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-testing sector is currently estimated to be worth around $100m globally, but given all the factors outlined above, there is clearly huge scope for growth as those groups using traditional blood and urine tests switch over, and those doing no testing get started. In 2003, according to Frost & Sullivan, more than 50% of US companies tested employees for drugs, while only 5%-10% of those in the UK implemented such tests.
One of the main reasons for this has long been the confused legal position on testing. In the US, drug-testing policies are largely accepted and considered practical, whereas in Europe there are still lingering perceptions that testing is an invasion of privacy. Still, however valid one may think those concerns are, I suspect that the gap between the US and Europe will soon close, thanks to the success of US testing programmes, the ongoing introduction of tighter regulation in Europe (such as the 2005 Drugs Act) and the fact that we just can’t keep ignoring the effects the drug problem is having on productivity.
All this puts a very strong tail wind behind the industry. And the good news for investors is that not only is POC a high growth area, but it is also under-researched, which suggests there may be opportunities out there that the City hasn’t spotted yet. I’ve trawled through all the players in the sector looking for the best way for us to get in. My aim was to find a financially secure business with high exposure to the market, with a good and securely patented technology, strong customer reference sites, a broad geographic reach, and which had clear potential for growth. My ideal candidate also had to be priced at an attractive valuation compared to the rest of the market. This was a demanding list of criteria, but I think I’ve found one, and I look at it in more detail in the box below.
How to profit from the clean-up operation
My favourite stock in the drug-testing sector is Cozart (CZT, 33p). The UK-based firm develops, produces and sells point-of-care (POC) testing products, laboratory services and forensic testing kits to the criminal justice, