcos already get billions for rural deployment from the USF, that's enough. If rural communities need more free-bes let them pass a local bond measure and borrow the money themselves like California has to do to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure.
ztmike
Mark for moderation
Premium Member
join:2001-08-02
Michigan City, IN 2 edits ztmike Premium Member The future. Isn't that what this is all about?
Imagine how many jobs this would create for the U.S and not some 7-10 dollar job either.
So in doing this (investing in FTTH upgrades) would not only create jobs it would also help the economy, and maybe even get people to work from home, thus taking traffic off our congested roadways and less pollution and less oil being spent.
And not to mention the future of what FTTH could do for everybody.
But yet we have a president who decides to just send out checks that will give someone the opportunity to spend on something maybe once or twice, for the most part.
Thus not helping the economy where it REALLY needs it.
Not to mention the cost of the Iraqi war which sits at a staggering 491 1/2 billion dollars:
»www.nationalpriorities.o ··· war_home
BUT: Its already to late, congress has decided already. So go ahead and wait for your check to come this July only to be able to spend it at 1 or 2 places, just don't blow it all in one place, as they say.
I'm sorry but only dumbasses would be against the money being used for people to blow to go towards a future investment..Imagine how many jobs this would create for the U.S and not some 7-10 dollar job either.So in doing this (investing in FTTH upgrades) would not only create jobs it would also help the economy, and maybe even get people to work from home, thus taking traffic off our congested roadways and less pollution and less oil being spent.And not to mention the future of what FTTH could do for everybody.But yet we have a president who decides to just send out checks that will give someone the opportunity to spend on something maybe once or twice, for the most part.Thus not helping the economy where it REALLY needs it.Not to mention the cost of the Iraqi war which sits at a staggering 491 1/2 billion dollars:BUT: Its already to late, congress has decided already. So go ahead and wait for your check to come this July only to be able to spend it at 1 or 2 places, just don't blow it all in one place, as they say.
qworster
join:2001-11-25
Bryn Mawr, PA qworster Member you mean You mean go to Walmart and buy sneakers made in China!
cornelius785
join:2006-10-26
Worcester, MA cornelius785 Member i vote for ftth i'd rather see a mass fiber deployment than rebate checks. to me atleast, rebate checks are a quick temporary fix that may or may not pay off in the long run. many people have said/believe that FTTH is the future. why not take a large step to that goal? i doubt $150B would cover 100M households. i'm sure it would make a serious dent, but assuming $1500 per household is probably not that accurate given the towns that verizon has wired themselves (not to large, not that rural, above ground utilities, not many MDUs).
i'd sort of |
and Hamilton coming together and Verstappen agrees.
"Yes, absolutely", he said. "Because it was like a Sunday drive up front. I also had a lot of margin."
Fuel updates 'crucial' to success
For this season Red Bull switched from Total to ExxonMobil for its fuel and lubricants and Verstappen thinks the new supplier of the Milton Keynes outfit played a "crucial" role in the progress the team booked this season.
"We definitely saw the gains we made this year. They were a lot bigger than what we had the last three years. I'm very happy with that", Verstappen said.
ExxonMobil introduced fuel upgrades at the British and Singapore Grand Prix. On how these updates helped him in the car, Verstappen said: "More performance. Faster on the straights. And better life as well on the parts inside the engine.
"That's also very important, of course. And for next year, when we only have three engines, this will be very crucial."
"It's all about little details", Verstappen continued. "You do feel that everything is running smoother. But you can really see it on the data. I think that's the important thing."
Engine change a challenge for ExxonMobil
Red Bull Racing confirmed its switch to Mobil 1 race lubricants and Exxon Synergy race fuels in December of last year. For the US-based company this marked the end of a 21 year stint with McLaren in Formula 1.
Red Bull's chief engineer Paul Monaghan recently said that ExxonMobil's fuel and lubricants made the team advance roughly one grid slot in comparison since November 2016.
But the switch from Red Bull to McLaren - and going from a Honda to a Renault power unit - was far from easy, David Tsurusaki, global motorsports technology manager at ExxonMobil, explained to Motorsport.com.
"We actually had kind of a tough start", Tsurusaki said at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. "Well, maybe not a tough start but if we had more time we obviously could have done more.
"But with the short notice and short time to get ready we did a pretty good job getting our fuel and lubricants together by the early part of the season.
"And the fuel team and our Mobil 1 lubricants team are pretty good in understanding what's required for Formula 1. All we needed to do is kind of tweak our products to fit the engine and the design of the car."
"Changing engines obviously is a challenge", Tsurusaki continued. "But I think having a good starting point already with where we were in Formula 1, gave us a good step to make the final tweaks that were needed for this specific engine. So to get ready for Renault took a couple of steps for us. But after that we were right there.
"We did two upgrades on the fuel during the season. The second one started in Singapore and we were able to get a little bit more improvement. And we're already - fortunately already - working on the 2018 fuel."
Asked how big of a step ExxonMobil can make for next year, Tsurusaki answered: "Well, our target minimums are 0.5 percent so that's where we're shooting for. But each time we do a development step it gets harder and harder to do. But we're shooting for another 0.5 percent."The original Star Wars trilogy is known for its iconic imagery, much of which began of course as hand-drawn storyboards. Lucasfilm executive editor J.W. Rinzler has now curated collections of original boards from A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi for a new book called Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy, a follow-up to a collection of the prequel trilogy storyboards. Some of the artists represented include Joe Johnston (who also contributed the foreword), Ralph McQuarrie, Alex Tavoularis, Ivor Beddoes and Roy Canon. We talked to Rinzler about how the book came together.
fxg: Where were all the storyboards located?
Rinzler: Ninety-eight per cent of the boards are in the Lucasfilm archives. But doing the research, one collector contacted me - he had some and then Joe Johnston had a few. Alex Tavoularis had half a dozen or so. Paul Huston, who’s now a senior matte artist at ILM, happened to mention it to (ILM concept artist) John Bell who also still works at ILM, and he came up with these joke panels that we sprinkled in the front of the book and the back.
Above: watch the trailer for the book.
fxg: Can you talk about the process of putting them together - were they in order?
Rinzler: The difficult part is that they would start storyboarding say the attack on the Death Star and then they would storyboard it again, and they’d take some from the previous version and add others and re-order it and change things around and do it again and again. So people would end up with a photocopy that made sense of the 250 boards for the sequence. The photocopy is in order but to find the original that corresponds to that order would just take forever. So we’d end up having to mix and match from different versions of the sequences. And we were also trying to do the ‘best of’, so the part that was hard was figuring out which ones can we show? We really couldn’t show all of them because there’s thousands!
fxg: So how do you decide what made it into the book?
Rinzler: Well, you go through them - there’s just piles and piles and piles of them in the archives, so you select the ones that look the most interesting and the ones that are in a complete sequence. Or interesting shots that were omitted. Like in Jedi we found one shot of Luke’s severed hand on the sail barge crawling towards his light saber. And that never got in there - it was just that one storyboard.
So they scan them all - they have many more than you can use. I organise them digitally and put them into folders according to scene. And then sometimes you have to impose an order. Then you whittle it down, give it all to a designer and once the designer lays it out, the book is too long, and you go back and forth on honing it down to what you hope is the best book it can be.
Paul Huston, who has been here since 1975, is literally just downstairs at ILM still - so he went through a lot of the earliest storyboards and helped me ID a lot of them.
fxg: Having now seen storyboards made for the prequel trilogy and those from the original trilogy, would you say the style of storyboarding had changed much?
Rinzler: In some ways they’ve stayed completely the same - just define the story shot by shot - like sequential storytelling in a comic book. But when animatics came along there was then a question of whether you do storyboards at all. But storyboards are of course still done.
fxg: What were some of the surprises you found in the archives?
Rinzler: What was exciting was that Ralph McQuarrie had done a lot more storyboards than I thought. There were a few matte paintings for Empire that I mistakenly assumed were Joe’s and I showed them to Joe and he said, ‘You know what they’re not mine and I think they’re probably done by Ralph’. Which made sense because Ralph did a lot of matte paintings for Empire. So we found eight or nine of those that are in the book.
We were able to show some matte paintings by a woman who has never been credited before - Ronnie Sheperd. And there were also some for Jedi which we couldn’t find out who did but we found out through a tip that this guy named Brook Temple who was only there for six weeks, that these were his. So there’s been some fun detective work.
fxg: Any other unexpected finds?
Rinzler: There were some really funny storyboards Joe Johnston did of the attack by the X-wings on the Death Star where, you see, nobody knew Star Wars was going to be a big hit then. There’s this kind of irreverence to it where you have the ship exploding and R2 unit is cross-eyed as it’s blown to pieces and the helmet is flying out of the ship, and some of it is done in a Moebius style with sections of the ship disintegrating.
Paul Huston did one where you’re looking out of the cockpit but on the dashboard there’s a rotary phone dial. And there’s one I found that we included that Joe can’t remember why he did it - it’s a big picture of Darth Vader and he’s got ‘Snoopy’ written on his collar and it’s signed Charles Schulz. And Darth Vader is wearing some sort of WWI medal on his chest. I said to Joe, ‘What was going on there?’ And he said, ‘I just don’t know!’
Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy, published by Abrams, is available on Amazon from May 13th. All images copyright 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd. And TM. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.Canadians for a less Trumpy tomorrow. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images and Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
THIS EMAIL WAS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED, AS I AM CURRENTLY OUT OF THE OFFICE AND OVERWHELMED BY REQUESTS FOR HELP ACQUIRING A CANADIAN “PINK CARD,” WHICH IS WHAT I ASSUME AMERICANS THINK WE CALL OUR GREEN CARD.
Dear desperately sycophantic American liberal friend/relative/friend of friend/relative of relative,
In light of recent indices that your next elected leader may in fact be a man who makes George W. Bush look like a governmental visionary, I have recently been deluged with requests to move to/seek temporary asylum in/camp briefly at my unfinished Canadian basement.
Please know, my new, terrified horde of American best- friends-I-haven’t-met-yet, that I am processing your applications as quickly as I possibly can. Right now, my two grown children are in my unfinished basement, sorting through the mounting stack of letters, emails, Facebook friend requests, half-used Starbucks cards, and cash inducements you have been sending me in your efforts to reserve your small slice of my Glittering Northern Paradise (unfinished basement).
(As an aside: Please keep the used Starbucks cards coming. Contrary to popular belief, us Canucks really do prefer Starbucks to Tim Hortons, and $5 U.S. is worth about $350 Canadian.)
To make matters more severe, the re-emergence of your fake Canadian icon and poet laureate of cray-cray has contributed to a significant uptick in the application letters and overt bribes I am currently fielding.
That said, I send this mass out-of-office reply to advise you that while I am absolutely and sympathetically considering your family’s plight, your application for permanent residence in my unfinished Canadian basement catches me, apologetically, not in a position to proffer final lease agreements at this time. As I type, my aging parents are drafting final agreements in my unfinished basement while I sip on your generously supplied Starbucks grande chai lattes. But before I formally process your various requests for rental space, I would like to please stipulate the following terms and conditions in advance. Thank you so much for bearing with us, American soon-to-be friends! We promise a delightful if frigid future and a bare minimum of reminding you that we whupped you in the war of 1812! Parce que pour faire serait présomptueux et complètement anti-Canadien.
1. Showers: We have two. Should you be the lucky beneficiary of a coveted square metre on my basement floor (see No. 2, “metric system,” below), we will need to work out a shared system. I would propose that the Bernie people get Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Hillary people get Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. My family and I will take Sundays. The O’Malley guy can use the kitchen faucet.
2. Metric system: We use it. You should learn it. When we are forced to build (and pay for!) the “Trump Wall Norte” along our southern border (perhaps because of the excessive migration that your many letters hint at?), we might need your cheap physical labor! To us, in a most loving and respectful way, the USA has always been Canada’s Mexico. So, the ability to compute concrete amounts in cubic metres could soon come in very handy, and it will also wow your Imperial measure friends.
3. Heat: As you are probably aware, we use a lot of this, especially in our unfinished basement, which is where we used to store the caribou meat, and especially during our winters, which typically last from early August to late July. We are, being generous-of-heart Canadians, prepared to provide you with heat as part of our rental agreement. In exchange for said heat, we would ask only for occasional entertainment, perhaps the staging of an annual pageant re-enacting the GOP primary debates of 2016, or perhaps you can describe for us in song what firing an assault weapon for no reason feels like.
4. Your possessions: Assuming I am able to offer you a space in my basement, you will, of course, have to put most of your personal effects into storage, at least until the eventual ouster of President Trump or the War of 2017 (in which President Trump invades Trinidad so he can write a best-selling book about how much money he made building a golf course there, thereby accidentally triggering a worldwide nuclear disaster, about which he can then write another best-selling book). Whatever personal effects you can’t fit into your square metre (see above) of basement space, or in storage in the city of your original domicile, can be held in our conveniently spacious Yukon Territory, where, I am told, affordable storage space remains plentiful, no doubt due in part to the proximity to Alaska (which post-2017 becomes known as Palinistan).
5. Justin Trudeau: No. You can’t have him.
6. Justin Trudeau (Part Deux): No. We won’t trade him for Ted Cruz back.
7. Hockey: We watch hockey. Only hockey. Throughout our winter (as mentioned above, from early August to late July). So, unless you bring your own flat-screen TV (see “possessions,” above) you will be soon watching hockey too. Congratulations! It’s way better than American football. And there’s fighting, which—from our viewing of your reality television programs—we understand you to enjoy very much. As a side note, your American Netflix will not work here in Canada due to a myriad of complex broadcast rules and rights issues. However, we can promise you that Canadian Netflix’s unlimited supply of Irish Rovers concerts will amuse and delight!
8. Food storage: You are no doubt wondering how we plan to share one midsize kitchen refrigerator among 400 people. I propose that American renters take the top shelf, my family takes the middle shelf, and we reserve the bottom shelf for poutine, Molsons, and maple syrup. Any sightings of Bud or Bud Light in or near the refrigerator will result in your immediate registry in the national database currently being set up in Ottawa to track the whereabouts of dangerous non-Canadians.
9. Your career: I am told they are taking volunteers to erect the big concrete wall (see “metric system,” above). Also if you play hockey, you can DM me and I can advance your application to the local scout who covers the area stretching from our house to our neighborhood rink across the street.
10. Civil rights and civil liberties: It’s true: The growing and possession of marijuana is legal in Canada, as is the right to safe abortions and physician-assisted suicide. I would ask, however, that you not avail yourself of these specific rights from my actual basement. Re: the marijuana, DM me?
11. Justin Trudeau (Part Trois): No, you can’t have Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau either. Justin Bieber, however, is all yours.
So welcome, provisionally to my Canadian basement. Our money is many colors. And when you get here, everyone will welcome you with open arms, of course; we’re Canadian. And though I know you’ve inquired as to our basement availability before (remember when the cray-cray poet laureate had a chance to become vice president?), I won’t hold it against you that it took you so long to follow through. Don’t overindulge in our poutine, and remember, in Canada not shooting strangers over parking spots isn’t just good hygiene—IT’S THE LAW!
Sincerely,
Alex Lithwick
Ottawa, CanadaIf there’s logic behind the way Australian energy markets work, at first glance it’s hard to fathom. Increases in power bills have previously been justified by our increasing demand. But as energy demand in Australia drops prices continue to rise. This raises numerous questions. Is the type of demand changing? Is there the right type of investment in the network? Are the right energy market mechanisms in place?
In 2012-13, residential electricity prices increased by 14%, continuing a trend of double-digit increases going back to around 2007. This is a clearly a problem for homes and businesses and, therefore, for our political leaders.
The largest component of the price increase has come from costs imposed by the network distribution businesses, and yet these are regulated monopolies. The power to change rests with the regulators and, therefore, with governments. Yet, these monopolies, facing very little price or volume risk, make outsized profits. Why hasn’t the government done more to prevent this?
Grattan Institute issued a report in December, 2012: Putting the customer back in front: how to make electricity prices cheaper. This report drew four conclusions:
The allowed profits exceed reasonable levels, given the low level of risk these network distribution businesses face.
Costs are being incurred to achieve unjustified levels of reliability - our electricity system doesn’t need to be as reliable as these business are telling us.
The process of five-yearly reviews does not reflect the changing dynamics of the industry.
Government-owned businesses are on average significantly less cost-efficient than their privately-owned counterparts.
The report made four recommendations that have the potential to deliver savings to consumers of around $2.2 billion per year, a saving to the average domestic customer of $100 per year. These are:
Align allowed equity and debt returns with the risks faced by the businesses.
Give regulators, rather than state governments, the power to set reliability standards.
Where governments own the businesses, they should address poor governance or privatise.
Capital forecasts should be revised in line with changing demand forecasts.
In December, the Council of Australian Governments and the Standing Council on Energy and Resources (SCER) developed and moved to implement an electricity market reform package. This package is intended to strengthen regulation, empower consumers, enhance competition and innovation and balance the network investment interests of owners and consumers.
The Implementation Plan extends over 2013 and 2014 and puts considerable emphasis on strengthening the power and resources of the regulator (the Australian Energy Regulator, or AER).
It seems that expectations now rest heavily on the way the regulator responds to the various changes in its direction, powers and resources.
In March, 2013, the Australian Energy Market Commission - the rule maker - published a report on future electricity price trends. It estimated that nationally, the aggregated distribution network price will increase by 6% annually, from 2013 to 2015. This compares with an 11% increase between 2012 and 2013. These increases are estimated to represent 81% of the increase in residential retail prices.
The key questions now are will these reforms and price reductions be delivered and are they enough?
There has been criticism that the regulator has been too timid in its prior regulatory decisions and has tended to err on the side of investors. For example, in assessing the appropriate risk premium that businesses could earn, the regulator leaned towards encouraging investment rather than containing costs. The end result has been excessive returns for investors.
It will be important to assess the results of changes by looking at delivered outcomes, and not the actions and processes that are set up. The critical outcome will be the reported profits of the businesses - they should align with the risks faced. Savings of around $400 million per per year could be expected in coming years.
The communiqué from the last meeting of the Standing Council on Energy and Resources contains very little language to suggest it plans to be accountable to consumers for delivering them a better system. The current level of business ownership by state and territory governments and the challenges of delivering outcomes through federal processes would seem to work against what is and should be achievable.
Given the delivered outcomes over the last few years in terms of price increases for consumers and profits for shareholders, we should probably be seeking a much better result than the 6% price rise the Australian Energy Market Commission is estimating.
Although regulation is needed to ensure that companies have incentives to invest, recent decisions have disadvantaged the public. Governments need to take a more pro-active role in ensuring that changes are made and the benefits are delivered. It is time to restore the balance, and we should not be patient.
These issues will be discussed at a public seminar in Sydney on April 22 at the University of New South Wales. The discussion will be led by Andrew Reeves, Chair of the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), who will outline what regulatory agencies are doing to address the problem. He will be joined by a panel of experts chaired by Professor Mary O'Kane – Chief Scientist and Engineer, New South Wales.Calcified kidney stones are rarely found in excavations of ancient skeletons, as they are small and easily missed, but when multiple large masses were discovered near the lower back of a woman buried in a 19th century Peoria cemetery, researchers sought to fully analyze them.
The Peoria City Cemetery in Illinois was in use between about 1839 and 1886. When archaeologists excavated it in 2009, they found 86 people of both sexes, all ages, and different socioeconomic statuses. One particular skeleton, female and in her 20s at death, had calcified masses next to her lower thoracic and upper lumbar vertebrae that were strongly suggestive of kidney stones.
In a new article in the International Journal of Paleopathology, anthropologist Thomas Jaskowiec and colleagues note the need to investigate kidney disease in the past by "determining the chemical composition of the staghorn masses using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and by comparing the results to clinical data as a means of evaluating their etiology."
Specifically, the most common types of kidney stones are calcium, magnesium ammonium phosphate (also called struvite), and uric acid. Calcium stones are the most common, and also most frequently found in men. Uric acid stones are generally associated with gout caused by diets high in animal protein and genetic factors. And struvite stones tend to be associated with urinary tract infections and are much more common in women; they are also extremely difficult or impossible to pass. Interestingly, struvite stones sometimes include bacteria inside the stone itself.
Jaskowiec and colleagues examined the calcifications from the pelvis and found an FTIR signature compatible with a struvite stone. Additionally, they discovered urea in their analysis, which "strongly suggests that the stones are uroliths," they conclude, "and are not from or associated with the soil matrix surrounding the skeleton."
Further, the researchers note that "determining that the stones from BF 219 are staghorn struvite uroliths offers insight into the health of this individual." Specifically, this type of stone is "predominantly associated with prolonged urinary tract infection in women." With limited means of medical intervention in the 19th century, it's highly likely this woman perished because of sepsis or renal failure due to recurrent UTIs.
Since few comparative examples of kidney stones exist from archaeological sites, Jaskowiec and colleagues hope that their study will inspire other anthropologists to further investigate renal issues in the past. Studying these ancient and historic stones may even shed light on contemporary medical problems, such as why the prevalence of kidney stones in the US more than doubled between the mid and late 20th century.Java was designed in the 1990s as an object-oriented programming language, when object-oriented programming was the principal paradigm for software development. Long before there was object-oriented programming, there were functional programming languages such as Lisp and Scheme, but their benefits were not much appreciated outside academic circles. Recently, functional programming has risen in importance because it is well suited for concurrent and event-driven (or "reactive") programming. That doesn't mean that object orientation is bad. Instead, the winning strategy is to blend object-oriented and functional programming. This makes sense even if you are not interested in concurrency. For example, collection libraries can be given powerful APIs if the language has a convenient syntax for functional expressions.
The principal enhancement in Java 8 is the addition of functional programming constructs to its object-oriented roots. In this article, I demonstrate the basic syntax and examine how to use it several important contexts. The key points are:
A lambda expression is a block of code with parameters.
Use a lambda expression whenever you want a block of code executed at a later point in time.
Lambda expressions can be converted to functional interfaces.
Lambda expressions can access effectively final variables from the enclosing scope.
Method and constructor references refer to methods or constructors without invoking them.
You can now add default and static methods to interfaces that provide concrete implementations.
You must resolve any conflicts between default methods from multiple interfaces.
Why Lambdas?
A lambda expression is a block of code that you can pass around so it can be executed later, just once or multiple times. Before getting into the syntax (or even the curious name), let's step back and see where you have used similar code blocks in Java all along.
When you want to do work in a separate thread, you put the work into the run method of a Runnable, like this:
class Worker implements Runnable { public void run() { for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) doWork(); }... }
Then, when you want to execute this code, you construct an instance of the Worker class. You can then submit the instance to a thread pool, or keep it simple and start a new thread:
Worker w = new Worker(); new Thread(w).start();
The key point is that the run method contains code that you want to execute in a separate thread.
Consider sorting with a custom comparator. If you want to sort strings by length instead of the default dictionary order, you can pass a Comparator object to the sort method:
class LengthComparator implements Comparator<String> { public int compare(String first, String second) { return Integer.compare(first.length(), second.length()); } } Arrays.sort(strings, new LengthComparator());
The sort method keeps calling the compare method, rearranging the elements if they are out of order, until the array is sorted. You give the sort method a snippet of code needed to compare elements, and that code is integrated into the rest of the sorting logic, which you'd probably not care to reimplement. Note that the call Integer.compare(x, y) returns zero if x and y are equal, a negative number if x < y, and a positive number if x > y. This static method was added to Java 7. You shouldn't compute x - y to compare x and y because that computation can overflow for large operands of opposite sign.
As another example for deferred execution, consider a button callback. You put the callback action into a method of a class implementing the listener interface, construct an instance, and register the instance with the button. That happens so often that many programmers use the "anonymous instance of anonymous class" syntax:
button.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() { public void handle(ActionEvent event) { System.out.println("Thanks for clicking!"); } });
What matters is the code inside the handle method. That code is executed whenever the button is clicked.
Since Java 8 positions JavaFX as the successor to the Swing GUI toolkit, I use JavaFX in these examples. (See Eric Bruno's posts for more information on JavaFX. Ed.) The details don't matter. In every user interface toolkit, be it Swing, JavaFX, or Android, you give a button some code that you want to run when the button is clicked.
In all three examples, you saw the same approach. A block of code was passed to someone a thread pool, a sort method, or a button. The code was called at some later time.
Up to now, giving someone a block of code hasn't been easy in Java. You couldn't just pass code blocks around. Java is an object-oriented language, so you had to construct an object belonging to a class that has a method with the desired code.
In other languages, it is possible to work with blocks of code directly. The Java designers have resisted adding this feature for a long time. After all, a great strength of Java is its simplicity and consistency. A language can become an unmaintainable mess if it includes every feature that yields marginally more-concise code. However, in those other languages, it isn't just easier to spawn a thread or to register a button-click handler; large swaths of their APIs are simpler, more consistent, and more powerful. In Java, one could have written similar APIs that take objects of classes implementing a particular function, but such APIs would be unpleasant to use.
For some time now, the question was not whether to augment Java for functional programming, but how to do it. It took several years of experimentation before a design emerged that is a good fit for Java. In the next section, you will see how you can work with blocks of code in Java 8.
The Syntax of Lambda Expressions
Consider the previous sorting example again. We pass code that checks whether one string is shorter than another. We compute
Integer.compare(first.length(), second.length())
What are first and second? They are both strings! Java is a strongly typed language, and we must specify that as well:
(String first, String second) -> Integer.compare(first.length(), second.length())
You have just seen your first lambda expression! Such an expression is simply a block of code, together with the specification of any variables that must be passed to the code.
Why the name? Many years ago, before there were any computers, the logician Alonzo Church wanted to formalize what it means for a mathematical function to be effectively computable. (Curiously, there are functions that are known to exist, but nobody knows how to compute their values.) He used the Greek letter lambda (λ) to mark parameters. Had he known about the Java API, he would have written:
λfirst.λsecond.Integer.compare(first.length(), second.length())
Why the letter λ? Did Church run out of other letters of the alphabet? Actually, the venerable Principia Mathematica used the ˆ accent to denote free variables, which inspired Church to use an uppercase lambda (Λ) for parameters. But in the end, he switched to the lowercase version. Ever since, an expression with parameter variables has been called a "lambda expression."Born and raised in Chicago, Ms. Beals has a deep store of associations and memories on which to draw for her role. A few years ago, she said, she and her mother went to visit the South Side apartment where Ms. Beals spent her early childhood, only to discover that “where we once lived was now a crack den, with vials crunching under my feet, so that I was having to step over bodies in what used to be our kitchen.”
As Mr. Ryan sees it, casting Ms. Beals was important for the image he wants to convey with the series. “Physically and intellectually she is the embodiment of Chicago and how far you can rise,” he said. “She is someone who grew up in a mixed-race family in a town that was very racially divided, and still is, and through smarts and hard work went to Francis Parker,” an elite, progressive private school, “and then on to Yale. She’s got a lot of the traits I ascribe to the city.”
Television series have been set, explicitly or not, in Chicago before, dating back to “Hill Street Blues” and “Crime Story” in the 1980s and including CBS’s current hit “The Good Wife.” But only rarely are they shot on location; “The Good Wife” is filmed mostly in New York, with recognizable New York landmarks sometimes in the background.
“The Chicago Code,” initially titled “Ride-Along,” is unusual in that it was written specifically to capitalize on locations Mr. Ryan considers underutilized. These include the downtown lakefront, Grant Park, housing projects, the El tracks and gritty neighborhoods like Austin, on the city’s far West Side, all of which figure, often with dramatic camera work, in the 13 episodes that Fox has ordered.
“We’re all kind of semi-sick of seeing New York and Los Angeles, and I’m one of the culprits who is responsible,” Mr. Ryan said. “I think the bar is higher these days in terms of audience expectations of authenticity. People want to feel like what they are watching is really happening, and you can’t do L.A. well enough to be Chicago. I felt it was a crucial thing, and I think it has an effect on performances. When your cast breathes the air and interacts with the city on a daily basis, they become Chicagoans.”
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That same philosophy seems to motivate other recent television series that use the city where they are set almost as additional characters. “Burn Notice,” now in its fourth season, heavily features the landscape and landmarks of Miami, and “Fairly Legal,” which had its premiere last month, does something similar with San Francisco; both series are on the USA network.
It also helps that cities like Chicago and Detroit, where the new ABC series “Detroit 1-8-7” is shot, offer tax credits more generous than those of traditional production centers, thus reducing costs. “Producers’ eyes are wide open looking for the best deals around, and Illinois tax credits, while not the largest, are certainly competitive when you add in Chicago’s production values, infrastructure and talent,” said Rich Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office.
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Mr. Lindo, who was born in London and also lived in Toronto before coming to the United States, said he found Mr. Ryan’s insistence on shooting in Chicago to be valuable. To get a better sense of his character, he spent time with several aldermen, even accompanying them as they met with constituents and attended City Council meetings, where he studied their demeanor and body language.
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“I’ve played cops, and I’ve played robbers,” said Mr. Lindo, whose film credits include “Get Shorty” and David Mamet’s “Heist.” “But I don’t believe I’ve played politicians, and so the idea of playing one in Chicago, a city with its own unique and complicated dynamic, genuinely fascinated and challenged me.
“Some of the benefits of being in the city were amorphous, just walking the streets, talking to people, feeling the Hawk” — a slang term for what makes Chicago the windy city — “blowing in from the lake and hoping you’d absorb certain things by osmosis. Those are all things we wouldn’t have gotten if we were shooting on a soundstage or in Toronto.”
Mr. Ryan said he placed an equally high value on verisimilitude of the story, so when it came time to have the initial version of his script vetted, he turned to another Chicago connection: John Folino, a 35-year-old homicide detective still on active duty. The two men first met after Mr. Folino won a police charity auction whose prize was a walk-on role on “The Shield,” and Mr. Folino was pleased to offer his advice on what he called “little Chicago-specific things” that would give the series more authenticity.
For example, “we don’t call the guys we apprehend perps,” said Mr. Folino, who eventually signed on as the show’s technical adviser. “That’s a New York thing. Here they are either offenders or just bad guys.” He also arranged for cast members to ride along with Chicago police officers to get a sense of the challenges they face; Mr. Clarke compared the experience to “a journalist embedding himself with troops in Afghanistan.”
But in the end, Mr. Folino conceded, “The Chicago Code” is meant to be “entertainment, not a Chicago police reality show.” So it takes some liberties with the facts, beginning with its central premise, that one of the primary responsibilities of the Chicago Police Department — which has a long history of scandals of its own, including internal burglary, robbery and kidnapping rings and repeated instances of brutality against political protesters and racial minorities — is to crack down on corruption and malfeasance.
“Most of the investigations here have been by the U.S. attorney’s office and the F.B.I., or inspector generals for different units of government,” said Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman who now heads the political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “None of those have police assigned to them.”
Still, during the shooting of the first season, reality kept intruding and blurring what was intended to be fiction. Mr. Clarke, born in Australia, recalled one dark, snowy morning when he was looking for that day’s location in Austin and came across police officers who had been recruited as extras in a couple of episodes.
“We rolled up, I saw the tape on the street and thought we were setting up a scene,” he said. “But it was one of the cops cordoning off a real crime scene, a homicide.
“I don’t think anything can compare to that kind of action which you can’t get anywhere else but shooting on the streets of the city where your story is set.”This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Xenon is a medical gas capable of establishing neuroprotection, inducing anesthesia as well as serving in modern laser technology and nuclear medicine as a contrast agent. In spite of its high cost, its lack of side effects, safe cardiovascular and organoprotective profile and effective neuroprotective role after hypoxic-ischemic injury (HI) favor its applications in clinics. Xenon performs its anesthetic and neuroprotective functions through binding to glycine site of glutamatergic N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor |
interior of South Africa. “When my parents came down for my graduation, it was the first time in their lives that they saw the sea,” he says. He is now a research assistant in the UCT's Climate Systems Analysis Group, and he hopes to embark on a master's degree in oceanography next year.
Eventually, Koago hopes to bring his passion for science home — and perhaps to inspire other young people to follow in his footsteps. “I want to bridge the gap between people living in townships and the science,” he says. “The biggest problem out there is that people are ill-informed.”Steve Pifer is a good friend and a treasured colleague. And Strobe Talbott is my boss—so it goes without saying that I greatly admire his work. But as important as friendship and job security are to me, I still can only conclude that their proposal to arm Ukrainians will lead only to further violence and instability, and possibly a dangerous confrontation with Russia.
Steve and Strobe’s article (and the supporting report with several other prominent authors) rings with fury at Russian actions. And Russian actions are indeed outrageous. But moral indignation, no matter how righteous and satisfying, is not a strategy. A strategy needs to describe just how provision of American arms would make the situation better.
Rather than such a description, the article suggests that a just cause and the Ukrainian need and desire for weapons are enough to justify their provision. But it is hardly surprising that the Ukrainians want American arms in their war against Russia and Russian-backed separatists—they face the possibility of territorial dismemberment and would run any risk to preserve their state intact.
The Ukrainian calculus is one of immediate desperation. But the United States needs to think for the longer-term. And if U.S.-provided weapons fail to induce a Russian retreat in Ukraine and instead cause an escalation of the war, the net result will not be peace and compromise. There has recently been much escalation in Ukraine, but it could go much further. As horrible as it is, the Ukrainian civil war still looks rather tame by the standards of Bosnia, Chechnya or Syria. Further escalation will mean much more violence, suffering and death in Ukraine.
The report authors counter that if the United States does not stand up to Russia in Ukraine, the Putin regime will be emboldened to make similar mischief all over Europe and beyond. This is the familiar credibility argument that gave us the war in Vietnam, among other misadventures. In fact, U.S. credibility is not enhanced by making bluffs that we will not ultimately fulfill or by embarking on wasting wars that we do not need.
In any case, Ukraine is a unique situation, both for the Russians and for the United States. It is culturally and geographically supremely important to the Russians and yet for the United States it has no intrinsic geopolitical importance and is not a treaty ally. The Russians would be foolish to judge U.S. credibility in responding to provocations in areas of greater importance to the United States on the basis of its non-military response to Ukraine. And there is no evidence that they are that foolish.
In the meantime, to meet a Russian counter-escalation in Ukraine, the United States would have to either escalate the conflict beyond where it was originally willing to go or be forced into a humiliating retreat. Neither is a very attractive or credibility-enhancing option. U.S. policy should work very hard to avoid confronting that unpalatable choice. Otherwise, this dynamic might well draw the United States deeper into what could become a direct confrontation with a seriously pissed-off and still heavily nuclear-armed Russia.
To Escalate or Not to Escalate
So the key question becomes: what will the Russians do in response to America’s provision of arms to its enemy? For Steve and Strobe, the goal is to give “the Ukrainian military sufficient means to make further aggression so costly that Putin and the Russian army are deterred from escalating the fight.” This seems a tall order. Ukraine is clearly much more important to Russia than it is to United States. Ukraine is also, unfortunately, located much closer to Russia than to the United States. Russia would appear to have many escalation options and a clear incentive to exercise them.
Indeed, the Russian military is far stronger than the Ukrainian military, as we learned in late August when a one-off injection of regular units led to hundreds of dead Ukrainians at Ilovaisk. No program of U.S. assistance will change that balance. As the authors of the report admit, “[e]ven with enormous support from the West, the Ukrainian army will not be able to defeat a determined attack by the Russian military.”
The Mothers of All Strategies
So how do the report authors think that the United States and their doughty Ukrainian allies can force the Russians to back down in Ukraine? The authors assert that the secret to getting Russia to back down is to increase Russian “costs”, by which they mean Ukraine could take advantage of Russia’s sensitivity to casualties. U.S. arms will mean that Russian soldiers will die in much greater numbers in the effort to satisfy Russian objectives in Ukraine. The Russian government has been hiding the deaths of their soldiers in Ukraine from their own population for fear of the public reaction, and that will become much more difficult if casualties increase dramatically. The government supposedly fears the ire of Russian mothers whose devotion to the well-being of their soldier-sons can move political mountains even in authoritarian Russia. Rather than face a growing number of aroused and organized Russian mothers, the thinking goes, President Vladimir Putin will avoid escalation in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, one of the few more powerful forces than mothers in Russian politics is anti-Americanism. The Russian regime has defined the struggle in Ukraine as part of an existential battle against American imperialism, in which the United States eventually seeks to impose its will on Russia itself. American provision of arms would lend credence to that view and increase the Russian government’s freedom of action at home.
One would like to believe in the power of Russian mothers to conquer their government. But in the end, it is hard to find comfort in a plan whose success relies on Vladimir Putin’s sensitivity to death and to the suffering of the Russian people.Rio 2016: Australia's Olympic athletes given anti-viral condoms to combat Zika virus
Updated
Australian athletes at the Rio Olympics will be supplied with anti-viral condoms to help combat the spread of the Zika virus.
The condoms, that contain an anti-viral lubricant, will be distributed to athletes as a measure to help prevent them contracting the Zika virus which has spread throughout South America.
Sexual transmission of the virus has contributed to it spreading beyond the continent.
Germany last week reported its first case of the virus as a result of a woman becoming infected following a sexual encounter in Puerto Rico.
Australian team chef de mission Kitty Chiller said steps are being taken to minimise the health risk of athletes travelling to Brazil.
Those steps include distribution of the anti-viral condoms that have been developed by one of the team's commercial partners Starpharma.
"The health and wellbeing of the team comes first and our association with Starpharma will provide extra protection for everyone on the team," she said
"It is a common sense approach to a very serious problem we are facing in Rio."
Topics: olympics-summer, sport, travel-health-and-safety, health, brazil, australia
First postedGHAZIABAD: Former army chief General VK Singh created history by winning the Ghaziabad seat with a margin of 5.67 lakh votes while other candidates including actor-turned politician Raj Babbar and journalist-turned politician Shazia Ilmi contesting against him lost their security deposits.Singh's margin of victory is the second highest in the country after Narendra Modi's margin in Vadodra.Singh received a total of 7,58,482 votes while Babbar only managed to get 1,91,222 votes. BSP candidate Mukul Upadhyay received 1,73,085 votes, SP candidate Sudhan Rawat received 1,06,984 votes while AAP's Shazia Ilmi landed up in fifth place with 89,147.Of the 15 candidates, 14, including Raj Babbar, lost their security deposits, as they failed to garner one-sixth of the total votes polled. AAP's star candidate Shazia secured fifth position in the election.After the historic win, Singh told TOI that he is thankful to the Ghaziabad residents, who extended their support and unconditional love. He also thanked the media. "Ghaziabad has become a family to me. Now I know thousands of people in Ghaziabad personally," Singh said.Gen VK Singh said that he is not eyeing on any berth in Modi's cabinet. "Whatever job my party will assign me, I will ensure my best to deliver quality results. It is the job of a prime minister to decide the portfolios of his government. My party assigned me the job to serve Ghaziabad," he added.Film Courage, the website and radio show dedicated to empowering independent filmmakers, interviewed at length screenwriting teacher John Truby on the art and craft of screenwriting, and released a total of 14 videos between August and now.
I have yet to watching the whole series but decided to share the latest video I’ve watched because I thought it had some interesting beats.
I don’t always agree on some very specific points* with Truby but overall he has a different discourse than the regular ‘Hollywood Screenwriting Teacher‘ that I found healthier and closer to reality.
If you’re driven by making money and becoming famous, you might be disappointed by Truby’s philosophy. The man believes in two things: work and time. Sounds very logical when it comes to writing a story but somehow, in most books and screenwriting classes they assure you they have found the miraculous recipe to write a pitch/outline/draft that will seduce all species and will propel you to stardom in 10 minutes/days/weeks.
Truby, however, emphasizes the importance of mastering the craft but also the difficulties attached to a job that means you will spend most of your time alone in front of a blank page listening to your darkest thoughts. (Ok, Truby didn’t really say anything about dark thoughts, but he should have, because it’s true.)
You know the drill, I embedded the video with chapters breakdown. There are only three of them for this 10 minute video, and they are all worth watching, but I always say that so do as you please, just try to enjoy:
Chapter 1: Why Most People Fail at Screenwriting
Chapter 2: What Being a Writer Means
Chapter 3: The Key Quality for a Writer
*(i.e. in this video: ‘Screenwriting is the most difficult craft in the WORLD.’ Just that, really… Not a huge fan of the hyperbola tendency, unless Truby has practiced every single craft in the world. Then, of course, my apologies for doubting his words. Otherwise, saying it’s a difficult craft is enough I believe.)
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They Talk About Mentorless About Mentorless Mentorless is a blog for indie filmmakers, storytellers & storymakers with a diy spirit to find tips and nurture their craft and creativity. Read moreFrozen sing along 1 June to 13 September 2015
Here is the offical annoucement for this years Frozen summer sing along!
Frozen returns, creating the coolest summer from 1 June to 13 September 2015
It’s official: From 1 June to 13 September 2015, Disneyland Paris will celebrate Frozen, the 5th highest-grossing film ever, premiered on 19 November 2013 and the biggest animated film of all time globally, taking over $1.2 billion at the box office.
Winner of two Academy Awards®, five Annie Awards, two Critics’ Choice Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA, the movie tells the story of a fearless princess Anna who sets off on an epic journey with her companions Olaf and Sven to find her estranged sister Elsa, whose icy powers have inadvertently trapped the kingdom of Arendelle in eternal winter.
The famous Disney sisters will be back with their adorable snowman Olaf to cool things down this summer.
After catching a sneak peak of them in the famous Disneyland Park Parade and meeting them to pose for pictures last Christmas, Disneyland Paris guests will be able to sing with them this summer! Anna and Elsa will appear on stage in winter scenery inspired by the film. They will invite guests to join them in singing the best songs from the most successful Disney story of all time.
Olaf, their funny snowman who dreams of summer, will also be there on giant screens to help everyone to follow the lyrics.
Princess Anna and Queen Elsa will also star in “Disney Magic on Parade!” in which they appear every day on their frosted float
So excited we get to see this!!Fianna Fail has promised an extra 18 million euro to revitalise the Irish language and Gaeltacht areas.
Fianna Fail has promised an extra 18 million euro to revitalise the Irish language and Gaeltacht areas.
The windfall would help increase the use of An Ghaeilge and create new jobs in Irish-speaking regions.
Island life in places like Inis Mor near Galway would be protected through guaranteed transport and improved broadband connections for business owners.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said: "The Irish language is a key element of our identity but this Government has shown nothing but disdain towards it.
"Fianna Fail wants to undo the damage that has been inflicted on the language by Fine Gael by appointing a senior minister for Irish and for the Gaeltacht who is a fluent speaker."
Last year a report said Irish is unlikely to be the majority spoken language in Gaeltacht areas in 10 years.
At one stage daily speakers had fallen below a two-thirds tipping point in many parts.
Mr Martin said he was positive about the language's future as more young people were speaking it. He admitted that social networks like Facebook posed a challenge but said the language was in a better position than when he was growing up.
Eamon O Cuiv, spokesman on agriculture and food, said: "To further strengthen our commitment to the language, we will invest an additional 18 million euros in a specific Irish language and Gaeltacht plan, which will aim to increase the use of Irish as well as creating new jobs in Gaeltacht areas."
Fianna Fail outlined plans for state-contracted ferry services to all the islands and well as the air service to the Aran Islands.
A senior minister would concentrate on broader community support and development in rural Ireland while a "guarantee" in government would set targets for the availability of schools, health and social services.
A state enterprise bank would lend directly to small and medium-sized businesses.
High-speed broadband would be connected to the 750,000 premises where it is not commercially viable while the mobile phone signal would be boosted across the country.
Mr O Cuiv said public services in rural areas should be of equivalent quality to urban areas. He added that social enterprises and co-operatives should be promoted as a proven self-help tool.
"Rural schools, health services, Garda stations, public transport routes, post offices and other facilities are facing direct cuts and closures because they have been labelled inefficient.
"Fianna Fail in government will ensure that as many services as possible, such as community welfare officers and health services, are based in rural communities."
An "infrastructural guarantee" would roll out fibre broadband with download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second to every home and business. There would be universal access to 4G mobile phone services.
Changes to the tax system and social protection would support the self-employed, like farmers, by allowing them to make PRSI contributions for jobseekers' benefits, illness benefit and invalidity pensions.
Press AssociationDays after the release of Fantastic Four in theaters, Max Landis – who wrote director Josh Trank’s debut film, Chronicle – released four pages from a Fantastic Four script he wrote years prior. The script detailed the would-be film’s opening scene, which involved the FBI trying to prevent Reed Richards and company from attempted to launch into space using a craft built from a 1968 Corvair Ultra Van.
That script was never produced, but Landis shared a bit more detail about his vision for the Fantastic Four with The Daily Beast.
“My Fantastic Four was an on-the-run movie. It begins with their origin, which is an illegal Branson-esque space launch where they want to go see this thing. They become the biggest celebrities in the world, except then they wreck and they get these horrible powers. The government is hunting them and they split up, and you really get into the dynamics of these people as they’re learning to control their powers. So the origin takes place in the first two minutes and then you learn it’s a character movie. Avengers had just come out, and I wanted to present Fox’s superhero team so that any one of them could beat all of the Avengers, and any one of them could be the villain of an Avengers movie. Reed Richards is indestructible. Sue Storm can control light. Johnny Storm can burn hotter than the sun. The Thing is impossibly strong, and you can’t hurt him no matter what you do. I thought, what a cool idea, that these four friends have accidentally become gods. I had Doctor Doom as a good guy, one of Reed’s college friends, and my whole movie he’s trying to find and help them but it wasn’t clear if he was good or bad—until the finale of the movie when you realize his connection to Reed, and that they’re best friends. The audience who knows Doctor Doom thinks he’s going to turn bad, but the movie ends with him saving them. And in the sequel he’s probably good, too. You know, you Sam Raimi-Spider-Man it—at the end of the sequel he gets all ***ed up and shows up in the Doctor Doom armor. But then in the third movie he’s like, ‘What have you done to me?’”
Landis’ script sounds like the antithesis of what was ultimately directed by Trank, whom Landis describes as a high school “frenemy.” Would it have fared any better at the box office? We’ll never know, but you can tell us what you think in the comments below.We’ve been lied to for years now about the severity of California’s water shortage. The media and state officials have been ringing the alarm, warning that the state was in the grips of the quite possibly the “worst California drought in modern history,” when in fact the state nearly pulled in its average rainfall in 2009. The fearmongering is about to go into overdrive, as powerful interests start whipping up fears of drought to push through a $11 billion bond measure on the upcoming November elections, setting up the Golden State for a corporate water grab.
One of the big boosters promoting the drought scare is Gov. Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency in early 2009, and promised to reduce water deliveries across the state by a whopping 80 percent.
Such a huge cutback is alarming for a state in which most of the population lives hundreds of miles away from water sources and is dependent on a gargantuan aqueduct system for basic survival. So journalists seized on this juicy disaster-in-progress story, hitting their readers with heavy-handed images of drought and suffering that seemed more in line with something filed on a UN humanitarian mission in Somalia than news from the heart of California.
Has the drought really been that bad? According to the November/December 2009 issue of Mother Jones, yes, it has: “[F]armers are selling prized almond trees for firewood, fields are reverting to weed, and farm workers who once fled droughts in Mexico are overwhelming food banks. In short, the valley is becoming what an earlier generation of refugees thought they’d escaped: an ecological catastrophe in the middle of a social and economic one — a 21st century Dust Bowl.” 60 Minutes‘ recent segment on California’s water crisis agreed, proclaiming: “You don’t have to go to Africa or the Middle East to see how much the planet is running dry. Just go to California.”The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, McClatchy’s, the Wall Street Journal — all have sung the same tune.
When left, right, print, broadcast and mainstream media outlets agree, it has to be true, right? Well, not exactly. Here’s what an end-of-the-year update published in November 2009 by the US Bureau of Reclamation had to say about the drought: precipitation in 2009 was about 94 percent of average in Northern California, which is pretty much the only region that matters since it is where three-quarters of the state’s water comes from.
Ninety-four percent of average? That does not sound like severe drought conditions at all. But don’t tell that to California’s Department of Water Resources, which still has a huge DHS-style “Drought Condition Severe” orange alert plastered on its Web site.
The power of simple fact-checking aside, why would California officials exaggerate — if not outright lie — about the drought? Well, the issue here is less about the drought itself and more about what a drought — real or not — can help achieve. If there is one thing 2009 revealed about California’s “action hero” governor, it’s that he is eagerly willing to serve as the front man for the sleaziest, most crooked business cartel in the state: a de facto water oligarchy made up of billionaire corporate farmers who run vast stretches of the state like their own personal fiefdoms, exploiting migrant workers for slave labor and soaking the taxpayers for billions of dollars in subsidies every year. And like all good businessmen, they aren’t letting a good mini-crisis go to waste. Their objective is to whip up fears of a drought-related calamity to push through a “solution” they’ve been having wet dreams about for the past five decades: a multi-billion-dollar aqueduct the width of the Panama Canal that would give them near total control of more than half of California’s water supplies.
That’s what the state’s “historic” $11-billion bond measure that will appear on the November 2010 ballot is all about. A columnist at the Stockton Record said it best: It “really amounts to an old-fashioned California water grab based on the failure to face nature’s limits.”
In the convoluted world of California water politics, nothing is ever what it seems. And this time, it appears that even the most well-meaning of journalists fighting the good fight fell hook, line and sinker for the propaganda spun out by California’s well-greased water oligarchy. But if everyone got something as basic as the premise of California’s supposed water crisis — the drought — wrong, what else did they miss? Turns out, quite a bit. With no real drought in California, a lot of the myths, falsehoods and outright lies meant to stir up the masses might no longer makes sense. On the other hand, just because the state has rain doesn’t mean the state can’t run out water, not with the way corporate farmers are ramping up the pumping of the state’s increasingly-overtapped water supplies. So here are the top five things your billionaire-bullshit meter should be picking up:
Myth: Urban water conservation is key in protecting California’s water resources
Schwarzenegger’s mandate that urban water use be cut by 20 percent has earned the governor a lot of green cred, but few people realize that his plan for water conservation is actually a forced wealth transfer scheme in a environmentalist disguise. Conservation is a good idea, but it won’t do much good for California, no matter how diligent residents are about turning off the tap while brushing or the number of low-flush toilets they install, not unless farmers are forced to conserve water as well.
It is a simple matter of discrimination. Why is the agricultural industry exempted from mandatory conservation when it consumes an unreal 80% of California’s water? There won’t be much conservation going on even if every living soul in California up and moves to another state. Because no matter how much water city dwellers save, it’ll be sucked up by wealthy corporate farmers who are always on the lookout for more taxpayer-subsidized wet wealth. And with water trading for a minimum at ten times what they pay for it on the open market, every gallon a city dweller conserves will will end up as cash in the personal bank account of some wealthy corporate farmers. It’s all part of the master plan because, even as the governor talks up urban conservation, he tries his darnedest to get them more water.
Myth: Irrigation water rationing is causing California’s unemployment to spike to critical levels.
I could quote from a number of news sources — Fox News, CBS, Mother Jones, theNew York Times — to demonstrate the pervasiveness of this bogus notion, but luckily there is no need because most of the stuff is oddly similar to the media spam cranked out by Governor Schwarzenegger’s press secretary. Something like this: “[Drought] conditions are causing a loss of livelihood for many thousands of people, an inability to provide for families, and increased harm to the communities that depend on them... the Central Valley town of Mendota, as one example, already reports an unemployment rate of more than 40 percent and lines of a thousand or more for food distribution.”
Had any journalist bothered to look up its unemployment rate for some other year, they would have seen that water has never been a factor. Over a decade ago, Mendota’s unemployment normally ranged from 28 to 32 percent. In 1998, a wet year, it had an unemployment rate of 38 percent. In 2002, a slightly dry year, unemployment was still the same: 37.7 percent.
The chronic hardship seen in Mendota, and the much of the Central Valley, can not be neatly blamed on the weather. There are other bigger, more ominous forces at play here. Mendota is in a bad place, at once existing on the edge of America’s poorest Congressional District and also in one of its wealthiest, most subsidized farming communities: the Westlands Water District. This is how Lloyd G. Carter, a veteran UPI reporter who has covered California’s farming industry for three decades, describes it: “Rule is by the rich. Indeed, in Westlands, which is a public agency, the growers with the most land have the most votes in electing directors to the district’s board. The late Justice William O. Douglas called this voting control by the big growers a corporate political kingdom undreamed of by those who wrote our Constitution.”
To put it another way: the billionaire farmers who run Westlands like their own fiefdom have always liked to keep their labor costs down, preferring low-paid migrant workers to those who would register with the unemployment office.
Myth: The “drought” is hurting small, family farmers — “the backbone of America” — the most.
Small farmers are hurting, but rarely does it have anything to do with water rationing. You’ll find gobs of farmer pity in just about every story filed on the Central Valley, but most forget to mention that the bulk of the land threatened by water shortages is owned by wealthy corporate farmers clustered in and around Westlands Water District, in the driest, hottest and most isolated corner of the Central Valley. Most of these “farmers” don’t rise with the crow of the rooster, but fly in on private jets from Orange County and Beverly Hills. Most journalists, like the one who wrote a long rambling piece in the David Eggers special Bay Area newspaper production, Panorama, insist on painting scenes of family farm life in sentimental pastel while ignoring the greedy geezers who really run the show, and own everyone and everything in sight.
“W” is for “welfare”: two generations of money-grubbing farmers from the Woolf family
But you get to meet one of the boys from Westlands doing his struggling farmer routine on 60 Minutes, giving viewers a walkthrough of his family-farm-in-crisis, explaining how the drought forced him to fallow some of his fields while, in the background, massive shredding trucks turned $18-million worth his almond trees into a neat pile of wood chips. The 60 Minutes segment, like most other farmer profiles, left out the stuff that would squelch any sympathy for their cause. Like the fact that the Woolf family clan operates the “biggest farming operation in Fresno County” that receives $4.2 million in taxpayer-subsidized water every year, enough to supply a city of 150,000 people. In the past decade, the dozen or so companies partially owned by Stuart Woolf have taken in roughly $8 million in federal crop subsidies. But Stuart Woolf still feels like he isn’t getting enough. In 2008, he threatened a congressional subcommittee that he’d move his family’s farm holdings to Portugal, Spain, Turkey and even China if the feds didn’t give him more taxpayer-subsidized water.
Myth: Water shortages threaten to wipe out California’s agricultural industry, causing a chain reaction that will cripple the state’s economy and raise food prices around the country, maybe even the world.
It’s true, a total meltdown of California’s agricultural industry, the largest in the United States, would be bad news for everyone involved. But the problem with this apocalyptic domino effect, which pops up as a talking point on Schwarzneger’s press releases and is parroted by the likes of Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, is a pesky thing called reality. Most irrigation districts have been getting their water on schedule. And because the drought has only affected atiny sliver — about two percent — of California’s total farmland, most of which happens to be some of the most heavily-subsidized growing operations in the state, any “multiplier effect” is bound to be limited, if noticeable at all.
Take Westlands Water District, where a sizable chunk of the state’s fallowed farmland is concentrated. The district produces about $1 billion in gross income a year, $750 million of which is funded by water subsidies. Add to that hundreds of millions more in direct crop subsidies, and pretty soon the government ends up funding most, if not all of Westlands’ economic output. Even if Westlands farmers weren’t such welfare queens, it would be hard to get worked even if the entire old billionaire club went under. After all, their entire output amounts to one-half of one percent of California’s $1.8 trillion. And we’re not talking about missing out on vital crops here: who’d even notice an uptick in almond prices?
Myth: Big city environmentalists are making the drought more serious than it actually is.
In 2007, a federal judge limited the amount of water that could be pumped out of Northern California because it endangering a small, but important fish called the Delta smelt, which is now protected by the California Endangered Species Act. Ever since, California’s wealthy Central Valley farmers — including Westlands — have staged a public relations war, blaming big city elitists for caring more about the environment than they do about American farmers. “Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America’s premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations,” pronounced a Wall Street Journal editorial in September 2009.
Fox News took the attack to a whole new level, with Sean Hannity proclaiming that President and his Royal Democratic-Socialist Guard were single-handedly killing off hardworking American farmers and demanded that the Obama “turn this water on now.” The funny thing is that Obama had already done that, when the court-ordred pumping restrictions were lifted three months earlier.
The reason these farmers weren’t getting their water had nothing to do with the fish, and all to do with their “junior” water rights and a bailout business mentality. In the past decade, farmers had lobbied for and received 30% more water than they did in the 1990s, knowingly taking a gamble by planting permanent, high-cost crops in an area first to suffer water cutbacks during dry times. But they did it anyway, fully expecting to get the government to keep delivering the water even in a time of drought, which it has. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, even the most junior water rights holders were receiving almost all of their water all throughout 2009.
Where has all that water gone? Well, some of the farmers have been selling it on the open market, frequently flipping their heavily taxpayer-subsidized water back to the government for twice the price. One millionaire farmer-cum-real-estate-developer made roughly $60 million selling his welfare water to a McTractHome paradise in the Mojave Desert, selling water was easier and more lucrative than farming.
Bonus myth: the drought has sparked a grassroots movement of farm owners and farm workers, uniting to pressure the government for more water.
Nothing exposes Arnold Schwarzenegger and his billionaire farmers backers for the sadistic slime balls that they are than the Latino Water Coalition, an astroturf group created by farming interests, paid for by taxpayer money and blessed by the governor himself. The group was designed to give a populist face to a purely corporate cause, paying poor Latino migrant workers to take part in protests staged for the benefit of Fox News’ camera, even sent to go on a 5-day “March for Water” to draw attention to California farmers’ plight and generally exploiting the exploited so that you can help you exploit them even more. But the worst part about it is that well-meaning journalists fell for it.
This article was first published by AlterNet.
Further reading: HOW LIMOUSINE LIBERALS, OLIGARCH FARMERS AND EVEN SEAN HANNITY ARE HIJACKING OUR WATER SUPPLY…
Yasha Levine is a mobile home inhabitin’ editor of The eXiled. He is currently stationed in Victorville, CA. You can reach him at levine [at] exiledonline.com.
Further reading: HOW LIMOUSINE LIBERALS, OLIGARCH FARMERS AND EVEN SEAN HANNITY ARE HIJACKING OUR WATER SUPPLY
Yasha Levine is a mobile home inhabitin’ editor of The eXiled. He is currently stationed in Victorville, CA. You can reach him at levine [at] exiledonline.com.Adam Carolla is a lot of things: the world’s top podcaster, a former “Man Show” co-founder, and the father of 9-year-old twins. One thing he is not is a fan of “Dora the Explorer” — and the “Road Hard” star is supplementing that disdain by putting his money where his mouth is.
On Friday’s “Adam Carolla Show” podcast, the multi-hyphenate pledged $10,000 to any writer of the cartoon who can hack it in the adult sitcom world.
“They’re capable of providing entertainment for … children and retarded adults,” Carolla quipped, explaining that only a 48-year-old with the intellect of a 7-year-old child could possibly dig “Dora.”
Also Read: Adam Carolla, Dennis Miller's 'PO'dcast' Officially Dead (Exclusive)
“Do not ever think for one second — one hot second — that you can provide entertainment for anybody that has two brain cells to rub together,” he ranted. “Don’t think I don’t know how weak and feeble you are, and you couldn’t write a joke that would make it onto a Tim Allen sitcom from the ’80s, you fucking hacks.”
That’s when the cash came out.
“And I’ll put a challenge up to these guys: I’ll put up $10,000,” Carolla continued. “You write me one good [‘Modern Family’] spec script, I’ll give it to [Eric] Stonestreet. If they do two pages of it, I’ll give you $10,000.”
Also Read: FilmBuff CEO Janet Brown on Adam Carolla's 'Road Hard' and the Future of Streaming
The podcast king concluded: “Why would you be at ‘Dora the Explorer’ if you had talent?”
Obviously, on some level, the comedian was joking, because that’s what he does for a living. But Carolla has the coin, and is much a betting man as he is a man of principle. This isn’t the first time the “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman” documentarian has |
Robinson.
b. Joe DiMaggio.
c. Benny Goodman.
d. Satchel Paige.
Correct answer: a.
Former Congressman Wilbur Mills went for a dip in the Tidal Basin with
a. nothing on but his pride.
b. a stripper named Fanne.
c. his dog Spot.
d. a 20-year-old secretary.
Correct answer: b.
Martha Mitchell was
a. a porno star.
b. a famous author.
c. the outspoken wife of an Attorney General.
d. All of the above.
Correct answer: c.
The G-Spot is supposed to be
a. Ground Zero at a nuclear blast.
b. a female erogenous zone.
c. an unexplained astro- nomical discovery.
d. the place where the FBI was first established.
Correct answer: b.
Hugh Hefner is usually photographed in
a. the nude.
b. a hot tub.
c. his current lover's arms.
d. pajamas.
Correct answer: d.
The 1973 album "Dark Side of the Moon" was recorded by
a. Pink Floyd.
b. Deep Purple.
c. Bad News.
d. the Grateful Dead.
Correct answer: a.
When playing "Monopoly" you
a. hope for a straight flush.
b. must own four houses before building a hotel.
c. need a black jack to win.
d. win with a seven and a five.
Correct answer: b.
Which is not in Hawaii?
a. Oahu
b. Kauai
c. Fiji
d. Maui
Correct answer: c.
Which is not a car?
a. Ferrari
b. Porsche
c. Corvair
d. Toshiba
Correct answer: d.
President Eisenhower's nickname was
a. Tink.
b. Blackjack.
c. Ike.
d. Tina.
Correct answer: c.
Bourbon Street is in
a. Whiskeyville, Indiana.
b. Jackass Flats, Idaho.
c. "Monopoly."
d. New Orleans, Louisiana.
Correct answer: d.
Does a pair of queens beat three deuces?
a. Yes, in blackjack.
b. Yes, in poker.
c. No, in canasta.
d. It depends on what the three deuces said.
Correct answer: a.
Calvin Klein is
a. married to Brooke Shields.
b. a movie star.
c. a clothing designer.
d. President of the Coarsegold Chamber of Commerce.
Correct answer: c.
Two bits is
a. all it takes to consume a "Big Mac."
b. computer talk.
c. about a dollar.
d. the former cost for a shave and a haircut.
Correct answer: d.
Charlie McCarthy and
a. John Lennon
b. Louis Pasteur
c. Albert Einstein
d. Edgar Bergen
Correct answer: d.
Who is not a famous musician?
a. Lawrence Welk
b. Tommy Dorsey
c. Les Brown
d. Steve Garvey
Correct answer: d.
Which is non-alcoholic?
a. whiskey
b. Grand Marnier
c. Perrier
d. tequila
Correct answer: c.
Who was not a politician?
a. Richard Nixon
b. Ronald Reagan
c. W. C. Fields
d. George Bush
Correct answer: c.
The last name of Annette (on the original Mickey Mouse Club) was
a. Funnicular.
b. that WAS her last name.
c. Funicello.
d. Avalon.
Correct answer: c.
"Tiptoe Through the Tulips" was recorded by
a. Alice Cooper.
b. Alice B. Toklas.
c. Tiny Tim.
d. Big Tiny Little.
Correct answer: c.
Which one of these was not a war?
a. Crimean
b. Korean
c. Chinese
d. Vietnamese
Correct answer: c.
Who's buried in Grant's tomb?
a. Grant Tinker
b. Land Grant
c. NSF Grant
d. Mrs. Grant
Correct answer: d.
John F. Kennedy drove a
a. PT boat.
b. spike faster than a steam driver.
c. battleship.
d. Ferrari.
Correct answer: a.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
a. pips.
b. pipers.
c. peppers.
d. peekers.
Correct answer: c.
A result of Watergate was
a. the loss of water.
b. Jimmy Carter quit.
c. Richard Nixon quit.
d. Gerald Ford quit.
Correct answer: c.
I find computer games with adult content
a. offensive.
b. acceptable.
c. repulsive.
d. under my bed.
Correct answer: b.
The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are connected by the
a. Panama Canal.
b. Snake River.
c. hips.
d. Isthmus of Panama.
Correct answer: a.
The most likely place to find virgins is
a. The Virgin Islands.
b. Virginia.
c. St. Mary's Girls School.
d. Hollywood.
Correct answer: c.
Who wrote "To be, or not to be?"
a. Bill Shakespeare.
b. Paul McCartney.
c. George Bernard Shaw.
d. Tennessee Williams.
Correct answer: a.
The largest state is
a. California.
b. Alaska.
c. Rhode Island.
d. Texas.
Correct answer: b.
Utah is full of
a. fresh water.
b. Jews.
c. Catholics.
d. None of the above.
Correct answer: d.
The leader of Nazi Germany was
a. Boris Godunov.
b. Mussolini.
c. Oleg Cassinni.
d. Adolph Hitler.
Correct answer: d.
Lee Harvey Oswald killed
a. Harvey Milk.
b. Charles Nelson Reilly.
c. John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
d. William Randolph Hearst.
Correct answer: c.
How many molecules are in a glass of water?
a. one million
b. one trillion
c. one million trillion
d. as many as there are glasses of water in the whole world
Correct answer: d.
If a physician were stranded on a desert island with Bo Derek, he would probably
a. build a boat.
b. take two aspirins.
c. overcharge her.
d. thank God.
All answers are correct.
If Bo Derek were here, I'd ask her to
a. leave.
b. respect my privacy.
c. help me with my homework.
d. stop playing computer games.
Correct answer: d.
Joe DiMaggio played
a. pool.
b. baseball.
c. basketball.
d. trumpet.
Correct answer: b.
The most populous city in the United States is
a. Los Angeles.
b. Mexico City.
c. New York.
d. Chicago.
Correct answer: c.
A nehru jacket is
a. made from tanned nehru hides.
b. out of date.
c. a Middle Eastern prophylactic.
d. around a car's radiator.
Correct answer: b.
Sergeant Pepper was
a. the Beatles' chauffeur.
b. Elvis' manager.
c. the leader of the Lonely Hearts Club Band.
d. hung for treason.
Correct answer: c.
Which is not an American armed force?
a. the Army
b. the Navy
c. the National Guard
d. the National League
Correct answer: d.
The most effective form of birth control is
a. abstinence.
b. the Rhythm Method.
c. the Pill.
d. dating ugly people.
Correct answer: a.
Which is not a city in Mexico?
a. Tijuana
b. Puerto Vallarta
c. San Diego
d. Mexico City
Correct answer: c.
Herb Alpert and the _____ Brass
a. Tijuana
b. Boss
c. Canadian
d. Top
Correct answer: a.
"It's not nice to fool"
a. Mother Hubbard.
b. Mother Nature.
c. the government.
d. Mayor Daly.
Correct answer: b.
"Where's the"
a. catsup?
b. toilet?
c. beef?
d. rest of this game?
Correct answer: c.
Who was not an astronaut?
a. John Milton
b. John Glenn
c. Neil Armstrong
d. Richard Gordon
Correct answer: a.
Who has not been a U. S. Attorney General?
a. John Mitchell
b. Sam Shepard
c. Ramsey Clark
d. Herbert Browner
Correct answer: b.
Which is not a cheese?
a. Jarlsburg
b. Mozzarella
c. Brie
d. Reisling
Correct answer: d.
Captain Kangaroo's sidekick was
a. Mr. Potato Head.
b. Winnie the Pooh.
c. Mr. Rogers.
d. Mr. Greenjeans.
Correct answer: d.
Mohammed Ali is
a. a ballet star.
b. an Arab terrorist.
c. a professional boxer.
d. a singer.
Correct answer: c.
Who is not a mass murderer?
a. Charlie Manson
b. Ted Bundy
c. Jack the Ripper
d. Timothy Leary
Correct answer: d.
There are about _____ calories in a can of beer.
a. 15
b. 150
c. 1500
d. 15000
Correct answer: b.
John Belushi was on
a. "Mr. Rogers."
b. "The PTL club."
c. "My Mother the Car."
d. "Saturday Night Live."
Correct answer: d.
James Earl Jones was the voice of
a. Jason in "Friday the 13th."
b. Freddie in "Nightmare on Elm Street."
c. Darth Vader in "Star Wars."
d. Kriswell in "Plan 9 From Outer Space."
Correct answer: c.
Doonesbury's "Uncle Duke" is based on
a. Jeffrey Hunter.
b. Hunter S. Thompson.
c. Huntz Hall.
d. None of the above.
Correct answer: b.
In Westworld, "where nothing can go wrong," guests were entertained by
a. Stephen Wright.
b. X-rated movies.
c. robots.
d. Rodney Dangerfield.
Correct answer: c.
Mork was from the planet
a. Ork.
b. Vulcan.
c. Krypton.
d. Pluto.
Correct answer: a.
Who was banned from "Saturday Night Live" because he lost a telephone poll?
a. John Belushi
b. Dan Akroyd
c. Chevy Chase
d. Andy Kaufman
Correct answer: d.
The phrase "Cutting the cheese" refers to
a. hors d'oevres preparation.
b. topping another French chef.
c. leaving a warm climate.
d. flatulence.
Correct answer: d.NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries made "unjust" gains by pumping natural gas that flowed from ONGC’s adjoining block but a proper inquiry is needed to ascertain if both companies knew about the connectivity of reservoirs and chose to conceal the information for years, an official panel has ruled.The panel, set up after ONGC alleged that Reliance had illegally taken away the state firm’s gas, said compensation for this "unjust enrichment" of Reliance must go to the government because the national exploration company did not own the resource and, curiously, did little to extract it for a very long time — a lapse that merits proper scrutiny.It said RIL "prima facie" knew about connectivity of the reservoirs of the two companies by 2003 while ONGC appeared to have had some idea about it in 2007 but did not do anything about it for six years."The committee believes that the allegations of prior knowledge on the part of both RIL and ONGC must be enquired into further, with particular emphasis laid upon the failure of both parties to present the information they had to the DGH (Directorate General of Hydrocarbons) at the time they allegedly obtained the information," the report said.The report was presented to Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday. "The government will take appropriate action on this issue. We will look into his recommendations and take a call by the end of September," Pradhan told reporters after receiving the report from AP Shah, a retired judge.The report said it was "particularly disconcerting" that RIL did not inform the regulator about its appraisal report of 2003, which appears to show that reservoirs were connected. It has recommended that the government should introduce proper disclosure norms and penalties for concealing information.It said RIL should have approached the government for joint development of the field once it was known that the reservoirs were connected."Since RIL did not pursue such a step, and it had not been given the migrated gas as a gift or largesse, its actions had no lawful justification and amounted to unjust enrichment," the report said. No comment was available from Reliance at the time of going to press.The report said the government should decide on the compensation it should get for the gas that flowed into RIL’s block, and ONGC had no basis to make any claim."On the question of unjust enrichment, the Committee concludes that the Government of India, and not ONGC, is entitled to claim restitution from RIL for the unjust benefit it received and unfairly retained. ONGC has no locus standi to bring a tortious claim against RIL for trespass/conversion since it does not have any ownership rights or possessory interest in the natural gas," it said."The Committee also notes that the question of quantification of unfair enrichment is to be decided by the Government of India, with the principle that whatever benefit RIL received in terms of the migrated gas is liable to be returned to the Government of India."It also questioned ONGC’s failure to develop its own gas field. "The Committee further believes that the role of ONGC in the Indian oil and natural gas sector must be assessed with great scrutiny. The long periods of alleged inactivity on the part of ONGC in this case particularly must be examined further."The report said there was practically no scope for development or further production by ONGC in the relevant fields. "Due to the fact that only meagre reserves are left in the relevant fields, there is no question of contemplating any kind of joint development, unitisation, or gas balancing," the report said.The oil ministry had appointed the Shah panel last December following a court order that mandated the government to help resolve the corporate dispute within six months of the submission of the report on the issue by DeGolyer and MacNaughton (D&M), a USbased consultant.The consultant, hired by ONGC and Reliance to technically examine the dispute, said in its report last November that gas had indeed migrated from ONGC’s field to Reliance’s during the period of dispute. The panel, whose term was extended twice, had been asked to "quantify the unfair enrichment, if any", to Reliance Industries, suggest measures to prevent unfair enrichment in future and recommend ways to compensate ONGC and the government.The Shah panel also had to consider the acts of omission and commission, if any, on the part of all stakeholders, including RIL, ONGC, DGH and the government."I have submitted a comprehensive report covering all the terms of reference. It also has the future course of action," said Justice (retired) AP Shah, who presented his report to the oil minister. Shah also briefed the minister about the report, following which Pradhan said the panel’s findings confirm that the gas had migrated from ONGC’s field to Reliance’s.Analysts said the dispute may not end with the government’s action on the report as the two parties could take legal action after the government takes a decision.RIL had objected to the government’s move to appoint the Shah panel. The company and partner Niko had questioned the government’s authority to appoint a panel to resolve the dispute and refused to cooperate with the committee, arguing the dispute could be resolved only by arbitration and not government intervention.Super Bowl XXXII – Denver Broncos 31, Green Bay Packers 24
Super Bowl XXXII took place in Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego California, on January 25, 1998. Denver took on the defending champion Green Bay Packers in what would be a classic Super Bowl Battle. The Green Bay Packers were a huge 11.5 point favorite in the game against the Denver Broncos, who made it to the Super Bowl as a wild card team.
Denver had the 17-14 lead at half-time even though Terrell Davis sat out most of the second quarter with a migraine headache. With 1:45 left in the game, Denver and Green Bay was tied at 24-24. Denver had the ball when on second and goal, Terrell Davis scored his third touchdown of the day to give Denver a 31-24 lead.
Terrell Davis rushed for 157 yards and caught 2 passes for 8 yards. Coach for Green Bay, Mike Holmgren, told the defense to let Davis score as that would give Bret Favre and the Green Bay offense more time to drive down the field and tie the game. The reason Holmgren let them score was because it looked like Denver was going to run down the clock and kick a field goal. His decision didn’t work. Brett Favre drove the Packers into Denver territory, but John Mobley (51) knocked down Favre’s fourth-down pass to Mark Chmura with less than 30 seconds left to give the Broncos and veteran quarterback John Elway their first Super Bowl championship, 31-24.
Terell Davis was Super Bowl MVP. It was the first Super Bowl victory by a wild-card team, and only the second over all. The last wild-card winners were the Oakland Raiders in 1981.
Best Sports Gambling Site ReviewsUpdate: HP has officially denied the rumor
A claimed render of HP’s promised smartphone sent anonymously to phoneArena apparently shows it running stock Android.
The render is pretty crude, and the hardware appears rather generic, so there’s no guarantee it’s genuine – but the company did opt for near-stock Android for its Slate tablet. If the leak is real, we’d applaud a decision to go with a pure Android experience but add that HP will need to pull something out of the hat with either specs or apps to meet its promise of “a differentiated experience.”
We suggested earlier that HP’s credentials as the world’s largest PC manufacturer might make a business-orientated phone a smart move now that the market share of the former business smartphone leader, Blackberry, has fallen to less than 5 percent. Something special in the hardware – perhaps a fingerprint sensor for security (assuming Apple doesn’t do it first) – would one possibility.
Enterprise-orientated apps would perhaps be a more likely one, especially given the company’s partnership with Google to offer Google Apps to small businesses. A similar approach with a smartphone might enable the company to meet that new-and-different promise despite a rather ordinary-looking box running stock Android.About
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Pocket Mission Control will allow you to monitor your spacecraft telemetry (d), onboard apps (e), your training achievements (f), ground station status (g), and where your spacecraft is in space (h)
You'll monitor progress throughout with your own Pocket Mission Control app - track the progress of your spacecraft as it is designed, built and travels through space. See data from your spacecraft's instruments as it arrives, relayed from space by a global ground station network direct to your smartphone. Hold your phone up to the sky and use the augmented reality feature to point out exactly where your spacecraft is!
Never before will private individuals have had such a hands on opportunity to take an active part in interplanetary space exploration - this is your chance to be a true space pioneer!
The Team Members of our team co-created the first space mission funded on KickStarter (KickSat - due to be launched by NASA later this year), and have created or co-led influential workshops such as the Interplanetary CubeSat Workshop at MIT, and the Keck Institute for Space Studies Small Satellites: A Revolution in Space Science workshop at Caltech. More than 100 volunteers from twenty countries have inspired, worked on and presented the elements underpinning this project at universities and conferences around the world. We’ve created more than twenty open space projects since 2009 building the elements we need for this mission, with contributions from more than a hundred volunteers in twenty countries (and counting) led by our co-ordinators in Europe (Bristol, UK) and America (Pasadena, USA). In short, we’re serious. Your Mission We’ll tell you how we expect the project to work in a moment, but first a little about your mission, should you choose to accept it… Space is big - really big! Mankind has only sent a few dozen successful robotic exploration missions into the solar system since the start of the space age, yet there are millions of places waiting to be explored including asteroids, moons, planets, ring systems and more. The 88 largest solar system objects (diameter >200 miles). There are more than a million planets, moons and asteroids in the solar system >500m in diameter. Graphic: kokogiak.com Although space agencies do an amazing job launching high end exploration systems to interesting places, there are many more missions proposed than can ever be funded as high end missions are typically one offs that cost many many millions or even billions. We need your help to provide another option - to explore space at scale needs a generation of interested minds with access to affordable exploration tools. By supporting this mission you can help make this happen and be the first of this new generation of space explorers. We want to demonstrate that thousands of technical and non-technical people can design their own spacecraft, send these spacecraft into space, land some on a planet with an atmosphere (Earth this time) and send the rest a significant interplanetary distance to a body without an atmosphere (the Moon), and do useful science while having fun. That’s bold, crazy some people might even say, but thanks to Moore's law and advances in flexible and printable electronics, it’s now possible and we need your help to prove it. If we succeed, one day every child may be able to have their own spacecraft to take part in robotic field trips around the solar system as a normal part of growing up - and you'll have helped make it happen! Your spacecraft The key to our approach are ‘Pocket Spacecraft’. These spacecraft (that can also function as landers and rovers to some degree), are small enough to fit in your pocket, both physically and financially - we’re talking the cost of a nice birthday present here. Your Scout spacecraft Photograph of a Pocket Spacecraft: Thin-Film Scout prototype consisting of a polyimide substrate, bonded solar cells and thinned die, printed passive components, antennas and images. Your Pocket Spacecraft will be a Thin-Film Spacecraft / Lander / Rover ‘Scout’. These will be loaded by the thousand into an Interplanetary CubeSat Mothership which will fly to the body of interest, send out the Scouts to explore it, and relay their discoveries back to Earth and amongst each other. Prototype Thin-Film and CubeSat Pocket Spacecraft hardware in the lab. We try and use consumer equipment whenever we can to make it cheaper for anyone to replicate our work. Your Scout is a polyimide disc (a material used for flexible circuit boards, spacesuits and, of particular relevance for this application, high performance solar sails) held taut by a NiTi memory metal hoop that can also double as an antenna. Pocket Spacecraft are built from thinned system-on-a-chip dies and printed or offcut space rated solar cells to maximise performance at minimal cost. Solar cells, a thinned commercial off the shelf system-on-a-chip die (ground down with diamond sand paper) and support components, sensors and instruments are bonded or printed on the polyimide and protected with a conformal coating resulting in a spacecraft with an average thickness less than one twentieth of a millimetre (two thousandths of an inch), and a mass much less than a gram (a thirtieth of an ounce). 5µm metalised and unmetalised polyimide substrate (Kapton®) with a penny for scale. This thinness and lightness allows us to pack thousands per mothership, act as very small solar sails (when coated with a thin metal layer) to move about space, and potentially survive re-entry from orbit to the surface of bodies with suitable atmospheres. Your Interplanetary CubeSat mothership A CAD drawing of the CubeSat bus we will modify. The solar panels are in the process of unfolding to make room for a solar sail (centre) to deploy. CubeSats revolutionised low cost access to space a decade ago when professors Bob Twiggs at Stanford and Jordi Puig-Suari at CalPoly created a 30x10x10cm,<5kg ‘3U’ spacecraft that could be launched inexpensively. 'CubeSat: An Unlikely Success Story' describing the CubeSat story can be watched here. Since then, 70+ have been launched to low earth orbit by companies, space agencies and universities. Two years ago NASA funded the study of interplanetary CubeSats, last year more than 120 researchers gathered at our first Interplanetary CubeSat Workshop, and this year NASA announced an interplanetary CubeSat pathfinder. Your mothership is a 3U CubeSat designed to inexpensively piggyback on pretty much any American, European, Russian or other rocket that supports CubeSats and is launched into a suitable starting orbit. We have to be flexible enough to hitch a ride along with a high end commercial or scientific spacecraft going in roughly the right direction, then we'll be dropped off and make our own way on to where we want to go. Think of it as interplanetary hitchhiking! An engineering model of a 3U CubeSat, the largest most commonly launched CubeSat format. To allow us to hitch rides on rockets going to as many different orbits as possible (we're compatible with upcoming GTO, GEO, LLO and earth escape launches), about two thirds of the mothership is a modular propulsion system plus control and communications systems. Propulsion systems we can drop in include a solar sail module (based on The Planetary Society/Stellar Exploration LightSail-1), which uses the force of light from the sun, and an electrolysis propulsion system, which breaks down liquid fuel (basically water) into hydrogen and oxygen using solar power and ignites it (like these systems from Cornell and Tethers Unlimited). Which we use depends on the launch we book. If this KickStarter does spectacularly well, we would love to be able to launch CubeSats with each type of propulsion system. Your generous support can make this happen. (a) The 32m2 solar sail module we plan to use during a deployment test from a 3U CubeSat (Image: Stellar Exploration). (b) A bench top prototype electrolysis propulsion system. Radiation hardened/shielded avionics, solar cells and other subsystems to control the propulsion system, protect, release and photograph the Scouts, and to allow us to communicate with Earth and find where we are, complete the mothership. We’ll fly a low energy/weak stability boundary transfer from our drop off point to the moon that doesn’t require much fuel but takes many months, unlike the days of the Apollo missions. This is the fundamental trade off of this mission - we can do interplanetary space exploration at very low cost, but everything takes much longer. Navigation and communication at lunar distances is challenging. We are refurbishing two high performance ground stations for the project, and work with amateur radio enthusiasts, universities and commercial ground station providers and will apply to use systems such as the Deep Space Network and the Very Long Baseline Array. If you are, or would like to be, a radio amateur, we'll show you how to communicate directly with your spacecraft in space when it is nearby using inexpensive UHF and S-band equipment. Communication at (cis-)lunar distances is more expensive (typically requiring 5-24m+ steerable dishes), but available to some clubs and enthusiasts. We’re ready to do a complete demonstration mission, but need your help to fund it. If you’re up for it, here’s what we’d like to do… Concept of operations Your mission has five phases taking place over approximately thirty six months (subject to launch windows and delays) and we’d love you and your spacecraft to be involved every step of the way. The (very much simplified) path to the moon using a Weak Stability Boundary (WSB) transfer from a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) around the Earth. Mission phases: Provide online tools to allow you to design/personalise your own Scout spacecraft and take part science and technology experiments using your web browser (~12 months)
Build, test and load your Scout spacecraft onto the Interplanetary CubeSat Mothership while you watch how it's done and follow the progress of your Scout from laboratory to launch pad (~6 months)
Launch the mothership into a suitable orbit with you following from your mission control. Once in orbit, the Earth Scouts will be released and test their ability to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and (hopefully) land in one piece, transmitting their location to aid recovery. We hope you’ll help us try to track and recover some of them (~3 months)
We’ll then engage the motherships propulsion system and fly it and the Lunar Scouts on a Weak Stability Boundary (WSB) transfer (or similar) to an unstable Low Lunar Orbit (LLO). You’ll be able to track progress every step of the way (~6-12 months)
Once we arrive, we’ll release and photograph the Lunar Scouts and then they will land (at very high speed…) on the moon (~0-3 months) You and your spacecraft will have made history, and contributed to a system that we can then try flying elsewhere in the solar system such as Mars, Venus and to some asteroids. So perhaps you’re asking… How can I help make history and change space exploration for ever? Sponsor one or more Scouts and encourage your friends and family to do the same! This concept only works with mass participation and we need at least 2000, preferably 8000 or more people, willing to help make history and change space exploration forever. The Scout we’ve designed for you is a solar sail disc less than 80mm (about three inches) in diameter (there's a <34mm/1.33" version for atmospheric re-entry only) and averages less than a twentieth of a millimetre (two thousandths of an inch) thick with solar cells, computer, radio transceiver and instruments. About three quarters of the Scout is available for you to customise. You don’t need any technical skills, but if you have them, we’d love you to help expand what Scouts can do. You customise the appearance, software or hardware of your Thin-Film Spacecraft / Lander / Rover Scout using just your web browser and we do the rest. At the simplest level, you upload a picture or message which will be printed on your own Scout spacecraft that will be sent into space. You decide where you would like your Scout to go – load it onto the Earth Scout deck, and soon after it is launched into space, we’ll release it into Earth’s atmosphere to attempt re-entry and recovery from the surface of the planet. Load it onto the Lunar Scout deck and we’ll try to send it to the moon and release it to deorbit to the surface of the moon.
You can develop custom software for your spacecraft using a standard Arduino development environment on your computer, or just your web browser and our web based system. Scouts are solar powered with integrated optical and radio transceivers and can have sensors including a single pixel optical sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, temperature sensor, strain gauges and more. If you are comfortable with Arduino level software development, you can run your own software on Software and Hardware Development Scouts. We’ll provide a web based integrated development environment (IDE) so you can write code, test on a Scout simulator and in a virtual solar system and upload your design to your own Software Development Scout. If you are an educator or would like to support a school or club, the Software Development Scout Education Edition allows a group of up to 50 users with email addresses from the same institution to share a Software Development Scout and work on different types of customisation. The Scout can be placed in Crowd, Team or Earth/Lunar Scout customisation mode so users can customise their own part of the Scout or work together on a bigger design. Users have access to the online Scout software IDE, Scout simulator and virtual solar system allowing many software customisation ideas to be developed and one chosen to fly. You can support a specific group or else we will provide a mechanism for people who have great ideas and people who wish to support them to connect. Your donation will be acknowledged on the outside of the Scout unless you wish to remain anonymous. If you know others who might like their own Software Development Scouts then check out the Software Development Lunar Scout Party (a set of five Scouts, omnidirectional ground station and a swarm communications library) and work together on your own constellation or swarm of spacecraft. Perhaps you’d like your Scout to be affiliated with others and share position and other mission data? If so, you can create or join a Scout Fleet just by pledging and filling in the fleet request form or emailing support@pocketspacecraft.com Passive components such as resistors, capacitors and interconnects are printed on your spacecraft with a materials inkjet printer and permit user customisable Hardware Development Scouts. Hardware Development Scouts can be customised using the enhanced online IDE. You will be allocated 100 credits to specify what you would like to include from a palette of printable components, instruments, solar cell types, communications systems and other upgrades to the functionality of your Scout. The exact options and number of credits required will depend on the number of backers - more backers means more choice. With enough backers, if you want to add enhancements such as a printed fractal antenna, upgrade your optical communications from LED to laser diode, add GPS to your Earth Scout or add pop-up optics or memory metal actuators you'll be able to break out those credits and make it so! Serious fun We believe a key element of this idea is serious fun. By that we mean we believe that it’s OK to have fun while performing serious science and technology research. In fact, not only is it OK it’s our duty – if you are going to be generous enough to help us make this mission happen, then we should entertain and inform you throughout the mission. Photographing spacecraft for the KickStarter video. Our production team are going to help you follow behind the scenes throughout the project so anyone will be able to replicate our work. We’re going to do this in several ways. First of all, everyone who participates in this mission is going to know almost everything about it every step of the way. We’re going to blog every week, release a video diary every month, have a webinar every quarter, document everything we do in sufficient detail for anyone to replicate it in the Mission Manual, a professionally produced e-book that will be released, chapter by chapter, in monthly instalments. The Mission Manual will provide you with a personal record of your Mission to the Moon. It will be released as a Kindle and iPad compatible DRM free PDF eBook and as an archive quality special printed edition. The Mission Manual will be both the definitive record of the mission which anyone will be able to use to replicate and reuse our work, as well as perhaps become a family heirloom documenting you and your families’ first steps into the solar system to treasure for generations to come. We’re doing this responsibly, so we’ll show you how we make sure we follow the rules for planetary protection, space debris, spacecraft and radio licensing and more, and make all our paperwork and protocols available to all. We’ve also teamed up with expert authors who have kindly agreed to make their books about various elements of the project available to you as part of your reward. For example, we're pleased to be able to announce that Lou Friedman, Executive Director Emeritus of The Planetary Society has kindly agreed to allow us to give every backer an electronic copy of his book ‘StarSailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel’ to explain the background and potential of the Scout's and one of the Interplanetary CubeSat Mothership propulsion systems. This book describes technical topics in an accessible way and we'll release it to all our backers, one chapter per month. We'll announce other titles as the mission progresses. You will be able to follow the build and testing of your spacecraft in labs we will use such as semiconductor fabrication (left), materials testing (right) and spacecraft assembly cleanrooms. Online, we’ll put cameras in cleanrooms and labs when spacecraft are being built, in test facilities (such as thermal vacuum test chambers and on a parabolic flight), and in mission control. When we release Scouts into space, a camera on the mothership will photograph them and send a picture from space back to you of your Scouts historic achievement, hopefully with a picture of your Scout in the foreground and the earth or the moon in the background. A commercial off the shelf (COTS) camera halfway through our preparations to configure it for operation in vacuum |
I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'–type question.…I'm even uncomfortable telling people who to vote for." If people want to self-mobilize into some pro-Sanders "libertarian socialism," well, I'll bring the popcorn. And wonder how many times an experiment needs to be tried before people notice that it doesn't work.
UPDATE: Penn Jillette Tweets "You are right, I am wrong. I fall in love with sincerity, but you are right." More here and here.The EPA Takes an Ax to Self-Sufficiency: Most Woodburning Stoves Will Soon Be Illegal
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When you think of that little dream homestead in the woods, what does it include? Probably a well and septic system, a little stream bubbling nearby, a chicken coop, a sunroom for winter growing, and a cozy fire to curl up next to.
When my daughter and I spent a year living in a cabin in the Northwoods of Canada, our woodstove was our lifeline. It was the only source of heat in a place that reached -42 degrees. It was the only way we could cook when our power went out during snow and ice storms (as it did frequently). It was the cozy center of our home, and we survived for an entire frigid winter for less than$800. After that experience I vowed never to live in a home without a woodstove.
If the EPA has its way, however, heating your home self-sufficiently with wood could soon become illegal – or at the very least, insanely expensive.
Off Grid Survival reports:
Shortly after the re-election of President Obama, the agency announced new radical environmental regulations that threaten to effect people who live off the grid. The EPA’s new environmental regulations reduce the amount of airborne fine-particle matter from 15 micrograms to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air. This means that most wood burning stoves would now fall into a class that would deemed unacceptable under these new draconian measures. The EPA has even launched a nifty new website called Burn Wise to try to sway public opinion. On their site, while trying to convince people to get rid of their old stoves and buy the new EPA-certified stoves, they state that these older stove must be scrapped and cannot be resold. From the EPA Site: The local air pollution agency says I can’t sell my old wood stove to help pay for an EPA-certified wood stove. Why is that?
Replacing an older stove with a cleaner-burning stove will not improve air quality if the older stove is reused somewhere else. For this reason, wood stove change out programs usually require older stoves to be destroyed and recycled as scrap metal, or rendered inoperable. (source)
And here is the information right from the EPA:
Enclosed is the list of wood stoves certified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA Certified Wood Stoveslist contains information about wood stoves or wood heating appliances that have been certified by the EPA along with its manufacturer name, model name, emission rate (g/hr), heat output (btu/hr), efficiency (actual measured and estimated), and type of appliance. It also indicates whether the appliance is still being manufactured. An EPA certified wood stove or wood heating appliance has been independently tested by an accredited laboratory to determine whether it meets the particulate emissions limit of 7.5* grams per hour for noncatalytic wood stoves and 4.1* grams per hour for catalytic wood stoves. All wood heating appliances that are offered for sale in the United States are subject to the New Source Performance Standard for New Residential Wood Heaters under the Clean Air Act and are required to meet these emission limits. An EPA certified wood stove can be identified by a temporary paper label attached to the front of the wood stove and a permanent metal label affixed to the back or side of the wood stove.
See the EPA’s list of acceptable woodstoves HERE.
One of the easiest ways for the government to force this issue is through homeowner’s insurance policies. If you have a mortgage, you have absolutely no option but to carry homeowner’s insurance. Even if you own you homestead outright, most people consider insuring their homes and property to be a vital safety net. When your policy comes up for annual renewal, the insurance company can require an inspection of your home. At that time, compliance can easily be forced by either charging insanely high rates or through the cancellation of the policies of those who have “outdated” woodstoves.
An Attack on Self-Sufficient Living
The ability to heat your home off-grid is a major part of most preparedness plans. Heating with wood is the number one way to do this. Much like our food supplies, the ability to keep ourselves warm and healthy and the ability to cook without being connected to the grid are vital to our freedom.
Those of us who live this lifestyle are constantly targeted. In many places it’s illegal to collect rainwater. Growing food in your front yard instead of flowers is all but outlawed. Sellers of raw milk have their farms raided by SWAT teams as though they’re running a meth lab instead of a dairy. We are being Codex Alimentarius-ed and Agenda 21-ed right into slavery and the government and it’s agencies try to make it appear that they are “saving” us.
We, the self-sufficient, by our very nature, are a threat to this insidiously spreading control. Our self-sufficiency means that we won’t be forced to be subjugated, tagged, chipped, and inventoried like our less prepared friends and neighbors. We won’t have to cave in order to survive. We can eat, stay warm, and stay off the radar. And this is a threat because we can withstand the assaults on our freedom. We don’t need the government’s benevolence to survive. Those of us who don’t need the government are the last hold-outs of liberty in a country that has strayed far from it’s freedom-loving origins.
The “Credibility” of the EPA
Don’t be fooled by environmental friendliness or the warm and fuzzy green words. The EPA is just another tool of subjugation. Their stamp of approval carries the same “credibility” as that of USDA or FDA approval. The Environmental Protection Agency, that bastion of clean air and fertile land, wants you to believe that they are taking steps to save us all.
You know, the same folks who upped the legal levels of glyphosate for their friends at Monsanto, even though the herbicide has been proven to cause toxicity and death. The same agency that responded quickly when radiation from the Fukushima disaster reached dangerous levels on the shores of California by closing down 8 of their 18 radiation-testing facilities in California and increasing the “safe amounts” of radiation that we can absorb.
The EPA (or as I like to call it, the Environmental Deception Agency) tends to find things to be highly threatening to the environment only when those things allow us to be non-reliant on big business.
One controversy after another can be attributed to the EPA, an agency charged with protecting the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food and the water that we drink. At the bottom of each of those controversies can be found ties to the conspiracies of the big businesses that really run the country. Decisions are being auctioned off to industry lobbyists with the most money and influence.
Environmental protection is only the rule of thumb if it goes along with Agenda 21 – the EPA is all over the green agenda in cases that benefit the redistribution of wealth, but the agency completely ignores blatant crimes against the earth if it involves fracking for the benefit of a natural gas company or poisoning the soil and groundwater for the benefit of a biotech monolith.Since it swept the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prizes and sold in a stunning $17.5 million worldwide rights deal to Fox Searchlight at January’s Sundance Film Festival, Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation has been considered a front-runner film in the Oscar race. The wrenching, brutal depiction of the Nat Turner-led slave uprising in 1831 Virginia was a welcome respite from the outcry over a lack of diversity in Oscar nominees the past two years that haunted the Academy and led to sweeping overhauls. Who better to root for than Parker, an actor who, not satisfied to be considered a name on a casting director’s list, wrote his own second act and scripted, directed, produced and starred in a film considered every bit as powerful as 12 Years A Slave?
A brewing controversy threatens to challenge the trajectory of that inspiring narrative. Memories of 17-year-old rape charges waged against both Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin (who shares co-story credit with Parker) while they were roommates at Penn State in 1999 left Fox Searchlight in full crisis mode these past weeks, scrambling to figure out how best to protect its sizable investment and Oscar chances by getting in front of a disclosure that is bubbling up in the mainstream press. The transcripts of the trial are public record and readily available, as Deadline discovered — the clerk there offered that numerous inquiries have been made recently — and the play-by-play is a sordid he-said-she-said affair that pitted a female student against Parker and Celestin. She claimed both men had sex with her after she had passed out in their room following a night of drinking. They claimed the encounter was consensual. Traumatized, she subsequently dropped out of college, and attempted suicide, per court documents. Parker, who had an earlier mutually willing sexual encounter with the student, was acquitted of the charges. Celestin initially was convicted, but that was overturned on appeal and his case was not retried.
[Read the closing arguments of the prosecutor here and the defense attorneys here and here.]
Why would an incident that ended in Parker’s acquittal nearly two decades ago be at all relevant in a movie that took place in Antebellum Virginia? It wouldn’t, if Parker — who studied management science and information systems with the intention of a career in IT, computer programming and management before he fell into acting — hadn’t remade his career to where he is on the cusp of being an A-list writer-director, and potential Oscar front-runner. Oscar history tells us there are no secrets during awards season. Having become fully aware of those old charges in the months since it bought the film, Fox Searchlight has been looking to pre-empt any late-season bombshells that might land while voters have ballots in hand. Also, one of the flash points for the uprising in The Birth of a Nation is the brutal rape of Turner’s wife Cherry, which strikes a match that flares into murderous rebellion against white slave-holders and the institutionalized cruelty that has never been exposed to this level in a major film.
Sundance Film Festival
Parker, with Fox Searchlight’s support, has decided to face this 17-year-old legal matter, head on. Hours before receiving the prestigious Vanguard Award from the Sundance Institute, Parker invited a Deadline reporter to his home Thursday – remnants of the five daughters who live with him all around – to look him in the eye and discuss the case. He spoke about how he has grown as a man, a father and an artist since that night at Penn State. And how he is determined not to let his worthy film be defined by that case, lest it detract from his mission to use Turner’s story as a catalyst for discussion on the turbulence between blacks and whites that has roiled major cities across the country this year. He firmly believes some of these tensions are connected to that shameful chapter of slavery in America.
“My responsibility as a filmmaker, an actor, an artist and an American is to say this period in history was more egregious than we were led to believe, and it had an impact on all of us,” Parker said of the film. “Frederick Douglass said, ‘When I became free, I began to see the impact that slavery had not only on the slave but on the slave master.’ My film doesn’t shake a finger at someone for being born in the ’90s with pink skin. It says that because you were born in the ’90s, you have some stuff that might live in your heart and the hearts of those around you. Let’s collectively address that. For the person with brown skin, who was born in the ’80s or ’90s, you weren’t born into slavery in 1831, but we have all inherited stuff we didn’t create.”
For Parker, the film is about curing through catharsis. “Psychologists will tell you, until there is honest confrontation, there can be no healing,” he said. “We can’t just skip the healing part and say, ‘Get over it.’ It’s in me, you, and the air we breathe. If I have a gash and it’s infected, one of two things is going to happen: Put some alcohol and let it burn away infection, sew it up and heal it, or it gets worse to the point real complications occur that maybe had nothing to do with that initial gash. That is what we’re dealing with.”
That same painful form of confrontation is how he has chosen to handle the rape case whose memory is rearing back up. Parker was acquitted in 2001 of raping a woman in his apartment while a wrestler at Penn State; Celestin was initially convicted of sexual assault but the conviction was later set aside, and a planned re-trial was dropped as witnesses became unavailable. The case caused heated battles on the Penn State campus, where some black supporters said Parker and Celestin were victims of false charges and treated poorly by the administration, while women’s advocates accused the university of failing to protect the alleged victim. In a 2002 complaint filed in the United States Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the Women’s Law Project represented the woman in a “Jane Doe” suit against the university (read it here). It ultimately was settled for a small cash payment and a promise to review sexual harassment practices at the school, which later suffered massive humiliation when a football coach, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with molesting eight boys between 1994-2000.
Sundance Film Festival
“I was sure it would come up,” Parker said. “It is there, on my Wikipedia page, the Virginia Pilot … I stand here, a 36-year-old man, 17 years removed from one of the most painful … [he wells up at the memory] moments in my life. And I can imagine it was painful, for everyone. I was cleared of everything, of all charges. I’ve done a lot of living, and raised a lot of children. I’ve got five daughters and a lovely wife. My mom lives here with me; I brought her here. I’ve got four younger sisters.”
Parker made clear that the case does not define his attitude toward women. “Women have been such an important part of my life. I try, every day, to be a better father to my daughters, and a better husband,” he said. More, Parker acknowledged and applauded a growing intolerance for sexual violence: “The reality is, this is a serious issue, a very serious issue, and the fact that there is a dialogue going on right now around the country is paramount. It is critical. The fact we are making moves and taking action to protect women on campuses and off campuses, and educating men and persecuting them when things come up. … I want women to stand up, to speak out when they feel violated, in every degree, as I prepare to take my own daughter to college.”
But Parker has no plans to rehash the episode as he introduces the film, and continues his career. “I will not relive that period of my life every time I go under the microscope,” he said. “What do I do? When you have a certain level of success, when things start to work, things go under the microscope and become bigger and bigger things. I can’t control people; I can’t control the way people feel. What I can do is be the most honorable man I can be. Live my life with the most integrity that I can, stand against injustice everywhere I see it, lead charges against injustice against people of color, against the LGBT community. That’s me. The black community is my community, the LGBT community too, and the female community. That is my community. That me, it’s who I am. When I made this film, I said, ‘If you’ve got injustice, this is your film. And I’m coming.’ That is the legacy I want to leave behind. I can’t change anything. You move forward, and every moment you’re alive, you’re living in the moment. I continue to fight for what’s important to me and I will, no matter how deeply I go under this microscope, no matter how bright the spotlight, I will fight against injustice in everything I do. And I will raise children and try to leave a legacy that points to that desire to see the changes happen that I’ve fought for.”
Fox Searchlight Pictures
In an email on Friday, Celestin said: “This was something that I experienced as a college student 17 years ago and was fully exonerated of. I have since moved on and been focusing on my family and writing career. I have several exciting book and film projects that I am working on and that I am looking forward to.” Celestin said he joined Parker in co-creating The Birth of a Nation in order to present Nat Turner in what they see as his proper historical context. “Nat was a hero buried in the graveyard of fear and distortion,” Celestin said.
For its part, Fox Searchlight, the prestige distributor that most recently steered Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave and Birdman to Best Picture wins, is standing behind Parker. “Searchlight is aware of the incident that occurred while Nate Parker was at Penn State,” Searchlight said in a statement. “We also know that he was found innocent and cleared of all charges. We stand behind Nate and are proud to help bring this important and powerful story to the screen.”
Neither Searchlight nor Parker would say specifically when the studio learned of the Penn State incident, but clearly it seems to have happened when the distributor bested numerous offers, including a $20 million commitment from Netflix. Said Parker: “I never felt the need to introduce all the obstacles in my past when I say, ‘Hello, my name is Nate.’ But at the same time, I’ve never hidden from it. It’s public record, and in fact, this isn’t the first time I’ve talked about it on the record. Anytime anyone has asked me about this, I’ve been open. It’s tough reliving it, 17 years after the fact, but I never hid it from Fox. The last 48 hours, it was something we discussed and I’ve always said I live in truth. I don’t know how these things work, who to talk to and what to say, but I have been very clear with everyone. Anyone who wants to talk to me, I will talk to them. The issue itself is so serious and I care deeply for the rights of women, and I care very deeply for the safety of our women and our students. And with this thing, all I can do is keep telling me the truth.”
In the past, real-life controversies have landed on awards contenders with varying effect. In 2002, claims that Nobel Laureate mathematician John Nash had anti-Semitic leanings did not keep A Beautiful Mind from winning the Best Picture Oscar and a total of four wins out of seven nominations, and Roman Polanski won the Academy’s directing prize for The Pianist even though he remained a fugitive on a still-unresolved sex charge in the U.S. But Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, for instance, appeared to suffer from a clash with congressional authorities and some Academy members over its approach to the effectiveness of torture in terror investigations; though heavily nominated in 2013, the film was blasted publicly by three prominent U.S. senators and won only one Academy Award, for sound editing.
As Parker pointed out, the charges against him and Celestin were never a secret. The case had been reported in local news media, and leaked into a handful of blogs after Fox Searchlight bought the film in its precedent-setting deal at Sundance. Still, prior disclosure didn’t soften the 2014 furor around Woody Allen’s film Blue Jasmine, when the director’s estranged daughter Dylan Farrow used an open letter on a New York Times blog to renew claims that her father had abused her as a child. While that case had been investigated and Allen wasn’t charged, Blue Jasmine won only one of the three Oscars for which it was nominated, with Cate Blanchett winning Best Actress.
So it is difficult at this point to weigh how history will impact Parker’s historical biopic in the harsh light of the upcoming awards season, especially in a post-Bill Cosby and Roger Ailes era when even an allegation of rape creates stigma, and where Mel Gibson was ostracized for merely saying objectionable things while drunk. Also troubling here are allegations made by the female student in her civil suit against Penn State, that Parker and Celestin harassed her repeatedly after she filed a police report, in part by having a private investigator show her photo around campus. And, she claimed, by taunting her with sexual epithets and “shadowing her as she moved throughout the campus.” Twice in the months following her police report, the woman attempted suicide, according to her suit.
The encounter and its long aftermath began on August 21, 1999, when the female college freshman — according to a report she filed nearly two months later — went to an apartment shared by Parker and Celestin after drinking heavily (atop a dose of Prozac), and, as all three of them ultimately acknowledged, had sex with both men.
The woman was named in trial records but generally was not identified by name in media reports, and Deadline will not name her here. Celestin and Parker were tried together; but most records of Celestin’s subsequent legal fight are not publicly available, a representative of the Centre County court system said.
At trial, the woman testified she was intoxicated, unconscious through much of the encounter and upset to find she had experienced unwanted sex with Parker — though she acknowledged having willingly engaged in oral sex with him during an encounter the day before. More, she said she was shocked on becoming briefly conscious to find in her mouth the penis of another man, who was later identified as Celestin.
Read a portion of the trial transcript here.
In a phone call taped without the permission of Parker or his roommate, the woman falsely claimed to be pregnant, in what she said was an attempt to get him to identify the third sexual partner in the room that night. The police later monitored a second call during which both Parker and Celestin generally admitted the sexual encounter but insisted it was consensual.
“I’m not try, trying to be mean, but, I felt like you put yourself in that situation, you know what I mean?” said Parker. “I really felt like I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Read a partial transcript of the call here.
At trial, a third man, Tamerlane Kangas, testified that Parker waved him and Celestin to join him when they spied Parker and the woman having sex in the bedroom. While Celestin accepted the invitation, Kangas declined, and left the apartment. He was not charged with any crime. “I didn’t believe that four people at one time was — you know, it didn’t seem right,” he testified.
Both Celestin and Parker said in their statements that the woman was conscious and willing. Celestin added that she “she pulled me into her mouth and used both her hand and her mouth to stroke my penis.”
Read both defendants’ statements from the trial record here.
With his acquittal on October 5, 2001, Parker was legally in the clear. Celestin was acquitted of the rape charge but convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to between six and 12 months in jail by Judge Thomas Kistler. The Superior Court later found the sentence too lenient under Pennsylvania guidelines and increased it to between two and four years. But Celestin prevailed in an appeal and never faced re-trial.
Apart from the resurfaced sex crime claims, Fox Searchlight has been working to engage both black and white audiences with a movie that poses tougher inherent challenges even than its slavery-themed Best Picture Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave. While Slave, directed by Steve McQueen, was a story of survival — with a white redeemer, played by Brad Pitt — The Birth of a Nation is more purely a tale of resistance. Beginning with the real-life rebel Nat Turner, it creates a story of necessary, even patriotic, struggle for liberty. Turner’s wife, who barely surfaced in most historical accounts, becomes an emotional anchor, and her rape is a flashpoint for his rebellion.
Parker said he wanted to make a film that fell in line with films like Braveheart and Defiance, where the oppressed rose up against the oppressors.
“The reality is, I wrote this film from the standpoint of a young man who didn’t have heroes growing up,” he said. “I lived in an environment where the idea of a black, intellectual person of faith, that had integrity, respected his community and was willing to sacrifice for everyone, was an oxymoron. These things just didn’t seem to exist in the same space, ever.
“We were offered basketball players, I saw drug dealers, all types of role models, but the idea there was a man who existed in history, that there was a true story about someone that stood up against injustice, sacrificed everything he had in the name of God, in the name of good against evil, I had never seen anything like that. And it wasn’t taught. I knew about Patrick Henry, and Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, but in my education I never learned about black men who did powerful things. It wasn’t taught then and it’s not really taught now. I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, which is 42 miles east of Southampton County where Nat Turner and the slave revolt happened. And I had never heard of him. They just don’t teach it, and where I came from, there is no encyclopedia of black issues and social progress in the black community. All we learned about were people in the history books. I can go get my 18-year-old’s history book right now, flip through it and you don’t see Nat Turner. He’s just not there.
“I walked around feeling, in a sense that people of color, we began at the bottom of a slave ship,” Parker said. “We were enslaved, we picked cotton. There was Honest Abe, who wore a top hat and was taller than anyone and who said, ‘Enough is enough, slavery must end.’ And then, black people could stand up again. But after that, we didn’t catch up. Then civil rights happened, and we are fighting not to be lynched. And then, we have a black president and everything is fine. But then it is not fine, because people are getting killed in the streets. That has been the narrative of people of African descent in this country. It’s a very victimized experience. It’s not empowering and not aspirational. A sense of pride wasn’t something I associated with. If anything, I wanted to assimilate. To just make money and provide for my family, and get them out of the projects. Get as much as I could, do as well in school as I could. There was no real context of the African experience. And then I learned about Nat Turner.”
Parker recalled that moment, vividly. “I said, ‘There was a black guy back then who, first of all, could read?’ That sounded odd. He was a preacher? That must have meant he was docile and passive. Wait, no, no, he stood up against slavery, and people stood up with him? And then he fought, and died, he was hung and was skinned and his flesh was crushed to grease, all for me? That gave me a sense of pride. Braveheart, for the black community, it has just never happened.
“A lot of times when we see stories about slavery, it’s in the context of our endurance; it’s never within the context of our resistance,” Parker said. “I think it’s important for people to see that, yes, there was someone who stood up. There’s a sense of pride in that. Also, there’s a sense of healing. I didn’t make a film about bad white people and good black people, so cut and dry that you can walk out and be angry. Sure, there is anger, but when you look at the baggage we bring into the room, the anger is less about black people being hurt by white people and then black people killing white people. It’s more that a system could have existed, one that would encourage human beings to treat other human beings that way. That is what makes us angry, the same way that when you watch Braveheart and the woman’s throat is cut, or you watch the scene where they take the guy’s wife and you’re thinking, ‘Human beings did this to other human beings?’ It is only our baggage as Americans in this country that we walk into it with the idea that, ‘I’m angry and this could inspire black people to be angry at white people.’ No, no, no. This is a healing process that exposes things for all of us, and which needs to happen to this injury we’ve carried, this post-traumatic stress that a lot of us who are pink and brown in this country have lived with. Above all else, I wanted to create a film to create a conversation about healing. … I made a film I hoped could start a conversation, and be a conduit for healing as Americans. That is a culture shift, something people dream of. And I can do it with someone who, race aside, stood for God.”
To Parker, the story of Nat Turner was “like Braveheart, Troy, Gladiator, all the things we’ve never had within our community. It gives me an opportunity to effect change, and to make my mom proud, my grandmother proud and my kids because I took on something that was bigger than me. Nina Simone said an artist’s job is to reflect the times. In my activism, I’m not one who talks about everything being wrong, and then not present an answer. One of the things we are recording now, to go in front of the film, is, after you watch the film, talk about it. Have a 30-minute conversation with anyone. It can be your spouse, friend — it can be the stranger you’re sitting next to. I designed this film very specifically to deal with every level of injustice I could find in that community in 1831, especially ones I thought existed right now. We took on racism. Head on. We took on white supremacy and D.W. Griffith, which was a scary thing because he is a filmmaker who everyone hails, at the top. We took on women being marginalized, and violence against women, and systemic oppression, and how you can have good intentions and feel benevolent about people who are being oppressed, but in your passivity, you can be complicit in not speaking or acting in a way that can help them. Those were things when I was writing the film and studying Nat Turner, that I felt were important.”
In one of the more provocative marketing images in recent film memory, Fox Searchlight has leaned heavily on a poster that shows Parker, as Turner, wrapped in a noose fashioned from an American flag.
When that image surfaced in July, Celestin circulated it on Twitter, with his own wish that the Turner rebellion would become a cultural marker in a year that has been roiled by interracial shootings both of and by the police. “We should just put ‘NAT TURNER’ on EVERYTHING for the rest of 2016,” he wrote.This week's Monday Night Raw made waves, but perhaps not in the manner in which WWE wanted. The show closed with a controversial angle that saw Paige bring up Charlotte's deceased brother Reid. Many fans, wrestlers, and even Reid's mother thought it was in bad taste.
Ric Flair, Reid's father spoke out on his CBS Radio and Play.it Wooo! Nation podcast, about the controversy and said that he was never approached about his feelings regarding the angle.
Flair also said that his daughter Ashley, better known as Charlotte, was probably too afraid to shoot down the angle because she's not been on the roster very long.
"Obviously I have an opinion, but I'm afraid to voice it because I don't want anything to affect Ashley's career," said Ric. "I know that Hunter and Stephanie and Michael Hayes have her back. I don't think she feels she's comfortable enough to say 'no' to anything yet, she's only been up there three-months"
See Also: WINC Podcast (11/17): Reid Flair - RAW, Owens Blocking Russo, Rousey Fallout, Billy Gunn Fired, More
Flair mentioned that just because Charlotte is the current Divas Title holder, it's still tough for anyone to say no to storyline ideas on the WWE main roster.
"It's a pressure cooker, and a tough spot to be in," Flair explained. "If you're asked to do something, that's pretty much the way things operate up there. Everybody walks on pins and needles. Just because you're the champ, doesn't mean you say no. It's a very sensitive issue, it's very new. I know her mom is on fire. I'm not going out on a limb to say what I think."
Flair very clearly wasn't happy with the angle, and wasn't approached prior or after it happened on television, saying "I never heard a word about it. I started crying when I was watching." He reiterated that Triple H, Stephanie and Michael Hayes wouldn't do anything to intentionally hurt Charlotte.
Flair said that even though he wasn't approached, he doesn't think it would have mattered.
"I don't think that it would have made any difference. If they ask you to do something, what is she going to say? 'No, I quit?," Flair said, before asking his co-host what the fans on the internet thought
Flair also mentioned that he'd be in Atlanta for Survivor Series, and that he thinks this situation will be old news be then. You can hear the full, emotional podcast over at the Play.it podcast network this linkFusion, the TV network aimed for millennials that is owned by ABC News and Univision, is expanding to Roku.
Users of the service will be able to tap into the Watch Fusion channel on Roku to watch Fusion programs, so long as they have a subscription to the network through a cable or satellite provider. Roku users with a subscription will be able to watch a live-stream of the company’s linear network as well as a selection of on-demand video highlights and digital-only series.
The move adds to the number of venues on which Fusion is available, including Apple TV, Spotify, Vessel, and Flipps.
The goal, said Jonathan Stern, Fusion’s vice president and head of business development, is to make the network’s programming available to viewers in whatever fashion they might desire, whether it be linear or on-demand streaming.
“We want to be in all the places where our audience is consuming entertainment programming, whether it’s on our linear network, Snapchat Discover, or Spotify,” he said. “We are looking to preserve our core [linear] business, but we are also looking to provide a unique experience for those authenticated subscribers to help provide them with access to our programming.”
Stern suggested Fusion would continue to work on developing a presence on other streaming outlets, including Sling TV and Sony smart televisions.Al Jazeera will receive a ticking off from parliamentary authorities after an undercover reporter filmed within the Palace of Westminster for its investigation into alleged Israeli influence on British democracy.
Posing as an Israel activist, the journalist befriended the embassy’s political officer, Shai Masot, gaining access to private events and and meeting senior figures at the forefront of putting Israel’s case in the UK. In one of the four part series, the reporter was seen introducing himself to Masot during an event in the Commons.
After the case was raised by blogger Jonathan Hoffman, a parliamentary spokesperson said: “To ensure we are able to offer reasonable and practical opportunities for reporting on Parliamentary business we require the full co-operation of all journalists to ensure that regulations governing filming and broadcasting within both public and non-public areas of the Houses of Parliament are adhered to.
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“The House of Commons will be reminding this broadcaster of the rules and asking them not to do it again without seeking prior permission.”
Hoffman said: “It’s hardly surprising. When you set out to fuel the antisemitic trope about Jewish power and vilify Jews for reacting to antisemitism, why should you worry about such niceties as getting permission to film?”
OFCOM is currently assessing a complaint over elements of the first programme, before deciding whether to launch a formal probe.Novel Playlists from Fantasy Novelists treats each fantasy novel like a feature film and encourages the author to put together their own dream soundtrack. Having conquered all of Europe and now turning her sights upon the US, queen of grimdark Anna Smith Spark
has an overwhelming hatred of cutlery, which she demonstrates with her debut novel The Court of Broken Knives.
It is the richest empire the world has ever known, and it is also doomed. Governed by an imposturous Emperor, decadence has blinded its inhabitants to their vulnerability. The Yellow Empire is on the verge of invasion--and only one man can see it.
Haunted by prophetic dreams, Orhan has hired a company of soldiers to cross the desert to reach the capital city. Once they enter the Palace, they have one mission: kill the Emperor, then all those who remain. Only from the ashes can a new empire be built.
The company is a group of good, ordinary soldiers, for whom this is a mission like any other. But the strange boy Marith who walks among them is no ordinary soldier. Young, ambitious, and impossibly charming, something dark hides in Marith's past--and in his blood.
Link to the Spotify Playlist.
Laws and Crowns - Sol Invictus. I named the final section of Broken Knives after the album this song is taken from. 'A laurel wreath upon his brow / Bloody garlands for his crown'. Sums up everything grimdark is for me. Power. Desire. Murder. Listen to this and read chapter one of the book.
Wolf-Age, Axe Age - Sol Invictus. A description of Ragnarok set to music. Brother shall kill brother. No mercy given. All shall fall in blood.
Joy - VNV Nation. 'I carry a sword through a battlefield'. I, uh, may have been influenced by the lyics a bit.
Tooth and Claw - Sol Invictus. 'See the dove fall, beneath the eagle's claw / Obeys the one law'. And his voice sings it with such pain. Such bleak certain grief. What's the one true thing in the end? Death
Alea Iact |
librarian and president of the Toronto Public Library Workers Union. “They’re still waiting many, many, many, many, many years to get a full-time job.” The average wait time for someone to be hired as a full-time librarian with the Toronto Public Library is a decade — and that’s for applicants who already have a foot in the door working other jobs at the library.[1]
Full-Time Jobs Have Been Outsourced to Part-Time Employees
Sagen connects the employment problem in libraries to its corollary in the private sector, and she’s right to, since both issues boil down to the sobering fact that it’s cheaper to periodically hire and replace a phalanx of part-time employees than to hire one or two full-time ones. Dan Lyons discusses this same issue in his New York Times article, “Congratulations! You’ve been fired.” He describes how his fellow employees in the tech company HubSpot were called “rock stars” and told they “were changing the world” but were disposable. Their firings were called “graduations.” Lyons talks about how cruel it is to fire people with no warning and little explanation, all the while talking about how great they are. He also talks about how normal it started to seem to employees.[2]
Lyons goes on to describe how, fun language and false compliments aside, this “‘new’ way of working was actually the oldest game in the world: the exploitation of labor by capital.”*[3] Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO at HubSpot, has responded to the book with his own article.[4]
My library, although next door to several tech companies, is worlds apart in terms of culture and environment, but Lyons’s words struck a chord. They matched the theme in Sagen’s article, and a theme running through the lives of many of my contemporaries. Supervisors will increase the responsibility of qualified part-time librarians, talk about the amazing jobs they’re doing, and tell them how great it is to have them around, but hiring them full-time won’t be an option. Like Lyons’s tech contemporaries, library staff and culture are becoming so inured to this that it seems normal.
Adding Up Underemployment
Sagen and Lyons’s articles present a story close to my own heart—and, to be honest, close to my own bank account. When I graduated with my MLIS, I had a teaching credential, experience teaching both ESL and Special Education, and I had finished two really good library internships. It never occurred to me that the best job I’d get would be working as an aide, shelving and running paging lists for barely above minimum wage. Kids in high school worked in this position alongside people who’d had the MLIS degree for years. The supervisors at the top of the food chain were thrilled to have librarians doing their shelving because, why wouldn’t they be? Those books were never shelved so well. Even better, we were hungry to go above and beyond our job description—to do librarian level work for library aide wages.
It took six months to get a librarian position in a city over (as a library specialist, which was technically a librarian I position but paid less and had no benefits). I was hired to work on-call but immediately asked to work a regular position every other Saturday. As I got to know my coworkers, I learned that this was a thing our library system did, and that my Saturday position was something of a revolving door. No one wants to work one day every two weeks with no chance of moving up or getting more hours.
It took another eight months to get a librarian I per diem position (this one genuinely is on-call) steady enough that I could give up the “aide” title from the first county. My replacement was, of course, a recently graduated MLIS student. When I landed a job as an adjunct faculty librarian at a local college I was able to give up the specialist job. Still, I was (and am) working an average of two jobs at a time at three locations, and I’m still not getting forty hours a week.
The bigger problem is that part-time jobs, even jobs at libraries with good reputations and traditionally strong unions, don’t accrue much in the way of retirement or sick leave. They often don’t have other benefits, like vacation days or healthcare, at all. Library unions, it seems, only really benefit full-time staff.
Wait! There’s more!
In library school, I was really excited go to ALA conventions. Public libraries, I quickly learned, don’t pay for part-timers to go to those. To be fair, they have offered to pay for my registration; however, with limited hours and paying for my own medical benefits, I can’t afford lodging, food, and transportation, and I certainly can’t afford to take the day off work. Besides, my library will generally expect me to fill in for full-time staff who are attending. This is only one example of my catch-22: because I’m not a full-time employee, I don’t have access to things that would make me a stronger candidate in order to become a full-time employee.
Things Are Rough All Over, but It Doesn’t Have to be This Way
Originally, I thought this was a San Francisco Bay Area problem. With the library and information program at SJSU producing two to three hundred graduates a semester (though not all living in the area), I assumed there were just too many of us vying for a finite number of jobs in this region. But I’ve learned that it’s like this all over. New York City has the same story, as does Colorado, and, according to Sagen, so does Toronto.[5]
The pattern new librarians face has become both obvious and significant, and while a lucky few have landed full-time positions, many more have become disheartened with the industry and quit. Meanwhile, part-time librarians, whatever their title, bounce between branches and systems hoping to one day become full-time. As Sagen points out, that can take “many, many, many, many, many years.”
Like Lyon’s HubSpot friends, these newer librarians are told they’re doing great and that they’re assets. As much as that’s probably true, it’s also true that they’re disposable assets, and that libraries—like Walmart, McDonald’s, or any other business—have learned that it’s cheaper to hire ten desperate part-time employees than two full-time ones who would cover the same hours. One simple solution to all this is to drastically shrink library program admittance. Another is to present MLIS programs more as “information science” programs, which is a growing, if controversial, trend.
If libraries don’t want to be viewed as big businesses by their librarians, they need to treat them like valued staff instead of part-time wage earners. That means hiring more full-time positions instead of lots of part-time ones and insuring that staff have enough benefits to make them want to stay put. It also means paying to send part-time employees to conferences (it should be easy with their flexible schedules!) and allowing them access to the same training as other staff so they can stay on the cutting edge of technology and keep up with new materials. These opportunities are all impossible for someone who’s juggling two or three jobs. True, none of this will do a thing for many of the newest library school graduates, but in the long term, neither does yoking them to inconsistent and unstable work forever.
References
Tags: employment, library jobs, part time librariansBy By Anne Sewell Feb 18, 2014 in Odd News Barcelona - Barcelona police arrested a former house painter who claims to have God-given healing powers, which allow him to "cure" small breasts and various other physical malformations. However, despite claims of sexual abuse, the man has been released on bail. According to The so-called healer's wife and daughter were also involved in the alleged treatments. Some of his patients were apparently as young as 13 years old and were required to take off their clothing before the treatment commenced. His "healing method" for genital disorders and small breasts reportedly involved massaging the "troubled area" while the man blew his "healing breath into it." He reportedly charged 10 euros an hour for his service. His wife and daughter often handled the massage involved on his behalf and apparently at times the man even got his patients to apply the massage treatment and fondle each other. However, it was the man himself who allegedly performed the touching of private parts and apparently often asked to stay in his underwear while they were alone in the treatment room. While his practice appeared to be successful, some of his patients eventually called into question his methods of treatment. They realized that the treatment wasn't changing anything and with increasingly unlikely diagnoses being given, they decided to file a police report against him on February 6. The man is now out on bail, awaiting trial. Spanish sources: Europa Press El Mundo Catalan Source: Los Mossos d'Esquadra Apparently the 54-year-old man only treated female "patients." He believed that God had given him the power to heal women, both physically and emotionally, and that he could even diagnose illnesses that the women did not know they had.According to Los Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police force, his skills allegedly served to prevent future deafness, enlarge the breasts of women, increase their capacity to gain or lose weight, correct crooked noses and deviant hips, among many other things.The so-called healer's wife and daughter were also involved in the alleged treatments. Some of his patients were apparently as young as 13 years old and were required to take off their clothing before the treatment commenced.His "healing method" for genital disorders and small breasts reportedly involved massaging the "troubled area" while the man blew his "healing breath into it." He reportedly charged 10 euros an hour for his service.His wife and daughter often handled the massage involved on his behalf and apparently at times the man even got his patients to apply the massage treatment and fondle each other. However, it was the man himself who allegedly performed the touching of private parts and apparently often asked to stay in his underwear while they were alone in the treatment room. The man had apparently built up such a loyal clientele, he was able to cease employment as a part time house painter and live off the proceeds of his healing sessions alone.While his practice appeared to be successful, some of his patients eventually called into question his methods of treatment. They realized that the treatment wasn't changing anything and with increasingly unlikely diagnoses being given, they decided to file a police report against him on February 6.The man is now out on bail, awaiting trial. More about Barcelona, Spain, fake healer More news from Barcelona Spain fake healerPrevious Next
The two of us moved across the house, making as little noise as possible while still striving to cover as much ground as possible.
The game with the twins was still underway. Give and take. Each trying to constrain the other side’s options. Our options now were far more limited.
The younger siblings were killing machines. Easier to predict, to bait into attacking or reacting. The elder twins were more complex, more savvy. They had demonstrated that much earlier. I had no idea what to expect from them. I knew they were strong, their bodies repurposed and at least somewhat similar to the younger twins. I knew their senses were altered. I didn’t know much else.
The house we’d broken into had a side door. There was no convenient way to check if the coast was clear, and I wouldn’t trust any of those ways if they did exist.
All I could do was ease the door open slowly, ready to move a lot faster if I needed to stab at anyone on the other side.
Nobody.
Up until now, I had been able to maintain a general sense of where things were. Now there were too many variables to control and there was too little in the way of indicators. The explosions at the front line of the battle had stopped, but gunshots were incessant on both sides, the lines disorganized. I couldn’t tell what might be the Twins’ soldiers shooting at the surviving members of our group from the rest of the noise.
A hand touched my shoulder. Jamie pointed, gestured.
Indicating our path. He had to have some idea as to why. We were heading through side streets, but he might have glanced down another street while we’d been walking with our handpicked squadron and picked up a sense of how the area was laid out.
We ran for a couple of minutes, passing by a patch where the rocky ground was too uneven for any kind of building to be planted on it.
Behind the residential block, a few streets down, was a building, recessed into a nook in the patch of rockier terrain. The building was surrounded by walls, in turn. It wasn’t one of the sturdier constructions, standing half-again as tall as a typical one-story house did, as wide on any side as two houses, and on approach, I could smell traces of shit and blood. There was a peculiar cast to the smell, suggesting it wasn’t fresh – just the opposite. Weeks upon weeks of blood and shit piled onto one another, as if the rocky ground here had trapped the smell in.
A slaughterhouse, or it had been. Not a huge one, probably only taking in six to twelve animals at a time, bringing them in along a road that branched in off the main street. The lack of freshness to the smells made me think it hadn’t been used anytime in the last week or two. Closed for the colder months, perhaps, or it worked on a schedule, as boats came in.
Weapon, Jamie signaled.
Did I want to pass up my spear of twin-bone for something from the slaughterhouse? I could think of a dozen things I could do with the right tool and the right circumstance. Meathooks, saws, chains, and sharp blades? On any other day, it would have been perfect.
“No,” I said. If we weren’t far enough away from the Twins to be able to speak without being overheard, then we were as good as dead as it was. “But it’s a good thing to put between us and the twins. Strong smell, to make us harder to sniff out, walls to block sounds. Even if they’re strong, and even if they’re nimble, it doesn’t look like it’s easy to get onto the roof, and cutting across the property looks like it’s a pain.”
It was true. Fences, corrals, barriers to keep thieves out, and doors, all bounding a building that looked dilapidated enough to discourage kicking one’s way through doors. Part of the reason I didn’t want to put time into going into the building and getting my hands on things.
“Good,” Jamie said.
“How did you even see it? Through an alley as we walked by?”
“If you stand near the harbor and look northeast, you could see it. Looking the other way, the slope and intervening buildings hide it.”
“Maybe we could see it, but I definitely couldn’t tell what it was from that distance.” Or remember where it was supposed to be.
“Neither could I. I figured something like this, set a little bit away from the other buildings, a bit large-”
“Was set apart from other stuff for a reason. Because it offended the senses. Loud or smelly.”
“Which means tools.”
I nodded. Which mean options.
Every interaction with this Jamie seemed to create more distance between me and the old Jamie. As if it reminded me, again and again, over and over, that my best friend was gone and he was being left behind.
That this Jamie was proving himself and honing his abilities in a way very different from the Jamie I knew was a bittersweet thing. Bitter because it only widened the gap, sweet, if it could be called that, because it helped keep us alive.
My finger touched the ring at my thumb. The options afforded by the slaughterhouse weren’t worth the time it took to get in, or the risk of finding ourselves at odds with very angry twins in an environment filled with sharp things.
More likely they’d figured out where we were, and were moving in the same direction we were. If our group had headed toward Mauer, then they had waltzed right into the soldiers. Jamie and I had backtracked a little and were now heading to that same general perimeter.
My hope was that the soldiers had taken notice of the group of seven and were now moving from their position to collapse in on the group. The line became a ‘u’, which became a circle, ever-closing on the seven. If the soldiers thought we were part of that group, then there was a very real chance we could come in behind the soldiers as they closed the circle, approaching from the outside of that circle while the people that composed it were looking inward.
The twins, if they were following us, would have found themselves cut off by terrain and by the setup of the fences and walls of the little slaughterhouse. They would turn, moving in parallel to us as we headed toward the soldiers who were attacking or surrounding the seven.
Jamie’s little tidbit of knowledge had bought us distance.
There were two possibilities, now. The first was that the seven were dead, and the twins would find their soldiers and give the order to chase us. That would be bad, and it would be a test of whether grown men or two boys who had been running all night were quicker on their feet.
The second option was that the seven were alive. The twins would reach their soldiers, give the order, and make those soldiers attack. Whatever was holding them back, whatever had happened that let the seven live, the twins would force a resolution, even if it meant making their soldiers mount a suicidal attack on the seven. That done, they could attack Mauer’s back line or chase us.
Both options were different brands of bad.
Mauer was only a five minute run away, going by the fires and the glow of the countless people who held torches. The Crown- I had no way of telling. Too many people were shooting in too many places.
I watched the buildings, looking, my eye focusing on the darkness, to see if I could see shadow moving against shadow, as the Crown’s soldiers moved closer to the seven.
Where had they set up, and where were they going? Given a choice, where would a talented soldier set up?
A sharp whistle made Jamie and I turn our heads simultaneously.
A moment later, a gunshot. It was answered by three more. The first gunshot and the answering gunfire had very different sounds, the latter muffled, not nearly as crisp.
The twins had found the soldiers. The first gunshot we’d heard had to be one of their soldiers, if not one shot fired by a member of a pair or trio. A response to the whistle that summoned them, I imagined. ‘We can’t come because we’re the only thing between the enemy and Mauer’, it was saying.
The answering gunfire would have been the response of the seven. Or however many were left, now. Not a response I would have recommended. They had just told everyone where they were.
I gestured. Jamie nodded.
We moved in the direction of our allies, keeping closer to the shadows.
Pinned down, surrounded, injured, and unaware that the twins were about to catch up with them.
We reached an intersection. I could look down the length of this particular street and see the back lines of Mauer’s force. So close, yet those forces were preoccupied.
It was salvation. I could have abandoned my hand-picked group and gone to Mauer. I was carrying a trophy that would likely buy some mercy from the man. It could even buy us soldiers, a force of men that could strike at a smaller squad of the twins’ men and the twins themselves.
It would be so easy to be the utter bastard, to just dispose of those lives. The risk, the reward, the likelihood it saw us living versus the nobles dying.
I wondered if Mauer would have decided to return to the main force. I felt like he might, if it was civilians and not his trained soldiers. For his men to be loyal, he had to justify that loyalty. To do otherwise would have required constant manipulation. He was good at leading and directing people, shepherding his flock, but he seemed far too pragmatic a man to adopt lies and manipulations that would tie his hands just a little in every interaction over just about every single day.
I couldn’t do it.
We glanced around, checking every avenue, then, at a signal from me, we crossed the street at a run.
We were three-quarters of the way across when I saw movement in the corner of my eye.
One soldier.
I gestured, and Jamie and I began to follow the man, as he wound his way through alleys, heading in the direction of the whistle.
He moved at a brisk walk. Jamie and I moved at a jog. It would have been a run, but we both took caution to move silently. The heat in the air from the bodies and the fires of Mauer’s forces was plunging skyward alongside plumes of smoke, and the difference in cold air and hot air was stirring the wind, drawing in cold air from the harbor and up the sloping city. It was windy, and the wind stirred up snow, it blew in the ear and it caught sounds, carrying them away. Moving while upwind of the man would help, if only a little.
You. Right. Me. Left. I gestured.
Jamie and I parted as we approached the soldier from behind. Sure enough, he was focused on the direction of the seven and on getting to the Richmond Twins quickly enough to avoid their ire.
Jamie glanced at me.
You. High. Me. Low.
He nodded.
The man was a few paces away, but he was walking away from us. Moving closer meant having to be quieter, which generally necessitated moving slower. It was a paradox, one that made the approach an exercise in agony. The strain of smoothly rolling my weight forward with more careful motions of my legs and feet was making the cut in my calf hurt. Courtesy of the younger twins.
I saw Jamie’s head turn, and then reluctantly drew back, dropping lower to the ground and closer to the edge of the nearest building, where I could be out of sight.
Another soldier, approaching from a different position, converging on the same point as our quarry.
There would be no careful execution of that pair. Especially with the risk that another soldier might approach and spot us as soon as we stepped out of cover and attacked.
Jamie had stopped as well. He watched from the other end of the street, through precipitation-beaded glasses, his hood up, a rifle in his hands.
I gestured at Jamie. Enemy. Count. Question.
One-five, the response came.
Fifteen. Fifteen soldiers to worry about. Fifteen, and the two we’d just seen had approached from points that seemed set fairly far from one another. Assuming they had started traveling when they heard the whistle…
Back, I gestured. Fast.
We reversed course.
I could imagine Gordon explaining it: it didn’t make sense that the soldiers would position themselves that that far apart, with so much of an area to watch. Drawing a mental circle around the handpicked group of seven, extrapolating from what we had seen, there would be seven or eight different positions where soldiers had taken up watch. Those positions left wide, wide gaps between them.
The only plausible explanation was that there was more than one soldier at each post. The whistle code had called for only one to arrive and report in. Others were still at their posts.
Knowing the direction they would be looking and the direction the two soldiers we’d seen had been traveling, I could start looking for the vantage points they might have taken up.
Have to be fast. The twins are closing in.
There. Built adjunct to one building was a rigging of planks and pieces of wood, some of the lengths of wood still had bark on them. A ladder led up to the top of what looked to be a water reservoir tower. Set up to catch the rain like a water barrel, with a hose drooping down for showers or some industrial work.
A perfect vantage point. It offered a good view of surrounding streets.
I gestured for Jamie to wait. He nodded, and retreated a bit, to where he could point the gun up and in the general direction of the tower.
The construction gave me cause for concern. It wasn’t shoddy, and it didn’t look wobbly – it wouldn’t have held any proper amount of water if it was either. But it wasn’t so solid that I could be sure that any movement wouldn’t vibrate through the entire construction, alerting the guy or guys on the top that someone was approaching.
I moved with care, my calf aching as I adjusted my weight upward, rather than climbing or hauling myself up. Holding the spear of carbon-strong bone, I had to be extra careful not to knock it against anything.
I knew the angle the man or men on top might be looking, if they were watching out for their buddy and for the group of seven. They would be especially alert, because their buddy was gone, and there was a lot of ground to watch, more with fewer sets of eyes.
I had to approach from one side. I tucked the spike of bone through the back of my shirt and down the back of my pants. Once I was sure it wouldn’t fall free, I moved from one side of the ladder and climbed around the platform, gripping the ledge with my fingers, my legs dangling over the sloped roof below. The spots in my arm where the younger twin’s fingers had dug into flesh throbbed with pain, and my right hand was noticeably weaker than my left, as a consequence of the damage.
Not a terminal fall, but falling would be terminal. I would make noise, and if I was right and if someone had set up position here, then I would be gunned down before I finished rolling off the roof and landing on the street below.
Wood creaked under my hands. I froze, trying not to move.
I heard a murmur.
The mental image of the scene above me clarified. I knew which way he was looking, and now I had a general sense of where at least one of the people were.
Moving a hand up, I gripped the rail above me, splinters digging into my palms. Legs still dangling, I hauled myself up until I could see everything on the platform.
Platform, circular, with the barrel situated on top. The platform with its rail at the boundary would let the owner fix the water barrel if it started leaking, after weather or the weight of water warped it too much.
One man sat with his back to the barrel, watching in the direction I’d guessed.
I hauled myself up further, brought one leg over, and then brought the other up. Once I was secure, with four points of contact with solid terrain, I reached back, and slid the spike of bone onto the platform beside me. Flexible enough to move, now, I walked myself forward, still maintaining a death grip on the railing, until I was lying down on my back, my arms over my head, holding the railing.
I relaxed, flipping over and taking hold of the spike, and crawled around the circumference of the oversize water barrel.
I attacked from around the corner. One blow. Ambush, I could do, calculating my move in my own time, no rush and no fuss. Fighting was something else, leaving me one step behind.
All of my weight behind the blow, I drove the spike of bone into the front of the man’s throat. He fell over, eyes going wide, and I planted my feet, thrusting the spike in deeper, so there was more bone in his throat, blocking and tearing through windpipe and arteries.
He reached for his gun, a final, suicidal attack. I put my foot out, blocking the gun from coming around to point at me.
The fight went out of him quick, but he was slow to die. He struggled for what seemed like a minute. He’d stopped trying to use the gun, and his hands weakly grasped at the bone that extended in one side of his neck and out the other. He was showing no sign of stopping, grunting and gasping, making thick choking sounds.
Then, as I pulled the spike free, he seemed to go out like a snuffed candle. As he went limp, he made a singular, low, gurgling groan that seemed like the accumulation of all the sounds he’d been unable to make during that one minute of struggle.
My finger touched the ring at my thumb.
A man with a family. A man who had shit and laughed and cried, countless times over the course of his life. On a level, he might have had no choice but to follow the nobles. He wasn’t any more or less guilty than the citizens of Lugh I’d hand-picked. On another level, he was participating in a city-wide extermination, trying to kill children and relative innocents who had only picked up this fight to defend themselves.
It didn’t break down to right or wrong. It was too complicated, and that complication was matched with the simple reality that he’d had to die, because he might have shot us if he was given the chance.
With all of my strength, I hauled him back up to a sitting position. It took some doing. With care, I buttoned up his shirt and raised his collar before buttoning that too, to cover the wound. I positioned his head so he sat in nearly the exact same posture he’d sat when I found him. The stiff collar helped to keep his head up, but I suspected it would give way with a few more minutes of his heavy chin pressing down on it.
It only took thirty seconds to prop him back up like that, and if someone came to find him in the meantime, the confusion and alarm might help us.
Collecting his gun, I headed back down the ladder, climbing down with two feet and one hand, as fast as I was able. Jamie met me at the bottom, waiting patiently while I slid the bone spike back into my shirt, the fat end in my back pocket.
I pointed. Jamie nodded.
Circling around to the south of the group of seven, we headed in the general direction the other soldier had come from.
He found us before we found him. A gunshot rang out, closer and clearer than the cacophony from Mauer’s camp.
You. Right. I gestured.
But Jamie was heading right before I even started indicating it.
Another gunshot. Unaware, the group of seven fired back in our general direction. They thought the gunshots were meant for them.
It would be so very fitting if I died after getting shot by a friendly bullet.
The twins would be coming, probably at a brisk run.
No time. Jamie continued moving to the shooter’s right, I moved to the shooter’s left. I could tell where the shooter was firing from, now. He’d chosen a point lower to the ground, a store front with a great glass window that had broken earlier in the night.
The muzzle flashed. I could see the oblong nature of the flash, and knew the man was firing at Jamie, not me. One shot. Then another. Jamie was stuck, and I couldn’t approach without it being a very direct, obvious approach.
I reached down to my pocket. I retrieved the whistle I’d taken from the soldier who handled the stitched.
Ducking behind a trough of water, I blew, hard.
I was telling the twins where I was, I knew. But we didn’t have a lot of options. Not moving would just leave us stuck in place.
Another gunshot. I heard the bullet sink into a bit of wood to my right.
I blew.
Another shot. This one hit the trough.
Another shot.
“Sy.”
I stood straight, hurdling over the trough, stumbling a bit on the landing – moving around with a straight, inflexible rod at my back wasn’t helping, and the rifle I held was meant for someone two and a half times my height – it was unwieldy.
Jamie had approached while the shooter was focusing on me, and managed a clean shot.With my own rifle, which matched what the man held, I aimed, and I fired again, off to one side.Let the enemy think we were still embroiled in the fight. If the Twins had hearing as keen as we suspected, maybe they could hear the difference in the direction of the shots, the distant ‘pok’ of impact. Would they extrapolate, and think the shooter was aiming at someone further away?
I paused, and fired again, looking at Jamie.
No need for gestures. He got what I meant.
I ran, as fast as my tired legs would allow.
If we were going to make this work, we needed to be fast. The twins were approaching, and we had opened up roughly a third of the circle that had been drawn around the seven. By moving out through that opening and toward Mauer, we stood a small chance of coming out of this with our hides intact.
Jamie remained behind, periodically firing. He was painting a picture through sound, much like the one I’d been observing since I’d had my dose of wyvern. Hopefully it was one that misled, that made the twins make certain movements.
I kept to paths and roads that wouldn’t expose me to fire from anyone with a vantage point and eyes on the building. When it came to the building, I exposed myself to gunfire from friendly forces and approached directly, heading straight for the nearest window, praying they wouldn’t take me for one of the younger twins.
There were safer ways to approach, ways that involved coming in at an angle, knocking, and negotiating.
Instead, I turned my rifle around and smashed the glass with the butt-end. I could see the people on the other side backing away.
“Move! Out! Now!” I called through the break in the glass. “Only chance!”
The seven -now the five– opened a door. Bat-nose, with her grave shoulder wound, was no longer with them. Tattoo Belly was absent as well. Adam, surprisingly, had bandaged the wound at his stomach, and was still mobile. I’d taken him for disemboweled.
“Go,” I said. “Move!”
They asked questions, some about the spike at my back, but my mind was racing, my focus wholly on the environment. Possible avenues of approach or attack by enemies.
It crossed my mind that I hadn’t heard Jamie shoot recently.I could only hope he’d escaped.
Toward the perimeter, then through. To Mauer, then we could turn his forces back on the twins. It wasn’t perfect, there were countless problems at play, but in terms of immediate survival, it was the only way we might live through this.
I was cutting corners, now. Moving fast and taking risks to move even faster, in hopes of staying ahead of them I was praying that with their sisters absent and their structural integrity suffering just a bit for the lack of their other halves, that the elder sisters might be a little slower. That they would lag behind and rely more on their soldiers. The proceedings thus far didn’t contradict that fact.
Faster. To the perimeter, to Jamie.
A horse that had been ridden like I’d been running would collapse and a merciful owner would put it down. Small mercies, that humans had evolved as long-distance runners. Sweat and precipitation clung to my face and ran through my hair. My ears were freezing.
Ahead of me, one of the Richmond Twins stepped out of the shadows, putting herself directly in our path. Her eyes were wide, and they were wild.
Without wasting a moment, I raised my rifle, aiming and firing. Gordon might have approved the minimal hesitation in the action. Mary would have shaken her head at the miserable aim. What would have been a glancing blow became a miss as the woman took one step to the side, a slower, lazier version of what her smaller counterpart had done, swaying out of the way of my rifle’s point.
In the next moment, I pivoted on my toes and ran for cover. The others had skipped the shooting part and gone right for the cover, and some of those people, wounded, were slower than I was in getting there.
The Twin held a rifle in one hand. She raised it, aimed, and fired at the mass of our group. Salt, the boy with sailor’s clothes, toppled, shrieking in a high voice, reminiscent of a woman’s.
“You killed my sister. Two of them,” she said, her voice higher than it had been before, imperious, and dangerously unsteady. She was reloading her weapon, walking toward us at a lazy pace.
This was one Twin. The other-I turned on the spot, looking behind the group. I turned again, looking to the side of the street for alleys, then the other side.
“She’s not here, Lamb,” she said. Her voice still had that note to it, like the quaver of someone who was on the verge of tears, but very dangerous.
The glassblower looked over cover, aimed, and fired. Hit home.
Yet the Twin didn’t seem to care. Blood welled out of the wound. She’d finished reloading, aimed, and fired.
The cover the glassblower was behind wasn’t quite good enough. The woman shrieked, splinters and a bullet catching her upper arm.
The Twin raised her fingers to her mouth. She whistled, tremolo, like a bird’s song.
The whistle reminded me of the noise the younger twins had made. A twin language, shared among the four.
I heard the answer, distant. A different sort of song.
“She found your friend. He’s secured,” the twin said.
No. I well and truly believed her.
“Now I’m going to break you. I want you to be aware as I take your fellow Lamb to pieces, the Duke’s orders be damned. He played a part in this, and nobody that hurts a proper noble can be suffered to live,” she told me. Her voice was getting unsteadier by the moment, as if the breaking point would be within the next few words, only it didn’t break. She sounded positively unhinged, now.
I seriously contemplated raising the question of whether she was a proper noble. If I called her a bastard now, what would she do? Would she break?
If she would, I didn’t want to see it.
“…Then I’m going to take your remaining eye, and I’m going to send you to the Richmond home. Every moment of pain and heartbreak we feel for our little sisters will be returned to you tenfold.”
I closed my eyes.
There were slim few ways out of this, and all the ones that sprung to mind involved sacrificial pawns. Sacrificing one of the surviving five members of our group of ten.
“One of them is alive,” I said. “We left her back there, dying.”
“Cry wolf one more time, Lamb, try it.”
I hadn’t expected that would work. It was hard to steer someone like her off course, when all she wanted was revenge.
She was drawing closer. I would have to run for it, and I doubted I would get away.
“If the rest of you would like a life |
discrete way of telling us who is calling, but its effectiveness is reduced if the phone isn’t placed on a glass or reflective surface – since the colors won’t be able to bounce off surfaces so much to produce its light show.At the end of the day, the dual-curved display is here on the Galaxy S6 edge mostly for the aesthetics.On Tuesday evening, in the East Room of the White House in prime time, President Trump tapped Neil Gorsuch as his nominee to the Supreme Court. The court has had a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia nearly a year ago.
Gorsuch is a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Denver-based federal court that covers Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, as well as the portions of Yellowstone National Park that extend into Montana and Idaho. He was appointed to the position by George W. Bush in 2006 and was confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote.
He attended Harvard Law School, as well as Columbia and Oxford, and clerked for Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court. (White retired in 1993 and died in 2002.) It’s the sort of gleaming ivory C.V. that was largely absent from the rest of Trump’s shortlist. Academically, Gorsuch would fit right in: Every current justice attended law school at either Harvard or Yale. But if he’s confirmed, it would be the first time a justice and his former clerk sat together on the Supreme Court. Gorsuch is 49. The youngest member of the current court, Justice Elena Kagan, is 56.
Ideologically, Gorsuch would almost certainly represent a reliably conservative vote and voice, restoring the tenuous balance on the court that existed before Scalia’s death. According to ”judicial common space” scores, developed by a team of political scientists and legal scholars, Gorsuch would be the most conservative justice save for the silent stalwart Justice Clarence Thomas and would sit somewhere just to the right of the ideological space occupied by Scalia.
Trump promised to nominate justices “very much in the mold” of Scalia, and Gorsuch seems to fit the chair. A recent working paper by a group of attorneys and academics tried to gauge the “Scalia-ness” of several potential Trump nominees. Gorsuch did well in the lookalike contest. Like Scalia’s, his opinions were especially likely to invoke originalism — the idea that, rather than an evolving document, the meaning of the Constitution was fixed at its enactment.
Beyond the statistics, Gorsuch’s judicial record ticks many conservative boxes. As SCOTUSblog explained, many of his high-profile cases have involved religion. He sided with Hobby Lobby, which viewed contraception as immoral, in a case related to the Affordable Care Act and has opposed limiting religious expression in public spaces. He has not been sympathetic to death penalty defendants and has endorsed Second Amendment rights. He’s also written a book that, according to its publisher, “builds a … powerful moral and legal argument against legalization” of assisted suicide and euthanasia, based on “the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable.” Some have used that argument as a window into his future views in abortion cases.
Gorsuch may be skeptical of recent progressive victories won at the high court. “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box,” he wrote in National Review in 2005, praising the words of a Washington Post columnist, and specifically citing same-sex marriage. “This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary.”
The empirics aren’t perfect, and Supreme Court nominees can surprise after they take their place on the bench. Former Justice David Souter, for example, was appointed by George H.W. Bush yet became reliably liberal. Kennedy, often considered the court’s moderate median, was appointed by Ronald Reagan. And while Gorsuch is the youngest nominee since Thomas, there is evidence that justices get more liberal as they get older — a trend not even Scalia was immune from.
Still, for now, Gorsuch has pretty unimpeachable conservative credentials. He also has a sterling résumé. Those two qualities have historically been important in how easily the nominee navigates the Senate confirmation process — senators are more likely to vote “yea” on better qualified and more moderate nominees.
One other thing to keep an eye on in the coming weeks that could also affect Gorsuch’s chances of making it to the bench: public opinion. Qualifications and ideology matter, but a nominee’s approval rating also has some predictive power. Robert Bork, for example, had a net approval rating of -11 percentage points at the time of his confirmation vote in 1987 and got far fewer votes than one would expect given his ideology and experience. Thomas was likely confirmed (albeit barely) despite the Anita Hill controversy, in part, because his net approval rating was +36 percentage points.
The key question is whether Gorsuch ends up with a net approval rating closer to Trump’s (-8 percentage points) or closer to the average Republican Supreme Court nominee over the past 25 years (+25 percentage points). If his approval rating is closer to Trump’s, Gorsuch could have a difficult time corralling the 60 votes in the Senate necessary to overcome a filibuster. If his approval rating is closer to the historical average, his confirmation is far more likely. We can see this by rerunning our Supreme Court model (you can read more details about that here) with the current Senate makeup and see how many votes the most recent five confirmed Republican nominees would get:
EXPECTED SENATE “YES” VOTES FOR A NOMINEE WITH NET APPROVAL RATING EQUAL TO … NOMINEES TRUMP’S AVERAGE FOR REPUBLICAN NOMINEES IN LAST 25 YEARS DIFFERENCE Anthony Kennedy 61 81 +20 David Souter 56 68 +12 Clarence Thomas 48 52 +4 John Roberts 55 65 +10 Samuel Alito 52 57 +5 Public approval of the nominee influences the Senate vote
The only nominee who would be predicted to get more than 60 votes with an approval rating equal to Trump’s would be Anthony Kennedy, who at the time of his nomination was seen as well-qualified and far more moderate than Gorsuch is. Compare that to a nominee with an average approval rating. All the previous nominees with the exception of Thomas, who was far, far less qualified than Gorsuch, would get about 60 “yea” votes or more in this situation. And given that there may be a few Democratic senators who vote “no” and still vote to end any filibuster, it’s likely that any nominee with an average approval rating will be confirmed.
VIDEO: Nate Silver on Trump’s immigration orderOh yeah Oh yeah yeah!
I am moving the prototype version of the 37 hr coded ‘You are, A Shadow‘ into development phase.
Why?
Because we accidentally showed it off at Casual Connect Asia, Singapore and people LOVED it!
Infact, they loved it more than our main showcase game.. What an Irony!
Note: Yes, I know I’m pending a blog post on our Casual Connect experience.. just waiting for pics from different cameras. Argh! :X
Back to topic, I promised people and fans at the showcase that I will give them an expanded version with more mind fuck
Also, a mobile friendly build will be released, so you can enjoy the game with touch / without keyboard.
I will start off by providing the current prototype build playable on Facebook(hopefully finish this weekend) and then regularly release expansion updates later.
But first, let’s give it to these brave and cool people who posed with their scores
I am very thankful to everyone who played the game, gave feedback and loved/hated it. (Don’t remember anyone hating it though)
Will work hard and give you more fun in the expanded version… watch out and save yourself from scores!A young Wellington woman raped by a bouncer in an alleyway could have "closed her legs" if she didn't want sex, the man's lawyer told a jury.
Keith Jefferies was addressing the Wellington District Court in defence of George Jason Pule, who was found guilty last night of raping the drunk 20-year-old after telling her he could help get her into a club to see her friends.
His comments were condemned after the verdict as "disgusting" and "disrespectful" by Wellington Rape Crisis manager Natalie Gousmett.
They come in the wake of the Roast Busters scandal, in which a group of young Auckland men boasted online of having sex with drunken girls as young as 13.
Jefferies told the jury that the complainant and Pule, 34, a bouncer at The Establishment bar, had walked down Courtenay Place holding hands before having consensual sex in the early hours of October 22, 2011.
He claimed the woman made a false complaint to police six days later because she regretted the sex. There was no struggle or any threats, nor was there violence, Jefferies said in his closing arguments yesterday.
"All she would have had to do was to close her legs... it's as simple as that," he told the jury. "Why didn't she do that?... The reason she didn't do that was because the sex was consensual, as easy as that."
Gousmett said Jefferies' remarks were unacceptable. "It's disgusting, but also unnecessary, to use that kind of victim-blaming rhetoric."
Jefferies said after the verdict that his comments were made as part of the defence, and were not his personal view.
"This is the defence of a criminal charge. The Crown and the judge didn't complain about it."
The case revolved around whether sex was consensual, which made the complainant's position important, he said.
"The accused was of the view there was an element of willingness from the accuser, and that she was a willing partner. What I say to the jury doesn't represent my personal view. It merely represents the defence."
Crown prosecutor Geraldine Kelly said in court that the complainant held Pule's hand as they walked down Courtenay Place only because she "thought he was her saviour".
When he tried to kiss and grope her she clearly said no, and was clearly saying no as he bent her against a wall and raped her.
"No, she didn't fight back, she didn't scream her head off, she didn't go running into the street screaming ‘Rape!' But this isn't an American TV show," she said. "This is real life. She was scared, and she didn't want to make the situation worse."
Kelly said it was Pule who approached the woman in Courtenay Place when she was alone, and drunk on beer and vodka. Her friends had gone home earlier, but she had stayed in town with a co-worker and her sister.
The three women were in the line for The Establishment when the complainant realised she had left her ID with a friend who had gone home. She then decided to go home on her own, went to a bus stop, but realised she was also without her eftpos card or money.
When Pule approached her, she told him she needed to get into a bar to see her friends. He said he was a bouncer and could get her in, but had to pick something up first. He then led her towards Cuba St and raped her.Rumors are swirling that Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was one of the NFL stars expected to come out of the closet this summer, and a cyber sleuth site is all but confirming it with a wealth of dirt that suggests he’s also in a gay relationship.
The Fame Driven was apparently tipped off by an anonymous “spy,” who pointed to a number of now-deleted tweets from the Twitter account of Kevin Lanflisi, the man who worked as Rodgers’ “personal assistant” and lived in his home as “a roommate” for the last several years. (Kinda like Kerry Rhodes and his “friend”…)
According to the spy:
Aaron has attended numerous sports award shows with Kevin, always color coordinated and without any double female dates, including the ESPY’s. Kevin was also the first person Aaron embraced when the Packers won the Super-bowl in 2011. I just find it really strange that as of late there has been many bitter subliminal tweets on Kevin Lanflisi’s twitter alluding to a relationship much deeper than a friendship he had, with who I perceive to be Aaron Rodgers, because Kevin has NEVER once tweeted about having a girlfriend, just mainly about the Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers, and Justin Bieber’s music and sitting front row at Bieber’s concert. There has been speculation for years here in Wisconsin that Aaron is gay.
Rodgers first referred to the super-cute Lanflisi as his “roommate” in a 2008 interview with Sporting News, saying they “just hit it off” when Lanflisi was interning for the Packers. “He’s been great for me as far as great conversations outside of football,” he said. “Our friendship goes a lot deeper than what we do.”
A friendship that apparently also came with a ring! And not just any ring—the prestigious Super Bowl MVP ring which was awarded to Rodgers in 2011. Lanflisi tweeted photos of himself wearing the ring once Rodgers brought it to their shared home.
Shortly after, Rodgers told MilwaukeeMag that he based friendships with other celebrities on whether or not they accepted his “personal assistant/roommate”:
“I kind of judge how those people are based on how they are to people like Kevin,” Rodgers explains. “Kevin, he’s not a famous person. I want to see if they give Kevin the time of day, or if they big-time him.”
A source close to the couple also claimed their relationship is now in turmoil as a result of the botched mass NFL outing scheduled over the summer. Aaron Rodgers was allegedly one of the men involved, and his backing out at the last minute infuriated Lanflisi, shattering their relationship.
If their rumored relationship is actually fact, the truth could come sooner than we’d have thought. In the words of Kevin Lanflisi himself, “Silence always comes with an expiration date..”Members of Congress are listening to you.
Yesterday the U.S. House rejected a nearly trillion-dollar food stamp and farm bill — an important victory for taxpayers and a stinging rebuke for the Washington establishment.
Sixty-two Republicans bucked their own party to vote against the bloated bill. Coupled with a large bloc of Democrats who wanted more spending on food stamps, the bipartisan opposition was enough to sink the measure. It’s unclear if or when House leaders will bring the bill back to the floor for a vote.
Remember, there are no permanent victories in Washington. But this is one for conservatives to celebrate as a win for taxpayers and a reaffirmation of fiscal responsibility.
Rejection of the farm bill also has significant implications for the debate happening on immigration reform. As senators continue to play political games to justify their support for amnesty, conservatives in the House will no doubt look to the farm bill debate as an indication of what can happen when the American people are informed and engaged.
Nearly a year ago, Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham and Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the unholy alliance between food stamps and agriculture policy must end.
Congress failed to take that advice, preferring to stick with the status quo. The farm bill was not only loaded with expensive programs and subsidies, but it would have also locked in President Obama’s massive expansion of spending on food stamps.
Stutzman, a fourth-generation farmer from Indiana, commented after the vote:
Hoosiers sent me here to change the way Washington works and I’m pleased that my colleagues have joined me in rejecting the old path of business as usual. While it might have been called a ‘Farm Bill,’ the American people understand that it was anything but.
Lawmakers now have a chance to get it right. They would be wise to refocus their efforts on real reforms to our antiquated farm policy and food stamp program. That begins by splitting the farm bill into separate legislation on agriculture and food stamp policy.
Taxpayers have seen enough wasteful and reckless spending come out of Washington. They are tired of the backroom deals and political grandstanding.
The immigration debate playing out in the Senate exemplifies the worst of Washington. A “gang” orchestrated by liberal Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has developed a plan that would cost taxpayers trillions and ensure more illegal immigration in the future.
As the debate moves to a critical stage, senators are considering a border-security amendment that has Obama’s blessing. It won’t fix the legislation. Any bill that guarantees amnesty — as the Gang of Eight’s does — fundamentally undermines efforts to secure the border. Yet some Republicans appear eager to endorse a weak border-security plan now for the political cover to support amnesty later.
But not if you have anything to say about it.
Earlier this week, thousands of tea-party activists rallied on Capitol Hill. Many were there to send a message on immigration. Watch our short video below to see how conservatives are standing up to be heard.
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Quick Hits:POLITICAL jokes travel farther than ever before. Last year the Onion, a satirical magazine in America, declared Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s round-faced leader, the “sexiest man alive”. The People’s Daily newspaper in China took the nomination seriously and ran a 55-photo spread to celebrate the honour. When the Onion published a fake poll announcing that rural white Americans had a more favourable opinion of Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than of Barack Obama, an Iranian state news-agency covered this as real news. Lots of people are less ingenuously looking at the Onion to entertain themselves. In the past year its web traffic has grown by around 70%.
Political satire used to be the preserve of artists and writers like Honoré Daumier, who caricatured King Louis Philippe in 19th-century France, and George Orwell, the author of “Animal Farm”. It has existed at least since Aristophanes took aim at the Greek elite in his plays, but thanks to modern technology and a changing political climate it is almost everywhere today. The internet has made it easier for the masses to join in the fun. Cartoons and lampoons can be posted online, no longer needing a print publication to host them. Social media have helped political sideswipes to spread as contagiously as laughter, and have fostered a “remix culture” in which internet-users share memes and post spoofs with abandon.
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The internet has also made it easier for satirists to bypass censors and stay anonymous. The Pan-Arabia Enquirer, a Middle Eastern satirical news site, is run by a nameless editor. Satirists enjoy a global reach they never would have had otherwise. Jon Stewart, an American who hosts “The Daily Show”, a humorous news programme on the Comedy Central channel (pictured above), has inspired copycat shows abroad, including one by Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian heart surgeon, who started posting videos on YouTube; they became so popular that he was given a slot on an Egyptian television channel.
Satire is still flourishing where it was born: in theatres. “The Book of Mormon”, a musical making fun of Mormonism, has broken box-office records in America and Britain. But innovation mainly happens online. When Wendy Davis, a Texas state senator, spent 10 hours on her feet filibustering a bill that aimed to restrict abortion, her supporters turned to Amazon, the online retailer, to skewer opponents. One product review of the Mizuno running footwear worn by Ms Davis that day says it “fits perfectly up a Republican’s rear end”. KermlinRussia, a Twitter account, mocks Russian government news releases.
Once such pronouncements were honed in satirical essays. Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Fathers, gave humorous advice to the British government in 1773 when he penned “Rules by which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One”. Such essays are experiencing a resurgence of sorts. A recent cartoon essay hosted on CNN’s website by Matt Bors about youths facing discrimination from their elders was shared avidly across social media.
In authoritarian countries coded images, rather than words, are a common form of satirical dissidence, not least because they have a greater chance of evading censors. On the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June, Weibo, China’s microblogging site, was filled with photos of yellow plastic ducks in an empty square in Beijing. They went viral before censors intervened, blocking the phrase “big yellow duck” from search results. When CNN’s Turkish channel decided to show a documentary about penguins that month rather than cover big protests in Istanbul’s Gezi park, penguins shuffled across social media sites.
New technology is not the only explanation for today’s satire boom. Political change, including a worldwide move towards democracy, is helping too. Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, thinks satire is doing particularly well in the “middle ground”—in countries where freedom of expression is constrained enough to outrage people but where political repression is not so severe as to crush people’s ability to communicate relatively freely. Regime change brought about by the Arab spring has sparked a new season of creative and daring cartooning (see article). According to Andrei Richter of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Institute, a think-tank, the internet may also have made politicians more accustomed to ridicule and less likely to bring charges against satirists, since they can see their competitors are being pilloried too.
Still, many satirists in countries with humourless governments, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, struggle to express themselves. They are routinely jailed, kidnapped and threatened, says Bro Russell of Cartoonist Rights International, an advocacy group. Some countries are trying to rewrite laws to make it easier to crack down online.
And while the internet may have boosted satire in general, it has also made it harder for practitioners to make a living from it. This is particularly true for professional cartoonists. Their numbers have dwindled as newspapers have gone under or cut staff. American papers employed around 2,000 full-time editorial cartoonists a century ago. By 2010 only 40 were left; most work is done by freelancers. Their best (and often only) paycheques come from cartoons that sell nationally. Thus local politics now rarely attracts their attention. The most successful cartoonists run their own websites and sell merchandise such as mugs and T-shirts. But that is rarely lucrative. Tjeerd Royaards of the Cartoon Movement, an online publisher, says, “There are more cartoonists in the world, but more part-time cartoonists.”
It is not just politicians who find aspects of the explosion in satire unwelcome. Thanks to the internet, professional purveyors of the stuff face a lot more competition. For once, the joke is at their expense. A niche craft practised by a talented few has turned into a globally popular hobby, and what was once considered audacious commentary is now mainstream. Satirists used to shock people, says Charlie Beckett, a media professor at the London School of Economics. But they have lost impact, no matter how vicious or personal. “Everyone is rude on the internet.”Donald Trump. AP Photo/Seth Perlman Donald Trump is the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee.
Trump delivered Ted Cruz a knockout blow on Tuesday night, winning Indiana's primary while the senator dropped out of the race, conceding there was no longer a path to victory.
Multiple outlets projected shortly after polls closed on Tuesday that Trump would win the Hoosier State's primary.
"Thank you Indiana, we were just projected to be the winner. We have won in every category. You are very special people-I will never forget!" Trump tweeted after his victory.
The GOP frontrunner led in Indiana by almost 20 points over Cruz, a Texas senator, with about 27% of precincts reporting. John Kasich, the Ohio governor, finished a distant third.
The win put Trump on a glide path to obtain the needed 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination. Both The Associated Press and NBC News gave Trump at least 45 of the 57 delegates available in the state. With those delegates counted, Trump stood less than 200 delegates away from securing the GOP nomination.
Late last month, almost all projections forecast that Indiana would be a tough draw for Trump, as well as a must-win yet favorable state for Cruz.
The script flipped in the week leading up to the crucial vote, with Trump soaring ahead in the polls while picking up key endorsements, such as Bobby Knight, the legendary former Indiana University men's basketball coach.
A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump held a gigantic 15-point lead over the Texas senator. FiveThirtyEight gave Trump an 83% chance of winning the state based on its polls-plus model, and a 97% chance of winning based on its polls-only projection.
Trump assured supporters during a Monday rally that his campaign is "way ahead of projection" and that he would secure the Republican presidential nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in July.
"But if we win Indiana," he added, "it's over."
Knowing that the state could be the last stand of the "Never Trump" movement, Cruz and anti-Trump forces had gone all out to stop him. Cruz began last week by cutting an unprecedented deal with Kasich.
The deal called for Kasich's campaign to pull out of Indiana, in hopes that his absence would give Cruz the boost he needed to pick up the crucial win. In exchange, Cruz would recede from Oregon and New Mexico, which hold contests later in the nominating process.
But less than a week after the deal was announced by both campaigns, the agreement had already collapsed.
The deal wasn't Cruz's only attempt at shifting Hoosier State polls, which showed that Trump held a more than 10-point average advantage leading up to the vote.
Last Wednesday, the Texas senator made another rare announcement. He named Carly Fiorina, an ex-presidential hopeful and the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, as his running mate should he win the GOP nomination. Cruz and Kasich are mathematically eliminated from securing the nomination ahead of the convention, so their potential nominations would have to come from subsequent ballots.
Trump chastised Cruz for that move as well, calling it a "waste of time."
Based on the results in the state, both moves failed.
"We left it all on the field Indiana, we gave it everything we've got," Cruz told supporters Tuesday night. "But the voters chose another path."Though he may have been symbiote-less, Eddie Brock has been back in the vicinity of Venom for a while now. A recurring character in 2012's Venom: The Savage Six storyline, which starred Flash Thompson as the titular terror, he returned in 2015's Carnage, a blood-soaked cross country road trip starring Marvel's second symbiotic psychopath. With the end of Venom: Space Knight, the editorial team saw an exciting moment to bring Venom back down to earth. Literally. "There was an opportunity we saw, not only to put Venom back on Earth, but also to re-centralize him as a Spider-Man villain," explained Devin Lewis.
As our exclusive artwork by Clayton Crain shows (click the image to see a larger version), the character roster for this miniseries is a deep dive into all things Venom. The epic image will actually make up five interlocking covers featuring venomized versions of beloved characters both new and old, from fresh additions like Laura Kinney's All-New Wolverine to deep cut classics like the Venomsaurus Rex from Old Man Logan. Venomverse is throwing fans headfirst into a whole world of symbiote-suited superheroes, led by none other than Eddie Brock himself.
With a huge cast of characters and a figure as notorious as Venom smack bang in the middle, a lot of thought went into exactly who would be bonding with the infamous alien parasites. "Part of picking this cast was definitely thinking about who readers would be most excited to see," said Cullen Bunn, "but another part of it--something that I've always found important--is how the Venom symbiote interacts with other hosts. What's really exciting is that we get to see this with characters you'd never expect, like Black Panther, Mary Jane, and Old Man Logan."
When your protagonist is an anti-hero with a powerset that makes him almost invincible, you have create some pretty atrocious antagonists. With the Poisons, Marvel has gone full dark, no stars. Devin Lewis explained that "the Poisons will present a unique challenge for these Venoms, who're some of the strongest and most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe. They're nature's answer to the symbiotes." A completely new addition to Marvel canon and based on character designs by Ed McGuinness, the Poisons are set to be an integral part of Venomverse, one that could have a potentially harrowing impact on the symbiote super team.
What can fans expect from Venomverse? "There are definitely some horrific moments in this series, not just the gross-out or the jump scare. I think there's some real emotional horror aspects to this story. The threat they're dealing with has some pretty strong horror chops," elaborated Bunn. He's no stranger to horror comics, with his popular Southern Gothic witch comic, Harrow County, and his new book, Regression. Bunn plans to return Eddie Brock to his horror roots whilst also exploring the sci-fi origin of the symbiote itself. "For me, just because we're dealing with the symbiotes in general, there's a heavy science fiction element to this story," Bunn explained. "It's heavily rooted in some sci-fi horror inspiration."
Though Venomverse will have its darker influences, the inclusion of characters like the Venom from Spider-Ham's universe, Pork Grind, and everyone's favorite wisecracking Merc With a Mouth, Deadpool, hint that the event will also be one that's fun. It harkens back to the '90s era of extreme comics, placing these classic characters on one wild ride. "Cullen has done an incredible job of lacing every script with fun, bombastic energy. Deadpool is one of our main venomized protagonists. He's got so much heart and he's also a source of unpredictability, insanity, and goofiness," said Lewis.
The story will put a number of unexpected characters into symbiote suits, including Guardians of the Galaxy's very own Rocket Raccoon and the Spirit of Vengeance himself, Ghost Rider. "I think Ghost Rider is a great representation of where this series can go," said Bunn. "I don't know that anyone would ever expect to see Ghost Rider in a symbiote suit, so I think he's the perfect example of how this series will go into some real unexpected territory."
The main Venomverse book is a complete story but there's also Edge of Venomverse, which will see more of Marvel's most famous characters getting venomized. With a roster of exciting creators including Si Spurrier, Tigh Walker, Clay McLeod Chapman, James Stokoe, and Ryan Key of Yellowcard, Edge of Venomverse tie-ins are bound to get fans pumped. Alongside the release of Venomverse #1, there'll also be an anthology comic called Venomverse: War Stories, including a venomized Punisher issue written and drawn by Declan Shalvey.
The creative team believes this is a story bigger than just Brock's past. "Eddie's not a hero, but he is the Venom that's most needed at this moment. This story will show why he's the best Venom that there is," Bunn said. With an event book, it's easy to imagine that it'll all be about the action. But Devin Lewis assured us that Venomverse is so much more. "The story that Cullen's managed to craft here is absolutely terrific. As much as it's about the symbiotes and the Poisons, it's also about identity and trust. Cullen's managed to make this an epic story in scope and an intimate story in regards to character."
Venomverse #1 hits stores the first week of September, but you can pick up Edge of Venomverse #1 in your local comic shop on June 28th. It's clear that for Bunn and Lewis, this is one of the most exciting books they've ever worked on. "To be involved in something so epic in scale, it's an opportunity I wouldn't have passed up in a million years," Bunn said. Lewis implored that "Venomverse really is one of the most rewarding stories I've ever read as a Venom fan."
So will you be adding Venomverse to your pull list? Are you excited to see Eddie back in the symbiote suit? Swing into the comments and let us know.
Images: Marvel ComicsSony’s Andrew House Found Microsoft’s Response to the PS4 Pro “Quite Intriguing”
After the PlayStation 4 Pro was announced, the official Xbox Twitter account reminded everyone that the Xbox One S includes a 4K Blu-ray player – something the PS4 Pro lacks – and Microsoft’s Albert Penello talked about how he believes next year’s Project Scorpio will be the “most powerful box.” In a new interview with Digital Spy, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Andrew House was asked about Microsoft’s response:
I thought it was quite intriguing given that we’d seen a year of stories about “a new and different Microsoft” in terms of their attitude towards the competition.
House added, “That was rather short lived, wasn’t it?” when Digital Spy brought up the new and gentler politics of recent years.
Although the official Xbox Twitter accounts and some executives made these comments, Xbox boss Phil Spencer mentioned that he prefers things to be more civil. “I’ve been public about my dislike of the negative dialog. We should stay focused on what we are building for Xbox gamers,” he wrote on Twitter.
Elsewhere in the Digital Spy interview, House mentioned that the lack of a 4K Blu-ray player in the PS4 Pro doesn’t necessarily mean the start of a digital-only future, they just noticed that streaming is beating physical media 5:1 on PS4:
No, I don’t think one should read into it that way. If you look at our current business, we see very stable sales of packaged media when it comes to games. On the other hand, when I look at other ways people are using their PS4 – video content is absolutely the number two use of people’s time on the console. But it is 5:1 in favor of streaming video versus packaged media. We looked at that and said that’s probably where we should place our emphasis. But I don’t think you should extrapolate out from that to say that’s now going to change our philosophy around other areas of the business.
House added that it’s “to be determined” if the PS4 Pro will support Sony’s Ultra Streaming service, and the $400 USD system is being targeted “towards someone who is probably pretty knowledgeable and committed in the kind of entertainment they want.”
As for the 4K gaming PS4 Pro will provide, and whether it’s native or upscaled, House said, “I would say the majority will be upscaled – at least based on the game portfolio I have seen to date.” Asked if he feels like ‘4K gaming’ is a misleading term, House replied:
No, I don’t think so. I think that whatever the term is, it’s a question of whether people see a demonstrable difference in the game experience or not, rather than the term we use to apply to it. I think that’s what people are looking for and they’ll make their judgement as to whether that’s working for them or not.
So far, games confirmed to support native 4K on PS4 Pro include The Last of Us Remastered, Mantis Burn Racing, and The Elder Scrolls Online.
[Source: Digital Spy via VideoGamer]The Community of the Wrongfully Accused blog ( COWTA ) A blog dedicated and created to advocate for men wrongfully accused of rape has for some reason, adopted "the narrative" on the death of convicted felon Freddie Gray.
In order to defend men's rights vis-a-vis false accusation of sexual assault, COWTA surrenders white men to sacrifice on the altar of false accusations of racism and excessive force.
COWTA May 1, 2015 Baltimore, Baltimore, Baltimore It is just awful — and terribly unfair — that Baltimore has been tarnished by the Freddie Gray incident. Tourists should have no fear about visiting the historic town, including the world famous Inner Harbor. After all, you probably won't get your spine severed unless you're a black male and you do something terribly stupid, like make eye contact with a police officer.[More]
For a blog that usually gets so much correct, it is shocking that in one paragraph of a mere two sentences, the writer gets so much wrong, and falsely accuses 5 male police officers of heinous crimes with absolutely no evidence.
First, and astoundingly, the defender of male victims of false accusations of rape has decided that Baltimore is a safe place unless you cross the cops. Well, that is not true. Crime in Baltimore is rampant and its one of the top ten most dangerous big cities in the United States. And the Color of Crime in Bulletimore is black.
Second, Freddie Gray did not have his "spine severed," but died when his head struck a bolt on the wall of a police van.
The Daily Dot, April 30, 2015, by Dell Cameron Leaked Autopsy Sheds New Light On Freddie Gray's Death An unnamed law enforcement source says that Gray, whose death sparked protests in Baltimore and cities around the country this week, was instead killed by injuries that occurred after he was placed unrestrained into the back of a police transport vehicle. A medical examiner found that the injury happened when Gray’s head slammed into the back of the police van, according to the report. The head injury he sustained apparently matches a bolt in the rear of the vehicle.
So, Freddie Gray died not because he made eye-contact with a police officer, but because of an accident due to not having been seat-belted in.
Furthermore, COWTA claims that Bulletimore's Inner Harbor is safe for tourists. But, in fact, Inner Harbor is being targeted by black gangs seeking white victims.
WND May 18, 2012 by Colin Flaherty Call For Crackdown On Black-On-White Terror A state lawmaker in Maryland, concerned about “black youths” who are “terrorizing” Baltimore’s upscale Inner Harbor, wants the governor to send in state troopers to make the area safe. Pat McDonough, a member of the Maryland legislature, has been accused of launching a “racially tinged publicity stunt” but stands by his comments. “The Inner Harbor is a dangerous place for residents and visitors,” said McDonough. “And it does us no good to avoid this hard truth: Black youth are responsible for a sustained and dangerous period of violence in one of Baltimore’s nicest neighborhoods.” The most recent episode of racial violence happened on St. Patrick’s Day |
hover). However, if you want to transition to start after it is triggered you can use the transition delay property.
See the Pen Transition Delay Example by Rachel Cope (@rachelcope) on CodePen.
Shorthand example:
div { transition : all 3s 1s ; }
A negative value will start the transition immediately, but part way through the transition process.
Now that we reviewed how to make smooth and gradual transitions, let’s look at CSS transforms - how to make an element change from one state to another. With the CSS transform property you can rotate, move, skew, and scale elements. (This post will only cover 2D transforms, but stay tuned for future blog posts on 3D transforms.)
Transforms are triggered when an element changes states, such as on mouse-hover or mouse-click. The examples in this post will demonstrate transforms on mouse-hover.
For simplicity, I’ll only be using the unprefixed versions in my examples. However, you may want to include prefixes to ensure it works in modern browsers.
The scale value allows you to increase or decrease the size of an element.
For example, the value 2 would transform the size to be 2 times its original size. The value 0.5 would transform the size to be half its original size.
See the Pen Transform: Scale by Rachel Cope (@rachelcope) on CodePen.
You can scale an element by setting parameters for the width (X-axis) or height (Y-axis). For example, transform: scaleX(2).
Or, use the scale() shorthand to scale both axes at the same time: transform: scale(2);. Or define them independently of each other: transform: scale(2, 4);
CSS syntax example
Don’t forget to add a transition! Without applying transition, the element would abruptly change sizes. Add the transition to the parent selector (not the hover selector). To make the transition smooth on both hover-over/hover-off.
div { transition : transform 1s ; } div :hover { transform : scale ( 2 ); }
With the rotate value, the element rotates clockwise or counterclockwise by a specified number of degrees. A positive value, such as 90deg, rotates the element clockwise, while a negative value, such as -90deg, rotates it counterclockwise.
See the Pen Transform Rotate Example by Rachel Cope (@rachelcope) on CodePen.
You can rotate more than a full rotation with numbers over than 360, such as 1080deg, for three full rotations.
CSS syntax example
div { transition : transform 1s ; } div :hover { transform : rotate ( 1080deg ); }
The translate value moves an element left/right and up/down. The movement is based on the parameters given for the X (horizontal) Y (vertical) axes.
A positive X value moves the element to the right, while a negative X moves the element to the left. A positive Y value moves the element downwards and a negative Y value, upwards.
In this example, the element will move 20 pixels to the right and 20 pixels down.
See the Pen Transform: Translate by Rachel Cope (@rachelcope) on CodePen.
CSS syntax example:
div { transition : transform 1s ; } div :hover { transform : translate ( 20px, 20px ); }
With the skew value, the element skews (or tilts) one direction or the other based on the values given for the X and Y axes.
See the Pen Transform: Skew by Rachel Cope (@rachelcope) on CodePen.
A positive X value tilts the element left, while a negative X value tilts it right. A positive Y value tilts the element down, and a negative Y value tilts is up. Or use a shorthand to include both X and Y properties:
CSS syntax examples:
div { transform : skewX ( 25deg ); transform : skewY ( 10deg ); transform : skew ( 25deg, 10deg ); }
div { transition : transform 1s ; } div :hover { transform : skewX ( -20px ); }
Note: Skewing an element will also skew all of the children inside of the element as well. If you need to maintain the original angle of a child element, you can use the opposite value of skew to bring it back.
The transform-origin property is separate from the transform property but works in tandem with it. It allows you to specify the location origin of the transform. By default, the origin is in the center of the element.
For example, if you are using the transform: rotate property but want it to rotate not from the center, but from the top left corner, you’d use the value 0% 0% or left top. For the bottom right corner, you would use 0% 100% or right bottom, etc.
See the Pen Transform Origin Example by Rachel Cope (@rachelcope) on CodePen.
Make sure to add the transform-origin property to the parent element, not with the transform property in the hover selector.
div { transform-origin : left top ; transition : transform 1s ; } div :hover { transform : rotate ( 720deg ); }
You can combine multiple transforms by using the transform shorthand or the matrix method.
Shorthand
The transform shorthand allows you to string the various transform methods into one property.
div { transform : rotate ( 90deg ) scale ( 2 ) translateY ( -50% ) translateX ( 50% ); }
See the Pen Combining Transforms by Rachel Cope (@rachelcope) on CodePen.
Matrix
The matrix method allows you to combine the scale, skew, and translate properties into one using a coordinate system. This can be very useful for manipulating transforms with a javascript library but is very difficult to do by hand. You can read more about the matrix method and coordinates.
Next, take what you’ve learned here and combine CSS transforms with CSS animations to create more complex animations and interactions - Beginner’s Guide to CSS Animations.It’s solidly November, but the weather here still changes throughout each week. We’re prepared for anything, from winter-coat winds to days where you accidentally leave your jacket at work.
And speaking of work, I’ve been trying to take a lunch more often. This Sunday, I’m planning a meal prep session. I’m not sure what to cook yet, but I’ll probably make a soup, roasted veggies, a protein or two, and a crunchy salad. So I’ve been experimenting with apples and jicama, which are both easy to spiralize and pair well with the roasted root vegetables I’m planning to make.
The flavors in this salad are a bridge from early to late fall. Spiralized jicama and apples provide a juicy crunch, grapefruit adds a bitter note of winter citrus, and the sweet-spicy honey clove dressing brings spicy warmth.
Print Jicama Grapefruit Salad with Honey Clove Dressing Prep Time 10 minutes Total Time 10 minutes Servings 4 Ingredients Salad 1 medium jicama, peeled
1/2 honeycrisp apple, unpeeled
1 pink grapefruit - peeled, segmented, and diced Dressing 1/4 tsp grated ginger
1 tbsp honey
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp champagne vinegar
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil Instructions Spiralize the jicama and apple with the spaghetti blade. (If you don't have a spiralizer, they can be finely julienned.) Add the grapefruit. In a small bowl, whisk together dressing ingredients. Season with salt to taste. Pour dressing over jicama mixture and toss to combine. Serve chilled.
[sta_anchor id=”recipe” /]I've been saying for years that it's bad security advice, that it encourages poor passwords. Lorrie Cranor, now the FTC's chief technologist, agrees:
By studying the data, the researchers identified common techniques account holders used when they were required to change passwords. A password like "tarheels#1", for instance (excluding the quotation marks) frequently became "tArheels#1" after the first change, "taRheels#1" on the second change and so on. Or it might be changed to "tarheels#11" on the first change and "tarheels#111" on the second. Another common technique was to substitute a digit to make it "tarheels#2", "tarheels#3", and so on.
"The UNC researchers said if people have to change their passwords every 90 days, they tend to use a pattern and they do what we call a transformation," Cranor explained. "They take their old passwords, they change it in some small way, and they come up with a new password."
The researchers used the transformations they uncovered to develop algorithms that were able to predict changes with great accuracy. Then they simulated real-world cracking to see how well they performed. In online attacks, in which attackers try to make as many guesses as possible before the targeted network locks them out, the algorithm cracked 17 percent of the accounts in fewer than five attempts. In offline attacks performed on the recovered hashes using superfast computers, 41 percent of the changed passwords were cracked within three seconds.JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian militants planned to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb, security sources said, highlighting the rising ambitions of extremists to wreak destruction in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
FILE FOTO: Anti terror policemen stand beside goods seized from a house of suspected Islamist militants in Bandung, West Java province, Indonesia August 15, 2017 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Agus Bebeng via REUTERS/File Photo
But experts cast doubt on their expertise, equipment and chances of success.
The plot was foiled when police raided homes and arrested five suspects in Bandung, West Java, last week, the sources with direct knowledge of the plot said. After the raids, police spoke of a plan to explode a “chemical” bomb but provided no other details.
The plot comes as Indonesia grapples with an influx of militants deported from other countries and the fallout from the Islamic State-led siege in the southern Philippines city of Marawi that regional leaders and analysts worry has energized militants across Southeast Asia
The three counter-terrorism sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the militants had hoped to transform low-grade radioactive Thorium 232 (Th-232) into deadly Uranium 233 (U-233).
The highly radioactive uranium would be combined with the powerful home-made explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP) to create a “nuclear bomb”, according to an instruction manual used by the militants and reviewed by Reuters.
In fact, the device would be, at best, a radiological dispersal device or dirty bomb that could spray radioactive material when the conventional bomb exploded.
A spokesman for Indonesia’s national police, Inspector General Setyo Wasisto, declined to confirm or deny the plot to construct the device, but said it would have been more potent than the two bombs made from TATP that killed three police in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta in May.
“If this bomb was finished, it would have had a more destructive impact than the bomb made from ‘Mother of Satan’,” he said, using the nickname for TATP.
“It could burn anything and make it hard for people to breathe.”
Thorium-232 can be transformed into Uranium-233 but requires the Thorium to absorb a neutron, a process that needs powerful irradiation, generally from a nuclear reactor, according to three analysts contacted by Reuters and the website of the World Nuclear Association, which represents reactor vendors and nuclear engineers, among other industry stakeholders.
The militants’ manual advised an X-Ray machine or microwave be used instead.
“X rays would not have enough punch to overcome the binding energy of the Thorium atoms,” said Peter Hayes, an expert in radiological devices from the Nautilus Institute, in an email.
“And, no, you can’t cook Th-232 to make U-233 in a microwave and, if you could, you would have a painful and rapid death from the radioactive nature of the co-present U-232 produced alongside U-233.”
One senior Indonesian counter-terrorism source said the Bandung-based cell had bought a large amount of a household item and had begun to extract the Thorium. Reuters has chosen not to name the item.
“They needed three weeks. It was still only one week (into the process when police raided),” the source said.
“A MUSLIM’S DUTY”
Indonesia has suffered a series of mostly small attacks by extremists over the past 18 months, although police have disrupted many more.
Indonesian terrorism analyst Rakyan Adibrata fears militants have been inspired by the events in Marawi, where IS fighters continue to occupy part of the city despite a three-month offensive by Philippines force to re-take it.
“They don’t have the ability to occupy a city like has happened in Marawi, but they want to do something big that pleases their bosses in Islamic State,” said Adibrata.
A radiological bombing could fit the bill, although Adibrata said that it was highly unlikely that the Bandung cell had either “the equipment or the knowledge” to succeed.
Most of Indonesia’s recent attacks have involved members of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a pro-IS alliance of Indonesian militants. Many have been directed from Syria by an Indonesian national and JAD leader Bahrun Naim, according to police.
Naim is identified as the author on the front page of the 47-page Indonesian-language bomb instruction manual - named “Nuclear for Dummy” (sic) - and posted on a blog that has since been taken down.
“Mastering weaponry is essentially every Muslim’s duty,” it says.
“This paper, we hope, also can motivate the Muslim mujahideen to learn nuclear science easily and apply it.”
Last week, police said the militants had been working off Naim’s manual, but did not disclose its contents.
According to police, the suspected Bandung plotters were members of JAD and were considering targets like the presidential palace in Jakarta and police headquarters in Bandung and the capital.
Two of the five suspects are Indonesian migrant workers deported from Singapore and Hong Kong this year for posting radical Islamist material on social media.
They spent a month or less in a deradicalization shelter before joining up with the other militants, sources told Reuters.
About 177 Indonesian militants have been deported from other countries this year, according to Adibrata, citing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.8.8k SHARES Facebook Twitter Pinterest Google
Abd al-Qadir ibn Muhieddine al-Hasani was born on September 6, 1808, near the town of Mascara in an Algeria that was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Born into a religious family, he wanted to dedicate his life to God and live according to the principles of Sufism (Islam’s mystical dimension), but the role of emir (commander) was thrust upon him in 1830 when the French invaded Algeria. His resistance lasted until his surrender in 1847.
Terrorism can effectively sum up what the emir had to deal with when the French arrived. A Government Inquiry Commission report of 1883 was reported to have said: “We massacred people carrying [French] passports, in suspicion we slit the throats of entire populations who were later on proven to be innocent; the ears of Arabs were worth ten francs a pair and their women remained a perfect prey.” Entire villages, with men, women, and children, were burned to ashes.
But how did the emir respond to such cruelty? By firmly holding on to the laws of Islamic warfare. He was quoted to have said to his soldiers: “Every Arab who has in his possession a Frenchman is bound to treat him well and to conduct him to either the khalifa or the emir himself, as soon as possible. In cases where the prisoner complains of ill treatment, the Arab will have no right to any reward.“
Long before the Geneva conventions of the treatment of prisoners of war, the emir showed the world how to deal with even the harshest of enemies. He made sure that his prisoners had a Christian priest so that they could fulfill their spiritual needs and in one instance even freed some prisoners due to an inability to feed them. What I find most unbelievable is that he protected these very soldiers who had murdered so many innocent Algerians from enraged tribesmen who wanted to take revenge for the deaths of their family members. An eye for an eye did not exist in his world. Thus, many French soldiers converted to Islam and developed a deep love for him.
But it is his protection of Christians from the murderous mob of Muslims in Damascus, July 1860, that is most remembered.
“We were in consternation, all of us quite convinced that our last hour had arrived […]. In that expectation of death, in those indescribable moments of anguish, heaven, however, sent us a savior! Abd el-Kader appeared, surrounded by his Algerians, around forty of them. He was on horseback and without arms: his handsome figure calm and imposing made a strange contrast with the noise and disorder that reigned everywhere.”
— Le Siècle newspaper, 2 August 1869
For five days and nights he and his band of Algerians neither slept nor rested, battling out in the streets and guiding Christians to his large mansion where they could dwell in safety. By the time they were finished, they had managed to save over 15,000 Christians, the majority of which were the very same European people who had colonized his native land and were in the process of colonizing others. An Arab leader had, with his life, protected and saved the elite of Europe.
He was then conferred the highest French honor, the “Legion D’honneure.” But all he had to say was this: “The good that we did to the Christians was what we were obliged to do, out of fidelity to Islamic law and out of respect for the rights of humanity. For all creatures are the family of God, and those most beloved of God are those who are most beneficial to his family.”
What kind of teachings would have given a man such morals and values that he would risk his own life to protect the lives of the same people who had terrorized his own native land for years? The teachings of the Prophet:
“All the religions brought by the prophets, from Adam to Muhammad, rest upon two principles: the exaltation of God Most High, and compassion for His creatures. Apart from these two principles, there are but ramifications, the divergences of which are without importance. And the law of Muhammad is, among all doctrines, that which shows itself most attached to, and most respectful of, compassion and mercy. But those who belong to the religion of Muhammad have caused it to deviate.”
Indeed, the deviation is in full effect. But I hope with all my heart that the example of this brave man can serve to help to end the radicalization of our Muslim youth, teach something positive to those who malign and attack Islam, and finally, make us proud of our Islamic heritage.
This article is written by Joey Belmondo.Suspected links between Prince’s death and prescription narcotics come amid an opioid abuse epidemic in Minnesota that worsened last year, according to a Star Tribune review of new state death certificate data.
State records show 336 deaths last year linked to excessive or abusive use of prescription opioids, such as oxycodone, or illicit opioids, such as heroin. That is six times higher than the opioid-related deaths in 2000, and an increase from 313 deaths in 2014.
Two-thirds of the deaths involved legal painkillers or the addiction treatment methadone, which can help wean drug abusers off opioids but is addictive itself.
Ongoing autopsy and toxicology testing will determine whether Prince’s April 21 death was related to opioids, but law enforcement sources have told the Star Tribune that they found opioids at Prince’s Paisley Park complex and that they are investigating how he received them. Sources also said Prince overdosed on an opioid medication six days earlier, forcing his plane to divert to Moline, Ill., where he received an emergency dose of Narcan to counteract the drug.
“If his death was due to prescriptions alone, then this confirms the message I have been saying for years, which is [that] all these drugs are basically heroin,” said Dr. Christopher Johnson, an ER physician directing a state work group to reduce unnecessary opioid prescribing.
Johnson added “that to continue to think of prescribed opiates as ‘safe,’ or even ‘healthy,’ and heroin as ‘evil’ or ‘corrupt,’ is not only misguided regarding the brain chemistry, but actually dangerous.” However, Johnson stressed that the medical examiner’s report is needed before drawing conclusions regarding Prince’s death and ties to opioids.
Graphic: Opioid-related deaths Graphic: Opioid-related deaths
The state data showed a continued spread of opioid-related deaths in 2015. The annual numbers remained unchanged at 105 in Hennepin County and at 21 in Anoka County, compared with 2014.
But the total in outstate Minnesota increased, and five deaths occurred in Morrison County, which hadn’t reported any in 2014 or 2013.
Among the 2015 deaths, 28 were listed as suicides and 298 as accidents — though advocates say it can be challenging for investigators to differentiate the intentions of people in pain who are addicted or dependent on opioids. Half of the deaths involved victims ages 36 to 55.
The Star Tribune analysis counted death certificates that listed opioids as the official cause, and also a handful that listed opioids in the narrative descriptions of the deaths.
The toll could be higher. There are 783 deaths since 2000 that are attributed to drug overdoses but aren’t specific about which drugs.
Another annual increase was disappointing to Carol Falkowski, a former state drug abuse policy leader who formed the watchdog group Drug Abuse Dialogues.
Her April 2016 drug trend report showed the number of addicts in treatment in the metro area had been rising, as had the number of law enforcement seizures of heroin and oxycodone — trends that should reduce fatalities. She was encouraged to see the death figures leveling off in Hennepin County, perhaps because so many of medics, firefighters and other first-responders now carry emergency doses of Narcan.
Steve’s Law
Expanded access to Narcan occurred in Minnesota in 2014 under Steve’s Law, which allowed all first-responders under the authority of doctors to administer the drug to treat overdoses. It also gave members of the public the ability to legally acquire the nasal version of the drug if they were worried that friends or relatives were at risk of overdosing.
Some first-responder agencies have become hesitant to carry Narcan, due in part to the cost, said Tony Spector of the Minnesota Emergency Medical Services Regulatory Board. Anecdotally, he’s heard from medical and fire officials who were concerned about the agitated, unpredictable reactions from overdose victims when the antidote kicks in.
“Waking the giant” is how some first-responders referred to it, Spector said. “If ambulance services administer the medicine to patients who are under the influence of opiates and they wake up, depending on how it works out they may be very angry and very out of control.”
That concern frustrates Lexi Reed Holtum, who helped establish the Steve Rummler Hope Foundation and successfully lobbied for Steve’s Law and for funding so that agencies could acquire the medication. “With the massive amount of deaths we are seeing across the state, it is unacceptable for them to not implement and put into place Steve’s Law,” Holtum said.
But state officials also are focusing on solutions that prevent overdose situations in the first place, and they are paying particular attention to how physicians prescribe narcotic painkillers that can themselves be addictive and dangerous. Those painkillers can also lead users to heroin; the American Society of Addiction Medicine estimates that 4 out of 5 new heroin users started by misusing prescription opioids.
State officials on the new opioid prescribing work group have discussed when it is appropriate to prescribe opioids to treat acute pain and injuries, and they are taking up the controversial topic of when to prescribe them for chronic pain.
Johnson said there is little, if any, research to support the use of opioids for long-term pain.
The Minnesota Board of Pharmacy also is seeing more prescribers join its monitoring program, by which they can enter their prescribing data and identify patients who are “doctor shopping” to acquire large quantities of opioids. The board’s March report showed 14 new accounts created each day by prescribers or pharmacists.
336 Deaths in Minnesota in 2015 that were linked to excessive or abusive use of prescription opioids, a sixfold increase from 2000. 126 Opioid-related deaths outstate. 105 Number in Hennepin County. 48 Number in Ramsey County.
Allegations in the case of Prince’s death show the limits of those programs, though. An attorney who previously represented one of Prince’s relatives claimed that Prince had “straw buyers” who would get prescriptions for him.
Whether Prince’s death ultimately is tied to opioids or to something else altogether, state officials believe it has brought new attention and urgency to addressing the opioid issue.
Officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, in connection with the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, will meet Saturday to discuss the dangers of prescription abuse.
“The world,” Falkowski said, “is looking at Minnesota to frame this.”
Data editor MaryJo Webster and staff writer David Chanen contributed to this story.A teaser poster for the eventual 5th Avengers Film from Marvel Studios, with a brand new team of Avengers here to take on the mantle of 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes'.
The idea for the poster was to make it similar to magazine photo shoots, and to have the Avengers presented in more civilian attire.
After the events of Infinity War and Avengers 4 (still untitled), the world welcomes a new generation of heroes to protect Earth from all manner of evil. Witness the triumphant return of beloved characters such as Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bettany), The Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), and finally, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) sheds the 'Winter Soldier' identity to become the all-new Captain America.Someone wondered on Twitter, "Brooklyn Bridge closed to pedestrian and cycle traffic; cops refuse to say why. Why?" Well, it's also closed to vehicular traffic in both directions—apparently there are two suspicious packages, one in each direction! You can send us photos and tips at tips@gothamist.com. UPDATE 10:55 a.m.: Now the bridge is reopened—the suspicious packages were...flashlights from a leukemia walk.
Yes, apparently the NYPD got a call about a flashlight on the pedestrian walkway; the AP says there was a copper wire around the flashlight. Last night was the "Light the Night" walk for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society. According to MyFoxNY, "During this highly visible event, participants carry illuminated red balloons, survivors carry white balloons and gold balloons are carried in memory of loved ones lost." Balloons? Are we sure there wasn't a UFO by the bridge?Café 8 ½ in Honolulu has a wonderful and festive menu, inviting to all sorts of diners looking to enjoy Italian fare.
That is, only if you’re not a deplorable!
At least, that’s what the cafe asked of patrons when it put this yellow notice on its front door, warning that restaurant goers who voted for Republican nominee Donald Trump would not be allowed to eat there:
Oh, and it also adds the words “No Nazis” in case you were confused.
The owner of Café 8 ½ — Robert Warner — says he had no idea that his “scribbled” note would go viral or evoke a high backlash. “Just 12 words on a piece of paper. It was not that big. You don’t see it from the street or anything. Just kind of scribbled off quick,” Warner said.
As for how vociferously he defends his political commentary, Warner revealed, “I didn’t really mean it for real either.” He clarified the spirit of the note:
“If somebody came in and said, ‘Hey, I know you can’t tell who I voted for, but I voted for Trump. Would you let me eat?’ I would say, ‘Sure, if you’re nice with me and I’m nice with you and you like my food, sit down, no problem.'”
But not everyone has been so kind to Warner’s note, with some connecting his rhetoric to that of other prejudicial purist behavior in history:
More understanding and tolerance from the #prejuduce #LiberalExtremists at Cafe 8 1/2 in Honolulu #BoycottCafe_81/2
pic.twitter.com/8oBcKqFqHl — The Bad Guy (@Mad_Deuce) December 28, 2016
Café 8 ½ is also drawing comparisons by many to christian cake shops that refuse service based on sexual orientation, as the debate continues over equal protection versus freedom of expression.
Predictably as happens when a local business creates a national uproar, it finds itself on the receiving end of a few unfavorable Yelp reviews. One Yelper wrote, “Putting up a sign denying service to certain people because of their beliefs, customs, race, backgrounds, sexual preference or whatever it may be is never a good idea. You call others ‘Nazis’ yet you are doing just as they did and casting people out because they are different from you.”
Another user from Los Angeles wrote of the cafe, “So far, all you have done is further the divide between two groups who are already so divided. There is an old saying, if you are hot here to solve the problem…you are the problem.”
“This is the type of attitude you would expect to see during the 50s and 60s during the Civil Rights movement, but apparently the owners of this establishment haven’t matured,” wrote another. The establishment’s overall Yelp rating has plunged to 2 out of 5 stars.
At least some commenters were there solely for the food. One Yelper avoided politics in his review altogether, writing simply, “Avoid this pace like the plague–because you may contract the plague by eating the food here.”
—
[image via Hawaii News Now]
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comRick Loomis/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The sale of exclusive access to Australia’s company registration information has been halted because bids from private enterprise didn’t go high enough.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has 31 registries with more than 10 million company records, which generate about $820 million a year in revenue.
The historical and current company information was said to be worth as much as $2 billion to the right organisation.
Critics said such a privatisation would mean high company search fees where the trend in the rest of the world is to make digital records free.
Finance minister Mathias Cormann says the government decided not to proceed with the competitive tender after evaluating final bids.
“The reason the government decided not to proceed with the commercialisation of the ASIC registry is that final bids received did not deliver a net financial benefit,” he says.
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Attacking Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain on Tuesday said there was a “deep political conspiracy” by the Congress to defame the country by harping on an atmosphere of intolerance after Rahul Gandhi backed the actor's comments. “Where will Aamir and his family go other than India,” he wondered in response to the actor's remarks that his wife Kiran Rao had even suggested that they should probably leave the country.“There is no other better country like India and no better neighbour than a Hindu for an Indian Muslim. What is the situation in Muslim countries and Europe. There is intolerance everywhere,” Hussain, a national spokesperson of the BJP, told a press meet.“India is the most secular state where Muslims enjoy equal rights. In our country, an artist is not judged by his caste and religion but by his art,” he said.Hussain said if Aamir feels the situation is so bad in the country and that he is contemplating to leave, he should convince us. “We are ready to debate,” he added and wondered who is advising the actor. Hussain also took a swipe at the Congress vice president for coming out in support of Aamir Khan.“This shows Congress complicity in the campaign to malign the country. Congress cannot tolerate an elected government and a popular prime minister. When the country is progressing under the leadership of Narendra Modi, the Congress is creating an atmosphere to malign the country,” he charged.“Congress is responsible for the massacre of Sikhs and many communal riots. The party should not teach the country about tolerance and intolerance. Aamir should know that this is incredible India and 'Atulya Bharat' and one should not do anything to malign the image. Aamir had gained respect, fame and wealth due to the love and respect of all Indians. When you become a star your comments may get you headlines and good coverage but they are used against the country by the enemies,” he said.Further hitting out at the Congress vice president, Hussain said, "Rahul (Gandhi) says government should reach out to people to understand what's disturbing them. If his father late Rajiv Gandhi had done so, the Sikh massacre would not have taken place. Where is intolerance in India?"He said Aamir is the first person to have spoken about leaving the country and this is not right. It has to be condemned, he said.To a question on whether Aamir should listen to his wife and leave the country, Shahnawaz said BJP does not want to interfere in family matters.When asked if Aamir will be taken off the 'Incredible India' campaign, he said, "That's not the issue as of now."The BJP spokesman alleged that Congress leaders Mani Shankar Iyer and Salman Khurshid visit Pakistan and berate the Indian government."Another Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed chooses to highlight religion of some criminals. This is nothing but a dangerous trend to disturb the peace in the country. From opposing the BJP and the BJP government, the Opposition party is now against the country," he added. To a question on whether India should play cricket with Pakistan, he said, "The matter is between PCB and BCCI."Aamir Khan has been provided with adequate security, a senior police official said today. “We have provided adequate police security to the actor. There hasn't been any protest by anyone in the city or at Khan's house, but we have information that some outfits may hold a protest,” DCP (Detection) Dhananjay Kulkarni told PTI.Coming in support of Bollywood star Aamir Khan's remarks on intolerance, Congress today said what the actor is saying, the whole world is saying and asked the current dispensation to pay heed to the message. “What Aamir Khan, one of the most respected actor, has said in the presence of many senior BJP people is what the whole world is saying, all of India is saying, all right- minded people are saying,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said here. Taking a dig at BJP, Singhvi said Khan should not be branded as a Congress man for raising the intolerance issue. “I only hope and trust that he will not be referred to as a Congress man. I will only hope and trust he will not be referred to in derogatory terms,” the Rajya Sabha MP said. “These are the people whose conscience is speaking. Instead of criticising them, heed should be paid to the message, not shooting the messenger,” he added.Amid growing concerns on the issue of intolerance, Rahul Gandhi today said it would be better for the government to stop "bullying, threatening and abusing" and instead reach out to the people. "Instead of branding all those who question the Govt & Modiji- as unpatriotic, anti national or'motivated' the Govt would do better to reach out to people to understand what's disturbing them". "That's the way to solve problems in India- not by bullying, threatening & abusing!", the Congress vice-president said.The Delhi police on Tuesday received a complaint against Aamir. The complainant, a resident of east Delhi's Vasundhra Enclave area, told the police that he “as a citizen of this country feels that the celebrities should think before speaking”. The complaint was addressed to the station house officer at New Ashok Nagar police station in east Delhi. "We have received the complaint and are looking into it. Further action will follow in accordance with law,” DCP (East) B S Gurjar said. The complainant told the police that actor Aamir should clarify which “society” he was talking about. “I also live in this society and I do not feel insecure and scared in my country. Aamir should not have mentioned it in a general way,” said the complainant.Now an actor has spoken fearlessly, will the BJP admit it was a manufactured charge that Bihar polls were why people were speaking up? Aamir spoke about difficult issues with ministers present in audience. He should be heard and not threatened for speaking truth to power Sitaram YechuryAamir, did you ask Kiran which country would she like to move out to? Did you tell her that this country has made you AAMIR KHAN. Did you tell Kiran that you have lived through more worse times in this country but you never thought of moving out?Some celebs complaining about Intolerance should be the last ones to complain because they became celebs in a so called intolerant country. Compared to any country India is the most tolerant and if some people are unhappy here also they should tell which country they will go to.“ Every word Aamir said is so true. I admire him for speaking up. BJP should stop silencing voices through abuses and threats.“Whatever he said was in a simple manner and what his wife told him. If people have issues and are afraid to live in India, the government should come forward and address those issues. Yes, the situation of the country has changed, it is not a political statementOpposition parties have closed ranks to target the government on range of issues from intolerance to rising prices as Winter Session begins on November 26. Parleys have been held among leaders of Opposition parties and Congress. JD-U in particular will be raising the issue of intolerance and award wapsi in a big way.“Now Assam Governor made derogatory remarks being on d Constitutional position shows d ruling Govt has not learnt lesson from defeat in Bihar.”“We will raise issues of love jihad to 'ghar vapsi' and increasing intolerance during d course of discussion on commitment towards Constitution,” JD-U president Sharad Yadav said. |
to find a new language of attack which his opponent does not speak. In this instance, Nelson was asking Hunt whether he would be allowed to counter safely, and Hunt gave him a definitive answer: absolutely not.
Despite eating Nelson's left hook, Hunt's lighting fast and thunder strong combination punching sent the very clear message that he would not sit in range waiting to be countered. Instead, Hunt reminded Nelson with his right hand to the ear, he would keep throwing until Nelson either backed away, or went to sleep. Of course, it must be noted that Nelson succeeded in taking Hunt down immediately after this exchange, but that ended up playing right into the narrative that Hunt was attempting to create for the fight anyway, as Hunt quickly escaped from Nelson's back control and returned to casually outstriking him. Thus, in addition to allowing Big Country to believe that his only chance was to take him down, Hunt ended up convincing him that even that wouldn't work out so well.
Hunt also found success with his follow-up left hook, convincing Nelson that he was not an easy target even after falling into his right hand (GIF). After putting Roy almost entirely on the defensive, Hunt was free to set up the shot that would end Big Country's night.
(Click to enlarge)
GIF
1. Hunt swings a soft left hook at Nelson's head, which the big man swats away.
2. Nelson thinks about a long left hook of his own, but Hunt convinces him otherwise with a jab to the nose.
3. Inching forward with these left-hand attacks, Hunt backs Nelson up into the fence--nowhere to run.
4. Knowing Nelson lacks the footwork to escape to center cage, Hunt baits him into a counter, blinding him with another probing jab.
5. Blinded by Hunt's left hand, Nelson winds up for a right hand, dipping his head as he is wont to do. Hunt retracts his left just in time to reveal...
6.... an uppercut perfectly designed to catch Nelson ducking.
Truly a masterful performance from the Super Samoan. Nelson, despite his many shortcomings, is spectacularly learned when it comes to finding a home for his explosive overhand right. Hunt managed to not only defuse this potent weapon but a left hook which Nelson has never shown before that should have made him a much more dangerous and varied opponent. Ultimately, it only made him a more satisfying win for the UFC's most unexpected top 10 heavyweight.
Stay tuned to Bloody Elbow for more analysis of heavyweight action. Tomorrow we'll be looking at the resurgence of The Pitbull, Andrei Arlovski, who just last week made his own unforeseen return to the UFC's top 10 by knocking out Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva in the first round.Beginning in Halo 2, Halo has always featured 1-sided, asymmetrical game modes. These have included simple variants like 1 Flag CTF, 1 Bomb Assault, and Territories, as well as the occasional full-blown mode like Invasion. Halo 4 introduced a departure from this for the first time in close to a decade, not shipping with any 1-sided game modes and never adding in any via updates. A few work arounds were made for this, like hiding one flag under the floor and using rounds to emulate the old system, or the Conversion game mode that I helped create in order to fill the Invasion gap (with limited success), and these helped the customs community get by until MCC brought back these options in Halo 2 Anniversary. With the bare-bones game modes introduced in Halo 5 and the frequent update schedule, may of us expected that 1-sides modes might make a comeback in this game. 1 Flag in particular is a simple variant of CTF, and should be fairly easy to implement. Unfortunately, 6+ months later even this most basic variant has not been released or made possible.This is a call to 343 Industries to dedicate the time and resources to make a few basic 1-side game mode variants. 1 Flag CTF, 1 Bomb Assault, and a 1 sided "lockdown style" Strongholds variant are the big three modes I would like to see. These base game modes already exist in the game, and so should take the least amount of effort to create. Even with the intricacies of game design and the amount of other content being created, I feel that this should be a relatively minor task for 343 Industries to achieve. There are already asymmetrical maps in Matchmaking that would support these modes with a few tweaks to spawn and weapon layouts, tasks that would take forgers a couple of hours to a day to complete.These game modes would not only add more variety to current playlists, but also would vastly increase the variety of maps produced in Halo 5's Forge. 1-sided game modes play very differently from their symmetrical counterparts, and this allows for more wild, asymmetric map designs that would just never work for symmetrical modes. This invigorates custom games and leads to the potential for more varied and interesting forge content reaching matchmaking. As a longtime member of the forge and customs communities, I can attest that the variety of types of maps in Halo 5 has been severely hampered by a lack of game modes to design around. Choices fuel creativity, and with just a few small game modes we could see a huge increase in variety, increasing forge activity, promoting variety in customs, and leading towards a better matchmaking experience.Image copyright Lisa Grant Ludwig Image caption The researchers spent 10 years collecting measurements of balancing rocks
US scientists say they have solved the riddle of why a collection of balancing rocks near the San Andreas fault has never been toppled by earthquakes.
Their decade-long study concludes that quakes can stop or "jump" due to interactions between the San Andreas and the neighbouring San Jacinto fault.
Models show that these interactions sent the biggest vibrations around the rock stacks, leaving them intact.
But the connected nature of the faults has implications for quake planning.
The study of precariously balanced rocks was begun in the 1990s by Jim Brune, now an emeritus professor at the University of Nevada and a co-author of the new paper.
"He realised that [these rocks] could be a check on seismic hazard maps, and give long-term indications of ground shaking," said the study's lead author Prof Lisa Grant Ludwig, from the University of California, Irvine.
"They are kind of natural seismoscopes - but you have to read them indirectly.
"They don't tell you an earthquake happened, they tell you 'an earthquake strong enough to knock me down did not happen'."
Tipping point
Generally, balancing rocks are not seen within 15km of major faults. But 10 years ago Prof Brune and his colleagues found two sizeable collections of such stones just 7-10km from the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults, in the San Bernardino mountains of California.
Image copyright Lisa Grant Ludwig Image caption The teetering rocks sit less than 10km from two major faults
In the new study, due to be published in the journal Seismological Research Letters, these rocks were carefully catalogued and measured.
Importantly, the team calculated how much force it would take to tip each of the rocks over.
"There are two methods of doing that, one of which is actually trying to tip the thing," Prof Ludwig said. This meant some nerve-wracking fieldwork, gently pushing the rocks until there was some movement, but not actually tipping them over.
"If my mother had known I was doing that, she would not have been happy," Prof Ludwig confessed. "You never want to be on the downhill side when you tip it."
The second method, for rocks too dangerous or difficult to tip, was "photomodelling": using views from multiple angles to build a 3D model of the balanced stone and calculate its centre of gravity, mass, and so on.
Both these methods, along with some "shake table" simulation experiments, showed that the rocks should have fallen over during quakes as recent as 1812 and 1857.
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption The famous San Andreas fault stretches 1,300km across California
But various measures can tell us exactly how long the stones have perched in their places - and it is millennia, not centuries.
"One of my former postdocs did an age study of one of the rocks. And it'd been in that position about 18,000 years," said Prof Ludwig.
So how did these precarious rocks withstand the tens or hundreds of earthquakes that shook the region during that time?
Network of fractures
"The inescapable conclusion was that the ground motions had to be lower than you would expect from typical earthquakes on the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults," Prof Ludwig explained.
The team's best explanation for that surprisingly small ground movement - and one supported by computer modelling of big earthquakes - is an interaction between the two faults.
Image copyright Nick Hinze/Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Image caption Precarious rocks, like this one in Nevada, can act as natural measures of earthquake strength over time
"The San Andreas and San Jacinto faults come very close together; they're only about 2km apart. And it's been well established, through other earthquakes and modelling studies, that a rupture can jump across [a gap like that]. It's what's called a stepover.
"What if the rupture jumped across, or alternatively, stopped at this junction, or started at this junction? All three of those cases would produce lower ground shaking in the area where we found the rocks."
It is crucial to consider the faults together, Prof Ludwig said - not just to explain the baffling, balancing rocks, but also in order to plan safely for future earthquakes.
"These are really networks of fractures in the earth. Just because we give them different names doesn't mean that they behave independently."
Shaky scenario
Dr Lucy Jones is a long-serving seismologist and a science adviser for risk reduction at the US Geological Survey. She said the paper would have "pretty significant implications" for earthquake planning in California.
In particular, Dr Jones said the findings might impact the "ShakeOut scenario" - in which she and others modelled a major San Andreas quake, to support safety drills and procedures.
"I think that this study actually makes the particular ShakeOut scenario less likely, but I'm not sure it means that we're definitely going to get less ground motion," Dr Jones told the BBC.
"It isn't a clear-cut answer as to whether we'll be better off or worse off. We're going to need time to look at the permutations."
Looking beyond individual quakes, Dr Jones said the new study fits into a "pretty well accepted picture" that in the long-term, seismic activity is gradually shifting from the southern stretch of the San Andreas fault across to the younger San Jacinto fault.
"This study is a really cool piece of evidence that maybe the jump is a little further along than we assumed," she said.
Follow Jonathan on TwitterI recently reviewed the debut album for a young Melbourne band (Kettlespider), which turned up on the same day as this record from When Clouds Collide. The two were bursting with youthful enthusiasm and while artists may tighten up and learn from experience over time, there’s nothing like the freshness of early recordings like these to feel good about new music and the future of rock.
When Clouds Collide are Matt O’Connor and Michael Coyle, a post-rock duo from New Jersey and “We’re Just Making Sound” follows on from an EP they released on bandcamp a year ago. This time they have teamed up with German post-rock label Oxide Tones, one of the strongest supporters of the style.
This record has some of the most wonderful moments on it, with the lads having a great feel for chord progression and dynamics. Sounds and themes are not overused, spoken word samples are structured well in the songs, and there are some great crescendos. It’s very restrained and ambient for the most part with the occasional flurry of activity.
‘Cellar Door’, with it’s sound bite from the director’s cut of Donnie Darko, sets the scene – instruments are well played, unselfish and you know you’re up for some crescendocore.
‘Hibernation’ is one of the standout tracks, with it’s waves of jangling chords, simple but effective drumline, and a build up to some magnificent synth strings. It flows triumphant and uplifting, carrying an infectious phrase that will soon have you humming it without realising.
With a complete change of feel, ‘Edge Of Infinity’ follows with creepy, moody keys and slowly lifting guitar before an explosion of fuzzy power chords, tremolo and a cacophony of cymbals. It’s powerful stuff.
“Oh, Boy” samples some TV (I think), perhaps a little too loudly at the start, but doesn’t overdo it and there’s a great little lead-in to another powerful crescendo. From here on you do start to feel the familiarity and to a degree sameness of the songs with good variation in sound but little change in the way of structure.
Final track, ‘In The Wake Of Collision’, rounds the record out well, as uplifting and memorable as ‘Hibernation’ but clearly saying goodbye as it gathers pace before the fading last minute.
This record does have a couple of flat spots, the structure could be more complex, and I think they struggle with rounding out and closing off their songs, as do so many bands playing this style. That said, I didn’t get bored listening to it and there some genuine moments where this record just soars. In terms of sound for a home produced record this is up there with the best of them.
What will be interesting to see is how the guys mature. They really need to get out there and gig which means expanding the lineup at least to one or two more and even then the laptop would probably get a significant workout. You can’t rely on a couple of friends and one or two reviews to give you the feedback and engagement that you need to keep growing and remain passionate and inspired.
Never mind a concert hall; fill a house or a record store, peel the paint off the walls with those crescendos and share the talent. Because you’ve got a lot to share.
When Clouds Collide – Bandcamp PageThe company seemed like the perfect place for Tyler. After working in the agency world, Tyler (not his real name) wanted to try a startup. He wanted a place where he wouldn’t be beholden to clients, where people would value his expertise. As he went through the interview process with 50onRed, a Philadelphia adtech firm, his excitement grew. The whole place just seemed cool. “Like, man, this is a really nice office,” he recalls thinking. “Open floor plan, lots of really cool perks, the food. It just felt really modern. It felt like that startup kinda vibe I was looking for.”
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He joined 50onRed, and the company more than delivered: not just weekly free lunches but also quarterly parties, all expenses paid, at trendy restaurants. He could set his own work pace. His teammates were talented.
But there was one thing he didn’t know about the company. Months after joining, he was shocked to learn exactly how 50onRed made money.
At first glance, it seemed like just another digital advertising company. It had built a platform for advertisers to buy ad space. Simple. But what wasn’t standard was how 50onRed got those ads onto websites. It used a controversial practice called “ad injection,” inserting ads onto websites without those sites’ permission.
The way 50onRed did that was through downloadable software, usually browser extensions, known as adware. “Adware companies resort to trickery to push their software to users,” explains Ben Edelman, a Harvard Business School professor and ad injection expert. Download a free Flash player, for example, and it might come bundled with adware. Suddenly, you’d see ads on sites like Wikipedia or Target.com — ads those websites never agreed to display and weren’t making money from.
If ad injection sounds duplicitous and unethical, Edelman said that’s because it is. And that’s being charitable: “Some people say it’s highway robbery,” he says. Ad injection hurts many players in the advertising industry, chief among them publishers, who miss out on ad revenue while ad injection companies make money off their content. “Adware reaps where it didn’t sow,” Edelman says. At the same time, advertisers feel duped when they pay top dollar for what they believe to be “genuine, legitimate, honest ads” and instead get injected ads, he said.
Adtech companies like OpenX and AppNexus see it as a quality control issue and have vowed to keep ad injectors off their platforms (OpenX told AdAge in May 2014 that it no longer works with 50onRed, and AppNexus spokesman Josh Zeitz told me the same in April). Google and Mozilla suffer because users associate the problem with their browsers. “Deceptive ad injection is a significant problem on the web today,” a 2015 Google report reads. The company pledged to rid its browser and advertising platform of ad injectors.
And, of course, consumers hate adware because it slows down their browser, Edelman says. For the digitally illiterate, he said it can be torturous because it’s not always obvious what’s causing the problem.
50onRed says that its practices are above board. “50onRed has always been proud of our strict partner vetting process, and compliance guidelines such as those set forth by Google and Microsoft, appropriately labeled ads, and the ease with which users can opt-out of seeing ads,” the company said.
Regardless, Tyler was not pleased when a colleague finally explained the business model to him.
“Wait, really? That’s what we do?” he remembers thinking. “We’re that skeezy toolbar company that your grandmother installs that she can’t get out and she’s got seven of ’em and her computer doesn’t work anymore?”
Oops.
Tyler wasn’t the only one surprised to find out what 50onRed really did. I spoke to more than a dozen former employees of 50onRed and its affiliated companies for this story and most of them said they didn’t know that 50onRed injected ads when they joined the company. (Nearly all of them requested anonymity, fearing legal retribution from 50onRed.) There was a new-employee learning curve, Tyler said. One person realized what was going on while working on the browser extensions themselves, while another said he started digging when the company’s jargon just didn’t add up to him.
One intern, Steve Fox, didn’t find out until after the company turned his browser extension, named I Want This!, into adware in 2012. He thought the whole thing was pretty funny — intern’s first piece of software makes list of Top 10 Malware Applications, lol — and didn’t mind that no one bothered to tell him how the company made money.
“It wasn’t a secret,” he says. “I just didn’t care enough to ask.”
But others felt deceived. It’s not clear if the lack of transparency was intentional or stemmed from negligence, but five former employees said that company leaders were pros when it came to spinning the business to make it sound innocuous. “They are extremely good at not revealing how it is they make money,” says a former engineer at RightAction, another adtech company started by 50onRed’s founders and that shares its office space.
And yet, when employees did finally figure it out, they didn’t rush out the door. Even though many of them thought the business model was despicable. Even though many of them felt fooled.
It’s complicated, OK?
Stephen Gill doesn’t like to talk about adware. When I interview 50onRed’s stiff and serious 30-year-old cofounder and CEO at his office, he seems ill at ease, sometimes reading off a piece of paper when he answers my questions. (I, too, probably seemed ill at ease, in part because right before the interview, company spokeswoman Leah Kauffman insisted I pose for a photo in front of a flashy “50” wall decoration adorned with lightbulbs.) Gill tells me he doesn’t consider himself in the adware business. He prefers, instead, to describe 50onRed as a company that keeps content free for users. “The simplest analogy I can use is Facebook, where you get Facebook for free in exchange for seeing ads,” he said. “Or you know, the radio.”
Gill has been in the business of keeping content free for users for nearly a decade. In 2008, when he was still in college at New Jersey’s Rowan University, he started the company that would become 50onRed. Then it was a popular Facebook ad network called Socialreach that he built with CTO Gabriel “Gab” Malca, who lives in Montreal. Socialreach helped Facebook app developers like Zynga monetize their work through ads, back in the days when Facebook was flooded with apps like Farmville and Mafia Wars. In a 2009 report, Venturebeat called Socialreach one of the larger networks on the platform.
After he graduated from Rowan, Gill moved his business into the state school’s tech incubator, the South Jersey Tech Park, 20 miles south of Philadelphia. As Socialreach hired more employees and filled out the incubator, Gill became the school’s entrepreneurial darling.
“He is the poster child for what we’re trying to do at the Tech Park,” the incubator’s director, Sarah Piddington, said in a 2009 Rowan news feature about the company’s growth. As the bootstrapped company grew and prepared to move its offices to Philadelphia, Rowan even planned a “graduation ceremony” to celebrate the company’s move.
But before it completed its move, Socialreach ran into some trouble. The company got banned from Facebook for “deceptive content.” According to a Venturebeat report (confirmed to me by former employee Graham Smith), Socialreach placed ads that stretched the truth. One ad encouraged users to take an IQ test by suggesting their friends had taken it. “Are you smarter than Tony? Click to find out!” the ads read. These ads have been linked to mobile scams, where users are asked to enter their phone number and then get slapped with a recurring fee on their bill.
Gill disputes that Facebook banned Socialreach for deceptive ads, saying that Facebook decided to work with one ad network and shut down the rest.
Either way, Socialreach changed course and left Facebook (and New Jersey) behind. It moved into the Cira Centre, a futuristic-looking, tax-incentivized skyscraper next to Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, and shifted its focus to monetizing browser extensions instead of Facebook apps.
The 23-year-old Gill got fancy new digs in the city, too. He moved into an $8,000-a-month apartment at the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, a luxury skyscraper across from City Hall with valet parking and an indoor pool, according to a lease agreement shown in a city court filing. (He may have shared the three-bedroom apartment, as the lease shows he paid for two spots in the parking garage.)
That move away from monetizing Facebook apps is why the company changed its name to 50onRed, says spokeswoman Kauffman. But Smith, an engineer who joined the company when it was still at Rowan, said it was also because the company was concerned about the news articles on the Facebook ban. Whatever the reason, Socialreach disappeared and 50onRed emerged. It was the first time a tech giant forced the company to change course, and it wouldn’t be the last.
What do you do when you discover your company is not what you think it is? Mental gymnastics. Tyler struggled to stay motivated everyday. Over time he found himself detaching from the idea that his company was trafficking in adware and focusing instead on the task at hand. As another former employee described it: “It’s like living in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.” Tyler reminded himself, “There are legitimate people out there who have a legitimate use for our platform.”
(Those legitimate people were generally advertising such things as gambling sites, dating sites and insurance. Many 50onRed advertisers are affiliate marketers, who make money when someone signs up for whatever they’re selling. They like 50onRed for its low minimum deposit, user-friendly design and accessible customer service, said Luke Kling, who runs marketing for affiliate network PeerFly and recommends 50onRed to PeerFly’s more than 70,000 marketers.)
One longtime engineer said he had heard (and tried) all the justifications: If we don’t do it, others will. Or, We’re not forcing people to download adware, we’re just selling ad space. “Eventually,” he says, “that excuse stops being valid.”
Gill himself describes the company as one that prioritizes “user’s choice.” “It’s about users being free to control their browsing experience,” he said in a statement, adding that 50onRed makes sure to get consent from those who download its ad-supported software.
As for 50onRed’s unhappy former employees, Gill said that not everyone is cut out for advertising. “If you want to work here,” he said, “you have to be passionate about advertising.”
That longtime engineer was not passionate about 50onRed’s brand of advertising. He wanted to leave but he was nervous. Say what you will about the company, it was a stable paycheck. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find a better gig — it was only a few years after the recession and the Philly tech scene was still in its infancy. “There were a bunch of times where I almost quit but then I chickened out,” he said. He finally left in 2012.
For several other staffers, it wasn’t as straightforward. The technical challenges, the perks and the camaraderie of the office outweighed the moral dilemma. “I think what they did is pretty despicable but at the end of the day, I didn’t give a fuck,” one former employee said. “I was engrossed by the technical problems that this afforded me.”
50onRed, he said, was “an incredible launchpad.” It’s the reason he can command a six-figure salary. At 50onRed, he got to work with terabytes of data, an experience he couldn’t find at many other startups in Philly.
50onRed’s Instagram feed touts its cultureThe startup culture didn’t hurt, either. The whiskey club, the workout room, the quarterly profit-sharing bonuses. “What guy in Philly in their mid-twenties wouldn’t wanna roll around in a six- or close-to-six-digit salary and get free parties and beer at work?” he said. “It was very easy to get swept up in that and not care about the fact that you were injecting ads.” (He’s referring to guys in their twenties for a reason: Up until last year, 50onRed’s leadership team and staff was largely composed of white males in their twenties. Today, three women hold high-ranking roles.)
Several former employees said another reason it was easy to stay was because they liked their coworkers so much. Many still keep in touch with a Slack group chat for 50onRed alumni. (The engineer who quit in 2012 laughed when I told him about it. “We always joked about starting a support group,” he said.) The coworker dynamic was most striking when I interviewed one former employee who seemed bitter and angry that he had been tricked into working for an adware company but suddenly softened when the topic of his former teammates came up. Not Gill or Malca, who were rarely around, but the rank-and-file. “They’re all just normal tech people who want to further their careers,” he said.
He asked me not to use his name because he feared legal retribution, but also because he was afraid of how they would react if they knew he spoke to me. “I don’t want them to think that I’ve betrayed them,” he said.
So why talk?
“I’m letting other people know this may not be the best career move for them,” he said. “This is how I view this interaction. This is information that should be out there about any company.”
But, he said, the truth is, “it’s not the worst thing in the world to work there.” Then, after a beat: “It’s quite an amazing thing. It’s better than most people’s jobs.”
In the years after 50onRed moved to Philadelphia and started injecting ads, everything seemed to be going great. 50onRed made Philly.com’s “Top Workplaces” list two years in a row. The company hosted poker nights for the Philly tech scene and meetups to show off their employees’ side projects. It hired its first president in the summer of 2014, a veteran tech exec named Sandy Dondici. Gill, who travels to Miami Art Basel every year and hits tech-scenester events like the Summit Series, bought himself a second luxury condo in Philly’s tony Rittenhouse Square for $2 million, according to city property records. Sure, there were some threats of bad press, as the company’s browser extensions got called out in stories on AdAge, DigiDay and Wikimedia Commons’ blog. “If you’re seeing ads on Wikipedia, your computer is probably infected with malware,” read one post that called out a 50onRed product by name. But 50onRed likely evaded much attention through its related corporate entities: 215 Apps, Amazing Apps, Engaging Apps. The 50onRed name was synonymous with fast-growing Philly tech startup, not ad injection.
But at the end of 2014, something snapped.
Executives started leaving after just a few months. Rich Sayer, 50onRed’s COO whom former employees said ran the company, left quietly in August 2014. Seven more high-ranking employees followed suit, several of whom joined the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon.
“All of our top positions were abandoning ship,” said one former employee about that period of time. Dondici, 50onRed’s president, left in fewer than six months and doesn’t list the company on his LinkedIn. He now works at Facebook. In early 2015, biting Glassdoor reviews started surfacing, pushing the adware business into the open.
Screenshot from an anonymous Glassdoor review.
The company was also battling a slew of lawsuits. A Chicago man sued one of 50onRed’s related entities, International Web Services, for damages done by 50onRed’s adware. The case was eventually dismissed in 2015, though International Web Services initially offered the man $10,000 to settle. In 2014, 50onRed sued an Israeli partner named Revizer for allegedly reverse-engineering its technology and stealing the company’s customers. The case is still pending. 50onRed said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, while Revizer did not respond to requests for comment.
The biggest threat of all came from Google, which made it clear it wouldn’t stand for injectors. Ad injection was the No. 1 user complaint for Chrome in the first five months of 2015. Over the past few years, Google has made it harder and harder for injectors to operate, as it seeks to crush the practice.
Microsoft, too, released a new set of software guidelines to protect consumers and said it planned to block programs that violate the guidelines starting this month, according to a Microsoft spokesman. “We are working with several of the largest developers who violate the new policy so they have a viable path to compliance,” the spokesman wrote in an email, though he declined to name the developers.
The adware industry, most of whom are based in Tel Aviv, Israel in what is known as Download Valley, has been reacting to these moves in the last few years. Some are distancing themselves from adware and launching new product lines. 50onRed is now following suit, but the new direction may not be as effective.
Its leadership launched a new company in early 2016: an analytics platform for recommended content, or native advertising, called Tiller. At a Philly startup expo in April, 50onRed staffers manned a table that bore no reference to 50onRed, only Tiller. Gill himself sported a navy blue Tiller polo shirt.
One former employee, the one who didn’t want to betray his coworkers, said Tiller seemed like a good fit for 50onRed. A solid, legitimate business. But, he said, it’s a shame that 50onRed didn’t move faster. The founders missed their opportunity, when the company had a killer team and money to burn.
“Now, at this point, they’ve lost a lot of their bench,” he said. “Adware revenue isn’t as good. So it’s not just that people are leaving, but the revenues are declining, so it’s harder to hire the really good people.” (Two other former employees also said that revenues had been declining.)
At the end of my interview with this former employee, I ask him if he regrets working at 50onRed. He hesitates. “I don’t think I regret it,” he says. He starts talking again and stops, like he’s struggling to express something. “I don’t know if I regret it.” Then he starts again.
“It could have been a lot more than it is,” he says. “I would have loved to stay working with some of those people. I would have loved to grow the company more.”This is the first image of how Cork harbour will look after a massive €1bn makeover that will transform it from an industrial eyesore, into one of the world's great maritime and tourism centres.
This is the first image of how Cork harbour will look after a massive €1bn makeover that will transform it from an industrial eyesore, into one of the world's great maritime and tourism centres.
Cork ranks as one of the world's five great natural harbours and, in the 19th century, was arguably the most important port for Britain's Royal Navy as it controlled the Atlantic approaches. In the early 20th century, Cork harbour was also one of the world's busiest cruise liner ports and was associated with such famous ships as RMS Titanic, RMS Lusitania and HMS Dreadnought.
Cobh Harbour was the last mooring of the Titanic before she set sail for the open Atlantic in 1912,never to return. The White Star Line office, where tickets were bought for the ill-fated sailing, is now a museum and heritage centre based around the massive liner.
But over 100 years of under-investment and problematic industrial projects has left Cork with a depressing harbour legacy.
Now, under a landmark redevelopment programme championed by Marine Minister Simon Coveney, the aim is to transform Cork into the 'Sydney of Europe' by the end of 2018. Two of eight separate projects that form part of a total investment of €1bn are already underway.
These include the €40m clean up of the old Irish Steel/Irish Ispat site on Haulbowline Island in the centre of Cork harbour. The €40m plan to redevelop Spike Island as an Irish-style Alcatraz or Robben Island tourist development is also underway.
The other six parts of the project - including a new multimillion cruise terminal for Cobh, and the Port of Cork's new €100m deepwater berth at Ringaskiddy - are currently at planning stages.
Almost 100 new jobs were announced this month for the Irish Maritime & Energy Resource Cluster, which aims to exploit wind and wave energy as well as maritime conservation projects.
Minister Coveney said the massive clean-up operation at Haulbowline - Ireland's most toxic landfill site after half a century of steel production - is Ireland's number one industrial-environmental priority given a looming EU deadline.
He told the Sunday Independent: "Getting this aspect right will be crucial to the overall success of the project and ensure that the entire Haulbowline Island site can thrive and prosper into the future." Cork Chamber of Commerce say the successful redevelopment of the harbour will provide an economic engine for the region for generations to come.
Meanwhile, Cork County Council claim the site of the former prison on Spike Island has the potential to attract up to 100,000 tourists a year.
Sunday IndependentLanguages are thoroughly organic entities. Each one is complex and versatile, constantly shifting according to the needs of those who use it. When social, political or environmental changes create a gap in a language, its individual speakers use creativity and problem-solving skills to generate a solution. Successful changes to the language are spread quickly and often intuitively.
Another example of creativity influencing language is when small groups of children invent their own languages; however these do not tend to be languages in the fullest sense. They are typically simple, and based on the structures and/or vocabularies of languages that the children already know; they tend to function more as secret codes than anything else.
In at least one case, however, a group of children was able to spontaneously invent a totally new language out of necessity. The children in question were deaf, illiterate, and devoid of all but the most basic language skills, yet they were able to devise an intricate method of communication to use amongst themselves. Nicaraguan Sign Language (or ISN, for either Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua or Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense) is a unique and remarkable linguistic phenomenon of recent years.
After the Sandinista revolution of 1979, Nicaragua opened a school program for deaf children at a special-education center as part of a nationwide campaign to increase literacy. A second school started operating in 1980, and by 1983 the two schools had 400 students between them.
However, progress proved hard to come by. There was no access to any of the hundreds of established sign languages from around the world; instead, the students were instructed in lip-reading and alphabet finger-spelling. Overall, though, the children seemed to retain very little of what they were taught. Because the young students had virtually no language skills, the finger-spelled letters meant nothing to them.
This was unsurprising. Prior to these attempts at teaching them to communicate, deaf children in Nicaragua had interacted with their respective families via idiosyncratic systems of very rudimentary gestures (known as mimicas in Spanish). This meant that deaf children from different families couldn’t even understand each other, let alone form friendships.
But an interesting effect appeared once the many deaf children had begun interacting in the group setting of the schools. The children started learning and elaborating on one another’s mimicas, and the resulting system of signs rapidly grew. The amazed teachers watched as their students began to communicate quite successfully among themselves. This was immeasurably more than any little ‘secret code’ based on an existing, spoken language; these children were inventing the entire structure of ISN along with the vocabulary. They were, in a sense, teaching themselves to use language in general.
When the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education became aware of ISN, its members found themselves baffled by the phenomenon. They asked for help from sign-language specialist Judy Shepard-Kegl, then of Northeastern University in Boston. Intrigued, she set out for Nicaragua to document and analyze |
various stages of their long sojourn.
The authors then trace Lehi's probable path from Nahom eastward to the coast of Oman, and offer an interesting but possibly incorrect candidate for the place Bountiful (see "Warren Aston on the Superiority of Khor Kharfot as a Candidate for Bountiful"). Here they depart from the much publicized Wadi Sayq as a candidate for Bountiful, preferring instead the region of Dhofar about 60 miles to the north, and specifically the port region of Khor Rori. Even if some parts of their analysis are wrong, the general information about the Arabian Peninsula strengthens the case for the plausibility of First Nephi in the Book of Mormon. Regardless of which candidate is selected for Bountiful, there are many factors that supporting the record in First Nephi as an authentic ancient Semitic record from someone who actually made the journey from Jerusalem to the eastern coast of Oman. In spite of some possibly serious errors, Potter and Wellington's book is a valuable contribution. It is available at NephiProject.com. Also see my Book of Mormon Nugget, "The Place Shazer" and Rex Jensen's "Where Did Nephi Build His Ship?"
2013 Update on Khor Kharfot
Take a look at Warren P. Aston's article in the March 2013 issue of Wildlife Middle East (vol. 6, no. 4, March 2013). Warren's article, "Arabia's Hidden Valley: A Unique Habitat in Dhofar Captures Arabia's Past," does not mention the Book of Mormon or LDS issues, but the site he treats in his secular article is a leading candidate for ancient Bountiful. The article includes photos of the Khor Kharfot site at the mouth of Wadi Sayq, and also discusses biodiversity in this region. Photos of native figs and dates are included, as are some photos of the large freshwater lagoon that would have been a big part of why a weary band of travelers might call that spot Bountiful. Knowledge of the biodiversity there helps us better appreciate what Lehi and Nephi may have found, though some things have certainly changed since 600 B.C.
Also see FAIRMormon.org's page on Book of Mormon geography in the Old World for a good overview of the development of proposed routes for Lehi's group through the Arabian Peninsula.
The Valley of Lemuel: Another "Blunder" Becomes Evidence FOR the Book of Mormon
While the once-frequent jabs at Nephi's tale of finding Bountiful in the Arabian Peninsula have lost their punch with the discovery of a remarkable and hard-to-ignore candidate for Bountiful in Oman, other aspects of Nephi's story continue to draw anti-Mormon fire. One of the most prominent targets is the Valley of Lemuel and the River of Laman. Anti-Mormons recently have been proclaiming that no such river exists--a "slam-dunk" argument against the entire Book of Mormon. The attack is based on the following verses from 1 Nephi chapter 2:
2 And it came to pass that the Lord commanded my father, even in a dream, that he should take his family and depart into the wilderness....
4 And it came to pass that he departed into the wilderness....
5 And he came down by the borders near the shore of the Red Sea; and he traveled in the wilderness in the borders which are nearer the Red Sea; and he did travel in the wilderness with his family, which consisted of my mother, Sariah, and my elder brothers, who were Laman, Lemuel, and Sam.
6 And it came to pass that when he had traveled three days in the wilderness, he pitched his tent in a valley by the side of a river of water.
7 And it came to pass that he built an altar of stones, and made an offering unto the Lord, and gave thanks unto the Lord our God.
8 And it came to pass that he called the name of the river, Laman, and it emptied into the Red Sea; and the valley was in the borders near the mouth thereof.
9 And when my father saw that the waters of the river emptied into the fountain of the Red Sea, he spake unto Laman, saying: O that thou mightest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness!
10 And he also spake unto Lemuel: O that thou mightest be like unto this valley, firm and steadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord!
The critics chuckle that there are NO RIVERS flowing into the Red Sea, at least not anything that could be said to be "continually" flowing. Sure, a few wadis might get a momentary trickle during a rainstorm, but nothing that could be the basis for Lehi's lecture to Laman. Yet the Book of Mormon has Lehi and his family stopping in an impressive valley with a river that continually (year round?) flows into the Red Sea. Slam dunk for the antis? No way!
An excellent candidate location for the River of Laman and the Valley of Lemuel has been found in an entirely plausible location. Photographic evidence and other documentation is provided in George D. Potter's article, "A New Candidate in Arabia for the Valley of Lemuel," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999, pp. 54-63 (PDF). Potter reports that in looking for a well in Arabia, about 8 miles north of Maqna on the Gulf of Aqaba, he stumbled across a magnificent narrow canyon that ended in a palm-lined cove on the coast of the Red Sea. The canyon actually has a small stream that flows continually, throughout the entire year, and is surrounded by very tall mountain walls. This valley is known as Wadi Tayyib al-Ism ("Valley of the Good Name"). I've received permission from author George Potter to display two relevant photos that he kindly sent me:
George Potter's Photos from the Valley of Lemuel The River Laman The Valley Cove A 35 minute video, Discovering the Valley of Lemuel, filmed entirely on location, can be ordered.
Other photos from the video on the Valley of Lemuel and other photos of interest from the Arabian Peninsula are shown in a photogallery at NephiProject.com. (While some of the findings reported in various videos at NephiProject.com may be somewhat speculative, I am particularly impressed with the work done regarding the Valley of Lemuel.)
To really understand the strength of this evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon, I recommend the video mentioned above. Further information is provided at The Nephi Project. It shows, for example, that following Nephi's directions almost inevitably would lead one to encounter the oasis and the spring that is the source of the "River Laman" at the beginning of the Valley of Lemuel, and that this is just where the Book of Mormon says it is. It is there--and no one in the Americas knew of it in Joseph Smith's day. Few experts know of it in this day. But it is there, an incredibly rare perennial stream in Arabia. After seeing the video, one can understand why Lehi would have been impressed with the setting and would have referred to the valley as a symbol of strength and firmness. The video also shows the grains, dates, and other edible plants available in the area, along with clear evidence that the stream flow all year round. The video also shows pottery fragments and remnants of possible altars dating to the first millennium B.C. that have been found there, adding to the plausibility of the Book of Mormon account. (The video is not highly professional, but presents the evidence clearly and is definitely worth owning.)
Could Potter's small stream, shallow and just a few feet wide, at most, qualify as a river? In the published article, Potter notes that there are several Hebrew words which could qualify as the "river" of 1 Nephi 2, most of which refer to any running stream. They could also refer to seasonal waterways, such as the "River of Egypt," which is Wadi El-Arish, a wadi that fills only after storms (see Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1992, Vol. 2, p. 321, 378). Or it can refer to large rivers like the Euphrates. The small stream found by Potter keeps vegetation green and healthy even when there has been no rain for months. It flows continuously, in spite of being reduced in volume by pumping upstream for use at a coast guard post and by many motor-driven pumps in the area tapping into the aquifer that is the source of the spring. In fact, it appears that the stream once had much greater flow, for there is heavy erosion of the lower canyon walls and water-laid calcite deposits on the valley floor that can be as wide as 15 to 20 feet, much wider than the stream. The river currently descends into rocky rubble as it approaches the Red Sea. According to Dr. Wes Garner, a retired geologist from King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, movement of the continental plates has caused the canyon to rise significantly since Lehi's time--the rocky place where the stream disappears as it approaches the Red Sea was previously submerged. Lehi probably would have faced a larger river that visibly flowed into the Red Sea.
The shady canyon and the stream of fresh water, originating from a spring, would have provided welcome relief to the travelers and undoubtedly would have been a place where the voyagers would camp and recharge. They may have stayed here long enough to learn that the river really does flow continuously, though they may have inferred that based on the green vegetation supported by the river.
How about the location? The Book of Mormon text appears to say that Lehi and his family traveled for three days in the wilderness after the reached the Red Sea (after "he came down by the borders near the shore of the Red Sea"). Is the candidate for the Valley of Lemuel in a reasonable location to match the text? Yes--it's 70 miles south of Aqaba--that's the land distance that must be traveled by foot (or by camel), not the distance along a straight line. That's a plausible but challenging distance on foot for three days travel, and a piece of cake by camel.
Potter provides photos, a map, and detailed directions on how to get there. More remains to be learned about this amazing site--but it must be regarded as another powerful and verifiable piece of evidence supporting the plausibility of the Book of Mormon. An anti-Mormon laughingstock has become one more piece of evidence for them to ignore. Meanwhile, skeptical anti-Mormons are encouraged to head off to Arabia as quickly as possible to see for themselves. (And, for a refreshing change of pace, be sure to try a little anti-Muslim evangelizing while there.) Others wishing more information are encouraged to purchase the video.
Most of the arguments against the Book of Mormon are arguments of silence. According to the critics, since something in the Book of Mormon has not (yet) been found, it must not exist, making the book false. But these arguments of silence have a tendency of crumbling before the voice of data. Modern ignorance about remote places and ancient peoples continues to erode, leaving the foundation of the Book of Mormon exposed as a solid fortress rising above the plains of doubt. Oh, yes--we're just in the infancy of knowledge here. Almost none of the likely candidates for Book of Mormon sites in Mesoamerica have been carefully excavated. Many more discoveries await us--be patient! For now, though, consider John Sorenson's latest work, Mormon's Codex (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2013). See the text from his presentation, "Reading Mormon's Codex" from the FairMormon 2012 Conference.
Writing on Metal Plates
Absolutely laughable in 1830, now not only well established as an ancient practice, but as a particularly significant ancient practice in the Middle East in the era of 600 B.C.--especially for religious documents. Many new insights have come to light in recent years. For example, a 2014 news story from LiveScience.com reveals that a newly translated ancient Hebrew document may point to a tradition of preserving important texts by writing on metal. See my discussion at Mormanity, "An Ancient Tradition of Writing on Metal? Surprise (?) from a Newly Translated Ancient Hebrew Text."
Etruscan gold plates dating to 600 B.C.
Another recent news item is that ancient book of gold plates was discovered! See the BBN News article from May 26, 2003, " Unique Book Goes on Display." This volume of gold plates, bound with gold rings at the side as was the Book of Mormon plates, comes from the ancient Etruscans, who had origins in the Middle East (Turkey) and were wiped out by the Romans in the 4th century B.C. Also see the related story from May 23, 2003, " World's Only Etruscan Gold Book Added to Bulgaria's Archeology Treasures." The evidence since Joseph's day has turned what was laughable into something much more plausible. Here are some useful resources to consider:
One significant issue is the ancient practice of "scriptorio"--putting the title page at the end of the book, a hallmark of ancient writings on plates from the Middle East and evidence of authenticity for the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith could not have known of "scriptorio" when he translated the gold plates and noted that the title page was at the end, on the last page. For details on this important external evidence, see my page on "Metal Plates and the Book of Mormon", taken from a FARMS Update (in compliance with their "fair use" policy). Also see my Book of Mormon "Nugget," "Hiding Sacred Records like the Golden Plates: A Well Established Ancient Practice," and my LDSFAQ page on Metals in the Book of Mormon. It's interesting to see the critics moving away from mocking the very concept of writing on metal places to now saying that it was obvious and Joseph could easily have come up with that idea on his own (see the related Mormanity post or Book of Mormon Nugget #25.
Where did Joseph Smith get the idea of ancient records on metal plates hidden in a stone box that was buried in the earth? Critics mocked this for decades--until many other examples of ancient records preserved on plates or in stone boxes were found. In our day, scholars know that there is a vast ancient tradition pertaining to preserving sacred records by concealing them for some future time. Some of this evidence is brought together lucidly in John A. Tvedtnes, The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000). Also see my Book of Mormon "Nugget," "Hiding Sacred Records like the Golden Plates: A Well Established Ancient Practice." It turns out that this practice of concealing records "is most prominent in the ancient Near East, the land from which the Book of Mormon people emigrated to the New World. The practice of concealing records in stone boxes is also well attested in the ancient world and was still being practice in Moroni's day. And the use of metal for preserving sacred records is also attested, particularly in the ancient Near East. Joseph Smith could not have known all of this (though some basic concepts were known before 1830 - see "Those Implausible Plates" at Mormanity for a discussion), and his early critics had no clue either (and many modern critics still remain blissfully unaware of the extensive discoveries in this area). How, then, if the Book of Mormon is a forgery, did Joseph manage to be so lucky as to make up a story that fits ancient patterns so well?
The way covenants were made in the ancient Middle East are much different than the way we do treaties or contracts today. It was only a few decades ago that scholars, after studying newly translated documents from the ancient Hittites and others, began to piece together a common pattern found, at least partially, in many ancient covenants, including Old Testament covenants.
My appreciation of the ancient covenant patterns found in part of the Book of Mormon actually came after recognizing the significance of these patterns in the LDS Temple concept. This began by reading two books by modern scholars dealing with ancient religious practices and symbols. The book I found most helpful was Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985) by Jon D. Levenson, a Jewish scholar now at Harvard. Also of great value to me was Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, transl. W. R. Trask, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1959). Eliade helped me to see the Temple from the ancient perspective of sacred space, to recognize its meaning and symbolism as the cosmic mountain, an axis that connects the underworld, the living, and the heavens and that provides orientation and directions for our journey in mortality. The significance of altars, of ritual drama, of the emphasis on the Creation, and many other ancient aspects of the modern LDS Temple became much clearer and profound after reading Eliade. But Levenson's book was most valuable. On page after page, I encountered evidence that ancient Temple elements--covenant making, symbols, meanings--were in the modern LDS Temple. One of the most exciting discoveries was that the typical ancient form of covenant making had been restored. This ancient pattern for making a covenant between God and man or a king and his subjects is known as the "covenant formulary" and includes six major steps, though many ancient examples may only have a subset of the six:
The preamble Historical prologue (description of what the king has done for the subjects) Stipulations (to secure fidelity of the subjects to the king) Deposition of the text of the treaty or covenant (special writings and other means to ensure that the covenants aren't forgotten and are recorded and reviewed) List of witnesses Statement of curses and blessings (the results of disobedience or obedience)
I won't get into the fascinating relationship to LDS temples here, but I will note that these patterns can be found as well in the temple-related sermon of King Benjamin in Mosiah 1-6, an episode where Benjamin speaks from the Nephite temple and brings his people into a covenant to follow Christ, the promised Messiah. For details, please see Stephen D. Ricks, "The Treaty/Covenant Pattern in King Benjamin's Address (Mosiah 1- 6)," BYU Studies, vol. 24, no..2, Spring 1984, pp. 151-62. Also see Stephen Ricks, "Kingship, Coronation, and Covenant in Mosiah 1-6," in King Benjamin's Speech, ed. John Welch and Stephen Ricks, Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1998, pp. 233-275. Also see my related post on Mormanity.
I don't think the elements of the ancient covenant formula can be pieced together just by being familiar with the King James text, though once identified by scholars with the help of other ancient documents, we can see it in the Bible. To me, the ancient elements of King Benjamin's speech as well as the LDS temple cannot be explained by Joseph just absorbing and regurgitating what he was exposed to. There's a whole online book on the topic, the previously mentioned King Benjamin's Speech, edited by Welch and Ricks.
The Book of Mormon and Early Judaism
The Book of Mormon has long been criticized for its description of an ancient Hebrews who spoke of Christ and had Christian practices like baptism long before the coming of Christ. In fact, it begins with a vision of Lehi, a rebel prophet in Jerusalem, who has visions of God, Christ, and heavenly beings. In the Book of Mormon, the message of Christ was not new to the world but was a restoration of ancient truth focused on the Son of God as the Messiah. Such concepts have become more plausible in recent decades.
Some of the early relevant evidence comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls, where we learn of early Hebrews actively looking forward to a Messiah and engaging in practices similar to baptism, showing that a "church of anticipation" outside the mainstream ranks of Judaism was possible, and showing that some aspects of Christianity had more ancient roots than previously recognized. The Dead Sea Scrolls also showed that a community of Hebrew believers steeped in concepts such as ongoing revelation was possible. For some of the first LDS insights on this topic, see Hugh Nibley, "The Dead Sea Scrolls: Some Questions and Answers" and Hugh Nibley, "From the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QS)" in Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, vol. 2 (Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 2010): 83-104. More recently, see Stephen Ricks, "The Book of Mormon and the Dead Sea Scrolls" in LDS Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Stephen D. Ricks (Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 1997).
A scholarly book on this topic is now available free online. See Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem, ed. by Jo Ann H. Seely, David Rolph Seely, and John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 2004). A chapter of special importance in that work is Kevin Christensen's "The Temple, the Monarchy, and Wisdom: Lehi's World and the Scholarship of Margaret Barker," which introduces us to some exciting work from a non-LDS scholar who now finds the Book of Mormon to have relevance to her work. Barker's work sheds light on Lehi's experience in ancient Jerusalem and the early "first Temple" religious traditions of the Jews before their Babylonian captivity. Her work helps us appreciate not just the plausibility of Lehi's and Nephi's accounts, but also give added depth to the Book of Mormon record, filling in some gaps regarding the apostasy that Lehi was fighting. Here are some related resources:
There is so much in the Book of Mormon that makes a lot more sense today than it did 150 years ago or even 30 years ago. An understanding of the prophetic traditions from the early days of Judaism and even among the later Dead Sea Scrolls community gives us much to appreciate. If you've read the Book of Mormon already, go back and read First Nephi again, but with the perspective we gain from Barker's work and the prophetic traditions of Israel's visionary men. There is an abundance of new evidences in favor of the Book of Mormon in this field.
Contrary to anti-Mormon claims, DNA evidence does not refute the Book of Mormon. The issue requires more analysis than I wish to fit on this page, so I have a separate lengthy page on the issue at https://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/DNA.shtml. (I am happy to report that the Nov. 16, 2003 version of that essay that I converted to a PDF file has been posted on the LDS.org Web site at www.mormonnewsroom.org/assets/pdf/Jeff_Lindsay_DNA.pdf (archived)--also see other resources on this topic on the LDS.org "DNA and the Book of Mormon" page.)
In my article, I point out that there are genes found in Native Americans that are also found in Jews, including mitochondrial DNA haplotype X (found among some Israelis and Europeans) and a Y chromosome haplotype called "1C". These genes can also be found in Asia, and so don't prove that people from the Middle East came to the Americas--but that possibility most certainly is NOT excluded by the DNA evidence. Other data may point more directly to Middle Eastern origins for some of the many genes in the Americas, including an analysis of ancient skulls from the Americas and HLA genes. But even without the discovery of such evidence or of the possibly relevant DNA haplotypes, a proper understanding of what the Book of Mormon actually says and what the scientific data actually say rapidly leads one to the conclusion that the DNA-based attacks on the Book of Mormon are without merit. The scientific data may challenge some popular misinterpretations of the Book of Mormon, but they do not challenge the text itself. For details, see "Does DNA evidence refute the Book of Mormon?"
In spite of the popular "Asia only" paradigm for Native American origins, evidence for ancient transoceanic contact exists and the Bering Strait theory may not explain the origins of all ancient Americans. I discuss transoceanic contact and the Bering Strait in my page on the Smithsonian Institution's 1996 Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon.
2014 Update: Critics who say there is no shred of evidence linking Native Americans with the Middle East might have missed this recent headline: "'Great Surprise'--Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins," National Geographic's Daily News, Nov. 20, 2013. Here is the leading paragraph:
Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought, according to a newly sequenced genome.
Exciting, no? But as I explain in a post at Mormanity, we should not get too excited about this report. There are many questions and puzzles yet to explore, and the linkages found may have nothing to do with genes from Nephi's group in 600 B.C. However, this recent scientific finding certainly helps weaken what once seemed like a powerful attack against the Book of Mormon.
One of the most common attacks against the Book of Mormon focuses on the use of "Reformed Egyptian" as the writing system for the golden plates (Mormon 9:32-34). It is alleged that the no self-respecting Israelite would ever use Egyptian to write sacred scripture, and it is alleged that no such language as "Reformed Egyptian" has ever existed. These arguments are typified in the anti-Mormon book, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism by "Dr." John Ankerberg and "Dr. Dr." John Weldon (but neither appears to have a legitimate Ph.D.):
"Mormonism has never explained how godly Jews [sic] of A.D. 400 allegedly knew Egyptian, nor why they would have written their sacred records entirely in the language of their pagan, idolatrous enemies" (p. 284). "How likely is it that the allegedly Jewish [sic] Nephites would have used the Egyptian language to write their sacred scriptures? Their strong antipathy to the Egyptians and their culture makes this difficult to accept. When modern Jews copy their scripture, they use Hebrew. They do not use Egyptian or Arabic, the language of their historic enemies" (pp. 294-95). "[N]o such language [as reformed Egyptian] exists and Egyptologists declare this unequivocally" (p. 294).
Ankerberg and Weldon are wrong on several counts--grossly wrong, as shown by Daniel C. Peterson in a noteworthy book review in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 5, 1993, pp. 43-45 (available online). Several modified or "reformed" Egyptian scripts are well known, including forms called Demotic and Hieratic. "Reformed Egyptian" is clearly an appropriate generic term for those writing systems. However, the "Reformed Egyptian" used by the Nephites is described as a language system unique to them (Mormon 9:32-34), having evolved with their culture over a 1,000-year period. It was apparently used for sacred writings, and should have been almost wholly lost with the destruction of Nephite civilization. How can we expect Egyptologists, with typically no training in Central American matters, to know whether such a language ever existed there? Daniel Paterson gives further analysis (Peterson, pp. 44-45):
[W]ho says that the Nephites wrote in Egyptian? That is certainly one possibility, but several scholars (e.g., Sidney Sperry, John Sorenson, and John Tvedtnes) suggest, rather, that the language of the Nephites was Hebrew, written in Egyptian characters. The practice of representing one language in a script commonly associated with another language is very common. Yiddish, for instance, which is basically a form of German, is routinely written in Hebrew characters. Swahili can be written in either Roman or Arabic scripts. Judeo-Arabic, as written for instance by Moses Maimonides, was medieval Hebrew written with Arabic letters. In fact, almost any textbook of colloquial Arabic or Chinese or Japanese aimed at Western learners will use the Latin alphabet to represent those languages. Language and script are essentially independent. Turkish, which used to be written in a modified Arabic script, has been written in Latin letters in the Republic of Turkey since the 1920s. However, in the areas of the old Soviet Union, it is now usually written in Cyrillic (Russian) characters. Likewise, perhaps the major difference between Hindi and Urdu may be the mere fact that the former uses a Devanagari writing system, while the latter uses a modified Arabo-Persian script. So this phenomenon of changing the script with which one writes a language is by no means unusual. But we need not speak only in theoretical terms. We have, in fact, an ancient illustration that comes remarkably close to the Book of Mormon itself. Papyrus Amherst 63, a text from the second century B.C., seems to offer something very much like "reformed Egyptian." It is a papyrus scroll that contains Aramaic texts written in a demotic Egyptian script. (Aramaic is a language closely related to Hebrew. of the Old Testament book of Daniel is written in Aramaic, and it was the spoken language of Jesus and his apostles. Incidentally, however, a Christian form of the language, Syriac, came to use an alphabet related to Arabic--again illustrating the independence of script and tongue.) Interestingly, one of the items found on Papyrus Amherst 63 is a version of Psalm 20:2-6. Ankerberg and Weldon wonder why "godly Jews [sic]... would have written their sacred records entirely in the language of their pagan, idolatrous enemies." Perhaps they should ask them some day, for godly Jews most certainly did (see "Language and Script in the Book of Mormon," Insights: An Ancient Window, March 1992, p. 2).
By the way, Peterson gives a footnote on Ankerberg's claim about Jews exclusively using Hebrew:
The statement "When modern Jews copy their scripture, they use Hebrew. They do not use Egyptian or Arabic, the language of their historic enemies" is quite an astonishing display of ignorance. Since the Egyptian language has been dead for centuries, it is hardly remarkable that modern Jews do not read the Bible in Egyptian. On the other hand, "the first and most important rendering [of the Old Testament] from Hebrew [into Arabic] was made by Sa'adya the Ga'on, a learned Jew who was head of the rabbinic school at Sura in Babylon (died 942)" (George A. Buttrick, ed., The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible [hereafter IDB], 4 vols. and supplement [Nashville: Abingdon, 1962-1976], 4:758b). Thus, Jews have indeed translated the Bible into "Arabic, the language of their historic enemies." They also have translated it into the language of their "historic enemies" the Greeks ( IDB 4:750b on the Septuagint) and Aramaeans ( IDB 1:185-93; 4:749-50, on the Aramaic Targums).
For more information, see "Reformed Egyptian" by William J. Hamblin, The FARMS Review, 19/1 (2007). Also see "Jewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters" by John A. Tvedtnes and Stephen D. Ricks, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1996. And for fun, be sure to see the site, Ancient Scripts--a marvelous collection of information on scripts of the ancient world.
Update: The FARMS publication, Insights, in Feb. 1998 reported on presentations at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), held Nov. 1997 in San Francisco. Non-LDS scholar Nili S. Fox discussed the development of Egyptian hieratic numerals used in Hebrew texts by Israelites during the ninth through seventh centuries B.C. Fox noted that the Israelite scribes were acquainted with the Egyptian writing system and that there was a longer history of ties between Egypt and both Judah and Israel than previously thought. Hebrews using an Egyptian writing system? The idea is a lot more plausible today that it was in Joseph Smith's time.
Comments for the Book of Mormon Evidences Collection (via Facebook)Guido hears the Brexit caucus of Tory MPs met with the remaining DexEU minister Robin Walker and DIT ministers Greg Hands and Mark Garnier this morning to have their concerns allayed. MPs were reassured by the ministers that, contrary to reports, the government will not pursue a weakening of Brexit policy. They were told that government policy has not changed and that the UK will have control of trade policy. i.e. No wavering, we are leaving the single market and customs union. Steve Baker, who leads the European Research Group caucus of around 80 Leave-supporting MPs, says it was a “hugely encouraging and constructive meeting”. Ministers will need to keep their word, the 80 MPs in Baker’s group alone far outweigh Ruth Davidson’s handful of Scots…
The broadsheet Remain media and broadcasters are persisting with the misleading language of “soft Brexit” and “hard Brexit”. Those arguing for a “soft Brexit” need to be honest about what they mean. Do they want to stay in the ECJ, stay in the single market, not take back control of immigration and not have the right to strike trade deals with the rest of the world? If so, that is not Brexit, it is not what the country voted for on June 23. Remainers arguing for this, and broadcasters indulging them by using their terminology, are laying the ground to overturn the referendum result…I couldn't make a casus belli of it just then, because my Chief had taken all the troops to hammer a gang of slave kings up north.
Such might have been the end of it had the CASUS BELLI been other than it was; but Teeka was flattered at the attention that was being drawn to her and by the fact that these two young bulls were contemplating battle on her account.
Another artificial casus belli is the McMahon Line.
Even if the most grandiose claims for "Russiagate" are true, they don't constitute anything close to a legitimate casus belli.
Over the past month, Iran's Lebanese allies led by President Michael Aoun have been looking for casus belli to start a new conflict with Israel, while Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dispatched his possible successor Ayatollah Sayyed Ebrahim Raisi to Lebanon.
The storm raised by a section of opinion in India over the removal of Mrs Kulbhushan Jadhav's shoes when she met her husband is not the result of frustration at the effectiveness of Pakistan's gesture, so much as the search for a casus belli, resembling nothing more than the cutting off of Jenkins' ear in 1731, which led to the War of Jenkins' Ear between England and Spain in 1738.
That the soldiers were not much concerned about slavery on either side" completely misses the salient point that the governments for whom these soldiers fought were clear-eyed about the war's casus belli, which is set forth with depressing clarity in secession documents.
A wise thing, too, because an impish member of the council was waiting for casus belli to cut off the water service of the delinquent debtors.
In the thick of the latest casus belli, words of influential faith leaders like Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, sought to offer solace.
On savait que les mesures fiscales dont avait accouche cette LF echafaudee dans le secret du palais de la Kasbah avaient tout pour constituer un casus belli.
The alleged intelligence activities against the diplomatic representatives of Serbia to Skopje are listed like casus belli, and the level of rhetoric implies "increased offensive activities against the Republic of Serbia".This fall, Toronto residents — not bureaucrats or politicians — will decide if the city adds benches along Danforth Avenue, lighting improvements in Oakridge Park, or a new shaded area in Prairie Drive Park. As part of a pilot project in participatory budgeting, residents in three neighbourhoods — Don Valley East (Ward 33), Oakridge in Scarborough (Ward 35) and Rustic in Etobicoke (Ward 12) — will be the ultimate decision-makers on which community ideas receive $150,000 in funding.
The city holds consultations on everything from park renovations, proposed cycling lanes and responsible pet ownership. Participatory budgeting is meant to be different: instead of merely receiving information and giving input, residents directly propose and decide what will happen in their neighbourhoods. Yet with the results now rolling in, the city faces a tough question: is the participatory budgeting experiment intended to truly hand over fiscal power to residents, or is it just another consultation tool in disguise?
What is participatory budgeting?
In 1989, Porto Alegre, Brazil became the first municipality in the world to introduce participatory budgeting (PB) in the wake of the election of the Labour Party, which pledged more open government. Porto Alegre is touted as the prototype. At the time, a third of the city’s population lived in favelas (slums) without access to basic infrastructure, like clean water and medical clinics. The city used participatory budgeting to engage citizens on ranking Porto Alegre’s priorities. As a result, civic involvement skyrocketed, corruption dropped as a result of decision-making becoming more apparent, and the city’s priorities changed. For example, a World Bank paper concluded that participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre led directly to a 20% increase in sewer and water connections, and a quadrupling of schools. The UN Habitat, a United Nations program that focuses on urban growth, declared the experiment to be an international best practice.
In the quarter century since Porto Alegre’s bold experiment, thousands of municipalities have introduced variations of participatory budgeting, including leading cities in developed countries. Josh Lerner, executive director of the non-profit Participatory Budgeting Project says that this approach enables residents to contribute their local knowledge to projects and ensure tax dollars are well spent. Lerner told Spacing: “Participatory budgeting is about authentic community power. It gives people the power to make real decisions about real money, together with government staff and experts. When people have real power, they step up and become more |
containers when heating food in microwave ovens.
Originally published on CivilEats.The private security company awarded a controversial $21-million contract to do checkpoint screening inside the security perimeters at last year's G8 and G20 summits in Ontario has pleaded guilty to doing business without a licence ahead of the event.
Contemporary Security Canada provided security screening at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and last year's G8/G20 summits in southern Ontario. ((CBC))
A lawyer for Contemporary Security Canada appeared in an Ottawa court Friday morning to plead guilty on behalf of the company and agree to a $45,000 fine.
The Ontario Provincial Police laid a string of charges in March against CSC, including three counts of offering security services while not licensed, two counts of failing to ensure proper uniforms and one charge of hiring an unlicensed guard for the G20 and G8 summits. Many of its top executives were also charged.
The Crown dropped most of those charges — including the more than 20 against company officials — on Friday, telling the court that it was the RCMP that solicited CSC's business and granted the contract without considering bids from other, licensed Ontario security firms.
Firm dodged regular procedures
CSC bid on the lucrative G8/G20 contract at the invitation of the RCMP 2½ months before the summit, even though both the Mounties and the company knew CSC wasn't properly licensed to operate in Ontario under the province's Private Security and Investigative Services Act.
The debacle left Ontario's Ministry of Community Safety scrambling in the weeks leading up to the June 2010 meeting of G8 leaders in Huntsville and G20 countries in Toronto. Bureaucrats had to shut down their regular licensing operations in order to fast track the licences and background checks on CSC and the hundreds of out-of-province guards it brought in to work at the summits.
Ontario even had to make special allowances and waived aspects of the testing and training requirements usually in place for Ontario security guards. Those measures were brought in after numerous inquests found a lack of training contributed to accidental deaths involving security guards arresting citizens.
$164M for Olympics Contemporary Security Canada, the private security firm hired by the RCMP to do screening at the G8 and G20 summits, did the same work at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver four months prior. For that event, RCMP disclosures reveal the company landed two contracts — one in May 2009 and one in January 2010 — worth $164 million.
The company insists it fully apprised the RCMP about its need to get a licence at the time it submitted its bid in April 2010, and that it did obtain the licence before it actually performed the work of X-ray screening, bag checks and operating metal detectors.
The Mounties solicited the bid from CSC, a Vancouver-based joint venture between Canadian security firm Aeroguard and U.S.-based Contemporary International, because it already had expertise as the private security company for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, for which CSC landed two RCMP contracts worth a total of $164 million.
Three other security firms that were already licensed in Ontario say they bid substantially less — between $8 million and $16 million — on the G8/G20 contract than the $21 million CSC was paid, but the RCMP excluded those companies for various reasons. The Mounties said for instance that Garda didn't have adequate X-ray machines, even though it runs the screening at many Canadian airports, and that G4S had unsatisfactory references, despite the fact the company was contracted for previous international summits in London and Pittsburgh.
There were also concerns in Ontario's security sector that the RCMP contract award was influenced by the fact a vice-president of CSC parent company Aeroguard was a 35-year veteran of the Mounties. The RCMP denied any favouritism.Jamie-Lynn Sigler has been battling multiple sclerosis for the past 15 years.
"The Sopranos" actress tells People magazine she was diagnosed with the degenerative disease when she was 19 years old, ahead of the show's fourth season.
Sigler, who is originally from Oyster Bay, New York, says she wasn't emotionally prepared to reveal her condition to the public until now.
The 34-year-old actress says her symptoms have become worse over the past decade. Sigler noted that she can't run or walk for long periods of time without rest.
"The Sopranos" actress portrayed Meadow Soprano throughout the HBO show's six seasons. She has also appeared in stage productions of "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast."
Sigler married baseball player Cutter Dykstra on Saturday in Palm Springs, California. They have a 2-year-old son, Beau.
Copyright Associated PressFormer president Barack Obama responded to President Donald Trump’s accusation that Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower phones while still in office.
“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” Obama spokesperson Kevin Lewis said in a statement on Saturday. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
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Earlier Saturday morning, Trump posted a series of tweets claiming that Obama in October sidestepped a court ruling to wiretap the then-presidential candidate’s phones on a level that was “Nixon/Watergate.” Trump did not include any evidence or links to back up his assertion.
“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” Trump tweeted just before 7 a.m. eastern. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” the president added.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Peter Rakobowchuk, The Canadian Press
Canada could play a key role in a new international space race, with the next sprint to the moon gearing up as an extra-terrestrial gold rush.
Industry insiders will be watching closely this week as the heads of the world's five biggest space agencies get together in Quebec City, where the partners on the International Space Station will discuss more than just the future of the orbiting lab.
They will also address an idea gaining currency in business and scientific circles: that within human reach lies an unfathomable wealth of resources, some of them common on Earth and others so exotic that they could change the way we live.
Canada could figure prominently in any discussion about lunar exploration, with nearly one-quarter of the world's top mining companies headquartered here and this country also known for robotics like the famous Canadarm.
Several countries, including China, have expressed a desire to start mining the moon's resources. The mining industry is now waiting for the Canadian Space Agency to make its intentions known, while the agency awaits direction from the federal government.
"When members of the international space community decide to go to the Moon or Mars, the CSA and Canada will be ready to contribute," the agency told The Canadian Press in an email last week.
The CSA has already begun developing a number of prototype lunar rovers, in co-operation with NASA and several Canadian firms.
The testing of these prototypes on Earth, with special drills for excavating, has already begun and more tests are planned this summer in Hawaii. The next phase would involve building space-bound rovers -- but the CSA can't move forward without federal approval.
"They're not headed for the moon, yet, although we have hopes for sure," Iain Christie, the president of Neptec Design Group, maker of one of the excavation rovers, said in an interview.
"We're making, I think, a contribution to what Canada's future space program might look like."
Ottawa-based Neptec made the laser-camera system that was used to inspect for damage on the exterior of the recently retired U.S. space shuttles.
For Christie, Canada's post-shuttle vocation is a no-brainer.
Of the top 40 global mining companies, with combined assets approaching $1 trillion, nine are Canadian, according to a 2011 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"On this planet, we are amongst the leading nations in figuring out how to extract resources from underneath the ground (and) we're also one of the leading countries in space exploration," he said.
Christie added that putting those two together makes a lot of sense: "It appears to me, at least from doing a quick survey of what other nations are doing, that it's also a niche that other countries might be prepared to let Canada excel at."
The moon is home to a number of compounds that are not readily available on Earth -- like Helium-3, a gas that could potentially fuel future nuclear-fusion power plants. Such a development would hold drastic implications for human activity, beginning with energy consumption. The moon also contains gold, platinum-group elements, and rare-earth elements.
Drilling for lunar resources may not be that far off. Some predict it could start by the end of this decade.
Since 2004, Neptec, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT) have all been working on a drilling project, called RESOLVE, which involves water ice on the Moon.
"It's a very wet place and water is the Holy Grail for space exploration," said Dale Boucher, a senior developer at NORCAT, said in an interview from his office in Sudbury, Ont.
"Water provides life support and, when you break it down into hydrogen and oxygen, it will provide fuel for ascent and even fuel for electric power generation, like in a fuel cell."
With hydrogen, the moon could hold the energy necessary to launch flights into deeper space. Several countries are even looking beyond the moon for possible mining sites, to Mars and also to asteroids.
Creating a permanent lunar outpost would be a precondition for any such projects. The Russians have already been talking about establishing a moon base by the year 2020.
But there's a slight chicken-and-egg connundrum: Boucher says there can't be a long-term lunar presence without water. And before water can be produced on the moon, there would first have to be some kind of mining.
Producing lunar H2o is necessary -- because to ship up the water required to sustain human life, there would be an out-of-this-world price tag.
"The average cost right now is estimated at a quarter of a million dollars for a one-litre bottle of water soft-landed on the Moon," Boucher said.
He believes Canadian mining expertise will prove to be "our toe in the door."
"I think we're kind of on the threshold of a mining boom on the moon and I think that we're very close," Boucher said.
"I think it's the next great activity similar to the Canadarm."
Space mining is not new to NORCAT, which develops new technologies for the mining industry. Boucher said the company has been building drills for NASA and the CSA since 1999.
The lead scientist on NASA's RESOLVE drilling project, Tony Colaprete, was also the principal investigator for LCROSS, the 2009 lunar probe that found a significant amount of water ice on the moon.
Colaprete says the next step is to find the veins of water on the moon and map out its distribution. That's where RESOLVE would go to work, drilling for samples and analyzing their components.
He says the equipment will be ready to be flown to the moon at the end of 2014. He adds that people are already interested in flying it, both commercially and within NASA.
One missing piece is a rocket to get RESOLVE to the lunar surface.
The United States is now focusing its attention on developing a heavy-lifting rocket known as the SLS, which will replace the shuttle program, but Colaprete says it isn't due to launch until 2017. The SLS, or Space Launch System, is a heavy-launch vehicle being designed by NASA and is expected to be the means of transportation for the RESOLVE payload.
That means the soonest there could be a rover driving around on the moon with RESOLVE is likely around the end of the decade, if all goes well with SLS.
"I think you can say certainly something could occur within a decade -- where we're driving on the moon, finding exactly where the water is, and sampling and tasting it, so to speak," Colaprete said.For a Japanese novel/manga/anime, see Rail Wars!
Railroad Wars were business rivalries between railroad companies, which occurred frequently in American history. Although they were usually little more than legal disputes inside a courtroom, they sometimes turned into armed conflicts. There has been competition between railroad companies since the beginning of railroading in the United States, but violent confrontations were most common in the final quarter of the 19th century, particularly in the Old West.
Wars [ edit ]
Placer County Railroad War [ edit ]
One of the first railroad wars in Old West history was the Placer County Railroad War in California. In 1864, the Sacramento Valley Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad began competing for the ownership of a road from Ashland to a point just outside Auburn Station, which was in the process of being abandoned by the Sacramento, Placer and Nevada Railroad. Because the Sacramento Valley company was in need of American-made rail for use in the First Transcontinental Railroad, the abandonment of the Sacramento, Placer and Nevada road gave them an opportunity to purchase new rail cheaply. To the contrary, the Central Pacific was interested in completing the road to Auburn.[1]
In order to stop the destruction of the road by the Sacramento Valley company, Central Pacific convinced a local Welshman named Griffith Griffith, who owned a granite quarry along the road, to sue the former for threatening his business. Griffith was successful and on June 15, 1864, he received a court order to stop the destruction of the road. The Sacramento Valley company ignored the order though and on July 2 they began disassembling the road for use elsewhere.[1]
In response, the sheriff of Placer County assembled his deputies and arrested some railroad workers at Auburn Station. However, on July 9, the disassembling of the road was resumed so the deputies attempted to stop it again. But, before they were successful, the Justice of Lincoln arrived and arrested the deputies for disturbing the peace. When he learned of this, the sheriff of Placer County ordered the Auburn Greys, a local militia, to pick up where his deputies had left off. During the following encounter, the militia opened fire on a crew of workers as they were removing the tracks. Others were arrested and put in jail. The road was safe for the time being, but, soon after, the California Supreme Court got involved and sided with the Sacramento Valley Railroad. Now that the Sacramento Valley company had permission from the state to continue removing the road, the Central Pacific was forced to build their own line to Auburn, which was completed on May 13, 1865.[1][2]
Colorado Railroad War [ edit ]
The Colorado Railroad War, also known as the Royal Gorge Railroad War, was fought in the late 1870s between the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the smaller Denver and Rio Grande company. In 1878, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe was competing against the Denver and Rio Grande to put the first line through Raton Pass. Both railroads had extended lines into Trinidad, Colorado and the pass was the only access to continue on to New Mexico. There was a great deal of legal maneuvering, and even threatened violence between rival gangs of railroad workers. To break the impasse, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe hired a number of local gunfighters in February 1878. Faced with this threat, and running out of money, the Denver and Rio Grande was forced to cede the pass to its rivals. The initial dispute was over without a shot being fired. However, the next year a silver strike in Leadville brought the struggle back to life.[3][4][5]
Now both railroads were competing to put track along the narrow Royal Gorge. The Denver and Rio Grande had hired its own gunfighters so the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe decided to strengthen its forces. On March 20, 1879 the railroad hired Bat Masterson to put together a group of gunmen. Masterson's force included such famous fighters as Doc Holliday, Ben Thompson, Dave Rudabaugh and Mysterious Dave Mather, as well as about seventy others. This impressive force had great success through early June 1879, but, on June 10, the state Fourth Judicial Circuit, with the later concurrence of the federal courts, ruled in favor of the Denver and Rio Grande, changing matters entirely. With the assistance of the sheriffs in the counties through which the railroads passed, the Denver and Rio Grande mounted an attack on its rival's forces. There was heavy fighting at the Santa Fe's garrisons in Colorado. The garrisons in Denver and Colorado Springs fell quickly. Masterson's headquarters in Pueblo held out the longest, but they eventually conceded defeat. Later, there were some bloodless skirmishes, but the war was essentially over with the Denver and Rio Grande in control of the Royal Gorge.[3]
Enid-Pond Creek Railroad War [ edit ]
The Enid-Pond Creek Railroad War was a dispute between the citizens of two Oklahoma counties and the Rock Island Railroad. In the late 1880s, the Rock Island Railroad built a line into the Indian Territory, entering near Caldwell, Kansas and following the Chisholm Trail. At part of the infrastructure, the company established railroad stations near several of the existing stagecoach stations along the trail. Two of the stations, Pond Creek, built at Pond Stage Stand on Round Pond Creek, and Enid, built at Skeleton Station near the Skeleton Ranch headquarters, would become involved in a controversy between the railroad and the United States Department of the Interior.[citation needed]
The problems began when the Department of the Interior set about opening the Cherokee Outlet to settlement. Hoping to lessen the problem of county seat wars, a common event in newly settled areas of the Old West, the Department of the Interior divided the Cherokee Outlet into counties and assigned them county seats. Pond Creek was chosen as the seat of "L" County and Enid became the seat of "O" County. Following the announcement of the official county seats, several Cherokee citizens began claiming land allotments, choosing sites near Pond Creek and Enid. Subsequently, railroad officials were accused of conspiring with the Cherokee to speculate on town development. Accordingly, officials in the Department of the Interior moved the government approved towns to different locations nearby, effectively creating two new towns.[citation needed]
A land run opened the Cherokee Outlet in 1893 and settlers, mostly from Kansas, occupied all four town sites; railroad Pond Creek, government Pond Creek, railroad Enid, or North Enid, and government Enid, or South Enid. The Rock Island Railroad responded to the government's action by refusing to stop trains at the government towns. Initially, the citizens in both government towns protested to get the railroad to provide them service and the Oklahoma Territorial government and United States House of Representatives supported them. However, the United States Senate took the railroad's side and refused to act. Government officials then informed the Rock Island Railroad that they had to furnish mail service to the two government towns. The Rock Island company responded by installing a type of hook on their trains to pick up and deliver mail without having to slow down. So when the mail pouches broke open, furious citizens claimed it was done intentionally. Not long after that, the people of Enid passed an ordinance setting a speed limit for trains passing through the town, but the Rock Island Railroad ignored it. Citizens in both government towns began attempting to flag down trains, placing dummies on the tracks, and leaving wagons and debris across the rails. But when that failed, the citizens resorted to violence. In June 1894, the people of Pond Creek tore up about a hundred yards of railroad and wrecked a freight train. By July, citizens were shooting at passing trains and placing bombs on the railroad tracks. Later that month, a group of unknown assailants sawed partially through a number of wooden supports on the trestle near Enid, which led to the wrecking of another freight train.[citation needed]
To restore order, men of the United States Marshals Service and United States Army troops from Fort Reno and Fort Supply were sent in to patrol the railroad right-of-way. Violence continued though. Finally, the United States Senate decided to intervene and on August 8, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed an act which required railroads "to establish and maintain passenger stations and freight depots at or within one-fourth of a mile of the boundary limits of all town sites established prior to August 8, 1894, in said Territories." Soon after, railroad Pond Creek was renamed Jefferson and relocated to higher ground; government Pond Creek remained, but "L" County was eventually renamed Grant County and the seat was moved to Medford. Railroad Enid became North Enid and government Enid, or South Enid, became the present-day Enid, the seat of Garfield Count.[citation needed]
Deschutes Railroad War [ edit ]
The Deschutes Railroad War began in 1908 when two competing railroad companies, the Deschutes Railroad and the Oregon Trunk Railway, started racing to build a line from the mouth of the Deschutes River across central Oregon. The Deschutes Railroad, a Union Pacific subsidiary, was owned by Edward H. Harriman and the Oregon Trunk was owned by James J. Hill.[6][7]
Harriman was the first to begin construction and, after surveying the area, he decided that the eastern side of the river would be the best route. Soon after, Hill began building his own line on the western side. Later on, however, in the Deschutes River Canyon, the two roads actually ran side-by-side or shared the same rails and terminals. Over the following years, there were multiple legal disputes to decide which company should have sole access to the canyon, but railroad workers went even further. Competing construction crews would often blow up the other side's supplies by igniting their black powder stores. They also dumped boulders onto camps below and engaged in small gunfights. Casualties remained light though and by 1912 the two railroads were operating on mostly separate lines, thus removing the cause for hostility.[6]
See also [ edit ]The 1981 South African rugby tour (known in New Zealand as the Springbok Tour, and in South Africa as the Rebel Tour) polarised opinions and inspired widespread protests across New Zealand. The controversy also extended to the United States, where the South African rugby team continued their tour after departing New Zealand.[1][2]
Apartheid had made South Africa an international pariah, and other countries were strongly discouraged from having sporting contacts with it. Rugby union was (and is) an extremely popular sport in New Zealand, and the South African team known as the Springboks were considered to be New Zealand's most formidable opponents.[3] Therefore, there was a major split in opinion in New Zealand as to whether politics should influence sport in this way and whether the Springboks should be allowed to tour.
Despite the controversy, the New Zealand Rugby Union decided to proceed with the tour. The government of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was called on to ban it, but decided that commitments under the Gleneagles Agreement did not require the government to prevent the tour, and decided not to interfere due to their public position of "no politics in sport". Major protests ensued, aiming to make clear many New Zealanders' opposition to apartheid and, if possible, to stop the matches taking place. This was successful at two games, but also had the effect of creating a law and order issue: whether a group of protesters could be allowed to prevent a lawful game taking place.
The dispute was similar to that involving Peter Hain in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, when Hain's Stop the Tour campaign clashed with the more conservative 'Freedom Under Law' movement championed by barrister Francis Bennion. The allegedly excessive police response to the protests also became a focus of controversy. Although the protests were among the most intense in New Zealand's recent history, no deaths or serious injuries resulted.
After the tour, no official sporting contact took place between New Zealand and South Africa until the early 1990s, after apartheid had been abolished. The tour has been said to have led to a decline in the popularity of Rugby Union in New Zealand, until the 1987 Rugby World Cup.
Background [ edit ]
A poster advertising a meeting of the Citizens' All Black Tour Association to protest against racially selected All Blacks teams touring South Africa.
The Springboks and New Zealand's national rugby team, the All Blacks, have a long tradition of intense and friendly sporting rivalry.[4] From the 1940s to the 1960s, the South African apartheid affected team selection for the All Blacks: the selectors passed over Māori players for some All Black tours to South Africa.[5] Opposition to sending race-based teams to South Africa grew throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to the All Blacks' tour of South Africa in 1960, 150,000 New Zealanders signed a petition supporting a policy of "No Maoris, No Tour".[5] The tour still happened, and in 1969 Halt All Racist Tours (HART) was formed.[6]
During the 1970s public protests and political pressure forced on the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRFU) the choice of either fielding a team not selected by race, or not touring South Africa:[5] South African rugby authorities continued to select Springbok players by race.[4] As a result, the Norman Kirk Labour Government prevented the Springboks from touring during 1973.[6] In response, the NZRFU protested about the involvement of "politics in sport".
In 1976, the All Blacks toured South Africa with the blessing of the newly elected New Zealand Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon.[7] Twenty-five African nations protested against this by boycotting the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.[8] In their view the All Black tour gave tacit support to the apartheid regime in South Africa. The 1976 tour contributed to the creation of the Gleneagles Agreement adopted by the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1977.[9]
Tour of New Zealand [ edit ]
By the early 1980s the pressure from other countries and from protest groups in New Zealand such as HART reached a head when the NZRU proposed a Springbok tour for 1981. This became a topic of political contention due to the international sports boycott. The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, refused permission for the Springboks' aircraft to refuel in Australia,[10] so the Springboks' flights to and from New Zealand went via Los Angeles and Hawaii.
Despite pressure for the Muldoon government to cancel the tour, permission was granted, and the Springboks arrived in New Zealand on 19 July 1981. Since 1977 Muldoon's government had been a party to the Gleneagles Agreement, in which the countries of the Commonwealth accepted that it was:
the urgent duty of each of their Governments vigorously to combat the evil of apartheid by withholding any form of support for, and by taking every practical step to discourage contact or competition by their nationals with sporting organisations, teams or sportsmen from South Africa or from any other country where sports are organised on the basis of race, colour or ethnic origin.
Despite this, Muldoon argued that New Zealand was a free and democratic country, and that "politics should stay out of sport."
Some rugby supporters echoed the separation of politics and sport.[12][13] Others argued that if the tour were cancelled, there would be no reporting of the widespread criticism of apartheid in New Zealand in the controlled South African media.[citation needed] Muldoon's critics felt that he allowed the tour in order for his National Party to secure the votes of rural and provincial conservatives in the general election later in the year, which Muldoon won.[14]
The ensuing public protests polarised New Zealand.[14] While rugby fans filled the football grounds, protest crowds filled the surrounding streets, and on one occasion succeeded in invading the pitch and stopping the game.[15]
To begin with the anti-tour movement was committed to non-violent civil disobedience, demonstrations and direct action.[citation needed] As protection for the Springboks, the police created two special riot squads, the Red and Blue Squads.[16][17] These police were, controversially, the first in New Zealand to be issued with visored riot helmets and long batons (more commonly the side-handle baton).[citation needed] Some protesters were intimidated and interpreted this initial police response as overkill and heavy-handed tactics.[citation needed] After early disruptions, police began to require that all spectators assemble in sports grounds at least an hour before kick-off.[citation needed]
At Gisborne on 22 July,[18] protesters managed to break through a fence, but quick action by spectators and ground security prevented the game being disrupted. Some protesters were injured by police batons.[citation needed]
Hamilton: Game cancelled [ edit ]
At Rugby Park, Hamilton (the site of today's Waikato Stadium), on 25 July,[18] about 350 protesters invaded the pitch after pulling down a fence. The police arrested about 50 of them over a period of an hour, but were concerned that they could not control the rugby crowd, who were throwing bottles and other objects at the protesters.[19] Following reports that a stolen light plane (piloted by Pat McQuarrie) was approaching the stadium, police cancelled the match.[19] The protesters were ushered from the ground and were advised by protest marshals to remove any anti-tour insignia from their attire, with enraged rugby spectators lashing out at them. Gangs of rugby supporters waited outside Hamilton police station for arrested protesters to be processed and released, and assaulted some protesters making their way into Victoria Street.[21]
Wellington: Molesworth Street protest [ edit ]
The aftermath of the Hamilton game, followed by the bloody batoning of marchers in Wellington's Molesworth Street in the following week, in which police batoned bare-headed protesters, led to the radicalisation of the protest movement. Because of this, many protesters began to wear motorcycle or bicycle helmets to protect themselves from batons and head injury.[22][23]
The authorities strengthened security at public facilities after protesters disrupted telecommunications by damaging a waveguide on a microwave repeater, disrupting telephone and data services, though TV transmissions continued as they were carried by a separate waveguide on the tower.[24] Army engineers were deployed,[citation needed] and the remaining grounds were surrounded with razor wire and shipping container barricades to decrease the chances of another pitch invasion. At Eden Park, an emergency escape route was constructed from the visitors' changing rooms for use if the stadium was overrun by protestors. Crowds of anti-tour protestors stood outside as the police were overwhelmed but the hundreds of police still managed to prevent the protestors from entering the stadium.[25]
Christchurch [ edit ]
At Lancaster Park, Christchurch, on 15 August,[18] some protesters managed to break through a security cordon and a number invaded the pitch.[citation needed] They were quickly removed and forcibly ejected from the stadium by security staff and spectators.[citation needed] A large demonstration managed to occupy the street adjacent to the ground and confront the riot police.[26] Spectators were kept in the ground until the protesters dispersed.[citation needed]
Auckland: plane invasion [ edit ]
A low-flying Cessna 172 piloted by Marx Jones and Grant Cole disrupted the final test at Eden Park, Auckland, on 12 September[18] by dropping flour-bombs on the pitch. In spite of the bombing, the game continued.[27] "Patches" of criminal gangs, such as traditional rivals Black Power and the Mongrel Mob, were also evident[citation needed] (The Black Power were Muldoon supporters[28]). Footage[according to whom?] was shown of the Clowns Incident, where police were shown beating unarmed clowns with batons.[29]
The protest movement [ edit ]
Some of the protest had the dual purpose of linking racial discrimination against Māori in New Zealand to apartheid in South Africa. Some of the protesters, particularly young Māori, felt frustrated by the image of New Zealand as a paradise for racial unity.[13] Many opponents of racism in New Zealand in the early 1980s saw it as useful to use the protests against South Africa as a vehicle for wider social action.[citation needed] However, some Maori supported the tour and attended games.[citation needed]
Tour of the United States [ edit ]
With the American leg of the tour following directly after the events of New Zealand, further protests and clashes with police were expected.[2] Threats of riots caused city officials in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City and Rochester to withdraw their previous authorisation for the Springboks to play in their cities.[2]
Midwest [ edit ]
The Springboks' match against the Midwest All Stars team had originally been intended to be played in Chicago. Following the anti-apartheid protests, it was secretly rescheduled to the mid morning of Saturday 19 September at Roosevelt Park in Racine, Wisconsin.[30] The clandestine strategy seemingly worked as around 500 spectators gathered to watch the match. Late in game, however, a small number of protestors arrived to disrupt proceedings and two were arrested after a brief altercation broke out on the field.[30]
Albany: pipe bomb [ edit ]
The cancelled New York City match against the Eastern All Stars was moved upstate to Albany.[31] The long serving Mayor of Albany, Erastus Corning, maintained that there was a right of peaceful assembly to "publicly espouse an unpopular cause," despite his own stated view that "I abhor everything about apartheid".[30]
Governor Hugh Carey argued that the event should be barred as the anti-apartheid demonstrators presented an "imminent danger of riot", but a Federal court ruling allowing the game to be played was upheld in the United States Court of Appeals. A further appeal to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was also overruled on the grounds of free speech.[31]
The match went ahead with around a thousand demonstrators (including Pete Seeger) corralled 100 yards away from the field of play, which was surrounded by the police. No violence occurred at the game but a pipe bomb was set off in the early morning outside the headquarters of the Eastern Rugby Union resulting in damage to the building estimated at $50,000.[31] No one was injured.
Glenville [ edit ]
The final match of the tour, against the United States national team, took place in secret at Glenville in upstate New York.[32] The thirty spectators recorded at the match is the lowest ever attendance for an international rugby match.[1]
The rugby [ edit ]
In New Zealand [ edit ]
In United States [ edit ]
Aftermath [ edit ]
The Muldoon government was re-elected in the 1981 election losing three seats to leave it with a majority of one.
The NZRU constitution contained much high-minded wording about promoting the image of rugby and New Zealand, and generally being a benefit to society. In 1985 the NZRU proposed an All Black tour of South Africa. Two lawyers successfully sued it, claiming such a tour would breach its constitution. A High Court injunction by Justice Casey stopped the tour.[34][35] The All Blacks did not tour South Africa until after the fall of the apartheid régime (1990–1994), although after the 1985 tour was cancelled an unofficial tour took place in 1986 by a team that included 28 out of the 30 All Blacks selected for the 1985 tour, known as the New Zealand Cavaliers but often advertised in South Africa as the All Blacks or depicted with the Silver Fern.
The role of the police also became more controversial as a result of the tour.[citation needed]
The All Blacks won the 1987 Rugby World Cup and rugby union was once again the dominant sport – in both spectator and participant numbers – in New Zealand.[36]
In New Zealand culture [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Notes and references [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Amid scrutiny over conflicts as they run the Trump Organization taken over from their father, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have asked an array of business partners not to contact the government seeking special favors.
The Trump children revealed the measure in separate interviews they conducted with the New York Times, where they defended President Trump's decision not to sell his assets.
One measure they have taken includes 'explicit instructions to their domestic and international business partners not to reach out to anyone in the United States government for help, the Times reported.
Another step relies on the Trump sons and the president to honor an agreement not to talk in detail about the business
'In the next four years, do I ever expect him to say: 'Hey, how's Turnberry? How's the new green? How's the new 10th tee?' Eric Trump said, regarding the Trump Turnberry golf course in Scotland.
Donald Trump Jr. (L) and Eric Trump have taken over the Trump Organization, which they run along with a longtime company executive. They attended the ceremony to nominate Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in the East Room of the White House
The younger son said he would probably reply in generalities like, 'Dad, it's great' and 'The property looks awesome.'
'Am I ever going to say: 'Listen. Hey, we have a tax issue'? No, no, no. There's a difference,' he said.
The president's office at Trump Tower remains vacant, and the sons have been using it to stockpile memorabilia for a future Trump presidential library.
Donald Trump Jr. bristled at the idea that his father might use the office to further enrich himself.
'Who in their right mind would try to enrich themselves by spending a fortune to run against 17 seasoned politicians on the Republican side, to then go up against the Clinton machine, Wall Street, Hollywood, P.C. culture?' he asked. 'To use that as the way to enrich yourself is laughable.'
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump attend the Eric Trump Foundation's 6th Annual Golf Invitational Benefiting The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital at Trump National Golf Club Westchester on September 10, 2012 in Briarcliff Manor, New York
s the 9th Annual Eric Trump Foundation golf invitational at Trump National Golf Club Westchester on September 21, 2015 in Briarcliff Manor
Donald Trump, Jr.and Eric Trump pose at Trump Tower on May 3, 2012
Eric Trump is the son who has more current interaction with his father.
Don Jr. said he called his father just once since inauguration, knowing he is busy.
Eric, by contrast, said he spoke to his father a few times a week.
The two sons |
while working as a civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy.[7] What was quite interesting was that the Israeli Mossad was highly involved in the Monica Lewinsky affair. The Mossad
“began to intercept explicit phone calls from the president to Lewinsky. The recordings were couriered by diplomatic bag to Tel Aviv. On March 27, Clinton once more invited Lewinsky to the Oval Office and revealed he believed a foreign embassy was taping their conversations…
“In Tel Aviv, Mossad’s strategies pondered how to use the highly embarrassing taped conversations; they were the stuff of blackmail—though no one suggested any attempt should be made to blackmail the president of the United States.
“Some, however, saw the recordings as a potent weapon to be used if Israel found itself with its back to the wall in the Middle East and unable to count on Clinton’s support.”[8]
Andrea Peyser of the New York Post declares that Lewinsky did not blame Clinton for what happened. Lewinsky herself said: “Sure, my boss took advantage of me. But I will always remain firm on this point: It was a consensual relationship.’’[9]
So, the big questions which probably will never get a conclusive answer are simply these: was Lewinsky a honey trap? There is no serious evidence to suggest that she was, but I wouldn’t be surprise if the Mossad contacted her. The Israeli regime has a history of doing just that.[10] Back in 2010, Haaretz reported:
“An Israeli rabbi has given his blessing to female agents of Israel’s foreign secret service, Mossad, who may be required to have sex with the enemy in so-called “honey-pot” missions against terrorists. Rabbi Ari Shvat’s ruling appeared in a study, ‘Illicit sex for the sake of national security,’ published by the Tzomet Institute, which studies the interface between religion and modernity.
“There is a catch, however, for married honey-pots. ‘If it is necessary to use a married woman, it would be best [for] her husband to divorce her. … After the [sex] act, he would be entitled to bring her back,’ Schvat wrote. ‘Naturally, a job of that sort could be given to a woman who in any event is licentious in her ways.’”[11]
Zachary Keck did not go into the metaphysical issues at all in his article. He never told us the essentially Talmudic ideology that is driving Netanyahu. He never pointed out the fact that Netanyahu is the chairman of the Likud Party, which grew out of the terrorist organization known as the Irgun.
“Two of the operations for which the Irgun is best known are the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre, carried out together with Lehi on 9 April 1948.
“The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts. In particular the Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by Britain,[5] the 1946 Zionist Congress[6] and the Jewish Agency. Irgun’s tactics appealed to a certain segment of the Jewish community that believed that any action taken in the cause of the creation of a Jewish state was justified, including terrorism.
“The Irgun was a political predecessor to Israel’s right-wing Herut (or ‘Freedom’) party, which led to today’s Likud party. Likud has led or been part of most Israeli governments since 1977.”
One Zionist historian even acknowledged, “Irgun and Lehi terrorism inevitably provoked a tough British response, which included the beating and torture of terrorist suspects.”[12] Irgun, or Etzel,
“was founded in Jerusalem in April 1931 and steadfastly reflected the ideas of Jabotinsky, who regarded political violence solely as a means of achieving the goal of establishing a sovereign and democratic Jewish state.
“On the other hand, the people of Lehi, which splintered off from the Etzel in June 1940, considered the use of violence and terrorism a crucial component in the evolution of the Jewish nation.”[13]
The crucial point here is that “Although the majority of the members of these two groups were secular, their ideology gave prominence to the affinity between religion and nationalism. Leaders of the groups tended to embrace Jewish mythology and to draw a direct line between the stories from the Bible and their own struggle for Jewish independence.”
Jewish scholars Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger argue that those terrorist groups “incorporated messianic elements” in their terrorist acts. Pedhzur and Perliger move on to document that
“The ‘Essentials of Revival,’ Lehi’s public platform, gave preeminence to the aspiration of building a Third Temple. Lehi leaders even declared themselves the successors to the Jewish zealots from the Second Temple era. It therefore comes as no surprise that the doctrine of the Lehi organization…became one of the principal sources of inspiration for future national-religious terrorist groups in Israel in the following decades.”[14]
So, Netanyahu’s political ideology stemmed from those terrorist groups, which essentially are Talmudic in their orientation. The reason that no U.S. president can stand the man in Tel Aviv is because he lives in this Talmudic colony, which has no respect for reason and order and morality. Some Israeli officials sometimes cannot stomach the ideological outlook of that world either. Meir Dagan, former head of the Mossad, declared that Netanyahu’s world produces “bullshit.”[15] In the same vein, Yuval Diskin, former head of the internal intelligence agency Shin Beth, lamented back in 2012,
“My major problem is that I have no faith in the current leadership, which must lead us in an event on the scale of war with Iran or a regional war.
“I don’t believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister. I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings. Believe me, I have observed them from up close … They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off. They are misleading the public on the Iran issue.”[16]
What Dagan and Diskin could not seem to grasp is that Netanyahu’s ideology is consistent with Talmudic mores. In fact, the Talmudic position is quite clear: “It is permitted to deceive a goy.”[17] If this is too hard to believe, remember the words of Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef:
“Goyim (gentiles, non-Jews) were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.”[18]
If the Goyim are comparable to “donkeys,” which was exactly what Yosef said,[19] then lying to them is a very small price to pay. After all, donkeys are just too stupid enough to understand lying. When Yosef passed away last October, Netanyahu said: “The Jewish People have lost one of the wisest men of his generation.”[20]
The fact is that Netanyahu never repudiated Yosef for denigrating the Goyim. Hence, it is perfectly legitimate to say that Netanyahu’s ideology includes lying to dumb Goyim or “donkeys.” To give a classic example, Netanyahu explicitly wrote in his 1995-book Fighting Terrorism:
“The best estimate at this time place Iran between three and five years away from possessing the prerequisites required for the independent production of nuclear weapons. After this time, the Iranian Islamic republic will have the ability to construct atomic weapons without the importation of materials or technology from abroad.”[21]
Netanyahu never cited the sources for this extraordinary claim. In fact, serious documented account tell us a completely different story.
In any event, more than twenty years later, Iran still does not have the bomb. In fact, it is generally agreed among U.S. and Israeli intelligence that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program.[22]
Did Netanyahu start rethinking about his relentless lies and fabrications? Did he apologize to the world for slandering Iran? Did he listen to the head of the Israel Defense Force Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, who said that “the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people” and are not interested in building nuclear weapons?[23]
The answer is no. Why? Well, pretty simple. Netanyahu’s world, as St. Athanasius would have said, is Satanic precisely because it is against metaphysical reason, political order, and harmony. Netanyahu, like Satan or “the infernal Serpent” in Milton’s Paradise Lost, seems to be saying, “evil, by thou my good!”[24] Milton’s Satan “stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived the mother of mankind” with one of his biggest weapons known as “pride.”[25]
Netanyahu wants to deceive much of the Western world with his lies and deceptions. In fact, he has been doing exactly that for more than twenty years.[26] This is another reason why his essentially Talmudic system is Satanic because it uses deliberate lies as its foundational weltanschauung. In short, Netanyahu is actually against Logos.
“St. Athanasius established the principle that being against Logos is synonymous with being Satanic.”[27]
Moreover, Netanyahu doesn’t care if you live or die. He only cares about marshalling lies and deceptions. This is why when thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives in the 9/11 attack, his cogent response was that the attack would be good for Israel! “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” said Netanyahu. Those events, he continued to say, “swung American public opinion in our favor.”[28]
How is that not Satanic? How can he sit down in front of a TV screen and watch people die by the hundreds and then laugh about the whole event? Here Netanyahu reminds me of some of Karl Marx’s poems. For example, in “Oulanem,” Marx “smiles pleasantly, roars outrageously, consigns the entire human race to damnation, and all the time he is watching himself cynically.”[29] Historian Robert Payne declared that Marx “will squeeze the life out of the world, and then watch it sinking away into utter nothingness.”[30] Paul Johnson came to similar conclusions.[31]
If you doubt that Netanyahu isn’t pursuing this Satanic activity, look again at the Iraq War. Look at how he is willing to take the world down with him if he doesn’t get what he wants. In fact, he has made it very clear that Israel is not bound by the Iran deal.[32]
What we are seeing here is that Israel, as Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, is part of the “axis of evil.”[33] That “axis of evil” has a number of colonies in the United States, and those colonies are laden with ideologues. One of them is none other than Thomas Friedman, who has said recently that:
“Congress should pass a resolution authorizing this and future presidents to use force to prevent Iran from ever becoming a nuclear weapons state. Iran must know now that the U.S. president is authorized to destroy — without warning or negotiation — any attempt by Tehran to build a bomb.”[34]
Why can’t Friedman follow this political gyration to its logical conclusion? Why doesn’t he apply it to Israel, which has hundreds of nuclear bombs and which even threatens to annihilate parts of Europe? Once again, it is pertinent to bring in Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld, who said:
“We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”[35]
Well, that is certainly an infallible sign that Israel is under a Satanic ideology. So if Friedman wants to be serious and wants to keep his ideas intact, then America would be bombing Israel because the regime does not even allow international inspections. It gets worse. Business Insider has recently reported:
“Israel is also believed to have some of the most advanced cyberwarfare capabilities of any country on earth, to the point where the National Security Agency reportedly considered Israel to be a potential electronic warfare proliferator.”[36]
Will Friedman check this cyberwarfare thing out for us? Will he ever tell us what the Israeli regime has been up to?
The answer is a resounding no. Should we take him seriously? The answer again is no.
[1] Zachary Keck, “Netanyahu: The Israeli Leader No President Can Stomach,” National Interest, March 2, 2015.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Yes, Gaza is a concentration camp, and Israeli officials have suggested that Israel ought to annihilate “all the fighting forces and their supporters.” “Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters,’” Daily Mail, August 4, 2014.
[4] Lewis Rosen, “Did Bill Clinton Really Say That about Netanyahu?,” Times of Israel, September 18, 2014; see also “Netanyahu ‘not the man’ to make peace: Bill Clinton bashes Israeli prime minister in candid remarks caught on tape,” Daily Mail, September 16, 2014; “Bill Clinton takes a shot at Benjamin Netanyahu,” Politico, September 16, 2014
[5] This again goes back to E. Michael Jones’ thesis that sexual liberation is a form of political control. As he puts it,
“It is no secret now that lust is a form of addiction…the current regime knows this and exploits this situation to its own advantage. In other words, sexual ‘freedom’ is really a form of social control. What we are really talking about is a Gnostic system of two truths. The exotic truth, the one propagated by the regime through advertising, sex education, Hollywood films, and the university system—the truth, in other words for the general consumption—is that sexual liberation is freedom. The esoteric truth, the one that informs the operations manual of the regime—in other words the people who benefit from ‘liberty’—is the exact opposite, namely, that sexual liberation is a form of control, a way of maintaining the regime in power by exploiting the passions of the naïve, who identify with their passions as if they were their own and identify with the regime wich ostensibly enables them to gratify these passions.” E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000), 2.
[6] Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, “Netanyahu said to have offered Lewinsky tapes for Pollard,” Times of Israel, July 23, 2014.
[7] Pollard’s wife has recently declared that the Israeli government should hire an attorney and to fight for his swift release. The laughable and inexorable conclusion is that we Americans give Israel at least $3 billion every year, and now we are being told that the Israeli government should use our money to release an Israeli spy.
[8] Gordon Thomas, Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995 and 2015), 103.
[9] Andrea Peyser, “Monica Lewinsky should shut up and go away, NY Post, May 7, 2014.
[10] See for example “The History of Honey Trap,” Foreign Policy, March 12, 2010; Stephen Miller, “An Israeli Spy Whose Snares Included the ‘Honey Trap,’” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2009.
[11] “Israeli rabbi: Honey-pot sex is kosher for female Mossad agents,” Haaretz, October 5, 2010.
[12] Michael Burleigh, Blood & Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 103.
[13] Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 11.
[14] Ibid.
[15] “Ex-Mossad chief pans Netanyahu’s ‘bulls—‘ speech to Congress,” Jerusalem Post, March 6, 2015.
[16] Quoted in Harriet Sherwood, “Ex-Israeli spy boss attacks Netanyahu and Barak over Iran,” Guardian, April 28, 2012.
[17] For a full expose on this, see Michael Hoffman, Judaism Discovered (Coeur D’Alene: Revisionist History, 2008).
[18] Quoted in Dan Murphy, “Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in his own words,” Christian Science Monitor, October 7, 2013.
[19] “5 of Ovadia Yosef’s most controversial quotations,” Times of Israel, October 9, 2013.
[20] Murphy, “Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in his own words,” Christian Science Monitor, October 7, 2013.
[21] Benjamin Netanyahu, Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), 121.
[22] “‘US, Israel agree Iran abandoned nuclear bomb,’” Jerusalem Post, March 18, 2012; James Risen and Mark Marzetti, “U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb,” NY Times, February 24, 2012.
[23] Julian Borger, “Israel army chief contradicts Netanyahu on Iran,” Guardian, April 25, 2012; “Israeli military chief: Iran will not decide to make nuclear weapons,” Guardian, April 25, 2012.
[24] John Milton, Paradise Lost (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2005), 71.
[25] Ibid., 4.
[26] Scott Peterson, “Imminent Iran Nuclear Threat? A Timeline of Warnings Since 1979,” Christian Science Monitor, November 8, 2011.
[27] Cited in E. Michael Jones, “The Great Satan and Me: Reflections on Iran and Postmodernism’s Faustian Pact,” Culture Wars, July 2015.
[28] “Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel,” Haaretz, April 16, 2008.
[29] Robert Payne, Marx (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), 68.
[30] Ibid., 72.
[31] Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), chapter 3.
[32] Barak Ravid, “Netanyahu: Iran nuclear deal makes world much more dangerous, Israel not bound by it,” Haaretz, July 14, 2015; “Reactions to the Deal on Iran’s Nuclear Program,” NY Times, July 14, 2015.
[33] Paul Craig Roberts, How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2014), 19.
[34] Thomas Friedman, “Backing Up Our Wager With Iran,” NY Times, July 22, 2015.
[35] Quoted in “The War Game,” Guardian, September 21, 2003.
[36] Amin Rosen, “John Kerry gave a revealing answer on whether the US will help protect Iran’s nuclear program from an Israeli cyber-attack,” Business Insider, Jully 24, 2015.Canonical joins GNOME Foundation Advisory Board
ORINDA, CA – November 1st, 2017 – The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce that Canonical, creator of the Ubuntu operating system, has joined the GNOME Foundation advisory board. The Advisory Board is a body of stakeholder organizations and companies who support the GNOME Project by providing funding and expert consultation. The board includes Google, the Linux Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation, among others.
“The recently launched Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) had been widely anticipated as the first version of Ubuntu to switch to GNOME. The success of this release is thanks to the GNOME community. We’re excited to join the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board to continue our collaboration in closer partnership.” said, Jamie Bennett, Vice President of Devices and IoT Engineering at Canonical
Ubuntu is the most popular GNU/Linux distribution and is used by millions of users daily.
“Canonical brings a wealth of experience, and we’re extremely pleased that they’re engaging with the Foundation and the community.” said Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.
The non-profit GNOME Foundation is an independent organization committed to supporting the advancement of the GNOME Project and software freedom. It provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME Project and helps determine its vision and roadmap. GNOME software is used by millions of people around the world.
More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.orgMike Slive, SEC Commissioner
“The SEC is considering buying the NFL.”
Johnny Manziel, Texas A&M QB
“They sent the oldest Manning brother, Cooper, and he told me to wake up and come to the film session. I laughed in his face, threw up the double birds and went back to sleep. Listen, I probably would have woken up for Peyton Manning, maybe the younger one or the old man, but Fredo Manning? No chance.” – On leaving the Manning Quarterback Camp
“How many Heisman’s have the Manning family won? That’s right, zero. These fools need to hit up my quarterback camp… It’s held in Panama City every March… Tell them to bring a flat-billed hat… and pick up some beer.”
“Have you seen his tattoo? Yeah, A.J. McCarron always makes great decisions.”
Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban
“I’ve spent the offseason tapping into a more powerful energy source. As a result I’m no longer a regular human like the rest of you in this room, despite our similar appearance; instead I’m more of a spiritual essence, a deity. I’m not saying I’m necessarily your God, but I am a God.” – On how he celebrated back to back titles
“Coaches calling me the devil don’t even get it. I’m operating on a higher consciousness than the Devil they grew up knowing. If you did a power rankings of Spiritual Beings and related those to a Power Ranking of SEC Coaches I would still be me and the Devil would be somewhere in the James Franklin range.” – On being called the Devil by SEC Coaches
“I am the Nucleus.” – On his role in College Football and the Universe
“Visiting my mind is like visiting the Hermès factory. Sh*t is real. You’re not going to find a chink. It’s 100,000 percent Jimi Hendrix.” – On how he will game plan for Johnny Manziel
“What is a Bear Bryant? I don’t understand your question.”
Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M Head Coach
“Recruiting against Texas is actually pretty easy. Listen, I’m 48 but if I told you I was 35 you would believe it. Mack Brown is almost 62 but if I told you he was 79 years old you would believe it. So I start by telling every recruit that Mack Brown is 79 years old…”
Will Muschamp, Florida Head Coach
“Urban Meyer took a break from ignoring his family and mentoring murderers to report the University of Florida for minor NCAA violations? Yeah, that guy has his priorities straight.”
“We play Georgia in Jacksonville, at LSU, at South Carolina and if we’re lucky Alabama or Texas A&M. Out of conference we play Florida State and at Miami. So we have the hardest schedule in the SEC and the hardest schedule in the ACC… so, I’m sorry, what was your question about scheduling Georgia Southern?”
Les Miles, LSU Head Coach
“It doesn’t look good for the program when you see running back Jeremy Hill on film punching a man in the back of the head, but it looks worse when it’s his non-football buddy who actually manages to knock the guy out.”
“Alabama plays Tennessee and Missouri from the SEC East. Combined, they went 1-15 in the SEC. We play Florida and Georgia. Combined, they went 14-2. I’m just saying.”
Aaron Murray, Georgia Quarterback
“If coach tells me to spike that ball, and lets me run a real play there is a good chance we’re playing in the BCS Championship game against a team whose best player’s imaginary cancer ridden girlfriend just died in a car accident.”
Mark Richt, Georgia Head Coach
“It’s the only thing I think about. I literally have no other thoughts.”
A.J. McCarron, Alabama Quarterback
“No, I didn’t have time to take batting practice at every major league stadium this offseason. Between hanging out with my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model girlfriend and watching my highlights from the BCS Championship game, I just didn’t have the time.”
Mark Stoops, Kentucky Head Coach
“My brother has lost all touch with reality. He plays maybe one challenging in-conference game every year then goes and gets smoked in the bowls. He used to be a great coach but victory has made him weak.”
“I’ll be honest, this season is going to be a disaster and I have very little hope for the future. I took this job just so I could get good tickets to see the basketball team play this year. Julius Randle? Andrew Harrison? They could beat most NBA teams!”
Gus Malzahn, Auburn Head Coach
“If you break down who was responsible for our National Championship it would go 60% Cam Newton, 40% Gus Malzahn and 0% Gene Chizik. Dude was worthless.”
Bret Bielema, Arkansas Head Coach
“This was a total cash grab. I can’t even look myself in the mirror.”
Steve Spurrier, South Carolina Head Coach
“Arkansas’ coach is named Bielema? Isn’t that when hot girls throw up their food to stay skinny?”
“Part of me is happy that I get to go an entire season without having to watch Marcus Lattimore’s leg fall off again.”
“I’m being totally honest with you when I say there is a 60% chance Jadeveon Clowney kills somebody on the field this year.”
Jadeveon Clowney, South Carolina Defensive End
“I’d say 100%.”
Dan Mullen, Head Coach Mississippi State
“South Carolina, Texas A&M, and Alabama, back to back to back… See y’all in 2014.”
Hugh Freeze, Head Coach Ole Miss
“Dammit, stop staying how improved we’re going to be. We got a nice class, but they are still Freshman. Bo Wallace is nice, but we’re going to have to earn it. Hell, I’ll be thrilled if we can get past Vandy week one!”
James Franklin, Vanderbilt Head Coach
“I think I’d be great at USC after they get rid of that clown Kiffin. Clemson is a dark horse, too.” – On his coaching future
Gary Pinkel, Missouri Head Coach
“We’ve made a huge mistake.”
Butch Jones, Tennessee Head Coach
“I’ve never even heard of myself.”This Graphic Puts Global Warming in Full Perspective
To say the world is having a streak like no other is an understatement. Global warming has made cold scarce on a planetary scale.
This March clocked in as the second warmest March on record when compared to the 20th century average, according to newly released data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NASA data published last week came to the same conclusion, comparing temperatures to a 1951-1980 baseline.
The NOAA data shows the planet was 1.9°F (1.05°C) above the 20th century average for March, the first time any month has breached the 1°C threshold in the absence of El Niño. This March is the latest freakishly hot month following three years in a row of record heat.
NOAA and NASA baselines don’t really tell the whole story. How much the world has warmed since pre-industrial times is a crucial measuring stick for international climate talks and a more accurate representation of how much climate change is altering the planet.
Using the baseline of 1881-1910, a new, more dire picture of global warming emerges. This March was 2.4°F (1.3°C) above the pre-industrial average by that measure. More notably, this March marks a whopping 627 months in a row of warmer than normal temperatures. If you were born after December 1964, you’ve never experienced a month cooler than average on this planet.
To understand what that looks like, take a peek at the global temperature chart below. Each month is represented by a box. Cool blues have been disappearing, replaced by a wave of unending heat. Climate change is likely to continue the streak of warmer than normal months into the foreseeable future as temperatures keep marching upward.My previous post is still visible a few messages back… And I don’t know anything on any of this, I’m simply trying to understand your logic and ‘facts’
But first, I must ask, who/what are you that qualifies you? Are these just opinions, things you’ve ‘learned’ (cause you know everything everyone ‘learns’ is always 100% truthful), or do you/have you dealt with this stuff in real life?
Physics SEEMS to have laws that ‘prove’ everything, but every so often, something doesn’t follow those laws EXACTLY, so, they make other laws to ‘fill the gaps’. Water is one of those not-quite-right items.
Next, how much energy DOES it take to separate the hydrogen? I don’t feel like reading back, and I don’t study this stuff, so you may be totally correct, BUT, can you agree with me on the FACT that hydrogen, when burned produces MORE energy than gasoline?
You never made such a claim as to ‘.... the gasoline you put in the engine IS NOT 100% efficient. So, theoretically, you CAN NOT RUN YOUR CAR ON GASOLINE’?
I believe (according to my copy and paste keys) you said :
"HHO" systems are 100% guaranteed to use more energy than they return to the system, you'll similarly understand my recalcitrance to build a device which is 100% guaranteed to fail!
is what you said. But, previously, in the same post, you said ICE’s are only 30% efficient, which, in MY BOOK, means they use more energy than they return to the system.
An alternator doesn’t produce more than it needs, huh? I will concede this point, having read more about the electrical system in the car.
ok, I GUESS my statement #2 didn’t really make sense, did it? Fuel not 100% efficient? Well ok, NOTHING is 100% efficient, but, not really what I meant. What I should have said is more along the lines of it should be cost vs. mpg…. My bad J (This is an unchecked rant about stuff I don’t have a lot of background on, like MOST of us here, I’m trying to learn more… thank GOD we have self appointed geniuses such as yourself to help us along our way J )
Modern cars burn 99% of the fuel…. Ok, so, if we could make that 99.5%, that would be better, right? I’m sure that comment was because of my ‘fuel not 100% efficient’, but we’re past that…
You're never going ANYWHERE in a vehicle 'powered by water' because there has never been one!
Ok, NOONE is trying to build a car ‘powered by water’, we’re trying to ASSIST a gasoline engine with HYDROGEN.
One more time- no one is trying to run the vehicle on water.
“No devices on petrol burning automobiles "recaptures" unburned hydrocarbons”
what does a PCV valve do? OHH! That’s right! The PCV valve is a control device which sends partially burned gases that come from the engine's crankcase to the combustion chamber. Its name, PCV means Positive Crankcase Ventilation and is one of the oldest and most used emission control devices
“Do you have a clue as to how quickly these adjustments are made by the engine computer? Apparently not. This is a continuous monitoring and adjustment process, which happens in milliseconds.”
If I can save.0001 gallons of gas 10,000 times in 100 miles, what does that do for my MPH?
“WTF? Fuel and water?”
exactly, but I HAVE see you nay-sayers say that in other comments about HHO, brown gas, etc…. Did the guy who build the first engine have pcv valves, and efi? His engine PROBABLY didn’t get very good mileage at all, huh? It took time for people to learn HOW they could make it more efficient….
“I'll make it deadset easy for you. "HHO" systems consume more energy to produce hydrogen than they return when the hydrogen is burned. This means that they are a net energy LOSER. “
UNFORTUNATELY, that does not make it deadest easy. PROOF, give me some facts or some point of reference that I can research, because from the (limited) research I’ve done, I have not found that to be true.
“An electrolyser based in a jam jar and running off a typical automobile's charging system will produce just a few litres of hydrogen (certainly less than 10L, more like 2-5L) PER HOUR. Compare that to the airflow through a typical auto engine; a 2 litre, 4-stroke engine draws in 2 litres of atmospheric air with every other crankshaft revolution. Thus, at 2500RPM, this engine is flowing 5000L of air per minute, 300,000L per hour. 2-5L/hr of hydrogen out of 300,000L/hr is a fart in a hurricane.”
WHO CARES ABOUT AIRFLOW?! WE’RE NOT CONCERNED WITH THE AIRFLOW. THE AIRFLOW WILL STILL BE THE SAME WITH OR WITHOUT THE HYDROGEN. ***HOW MUCH GAS DOES THE CAR USE PER MINUTE? GAS AND HYDROGEN IS WHAT WE ARE COMPARING.***
“If your engine is running on another fuel (i.e. petrol) and you're piping the hydrogen into the engine's intake, since the hydrogen generation system takes more energy off the crankshaft than you get back when the hydrogen is burned in the cylinder/s, you're simply increasing the amount of petrol the engine burns. “
See here is where we have the problem. How do you think you know, where did your facts come from, that it takes more energy to split the hydrogen from H2O than can be recaptured? (you may be right, I just know, for the good of all involved, I can’t take some text on my screen as fact without something to back it up.)
“Remember, the alternator belt loses 30% of the energy taken from…”
So, YOUR stance on this is that EVERYONE of these people that claim they get MORE MILES PER TANK OF GAS with this added to their car are lying, or just too stupid to figure out that 200 miles on a tank of gas without the HHO thing is the same as 300 miles on a tank of gas and a bottle of water?
And, as an FYI, there ARE PLENTY of hydrogen powered engines. IT IS POSSIBLE that one may not be able to use such a simple device to efficiently produce the necessary hydrogen, but, I’ll state again, the first gas engine didn’t run very efficiently. The BIG car companies DO produce hydrogen powered cars, they DO produce (well, starting to) cars that RUN ON WATER. They use FUEL CELLS, maybe you’ve heard of those? So, don’t say it’s not possible. Yes, I understand, ‘fuel cells are not the same thing!’ no, they are a progression. Learning starts SOMEWHERE.
Please, if you haven’t already, scroll down and read my post from a month or so ago.. I could be 100% wrong with everything, and I’m not afraid to admit that. I’m here to learn. I wanna know WHY what I think is wrong, not just ‘because I said so!’ Everything in that post while (quickly) researched was put together from information *I BELIEVE* to be factual. Nothing I have said in this message has be proof read, verified, or validated. Again, bare with us while we try to absorb as much knowledge from said geniuses as we can (and I say that in the friendliest smart ass way I can cause I thought it was cute, not case I am trying to be mean)Panda eating bamboo (Shutterstock)
Belgian researchers are examining the excrement of giant pandas to try to understand how they can digest tough bamboo, hoping for clues on how to develop new generations of biofuel.
The genetic make-up of endangered pandas is that of a carnivore but the animals have adapted to a diet consisting almost exclusively of bamboo.
While a few scientific studies have looked into the digestive tract of the panda, the researchers say their study is the first to focus on the microorganisms in the animal’s gut.
“We can look for new enzymes which could be used to degrade tough biomass,” said Korneel Rabaey, professor for biochemical and microbial technology at Ghent University, standing outside the giant panda enclosure at the Pairi Daiza zoo in Belgium.
The results of the study may point to new, cheaper, ways to produce so-called second generation biofuels made from plants and biomass not destined for consumption such as corn stalks.
Six-year-old panda Xing Hui, whose name means sparkling star, and his female partner Hao Hao, meaning kind, paid little attention to the scientists collecting their droppings on Monday, instead soaking up the sun and chewing through the first stems of their daily 10-kg (22-lb) portion of bamboo.
The research may also help the pandas. “We can also go back to the animal and understand why it is eating only certain kinds and parts of the bamboo,” Rabaey said.
(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Janet Lawrence)ROHTAK Several private schools in the district were forced to declare Wednesday a holiday as their buses were requisitioned for the rally organised to welcome BJP national president Amit Shah in Haryana.
The state government seems to have forgotten the rulebook to welcome its party bosses as |
Fadiman noted. “Having the eye of a poet he is intensely aware of our taken-for-granted environment. He is aware of the millions of substitutes for things, the millions of substitutes for ideas, the millions of substitutes for emotions, the millions of substitutes for human beings. Out of this awareness the sweet and bitter of his prose continually wells.”
By 1938, White seemed to be at the top of his game. In a country still wracked by the Depression, he enjoyed a well-paying job at the New Yorker and the admiration of his peers. He had married New Yorker editor Katharine Angell in 1929. The Whites’ family included Nancy and Roger Angell, Katharine’s children from a previous marriage. Roger Angell eventually became a New Yorker staffer himself. The Whites’ son Joel was born in 1930.
But touched by a midlife crisis of sorts, White decided to leave the New Yorker—and New York itself—and move to a saltwater farm in rural Maine. Katharine, in spite of her stature as one of the most influential editors in America, agreed to go along, striking an arrangement with the New Yorker that allowed her to do some editing work long-distance through the mail.
White had no clear plan for making a living. But shortly before White’s departure from Manhattan, Harper’s editor Lee Foster Hartman asked White to write the monthly essays about rural life that would become “One Man’s Meat.” The essays satisfied White’s longstanding desire to write in the first person—something that the New Yorker, with its fetish for the editorial “we,” hadn’t allowed him to do. Farm life also renewed White’s imagination and sense of possibility.
After a few years, White returned to the New Yorker, but his real home remained in Maine. “Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me,” White wrote of his move to New England. “Confronted by new challenges, surrounded by new acquaintances—including the characters in the barnyard, who were later to appear in Charlotte’s Web—I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had a chance to get some of it down on paper.”
In staging his daring retreat, White could look to a fellow New Englander, Thoreau, for inspiration. In “A Slight Sound at Evening,” his 1954 tribute to Thoreau, White quoted admiringly from Thoreau’s journal: “A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly sweet and grand. It may be in Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.”
Thoreau’s gift for divining profound insights from the unassuming rhythms of domestic life is also what makes White’s writing so sublime. His 1940 essay about cars isn’t really about automobiles, but about how consumers blindly follow the whims of industry—and, in the process, condition themselves to be passive citizens, too. Here, in a single sentence, he tangibly describes how individuals quickly get lost within institutions: “The ultimate goal of automobile designers is to produce a car into whose driving seat the operator will disappear without a trace.”
In “Once More to the Lake,” perhaps his most widely anthologized essay, White recalls returning with his son to the same summer vacation spot that he once enjoyed with his own father. Throughout most of the essay, time seems suspended, the experience unblemished by the passage of years. But then, while watching his son throw on some wet swimming trunks for an afternoon swim, White realizes that his own boyhood has passed, leaving him a middle-aged man in the shadow of mortality. Here’s how White expresses that sentiment in a handful of words: “As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.”
That gift for distilling complex ideas and feelings so concisely is the ideal at the center of The Elements of Style, a handbook on writing that White updated from a manual first printed by one of his Cornell professors, William Strunk, then published in 1959. The book, known affectionately by its fans as “Strunk & White,” has sold millions of copies and become a cultural fixture. White embraced Strunk’s cherished dictum, “Omit needless words.” As Strunk wrote:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
White’s basic credo of writing also expressed itself in Charlotte’s Web, his classic children’s tale in which the title character, a highly literate spider, saves a pig from slaughter by spinning words of appreciation above its head. The gesture seems miraculous to human observers, but White suggests that the real miracle isn’t Charlotte’s web trick, but the abiding gratitude that inspired Charlotte to write in the first place. White thought that the best writers were “recording secretaries” for wonders large and small. “As a writing man, or secretary,” White once confessed, “I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even one were to be lost.”
Photo caption Wilbur enthusiastically tries to spin a web using string tied to his tail. Charlotte, "proud to see that he was not a quitter," reassures him when he fails. "You needn't feel too badly, Wilbur," she said. "Not many creatures can spin webs." Courtesy HarperCollins Publishers. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, Copyright 1952 © by E. B. White, Text copyright © renewed in 1980 by E. B. White, Illustrations copyright © renewed 1980 by the Estate of Garth Williams
He took his obligations as a writer seriously: White could be deeply self-critical, endlessly revising his essays and stories until, paradoxically, the end result seemed casual and conversational. The intensity of his vision sometimes sharpened his nerves. Periodically, White suffered from anxiety and hypochondria.
White’s troubles, and the graceful prose he managed to craft despite his challenges, are what make him so admirable, according to Susan Allen Toth, a master essayist in her own right. “Thinking of White as a man who knew fear, anxiety and self-doubt, but who still reveled in life, I continue to want him as a guide,” Toth wrote. “It is not easy to write prose, or live a life, with his humor, resilience and staying power.”
Despite his worries about decline, White’s physical health remained quite good into advanced age. Not until his eighties did White really begin to slip, as he showed symptoms of the Alzheimer’s disease that would eventually claim his mind and body. In his final weeks, when White was bedridden, his son Joel would visit each evening and read to him, sometimes from White’s own books. With his mind failing, White’s self-consciousness faded, too. He could hear—and enjoy—his own prose as a reader, not as a critic.
That appreciation is shared today by millions of readers in the United States and abroad. E. B. White died on October 1, 1985, at age eighty-six, but most of his books remain in print, and he continues to attract new fans.
In spite of his exceptional talent, White endures because he so aptly expressed the joys and sorrows of the common man. White “took pains not to be grand and all for naught,” Washington Post columnist Henry Mitchell noted after White’s death. “He wound up grand for all his avoidance of grandeur, and the more he avoided noble and elevated style the more convinced his readers were that he was noble—a word not always trotted out for writers of short and casual pieces.... He has been called the best American essayist of the century, though most of his readers possibly have wondered who the competition was supposed to be.”
*This article was updated on January 24, 2014, to correct a misattributed quotation.- Shane "Rapha" Hendrixson “Events back [in the day] were very grassroots. There were, at first, huge BYOC (Bring your own computer) tournaments. Most of those tournaments you went to didn’t even have invites. They were open bracket. It was all set up so that regardless of whoever wanted to show up to play, the bracket was large enough for that...”
Esports’ Past
The Expanding Present
The Good
The Bad
The Fix
A Hope for the Future
“I think the progression of streaming and exposure has really helped propel Esports into a place where we can even think they can do this or even attempt to do this at this time. Really, what Blizzard is doing could make or break Esports for the next decade. What they are taking on is no small thing. I get what they are trying to do, one of the things that have been a problem in comparison to traditional sports is that people usually will root for teams more so than an individual player. Even if their favorite player leaves their team, yea they will still root for them and watch them occasionally, but they will still be tied to their team.
I think that can have it’s place in esports. Definitely ten years ago no I don’t think it would have worked. You didn’t have the same type of exposure, I don’t think the timing was right generation-wise, you have more younger people now who are into gaming. I don’t know if this is something that you can take to television though, because of the way the television market is designed and the type of regular viewers you need for how much T.V contracts cost. Maybe if it’s more geared towards streaming via internet and eventually trying to get people to go to stadiums, which is what Riot Games has slowly done, to view these really important tournaments. You can see that there is some success, people like showing up in person if they actually matter and there is a lot on the line. Overall it’s something that really hasn’t been done before, so it’s exciting but it’s also kind of scary to think about what happens if this doesn’t work.
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Esports began as an industry with no restrictions. Anyone of any age could go to the events, big or small, and compete among the best in the world. For Shane “Rapha” Hendrixson this was everything. At only 14 years old he competed in the open bracket of Quakecon 2003, and although he'd lose, this very experience would ignite his career.Years later, Shane “Rapha” Hendrixson would look back on that tournament as the winner of 5 QuakeCons Championships in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2016. Now widely respected as a Quake legend, and top tier Overwatch player, he has been an active observer and player through many eras of the pro gaming scene.As a product of the “old way”, there is much to be learned from the experiences of veterans such as Rapha regarding the past, present, and future of Esports.“The first time I competed at a QuakeCon was in 2003, that was when I told myself that I wanted to give 1v1 a shot. I spent 2-3 months beforehand trying to get good and learn what I needed to do. I did very well in the qualifiers at the event, but I ended up losing right before they made the bracket double elimination.”Years ago, most esports events allowed anyone who wanted to compete to do so. Today, the audience is simply too large to let everyone have their shot. Rapha explains, “you don’t see that at all anymore. People who are on the outside looking in, the underdogs, don’t always get a chance to try and prove themselves and get better. Usually due to the size of the tournament pool.”As the years have passed and esports evolved, fewer titles hang on to the “old way”. Smash Brothers remains as one of those--it's a living relic from the era when playing games for a living was almost mythic; dreamt about by kids on schoolyards and known only to those who knew where to look.It’s sad to think that the accessible system that sparked the passion in many gamer’s hearts has been all but lost. Rapha shares in this sentiment saying, “I definitely do miss it every now and then having really huge tournaments where anyone who wants to play can play, and they don’t have to feel locked out.”The evolution of tournaments and leagues is not the only thing that has changed either. As competition became more elite and regulated, so did sponsor requirements, team expectations, and practice times. The more that people accept video games as a viable sport, the more organizations have wanted to get the most value out of their players and contracted teams.Rapha continues, “Well I know back in the day with certain sponsorship, you didn’t necessarily need to use the sponsored gear. I think that movement started in 2011 when sponsors really started to push that since they were providing teams with their sponsorship money we need our players to play with our gear at the professional level. They can’t just say that they do it and come to a pro event with something else.”On top of that, some of the earlier organizations didn’t actually have requirements for the amount of practice time. Rapha was part of this firsthand, “When I was sponsored by SK I wasn’t contractually obligated to practice a certain amount of hours. It was all up to myself to determine what I needed, whether it was to play more or get more rest. It was more under my control. I just did what I felt was right for myself as a player.”All the aforementioned practices are nearly unheard of today, and esports underwent a vast number of additional changes over the last decade as both the audience and financial support has grown exponentially. We could sit all day reminiscing over the beginnings of our great competitive scenes, however there is something more important than looking back towards the past. Where are we right now?The esports community certainly made great strides with both positive and negative changes. The drive to improve both players and team environments persists through the years, with some of the largest organizations employing a number of tactics to increase quality of life. Team houses, support staff, and an increasing numbers of substitute players are all becoming more common.Rapha explains some of the benefits, “I’m really glad to see that has been happening, which kinda started in League of Legends, is the trend of trying to get actual coaches, analysts, and help staff for the players. Especially with the sheer number of grueling hours that teams were having to put in at the time. It’s really good to have that outside voice and perspective that can really help bring you guys together and help problem solve for you.”But as the practice requirements implemented by today’s teams began to increase, so to did a wave of strain, mental exhaustion, and too little time. With the introduction of support staff that’s more akin to traditional sports teams, it seems to have curbed a lot of the negative effects.He continues, “There is only so much time you have available to yourself. It’s really exhausting if you are playing 8-10 hours of competitive practice per day and then on top of that you need to, by yourself, try and find the time to study up on an opponent, game plan against them etc. Also small things like eat, sleep, decompress, you know. You just end up running out of hours in the day.“It’s encouraging to see modern organizations recognize the needs of their players. With games like League of Legends garnering over 100,000,000 players, Hearthstone over 70,000,000, and Dota 2 and Overwatch each respectively above 30,000,000; the investment opportunities are there and teams are willing to spend money on ways to improve and care for their athletes.Whether you follow your favorite organization, players, or both; now more than ever esports inspires. Fans, investors, and venues are becoming more and more eager to join in on the grandeur of the largest competitions and tournament circuits. Everyone loves a good competition and here Rapha tells us how he enjoys being both the viewer and the player.“I’ve always loved to play onstage, that pretty much answers that *laughs*. I like it a lot. For example, even for myself, I don’t have the time to play fighting games but I do like them, and I know the feeling I get when I watch a stream of Street Fighter or Killer Instinct. I’ve looked and I know how good the players are and I get to watch it at the highest level, I know the feeling of rooting for people and seeing that skill. I know that not just myself but my teammates and opponents help to bring that to a lot of people who love the game. I’m glad that I can showcase that and that people enjoy it.”It's inevitable that despite much positive increase, there would be a few bumps in the road too.In our rush to match the intensity of traditional sports, some teams seem to have taken practice scheduling, and the hours required by major organizations, to the next level. “I don’t think a lot of people have a good grasp on practicing," Rapha tells us. "Some people equate getting better to the quantity of practice. They think you need to put in absurd amounts of time to get better but it’s really about quality. I think what you’ve seen in various players in League of Legends, Counter Strike, and even in Overwatch players either: Play so much that they have RSI issues or carpal tunnel, things like that when they are over playing without taking time to rest and take care of themselves.”And while the practice is a necessary part of an esports athlete's daily regimen, there seems to be aspects that lack precise, directed, and goal oriented sessions -- “ They [sports teams] don’t practice the same things all of the time."He continues,"There’s time set aside for weight training, practicing specific areas of your game(shooting, throwing, pitching, you name it), studying up on the next opponent, game planning, and then finally you have some team practices trying to bring it all together. The practice is in more of a precise form and set goal on each area than just practice practice practice. It’s about refining everything bit by bit and getting it to be a better overall game. But sometimes they feel like they're expected to put in more than they already do and can burn themselves out since there isn’t this feeling of separation of work and home.”The point he makes is clear, the monotony of so many hours of the same thing is an important issue that needs to be tackled. Luckily the support staff of today is working to eliminate some of these issues, however things like overestimating how much practice is realistically needed is something that can’t be easily helped. Rapha tells us, “ For myself, I would say that sometimes we practice too much. However Liquid and other organizations look at it like it is a professional sport and they feel like, for what they’re putting in, they want the very best to come out of it. I don’t blame them.”.Following the issue of practice, Gaming houses are one of these things that can be both a positive and negative issue. While the thought process behind them is certainly on the right track, there is much still to be learned. Rapha puts this simply, “If you look at the difference between sports and Esports so far: Football teams, basketball teams, baseball teams don’t put all their players in a house together. Where they have no feeling of separation from work and rest.”.Regarding both practice and gaming houses, Rapha's ideal situation "would be to have an office of some kind to gather to play, review, and practice as a team. Then we would have separate living quarters. I think that’s more beneficial. I know that from playing together in a boot camp environment it definitely does make an impact to be there in person to go over ideas and to quickly be able to problem solve and fix issues.”The advantages of being able to bring all the players together are hard to argue. However perhaps the next step in the evolution of these houses is to make them optional. Perhaps even convert them to offices while providing a living allowance to players who want to live off site in an apartment.Rapha continues on the topic of gaming houses, “I think there is definitely great value to the idea. That being said in Overwatch you have six people, not including a coach and help staff, that’s a lot of personalities and pet-peeves to deal with on the regular. Eventually if you are around each other too much you will get under each other's skin so I think it’s good to feel like you are coming to work then afterwards you get to go home, reflect, relax, do whatever you want then be ready and rested the next day."Concerning the endless hours of practice required by organizations, he says, “I’ve always found it helpful for myself that when I play really heavily for awhile it’s good to take a step back and relax for a bit. It’s good to let your mind naturally go over things while you’re doing something else so when you come back to the game you aren’t just going through the motions. You come back fresh about what you’re thinking about and you’re going to play better because you’re improving. You’re not just doing the same grinding things over and over, you’re actually improving at a greater rate than you would by simply practicing an insane amount of time.”Riot games is one of the major brands, along with Valve and others, that have paved the way for esports as we know them. With more and more competitive events showing that you can fill arenas for video games just as well as traditional sports, increasingly ambitious projects are rising up.One of the most anticipated endeavors to date is Blizzard’s Overwatch League. We have very little information other than the scale of the league, which is set to rival League of Legends despite only having less than a third of the player base. With most of the community’s pent up anticipation causing unsubstantiated rumors to fly around, we won't be addressing what the league will be like. However what we can do is postulate the stakes that are on the table if this venture succeeds or fails.The real question is whether or not Esports is prepared for a nationwide city based league. Have me come far enough with third party brands and investors to be on board with the costs normally associated with league slots? I’ll leave the final thoughts to Shane, our resident Champion and Overwatch player who was kind enough to aid in this overview.Regardless of what the future holds, we will continue to do what we love: Give support to your favorite teams, streamers, players, and games. Play hard and forge ahead with confidence.We as a community will continue to grow internally and externally. We will continue to command respect and recognition from outsiders on the global stage. It’s been a hell of a ride so far boys and girls and we’re just getting started.Experts warn that ISIS attacks are happening every 84 hours spreading more dread and panic across the western world.
Intelligence group IntelCenter, which studies terrorist activities, has revealed that terror assaults linked to, or inspired by, the death cult are happening every three to four days since June 8.
Reuters 8 84 people were killed in the attack as they celebrated Bastille Day on Nice's promenade
matrixpictures.co.uk 8 A lorry driven by an Islamic extremist ran over revellers as they scrambled to escape the speeding truck
This data does not include mass killings in war zones in Iraq, Syria, Sinai in Egypt and Libya.
IntelCenter warns that half of the attacks have taken place outside major cities in Europe and in other western democracies worldwide.
The expert group warns that many of the targets are those "not traditionally under threat of terrorist attacks.”
On June 12, ISIS fanatic Omar Mateen slaughtered 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida,
The mass shooting was one of the worst in the modern history of the Unites States.
Reuters 8 Messages... Omar contacted his wife while threatening to blow up hostages
Since June, France and Germany have both been plagued with terror attacks, the worst of which occurred in Nice on July 14.
During the Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city, a crazed killer Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a 19 tonne truck into a crowd of people watching a fireworks display.
The brainwashed fanatic murdered 84 people and injured another 308 innocent people.
On July 24, an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up outside a bar in Ansbach, Germany, when his plot to attack a music festival was foiled.
RELATED STORIES TOY GUN TERROR Moment disabled man holding his favourite plastic toy gun is TASERED by cops who ‘mistook him for a terrorist’ Revealed JIHADI JUNIORS ISIS is training the children of fighters to be next generation of terrorists to attack Europe SUN ON SUNDAY SAYS PM needs to reintroduce control orders to infringe liberty of terror suspects before it is too late Exclusive EYE IN THE SKY Unmarked SAS helicopters ready to "terminate" terrorists in minutes TONY PARSONS A lone wolf terror atrocity will return to our streets... but he can't kill us all 'FOOTBALL HOOLIGANISM IN THE RING' The brutal combat sport that needs FIVE referees and is a big hit with the thugs who terrorised Euro 2016 Exclusive OLYMPICS 'DIRTY BOMB' FEARS UN atomic agency helping guard Rio Olympics from ISIS terror attack Warning Graphic Harrowing ISIS threat Shocking video shows ISIS extremists praising Nice attack before beheading victims in front of CHILDREN Exclusive WHINGEING FANATIC LEGAL win UK's only bomb plotting terrorist on restraining order is using YOUR cash to get round it ISIS FERRY HIJACK WARNING Armed guards are drafted in at Calais in amid fears jihadis could strike on ferries bound for Britain and execute travellers ATTACK OF THE DRONES Fears ISIS could use drones for UK terror bombings as Government reveals they do same in Syria
Bomber Mohammad Daleel, a 27-year-old Syrian refugee, had pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State.
The crazed attacker was the only fatality in the incident.
Two days later, a pair of homegrown Islamic extremists stormed a Catholic Mass in the quiet French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy.
Teenagers Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, who had both previously tried to flee to Syria to join the depraved terror group, murdered an elderly Catholic priest and severely wounded another man before being gunned down by police.
Twitter 8 Asylum seeker... Evil Deleel tried to get into festival packed with people
AP 8 German police investigate scene of bombing in Ansbach
8 Adel Kermiche (left) and Abdel Malik Petitjean (right) pledge allegiance to ISIS
Getty Images 8 Father Jacques Hamel was brutally murdered by sick ISIS thugs
8 Map of terror which shows the chilling attacks on European soil by Islamic extremists over the past two years
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368Review of the RX7-8AL Atlas Gundam
Hello and a very good day to our fellow readers! Finally, I am done finishing the review on the RX-78AL Atlas Gundam, hope you all are well and I’m so very sorry for taking a while to finish the review on this kit.
Let’s Start the review with some background history on the RX-78AL Atlas Gundam.
The Atlas Gundam is a prototype ground combat mobile suit developed by the Earth Federation Forces, it is a very versatile mobile suit so it can be used in a lot of ways and works in most terrains you will see the gundam universe explore, such as in space, on the ground in earth and even underwater I feel it works best underwater.
It has a unique spherical joint system known as the Globe Joints which was interestingly developed based on Principality of Zeon amphibious Mobile Suits and it was meant for underwater use.
The Build was very interesting to put together, I was very impressed with how every piece worked, and seeing how every part moved was very satisfying.
The finished kit was very good looking even though it was straight built with no paint or even panel lined, I decided not to put most of the stickers because the kit looked good enough without them, the only ones I decided to put were some on the chest where the very little yellow details were.
For articulation, its best if we talk in terms of the waifu level, the waifu level of the atlas is like if you take Rem (I put her first cause people like her more) and Emilia and you put them together and BAM! you get the Atlas Gundam. For the joints of the atlas it’s like everything moves so nicely. If its still quite vague, let let me get into more details here, let’s start with the head. It’s on a standard issue ball joint but since there are no more polycaps its the plastic runners, now it can move front by like a lot, it can rotate at 360 degrees but it’s a little tight for mine since its pretty new but you can do that.
you can make it look up by a bit and that’s all for the head.
Moving on to the body, oh by far is the best part of this kit I feel, it can move its torso to the front a lot so you can make a bowing pose, now if you move the torso like you are stretching your back you get a bit of movement and you can see the chest piece open up a bit.
Moving on to the limbs, now let’s start with the arms, where the shoulders are you can rotate it 360 degrees as well, though I am a bit disappointed that they maybe could have followed how they made it with the HG Impulse Gundam where the shoulders can move like hugging in but it seems like they didn’t follow that. Instead, what we get is a very good motion to move it very high up, for example the shoulder piece can reach the Gundams head unit, though the ball joint for it can move a bit forwards.
For the arm, it is double jointed like what you would expect on a MG kit so it has incredible motion there.
The legs are also very good it can do the splits, it can move forward by a lot and it is also double jointed there.
The movement of the feet are very limited because it is not on a standard ball joint.
The sub legs are very limited in articulation as there is only one moveable piece and when assembled to the gundam it limits a lot of the articulation of the kit but a good thing is it can become like a tripod to stabilize the full kit. Because it can’t really stand properly with sub legs connected.
kill me pls(jk)
Now with the base kit there are no weight issues but with sub legs it just loves to topple down.
The equipment it comes with is the Rail gun, Blade Shield, 2 Beams Sabres and 2 Assault Rifles.
The only problem I have with the equipment is the Blade Shield as it is very hard to hold the handle so I guess this part the manipulators need to be glued together to hold it nicely
Oh, and a note the Rail Gun and Blade Shield are heavy but Bandai have somewhat cheated on this end and given a way for the kit to hold them up with parts connected to the arms of the gunpla to make the atlas able to hold these heavy equipment’s without any trouble on the kit.
My concluding thoughts on the kit are that it was a very good refresher for me as I have not been building gunplas for a while so it was an easy kit to finish and without any extra work like painting and panel lining the gunpla it looks very good with minimal effort.
It is an impressive kit to look at and to pose around but I do have some trouble with posing the kit with sub legs attached.
Yes, I would recommend people this kit as it is very handsome kit with some good-looking equipment, easy enough for beginners I think and veterans would like what the kit gives,
with its incredible articulation and great looking-ness of it
In conclusion, this is an impressive kit compared to the older HG kits I’ve built, I am hoping for an MG version of this kit so I can see how they can make it even more impressive then the HG version.
Please tell me what do you think of the article, because I feel this one might be longer.
Oh, and please do like and share this article with your peers.
Please do tell me anything about the review in the comment section and I’ll try to reply
And that is all folks hoped you have enjoyed this review as much I have writing it sorry it’s a bit long
AdvertisementsShona is a runner and running coach and has very kindly agreed to share her story with RunningPhysio. She works with Up and Running in Sevenoaks and you can follow her on Twitter – @Uprunning7oaks.
Does running help with mental health? There’s been a lot about this in the media recently: I’ve seen reports that say it does, and I’ve seen reports to the contrary. I can only go by my own experience, both personal and as a running coach.
I’ve suffered from depression on and off since adolescence. I’ve had therapy (several different types) and medication (you name the antidepressant, I’ll probably have taken it). I’ve found that therapy with the wrong person can do more harm than good, and therapy with the right person can be life-changing. Medication has helped with the symptoms and got me though some rough patches. Then 10 years ago I took up running.
I’d never been good at sport, and dreaded games lessons at school. I couldn’t wait to give it up and vowed when I left school I would never do any exercise again in my life. Like many women I’ve never felt comfortable with my body, and sport just made me all the more aware of that. So I was very surprised when I found myself joining a beginners’ running group, persuaded by a friend who wanted to give it a go.
I really struggled with it. I was always at the back, puffing, sweating, trying desperately to keep up. I used to drive home afterwards cursing my uselessness, but I was too stubborn to give up, and I really liked the other women I was running with. So I plodded on, occasionally in tears, once even getting lost because I was so far behind the rest of the group.
After about six months I suddenly realised one day that I was running along beside – not behind – another runner and chatting! It was my light bulb moment, when I finally began to think that maybe I could do this. I started to push myself a little harder, to run more often, and within a couple of years I was running half marathons and then full marathons. I never became a fast runner, but I didn’t care – I was enjoying myself, loving the challenge, making friends, encouraging others who were struggling as I had. I qualified as a running coach and have been coaching for the last six years. I realised along the way that I felt better mentally than I ever had, and started to think about why.
I realised that, for the first time in my adult life, I no longer hated my body. Not because running transformed my appearance – it didn’t. I slimmed down and toned up, but my body is still not a supermodel’s. The difference is that I now accept it and value what it can do, rather than focusing on the negatives. I am much more confident and comfortable with myself, and I can just be in the moment, running, focused on the physical effort without intrusive negative thoughts about my body.
I also realised that, when I felt low, running lifted my mood. Sometimes it was hard to force myself out of the door, and it often felt like running through treacle, but I always came back feeling better than when I went out. If I had to stop running through injury or illness, I could feel the black dog creeping up on me after a couple of weeks, but getting back out there would drive it away again. I have had episodes of depression in the last 10 years, but they have been milder and shorter, and I am sure that is at least partly down to running.
I’ve also seen how running boosts other women’s confidence, self-esteem and mood over the years I’ve been coaching, and as I’m open about my history of depression I’ve had many conversations with runners who’ve told me they have found it really good for their mental health. Three years ago I was chatting about it to some runners I was coaching. Afterwards one of them approached me and said she worked as a clinical psychologist and why didn’t we set up a running group for women who suffer from depression or anxiety? It sounded like a good idea to me – so we did.
Up and Running in Sevenoaks offers 10 week courses for women who don’t currently run, to gently introduce them to regular outdoor exercise in the company of women who can offer mutual support and understanding. Depressed people often feel isolated, so peer support can be vital, and there is evidence that being outdoors is beneficial for mental health. I think that’s why our group works – the combination of being outdoors, running, and getting to know other people who have similar problems is the key.
Harriet and I have coached eight courses now, and many of our women are still running together and supporting each other. Harriet does psychometric assessments at the beginning and end of each course, and we ask participants for evaluation and feedback. 90% of our participants who make it to the end of the course (there are always some who drop out) say they feel their mental health has improved, and that certainly shows on the psychometric measures. I feel very proud when I meet a group of our runners trotting through the park together, chatting and enjoying each other’s company; they are a fantastic group of women, and a great advert for the benefits of running. So do I think running is good for mental health? I have no hesitation in saying – yes, I certainly do. It changed my life.
If you'd like to know more about Shona's running courses visit www.upandrunninginsevenoaks.org.ukIf you're excited about Microsoft's freshly announced support for cross-platform play — which could even allow Xbox and PlayStation users to clash, eventually — thank Rocket League developer Psyonix.
"We were prodding everyone all the time," Jeremy Dunham, the |
Shares, +1.7 RAPM
Hayward is already quite versatile -- a quality scorer, a defensive irritant, a capable passer -- and needs only the time and opportunity to further develop his skills with the ball. He's athletic and controlled enough to do some nice things as is, and as soon as this season Hayward could grow to be far more comfortable generating offense. If that development takes a bit more time, Hayward still offers a baseline of strong all-around play with few gaps. He's a hard cutter and sweet shooter (41.6 percent on three-pointers, including 46.7 percent on spot-up threes). He does well defending either wing position, rebounds enough to get by and brought his scoring up to 17.4 points per 36 minutes this past season. That kind of balance gives the Jazz a lot to work with, and solidifies Hayward's standing as one of the better up-and-coming wings in the league. -- R.M.
66. Anderson Varejao, Cleveland Cavaliers (C, 30)
2012-13 stats: 36.0 MPG, 14.1 PPG, 14.4 RPG, 3.3 APG, 1.5 SPG, 47.8 FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 21.7 PER, 3.3 Win Shares, +4.1 RAPM
Note: Varejao played only 25 games because of assorted injuries, including leg surgery
Let's take a moment to pour one out for Varejao's aborted 2013 All-Star candidacy. Before injuries wreaked havoc for the third year in a row, the Brazilian center jumped out to a phenomenal start by placing among the league leaders in rebounding and doing what he could to hold together a pathetic Cavaliers team defense. Known as an energy guy, Varejao was Cleveland's leading interior scorer and he posted an eye-popping 15.4 assist percentage. He's reached -- and arguably exceeded -- Andrew Bogut-esque levels of health concerns and, given his age and the fact that Cleveland took the Andrew Bynum plunge, it's reasonable to wonder whether he will ever be able to maintain the durability needed to aid in the Cavaliers' ascent. -- B.G.
65. Tyreke Evans, New Orleans Hornets (G/F, 23)
2012-13 stats: 31.0 MPG, 15.2 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 3.5 APG, 1.4 SPG, 47.8 FG%, 33.8 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 18.1 PER, 4.4 Win Shares, -0.2 RAPM
Figuring out how to best use Evans can be a chore, but his instincts and physicality translate to some impressive individual production. In theory, he could fill a variety of roles: an oversized point guard, a slashing wing, a one-man juggernaut off the bench, a supporting ball-handler or even a post-up facilitator. But the Kings never quite figured out how to strike the appropriate balance around Evans. That task now belongs to the Pelicans, who gave him a four-year, $44 million deal in a sign-and-trade with Sacramento. Whether New Orleans can provide the right fit for Evans remains to be seen, but its far more intriguing roster could make better use of the enigmatic guard's flexibility. Regardless, Evans doesn't have a great feel for running an offense and has a long way to go as a defender and shooter. He produces despite those limitations, but they do complicate matters when constructing lineups around his rare talents. -- R.M.
64. Rudy Gay, Toronto Raptors (F, 27)
2012-13 stats: 35.8 MPG, 18.2 PPG, 6.1 RPG, 2.7 APG, 1.5 SPG, 41.6 FG%, 32.3 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 15.6 PER, 4.0 Win Shares, +0.4 RAPM
The Rudy Gay Experience was an all-around bummer in 2012-13: He put up his worst scoring and shooting numbers since his rookie year of 2006-07, a particularly rough turn of events for a high-volume shooter. It wasn't just that. In January, Gay was traded from a Memphis team that went on to make the conference finals to a Toronto team that was desperately chasing a playoff spot it couldn't possibly reach. Many observers panned the Raptors' move and the executive who acquired him, Bryan Colangelo, was replaced this summer. Even if his shooting numbers recover to some degree, it's hard to envision Gay's succeeding in carrying this team to the playoffs, even in a down year for the bottom of the East. Then what? -- B.G.
63. Andre Drummond, Detroit Pistons (C, 20)
2012-13 stats: 20.7 MPG, 7.9 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 1.6 BPG, 60.8 FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 21.6 PER, 4.5 Win Shares, +1.9 RAPM
Drummond is far and away one of the most difficult players to place on a list like this. His ridiculous per-minute impact as a teenager -- and all the upside it foretells-- suggests a player who could conceivably be regarded as a top-15 asset right now. The Pistons would reject straight-up offers for Drummond involving a good 30 players listed above him in this exercise, but the UConn product and iCarly fanboy still has plenty to prove during his sophomore season. Was his midseason back injury a one-time fluky hiccup? (He looked very good during the Orlando Summer League.) Can he handle full-time starter's minutes for a team with playoff aspirations? Can the 37.1 percent free-throw shooter avoid falling victim to endless Hack-a-Shaqing? Can he team with Greg Monroe and Josh Smith to make the jumbo lineup a functional concept? Can his evident potential as a traditional back-line stopper translate into team-wide improvement for a Detroit squad that ranked No. 23 in points allowed per possession last season? -- B.G.
62. Thaddeus Young, Philadelphia 76ers (F, 25)
2012-13 stats: 34.6 MPG, 14.8 PPG, 7.5 RPG, 1.8 SPG, 53.1 FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 18.2 PER, 7.4 Win Shares, +3.0 RAPM
Young's game is sublimely understated, in part because he's always been the second- or third-best player on mediocre Sixers teams, but also because the things that he does best generally go unseen. He's a skilled, flexible defender who does his work early in possessions to keep opponents from getting into their plays. With that type of prevention, he registers a far greater defensive impact than is immediately visible in the box score. Navigating space and managing switches are no problem for Young, who has the versatility to defend myriad player types, whether in help or by design. His offensive game, meanwhile, has been trimmed of all fat. About 70 percent of Young's field-goal attempts came within nine feet of the basket last season, thanks to pristine shot selection via cuts, rolls and improvised post-ups. He doesn't step outside himself or take on responsibility he shouldn't, admirable qualities that serve as a boon for his game. -- R.M.
Ersan Ilyasova had an up-and-down year with Milwaukee last season. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images) Ersan Ilyasova had an up-and-down year with Milwaukee last season. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)
61. Ersan Ilyasova, Milwaukee Bucks (F, 26)
2012-13 stats: 27.6 MPG, 13.2 PPG, 7.1 RPG, 1.6 APG, 46.2 FG%, 44.4 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 18.3 PER, 6.7 Win Shares, +2.5 RAPM
Not much about Milwaukee's season made sense, and Ilyasova's zany peaks (19.2 points and 9.9 rebounds in March) and valleys (6.7 points and 4.8 rebounds in November) can be added to the list of questions that might never be fully answered. Once he dug out of a months-long slow start, the Turkish stretch-four finished among the Bucks' leaders in scoring and PER. Ilyasova, who boasts inside-out versatility and legitimate shooting range, seems poised to enjoy a larger role after the departures of scorers Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis and J.J. Redick. -- B.G.
60. Andrew Bynum, Cleveland Cavaliers (C, 25)
2012-13 stats: N/A
2012-13 advanced stats: N/A
Note: Bynum missed last season because of knee injuries
There is no correct placement for Bynum, given the uncertainity involved after he missed the 2012-13 season, but this was the most reasonable we could muster. Obviously, he would be ranked far higher if he were healthy, but a year spent racking up knee procedures with not even so much as a target return date has given little reason for optimism. Beyond that, it's not as if Bynum were an unimpeachable star; he had one terrific season as the third-best player on a very good Lakers team, but still has no experience outside of that particular system, hasn't been tested as a higher-priority offensive piece and doesn't exactly measure up as an impact defender. Bynum was supposed to begin addressing those concerns last season in Philadelphia, but with that opportunity lost, Cleveland will have the pleasure and frustration of waiting on a tantalizing and risky young center to come around. -- R.M.
59. Joe Johnson, Brooklyn Nets (G, 32)
2012-13 stats: 36.7 MPG, 16.3 PPG, 3.5 APG, 3.0 RPG, 42.3 FG%, 37.5 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 14.1 PER, 5.1 Win Shares, +1.1 RAPM
Separating Joe Johnson the player from Joe Johnson the salary has been difficult since 2010, when he signed a six-year, $123.7 million contract with Atlanta, and his forgettable first year in Brooklyn only heightened the basketball world's collective awareness of his production-per-dollar mediocrity. Last season marked the first time since 2006 that Johnson was not selected to the All-Star team, and this was no snub: He averaged his fewest points and posted his worst shooting percentage in a decade. Johnson excelled in late-game situations, making multiple buzzer-beating game-winners. Unfortunately, the Nets' first-round exit, and his quiet series that included a six-point, 2-of-14 performance in the decisive Game 7 home loss to Chicago, undercut his clutch narrative. It's a safe bet that Johnson's production will continue to decline as he puts more distance between himself and age 30, but he should still be helpful as a floor spacer and solid defender for at least the next two years. -- B.G.
58. Nene, Washington Wizards (F/C, 30)
2012-13 stats: 27.2 MPG, 12.6 PPG, 6.7 RPG, 2.9 APG, 27.2 MPG, 48.0 FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 17.0 PER, 4.0 Win Shares, +3.7 RAPM
With Nene on the floor last season, Washington defended at a top-three level (98.3 points allowed per 100 possessions) -- a remarkable accomplishment even within the context of the team's already surprising defensive success. His lateral speed and ability to challenge quicker players provided one of the pillars of the Wizards' coverage. That he brings that caliber of defense along with a bevy of offensive skills makes him quite valuable -- noticeably more so than his basic counting stats suggest. Last year was a down season for Nene due to his gradual recovery from a previous foot injury, but when healthy his touch and quickness allow him to thrive in a variety of functions. The lack of a singular strength sometimes leads him to float around the court rather than attack, but his skills can be channeled in so many different ways as to stem some of the impact of that drifting. Nene can play high and low, as scorer or facilitator. That's enough to make him one of the more complete big men in the league, and worthy choice at this stage in our ranking. -- R.M.
57. Ryan Anderson, New Orleans Pelicans (F, 25)
2012-13 stats: 30.9 MPG, 16.2 PPG, 6.4 RPG, 42.3 FG%, 38.2 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 18.1 PER, 6.5 Win Shares, +0.4 RAPM
What Anderson supplies is unique even in a league keen on stretchy bigs, as his shooting range has now been tested against volume (only Stephen Curry attempted more three-pointers than Anderson last season) and context (having moved out from Dwight Howard's shadow in Orlando to a much stranger offense in New Orleans). He's a singularly prolific and accurate shooter for his position, a distinction which holds corresponding benefit. The threat of Anderson's shooting draws an opposing big man out of the lane, clearing room for drives or post-up sequences. Such a matchup advantage isn't without its remedies (many opponents have assigned smaller defenders to Anderson to good effect), but his very presence on the floor forces compromise in the game plan and rotation of the Pelicans' opponents. -- R.M.
56. Manu Ginobili, San Antonio Spurs (G, 36)
2012-13 stats: 23.2 MPG, 11.8 PPG, 4.6 APG, 3.4 RPG, 1.3 SPG, 42.5 FG%, 35.3 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 19.0 PER, 4.5 Win Shares, +3.7 RAPM
The end is in sight for San Antonio's sixth man, and he toyed with the idea of retirement this summer after dealing with injuries and uneven play in the postseason. Ginobili might be a shell of his former self, but he's still capable of magic, and his PER remains in the top five at his position. After a series of high-turnover, poor-shooting games in the postseason, Ginobili momentarily quieted his critics by delivering 24 points and 10 assists in San Antonio's Game 5 victory against Miami in the Finals. How many two-guards in the game today are capable of a night like that on a stage like that? (Not many.) Yes, his body can no longer handle a huge workload over an 82-game season. And, yes, Kawhi Leonard has replaced him as San Antonio's No. 3 guy. But Ginobili will remain one of the game's most respected guards until he finally decides to hang it up. -- B.G.
55. Luol Deng, Chicago Bulls (F, 28)
2012-13 stats: 38.7 MPG, 16.5 PPG, 6.3 RPG, 3.0 APG, 1.1 SPG, 42.6 FG%, 32.2 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 15.1 PER, 6.3 Win Shares, +1.4 RAPM
"Will" is one of those overused, amorphous sports terms, but what else would you call it when a player logs more than 39 minutes per game for the third straight season even though his team is in a down year because the franchise player is out injured? Deng's toughness and reputation as a gamer are so well established that no one was quite ready to believe that he would miss time during the 2013 playoffs, even when he endured a spinal tap that he called life-threatening. Deng, a tertiary offensive option and stout defender, doesn't have eye-popping numbers, but his importance to Chicago's continued success is unquestioned. -- B.G.
54. Steve Nash, Los Angeles Lakers (G, 39)
2012-13 stats: 32.5 MPG, 12.7 PPG, 6.7 APG, 49.7 FG%, 43.8 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 16.0 PER, 4.3 Win Shares, +0.7 RAPM
Nash is coming off his worst statistical season since the turn of the millennium, but his struggles seem to be the result of extenuating circumstance rather than the result of age-related decline. Last season's Lakers provided a miserable working environment for all involved. Rampant injury and poor chemistry prevented that mix of stars from ever finding a groove, and Nash's own injuries consistently limited what he was able to contribute. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that Nash is that far removed from the playmaker who dragged an ill-equipped Suns team to a.500 record just a season before. He's still an excellent shooter (for all of his struggles, he essentially dropped another 50-40-90 season) and passer with arguably the best feel for offense in the league. That level of vision -- and the corresponding ability to elevate an offense -- doesn't fade overnight. -- R.M.
Kings center DeMarcus Cousins is still trying to put it all together. (Glenn James/NBAE via Getty Images) Kings center DeMarcus Cousins is still trying to put it all together. (Glenn James/NBAE via Getty Images)
53. DeMarcus Cousins, Sacramento Kings (C, 23)
2012-13 stats: 30.5 MPG, 17.1 PPG, 9.9 RPG, 2.7 APG, 46.5 FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 20.2 PER, 4.4 Win Shares, +1.9 RAPM
Even in subscribing to the notion that Cousins will eventually be a great player, there's just no evidence to suggest that he's ready to make that jump this season. He's planted his flag by putting up some monster scoring and rebounding numbers -- averages that set him apart from many other elite prospects and bode well for an extraordinary career. But Cousins is an inefficient offensive player and a sorely lacking defender, a combination that makes him inferior on balance to all of the players yet to be ranked. Demerits for locker-room trouble, league-worst body language and rampant technicals certainly don't help his case, either. The tools are in place for Cousins to crack the top 25 sooner rather than later, but he has much to get in order before starting to make that steep climb. -- R.M.
52. Greg Monroe, Detroit Pistons (F, 23)
2012-13 stats: 33.2 MPG, 16.0 PPG, 9.6 RPG, 3.5 APG, 1.3 SPG, 48.6 FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 19.5 PER, 5.9 Win Shares, +2.5 RAPM
Monroe's unconventionality takes a moment to process, and not just because he's a left-handed big man with unusual vision who also enjoys putting the ball on the floor to create for himself. He lacks the mid-range jumper to truly thrive at power forward and doesn't possess the presence and overall defensive skill set to excel at center. Either way, he's a dependable scorer and a determined rebounder. With second-year center Andre Drummond on the come and forward Josh Smith in the fold after signing a four-year, $54 million free-agent contract, the 2013-14 season could decide whether Monroe winds up being one-half of one of the league's best young Twin Towers combinations, or the odd man out who becomes trade bait. -- B.G.
51. Nicolas Batum, Portland Trail Blazers (F, 24)
2012-13 stats: 38.5 MPG, 14.3 PPG, 5.6 RPG, 4.9 APG, 1.2 SPG, 1.1 BPG, 42.3 FG%, 37.2 3FG%
2012-13 advanced stats: 15.7 PER, 5.8 Win Shares, +0.9 RAPM
Batum was pigeonholed as a three-and-D player for most of his first four seasons, but after signing a four-year, $46.1 million contract in 2012, he welcomed the increased offensive role those dollars demanded. New coach Terry Stotts encouraged him to handle the ball and make plays last season. Batum responded by registering more assists than in his first four years combined, but his turnover rate spiked to career-high levels, too. The Frenchman, lauded for his length and athleticism on defense, is a master of the chase-down block. After a strong start last year, he floated his own name as a possible All-Star; to achieve that recognition, Batum, who has battled focused issues on both ends of the floor, will need to find a level of consistency that has eluded him to this point. -- B.G.
Tuesday: Nos. 50-31
Wednesday: 30-21
Thursday: 20-11
Friday: 10-1
Statistical support for this post courtesy of Basketball-Reference, NBA.com and Jeremias Engelmann.But representatives of Facebook and Google declined to say whether they would follow Twitter’s lead in banning RT and Sputnik advertising. Both companies have recently disclosed that Russian agents purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of advertising on their platforms during the campaign.
Lawmakers who have been pressuring Twitter to address Russian entities’ use of the platform to influence American politics praised the company’s decision on Thursday — but cautioned that it would not be enough.
“I appreciate the effort, although RT and Sputnik have been known entities for some time,” said Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has emerged as one of Twitter’s most vocal critics on Capitol Hill. “What I hope is we’ll see enhanced efforts on discovering other fake accounts as well as avatars that might not be as obvious.”
Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and John McCain of Arizona, who introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this month that would force Facebook, Google and other technology companies to disclose who is purchasing online political advertising, said the action only underscored the need for a new, across-the-board standard for social media companies to follow when it comes to political advertising.
“Twitter’s announcement today is a positive step, but one company preventing two outlets — RT and Sputnik — from placing ads on its platform is not a substitute” for government regulation, Ms. Klobuchar said in a statement.
Twitter, with 328 million monthly active users, is far smaller than Facebook, and has struggled more to find growth and financial stability. In September, the company’s vice president for policy, Colin Crowell, met with staff from House and Senate intelligence committees and shared copies of advertisements run on Twitter by RT’s three principal Twitter accounts. In a public statement, Twitter said that RT had purchased about $274,100 in advertising aimed at United States markets in 2016, promoting close to 2,000 Tweets.
On Wednesday, Twitter provided additional information, disclosing that Twitter had earned a total of $1.9 million in advertising revenue from RT since 2011. The company said it would now donate the money to research into the civic impact of Twitter, as well as its abuse by purveyors of fake news and propaganda.
Despite the sharp response from RT and Russian authorities, it is unclear how much impact Twitter’s decision will have on the growing threat of fake news and disinformation across its platform. Much of the Russian-sponsored activity surrounding the United States election did not involve advertising by official Russian outlets, but covert intervention: undercover human “trolls” on social media, Facebook pages impersonating American activists, and networks of automated Twitter accounts designed to amplify real and made-up news.Clashes in the Rojava region of northern Syria between al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which controls most of the region, are escalating. The strategic Yaroubia (Tel Kocher in Kurdish) crossing that links Rojava to Mosul and to Baghdad was captured by the PYD after prolonged clashes. Observers say the PYD’s capture of Yaroubia, following its earlier capture of the Ceylanpinar, Senyurt and Nusaybin crossings, will drastically alter balances in the region. Turkish daily Milliyet recently reported the advances of the PYD toward the crossing controlled by al-Qaeda groups.
According to a report by Syria-based Hawar News (ANHA) agency, on the night of Oct. 25, YPG militants launched a three-pronged assault against al-Qaeda-linked groups in the Tel Kocher area. YPG forces first seized the villages of Ciheshiye and Mahmoudiye and positions around them after violent combat. In the second massive assault at 3 a.m., the YPG captured the cement factory radical Islamists had been using as their headquarters. The YPG’s third major operation was at Suka Azad. Around dawn, the YPG captured the Yaroubia crossing that faces the Iraqi Rabia crossing. Reports said al-Qaeda groups sustained heavy casualties in these clashes. The YPG also reportedly captured a mortar tube, many weapons and ammunition.
After the capture of the border crossing, clashes shifted to the center of Tel Kocher where a tank belonging to al-Qaeda groups was destroyed and more casualties were inflicted. Many villages in the region are now under YPG control. The YPG is reported to have captured vast supplies of weapons and ammunition.
The second after Habur
After the vital Habur crossing between Iraq and Syria, Yaroubia — which is the most important gate to Iraq — is on the major trade route. Most of the economic activity between Syria and Iraq is conducted through this gate. The region is mostly populated by Turkmen and has been under Jabhat al-Nusra’s control until now.
Crossings closed
After the PYD took over control of the Kurdish region, Turkey had closed the crossings of Nusaybin, Senyurt, Ceylanpinar and Akcakale linking the region to Turkey. That move has led to shortages of food and other basic needs in the region, compelling Syrian Kurds to turn to Iraqi Kurdistan for their basic needs. Because of problems between the PYD and other Kurdish parties that are allied with Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq, the crossing was closed to Syrian Kurds, only to be occasionally opened for essential supplies. This is why the PYD has been expanding its operations to capture the Yaroubia crossing, which would allow unhindered access to Mosul.
Muslim will use the Mosul road
Last week, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) — the ruling Kurdish party of northern Iraq — did not allow PYD leader Salih Muslim to enter northern Iraq on his way to Europe. Muslim was told to go to Europe via Turkey, Iraq or Iran. After the PYD’s capture of the crossing to Mosul, Muslim will now be able to bypass northern Iraq and go to Europe via Mosul or Baghdad. The PYD intends to use this crossing to break the embargo of the northern Iraqi Kurds on Rojava.Mobile phones now serve as portable computers, scanners, atlases, cameras, media players, and more. But did you know they’re also part of a growing global mobile sensor network that can track all kinds of data — weather, traffic, and human behavior?
London-based startup OpenSignal released a report today about how the global proliferation of smartphones is leading to the rise of a wide-spread mobile sensor network, calling it “one of the most exciting technological innovations of recent times”:
“Mobile sensor networks present the opportunity to gather data about the world at a never-before-seen scale and low-cost. Smartphone users participating in crowdsourced mobile sensor networks are able to form part of a social laboratory, acting as gatekeepers of the devices that constantly record data about the environments in which they find themselves.”
In conjunction with the report, OpenSignal has launched a mobile sensors database, which is essentially a library detailing which devices have which sensors, what these sensors are intended for (by the device makers), and how they can be repurposed for other uses.
To better understand how mobile sensor networks operate, and the role smartphones play, let’s take a closer look at what OpenSignal does itself.
Meet OpenSignal
OpenSignal doesn’t always garner the same attention as other London startups such as SwiftKey, Shazam, Hailo, and TransferWise. But the company has been building a powerful arsenal of data over the past five years, thanks chiefly to its eponymous mobile app, which is installed on millions of mobiles around the world.
OpenSignal for Android and, as of fairly recently, iPhone, offers one of the biggest resources for independent data on the speed and network coverage of mobile networks. The app tracks users’ mobile phone coverage across the board, and makes this data available to anyone, so you don’t have to believe what the networks themselves tell you.
OpenSignal doesn’t just rely on the goodwill of people willing to participate in a giant crowdsourcing exercise. To entice people to download the app, it serves up a multitude of features, including a compass that directs you to where the best wireless signal is, a map that shows public Wi-Fi networks nearby, and a speedtest tool for 3G/4G or Wi-Fi. It also offers a network ranking feature that tells you the best-performing mobile carrier in a specific area.
OpenSignal has also revealed some interesting insights into how consumers can use its data on a more practical level.
For example, some mobile networks promise to cancel a contract or issue a refund if a user doesn’t have a signal, say, 40 percent of the time. But proving that can be tricky — unless you have the data to back things up. Pointing to purely anecdotal evidence, OpenSignal said that some people have used the app to try to wriggle out of contracts.
So OpenSignal gives a lot, and it gets a lot in return. With its app on so many devices, it is able to track other interesting data. For example, it can assess the state of Android fragmentation, revealing that there are almost 20,000 distinct Android devices.
Digging deeper, many mobile phones have sensors installed for very specific reasons related to the functionality of the device. But these sensors can be re-appropriated to garner data on other things.
For example, a phone’s barometer is designed to improve GPS positioning, but it can also be used as a traditional barometer to simply record atmospheric pressure. Then there are built-in light intensity meters to detect screen brightness, but they can also be used to measure sunlight intensity.
Then there are magnetometers, designed to give your phone compass functionality, which can monitor magnetic flux. The exact range of sensors vary from device-to-device, though most modern Android phones have more available than iOS (iPhones).
WeatherSignal
OpenSignal realized the potential for all these different sensors and launched a spin-off app in 2013 called WeatherSignal, which is essentially a crowdsourced network of weather forecasts that gathers data passively from people’s phones.
The app is most functional on Android due to the range of sensors. However, with the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Apple finally included a barometer, meaning WeatherSignal could expand the scope of its coverage into the iOS realm.
There is potential to gather other data from phones too, which isn’t quite perfected yet.
For example, it’s possible to collect temperature from phones that don’t have an external thermometer by using an algorithm to convert battery temperature into environmental “ambient” temperature.
But how can this be reliable if a phone is, say, indoors or even in someone’s pocket? There are workarounds that involve combining sensor readings. For example, if the light readings are below a certain level, then it’s almost certainly not outdoors.
Other clues include not being able to get a GPS fix, which means a phone is more likely indoors. Or if you’re on a Wi-Fi connection, you’re probably indoors. There is a lot of room for error here, but the technology can reach a reasonable degree of certainty by aggregating the data of many different users.
Moreover, future sensors may include things like a colorimeter, which can tell you the temperature of lights and thus distinguish artificial light from daylight.
“We think in the long run, sensors can be used to build this better contextual awareness — are you inside or outside?,” James Robinson, cofounder and CTO of OpenSignal, told VentureBeat. “In the future, it will become more like Google Now, knowing more about your current context. Have you just come in? Have you just gone for a run? Are you with people you know well?”
The ramifications of this are significant: Contextual awareness that goes far beyond the simple latitude/longitude position of a user.
Other players
While mobile sensor networks may present a golden opportunity for crowdsourcing data, OpenSignal’s Robinson reckons this is one area where the hardware is ahead of most developers’ ambitions. “It’s more usual for developers to say something like, ‘I wish I could do this, if only they could make the tools available’,” he said.
In the case of mobile sensor networks, there is still a lot of scope for harnessing what is largely untapped potential. Apple, for example, hasn’t opened up as much as it could to developers. Though OpenSignal launched on iPhone in 2013, it wasn’t able to pull in user data because iOS didn’t allow data to be collected in the background when the app wasn’t running. With iOS 7, that changed, and with enhanced permissions, OpenSignal could finally start tracking data from Apple’s mobile users too.
And as we’ve noted with WeatherSignal, OpenSignal is pretty much restricted to data from the barometer readings on the iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus.
“They [Apple] haven’t liberated all the sensor data they could, but in general on Android you’ve got access to so many different sensors,” said Robinson. “However, I don’t think there is too much being done with them.”
Aside from OpenSignal, a number of other companies are working on mobile sensor networks. There’s Sensorly and Rootmetrics in the signal crowdsourcing space, while the likes of PressureNet are operating on the weather side of things. But in terms of a company that’s trying to tackle multiple verticals, OpenSignal pretty much stands alone.
Other companies in the space may not immediately strike you as being sensor networks. Google is perhaps one of the biggest — Google Maps taps millions of GPS locations and correlates them with your cell signal and Wi-Fi hotspots so the next time you use the app, you can get a location fix even without GPS. It’s not a feature, however, it works behind the scenes.
Many mapping platforms also use passive tracking features from apps to improve information on maps — for example, if all cars are moving in one direction on a road, it’s safe to assume it’s a one-way road.
Crowdsourced travel community Waze — now owned by Google — is a good example of how sensor networks are forming. “We’ve observed people like Waze, building up huge crowdsourced networks and having a great success and providing insight that wasn’t possible before,” said Robinson.
There’s a huge hunger to participate in such initiatives around the world, it seems.
“People were downloading Waze even when there was no traffic information in their cities,” said Robinson. “So there was no immediate direct benefit to using it. People just love the idea of being able to participate in research projects, or as part of a crowd, and I think that’s what will drive the next wave of crowdsourced sensor networks.”
It’s easy to forget in amongst all this that OpenSignal is a business. So how does it make money?
$£€
The simple and short answer is that OpenSignal sells data to mobile networks, giving them another view of their network. Carriers spend billions of dollars each year building and maintaining huge wireless networks, so any new perspective they can garner is useful.
These reports are basically PDFs and are often dispatched to C-level execs and then distributed to the network teams. “The data we’re sharing is having an impact, and there are a few success stories of where people have managed to fix problems that they hadn’t realized the network had, based on the data,” said Samuel Johnston, OpenSignal’s marketing manager.
The reports take a general format, with networks able to opt-in to specific niches, such as a city or region, and OpenSignal can show how they compare to their competitors. This could include things like network latency and 3G/4G coverage.
Prior to mobile sensor networks, carriers would basically “drive-test” for the data, physically putting engineers out on the roads to zoom around and check signals in different areas. This was difficult to scale, which is why services such as OpenSignal are vital. OpenSignal also helps surface behavioral habits, such as whether people are opting for Wi-Fi over 3G — drive-testing doesn’t really help with that.
Given the wealth of data OpenSignal holds, the company has had interest from other parties. Since it first started producing Android fragmentation reports a few years back, it has piqued the interest of companies who want a regularly updated index. And there is at least one major Internet company buying these reports, though due to an NDA agreement, OpenSignal isn’t at liberties to disclose who.
But it is worth noting here that OpenSignal gains a more all-encompassing picture of the state of Android than perhaps even Google could, because Google only has access to the “Google Play” Android, not the entire Android ecosystem. Many Android devices in China, for example, don’t use Google Play services. Other companies use “forked” versions of Android, such as Amazon.
But in addition to that, OpenSignal actually tracks more attributes per device, and can tell you, for example, what ARM processors are being used in emerging markets. OpenSignal doesn’t just track device fragmentation, but attribute fragmentation too.
“For each off these attributes, we can look at the market share and how that’s fluctuating,” Robinson explained. “We can say, for example, how many of the devices that shipped in Scandinavia have Bluetooth LE sensors.”
Spin-offs
We may start to see more spin-off apps |
has been keeping the interest rates they charge banks at near zero rates as they continue with their manipulation of our money supply. A benefit, if you will, is that the low-interest rate dividends paid out on those bonds is very low accordingly. This serves to keep our federal debt interest amount relatively low. Once Bernanke recognizes the threat of inflation is real and begins to raise those rates, our debt interest payments will rise correspondingly as the debt bond owners roll over their bonds that mature into new ones with higher interest rate dividends.
As you can see, inflation is the key factor here. The Fed has a policy that actually encourages inflation with a target of 2% annually. That’s a problem in and of itself, but is best left for another post. However, the Fed ignores energy and food prices in its analysis of price inflation. This is, of course, ridiculous as those affect us more than anything in our daily lives. But it is what it is. The point is that curbing any excessive rise in inflation will be the trigger that forces Bernanke to raise those rates and thus will result in our debt interest payments rising.
Eventually, this will become a major issue as the debt interest payments will consume an ever greater percentage of our tax revenue annually. This is why we must act NOW to reduce spending. If they pass the law requiring the debt interest to be paid first, there will be no epic crisis as Geithner, Goolsbee and others have proclaimed. The crisis will be from not being able to continue funding of discretionary items. The bond rating of our country will not be cut if we address the interest payments.
The fact is that it is far more perilous and destructive to our country’s future if we continue the spending. Eventually, those massive debt interest payments are coming our way, and we must reduce our debt exposure now to minimize the effects on future budgets. There is no practical way to eliminate the debt short of default and obviously that is not a reasonable option. But we can eliminate unconstitutional spending and reduce other discretionary spending and start in the right direction.
If the debt limit is not raised, Congress will be forced to address its spending priorities right NOW. Not some supposedly well-intentioned plan for the future. This was what the mid-terms were all about. It is what the tea party is all about. Everybody wants spending reduced. This is without question the best opportunity the GOP will see in the Obama era to do it. Instead, we see the GOP bargaining and talking about trade-offs with the left for a yes vote on the debt limit. They should absolutely take a hard-line here and refuse to raise it. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Of course, Obama has all his talking heads out there proclaiming that the world will end if we don’t pass it because that’s in his best interests. He must continue with the excess spending to get his agenda implemented. This is so easy.
Will they do it? Likely not. The GOP will almost certainly make some compromise deal they can promote as progress and pass the debt limit raise anyway. In fact, Speaker Boehner was just on Fox yesterday saying essentially that. He made the point that it would be disastrous for our nation, even the globe, if we don’t raise the limit. In essence, has already laid his hand on the table and told Obama that he will cave because we cannot afford not to. Obama now knows that he doesn’t have to concede much more than lip service to make both sides have the ability to claim victory. The Washington spending machine will march on.
I’m sure some of you will hold out hope and wait to see what happens first and give the GOP a chance. Suit yourself. What will you “hope” for after this failure?
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The Complete Bard’s Handbook was released in April of 1992 and was designed by 2127 PHBR7was released in April of 1992 and was designed by Blake Mobley. I know that a small, but very loud group of people think that Bards, as written in the AD&D system, are the best class ever written in the history of the written word; to those gentle readers, I suggest that you click away as I am not remotely in that camp. Those who continue reading this, you have been warned.
borrowed seen a copy and the thing is just so counter to everything that I believe that a good product should be that I wouldn't even know where to begin. If you were expecting a grade, I think that you can connect the dots. This title has been used as evidence that by 1992, the life-cycle of AD&D was already over; that statement isn't true, but this is a horrible book in every sense of the word. Despite what the title of this post says, I'm not really going to review this specific book. I have never owned it, and am never going to. I had onceseen a copy and the thing is just so counter to everything that I believe that a good product should be that I wouldn't even know where to begin. If you were expecting a grade, I think that you can connect the dots. This title has been used as evidence that by 1992, the life-cycle of AD&D was already over; that statement isn't true, but this is a horrible book in every sense of the word.
I have no idea what TSR was thinking; logically The Complete Race Handbooks should've been completed before scraping the bottom of the barrel, if we have done anything here we have already established that TSR executives had no idea what they were doing
WHAT IS A BARD?
I don't play bards; I hire them. There have been some awesome bardic characters that have appeared in literature, unfortunately, the AD&D system does not allow you to play them. They just don't fit the mold of what AD&D is about. If I could ask Dave Cook anything, I'd ask him if he included the Bard template to visually show how weak a character who can do everything is, or should be.
The AD&D bard can fight, do some thief skills, and cast spells, the catch is that he isn't very good at any of this. He can't hit, he can't steal, and he can't control his spells. One should never play a bard, and instead focus their attention on specializing in one skill set, only then do you offer anything to the team. As the bard sits, I hire them when we are dealing with mass combat, or using the morale system; THAT is their specialty. That also doesn't make for a very interesting character.
WHAT DOES CLASS MEAN?
Here is the deal, you make a fighter, or a thief, or a wizard: have him learn how to play the harp, you've got a bard. The other Complete Class Handbooks were about taking the templates and skills of a set class and using them to define what a character is, not based upon their chosen class, but upon the identity of the character itself
Bard isn't the best example, so we'll instead examine the Druid: as it is laid out in the "2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook". Once you look at the entry, and read the decription, you will notice that this really isn't a class at all! It clearly defines all of the skills that specific character gets per level, as well as listing all of the requirements that must be met beyond just gaining XP to actually level up.
The Druid is a poorly labeled example of what a cleric should be, something very specific to the character that the player is using. Something unique that is only based upon the class system itself.
Now, we look at the Paladin or Ranger and I think that we see the same thing going on. None of the Sub-Classes are true classes, but examples of blending ideas together. This begs the question, are we supposed to be blending?
WHAT IS RACE?
Another example: The Barbarian, this isn't a class either, but a race of people. The template assumes that the Barbarian is a Fighter, but honestly, a barbarian can be a cleric, a thief, a whatever. Barbarian doesn't define his skill set, it defines his background.
Things got really muddied once many of the Original Dungeons & Dragons classes became races, the elf could multi-class now, he could be a Fighter/Thief/Wizard which is all fine and dandy at lower levels of play, but once the other players are fighting dragons, this guy has to hide in shadows because he's been playing 3rd level for the last eight years.
The very concept of Race is strange now, the player who chooses to play a demi-race gains all of these special abilities, but they never improve; the only thing that improves is their skills dictated by class.
There really isn't anything special about them anymore. An Elf used to be able to pick at the beginning of each session if he wants to play as a Fighter or as a Wizard, the Dwarf was a much sturdier fighter than the one that we have now; he's been lost among the other demi-races and in regards to mechanics, there is nothing really all that unique about dwarves anymore.
CLASS AS A JOB DESCRIPTION
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Is class our job? Do the things that we are good at define who we are as characters? I have always just assumed that Fighter or whatever was nothing more than a job. A character that is really good with a specific skill set.
We can choose to play a fighter by the book, but even playing it core to the rules it doesn't really define us as characters, it just defines how our characters progress if we survive. How we define our characters is still up to us. That is what makes the fighter class so solid.
Demon Slaying Doom Lord, or what have you, whatever they called themselves it was so precise and well-defined that one must ask if that is even truly the player's character or just some definition that they read in a book. Somewhere along the lines, class attempted to define us. It got really bad with later editions, so bad in fact that the language changed. A player was no longer a Fighter but a, or what have you, whatever they called themselves it was so precise and well-defined that one must ask if that is even truly the player's character or just some definition that they read in a book.
The idea of Min/Maxing and Powergaming is not a new concept, it happened right away, but to set it at such high levels that you can't even identify the basics anymore implies that something, somewhere, was lost in translation.
them, and apply it to our games. And, we don't need a supplement or splat book to do it either.
AN EXAMPLE:
One of the things that have always irritated players the most is the Battle Mage, or why can't a wizard pick up a sword... Gandolf used a magic sword, I want to too!
Well, lets first identify our Battle Mage as not a wizard at all, but as a fighter. We'll place limits on the mage's spell abilities by stealing the Ranger's spell progression, but instead of cleric spells, he uses wizard spells.
We'll also borrow the XP charts from Paladin/Ranger and apply them to our Battle Mage, and DONE!
If the battle mage wants to cast a spell that requires free movement, he can't be wearing armor; he has to decide if taking it off is worth it or not. We can also stipulate that the only sword a battle mage can use is a magical one, all normal swords interfere with his spells.
The battle mage can't specialize in weapons, but he can become proficient in their use and must use the Wizards Proficiency chart of progression instead of the Fighters.
How far should we be going to blend classes? Does it change the language when we do it? If we make the connections laid out for us in the Players Handbook, we can use these strict examples of what somebody at some time did to make a character unique to, and apply it to our games. And, we don't need a supplement or splat book to do it either.
via pinterest
You get the point; if we put enough thought into a specific idea, we can tailor it to actually identify what the character is. We just have to figure out which rules to use to keep this character fair for the world which we created it for. A real mage is going to be able to cast more spells, and a real fighter is going to be more dangerous, but the battle mage pays for the privilege of being both.
If we take this logic and apply it to the bard, we see that that is exactly what happened. In order to be an effective character, one must play a bard for a very very long time, even longer than a wizard except that low level wizards, while fragile, don't suck.
If we ignore the bard, and instead set out to make a character that better suits what we want to play; say, Will Scarlet, we can accomplish this goal better by the player and the DM sitting down and designing this character and agreeing on a set of rules and limitations that apply to him as an individual.
Bilbo never considered himself to be a burglar, Conan wasn't just a barbarian, Robin Hood was not a thief, these were just things that other people called them. They were all special cases, and this can transfer over to our game.
THEN YOU HAVE THE BARD'S HANDBOOK
This book, I feel, endorses a lie. It takes a misconception and instead of clarifying it, gives it flesh and blood and perpetuates it. Yes, it has some new things in it, but once again, why are we getting an entire book made for a couple of good ideas? Of course the answer is that TSR wanted money and they made poor Blake Mobley waste his time writing garbage that offers nothing to the hobby itself. This description fits much of the products that are published, good ideas are hard to come by, I get it; but does that really mean that we have to lower our standards in order to feel like we are succeeding? Well, it probably does.
With all of this said, I can perhaps skip reviewing the Complete Sub-Class Handbooks altogether, and I no doubt will. Books like this one are what irritated me at the time, and still give 2e a bad name. People remember the system for garbage and dirty tricks and forget the good stuff, the great ideas that came about in the 90's. We DMs of the period ignored the titles we didn't like, and if we were suckered into buying books like this, most of us left those things where they belong, on the shelf, collecting dust and holding the bookcase down so that it doesn't float around the room.Eating with your hands is a strict no-no, a taboo in polite western society, while hands are the utensils of choice in some parts of the world, including South Asia. However, when it comes to eating out, even Indians who happily eat with their hands at home seem to lose the desire.
Why do so many Indians hide this guilty secret? Why is there shame attached to this natural act? Is it perhaps a lasting legacy of the British Raj—a side order of racism, of inferiority? What does it say about accepting our cultural ethos? And why do Indians abroad eat even a roti with fork and knife in the so-called civilised western world just to fit in?
Reporter Arun Venugopal, the quirky messiah of Micropolis, a programme on public radio station WNYC in New York, recently turned his knife and fork—or lack thereof—to this spicy issue in his series on race and culture. Over a hundred people from New York’s elite knife-and-fork brigade came together for an evening at Greene Space in Manhattan, becoming hands-in-mouth warriors. With their bare hands they devoured an entire Indian meal served on banana leaves—Chicken Kottumali, Aloo Mustard Curry, Eggplant Chennai Roast and Basmati rice.
Venugopal’s foodie panelists for the $40 (Rs2,400) dinner and discussion included Jeff Orlick, an authority on food in Queens, New York; Helen Hollyman, editor-in-chief of the website Munchies; rapper Himanshu Suri (aka Heems), whose new album is Eat Pray Thug; and Madhur Jaffrey, a noted authority on Indian food. With this diverse, colourful bunch, the evening not only revealed titbits about race, colour and culture, but also examined diasporic life in a virtual grain of rice.
As toddlers, all of us have eaten spontaneously with our hands, and one has to wonder why so many of us have forgotten this essential art? Eating with hands is a kind of intimate poetry with fingers and hands and tongue, a delightful squishing of food and sculpting morsels into our mouths—something which is just not done in many societies.
So this roomful of savvy New Yorkers put their cutlery down and pondered over some culinary questions. Does food taste better when it has been stroked and lovingly massaged by your fingers? Is there an art to this lost tradition? And why those who insist on knife and fork losing out big time?
Growing up desi in the white world has its own challenges. Venugopal remembered that as a child in Houston, Texas, he would never take his mother’s home-cooked meals to school. Nor did he want to bring friends home for a meal because they would then learn his dark secret—his family ate with their hands.
Punjabi-American rapper Heems, who grew up in Queens, has other memories—of packed lunches of bhindi (okra), paneer bhujia and roti transported to school in Tupperware, and the jibes of school kids, “You smell like curry!” Yet, as he pointed out, as you get older, you get more comfortable with yourself and your hyphenated identity, and suddenly the things you were awkward with as a child, you want to hold on to in the diaspora.
While the evening had many brown folk happy to reclaim their past, Venugopal joked, there were lots of anxious white people trying out the alien ritual.
Helen Hollyman, being from Texas, was used to eating with hands when it came to barbecued food. Moreover, as the worldly editor of Munchies, a site that celebrates weird ways of eating, she has seen her share of oddities and is comfortable with varied cuisines.
Jeff Orlick too was familiar with the all-hands concept, coming as he does from the immigrant capital of Queens—that has New York’s largest Little India. As he said, “It depends on how wet it is! I’ve eaten tacos and bagels with my hands—but as far as Indian food is concerned—it is a bit of a leap for me to apply my hands to the issue!”
Reuters/Jason Reed That’s how you do it.
Legacy of the Raj
It was, however, left to Madhur Jaffrey, who grew up during the British Raj, to explain the deeper implications of the split personality left in Indians by colonialism. To eat with the hands or not to?
She explained that it begins at birth. In her family, the custom was for the grandmother to come with a jar of honey and dip the little finger into the baby’s mouth, writing Om with honey on the tongue. “It’s a first finger going in to the mouth and it’s a very, very sensual taste but also the finger of a loved one,” she said. “There’s something so intense about it, so loving about it that that love and sensuality stays within you forever. This is where you belong, this is your world—and it’s a lovely sensual world. My grandmother did it, my mother did it and I’m doing it.”
Eating with hands was regarded as routine, even when Jaffrey went to England as a teenager. “I was very comfortable in my skin and nothing was going to change me.”
The Raj co-existed with homegrown Indian culture, and Jaffrey recalled that though they always ate Indian food with their hands at their home in Delhi, they often ate “English food” with knife and fork. Indeed, certain concessions were made by even the British—curry and rice was eaten with fork and spoon, and even today Indians use these rather than a knife. Also, many Indian foods are just not meant to be eaten with cutlery. A textbook example is the Bengali fish with its many fine bones—fingers can do the detective work and discover the smallest of bones.
Heems recalled travelling to India on holiday with his family and eating at the five-star Bukhara—with their hands. His mother joked that they charged them thousands yet couldn’t even give them a knife and fork. The combined legacies of the Raj and the diaspora had complicated things: He remembered his mother looking at all the wealthy people eating with their hands in the posh five-star surroundings and saying, “There are so many of these people here!” And he responded, “Mom, you are one of those people!”
“The Raj had this bunch of western people coming and telling us how to eat with these things—and one thinks, we had a good thing going before you came,” said Heems. “In the diaspora we grow up with more shame while it’s very normal to eat with your hands in India. Here we wonder, do I eat with my hands? Do I smell like curry?”
Jaffrey recalled a Korean acquaintance who went to India and couldn’t bear to eat with her hands because she found it disgusting and dirty. Jaffrey asked her, “When you make love, would you make love with these tiny chopsticks? You are making love to all the contents of your plate—and eating them with that kind of pleasure.” Turning to Heems, she proclaimed, “Never allow anyone to tell you that you smell like curry. It’s a wonderful smell!”
Alchemy of emotions
Venugopal described Indian mothers feeding their children as the helicopter parenting of our country. As they run behind their offspring, forming balls of food to put into their mouth, perhaps certain oils are transmitted from the mother’s hand to the food, creating a wonderful alchemy. He marvelled: “There is nothing that feels as good as that.”
To which Jaffrey responded, “There is an emotional alchemy you read about it in Ayurveda—in the process of cutting and cooking the food, you are passing the love directly into the thali of the loved one. You can’t beat that—you can’t expect your child to go to McDonald’s and eat a burger and get the same results.”
Indeed, eating with the hands is very emotional and has some primal connections. A 25-year-old Bengali-American in the audience confessed: “When I go to mom’s house, I always ask her to feed me with her hands because I miss her. It’s the same curry but nothing tastes better!”
Eating with the hands has an added advantage—each bite tastes different, depending whether you mix the cauliflower vegetable with red or green chutney, pickle, dal, rice or yogurt. As Venugopal said, the idea of the evening was to reclaim the colonial dining room, undoing centuries of gastronomic hegemony. And South Indian delicacies from chef Hemant Mathur’s restaurant Kokum Indian Cuisine, eaten lovingly with the hands, certainly was a start in the right direction.
So what did the evening tell us about ourselves?
A roomful of mostly strangers had done that most intimate of things—eaten with their hands and licked their fingers, too. There was a certain bonhomie which probably would not have occurred at a regular dinner with silverware. Cell phone numbers had been exchanged and life stories swapped before the evening was done.
So was there any shame in eating with one’s hands? Not at this venue. Everyone brandished wiped-clean banana leaf plates almost as a badge of honour. On my table there was only one leaf which was almost untouched and that was discreetly turned over, trying to fade into itself.
At the end of the meal, delicate bowls of water were provided for washing hands to the VIPs, and packaged wipes to the commoners. We cleaned our hands and nonchalantly popped them back into our pockets. Now if only we had a juicy, slurpy paan or a pinwheel of sticky orange jalebi to end this all-hands meal. Heaven!
This post first appeared in Scroll.in. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.The FCC Chairman's plan has been called a 'grave threat to the Internet.' FCC facing net neutrality revolt
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s controversial net neutrality proposal showed signs of fraying Wednesday, taking hits from a fellow Democratic commissioner and the nation’s leading tech companies.
After weeks of backlash, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said a scheduled May 15 vote on the plan should be delayed at least a month, while Google, Facebook and other Web giants slammed the proposal as a “grave threat to the Internet.”
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Wheeler late Wednesday vowed to move forward with the vote. The plan has sparked a firestorm of criticism for allowing Internet service providers like AT&T and Verizon to charge companies for faster delivery of content.
“I have real concerns about FCC Chairman Wheeler’s proposal on network neutrality — which is before the agency right now,” Rosenworcel said during a Washington speech. “While I do not know now where this conversation will head on a substantive basis, I can tell you right now I have real concerns about process.”
( WATCH: POLITICO interview with FCC Chairman Wheeler)
Without Rosenworcel’s support, Wheeler’s plan is unlikely to win the three commission votes necessary to go forward. Despite the opposition, the chairman showed no signs of backing down.
“Moving forward will allow the American people to review and comment on the proposed plan without delay, and bring us one step closer to putting rules on the books to protect consumers and entrepreneurs online,” an FCC spokesman said in a statement.
The FCC’s two Republicans are unlikely to support any network neutrality proposal, and the other Democratic commissioner, Mignon Clyburn, reiterated her opposition to “pay for priority arrangements” in a blog post Wednesday.
“There is no doubt that preserving and maintaining a free and open Internet is fundamental to the core values of our democratic society, and I have an unwavering commitment to its independence,” Clyburn wrote. “My mind remains open as I continue to evaluate how best to promote these fundamental, core values.”
Also Wednesday, the nation’s leading tech companies warned the FCC that Wheeler’s proposal “would enable phone and cable Internet service providers to discriminate both technically and financially against Internet companies and impose new tolls on them.”
The companies, including Amazon, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Zynga, said the commission’s rules “should protect users and Internet companies on both fixed and mobile platforms against blocking, discrimination, and paid prioritization, and should make the market for Internet services more transparent.”
The developments throw into turmoil the FCC’s latest effort to establish rules for treating all Web traffic equally. The commission’s previous attempt was tossed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year, with the court saying the legal logic used by the FCC was flawed.
Wheeler’s current proposal has generated more than 26,000 public comments at the commission, most of which back strong network neutrality protections.
The chairman has been largely on his own defending the plan, lacking support from congressional Democrats, who say they have concerns. And while the White House has said it supports preserving an open Internet, officials say they haven’t seen the proposal and note the FCC is an independent agency.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House telecom subcommittee, expressed support for Rosenworcel’s call for a delay.
“I think she has a very good point. The chairman had a vote scheduled on the proposal for May 15, that’s in a handful of days,” she said during a Google Hangout Wednesday. “So unless all of the commissioners can really absorb the comments people are emailing in, or registering over the phone, I think she has a very good point.”
Alex Byers and Tony Romm contributed to this report.Can Apple be forced to hack its own iPhones? That question is at the heart of the latest skirmish in the war between Silicon Valley and law enforcement over smartphone encryption — and the answer may depend on an 18th-century law you’ve never heard of.
This week, the FBI obtained a court order demanding Apple’s help breaking into the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook.
Killed in a shootout with police in the aftermath of the San Bernardino terror attack, Farook obviously can’t unlock the phone, so the bureau wants Apple to write custom software that will help it do so.
Make no mistake: What the government is trying here is unprecedented.
In a blistering letter, Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged to fight the demand, warning that the court order would set a “dangerous precedent” threatening the security of millions worldwide.
The government wants Apple to create for it a phone-hacking app keyed specifically to Farook’s device, but similar demands from other agencies would surely follow, and Cook fears that the digital “skeleton key” would eventually fall into the wrong hands.
This dust-up is only the most recent battle in the “Crypto Wars” — a long-running debate over how to deal with strong encryption technology.
But Farook was no Edward Snowden — he only locked his phone with a simple numerical code. So the FBI could easily run through all the possible combinations in a few hours or days — if only the phone weren’t programmed to wipe itself after too many wrong guesses.
That’s where Apple comes in: The feds want the tech titan to build them a custom iPhone operating system, minus security features like auto-wipe.
The tech may be cutting-edge, but the legal issues are old-school. To persuade a judge to compel Apple’s assistance, the feds turned to a 1789 law, the All-Writs Act — in essence, a catchall empowering courts to issue orders that are necessary to carry out other legal functions. A search warrant for an apartment, for instance, might come with an order compelling the landlord to produce the key.
Make no mistake, though: What the government is trying here (and in at least one other similar recent case) is unprecedented. Traditionally, the All-Writs Act has been used to force companies to cough up information they already have about their own customers, like a phone company ordered to turn over a criminal suspect’s billing records.
Here, Apple engineers are effectively being conscripted to build forensic software — a hacking app — for the FBI. That’s more like ordering a locksmith to help crack a safe, or a linguist to make sense of a suspect’s diary, against their will, if necessary. Instead of being asked to hand over its own information, Apple is being instructed to help hack into someone else’s — someone whose only connection to the company was owning a phone that Apple produced.
That’s a particular stretch because (as Apple argues in another ongoing case) Congress has already passed a federal law outlining exactly what companies must do to help police spy on digital messages: the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1992.
Nothing in that law obliges companies to help crack encryption, and despite increasingly loud calls from the FBI for an encryption “update,” Congress has declined to go along.
The FBI, in other words, is relying on an 18th-century law to grant it powers that our 21st Congress won’t.U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump has invited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to visit him in Washington D.C.
The Prime Minister said that Mr. Trump then praised the Hungarian government and called the people of Hungary “brave freedom fighters” during a telephone conversation on Thursday night, Hungarian paper Magyar Hirlap reports.
Mr. Orbán also noted that Trump congratulated Hungary for its economic success in recent years saying that he has called the nation’s achievements over the past six years “outstanding”.
After being invited to Washington D.C., Orbán said: “I told him that I hadn’t been there for a long time as I had been treated as a ‘black sheep’, to which he replied, laughing, ‘Me too’.”
On Mr. Trump’s open attitudes toward Hungary, the prime minister said: “He is much more interested in success, efficiency and results than in political theories,” adding: “This is good for us, as the facts are with us. The economic cooperation has always been good, only the ideologies presented obstacles.”
One of the first European politicians to come out in support of Trump, the maverick Hungarian leader has been a fierce opponent of the migrant policies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union’s plans to redistribute migrants across the political bloc.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart London, shortly after the Hungarian migrant referendum, spokesman for the Hungarian government Zoltán Kovács said the Obama administration had left the country feeling abandoned. “My first-hand experience, the experience of the government, [is that] the U.S. has lost interest, and probably with it, knowledge about the region. Europe in general, but most certainly about Central Europe,” he said.
While Mr. Orbán had come out in support of Mr. Trump, Kovács was more cautious than to offer an official governmental endorsement, but did at the time note that the migrant policies of Trump and the Hungarian government aligned.
“If it’s about migration, which seems to be the most acute challenge we face, it’s definitely true that Mr. Trump and the conservative philosophy on migration is a lot closer to us,” he noted.
Hungary, along with neighbours Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, constitute the Visegrad 4 group, who have been a major bloc in opposition of mass migration within the European Union. The V4 now look to the presidential elections in Austria for another potential ally in the anti-mass migration Freedom Party (FPÖ) candidate Norbert Hofer.
After meeting with Czech president Miloš Zeman, Hofer related his intentions for Austria to join the group as well.
Speaking to Breitbart London on the issue, spokesman Kovács said: “Austria has always rather belonged to Central Europe, not the Western part of Europe. With the facts and the consequences of what is happening on the southern and eastern borders of Europe now with migration, it would be an interesting turn and development if the Austrians realised that.”(CNN) As South Korea's Y. E. Yang strode across the 18th fairway at Hazeltine National on a sunny August afternoon eight years ago, a television commentator said what everyone was thinking.
"This could change the game forever."
Yang had done the hard work, matching and eventually getting the better of 14-time major winner Tiger Woods; all the world No. 110 had to do now was hole out, and the 2009 PGA Championship trophy would be his.
The 37-year-old made no mistake, birdying the decisive final hole to become Asia's first ever major champion.
But though his victory did indeed herald a new era in golf, it was not in the way anyone expected. Until that day Woods had never relinquished a lead after 54 holes; since, he has never won another major.
Meanwhile the predicted succession of South Korean major champions on the PGA Tour never came.
While 15 of the past 29 majors on the LPGA tour have been won by South Korean women, Yang is still the only South Korean male to win a major since records began.
Photos: CJ Cup Jeju Island's Nine Bridges golf club hosted the first ever PGA Tour event in South Korea between October 19 and 23. Hide Caption 1 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup The largest island and smallest province in South Korea, Jeju is a volcanic island 130 kilometers from the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula. Hide Caption 2 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup With a $9.25 million prize purse up for grabs, 32 from the top 50 of the FedExCup standings competed. Hide Caption 3 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup But nobody could stop FedExCup winner Justin Thomas winning his fifth PGA title of 2017 and his first of the new season. Hide Caption 4 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup The 24-year-old American had to see off another man in hot form -- Australia's Marc Leishman -- sealing the inaugural CJ Cup title after Sunday's second playoff hole. Hide Caption 5 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup A number of the South Korea's leading male golfers believe the tournament will have far wider implications for the game in the country. Hide Caption 6 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup "It's very special," KJ Choi told CNN. "For my home country to host an official PGA Tour event shows how far Korean golf has come along. I'm confident that this will open doors for many up-and-rising golfers from South Korea to the world stage." Hide Caption 7 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup "Korean golf history is not that long but many young generations are starting to play these days," Si-woo Kim told CNN. "The CJ Cup will be a huge role on that trend."
Hide Caption 8 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup "It's fantastic to be playing in my home country on the PGA Tour," agreed Byeong-hun An. "I was fortunate to play at Nine Bridges last year and I think the venue is first class." Hide Caption 9 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup While 15 of the past 29 majors on the LPGA tour have been won by South Korean women, Y. E. Yang is still the only South Korean male to win a major since records began. Hide Caption 10 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup
For Choi, an amendment to his country's mandatory military service could help South Korean men mount a more consistent challenge for major honors. Hide Caption 11 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup "I advise young players to fulfill their military obligation as quickly as possible," Choi told CNN. "This may require a change in national policies, but for sure it will help produce more and more talented players."
Hide Caption 12 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup Byeong-hun An, the youngest ever winner of the US Amateur tournament, believes it's distance off the tee where he and his compatriots on the PGA Tour have struggled. Hide Caption 13 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup "I think men's golf needs a bit more physical ability," he told CNN. "We need to hit the ball farther and with more accuracy because of the long course set up. You see more Korean players are coming through now because they have the distance and good short games too."
Hide Caption 14 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup One such South Korean player showing signs of promise on the PGA Tour is Whee Kim. The 25-year-old finished fourth at the 2017 CJ Cup -- above established players such as Adam Scott and Jason Day. Hide Caption 15 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup "Every aspect has improved so much compared to 20 years ago when I first came to the Tour," said Choi. "Now any one of those young Korean guys on Tour can bump shoulder to shoulder with world-class golfers." Hide Caption 16 of 17 Photos: CJ Cup The Nine Bridges course, voted one of the top 100 in the world, certainly didn't disappoint... Hide Caption 17 of 17
Military obligation
The search for an heir to Yang's throne goes on.
Few have come closer than KJ Choi, a former |
and island regions separately (Supplementary Table 3). The lowest-AICc models explaining richness across all regions, and for mainland and island regions only, were selected for inference, and marginal R2 (accounting for fixed effects) and conditional R2 (accounting for fixed and random effects) were calculated.
For individual taxonomic groups, we also ran linear mixed models as above to explain EAS richness (ln[number of species + 1] transformation). Owing to insufficient data on sampling effort for several taxa in island regions, we restricted these analyses to mainland regions. Sampling effort for individual taxonomic groups and its interaction with area were included for amphibians, ants, birds, mammals and vascular plants. Sampling effort and its interaction with area were not included in models explaining fish, reptile and spider alien richness because data on native species inventory completeness were not available for these taxonomic groups. Information on model comparisons for individual taxon richness is summarized in Supplementary Table 5.
For all selected models, we checked for spatial autocorrelation of the residuals by constructing correlograms of Moran’s I in relation to increasing distance (0 to 15,000 km) between centroids of neighbouring regions. This was achieved using the ‘spline.correlog’ function in the R package ‘ncf’45. To assess significance of spatial autocorrelation, a 95% confidence interval about Moran’s I was constructed from 500 bootstrapped randomizations of the regions’ residuals from the models. For models explaining cross-taxon EAS richness, there was a significant but only small amount of autocorrelation (Moran’s I ≤ 0.19) when all regions or only mainland regions were considered, and only at very short distances between regions (<500 km; Supplementary Fig. 2). For individual taxonomic groups, models showed a significant but small amount of autocorrelation at very short distances for only amphibians (Moran’s I ≤ 0.33, distance ≤650 km), birds (Moran’s I ≤ 0.23, distance ≤150 km), and freshwater fishes (Moran’s I ≤ 0.30, distance ≤750 km) (Supplementary Fig. 3).
Congruence in EAS richness among taxonomic groups
The strength of correlation in EAS richness between taxonomic groups was assessed by calculating Spearman correlation coefficients for every combination of pairs of taxonomic groups, using the actual species richness for each taxonomic group. The resulting number of regions used per pairwise correlation is shown in Supplementary Table 6. All analyses were conducted in R version 3.2.346.
Data availability
The dataset analysed in this study is available in Zenodo data repository, https://zenodo.org/record/556393#.WPjH08a1s2w.By By James Walker Jul 29, 2016 in Technology A new poetry website is offering a unique kind of reading experience. All the content on the site has been written by computers powered by artificial intelligence. It’s designed to test the limits of machine learning, creating a robot with human traits. Humans select programs that are allowed to contribute to the site. Once an AI has been created and trained to write poetry, it then has to produce a poem entirely on its own. The site is open to submissions and "wants to read what you have built writes." This allows independent AI researchers to build their own scripts in an afternoon and get their work featured. CuratedAI was created by Karmel Allison, a software engineer and data scientist from Bay Area. She wrote an algorithm, Deep Gimble I, with a 190,000 word vocabulary that can create new poems in under a minute. Most people have a vocabulary of only 10,000 words so Deep Gimble I comfortably outperforms humans in at least one respect. The quality of its work is more subjective though, tending towards abstract pieces that don't always have an obvious meaning. The algorithm is seeded by supplying it with a single word. It then works around that word, crafting a poem that can be completely unrelated to the original input. CuratedAI contains several of Deep Gimble I's works, including love poems such as Seaward and Guess and poems where the stanzas are variations on a common theme. Often, the seed word become lost within the poem. Deep Gimble is able to move between themes in a poem and create a structure though, deviating from the seed to create something conceptual, such as in this extract from seaward to london i you are free of your name of god you of the kings and odysseus for man as i am dead for i was not a woman to keep the man in my own love i could be your life the sun shines bright on her lips the light falls on her hands with the light from a mothers eye from a glance she speaks of this love the soul and heart "Creating a poem once the machine is trained is easy," Allison Art created CuratedAI represents a different kind of creativity though, one derived from human achievements in computing. Some people are likely to view Allison's algorithm, capable of producing what other people interpret as poetry, to be a more significant creation than the words it actually spills out. Allison intends to keep working on There are hundreds of websites and blogs dedicated to sharing poetry and prose written by both top authors and amateurs. In many ways, CuratedAI is very similar to these sites, albeit with one significant difference. All the works featured on the site have been written by artificial intelligences.Humans select programs that are allowed to contribute to the site. Once an AI has been created and trained to write poetry, it then has to produce a poem entirely on its own. The site is open to submissions and "wants to read what you have built writes." This allows independent AI researchers to build their own scripts in an afternoon and get their work featured.CuratedAI was created by Karmel Allison, a software engineer and data scientist from Bay Area. She wrote an algorithm, Deep Gimble I, with a 190,000 word vocabulary that can create new poems in under a minute. Most people have a vocabulary of only 10,000 words so Deep Gimble I comfortably outperforms humans in at least one respect. The quality of its work is more subjective though, tending towards abstract pieces that don't always have an obvious meaning.The algorithm is seeded by supplying it with a single word. It then works around that word, crafting a poem that can be completely unrelated to the original input. CuratedAI contains several of Deep Gimble I's works, including love poems such as Seaward and Guess and poems where the stanzas are variations on a common theme.Often, the seed word become lost within the poem. Deep Gimble is able to move between themes in a poem and create a structure though, deviating from the seed to create something conceptual, such as in this extract from Seaward "Creating a poem once the machine is trained is easy," Allison said to Popular Science in an interview. "The reading is more in the reader than the writer, obviously. You can talk about what the creator was trained on, or how the creator works, but not the creator's intent - maybe the algorithm writer's intent, but it's a step removed, which is more fun for the reader, I think."Art created by a machine is perhaps the first true step towards a computer we can identify as human. With language such an expressive component of personality, a machine with a 190,000 word vocabulary and the ability to create "poetry" could perhaps be considered the first computer capable of creating on its own.CuratedAI represents a different kind of creativity though, one derived from human achievements in computing. Some people are likely to view Allison's algorithm, capable of producing what other people interpret as poetry, to be a more significant creation than the words it actually spills out.Allison intends to keep working on CuratedAI and Deep Gimble. Deep Gimble II, an upgraded algorithm, has already submitted a poem to the site. She considers writing "good poetry" to be harder than building a poetry algorithm, perhaps suggesting computers could one day become better writers than we are. More about Artificial intelligence, Ai, machine learning, Poetry, algorithms Artificial intellige... Ai machine learning Poetry algorithmsDeemo: The Last Recital Coming To North American And European PlayStation Vitas
By Jenni. February 6, 2017. 5:39pm
Back in 2013, Rayark Games brought Deemo, a rhythm game, to Apple iOS and Android devices. A PlayStation Vita version followed in Japan and Korea in 2015. Now, Acttil and PM Studios will bring Deemo: The Last Recital to North America and Europe in spring 2017. It will be a PlayStation Store exclusive in both regions.
The PlayStation Vita version of Deemo is essentially an ultimate edition of the game. Deemo: The Last Recital has an expanded story with fully animated cutscenes by Comix Wave Films and Ayana Taketatsu, who provided Japanese voice acting for Tama in World of Final Fantasy, as well as Labrys in Persona 4 Arena, Jessica Albert in Dragon Quest VIII and Dragon Quest Heroes, voicing the little girl. This iteration also includes additional songs and cooperative and competitive multiplayer.
Deemo is available on Apple iOS and Android devices. Deemo: The Last Recital is available on PlayStation Vitas in Asia.Two seats will be contested at the General Election where the majority of voters were born overseas.
A record four million people born abroad will be able to vote in May after a decade of mass immigration, a study predicted yesterday.
The figure – up 500,000 since the last election – represents one-tenth of the electorate.
In a historic development, more than half of those eligible to vote in London’s East Ham and Brent North seats were born overseas.
In two seats - East Ham and Brent North - more than half of voters were born outside the UK
In 10 areas outside the capital at least a quarter of voters are foreign born, according to the study
Such voters will make up a third of the electorate in another 25 seats, and at least a quarter in a further 50 constituencies, according to experts at Manchester University.
Their report says those born abroad are likely to hold the balance of power in 20 key constituencies – including 12 Labour marginals, six Tory seats and two held by the Lib Dems.
The country that provides the most foreign-born voters in England and Wales is India, followed by Pakistan, the Republic of Ireland and Bangladesh.
The figures, compiled for the Migrants’ Rights Network, include up to two million immigrants granted British citizenship since 2000.
About 200,000 applications are now approved every year – or one every two-and-a-half minutes.
Large numbers arrived when New Labour was operating an ‘open-door’ immigration policy – a strategy designed, according to Labour adviser Andrew Neather, to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’.
The 3.98million voters born overseas includes up to a million from the Commonwealth who do not have British citizenship.
Former Labour minister Barry Gardiner is the MP in Brent North while shadow minister Stephen Timms is MP for East Ham
Recent analysis by MigrationWatch UK, based on the 2011 census, showed there are 960,000 who have the right to vote in England and Wales.
Under arcane rules, citizens of 54 independent sovereign states can register on the electoral roll as long as they have an address in Britain.
In many cases, the arrangements are not reciprocal. Britons are not allowed to vote in Canada, Australia or the three most populous countries in the Commonwealth – India, Pakistan and Nigeria.
In 2008, a report commissioned by the then prime minister Gordon Brown called for changes in the rules to prevent Commonwealth nationals without UK citizenship from voting in general elections.
The report was never acted upon by the Labour Government – nor has the issue been addressed by the Coalition.
MigrationWatch has suggested that ‘one possible reason’ why Labour ignored the report was that minority voters are more likely to support the party.
WHERE FOREIGN BORN VOTERS COULD HOLD THE BALANCE OF POWER Top 10 seats in London Top 10 seats outside 10 London
East Ham 51.0% Leicester East 39.3% Brent North 50.0% Birmingham, Ladywood 34.3% West Ham 47.1% Slough 33.2% Brent Central 44.6% Leicester South 29.7% Ealing Southall 43.4% Luton South 29.6% Harrow East 43.3% Bradford West 29.1% Harrow West 43.0% Manchester, Gordon 27.2% Ilford South 41.6% Bimringham, Hall Green 26.4% Westminster North 40.5% Manchester Central 25.0% Cities of London and Westminster 38.9% Bimingham Perry Bar 24.6%
The Runnymede Trust, an anti-racism organisation, found that 68 per cent of these voters backed Labour in the 2010 election.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats received just 16 per cent and 14 per cent of their votes respectively.
The authors of yesterday’s report said that although migrants will not vote as a bloc, patterns suggest they are likely to prefer parties viewed as ‘positive’ about race equality and immigration.
They added that the growing significance of the ‘migrant vote’ is being largely ignored by the main parties.
Co-author Robert Ford told The Guardian: ‘Migrant voters are almost as numerous as current Ukip supporters, but they are widely overlooked and risk being increasingly disaffected by mainstream politics and the fierce rhetoric around immigration caused partly by the rise of Ukip.
‘Britain is more than ever an outward-facing, globalised country with a huge, hardworking, mobile electorate born overseas.
However, the political debate fails to reflect that contemporary reality in any meaningful way.
Ukip have made all the running with the immigration debate in the past few years and we have seen all of the parties looking to offer a harder line on migrants.
‘But there is another side to this debate – millions of hardworking British citizens who came to this country from abroad who find this kind of rhetoric profoundly alienating.
‘If the parties do not respond to that then they face lasting damage as this electorate is only going to become more significant.’
EU citizens are permitted to vote in local elections but not Parliamentary contests. This week, Ukip’s Nigel Farage said they should also be barred from any future referendum on EU membership.
Last night MigrationWatch chairman Lord Green of Deddington said: ‘This report underlines the absurdity of giving the vote in Britain to foreign citizens from Commonwealth countries which do not give the vote to British residents in their own countries.Tim Spector is professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer. CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news analysis and commentary. The content is produced solely by The Conversation.
(CNN) Mounting evidence suggests that the richer and more diverse the community of microbes in your gut the lower your risk of disease. Diet is key to maintaining diversity and was strikingly demonstrated when an undergrad student went on a McDonald's diet for ten days and after just four days experienced a significant drop in the number of beneficial microbes.
Your gut microbiome is a vast community of trillions of bacteria that has a major influence on your metabolism, immune system and mood. These bacteria and fungi inhabit every nook and cranny of your gastrointestinal tract, with most of this 1kg to 2kg "microbe organ" sited in your colon (the main bit of your large intestine).
We tend to see the biggest diet-related shifts in microbes in people who are unhealthy with a low-diversity unstable microbiome. What we didn't know is whether a healthy stable gut microbiome could be improved in just a few days. The chance to test this in an unusual way came when my colleague Jeff Leach invited me on a field trip to Tanzania, where he has been living and working among the Hadza, one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer groups in all of Africa.
My microbiome is pretty healthy nowadays and, among the first hundred samples we tested as part of the MapMyGut project, I had the best gut diversity -- our best overall measure of gut health, reflecting the number and richness of different species. High diversity is associated with a low risk of obesity and many diseases. The Hadza have a diversity that is one of the richest on the planet
The research plan was devised by Jeff who suggested I should have an intensive three days of eating like a hunter gatherer during my stay at his research camp. I would measure my gut microbes before heading to Tanzania, during my stay with the Hadza, and after my return to the UK. I was also not allowed to wash or use alcohol swabs and I was expected to hunt and forage with the Hadza as much as possible -- including coming in contact with the odd Hadza baby and baboon poo lying about.
To help us record the trip I was accompanied by Dan Saladino, the intrepid presenter and producer of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme, who was preparing a Hadza microbe special.
After a long tiring flight to Mount Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania, we stayed overnight in Arusha, a city in the north of the country. Before setting off the next morning, I produced my baseline poo sample.
After an eight-hour journey in a Land Rover over bumpy tracks, we arrived. Jeff beckoned us to the top of a huge rock to witness the most amazing sunset over Lake Eyasi. Here, within a stones throw of the famous fossil site of Olduvai Gorge and with the stunning plains of the Serengeti in the distance, Jeff explained that we were never going to be closer to home as a member of the genus Homo, than where we were standing at that moment.
The million-year-old diet
The Hadza seek out the same animals and plants that humans have hunted and gathered for millions of years. Importantly, the human-microbe tango that played out here for aeons probably shaped aspects of our immune system and made us who we are today. The significance of being in Hadza-land was not lost on me.
Unlike the Hadza, who sleep around the fire or in grass huts, I was given a tent and told to zip it up tight as there were scorpions and snakes about. I had to be careful where I stepped if I needed a nocturnal pee. After an interesting but restless night's sleep, a large pile of baobab pods had been collected for my breakfast.
Photos: Wodaabe, Gerewol – At the end of the rainy season near Lake Chad, northern Niger, Wodaabe people come together for Cure Salee, the "Festival of Nomads." At the center of celebrations is Gerewol, a male beauty contest and courtship ritual. Young men -- traditionally herdsmen -- wear full makeup, jewelry and their finest clothes and stand in line to await inspection by female onlookers. White teeth and white eyes are highly prized, so participants will grin broadly and pull all manner of expressions in the hope of attracting attention. It's flirtation en masse, in the hope of winning a night of passion with one of the judges. Hide Caption 1 of 12 Photos: Mursi, lip plates –
The bottom lip is pierced with a wooden peg inserted, which is replaced with larger pegs thereafter. Once the hole is big enough the first of a succession of ornamental ceramic saucers are inserted, stretching it over a period of years -- one example from the neighboring Surma tribe measured Circular lip plates called dhebi a tugion are worn by some Mursi women near Jinka in Ethiopia's Omo Valley. They are one of the few tribes that continue the practice in East Africa, but archaeologists have discovered lip plates in the region stretching back 30,000 years, says anthropologist Dr Jerome Lewis of University College London. "It's a body modification that people find beautiful," he says. "It's also very striking and a distinctive way of marking your difference from other people around you."The bottom lip is pierced with a wooden peg inserted, which is replaced with larger pegs thereafter. Once the hole is big enough the first of a succession of ornamental ceramic saucers are inserted, stretching it over a period of years -- one example from the neighboring Surma tribe measured 19.5cm wide Hide Caption 2 of 12 Photos: Himba, otjize – Women of the semi-nomadic Himba tribe in northern Namibia are famous for their reddish hair and complexion. It's the result of otjize, a paste of butter, fat and red ocher, applied daily to their hair and skin. It was once speculated that the otjize served as a form of sun protection and to ward off insects, however the women say it's purely for aesthetic reasons -- which makes sense, given that Himba men don't take part in the practice. Hide Caption 3 of 12 Photos: Hamar, bull jumping – Herdsmen become hurdlers in the Omo Valley, Ethiopia. Young men of the Hamar tribe, one of many in the valley, prove their manhood by jumping on prize bulls and then running across their backs -- all while naked. The purpose? It's a coming of age ceremony, and only when the participant has traversed the bull run four times will he be allowed to marry. Slip and you risk a hard fall: "Because it's a manhood initiation ritual, [failure] is likely to affect the perception of someone's manhood and that of course can have all sorts of dire consequence," adds Dr Lewis. Hide Caption 4 of 12 Photos: Xhosa, Ulwaluko – In Eastern Cape, South Africa, young Xhosa men take part in a coming of age initiation called Ulwaluko. The youths, known as abakhwetha, are first circumcised without anesthetic, before being sent away from their village and into the bush, with minimal supplies and wrapped in a blanket. Wearing white clay on their faces, initiates will fend for themselves for up to two months, living in a structure built by the village's adult community specifically for Ulwaluko. Upon their return they are no longer referred to as "boy" and receive a new blanket. The initiation has not been without its criticisms, due to complications and malpractice surrounding the circumcision process. Hide Caption 5 of 12 Photos: Chewa, matriarchy –
One thing Chewa women are shut out of is the Women of the Chewa tribe may not be quite on equal footing as men, but they do hold the key to one thing: inheritance. Descent and succession for the Bantu-speaking tribe, spread across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique, is matrilineal, with property and land inherited from their mothers. "Although inheritance passes down the female line, which definitely gives women more power in society, it's still male-dominated and patriarchal in the sense that men are still at the apex of power," explains Lewis. "People have an assumption that matrilineal societies are somehow favorable to women -- and they are certainly more favorable than some of the extreme patrilineal societies -- but they're not societies that give women equal power."One thing Chewa women are shut out of is the Nyau brotherhood (pictured), a secretive society who can channel spirits and performs a ritual dance called Gule Wamkulu around harvest and at weddings and funeral. Hide Caption 6 of 12 Photos: Maasai, spitting – Spittle is an essential part of life for the Maasai of East Africa, as it acts as a blessing. "People have different views about where the power and essence of somebody resides," explains Lewis. For some, "spit represents an essence of you as a person."
To spit is "a way of blessing people by giving something of yourself; your own power to someone else." It starts at an early age, when newborn babies are spat on to wish them a good life. "If you leave a place, elders will come and spit on your head in order to bless your departure, and that whatever you do you're safe and kept well," adds Lewis. Hide Caption 7 of 12 Photos: San, healing dance –
Lewis says that this tradition is under threat: "In some places in southern Africa the San now perform their traditional culture exclusively for tourists, because they've been forced out of all their territories as hunter-gatherers by conservationist organizations. This means that by extension... these performances are not the original initiations but a facsimile of them." The San of South Africa, Botswana, Angola and Namibia are, according to some researchers, the world's oldest people. Their hunter-gatherer culture stretches back tens of thousands of years, and integral to it is the trance dance, also known as the healing dance. Historically an all-night affair, the practice brings the whole community together, led by healers and elders dancing around a fire, chanting and breathing deeply until they induce a trance state. It offers the chance to commune with ancestral spirits of the departed and for healers, cure sickness within other dancers.Lewis says that this tradition is under threat: "In some places in southern Africa the San now perform their traditional culture exclusively for tourists, because they've been forced out of all their territories as hunter-gatherers by conservationist organizations. This means that by extension... these performances are not the original initiations but a facsimile of them." Hide Caption 8 of 12 Photos: Bantu-speaking tribes, lobola –
"It's the cause of much conflict," says Lewis, "because in order for a man to get married he must provide often quite a substantial head of cattle, and so he's in indentured labor to his father until the herd he's caring for is big enough." In societies that are cattle based, men tend to marry in their mid-forties, he adds, explaining that "there's always a backlog of women who are available but unable to marry" because men of a similar age have not yet raised the required bridalwealth. A feature of marital affairs for many Bantu-speaking tribes in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, lobola is practiced by, among others, Zulus (pictured). Lobola is also referred to as "bridalwealth", with the prospective groom's family negotiating with the bride's for her hand in marriage. The dowry comes in many forms, including money, but some choose cattle. There were reports in 1998 that Nelson Mandela (of Thembu lineage) paid the marital lobola of 60 cows to the family of new wife Graca Machel."It's the cause of much conflict," says Lewis, "because in order for a man to get married he must provide often quite a substantial head of cattle, and so he's in indentured labor to his father until the herd he's caring for is big enough." In societies that are cattle based, men tend to marry in their mid-forties, he adds, explaining that "there's always a backlog of women who are available but unable to marry" because men of a similar age have not yet raised the required bridalwealth. Hide Caption 9 of 12 Photos: Tuareg, tangelmust – Tuaregs are the only tribal communities in which men wear veils instead of women. The tangelmust, a wrapped headdress up to eight meters in length, is ubiquitous among the "blue men of the desert." The name does not allude to the muslin headdress, dyed with indigo, but rather because the dye gradually leeches out into the skin of the wearer. Tuaregs use the tangelmust for practical reasons: it protects from the sun and sand, but men will still wear them at night, and even during meals. Men cover their faces with the tangelmust in front of strangers and women, while women are free to show their face. Hide Caption 10 of 12 Photos: Bodi, Ka'el obesity pageant – Every June or July in the Omo Valley, Ethiopia, the Ka'el -- the Bodi lunar new year -- takes place. With it comes an extraordinary show of pageantry. In the months before the event men live in isolation and drink to excess a mixture of cow milk and cow blood for months in order to become vastly bloated and overweight. Each clan will then present an unmarried male to compete for the title of fattest man -- and with the glory, the greater chance of finding a wife. With stomachs swollen, balance and fatigue can be an issue, but once the event is over, contestants return to their normal size in a matter of weeks. Hide Caption 11 of 12 Photos: Dassanech, recycled jewelry – "It's important to remember that tradition doesn't mean 'the same'," says Lewis, "cultures will adapt and add elements all the time." A perfect example of this is the Dassanech tribe, another group found in Ethiopia's Omo Valley on the border with Kenya. Rubbish of all manner, but particularly bottle tops, have begun to be recycled by Dassanech women, who weave the metal caps into vibrant jangly headdresses. Other women have adapted broken watches and trinkets for similar purposes -- and a sure fire way of getting yourself noticed. Hide Caption 12 of 12
The baobab fruit is the staple of the Hadza diet, packed with vitamins, fat in the seeds, and, of course, significant amounts of fibre. We were surrounded by baobab trees stretching in the distance as far as I could see. Baobab fruit have a hard coconut-like shell that cracks easily to reveal a chalky flesh around a large, fat-rich seed. The high levels of vitamin C provided an unexpected citrus tang.
The Hadza mixed the chalky bits with water and whisked it vigorously for two to three minutes with a stick until it was a thick, milky porridge that was filtered -- somewhat -- into a mug for my breakfast. It was surprisingly pleasant and refreshing. As I wasn't sure what else I would be eating on my first day, I drank two mugs and suddenly felt very full.
My next snacks were the wild berries on many of the trees surrounding the camp -- the commonest were small Kongorobi berries. These refreshing and slightly sweet berries have 20 times the fibre and polyphenols compared with cultivated berries -- powerful fuel for my gut microbiome. I had a late lunch of a few high-fibre tubers dug up with a sharp stick by the female foragers and tossed on the fire. These were more effort to eat - like tough, earthy celery. I didn't go for seconds or feel hungry, probably because of my high-fibre breakfast. No one seemed concerned about dinner.
Hadza woman and child sitting at a fire, Lake Eyasi, Tanzania.
A few hours later we were asked to join a hunting party to track down porcupine -- a rare delicacy. Even Jeff hadn't tasted this creature in his four years of field work.
Two 20kg nocturnal porcupines had been tracked to their tunnel system in a termite mound. After several hours of digging and tunnelling -- carefully avoiding the razor-sharp spines -- two porcupines were eventually speared and thrown to the surface. A fire was lit. The spines, skin and valuable organs were expertly dissected and the heart, lung and liver cooked and eaten straight away.
The rest of the fatty carcass was taken back to camp for communal eating. It tasted much like suckling pig. We had a similar menu the next two days, with the main dishes including hyrax -- a strange furry guinea-pig-like hoofed animal, weighing about 4kg -- a relative of the elephant, of all creatures.
Harvested high from a baobab tree, our dessert was the best golden orange honey I could ever imagine -- with the bonus of honeycomb full of fat and protein from the larvae. The combination of fat and sugars made our dessert the most energy-dense food found anywhere in nature and may have competed with fire in terms of its evolutionary importance.
In Hadza-land nothing is wasted or killed unnecessarily, but they eat an amazing variety of plant and animal species (around 600, most of which are birds) compared with us in the West. My other lasting impression was how little time they spent getting food. It appeared as though it took just a few hours a day -- as simple as going round a large supermarket. Any direction you walked there was food -- above, on and below ground.
Massive increase in microbiome diversity
Twenty-four hours later Dan and I were back in London, him with his precious audio tapes and me with my cherished poo samples. After producing a few more, I sent them to the lab for testing.
The results showed clear differences between my starting sample and after three days of my forager diet. The good news was my gut microbal diversity increased a stunning 20%, including some totally novel African microbes, such as those of the phylum Synergistetes.When I teach Carmen Maria Machado’s story “The Husband Stitch,” the first in her collection Her Body and Other Parties, to my fiction workshops, it’s unlike teaching any other story. For one thing, the men in class don’t speak. I’m not sure if, like me, they don’t know what to say, something I admit before we begin. “I don’t quite know how to discuss this story,” I say. “I’m really having us read it because I love it.” Or maybe they feel like they shouldn’t because it is, among other things, a story about being a woman. The conversation limps along, uncharacteristically weighted with all the things the students are thinking and not saying. Often, one woman admits she cried when she read it, and when I nod and ask why, she says she doesn’t know. Always, a student says that she sent it to all of her friends.
I have that impulse, too, to share it, which is why I have my classes read it. There is a truth in the tales that I recognize viscerally but have never been taught. Machado’s narrator tells the story of meeting the young man she knew she would marry, their mutually desirous marriage, the birth and raising of their son, and an inevitable betrayal by her husband whom she loves. “He is not a bad man, and that, I realize suddenly, is the root of my hurt,” the narrator says. “He is not a bad man at all. To describe him as evil or wicked or corrupted would be a deep disservice to him. And yet — ” The title refers to the extra stitch sometimes given to a woman after the area between her vagina and anus is either torn or cut during childbirth. The purpose of the extra stitch is to make the vagina tighter than it was before childbirth in order to increase the husband’s pleasure during sex.
Often, one woman admits she cried when she read it, and when I nod and ask why, she says she doesn’t know.
I was first introduced to the husband stitch in 2014, when a friend in medical school told me about a birth her classmate observed. After the baby was delivered, the doctor said to the woman’s husband, “Don’t worry, I’ll sew her up nice and tight for you,” and the two men laughed while the woman lay between them, covered in her own and her baby’s blood and feces. The story terrified me, the laughter in particular, signaling some understanding of wrongdoing, some sheepishness in doing it anyway. The helplessness of the woman, her body being altered without her consent by two people she has to trust: her partner, her doctor. The details of the third-hand account imprinted into my memory so vividly that the memory of the story feels now almost like my own memory. Later that year, Machado’s “The Husband Stitch” was published, and sometime after that, I read it, and the details of Machado’s scene were so similar, down to the laughter, down to the words “don’t worry” (though in Machado’s story they’re directed at the woman), that I’m not sure now what I remember and what I read.
Reliable information about, or even an official definition of, the husband stitch is conspicuously missing from the internet. No entry in Wikipedia, nothing in WebMD. Instead there are pages and pages of message board entries and forum discussions on pregnancy websites, and a pretty good definition on Urban Dictionary. In James Baldwin’s 1979 New York Times piece, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” he writes, “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.” How can a practice like the husband stitch be warned against if there’s no official discussion of it, no record of it, no language around it, nothing to point at, to teach? Every time a woman received a husband stitch, is it in her medical file? Does it say, “2nd degree perineal laceration repaired + husband stitch”? Or might the record leave off the extra stitch, whether it happened or not? I asked three male friends in medical residencies in different areas around the country if they’d heard of the husband stitch and only one had, but not from medical school; he knew it from Machado’s story. And yet it happens, based on the chatter on message boards, women’s chatter, which I have been conditioned to approach with skepticism, a category of information I might dismiss as an “old wives’ tale” (a term with its own troubling connotations). It happens even now.
But this is not an essay about the husband stitch. It’s an essay about believing and being believed.
My mother has always had a flexible relationship with facts. She is constantly solving mysteries, including (often incorrectly) the mystery of what you’re about to say next, or the mystery of someone’s motivations. Sometimes in recalling these instances, she’ll substitute in her solutions for the truth, her prediction for what I actually said. “I thought you said you weren’t taking the baby to Portugal because of Zika,” she’ll say, and I am exhausted by the prospect of unraveling all of the inaccuracies. “No, that’s what you said,” I say, like a child. “I said I am taking the baby to Portugal and there’s no Zika in Portugal and the reason people worry about Zika in the first place is if you’re pregnant and neither I nor the baby are pregnant.” But of course she’s not confused, though there are times when she is; in this case she’s knowingly using incorrect facts to tell me her emotional truth, that she doesn’t want me to take the baby to Portugal because, like me, she’s afraid of everything. The truth that she is afraid of everything is as real as the truth that there’s no risk of Zika in Portugal. Both are true. By working backwards from her emotional truth I can understand why her facts are wrong.
Machado’s narrator tells a story from her own youth, when she’s certain she has seen and felt toes among the potatoes at the grocery store |
album but your custom tag might not work with other media players.
What if you sync to a portable or use streaming audio using DLNA?
Most of the time your custom tag is not supported.
A solution might be to use the standard tag CONTENTGROUP.
It is a tag available in various file formats.
ID3v2 / WMA tag fields
Name in Mp3tag ID3v2.3 ID3v2.4 WMA iTunes WMP 10 Winamp COMPOSER TCOM " WM/Composer Composer Composer Composer COMPOSERSORT TSOC " Composer Sort Order CONDUCTOR TPE3 " WM/Conductor Conductor CONTENTGROUP TIT1 " WM/ContentGroup Description Grouping Music category description
Source: MP3Tag
Using this tag we get
Album Album Artist Artist Composer Content Title Schubert Piano Trios L'Archibudelli Anner Bylsma Vera Beths Jos van Immerseel Schubert, Franz (1797-1828) String Trio in B flat major D 581 1 Allegro 2 Adagio 3 Menuetto 4 Finale Schubert, Franz (1797-1828) String Trio in B flat major D 898 1 Allegro 2 Adagio 3 Menuetto 4 Finale
This is a nice solution but at the present not all media players do support this tag.
Even if they do, the quation is how it handles this tag.
It should handle it the same as Album.
Album is a matter of grouping files as much as Composition is a matter of grouping files.
Multiple performances
You might have some overlap in your collection e.g. Beethoven's violin sonata no.1 performed by Gidon Kremer/Martha Argerich and by Vladimir Ashkenazy/Itzhak Perlman.
If your media player thinks tracks belong to the same album if both Album Title and Album Artist are the same you might get something like this:
Album Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1
and if you expand this to tracks you might end up with:
Album Song Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 1 Allegro Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 1 Allegro Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 2 Adagio Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 2 Adagio Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 3 Menuetto Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 3 Menuetto Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 4 Finale Beethoven - Violin sonata no.1 4 Finale
You get all the first movements, then the second movements, etc.
Adding the name of the composers and the performers to the composition makes your albums media player proof but the title might become too long to be fully displayed in the interface.
Album Beethoven - Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major (Kreutzer Sonata) - Kremer/Argerich Beethoven - Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major (Kreutzer Sonata) - Perlman/Ashkenazy
This I call a universal solution because by making the name of the Album unique it will work on almost any device even those that use Album Title only to define an album.
The downside is the title becomes very long. Often too long to be readable in the interface.
I don't endorse this practice but I do think it is a work-around often needed because most media players are built with pop music in mind.
Multiple values
Often you have various combinations of performers like:
Gideon Kremer
Gideon Kremer/ Martha Argerich
Gideon Kremer/ Olaf Mustone
Harnoncourt / Gideon Kremer
Martha Argerich
Martha Argerich / Harnoncourt / Gideon Kremer
etc.
This makes it hard to find all the works performed by e.g. Kremer in a sorted list.
Some media players support multiple values.
You enter the names separated by a semicolon.
An alternative is simply not to bother.
If your media player has a good search function, typing e.g. "Kremer" will simply yield all the tracks he is involved in.
Sorting
In classical music the movements (title) are often labelled using numbers.
You can do without as long as the media player sorts by track number.
But some simply sorts alphabetically by title, so it is a good practice to use numbers.
A common practice is using roman numbers.
As long as you remain below VIII, they sort well alphabetically.
I II III IV IX V VI VII VIII
Using 'normal' numbers might also give problems if the sorting is done alphabetically.
1 10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Some media players support "smart" sorting.
They sort the numbers in the right order although the content of the tag is character.
If not, the only thing you can do is to prefix with a zero.
This applies to compositions as well.
Piano Sonata No.1 Op.2/1 in F minor (1793-5)
Piano Sonata No.10 Op.14/2 in G Major (1799)
Piano Sonata No.2 Op.2/2 in A Major (1793-5)
....
If you prefix you don't have this problem.
Piano Sonata No.01 Op.2/1 in F minor (1793-5)
Piano Sonata No.02 Op.2/2 in A Major (1793-5)
....
Piano Sonata No.10 Op.14/2 in G Major (1799)
But I don't like these leading zeros.
Likewise Opus/Catalog
In case of Bach you need four digits to get the BWV sorted right.
Software
Tagging classical music is a lot of work.
Sometimes you can save yourself a lot of typing by using scripts.
Advanced taggers like MP3Tag allow you to use formulas for bulk editing.
At the present I use MusiCHI for classical.
Epilogue
Today a lot of media players support the composer tag.
Even the one on my Android smart phone does.
iTunes
In October 2016 iTunes started supporting typical classical tags as Work and Movement.
If iTunes does it, others will follow.
How to tag?
There is no perfect solution.
If you use a player like MusicBee you can make all kind of custom tags and tailor the views to your needs.
If you sync to a portable you have to take into account its capabilities.
If you use various media players, keep portability of tags in mind.
Search
You might go for an elaborate tagging schema but if you have a media player with a good search function it is often more important that the information is in some searchable tag then in a specific tag.
If you browse a list it is very inconvenient to have both “Gidon Kremer” and “Kremer, Gidon” in the list.
If you do a search on "Kremer" you will find both anyway.
Over time I became a bit less fixated about my tagging schemes.
If the search finds it, who cares?
References
Taming iTunes for Classical Music - Stan Brown
The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part1) - MusiCHI
The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part2) - MusiCHIIt was a hot and dry summer, and my plants suffered because I had to ration water. Sound familiar? Yup, I heard it from every one of my gardener friends this year. Our soil is volcanic, rocky and very dry, and the water runs straight through the ground without wicking out to my needy plants. Luckily one of my best friends is a permaculture specialist, and she helped me redesign my raised beds in the hugelkultur style (check this link for some cool pictures!). “Hugelkultur” means “hill culture” in German, and is basically a style of gardening on top of a composting pile of logs, straw and manure. The composting mass soaks up water like a giant sponge, and slowly releases it back into the soil as it dries. As my friend put it, “Your plants will be watered with January’s rain in June”. EXCELLENT!
Drought Tolerant Raised Beds
The basic idea of this “lasagna-style” gardening technique is to bury lots of organic matter that will soak up rain water and decompose over time, which will nourish your soil for many years. You also won’t have to turn the soil over ever again because those layers will be working hard to create the damp, rich conditions for your plants to thrive.
Layering from the bottom up, start with a pile of wood, then straw, steer manure, cardboard, and then end with a layer of compost on top. This is definitely not limited to raised beds, in fact, if you want to start a new garden bed (even on a lawn!), just start layering!
First, dig out the existing soil, save it on a tarp for adding back later.
We had lined our beds with hardware cloth to keep out the gophers, and it was still in good shape 5+ years later. These beds were built from salvaging an old deck off a nearby farmhouse.
The first layer is wood. Hardwoods will last a long time, so we threw in all the knuckle pieces and bark from our woodpile.
Water each layer as you go, you really want to soak all the wood to create that sponge.
The next layer is a few inches of straw, cover the wood and water well. We had a bale of old straw that had already started to rot, which we couldn’t use for the chicken coop, so this was a great way to make use of it.
Spread a layer of composted steer manure over the straw, to give it a nice boost of nitrogen. You need this because the decomposing wood will rob nitrogen from the soil during the first year, so this helps adjust for for that.
Next up is cardboard, try not use any cardboard that is dyed or glossy, they will add undesirable funk to your soil. Water as you go!
Finally, add rich compost as the top layer. This is where you can add back the soil you dug out. Now is a good time to amend it with some fresh compost or organic soil booster. Keep watering it until it is good and soggy, then water it some more.
I planted 4 types of kale, broccoli, spinach, and garlic about 2 months ago, and they are thriving through the winter. We had a month of solid rain right after we rebuilt these beds, which is pretty exciting, though I hope we get more. I can’t wait to see how my peppers, squash and tomatoes do this summer, I’ll keep you posted on how these drought tolerant raised beds improve the health of my garden and my harvest. Oh, and don’t forget to mulch, even in the winter!As a language instructor and author of language learning textbooks, I’ve always found the Kindle’s built-in dictionary a great tool to make reading foreign language texts more fluid and frictionless. Whether it’s on your Kindle ereader, on your iPhone or iPad Kindle app, or Kindle Android app (see links for detailed instructions), custom dictionaries can be easily integrated, so that all you need to do is tap on unknown words to get an immediate translation.
What has been missing from this list so far is an option to get the same feature on desktop computers, i.e. when reading Kindle books on your PC or Mac.
Cloud Reader: Not Enough Dictionaries, No Copy & Paste
While trying to get Kindle PC to accept custom dictionaries ultimately proved futile, I started looking into another way to accomplish this with Kindle Cloud Reader. In case you’re not familiar with it, Cloud Reader is a web-app that allows you to read Kindle books directly from your browser. Also Cloud Reader offers a handful of pre-installed dictionaries, but unfortunately there is no discernible way to install more dictionaries. Even purchased dictionaries from the Kindle store don’t show up here.
Furthermore, Kindle Cloud Reader doesn’t allow copying of text, which is probably to prevent piracy, but also it prevents readers from looking up and translating words or using third-party browser extensions for further study, such as flashcards, etc.
The Kindle Cloud Reader Bookmarklet
So is Kindle Cloud Reader also a dead-end street if you’re trying to “click & translate” words from your Kindle books? Turns out, binarycrafts from Romania have found a way to circumvent Kindle Cloud reader’s blocking of text copying by use of a simple bookmarklet.
I’ve adapted their code for language learning purposes (specifically German learning), so that after activating the bookmarklet you get two different options for sending selected text to either dict.cc or Google Translate.
How does it work?
Drag this bookmarklet to you bookmark bar (or copy this code and paste it into a new bookmark URL) + Kindle Translator Go to read.amazon.com Click on the bookmarklet. You’ll get a popup confirmation upon successful launch. Click on words to translate either via dict.cc or Google Translate
Obviously this is just a hack until Amazon will (hopefully) add the use of custom dictionaries to their PC, Mac or Cloud reader application. But until then it’s certainly a way to get quick translations. Let me know in the comments what you think.
How To Add Support For More Languages
In the above example, the bookmarklet only works for German-English, but what if you want to translate other languages? No problem. Here’s how you can modify the code to match your personal needs. First of all, open the code in a text editor and look for the following section:
if (r) {
var newW = window.open('http://pocket.dict.cc/?s=' + r, 'dict.cc', "height=400,width=448,location=0,menubar=0,scrollbars=1,toolbar=0");
}
});
$('#ACRExtensions_copyC', kDoc).click(function (evt) {
if (r) {
var newW = window.open('https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#auto/en/' + r, 'Google Translate', "height=400,width=776,location=0,menubar=0,scrollbars=1,toolbar=0");
}
});
The parts I highlighted in red are where the magic happens. As you can see, the code uses two URLs to do the dictionary queries: http://pocket.dict.cc/?s= and https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#auto/en/.
Now, let’s say I don’t want the German-English dictionary from dict.cc, but Spanish-German. First of all, let’s go to dict.cc or the mobile-friendly pocket.dict.cc. After selecting the correct dictionary, in our case “Deutsch Spanisch”, enter a word and take a close look at your browser’s address bar. For example, after typing in the word “esperanza”, you’ll see the following in the address bar: http://esde.pocket.dict.cc/?s=esperanza
Now we simply have to copy this URL, remove the example word, and we’re left with the following http://esde.pocket.dict.cc/?s=, which you can simply paste over the part of the above code where it says http://pocket.dict.cc/?s=.
The same we can do with the Google Translate URL. Go to Google Translate, type in something, select your language pair and click translate. For example, when I type in “bonjour”, select French on the left side and Hebrew on the right, my address bar says: https://translate.google.com/#fr/iw/bonjour
Again, all you have to do now is delete the example word and paste the string https://translate.google.com/#fr/iw/ over the part in the code where it says https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#auto/en/.
By the way, you could this with almost any dictionary you find online, not just Google Translate or dict.cc. For example, an example query URL for Spanish-Spanish from oxforddictionaries.com would look like this: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spanish/esperanza, the German Duden dictionary builds its queries like this: http://www.duden.de/suchen/dudenonline/Selbstversuch and so on and so forth. Just remove the example word and replace the highlighted parts in the above code with these new strings.
When you’re done, copy all of your code, edit the existing bookmarklet and paste it in the URL field, or just create a new bookmark and paste it in the URL field there.
–
Special thanks to Peter Cole's Bookmarklet Creator.
How To Use A German-English Dictionary with Kindle Cloud Reader 5.8 (115%) 4 votesIn a new website-slash-pitch for a memoir, Vijay Chokal-Ingam, the brother of comedian Mindy Kaling, reveals that he gamed the system and managed to get into medical school by claiming he was African-American.
Chokal-Ingam, who graduated from the University of Chicago with a meager 3.1 GPA, says that his ploy began after the self-described party boy saw his fellow Asian Indian-Americans, many of whom had higher grades, fail to get into medical school. “I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied to medical school as a black man,” he wrote on his website, AlmostBlack.com. “My change in appearance was so startling that my own fraternity brothers didn’t recognize me at first. I even joined the Organization of Black Students and started using my embarrassing middle name that I had hidden from all of my friends since I was a 9 years old.”
With this, “Jojo” managed to get into the selective Saint Louis University School of Medicine with the exact same application he used as an Indian man. As a fake black man, he allegedly secured interviews at nine highly selective medical schools, including Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania. As he told The New York Post:
“I disclosed that I grew up in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts, that my mother was a doctor, and that my father was an architect,” he said Saturday, describing his med-school applications. “I disclosed that I didn’t receive financial aid from the University of Chicago, and that I had a nice car,” he said. “I was the campus rich kid, let’s just put it on the table. And yet they considered me an affirmative-action applicant.”
Chokal-Ingam hinted that his plot to become black wasn’t exactly a smooth ride, however. “Cops harassed me. Store clerks accused me of shoplifting. Women were either scared of me or couldn’t keep their hands off me,” he wrote. “What started as a devious ploy to gain admission to medical school turned into twisted social experiment.”
After two years at med school, Chokal-Ingam dropped out and began attending business school at the University of California Los Angeles — as an Indian-American. He told the Post that he was going public with his past deception “because he heard that UCLA is considering strengthening its affirmative-action admissions policies.” (The debate over the University of California’s admissions system has been raging for decades.)
Chokal-Ingam hinted that his famous sister, who stars on Fox’s The Mindy Project, wasn’t too happy about his decision: “I love my sister to death…She says this will bring shame on the family.”
[New York Post]
[Image via Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com]
— —
>> Follow Tina Nguyen (@Tina_Nguyen) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comBeautifully Done!
If you could sum up Warlords of Ancient Mexico in three words, what would they be?
comprehensive, interesting & well-seamed
Who was your favorite character and why?
Tlacaelel; for his energy & unpredictability (doesn't mean I'd ever want to know him)
Which scene was your favorite?
since this is a history book, that's hard to say
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
the Roller Coaster of the Aztec Civilization
Any additional comments?
The writer did a beautiful job of describing the rise & fall of the Aztecs (there was little about the Maya, but then again they are very enigmatic), with many interesting accompanying illustrative stories. The narrator did a great job with those Nahuatl names. I recommend that you keep a name & place companion with you, as the names can get confusing.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful“Hold that thought,” your best friend states as he pushes his nose closer to the IPhone in his hand. Even ten years ago such behavior would have been considered rude, but today it’s an everyday occurrence.
But while technology may technically be ‘connecting’ people all over the globe, to what extent is it also separating individuals from having true, present communication with each other? This conundrum is a focus many cartoon artists have sought to bring attention to through illustration.
Whether at a coffee shop where patrons are more interested in their laptops than conversation, or at a family get-together where everyone has to check their cell-phones every 15 minutes, there is no doubt it is becoming an exception – not the norm – to be able to hold conversation for an extended period of time.
Of course technology has improved all of our lives for the better, but the questions that now beg to be asked are “how much is too much?”, and “what are we going to do about it?”…
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What are your thoughts on these comics? Share in the comments section below!
Source: BoredPandaThis man gets it. Flickr/@HayeurJF There is a fundamental problem with music-streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music.
It's not that streaming music often fails to properly value artists' work — though there have been grumblings for years about the amounts paid out by Spotify to rights-holders.
And it's not the overall cost of a lifetime of a streaming service, though Apple founder Steve Jobs hated streaming services for exactly this reason. In one of his best-known keynote speeches, he railed against the idea of "renting" music, arguing that you end up paying for your favourite songs thousands of times over.
It's not even the limited selection of music available to stream, though even the best and most comprehensive streaming service is unable to acquire the rights to everything you may want to listen to.
Permanence is everything
Let's imagine for a second that Spotify goes on living for another 30 years. That's a pretty long time for any company to stick around — especially in an industry as volatile and prone to disruption as the intersection of music and technology.
Barring any unfortunate accidents, that would make me 53 when the company finally closes its doors in 2045. And then what happens? My entire music collection, painstakingly built over three decades of careful listening — gone forever.
Can Spotify CEO Daniel Ek promise your music will be safe 20 years from now? Getty Images Music is not like a film, or a book, that you consume perhaps half a dozen times at most. It makes up the backdrop to your life. Whether it's the early teenage freedom that accompanied The Killers' "Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine," or the "Indecision" by Sampha soundtracking a period of listless post-graduation melancholy — music is linked to almost every major moment of my existence. And just listening can take me back at any moment.
When you're "renting" your music, the problem isn't that you're paying for your favourite music thousands of times over. It's that you have no control over it. You could lose it at any time, through no fault of your own. In 20 years, CEO Tim Cook's successor at Apple could decide the company needs to tighten its belt and wipe out 100 million people's libraries overnight. That uncertainty undermines music's most powerful quality — that it's a concrete link to the past.
Of course, the alternative — owning your music — has its own problems. It's expensive, and it takes up significant amounts of storage space. Music streaming also offers powerful convenience — so much so that I'll admit that I will sometimes use Spotify when I'm out and about.
And with owned music, there's always the risk that you lose the hard drive your collection is stored on — and with it your years of careful work. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal et al don't have this problem (though the risks can be mitigated through careful backing up).
So, yes, ownership of music isn't perfect. But ultimately, when I'm older and looking back upon my life, I'll want my music collection more than ever. And the custodianship of that is not a responsibility I'm willing to grant Apple — or anyone else.You cannot unsee this photo! A throwback pic of Donald Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, has surfaced, and frankly some think it’s quite disturbing. The unsettling photo features a 15-year-old Ivanka sitting on her father’s lap in a way that is — ahem — not very daughter-like. Take a look at the pic here!
Fans cannot stop cringing at this photo. Ivanka Trump, 34, does NOT look like Donald Trump’s biological daughter in this 1996 pic that has caused quite a stir. The two have always had a questionable relationship, but after seeing this photo, people are completely creeped out by this daddy/daughter pair.
The unnerving picture was pulled from a Vanity Fair shoot at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and features 15-year-old Ivanka sitting on her father’s lap while tenderly caressing his face and gazing at him in a, um, certain way. And as if that’s not awkward enough, the pair are sitting on top of two stone parrots who appear to be having sex. Yikes!
The photo has given people a major case of the heebie-jeebies, which has inspired them to express their feelings of outright disgust via social media. Their reactions are pretty hilarious!
This picture of Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump isn't creepy at all! #trumpenstein pic.twitter.com/kIsPjzrVmF — Eric Darcman (@Darcman) January 31, 2016
It’s no secret that Donald can be a major creep and outrageously inappropriate, but acting that way towards his own daughter has people accessing his actions on a whole new, disturbing level.
Donald even went so far as to “compliment” his daughter on The Daily Show in the most inappropriate way possible in December 2015. “Yeah, [Ivanka’s] really something and what a beauty, that one,” he stated. “If I weren’t happily married, and ya know, her father…” Yeah, let’s not even go there, Donald. It seems like the Donald just doesn’t know when to shut his mouth. He’s even stated, back in 2006 on The View, that if Ivanka wasn’t his daughter, he might DATE her! Does anyone else feel like they need a shower?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diMp241gAcw
Tell us what you think, HollywoodLifers: is Donald completely disgusting when it comes to his relationship with his daughter?By Mark Norton: Editor @ BitcoinWarrior.net
According to the Small Business Administration, about 600,000 new businesses are started just in the US each year. Each one of these businesses represents the hopes and dreams of the person or people founding it, and often represents people who are putting themselves far out on a limb financially and emotionally to get that business going. Every one of them is hoping to get a little bit of help.
Unfortunately, that help is scarce: according to the same reports, only about 300 startups each year will get VC funding. This means that less than one percent of any venture will get external funding and support.
Crowdfunding sites like KickStarter and Indiegogo have risen to address just this issue. They give small entrepreneurs a way to get funding without having to find an angel investor who will provide a large lump-sum, but instead find many people will put up just a little bit of money.
Tyler Houlihan is one individual who has been innovating a new way to crowdfund using Bitcoin with a twist: Rather than getting a limited-edition product as a reward, Tyler’s BitPieces site promises continuing and automatic dividends based on the rising popularity of the brands funded.
As is often said, Bitcoin is still in its early days when the space for creativity and innovation are wide open. I tracked Tyler down to ask him a few questions about his new site.
So to start this off, could you tell me a little about yourself: What your history is and how you got involved in the Bitcoin economy?
I’m a software dev with experience in the financial services field, but I’m highly interested in Bitcoin and dividend stocks. I created the site to help solve the fundamental problem of how people with great ideas can get funding, anywhere in the world, without having to promise some ‘product,’ to funders at some specified date. Really, what we’re talking about here is a stock market, and despite all the exchanges that are out there, no real stock market involving Bitcoin has been made yet � until now. That, along with the idea that dividends should be easy, automatic, continuous, and transparent in order to establish a history of trust, is what led me to build the site.
When someone creates a project, they sell off ‘pieces,’ or shares, of the project. These shares are paid rewards on a regular basis at a rate set by the creator. You recommend that it be something like 1-2 percent. There are already a number of crypto and non-crypto micro-funding sites out there. What gave you the idea for this and what problem do you solve that the others don’t?
Some things that differentiates Bitpieces from other crypto and micro-funding sites:
BitPieces is entirely open-source and hosted on GitHub.
The rewards that are paid to funders are automatic and continuous. Once you buy the shares, you just watch the rewards grow in your account.
While BTC is used for all transactions, everything from historical charts to current value of everything traded�can be displayed in your local currency (I think we’re up to around 20 currencies right now).
BitPieces is a clean, bootstrapped interface with highly interactive charts.
The micro-funding sites that I know of function more like lenders or bond issuers. BitPieces is more equivalent to stocks, where you are buying equity.
So again, from my understanding, when the creator starts a project, he or she creates a number of pieces to be sold � so there will be a fixed amount of them. Anyone who purchases one of those pieces potentially gets rewarded in two ways: First, as we said, their shareholdings increase according to a schedule set when the project is created, and also, since the pieces are tradable, through an increase in the exchange rate of the pieces. That means that if a project is a hit, then the price of the pieces might skyrocket, netting the investor a huge profit off their initial investment. Is that right?
Yes. For all intents and purposes, you can think of pieces as stocks. Once all the initial pieces are sold, then the bidding and valuation game can start: if people think the pieces are worth more, then they can bid higher on them and the sellers or askers can ask more for them. If the project is a hit, the price of the pieces will go up because people are willing to pay more for them. So just like stocks, these kind of speculative games start out. But this isn’t just pure speculation on some exchange rate, it’s people valuing how much they think a brand or creator is worth. If a web-comic sells pieces, it’s up to everyday people to decide how much that work is worth and how much they’d like to be a part of fueling its growth.
This actually sounds a little bit like colored coins. What’s the difference between a colored coin and a piece?
For one, colored coins, with dividends or rewards, as far as I know, are at a very early stage. If they were easy to use, or better developed, you’d see a lot of content creators using them. Secondly, people want a centralized place to go to do their funding, like Kickstarter or even exchanges. What happens, then, is you tend to see crowdfunding platforms being created as walled-gardens. This makes them very easy for funders to use and the funds raised generally stay within that framework. BitPieces is no different. The marketplace, the process which compares the bids and asks, and the system that gives you rewards, are all internal. Hopefully, the interface is clean enough, and it’s easy enough to use that people will enjoy it.
Once these colored-coins and other systems become more popular, streamlined, and easy-to-use, we will be looking for ways to integrate them with our system.
Where will people be able to store their pieces? Will they be able to store or exchange them privately, or will all trades need to be done on the BitPieces site? How is security handled for pieces?
You�do�actually own the pieces that you buy, and you do have complete control over them; you just currently can’t transact them outside the website.�Charts like these would be impossible if it were possible to sell pieces outside the network.
//bitpieces.com/creators/pieces/Bitpieces
//bitpieces.com/users/overview/testuser
There’d be no way for them to accrue rewards or to display trades if the site couldn’t track who owned them or when they were sold. That being said, the rewards you accrue can be withdrawn at any time and every action of a creator or user is entirely transparent.
As for security, the only way to transfer pieces, currently, is through the site, which is very secure: SSL, secure backends, no storing of passwords, and jasypt encryption, ensure that logging in and using the site is safe.
From a funder’s perspective, I really get what the potential benefits of this might be, and also some of the risks. You set up a five-pillar trust system. Could you tell my readers something about how that works?
Fraud prevention is a huge topic so I really wanted to make something as fraud-proof as possible. Even when people are very careful with their investments, fraudsters can get pretty far. It’s really important for the funders to feel that they can fund projects with confidence, assured of the safety of their investment
With a site like BitPieces, this is especially difficult because the creators aren’t IRS-accredited � they are just content creators. Valuing what they create can be a hazy process (kind of like deciding how much a bitcoin is worth). In my opinion, stopping fraud is all about transparency, verification, and an ability to pay rewards consistently. Paying rewards on past and current projects shows that the creator is willing to give something back to the people that helped fund them. The 5 safety measures BitPieces has instituted are:
Creator verification
Creator safety ratings
Mandatory rewards
Open discussion threads
Transparency
//bitpieces.com/FAQ#how_do_i_know_if_a_creator_is_safe
Now, of course, if a project fails or the creator disappears, then the funders are out of their money. As much as you might try to create systems to prevent this, it’s also the nature of the game. I did get a little confused about how this works for the creators, though. When funding from a project starts coming in, creators will start repaying immediately according to a schedule that they advertise on their project page. Presumably they use some of the funds raised to buy some of their own project in order to have enough pieces on hand to start paying the investors. Part of your trust system is based on how many pieces they have in reserves to pay back the funders. When they need to replenish that supply, do they need to buy shares of their project back from their investors? If this is the case, then if their project is a sudden hit, the cost of purchasing those pieces might become prohibitive. Am I missing something here?
This is a good question: What if a creator goes bust?
Well, first let’s break it down into two categories: Honest creators, and dishonest creators.
This is a major reason why creator verification is so important. An unverified creator has no reason to keep their funders happy. But a verified content-creator has to answer for their actions to the people funding them.
There’s a number of ways an honest creator who’s going bust can handle it:
If they’re having a financially tough time, they can decrease their reward to a very tiny amount. However, if they decrease the reward to their funders, there will be little point to owning their pieces. This still does leave open the possibility of them increasing the reward again in the future. Note that if the price of a project’s pieces fall to a certain level, this will happen automatically.
If they’re giving up their brand entirely, they can buy back their pieces from the funders. Creators would do this in order to keep up the trust and good-will of the funders. This will be really easy to do on the system: the can just send a message to the funders or post on the discussion thread that they are shutting down, request how much the funders bought the pieces for, and buy them back.
To me, there are two types of dishonest creators: the type posing as someone they’re not and the type that just lies about their project.
First we need to weed out the first type by prominently displaying creator verification.
Solar roadways on Indiegogo, or Enron are in the second category and are pretty hard to stop. Personally, I think it’s better to err on the side of freedom. Rather than centrally shutting projects down willy-nilly because they might appear to be fraudulent, it’s to best to expect funders to do research on what these people make and make sure they’re paying a good reward for what you think they’re worth.
My first impression is that this service would really be better for people just getting started out and other smaller projects rather than really big ones. Do you see yourself catering to more of an ‘indie’ crowd or do you think that BitPieces is also suitable for really big projects?
The problem I was trying to solve is to help small projects get funding, but I don’t see why big names couldn’t sell pieces of their brand to funders. If XKCD or a band I like, like Tokyo Police Club decided that they want to let fans become their owners, I see no reason why they shouldn’t.
You say that one of the motivations behind this project is to make the opportunity to fund projects like this truly international. People can |
he was heard telling people how he had quit on principle to avoid yielding to corrupt forces.
However, this time around, the BJP is in no mood to give Kejriwal a free run even in the radio space. According to NDTV, "Mr Kejriwal's recorded messages have been playing again on city FM channels, countered this time by the BJP's campaign. The ruling party has not only been airing messages from its Delhi unit leaders, but also its star campaigner, PM Modi, exhorting people to join his 'Swachch Bharat' campaign or talking about his government's other achievements."
An article on Jagran Post notes that Kejriwal's shows are going air only on private FM channels.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Shabbir Hasan Khan (December 5, 1898 – February 22, 1982) of Malihabad, known by his nom de plume as Josh Malihabadi, was not a particularly popular poet in his native land, India. For reasons that are not entirely clear, a decade after Partition – against the advice of his friend Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru – he chose to migrate to Pakistan. But Pakistan, where he lived his final years, turned out to be even less enamored with him than India. The man on the street today, assuming he has heard of Josh, would probably associate the name with the lyrics of certain popular film songs, or perhaps with his somewhat raunchy autobiography yaadon ki baraat. Apart from this, looking around in bookstores in Islamabad, one finds that his other works are unavailable.
Those steeped in the high culture of Urdu poetry do not really care. They know well the power and exhilarating beauty of Josh’s literary creations. His dexterity and genius in transposing thoughts into words created new thoughts and expressions. Poetry flowed from his pen like water from a bubbling spring – he is said to have authored well over 100,000 shairs (couplets) and more than one thousand rubayaats. Some among them represent the finest that Urdu poetry has to offer. This puts him into the pantheon of Urdu poets alongside giants like Ghalib and Iqbal.
But it still bothers one as to why this prodigiously prolific poet has not received, to date, recognition commensurate with his literary achievements. Perhaps one should not be surprised. Almost by definition, an iconoclast is not supposed to be popular in his own culture or country. Indeed, those who dare expose deep dark truths are likely to be reviled rather than praised. Josh the secularist, deeply unhappy about the partitioning of his country on the basis of religion, should not have expected to find recognition in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And he did not! It is said that at his funeral there were only seventeen persons present – this in a country where oftentimes many hundreds, or even many thousands, turn out to mourn the departed.
Does iconoclasm explain away Josh’s lack of popularity? Perhaps this is being a bit too glib. After all there are Urdu poets who also belonged to the genre of ideological and political dissidents. Some eventually did attain fame and acclaim during their lifetimes. Among Josh’s most celebrated dissident contemporaries were Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Habib Jalib, and Ahmad Faraz. Now that there is no squint-eyed General Zia-ul-Haq and his goons to muzzle them, their verses have found their way into rather staid drawing rooms, and are even sung and recited on television. So why is Josh, who passed away even earlier, mysteriously absent?
Perhaps there are other answers as well. Josh’s poetry is complex in thought, rich in structure, and uses alliterations and allusions that are subtle. The language is oftentimes difficult: its comprehension requires a vocabulary wider than that of the average Urdu reader. Although a century ago they would have been easily understood, many of the words he casually uses have become arcane and unfamiliar. This is still truer in the birthplace of Urdu – India – where the language is increasingly marginalized, vulgarized, and stripped of its grace and finery. Moreover, contrary to later trends of Urdu poetry, azad sha’aree or free verse was always anathema for Josh. As a stickler for rules, he insisted upon purity of form and adhered to its rules as though he was composing some deeply classical musical raga. So, another possible answer could be: Josh is for the connoisseur, not the masses.
In this short essay I shall draw from Josh’s poetry examples that reflect his weltanschauung. His rebellious pen directs withering criticism upon the existing order, challenges those who draw boundaries between peoples, and advocates rational thought over dogmas of the Marxist left or the religious right. His libertarian views and contrarian lifestyle set him apart from the crowd. The conclusion is that this remarkable poet was shunned because his message was too radical for those times, and is even more so today.
A Quintessential Libertarian
Three hundred years ago, philosophers of the European Enlightenment period struggled to define the limits and meaning of individual freedom and liberty. Are these always good things, or only in particular situations and circumstances? When should liberties be curtailed, if they must? The classic libertarian, John Stuart Mill, said:
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others….Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
Note the key phrase – the individual is sovereign! It runs smack against ideologies of collectivism, as well as the norms of a traditional, religious society. Josh Malihabadi had not studied philosophy or its history. Nor did he have a university degree. Quite probably, he had not read Mill. But being instinctively a rebel, Josh rediscovered and re-expressed in his own idiom the fundamental yearning of all humans to be free:
آفاق کی تنظیم پر اک طنزِ جلی ہے
اِس اَشہبِ ایّام کی ژولیدہ خرامی
ہٹ جاؤ سماوات، پلٹ جاؤ فرشتو!
انسان کو منظور نہیں طوقِ غلامی
Translation:
It is a taunt on the organization of this Universe
The tangled (confused) march of time
Move away heavens! Go back O angels!
Man does not accept chains of slavery
طنز … Sarcasm, satire, taunt اشہبِ ایّام۔.. lit: The horse of (changing) days, metaphorically: the passage of time
ژولیدہ۔—tangled, confused, disorganized خرامی– gait, walk, running, (style of) movement
For Josh as a libertarian, what one eats, drinks, wears, or does in private is a matter of personal freedom and not for any state or society to decide or regulate. This is opposite to how our world actually works: heinous crimes frequently go unpunished but an individual may be pillorized, publicly humiliated, and stripped of dignity for actions that have harmed no other. Josh lashes out against this hypocrisy:
ہل چل روا، خروش روا، سنسنی روا
رشوت روا، فساد روا، رہزنی روا
االقصہ ہر وہ شے کہ ہے نا کردنی روا
انسان کے لہو کو پیو اذنِ عام ہے
انگور کی شراب کا پینا حرام ہے
(A rough translation: Insanity thrives, ill-will thrives, enmity thrives, chaos thrives, disorder thrives, rumoring thrives, bribery thrives, conflict thrives, theft thrives. In short, all that is bad does so splendidly well. Drink the blood of man and it matters but little. Drink wine from the grape and you are damned till eternity. )
What a brilliant encapsulation of our collective experiences! On the one hand, Pakistanis find themselves trapped with venal and kleptocratic political leaders who empty the public treasury again and again, and public servants and policemen who stuff their pockets. On the other side are hate-filled ideologues who stoke angry fires of faith; murders and massacres follow. Nevertheless, state and society pardon criminals but reserve their harshest punishments for innocents who merely exercise their right to personal choice.
The victims of this vile hypocrisy: the daughter who dares choose her mate instead of obeying her parents, the woman who seeks refuge from a brutal husband, the student who points out his teacher’s mistake in class, the young man who breaks from the stupefying traditions of his village, the university girl who dares to hold hands with her boyfriend, and the thinking person who sets aside the faith of his ancestors. They are hounded, beaten, defaced with sulphuric acid, whipped and paraded naked, jailed, and some have been thrown before ferocious dogs that ripped apart their flesh. An unending deluge of horrors flows whenever one opens the daily newspaper. Yet, while moralizers on television, and in places of worship, prattle endlessly about “sinful behavior”, they are silent about human suffering. In fact, they often gladly contribute to it.
The ongoing Talibanization of Pakistan is surely the antithesis of freedom, a crushing blow to the human spirit and a re-tribalization of society. Threatened more than all else is freedom for Pakistani women. In just one year there were 1400 reported honor killings. In much of rural Pakistan a woman is likely to be spat upon, beaten, or killed for being friendly to a man or even revealing her face. Newspaper readers expect – and get – a steady daily diet of stories about women raped, mutilated, or strangled to death by their fathers, husbands, and brothers. Energetic proselytizers like Farhat Hashmi, never once mentioning these recurring tragedies, have made deep inroads even into the urban middle and upper classes. Their emphasis is on covering women’s faces, putting women back into the home and kitchen, excluding them from public life, and destroying ideas of women’s equality with men. Female state officials have been shot and killed, and fatwas issued against others. A hypocritical society sinks to ever lower depths even as the collective piety increases by the day, and the faithful teem into mosques.
Oppression by tradition, custom, and religion is nothing new. But once upon a time, defiant messages of freedom – like Josh’s – could strongly resonate with the Pakistani public. Many will remember that powerful speech of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto – which bears an eerie similarity to the poem quoted earlier. Bhutto had lashed out against his mullah detractors in the 1970 elections saying: ha’an main sharab peeta hoon, logon ka khoon nahin peeta [Yes, I drink wine but not the blood of innocents]. The crowd roared approval. Bhutto won the first – and perhaps the only genuinely significant election – in Pakistan’s history. Tragically, he betrayed his electorate and reneged later on much of what he said he stood for. But, in the end, his capitulation to the mullahs and instituting Islamic laws did not save his neck. He died writhing at the end of a noose that he fashioned for himself.
Would Bhutto’s boldly defiant message – or something similar that violates today’s social norms – have the same effect today? Could it even be voiced? Unlikely! On the contrary, such a frank public admission would be suicide for any whisky-drinking military general or political leader. Unlike Bhutto, the new crop of leaders cannot take chances, being aware that within the Pakistani lower-middle and middle classes there now lurks a grim and humourless Saudi-inspired revivalist movement that cannot tolerate even a whiff of irreligiousity. Everyone knows that public figures – including Pakistan’s present and past presidents – cheat on their wealth declarations, do not pay their due share of taxes, rig elections, bribe judges, eliminate rivals, and place unqualified favorites into positions of power. But all is washed clean as they rush to perform Umrah several times a year in Saudi Arabia. Their unctuous piety is displayed in Ramzan with lavish fast-breaking iftar parties and taraveeh prayers. If any blemishes remain, they can always be wiped off with an extra Haj pilgrimage.
Who can deny that the times have changed? A transformed Pakistani culture now frowns upon every form of joyous expression, including the dance and music that had been a part of traditional Muslim life for centuries. Kathak dancing, once popular among the Muslim elite of India, has no teachers left in Pakistan. In Taliban controlled areas of the Frontier province, even the entirely male-performed Khattak dance has disappeared. Thousand year old statues are blown up, and education for girls declared haram. Lacking any positive connection to culture and knowledge, this new revivalism seeks to eliminate “corruption” by strictly regulating individual freedoms.
Meanwhile Pakistani urban elites, disconnected from the rest of the population, comfortably live their lives through their vicarious proximity to the West. Even the bearded ones lust for the “Green Card”. But on Fridays they don their prayer caps and drive their shiny new imported cars to their neighbourhood mosque. Rich but bored middle-aged housewives, whose only job is to manage a fleet of servants, go to Al-Huda centres and return clad in burqas. Their conversion to the Faith has been quick and expedient.
Those Pakistanis who consider their country morally superior to the West should be deeply ashamed that, while they burn churches and temples in their country, mosques and Islamic Centers flourish in America. There is no church in Saudi Arabia but new mosques are perennially under construction in the US and Britain. Do those who fulminate day and night in Pakistan against religious persecution of Muslims in the West ever reflect on this fact?
Words fail to describe recent horrors. In 2009 a frenzied mob of 20,000 Muslims went on a rampage against Christians in the town of Gojra in Punjab. They had been put into a state of madness by mullahs in madrassas and mosques, who fired them with the notion that a Christian man had destroyed a page of the Quran. The mob destroyed dozens of houses and burnt several Christians to death, including women and children. Of course, there is a long history of attacks against minorities in Pakistan and this was just one of very many. The entire village of Shantinagar had been destroyed by another Muslim crowd in 1997. Then there is the tragic story of a mill-worker who had been beaten to death near Gujranwala for eating at a restaurant in spite of a prominently displayed notice “No Christians Allowed”. Perhaps he thought that he could sneak in unnoticed. What is especially sad is that, in a protest demonstration by Christians in Islamabad against the Gojra massacre, there were no Muslims. The Pakistani media, knowing full well that it was lying, passed off the massacre as a “clash between two groups”.
Secular honesty has few followers in an age where hypocrisy is an accepted way of life. Deceit and theft are guarantors of prosperity in today’s Pakistan. Josh, the poet, cries out in a moral wilderness.
Josh Was Anti-Imperialist Yet Pro-Modern
At the crack of dawn on 23 March 1931, the twenty four year old revolutionary Bhagat Singh, together with his two colleagues Sukh Dev and Raj Guru, were hanged until pronounced dead. They had courted arrest after throwing bombs – which did not cause casualties – to protest the British occupation of India. Specifically, they had expressed their opposition to the visit of the Simons Commission. Charged with determining the quantum of freedom allowable to the natives, the Commission had no Indian members. Widespread public protests had had no effect upon the court’s decision to award capital punishment to the three revolutionaries.
A sorrowing Josh composed a poem which he read out in the same city, not far from where the three young men had been executed:
سنو اے بستگانِ زلفِ گیتی ندا کیا آرہی ہے آسماں سے
کہ آزادی کا اک لمحہ ہے بہتر غلامی کی حیاتِ جاوداں سے
(A rough translation: Hear this all who care for life and love in this world. A voice speaks from the sky. That a moment of freedom is better than a life of slavery.)
Josh’s admiration for Bhagat Singh was not merely because this young man was a fighter, but also because he was a free-thinker and atheist. With a keen sense of history and commitment to his goals, Bhagat Singh had educated himself in matters of society and politics before picking up the gun. In this he differed from most others engaged in fighting the British who had thought little about the likely contours of a post-independence society.
For Josh, a Muslim, the fact that Bhagat Singh was a Sikh was irrelevant. What mattered was the inherent injustice of being ruled from afar, and the violent oppression of the colonizers. Even as they prepared for an eventual exit, a class of sycophants was assiduously cultivated by the British. They would remain as instruments for colonial domination, rule from afar. Josh thunders against this elite, who had donned the mantle of their former masters:
برطانیہ کے خاص غلامانِ خانہ ساز
دیتے تھے لا ٹھیوں سے جو حُبِّ وطن کی داد
جِن کی ہر ایک ضرب ہے اب تک سروں کو یاد
وہ آئی سی ایس اب بھی ہیں خوش وقت و با مراد
شیطان ایک رات میں انسان بن گئے
جتنے نمک حرام تھے کپتان بن گئے
(Rough translation: These special friends of the British. Whose cudgels had rained upon us blow after blow. Blows, that our still-aching heads cannot forget. Yet today they thrive and thrive. In a flash devils have turned into angels. They are now the captains of our ship of destiny)
Josh’s clear-headed, secular thinking was not shared by most Indians, Muslim or Hindu. Religious reasons competed with secular ones for fighting the British. The “Sepoy Mutiny” of 1857 was triggered when the British introduced new rifle cartridges rumored to be greased with oil made from the fat of animals. The fat of cows was taboo to Hindus while Muslims protested the pig fat. Although Muslims had suffered more than Hindus, they tended to oppose the British for religious reasons more than Hindus.
The reason goes back into history. Although colonization had hit all native peoples hard, it left Muslims in India relatively more disoriented and confused than Hindus or Sikhs. Three hundred years earlier, the development of modern science in the West had led to the emergence of a capitalist order that provided the impetus to forcibly expand Western access to markets and sources of raw materials. Conquest by forces from across the oceans changed forever the comfortable world of India’s Muslims who had dominated India for a thousand years. The establishment of British dominion during the 18th and 19th centuries dealt a death blow to the Moghul empire. Elsewhere, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 led to a series of changes that ended with the break-up of the Ottoman empire, the last of the great Muslim empires.
European countries colonized virtually all the Muslim world from East Asia to West Africa. A mercantilist and industrializing Western metropolis was on the ascendancy. The old Indian order gasped and then died, unable to withstand the forces unleashed by Scientific Revolution. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Moghul emperor, vengefully blinded by the British, spent his last days in captivity. He wrote beautiful Urdu poetry which many people have on their lips even today. But he stood for little besides a decadent monarchy and an order of things that could offer little to the people of India.
The brutalization of a pre-scientific native people by scientifically minded colonists drew a variety of responses ranging from cooptation and despair, to non-cooperation and resistance. Humiliation and helplessness, and a deep sense of resentment, made it difficult for most to see the diversity of the West and its great achievements of the Enlightenment. In any case, the orthodoxy had little use for scientific rationality and democratic pluralism. For them, the farangees (foreigners) were simply kafirs.
The anti-farangee movement amidst the Muslim religious orthodoxy was centred around Deoband, a town in northern India. The Deoband madrassa operated under the slogan that Islam was in danger. Established nine years after the 1857 uprising, it set itself the task of training Islamic revolutionaries who would fight the British; today Pakistani Deoband ulema provide the ideological basis for the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Deoband school became particularly active in demanding the restoration of the caliphate, which had been eliminated by Kamal Ataturk in 1924.Under Maulana Mahmud ul-Hasan and Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni, Deobandis were politically radical, but the movement was socially conservative. Their goal mission was to preserve traditional Islamic learning and culture.
Although it was strongly opposed by the Deobandis, a movement of Muslim modernists emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. Centering around Syed Ahmad Khan, it sought acceptability for an interpretation of Islam consistent with science and reason. The Muslim elite expanded its educational horizon by allowing its children to study the English language, science, and other secular subjects. Nevertheless, the bulk of Indian Muslims remained rooted in the past and education remained confined to religious subjects for the Muslim masses. The maulanas of Bengal, like the Deobandis of Uttar Pradesh, were adamantly opposed to secular education. In 1835 they collected 8000 signatures against the education reforms proposed by Lord Macaulay, a member of the Supreme Council of India. But these very reforms had been welcomed by the Hindus of Bengal who earnestly supplicated the British for still more schools and colleges. These supplications earned them the contempt of Muslim leaders, who charged that they were sucking up to the rulers.
Muslim conservatism in education was to have grave consequences for Muslim societies everywhere. In the 21st century the results of this resistance are evident: India stands at the threshold of being a major technological and economic power while Pakistan remains mired in the backwaters. Pakistan’s is being devastated by an Islamic resurgence in the form of Talibanization which, as it gains further ground, threatens to send its people back to the darkest of ages.
In those times, could one have been for progress and yet have been fighting against colonialism? Josh Malihabadi, like other secular Muslim Indian nationalists, thought this was certainly possible. British rule had to be resisted because it was coercive, unequal, and discriminatory even if it had brought elements of the Enlightenment with it. He therefore hated using the English language. But, a half-century before Josh was born, Muslim progressives had already been deeply divided on these questions. For example, Jamaluddin Afghani had sought to bring scientific enlightenment to Muslims while also energetically seeking to overthrow colonial rule across the Muslim world. But he was at loggerheads with another forward-looking contemporary, Syed Ahmad Khan, who had firmly allied himself and his Muslim followers with India’s masters, and wanted Muslims to learn science and English. Nevertheless, Afghani and Syed Ahmad agreed on one central point – they both saw traditional cultures as having run their course and now out of steam. They knew that the obstacle to social, cultural, and economic progress was not imperial occupation alone, but also fossilized thought rooted in ancient times.
Josh’s position is probably closer to Afghani’s rather than Syed Ahmad Khan’s. He was against the British – and the English language – but he reserved his strongest attacks against tradition and culture as instruments of mental enslavement. His rhythmically fascinating poem, murdo’on ki dhoom, or, “The Cacophony of the Dead” is a powerful blow against the fossilization of thought:
مخلوق کو دیوانہ بنائے ہوئے مُردے
یاروں کے دماغوں کو چُرائے ہوئے مردے
اوہام کے طوفان اُٹھائے ہوئے مُردے
عقلوں کو مزاروں پہ چڑھائے ہوئے مردے
آفاق کو سر پر ہیں اُٹھائے ہوئے مردے
دیکھو کہ ہیں کیا دھوم مچائے ہوئے مردے
(A rough translation: The dead drive our people mad. The dead steal the minds of the living. The dead unleash mighty storms of superstitions. Our minds are trapped in tombs and morgues. The sky too belongs to the dead. Look! Listen to the cacophony of the dead!)
In this poem, Josh speaks equally to Hindus and Muslims, city elites and rural poor, educated and illiterate. Held down firmly by the dead hand of belief and tradition, they drown in superstition and illogic. They pray for rain, attribute earthquakes to the wrath of god, think supplications to heaven will cure the sick, seek holy waters that will absolve sin, look to the stars for a propitious time to marry, sacrifice black goats in the hope that the life of a loved one will be spared, recite certain religious verses as a cure for insanity, think airliners can be prevented from crashing by a special prayer, and believe that mysterious supernatural beings stalk the earth. These superstitions hold as much today as they did decades ago.
The bizarre illogic sometimes boggles the mind. For example, India’s 1998 nuclear tests were preceded by serious concern over the safety of cattle at the Pokharan test site. Former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh writes “For the team at the test site – which included A. P. J. Kalam, then the head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation – possibly death or injury to cattle was just not acceptable.” India aspires to being a world power, but no Indian politician today can suggest that cows can be eaten. No politician in Pakistan dare suggest that praying for rain won’t work. Yet, these neoliths have nuclear science and both countries can annihilate each other in a matter of minutes.
The Cacophony of the Dead continues:
لیلاے تفکُّر کو سنورنے نہیں دیں گے
دریاے توہّم کو اُترنے نہیں دیں گے
تحقیق کی نبضوں کو اُبھرنے نہیں دیں گے
تقلید کا شیرازہ بکھرنے نہیں دیں گے
اِس بات کا بیڑہ ہیں اُٹھائے ہوئے مُردے
دیکھو کہ ہیں کیا دھوم مچائے ہوئے مردے
(A rough translation: The dead will not let reason flower. They will not block flowing rivers of superstitions. They will not let minds question and research. They will not allow blind belief to be challenged. But they certainly do ensure that nothing changes. Look! Listen to the cacophony of the dead!)
Deeply conscious of the calamitous decline in the intellectual energy of Muslims since the Golden Age of Islam, Josh wondered aloud at the causes. What caused a wonderfully alive and intellectually productive civilization to falter, then collapse? Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who is Pakistan’s national poet, in his epic dialogue with God (shikwa and jawab-e-shikwa) saw the straying of Muslims from the True Path of the Quran as the reason. But Josh adopts the diametrically opposite path of the “Muatizilla” tradition of Muslim rationalist philosophers.
The dominance of the Muatizilla over long periods of time between the 9th and 13th centuries accounts for practically all of Islamic scientific progress in those times. Their ultimate defeat – marked by bloodshed and persecution – marked the end of Islam’s Golden Age. The Muatizilla, who battled their Ashari adversaries on the central issue of freewill versus pre-destiny, believed that Allah had empowered man with the power of reason, the use of which could lead him to choose between alternatives.
The contrary opinion – that of the traditionalists – was that Man was a mere creature of fate, an irrelevance in the greater scheme of things. A straw in the wind, he could be blown hither and thither. All had been predetermined; it was useless to struggle against destiny. Therefore, supplicate Allah and heed his Book; that is the best that can be done.
Striking hard against this notion of helplessness, Josh’s Aadmi Nama (In the Name of Man) is a paean of extraordinary eloquence to the powers of Man:
اے نگاہِ مولویِ معنوی
دیکھ سوئے عزّ و جاہِ آدمی
آدمی ہے بوئے گُل رنگِ حنا
موجِ کوثر، موجِ مے، موجِ غِنا[i]
(Rough translation: Look and listen, o’ revered mullah. Look at Man’s dignity and grace. Man is the flower of life’s essence. Man gives color to this world, meaning to its existence, waters the arid desert, creates the wealth of the universe. )
Josh’s attack is head-on, without hesitation or apology. His poetic eloquence pushes him deep into dangerous territory. Perhaps, some might argue, a bit too far. Aadmi Nama continues:
د ستِ آدم، بُت تراش و بُت نما
نطقِ انساں، موجدِ حرفِ خدا
وہمِ انساں۔ بانیِٔ لات ومنات
فہمِ انساں، شارعِ ذات و صفات
ذہنِ انساں، پا بجولاں سوئے ذات
درکِ انساں، ہادمِ قصرِ صفات
آدمی کہسارِ ظن، قطبِ یقیں
آدمی پروردگارِ کُفر و دیں
آدمی دانائے اسباب و علل
فاتحِ مستقبل، دیوِ اجل
(A rough translation: With his hand Man fashions idols and images. With the power of words he creates the gods. With his superstition he makes the angels. With his intelligence he discovers qualities of the mind. With his mind he walks towards understanding himself. With his understanding he finds the house of knowledge. Man, source of knowledge and worthy of knowing. Man, creator of belief and disbelief. Man, who knows of cause and effect. Man, who shall one day win over death.)
But where did Man come from? Josh was an unabashed believer in the processes of physical law which have produced the wonders of nature culminating in the most wonderful of them all – the human race:
زندگی سعیِٔبلیغِارتقا کا ناز ہے
آب و آتش کی کرامت، خاک کا اعجاز ہے
(Rough translation: Life is the proud result of Evolution. Life is a gift of water and fire, the miracle of earth and dust.)
While other poets – Ghalib, most notably – have sniped from the sides, Josh declares open war on blind belief. His opponents screamed: Idolator! Worshipper of man! But little happened because Josh was an old man when died, his poems were little understood, and he had certainly lived in better times. One wonders: were he alive today, would he still be able or willing to write these lines? Most probably this poet would have been ripped to shreds by a shrieking mob, perhaps like the ones which burnt churches in Shantinagar and Gojra, or that in Shabqadar which had chased a terrified Ahmadi up a tree and shot him as he pleaded for his life.
Nationalism, Religion, Language: The Fatal Triangle
Every reader of this essay almost certainly carries a passport: Pakistani, Indian, Canadian, American, or whatever. Our world is presently divided into nations, which we tend to think of as permanent entities while forgetting how utterly recent they are. The League of Nations in the 1930’s had a maximum of 58 members. This is less than one third of the current 192 members of the United Nations. In other words, about 80 years ago, two thirds of the world’s current nation-states did not exist.
Even the oldest nation-state is but a few centuries old. I will not take sides in the academic debate of whether Peace in Westphalia, signed in 1648, actually marked the beginning of the first sovereign state. But much before that – fifty thousand years ago or more – our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in tribes. Loyalty to the tribe was natural, a necessary condition for collective survival. Tribal markers – tattoos, piercings, bones through the nose or ears, binding of feet, dances and songs, giving particular names to children, festivals, marriage rules – were bonding elements because they identified who belonged to which tribe. Attachment to one’s tribe was unequivocal and total: the tribe could never be wrong. The individual did not matter, and must be ready to kill or die for the tribe.
Nationalism emerged as an advanced form of tribalism. In Europe, the invention of cannons, roads, and printing presses had made domains of control larger. Coalescing tribes, and larger tribes, could do better than fragmented ones. The notion of a nation slowly emerged. It built upon the myth of a common ancestry, reinforced by similarities of physiognomy, language, culture, or religion. The nation was seen as marching together towards some shared future destiny, and hence that it must work together. This strengthened its capacity to cope with the challenges of a hostile environment, and to compete successfully with other groups animated by similar beliefs.
But there is a downside to nationalism. Wired for “group think”, humans tend to assume that their particular group or nation has no peer or rival. However, since obviously not every nation can be the best of nations, this assumption simply has to be wrong. If it was just a harmless assumption who would care? On the other hand, when one group insists on its absolute superiority, there is high risk because the other is automatically reduced to an inferior position. My nation, the true patriot asserts, is better than your nation. We are spiritually pure, you are intrinsically corrupt. Nationalism can then become the justification for mass murder and genocide.
This is why Einstein called “nationalism an infantile disease, the measles of humanity”, and Erich Fromm declared that “nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity”, and that, “patriotism is its cult”. Einstein and Fromm both, of course, were Europeans.
Europe, which invented nationalism in the Age of Enlightenment, has suffered more than any other part of the world from nationalism, which soon spun out of control. The two world wars left 70-80 million dead, and many times more permanently disabled. The lessons of Europe must, therefore, be carefully studied by people from Pakistan and India.
It is interesting to see how nationalism laid out its roots in Europe. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, French culture had imposed itself on many parts of the European continent. Frederick the Great of Prussia and his court spoke and wrote in French, but they really thought of themselves as Germans. Indeed, a nascent German nationalism was beginning to stir. Even before the establishment of a German national state, the romantic German nationalist, J.D. Herder, wrote a poem in protest against the French culture of Frederick’s court in Prussia:
Look at other nationalities!
Do they wander about
So that nowhere in the world they are strangers
Except to themselves?
They regard foreign countries with proud disdain.
And you, German, alone, returning from abroad,
Wouldst greet your mother in French?
Oh spew it out before your door!
Spew out the ugly slime of the Seine!
Speak German, O you German!
About two hundred years later, Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian Nobel-Prize winning zoologist and ornithologist, studied animal traits. But he also explored the biological roots of human aggression. Living in pre-WW II times, he warned against the growing German nationalism:
“We have seen on the screen the radiant love of the Fuhrer on the faces of the Hitler Youth… They are transfixed with love, like monks in ecstasy on religious paintings. The sound of the nation’s anthem, the sight of its proud flag, makes you feel part of a wonderfully loving community. The fanatic is prepared to lay down his life for the object of his worship, as the lover is prepared to die for his idol.”
Konrad observed that men may enjoy the feeling of absolute righteousness even while they commit the worst atrocities. Indeed, in situations of war, conceptual thought and moral responsibility descend to their lowest ebb. My revered physicist colleague from Denmark, Dr. John Avery, in his remarkable book “Space-Age Science and Stone-Age Politics”, (translated into Urdu and freely available at www.mashalbooks.com) quotes a Ukranian proverb that says: “When the banner is unfurled, all reason is in the trumpet”. Thereafter, men stop being human and turn into killing machines.
In South Asia, as in Europe, tribalism is generally considered to be on the retreat. But, perhaps paradoxically, in |
that his caucus had given up on repealing Obamacare — but remains committed to passing bipartisan health-care legislation in the near future.
“We’ve seen that we don’t have 51 votes to do it, so we’re going to have to do it bipartisan,” John Cornyn told the outlet. “I’m sure we’ll vote on some Obamacare-related language at some point … I just don’t know exactly what it’s going to be.”A Canadian company is leading a pack of challengers that intend to knock off the exclusive features of the Keurig 2.0 single-serve coffee-maker.
Keurig released its 2.0 model in August, with a feature that initially prevented consumers from using other brands of coffee pods.
“We cracked the code,” a smiling John Pigott, CEO of Club Coffee, told CBC News. The Toronto company made news this week with its $600-million lawsuit against Vermont-based Keurig, which alleges anti-competitive behaviour.
“And we’ve pointed other companies in the right direction on how to do it,” he added.
Some consumers had expressed anger and even launched lawsuits over Keurig’s plan to ensure that only its licensed K-cups would work in the new model. Less expensive off-licence coffee pods have been available for two years, but would be locked out from the wildly popular 2.0 model.
Now a number of companies say their pods will function in the 2.0 model.
Give us our fix
Canadians’ growing love of single-serve coffee makers has spawned huge growth in the business, and an all-out battle between companies that sell the pods.
I’ve been told you can trick it with a highlighter from Grand and Toy. — Neil Madden, ECS Coffee
“The single-serve coffee market in Canada is really exploding over the last number of years,” says Robert Carter of market research firm NPD Group.
“Right now four in 10 Canadians say that they have a single-serve device in their home. The more convenient we make something, the more consumers respond. Three million of the devices were sold over the last three years.”
But the real money is in the coffee pods. Just as they do with ink cartridges for printers, and refill blades for razors, companies cash in on the steady sales of a component that needs constant replenishing. Club Coffee of Ontario has a pod it says will work in Keurig's 2.0 machines. (CBC) Just as they do with ink cartridges for printers, and refill blades for razors, companies cash in on the steady sales of a component that needs constant replenishing.
Of Keurig’s $4.35-billion net sales in 2013, K-Cup sales reportedly accounted for $3.1 billion. But the patent expired two years ago, and competitors poured in.
Coffee pods have become hugely important to Club Coffee. The 100-year-old company is the largest roaster and distributor of grocery store coffee in Canada. It also works with the food service industry. Since it got into the pod business two years ago, the company’s revenues have doubled. For competitive reasons, Pigott won’t say exactly how many pods he’s producing, but acknowledges it’s “several million” of them daily.
“The consumer likes what we’re doing,” he says. “But I don’t think it’s been that popular with my competitor.”
Cracking the code
When Keurig’s CEO announced last fall that its next model would feature digital rights management that would render unlicensed pods useless, Pigott took note. He obtained a Keurig 2.0 model even before it was on store shelves and assembled a small team to examine the device and its K-cups to understand the technology.
“We figured it out in an afternoon,” he crows, noting that it took another two months for Club Coffee to develop its own workaround.
So what’s the secret? It turns out the new lids on K-cups are printed with ultraviolet ink. The darkness inside the coffee maker allows a light diode to read the ink and start the brewing process. Pigott consulted the printer that manufactures polymer bills for the Bank of Canada and was able to discover the precise formula that would activate the coffee maker. He bought commercially available ink and bingo — his pods worked.
Can Keurig stay on top?
Neil Madden owns ECS Coffee, a retailer of single-serve coffee pods of all types, K-Cups and unlicensed knockoffs included. Keurig says its own K-Cup pods give the 'optimum' performance from its single-serve machines. (The Associated Press) Madden believes Keurig makes a good product that a lot of people want, but wonders if the company brought the same rigour to its lock-out system.
“I’ve been told you can trick it with a highlighter from Grand and Toy,” he says.
Pigott spread the word that he’d cracked the code to let other manufacturers know about the workaround. “It helps if there are a few of us doing this,” he explains.
Mother Parkers announced in August that it would be selling unlicensed pods that are compatible with the Keurig 2.0, as will Treehouse Foods of Illinois. Pigott says Club Coffee’s pods will be first to hit store shelves.
Does he fear Keurig will take legal action? “Frequencies of light are not patented,” says Pigott. “We’re very confident. We did a lot of this with the legal in the back of our minds. I’m not looking for trouble.”
In an email, Keurig’s vice-president of corporate communications maintains that knockoff pods won’t be a threat.
“We remain confident that only Keurig-designed and produced and/or licensed beverage-optimized packs with the Keurig Brewed seal will allow the Keurig 2.0 brewer to perform consistently at its optimum level, delivering the quality beverage experience Keurig consumers demand,” writes Suzanne DeLong.
Consumers will find out fast enough what works and what doesn’t.
Meantime, Keurig has surely taken note of what happened to Nespresso in France. The government launched a probe into anti-competitive behaviour, and in April Nespresso agreed to stop trying to prevent rivals from making knockoff pods for its machines.They're fearless. They can live for weeks out of the water. They will eat anything, even each other.
"They were born ferocious," said Cynthia McKenzie, a scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans based in St. John's.
McKenzie is one of a group of researchers who have identified a species of green crab that is ravaging parts of Newfoundland's south coast.
There are little to no predators here and so they've just exploded. - Cynthia McKenzie, scientist, DFO
The species combines genes from a population originating in the eastern United States with one from northern Europe.
"So what we have is a population that is hybridized, mixed, that is very cold-tolerant," McKenzie said. "And, of course, there are little to no predators here, and so they've just exploded."
Conditions in the frigid Newfoundland waters have provided a perfect environment for this newly identified green crab to thrive.
First found a decade ago
Fishermen in Placentia Bay, on the southeast coast, first noticed green crab in 2007. They probably arrived through shipping from northern Europe through the Halifax area, McKenzie said. Now the creatures have spread throughout the bay and are beginning to take up residence in nearby Fortune Bay, home to a large lobster fishery.
Lobster catches were already in decline there, but it is almost certain that the green crab are having an impact, she said.
Lobster fishermen agree.
Clarence Marsh is convinced that the invasive green crab is destroying lobster and scallop fisheries in Placentia Bay. (Bruce Tilley/CBC News)
"When a lobster spawns … the green crab is there to eat it," said Clarence Marsh. "I think the green crab got a big effect on the lobsters, and that's why there's none here in this bay now."
The green crab are "numerous," said Marsh, and they don't stop at eating lobster. He has also found tiny green crabs inside scallop shells.
"I get hundreds and hundreds of shells with the fish gone out of them. There's no scallop here now like there used to be," Marsh said.
Unlike the much larger snow crab, viable markets for green crab do not exist. The largest of the creatures measure only about 10 centimetres across and contain very little meat.
"What they do with clams and scallops is they use their claws to snip the edges of the shell and then they stick their claws in to pull the meat out," said McKenzie.
Nicci Zargarpour set up an underwater camera to monitor the interaction between green crab and lobster in a lobster trap in Fortune Bay, Newfoundland. (Sherry Vivien/CBC News)
When Nicci Zargarpour, a graduate student from Memorial University's Marine Institute, began studying green crab she said she noticed the rocks on the shore were "crawling" with the "thumbnail-sized" shellfish.
Each time she has gone back to the field, Zargarpor says, the number of green crabs has exploded. "So the threat of the spread is real," she said.
Preventing further spread
Having seen the ecological harm green crab have inflicted in Placentia Bay, McKenzie's goal is to prevent a widespread invasion into Fortune Bay.
"They can actually be transported in gear or in boats from one place to another without anyone realizing it because people think a crab will die out of [the] water," said MacKenzie. "Not these guys."
When the lobster spawns, the green crab is there to eat it. - Clarence Marsh, fisherman
Marsh says fisherman could get the green crab under control if the government issued licences to catch them.
"You'd get boatloads," said Marsh.
McKenzie agrees that could help prevent further spread; eventually, local predators will do their part to reduce the green crab infestation.
In their native European environment, green crab are kept in check by shorebirds and other species, said McKenzie.
"Once the seabirds figure it out and the lobster and the rock crab and various other things, I`m hoping that that will have an impact."Greetings, adventurer.
January has always been the perfect month to grab great deals after the holiday season, and my store is the perfect place for some fantastic deals!
Throughout all of January, we’ll have a range of items that will be 25% off all month. However keep an eye out because each day we’ll be taking one of those items and boosting the discount to 66% off for 24 hours only! A different item each day means that you’ll be able to grab a massive bargain each day throughout the month.
And even more reason to watch these deals; when January ends, all the items that have been on sale will be removed from Solomon Store. That’s right, this may be your very last chance to ever get your hands on these particular items, keep a keen eye and act fast!
Get more RuneCoins to use in my shop by redeeming Bonds in-game, by clicking ‘Buy RuneCoins’ when you’re in Solomon’s store, or by visiting our billing page directly.
Drop by the store in game to say hello soon. You can find me just south of Varrock’s Grand Exchange!
Until next time,
SolomonMark McDonald has revealed he is seeking professional help to change his behaviour after a sexual harassment complaint led to him quitting the Scottish Government.
Writing exclusively for the Press and Journal today, the former childcare minister admitted causing “considerable distress and upset” to a woman who later complained.
He said he was “determined” to change the way he behaved – but that he would not stand down as Aberdeen Donside MSP.
The former city councillor stunned Holyrood nine days ago when he quit the government citing “inappropriate” behaviour.
The Press and Journal revealed last week that he had sent a text message to a woman which included a reference to a sex act.
The woman who complained said she decided to take action because “people have to change”.
Mr McDonald went to ground after his resignation, closing his constituency office, pulling out of public appearances and suspending his Facebook account.
But as he prepares to return to Holyrood this week, Mr McDonald has broken his silence today in an apparent attempt to draw a line under the controversy.
The 37-year-old, a married father-of-two, revealed that he spent the last week “thinking and reflecting” about his actions.
He said there was a “limit” to what he could say about the complaint to protect the woman involved, but that “regardless of context or intent”, there was “no excuse” for his behaviour and he took full responsibility.
Signalling that the SNP suggested he attend a behaviour course, Mr McDonald said: “I have accepted that offer of support. As has been said by many others, it is change in behaviour across the board which is the required outcome from this issue.”
And amid questions over why his conduct wad bad enough to resign as a minister but not as an MSP, Mr McDonald said: “I will continue to serve the people of Aberdeen Donside as their constituency MSP. It will be for my constituents to decide at the next election whether or not not they wish for me to continue in that role.”
He added: “Ultimately I will be judged by others on whether I can change my behaviour to meet the very high standards that people rightly demand of their politicians. I can only ask that I be given that chance.”
Mr McDonald last week became the highest profile political figure north of the border to lose his job over the harassment scandal that has engulfed Holyrood and Westminster.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said he had been correct to resign from the ministerial role he took on after last year’s election, but the SNP leader backed him to remain as a constituency MSP.
Mr McDonald was elected on Holyrood’s north-east regional list in 2011, before succeeding Brian Adam as Aberdeen Donside MSP in 2013.Leftist trolls have beaten actress Jessica Chastain (The Martian) into submission for daring to criticize the "alt-left" represented by Antifa anarchists.
Though Chastain has regularly flaunted her leftist street cred, especially in her fight against the "gender wage gap," she did recognize that people in her camp need to do some serious soul-searching before getting into bed with the likes of Antifa.
“If we resort to violence as a way to combat hate, we become what we are fighting," she tweeted out in sharing a Time Magazine article about why the “alt-left” should be stopped.
Interesting article. If we resort to violence as a way to combat hate, we become what we are fighting. https://t.co/TsJRoWRKBZ — Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) August 29, 2017
Big mistake! Now she is paying the price. After the trolls issued a major beating, Chastain returned to Twitter on Thursday night posting a video of herself in tears, letting her followers know that her "heart is very heavy" and that she "hears" their cries of pain.tl;dr The new Colorado River conservation program may not conserve a whole lot of water. But growing the “civic community” needed to solve the basin’s water problems may be far more important.
Longer Version:
The Colorado River Pilot System Water Conservation Program crept forward last week, in the process demonstrating an endearing quirk of Colorado River Basin water governance – no one is in charge. This no-one’s-in-chargeness is one of the central themes of my book. With the System Conservation Program, the folks not in charge are handing me an easy story line.
The news was the announcement Wednesday (press release here, scroll to the bottom of this post for the full solicitation document) of a “Funding Opportunity for Voluntary Participation in a Pilot System Water Conservation Program.” It’s a modest effort among basin water agencies to pool some cash to “conserve Colorado River System water for storage in Lakes Powell and Mead.” The $11 million involved is not nearly enough to fill the empty reservoirs, and no one expects that it should. Rather, it is an experiment in the construction of a new kind of water management widget aimed at staving off a particular kind of disaster – a tragedy of the commons among the nine states (seven in the U.S., two in Mexico) trying to figure out how to share the shrinking river.
When I say “no one is in charge,” I’m not describing a state of either anarchy or chaos. It’s actually a pretty orderly system. Rather, the system operates via a set of emergent properties based on existing rules and institutions, developed collectively, and people who know one another and are trying to figure out how to solve problems together by collectively developing new widgets. As opposed to, say, Secretary of the Interior Jean-Luc Picard just saying, “Make it so.”
Here’s how the newest widget would work. The big municipal water agencies representing the basin’s four largest metro areas – Southern California, Phoenix-Tucson, Las Vegas and Denver – pool money in a fund to pay farmers or cities to do something (the request for proposals doesn’t specify what) to “develop short-term pilot projects that keep water in Lakes Powell and Mead through temporary, voluntary and compensated mechanisms.” In other words, we’ll pay you to cut your water use and leave the water in the river, so it can get to the reservoirs. (The proposal letter says the water could come from cities or farms, but who are we kidding? The water’s gonna come from farms. I promise to correct this post if I turn out to be wrong on this.)
It is being done this way because everyone knows there are problems (chiefly not enough water), but no one has the authority to impose solutions, to mandate that water users use less in a way that’s binding across the basin, leaving any individual user with the classic “tragedy of the commons” dilemma – if Phoenix gets real and slashes its use, that would just leave more surpluses for L.A. The two alternatives, therefore, are to continue draining the reservoirs, with confusion and uncertainty about who would bear the brunt of shortages once the shit gets real, or some sort of collective action where everyone gets together and agrees on a plan to avoid said shortages. But wow, that’s sure hard to do.
If you look at the history of basin management widget invention over the last 15 years, the major innovations have emerged from fuzzy collective negotiations that are difficult for outsiders like myself to fully understand. The 2001 Interim Surplus Guidelines, which led to a significant reduction in California’s overuse of surplus water, grew out of seven-state/federal negotiations that dragged on for a painful decade. (See Jim Lochhead’s remarkable history for a great picture of how that deal went down). The 2007 shortage sharing agreement, similarly, was a seven-state/federal affair, with the tent expanded in important ways to include environmental interests in the discussion. I don’t think that story has been written yet. (Buy my book! As soon as I finish writing it!)
Minute 319, which took some important steps toward clarifying U.S.-Mexico issues of surplus and shortage sharing, was nominally a nation-to-nation negotiation, but it was managed such that the tent was even bigger, including states, water agencies, and environmental non-governmental organizations on both sides of the border. Big, big tent. (See Dan Tarlock, unfortunately behind a paywall, for a lot of that story.)
I’ve been collecting and misusing jargon to make sense of this stuff faster than I can understand its significance (“network governance,” “polycentric governance,” “social capital,” “institutions, both formal and informal”, “social-ecological systems,” “sustainability,” “resilience”). My flavor of the day is “civic community,” from Paul Sabatier and colleagues’ introduction to their book “Swimming Upstream”:
[W]e conceptualize a collaborative process as essentially a set of rules regarding the types of participants, their entry and exit from the process, their authority to undertake tasks, and how their actions lead to policy outcomes…. One causal pathway leads from process and context to “civic community,” which includes human capital (e.g., knowledge about watershed conditions), social capital (e.g., networks of reciprocity), trust of others, legitimacy concerns, and attitudes toward collective action. These civic community variables are conceived as both an end in themselves and a means to better policy outputs.
Sabatier and colleagues are focused on smaller watersheds and a different family of issues, but I think it generalizes
A lot of this is formal, but a lot is informal. As I’ve explained this process in a series of talks I’ve been giving this fall, I’ve been using some schtick about “solving the Colorado River’s problems in hotel bars”. That captures the fuzzy nature of the interactions among the players and how solutions depend in part of the kind of shared understanding that develops through personal relationships among the participants. Plus I have multiple actual hotel bar stories. (They’ll be awesome. Buy my book!) I’ve treated this problem-solving approach as a good thing, but some smart critics of my argument have pushed back, noting the implications of cronyism and who gets left out because they’re not among the cool kids invited to the bar after the day’s meeting. I think that’s a fair criticism, and I think it extends to some of the private grumbling I hear about the System Conservation Program. We have a long history in the Colorado River Basin of decision making that fits the Sabatier model described above, but in which the only participants in the “civic community” were the old “water buffalos”, big powerful water interests, who long marginalized Native American communities, environmentalists, and recreation interests.
We have to remain wary about who’s not being invited to the bar.
But with that caveat, the System Conservation Program has some important characteristics that make it a promising problem-solving model.
The first is the way the big municipal water agencies stepped forward together. This effort – each put down $2 million – sends a “we’re all in this together” message. Up until now, water saved was water saved individually. Under this effort, water saved belongs to all. The fact that the munis are leading also is a recognition that they are the ones who are vulnerable. They’re owning up that that. A corollary to this is the Upper Basin/Lower Basin component. Up until now, each basin has mostly dealt with its problems separately. This is a related version of the “we’re in this together” message.
The second very important characteristic is the program’s potential to build bridges between the big players and smaller agricultural water agencies, who haven’t typically been in the hotel bar. The jargon here is “polycentric governance”, the need to get the links right between basin actors at all scales. Look at the list of players who are getting the System Conservation Program notification letter, which ranges from the big boys and girls like the Southern Nevada Water Authority to the little Bard Water District on the Arizona-California border.
One positive outcome from this would be that it works – that the players figure out how to operate the necessary contracting and water management tools needed to set sane prices, measure outcomes and ensure saved water actually ends up in the reservoirs.
But failure at those outcomes would not necessarily be failure. If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to try something else, and if this process can also maintain and enhance a functional “civic community” with a shared understanding of the basin’s problems and a desire to work collectively to fix them, woot. We’ll need it for building the next widgets, which will certainly be harder.
And even if the pilot program works, come to think of it, we’ll still need to design more widgets. We’ll never solve the Colorado River once and for all, we’ll just need to keep adaptively managing it. So maybe the “civic community” part of the System Conservation Program is the most important piece of this, period.
In her speech accepting the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, Elinor Ostrom put it this way (pdf):
A core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans. We need to ask how diverse polycentric institutions help or hinder the innovativeness, learning, adapting, trustworthiness, levels of cooperation of participants, and the achievement of more effective, equitable, and sustainable outcomes at multiple scales.
Which bar shall we meet at? What time?
Solicitation letterSometimes, if an opportunity of a lifetime doesn’t quite pan out, it may spell the end of a career, a dream or a goal. In that case, it’s time to regroup and begin working in another direction. Sometimes, though, that opportunity may not pan out in the beginning, but hard work and perseverance will finally pay off.
Omaha, Nebraska’s Drew Dober had the opportunity of a lifetime after being chosen to fight for a spot on season 15 of The Ultimate Fighter reality show. Most of the people that make it into the house get some decent exposure on an international platform, but not every contestant actually makes it anywhere in the UFC after the show ends. In fact, the majority of contestants do not.
Dober didn’t even make it into the house, because of a very strange one-round loss in the qualifying round. It was the first and only time UFC parent company Zuffa went with the one-round format, and it “weeded out” some very good fighters. If it’s hard to get a contract after being on the show, it’s exponentially harder to make it into the UFC after missing a shot to get into the house. Well, Dober chose to stay at it, work his ass off, and chase that dream. That hard work has finally paid off.
Only two weeks ago, Dober got a call from the promotion, offering a quick contract, and on Nov. 19, it was announced that he would face Sean Spencer. Spencer was already a short-notice injury replacement for Zak Cummings and was scheduled to fight Sergio Moraes, but when Moraes became injured, Dober was quickly called up to fill in. It was an offer he gladly accepted. So, tonight in the first fight on the Fox Sports 1 prelims, Dober will make his UFC debut at the TUF 18 Finale, live from Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
“It’s been a mixture of excitement and anxiety,” said Dober in an exclusive interview with The MMA Corner. “The pressure of the big time, but the excitement of being able to achieve my dream of being in the UFC—it’s a dream I’ve had since I was 14.”
Excitement and anxiety aside, the UFC is the biggest stage in mixed martial arts, and it’s no walk in the park, so one has to wonder just how ready Dober really is to face a guy who already has two Octagon appearances under his belt.
“My conditioning has never been an issue, because I am always training as hard as I possibly can, whether it’s pre-fight or post-fight or off-season or whatever,” explained the Omaha native. “The thing that first struck my mind was, ‘Oh crap, I need to start cutting weight.’ It hasn’t been too bad, and I’m getting through it. I just had to start eating clean again, and the fight’s at 170 [pounds], so I didn’t really have to cut too much.”
On Oct. 18, Dober defeated Tony Sims for the Prize Fighting Championship’s lightweight title, so fighting at welterweight only six weeks later will be a breeze, and that’s a good thing, considering he will need all the strength he can to take on a very game Spencer, who has fought as high as 185 pounds in recent years.
As for the match-up, both men have extensive experience in striking arts, but Spencer takes most of his opponents the distance, whereas Dober finishes almost everyone he faces, most by submission.
“I think it’s a great match-up,” said Dober. “I was always under the notion that being a new competitor in the UFC, they were going to be throwing me to the wolves, but they gave me a very winnable fight. Sean Spencer’s a tough opponent, but I think, stylistically, it’s going to make for a great fight that I can win.
“I think he’s an athletic boxer and I’m a talented Muay Thai fighter, so we’re both going to swing for each other, both go for the knockout. It’s either going to be 15 minutes of fantastic fighting or, if I have it my way, a first-round submission or knockout.”
Both men have fought some high-level opponents in the past, but Dober has won more against bigger names. Dober has only been stopped once, by knockout, whereas Spencer has dropped two by submission, which plays right into Dober’s wheelhouse. With a deeper striking arsenal and a better ground game, the Nebraskan surely has the upper hand going into this one. Since they’re both coming in on short notice, the only real advantage for Spencer would probably be the size difference, but Dober’s got some big ol’ Midwestern training partners, so the size may turn out to be a non-issue.
As for the rest of his team at Mid-America Martial Arts in Omaha, Dober has a pretty solid stable of coaches, too.
“My head coach is Aaron Cerrone, Anthony Carlson is my jiu-jitsu coach, I have Bret Carter as my strength and conditioning coach, and Zac Dominguez as my wrestling coach,” Dober elaborated. “I know a lot of people have not heard of Mid-America, but it’s hard to find coaches who really care about your well-being, your goals and your aspirations, and these guys sacrifice a lot just [to] get me prepared for these fights. I stick with the people that brought me to the UFC, and that’s going to win me a title. These are the guys I’m sticking with, and Mid-America is the gym I’m taking it home to.”
Even though Dober’s background is in Muay Thai, Carlson currently competes in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and holds brown belts in BJJ and judo, and Zac Dominguez is a very highly decorated and highly involved wrestling coach, three-time All-American college wrestler, three-time high school state champ and former resident of the U.S. Olympic Training Center. Needless to say that with coaches like that, this Muay Thai practitioner has one hell of a ground game for a reason.
Coming into tonight’s match-up, Dober is confident, ready and focused on the task at hand, but as he has already learned in his fighting career, he always needs to be on his toes and ready to go, regardless of the outcome. At the same time, there always has to be that balance between work life and personal life, and he has a pretty good game plan for incorporating work with pleasure.
“I just want to watch my P’s and Q’s as far as training, because I don’t know when the UFC is going to give me a call for another fight,” Dober stated. “I always want to be prepared, I always want to be ready. So, as far as the month of December, spending some time with my family, obviously—I had to sacrifice Thanksgiving, so I need to make that up—and my mother’s birthday is Dec. 12.
“I also want to do some traveling and do some cross-training at some of the local gyms in Kansas City, Denver and St. Louis. I’ve got a bunch of different friends out in different cities who I’d love to go train with, and since I’m not in fight camp, I would like to go pick their brains and train with them and bring their skills—my newly acquired skills—back to my gym in Omaha, Neb.”
As for the Thanksgiving sacrifice, it’s not all about missing out on turkey and stuffing. As Dober stated, he usually stays in really good shape. The biggest sacrifice for him may seem an unlikely one: missing out on the biggest shopping day of the year.
“I’m usually spending time with my girlfriend, playing video games, reading books. I’m a huge nerd,” explained the 25-year-old pro. “You’ll always catch me at Barnes & Noble or the local malls, looking for new games. It’s unfortunate that I was out here and unable to purchase the Xbox One or one of the Playstation 4’s on Black Friday.”
Well, there will always be time for that later. And, who knows, a nice big bonus check from an exciting finish might just make up for missing out on those Black Friday deals, and he won’t get arrested for punching somebody, as many nut-job shoppers did yesterday morning. In fact, the result of punching somebody in the Octagon is earned respect, admiration and cheers from MMA fans, and, as this business goes, Dober is sure to deliver.
“Oh, man. This is going to be an exciting fight. I’m going in hoping to win, and I’m going to go for the win. Maybe not the early win, but the fight’s going to be exciting. I never, ever, have boring fights, and I refuse to have boring fights. Not only am I a martial artist, but I’m a fighter, and I’m an entertainer. I go out there to please the audience and to please the UFC.”
Dober would like to thank all of his coaches and training partners at Mid-America Martial Arts and Omaha Barbell. He would also like to thank his sponsors Max Muscle, Seven Fightgear, and Animal Instinct. Follow Drew on Twitter: @DrewDober
Photo: Drew Dober (Dave Mandel/Sherdog)The debate about whether or not a project manager needs to possess hands-on knowledge within the business domain of their projects started years ago and will likely rage on for many more.
In an earlier article, I had provided some support for both sides of the debate, but a new one came to mind when looking at projects through the lens of organization change management.
A fundamental component of successful and sustainable change implementation is being able to appreciate the impacts of a change to those who will be affected by it.
To help the team better understand these impacts, it is often recommended to engage representatives from each stakeholder group which will be impacted as part of the project team.
Change sponsors usually operate at a more senior level than those who are likely to be impacted the most by implemented changes, and without involvement of front-line stakeholders, decisions made by the project team run a greater risk of causing unnecessary change churn.
Having representation from those groups affected by a change on the team helps as does having dedicated change management experts. However without having had some personal experience with what impacted staff face on a daily basis it can be difficult for any project manager who does not possess a high degree of empathy and EQ to truly appreciate the magnitude of change impacts as they would only have an academic understanding of the business domain.
The team is certainly expected to provide such knowledge, but the risk of a project manager supporting the “wrong” decision (from a change perspective) or marginalizing the impacts of a gap in change readiness or transition activities increases if they only possess an academic understanding of the domain.
It is not essential to project success, but there are many benefits to a project manager being able to state confidently “Been there, done that”!
AdvertisementsYou may have heard about Iceland's toppling economy back in 2008. As one of the hardest-hit countries at the time, Iceland's heavily criticized method to escape veritable economic demise actually did the trick.
Faced with the possibility of financial failure, Iceland had to think on its feet. Instead of bailing out banks USA-style, the country forgave mortgage debt for the population - and completely started over from square one.
A country with a small population of roughly 320,000 citizens, Iceland's entire banking structure "systemically failed" in the early days of the 2008 recession. Despite the fact that Iceland is still on the road to recovery, the country ranks high as a politically and economically stable nation. Their success over the last few years has been largely under-reported, and the story behind it is quite fascinating.
A Little Bit of Morality Goes A Long Way
Let's face it: Icelanders are tough. They are entirely isolated, living in frozen tundra, perpetually enduring less-than-optimal weather patterns. While they are surrounded by epic natural beauty, these people aren't spoiled; they're tenacious.
Instead of allowing the criminals responsible for bank fraud to run free as the years passed by, Iceland thought it might be wise to actually indict bankers who committed serious financial crimes that contributed to the collapse. By paying off loans for consumers, forgiving homeowner debt (up to 110% of the property value), and throwing the offenders in prison, Iceland was able to bounce back. Now, its economy is "recovered" and is growing faster than both the US and European economies.
When Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimmson was asked whether or not other countries - Europe in particular - would succeed with Iceland's "let the banks fail" policy, he stated the following:
"Why are the banks considered to be the holy churches of the modern economy? Why are private banks not like airlines and telecommunication companies and allowed to go bankrupt if they have been run in an irresponsible way? The theory that you have to bail out banks is a theory that you allow bankers enjoy for their own profit, their success, and then let ordinary people bear their failure through taxes and austerity. People in enlightened democracies are not going to accept that in the long run."
Grimmson's "famous" reply to the controversial question, "What is the reason for Iceland's recovery?" is most remarkable.
"We were wise enough not to follow the traditional prevailing orthodoxies of the Western financial world in the last 30 years. We introduced currency controls, we let the banks fail, we provided support for the poor, and we didn't introduce austerity measures like you’re seeing in Europe."
Picking Up the Pieces On the Road to Recovery
Of course, though, everything isn't all rosy. Many Icelanders have two or three jobs to sustain themselves and their families post-2008, and a sudden spike in taxes - an inevitable result of letting the banks fail - made the burden even harder to bear.
Though unemployment is down (it's less than 5% of the population), you could say that "Iceland is a victim of its own success." Very high standards of living and 60-70 hour work weeks create a bit of a pinch in the pockets. Difficult challenges lie ahead, but whichever way you look at it, Iceland did avert a seemingly incurable catastrophe. The point is that Iceland was criticized for allowing the banks to fail - and we now know that the disparaging remarks from scathing critics were too quick to judge.
Since 2008, Iceland has added jobs to its tourism and green energy sectors. In fact, according to the Icelandic Tourism Board, foreign visitors increased last year by 15.9% - and travel now accounts for 5.9% of GDP.
However unorthodox in its method, Iceland's "let it fail" policy resulted in jubilation. We can't seek perfection in the years after a global financial collapse, but we can acknowledge nations who persevered with |
lamb, potatoes and onion porridge and milk tea to drink.
After dinner our guide sat with us and let us try his prized snuff from India. Having never tried this form of tobacco before, I must have sniffed too hard, because it went straight into my sinus and caused my one eye to tear up… fail. The old man also joined us for a smoke from his pipe.
Once the sun went down, the groups gathered around a fire and sang national anthems while drinking local beers. With nationalities from Denmark, Poland, China, Korea, Japan, Switzerland, USA, UK, France, and Mongolia the singing lasted quite awhile.
I never would have expected to find so many people from around the world joined around a campfire on top of a desolate mountain in the middle of Mongolia.
Tomorrow we were off to Karakorum!
Our host preparing a pipe with tobacco. Dinner… Snuff bottle and pouch Sunset Mongolian children singing at the campfire.
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EmailLocation: Templeton Campus Center, Council Chamber
Templeton Campus Center, Council Chamber
Join co-editor Walidah Imarisha for a reading and presentation about radical science fiction and social change.
Sponsored by Ethnic Studies, Office of Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement, Gender Studies, English, L&C Law School ACLU and L&C Law School National Lawyers Guild
About Octavia’s Brood:
Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without injustice, we are engaging in speculative fiction. Radicals and activists devote their lives to envisioning such worlds, and then go about trying to create them. What better vehicle for them to explore their work and its possibilities than through writing original science fiction stories?
Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown brought together 20 radical writers to do just that. The result is Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, an engaging and enlightening collection that uncovers truths buried in the fantastic, and injects a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our search for truth. It is the first book to explore the connections between radical science fiction and movements for social change, using visionary prose to weave strands of real-life experience—inequality and exploitation, struggle and solidarity—to generate innovative ways of understanding the world around us, paint visions of new worlds that could be, and teach us new ways of interacting with one another. This is visionary fiction to engage our imaginations and guide our hands in struggle.
Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, educator and performance poet. She is one half of the poetic duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. She has shared the stage with Angela Davis, Cornel West, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Kenny Muhammad of the Roots, Chuck D, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Umar bin Hassan from The Last Poets, Boots Riley, Saul Williams, Ani DiFranco, John Irving, dead prez and Kochiyama. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the hip hop anthology Total Chaos. Walidah has facilitated poetry and journalism workshops third grade to twelfth, in schools, community centers, youth detention facilities, and women’s prisons. She directed and co-produced the Katrina documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans. She has taught in the Portland State University’s Black Studies Department, Oregon State University’s Women’s Studies Department and Southern New Hampshire University’s English Department.
Seating in the Council Chamber will be limited to the first 208 people who arrive due to capacity. Please plan accordingly. We will be live streaming this event in Stamm (3rd floor) for overflow.From the very first moment that John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin for his Republican running mate was announced, the MSNBC news network was engaged in a deliberate attempt to smear the Alaska governor, according to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
During Friday night’s edition of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the Fox anchor displayed MSNBC’s “breaking news” graphic, which ran the message, “How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?”
MSNBC’s breaking news banner of John McCain’s announcement of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate featured a message asking, “How many houses does Palin add tot he Republican ticket?” (courtesy “The O’Reilly Factor”)
The comment was a reference to John McCain’s recent difficulty answering how many houses he owned.
“This is under a breaking news headline,” said O’Reilly. “It’s not commentary. It’s not their left-wing loons at night. It’s not that. It’s NBC News’ version of hard news coverage of the presidential campaign. … I am just almost sick that this is going on.”
O’Reilly called the message “snide” and “corrupt,” and said it was “one of the most outrageous things that I’ve ever seen in my 35 years in journalism.”
O’Reilly was interviewing radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham, who spent “a lot of years” working at MSNBC.
“Let me say that it’s sad and it’s disappointing, but right now, is it really surprising?” Ingraham said. “What’s clear is that this is a left-wing network with a left-wing agenda. It’s completely dishonest.”
“I think women across the country should be insulted and look at what’s going on at MSNBC very carefully because we’re gonna see a lot more of this in the coming weeks and months, and that is a sad commentary,” she added.
Ingraham said she felt sorry for NBC broadcast anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw due to the MSNBC’s pro-Barack Obama bias, but O’Reilly said both were part of the problem.
“I think if Williams and Brokaw had any courage at all, which they don’t,” O’Reilly said, “they’d go into [General Electric CEO Jeff] Immelt and they would say, ‘You gotta stop this. You gotta stop it. You’re ruining our reputation.’ But those people, Brokaw and Williams, they’re in it for the money, Laura. They don’t care about the country. They don’t care about the corruption. They care about themselves.”
O’Reilly isn’t the only media person ripping MSNBC.
HBO’s Bill Maher, himself well-known for his left-leaning stances, commented on MSNBC’s coverage following Obama’s Thursday night speech after he accepted the Democratic nomination.
“The coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him,” Maher said.
As WND previously reported, a comprehensive analysis of every evening news report by the NBC, ABC
and CBS television networks on Barack Obama since he came to national
prominence concludes coverage of the Illinois senator has “bordered on
giddy celebration of a political ‘rock star’ rather than objective
newsgathering.”
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Revealing
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Study: ABC, NBC, CBS strongly support ObamaValentine's Day was a bummer in Mountain View, Calif. For the first time, one of Google's self-driving cars, a modified Lexus SUV, caused a crash. Detecting a pile of sandbags surrounding a storm drain in its path, the car moved into the center lane to avoid the hazard. Three seconds later it collided with the side of a bus. According to the accident report, the Lexus's test driver saw the bus but assumed the bus driver would slow down to allow the SUV to continue.
It was not the project's first crash, but it was the first caused in part by nonhuman error (most incidents involve the driverless cars getting rear-ended by human drivers not paying attention at traffic lights). The episode shines a light on an ever looming gray area in our robotic future: Who is responsible—and pays for damages—when an autonomous vehicle crashes?
The sense of urgency to find clear answers to this and other self-driving vehicle questions is growing. Automakers and policy experts have worried that a lack of consistent national regulation would make rolling out these cars across all 50 states nearly impossible. To spur progress, the Obama administration asked the Department of Transportation to propose complete national testing and safety standards by this summer. But as far as the question of accountability and liability goes, we might already be homing in on an answer, one that points to a shift in how the root cause of damage is assessed: When a computerized driver replaces a human one, experts say the companies behind the software and hardware sit in the legal liability chain—not the car owner or the person's insurance company. Eventually, and inevitably, the carmakers will have to take the blame.
Self-driving pioneers, in fact, are starting to make the switch. Last October, Volvo declared that it would pay for any injuries or property damage caused by its fully autonomous IntelliSafe Autopilot system, which is scheduled to debut in the company's cars by 2020. The thinking behind the decision, explains Erik Coelingh, Volvo's senior technical leader for safety and driver-support technologies, is that Autopilot will include so many redundant and backup systems—duplicate cameras, radars, batteries, brakes, computers, steering actuators—that a human driver will never need to intervene and thus cannot be at fault. “Whatever system fails, the car should still have the ability to bring itself to a safe stop,” he says.
The proliferation of vehicles already on the road with partial automation shows how quickly the scenario that Coelingh describes is coming about. A growing number of cars include crash-imminent braking systems, which rely on optics to detect potential front-end impacts and proactively apply brakes. Audi, BMW and others have developed cars that can parallel park themselves. And later this year Volvo will roll out the U.S.'s first semiautonomous highway driving feature, called Pilot Assist, on the 2017 S90 sedan. The system uses a windshield-mounted computer equipped with a camera and radar to automatically accelerate, decelerate, avoid obstacles and stay in a lane at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour.
Features such as Pilot Assist exist in what tech policy expert and University of South Carolina assistant professor Bryant Walker Smith calls the “mushy middle of automation,” where carmakers still require human drivers to pay attention. “It's not always clear where the line between the human and the machine falls,” he says.
For the time being, some automakers are aiming to keep human drivers clearly on the responsible side of that line. General Motors' forthcoming Super Cruise, which will launch on a Cadillac in 2017 and is similar to Pilot Assist, comes with caveats that the human driver must remain alert and ready to take over steering if visibility dips or weather changes. With Pilot Assist, Volvo puts similar onus on the driver; touch sensors on the steering wheel ensure the person remains engaged.
By the time fully autonomous driving becomes a reality, however, carmakers such as Volvo, Mercedes and Google are confident that they will have these technologies—and many more—so buttoned up that they will be able to take the driver out of the operation and liability picture almost entirely. What is more, a 2014 Brookings Institution study found that current product liability law already covers the shift, so the U.S. might not need to rewrite any laws for automation to continue moving forward.
It is a relatively safe bet for driverless carmakers to say they will foot the bill for everything from fender benders to violent crashes because semiautonomy is showing that computer drivers are likely safer than human ones. Data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, for instance, have found that crash-avoidance braking can reduce total rear-end collisions by 40 percent. And Volvo's Coelingh notes that a study of the European version of Pilot Assist revealed that the computer maintains safer follow distances and has fewer harsh braking incidents than human drivers do.
In the long run, “from the manufacturer's perspective,” Smith says, “what they may be looking at is a bigger slice of what we all hope will be a much smaller [liability] pie.”Home > Judgments > 2014 archive
NJ v OV [2014] EWHC 4130 (Fam)
Application to relocate a child permanently to Sweden. Permission granted and guiding principles considered by Mostyn J.
The mother applied for permission to permanently relocate the child, B, to Sweden. B, a little girl, was aged nearly 5. The father opposed the application. The mother was born in Sweden of Finnish parents and was 31. She had a turbulent family history. The father was 36 and born in London to English parents. The mother came to London in 2007 and met the father that year. They commenced cohabitation in 2008 and B was born in 2010.
Problems developed in the relationship in 2011 and after an agreed holiday in Sweden in July 2011 the mother unlawfully retained B in this jurisdiction. The father issued an application for the return of B in Sweden pursuant to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and a return order was made and B and the mother returned on 3rd January 2012. The mother's application to relocate was made in May 2012 but was not heard until November 2014.
Mostyn J reviewed his recent decision of Re TC & JC (Children: Relocation) [2013] EWHC 290 Fam. and reiterated his summary of the governing principles applicable to such applications:-
i) The welfare of the child is paramount and overbears all other considerations, however powerful and reasonable they might be.
ii) The guidance given by the Court of Appeal as to the factors to be weighed in search of the welfare paramountcy, and which directs the exercise of the welfare discretion, is valuable and helps the judge to identify which factors are likely to be the most important and the weight which should generally be attached to them.
iii) The guidance is not confined to classic primary carer applications and may be utilised in other kinds of relocation cases if the judge thinks it helpful and appropriate to do so.
iv) The guidance suggests that the following questions be asked and answered (assuming that the applicant is the mother):
a) Is the mother's application genuine in the sense that it is not motivated by some selfish desire to exclude the father from the child's life?
b) Is the mother's application realistically founded on practical proposals both well researched and investigated?
c) What would be the impact on the mother, either as the single parent or as a new wife, of a refusal of her realistic proposal?
d) Is the father's opposition motivated by genuine concern for the future of the child's welfare or is it driven by some ulterior motive?
e) What would be the extent of the detriment to him and his future relationship with the child were the application granted?
f) To what extent would that detriment be offset by extension of the child's relationships with the maternal family and homeland?
v) The guidance should not be applied rigidly as if it contains principles from which no departure is permitted.
vi) There is no legal principle, let alone some legal or evidential presumption, in favour of an application to relocate by a primary carer.
vii) Arguments as to what label should be applied to the case by virtue of either the time spent with each of the parents should be avoided.
Mostyn J observed that the law relating to relocation applications was now clear and settled. He also highlighted the "paradox" which arises in the assessment of the impact of refusal which "penalises selflessness and virtue, while rewarding selfishness and uncontrolled emotions".
Mostyn J then moved to consider the facts of the case. B was the subject of local authority intervention and until recently had been on a child protection plan. There were concerns in respect of the parents' acrimonious relationships. the mother's care for B, B's sexualised behaviour, the mother's use of alcohol and the mother's relationships with unsuitable partners including one which had contained serious domestic violence. In this regard Mostyn J recognised that the mother was demonstrating a greater level of stability in the latter part of 2014. The court accepted that the mother's position in England was uncertain if not bleak, and in particular, her housing and employment prospects were poor. In comparison her prospects would be significantly better in Sweden and the mother's life would become more healthy and purposeful and her current unhappiness and anxiety would significantly reduce. Mostyn J was unimpressed by the evidence of the father who, at times had made untrue and exaggerated allegations about the mother's care for B.
Mostyn J concluded that B had a better prospect of a healthy and safe life in Sweden than if she remained in England and granted the mother permission to relocate B permanently to Sweden. Child arrangements orders were also made in respect of contact.
Summary by Ariel Ricci, barrister, Coram Chambers
___________________________
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE No. FD12P01226
FAMILY DIVISION
[2014] EWHC 4130 (Fam)
Royal Courts of Justice
Friday, 21st November 2014
Before:
MR. JUSTICE MOSTYN
(In Private)
B E T W E E N :
NJ Applicant
- and -
OV Respondent
__________
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__________
MR. A. LEONG (instructed by Broadway Solicitors) appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
MISS R. AMIRAFTABI (instructed by Dawson Cornwell) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
__________
J U D G M E N T
(As approved by the Judge)
The Judge hereby gives leave for this judgment to be reported in this anonymised form. The judgment is being distributed on the strict understanding that in any report no person other than the advocates or the solicitors instructing them may be identified by name or location.
MR. JUSTICE MOSTYN:
1 In this case I am concerned with the future of a little girl called B, who was born on 28th January 2010 and who is now therefore aged nearly 5.
2 Her mother is NJ, who is aged 31. She was born in Sweden of Finnish parents. B's father is OV, aged 36, who was born in London to English parents.
3 It is the mother's application for permission permanently to relocate B to Sweden and for consequential adjustments to be made to the contact arrangements in the father's favour. This is strenuously opposed by the father. He cross-applies for an order adjusting the present contact arrangements so that B's time is equally shared between the parents.
4 It is my opinion that outside the sphere of State intervention for the purposes of child protection, the hardest decision that a judge ever has to make in the field of family law, or, for that matter, in any field, is a relocation decision. The choices are starkly binary. One or other parent will lose and will be bitterly disappointed. There is no scope for finding some comfortable middle ground.
5 In my recent decision of Re TC & JC (Children: Relocation) [2013] EWHC 290 Fam., given on 21st February 2013, I analysed the highly acute decision of the New Zealand Supreme Court in Kacim v Bashir [2010] NZSC 112, which explained correctly, in my view, that a decision of this nature is not really discretionary at all, at least not in the sense of a judge making a decision from a range of legitimate solutions none of which can be said to be wrong. Rather the court makes an assessment and a decision based on an evaluation of the evidence. It is a factual evaluation followed by a value judgment.
6 In my earlier decision I attempted to summarise the relevant legal principles applicable to this type of case. I referred, in para.10, to the four leading decisions of the Court of Appeal, namely Poel v Poel [1970] 1 WLR 1469; Payne v Payne [2001] Fam 473; K v K [2012] Fam 134, and Re F [2012] EWCA Civ. 1364. In para.11, having considered the principles to be derived from those four principal cases, I attempted to set out the law in the following terms:
"I have considered these four cases most carefully and, doing the best I can, I set out shortly what seem to me to be the presently governing principles derived from them for a relocation application:
i) The only authentic principle to be applied when determining an application to relocate a child permanently overseas is that the welfare of the child is paramount and overbears all other considerations, however powerful and reasonable they might be.
ii) The guidance given by the Court of Appeal as to the factors to be weighed in search of the welfare paramountcy, and which directs the exercise of the welfare discretion, is valuable. Such guidance helps the judge to identify which factors are likely to be the most important and the weight which should generally be attached to them, and, incidentally, promotes consistency in decision-making.
iii) The guidance is not confined to classic primary carer applications and may be utilised in other kinds of relocation cases if the judge thinks it helpful and appropriate to do so.
iv) The guidance suggests that the following questions be asked and answered (assuming that the applicant is the mother):
a) Is the mother's application genuine in the sense that it is not motivated by some selfish desire to exclude the father from the child's life?
b) Is the mother's application realistically founded on practical proposals both well researched and investigated?
c) What would be the impact on the mother, either as the single parent or as a new wife, of a refusal of her realistic proposal?
d) Is the father's opposition motivated by genuine concern for the future of the child's welfare or is it driven by some ulterior motive?
e) What would be the extent of the detriment to him and his future relationship with the child were the application granted?
f) To what extent would that detriment be offset by extension of the child's relationships with the maternal family and homeland?
v) Since the circumstances in which such decisions have to be made vary infinitely and the judge in each case has to be free to decide whatever is in the best interests of the child, such guidance should not be applied rigidly as if it contains principles from which no departure is permitted.
vi) There is no legal principle, let alone some legal or evidential presumption, in favour of an application to relocate by a primary carer. The old statements which seem to favour applications to relocate made by primary carers are no more than a reflection of the reality of the human condition and the parent-child relationship.
vii) The hearing must not get mired in taxonomical arguments or preliminary skirmishes as to what label should be applied to the case by virtue of either the time spent with each of the parents or other aspects of the care arrangements."
7 By a coincidence, in this very month's Family Law at [2014] Fam Law 1586, a learned article appears written by Mr. Edward Devereux and Rob George, both barristers of Harcourt Chambers. In their conclusion they stated this:
"The experience of lawyers and judges up and down the country leads to a conclusion that now really is the time for a re-think. We have tried living with Payne and we have tried re-interpreting Payne. It is time finally to admit that this case has run its course and for the Supreme Court, with a critical eye, to take the next available opportunity to look at this important area of the law".
I do not agree with that view. In my opinion, the law, since the more recent cases of K v K and Re F, is now clear and stable and I believe that I have correctly summarised the relevant principles in para.11 of my earlier decision and, even more laconically, in para.18 where I stated:
"… presumptions have no place in a relocation application. I therefore start with a blank sheet. There is no presumption in favour of the applicant mother. My determination will involve a factual evaluation and a value judgment. I will ask myself and answer as best I can the questions in paragraph 11(iv) above but their answers will not be determinative or even necessarily tendentious (in the true sense of that word). They will merely be aids to my determination of the ultimate single question, which is, of course: what is in the best interests of these children?"
8 I make two preliminary observations of a general nature. Mr. Justice Hedley has made some characteristically penetrating observations about the problems thrown up by a transnational or cross-border relationship. Where, as here, an Englishman has formed a relationship with a foreign woman, both must have done so, or be taken to have done so, with their eyes open as to possible future pitfalls should the relationship founder: a fortiori, if they decide to have a child. If the relationship founders it will probably come as no great surprise to the Englishman if his own estranged partner wishes to return to her homeland. That would not come out of a clear blue sky. The counter-argument, which is the other side of the same coin, is that the foreign mother must surely be taken to have tacitly accepted and agreed that should the relationship founder she would sacrifice her own wishes and desires to return to her homeland in favour of the maintenance of a regular and meaningful relationship between the child and her father. These are deep waters indeed.
9 My second preliminary observation is the paradox referred to at para.12 of my earlier decision. In para.12 I said this:
"Factor (c) of the guidance always looms large and is particularly problematic, both in principle and in practice. It is a significant feature in this case, as will be seen. Discussing this factor in Re AR (A Child: Relocation) [2010] EWHC 1346 (Fam), [2010] 2 FLR 1577 (at para 12) I stated
'The problem with the attribution of great weight to this particular factor is that, paradoxically, it appears to penalise selflessness and virtue, while rewarding selfishness and uncontrolled emotions. The core question of the putative relocator is always "how would you react if leave were refused?" The parent who stoically accepts that she would accept the decision, make the most of it, move on and work to promote contact with the other parent is far more likely to be refused leave than the parent who states that she will collapse emotionally and psychologically. This is the reverse of the Judgment of Solomon, where of course selflessness and sacrifice received their due reward.'
I do not resile from these views but the paradox does not make the problem any easier to solve. The impact on the mother if her realistic proposal is rejected is a fact which has to be recognised whatever its psychological origin. I have to take the parents as I find them and if one finds himself as a result of my judgment to be a victim of his virtues then that is a cross which he will have to bear in the interests of his children."
As will be seen, that paradox looms large here and it has made my task in this case exceedingly difficult.
10 Counsel have, at my prompting, helpfully prepared a comprehensive chronology from which I will extract most of the key dates. But before I do so, I should set out some of the respective backgrounds of the parents. I have mentioned the date of birth of the mother. She comes from a troubled family. I remarked during the hearing that her family seems to have stepped out of the pages of a Russian novel. Her parents are Finnish. When her father was 12 his brother, then aged 23, murdered their own father by shooting him. The mother's parents were married in Finland and had two children there. These are ZJ and RJ.
11 At some point prior to 1980 the mother's parents, and their then two children, moved to Sweden and settled in H. This is a town with a population of about 40,000. Following their arrival in H, the mother's parents had two more children - AJ and the mother herself, NJ, who was born in 1983 and who is now aged 31. However, in 1980 the mother's father was accused of arson of a property in Finland prior to their move to Sweden. He was convicted and sent to prison for 9 months.
12 Although much emphasis has been placed by the mother on her close relationships with and within her family, and upon the support she would receive and would expect to receive from them should she be permitted to relocate to H, it is plain that this family is riven by disputes and feuds. The older sisters, ZJ, who still lives in H, and RJ, who lives in W, 200 kilometres away, do not have anything to do with their younger sisters or their parents. Although the mother is close to her sister, AJ, who also lives in H, and to her parents, AJ and the parents fell out over some unexplained issue 9 months ago and have nothing to do with each other. Were the mother to return to H I sense that she may find herself embroiled in the festering dispute between AJ and, for that matter, her husband, LO, on the one hand, and her parents on the other. This family is divided both horizontally and vertically and, as is well-known and as has been famously said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
13 It is fair to say that the mother was not particularly forthcoming about these rifts and divisions in her written evidence. The position only became clearer from her oral evidence, from her parents, from her sister, AJ, and her brother-in-law LO, which was all taken by video-link.
14 I turn to the father's background. He is aged 36 and is the middle child of his parents. He is a model and web designer and, although he has earned reasonably well in the past, the stresses and strains of this litigation has meant that his earnings have virtually disappeared. His father is a taxi driver. His mother is a retired dental nurse. His elder sister is GV. She has learning difficulties and is cared for by her parents at their home. His younger sister is JV. She is a dancer. All live together in the family home in Wimbledon Park. Nothing adverse has been said about the father's family dynamics. It is plainly a loving and stable family unit.
15 I revert to the chronology. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the family dynamics to which I have referred, the mother seems to have had a troubled adolescence. When she was aged 14 she self-harmed and had psychological treatment. When aged 23, in 2006, she left Sweden and travelled to Mexico where she stayed for some time. In 2007 she came to London. She wanted to live in a cosmopolis and London was the place for her. She worked first for Phillips in customers services dealing with the Swedish and Finnish market and, after that, for the Financial Times in the same field. In 2007, the year of her arrival, she met the father through the internet via the website 'Myspace'. They began a relationship and in 2008 the mother moved into his family home in Wimbledon Park to live permanently with him. In that year, and the following year for that matter, she visited her family in H. In 2008 she was accompanied by the father. In March 2009 she fell pregnant.
16 The father told me that he and the mother had spent two years discussing starting a family and that it was clearly understood and agreed that they would live family life in London. He told me that she expressly stated that she did not wish ever to return to Sweden. The mother agreed with me that if the relationship had not foundered she would have expected family life to have been at all times in London. As I have said, B was born on 28th January 2010.
17 Following her birth, the mother, the father and the new-born baby all lived in the paternal family home in Wimbledon Park. In July 2010 the mother, the father and B visited her parents in Sweden. At that point the rift between AJ and her parents had not occurred and so there were gatherings of the parents, AJ, LO and their two children, SO (who is now nearly 15) and TO (who is now aged 8), with the mother and the father and B. However, after a few days the father abruptly left. As I will explain, he has over-protective traits and he was very disturbed by the practice - which for all I know is a standard Swedish practice - of leaving B, then aged 6 months, outside the house in her pram. As a result a row developed and, without putting too fine a point on it, the father stormed off and returned to London, leaving behind the mother and B who stayed in Sweden for about a month.
18 Following her return with B, the mother resumed living with the father in the family home in Wimbledon Park. Plainly problems were developing in the relationship. I have seen an email written by her to the father dated 26th July 2011 where she refers to the father having threatened to kill her, of having hit her and strangled her, so that B was born prematurely. I have no idea if this is true and that was not explored in evidence. The same email says this:
"I have never been included in your family. I'm a stranger living in their house. I feel like a criminal when I've gone down with the laundry and if I've made lunch for B and I can't just go into the kitchen if I want to make something, and if I happen to go downstairs and your family are in the kitchen talking they go quiet and leave when I enter. You always defend your family, take their side and blame me for everything and that proves to me that you consider them to be your closest and primary family, not me and B".
Again this was not explored in evidence and I am in no position to determine if what the mother says is true. But what this email shows, and indeed the email to which it replies, is that very unhappy relationships had developed both directly between the mother and father and, for that matter, between the mother and the father's family.
19 In July 2011 the mother and B went to Sweden for an agreed holiday. She did not return with B at the end of the holiday. This was an open and shut case of a wrongful retention under the terms of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, signed in the Hague in 1980.
20 In my judgment in the case of Re TC at para.56 I denounced child abduction as a form of child cruelty. An unlawful retention is no less bad than an unlawful removal. The mother now professes that she wished she had done things differently and has expressed regret. Interestingly, and in contrast, her sister AJ maintains even now that in her view the retention was justified and right. It was a stupid, cruel and ultimately futile act because, as we all know, the 1980 Convention is extremely effective in securing the return of abducted children.
21 The father promptly issued an application for the return of B under the Convention. This was heard in Sweden on 8th December 2011. A return order was inevitably made. The parents agreed terms as to the father's contact that should be enjoyed by him upon the return of B and further terms to ensure that the mother had a soft, safe landing on arrival. The terms extended to the father agreeing that he would provide accommodation for the mother upon her return.
22 The mother and B returned on 3rd January 2012. One might have expected that the mother would have promptly issued a specific issue application permitting relocation and that such an application would have been heard by a District Judge or a Circuit Judge by the end of 2012. But that did not happen. It has taken nearly three years since the return of the mother and B for this case to be heard by me in the High Court, to which court the case has been transferred. The delay is not the fault of the court. It is because, almost from the moment of the return, these parents have engaged in an attritional war about B. Each has accused the other of negligence and worse. The father told me that he has made no fewer than six complaints to the police about the mother's care of B. Some of those complaints have been, up to a point, justified. Some were plain over-reactions and some were, in my view, inventions. Reference has been made to the Local Authority, the London Borough of Wandsworth, in relation to allegations of neglect, who determined to place B on what used to be called the Child Protection Register but which is now known as being on a child protection plan. B was put on such a plan between November 2013 and July 2014. She was taken off the plan in July 2014 but is still designated as being a child in need.
23 For her part, the mother breached the agreed contact regime almost as soon as she stepped off the aeroplane. She herself has insinuated that the father has been guilty of neglecting B.
24 The mother's application to relocate was made on 23rd May 2012. The court directed that it should be heard finally on 21st January 2013. In January 2013 the mother and B, who had been living in the accommodation provided by the father pursuant to his agreement in the Hague proceedings, moved from there into temporary accommodation, a bed-sitting room, provided by the Local Authority.
25 The final hearing did not take place on 21st January 2013. It was adjourned to 28th May 2013 for a number of reasons. The mother was unrepresented at that time. B had suffered a bruise and a cut to her left eye on 20th December 2012. The mother explained that this was caused by an accident when she fell on a broom which the mother was using whilst sweeping.
26 On 20th March 2013 B suffered a further bruise to her right buttock. In the light of that and in the absence of criminal checks on the mother's family, and also having regard to certain concerns which had been raised by B's nursery, the then CAFCASS officer recommended, on 22nd May 2013, a further adjournment. Therefore on 28th May 2013 Judge Hughes QC adjourned the final hearing to 14th October 2013, and the father's contact was fixed for alternate weekends plus |
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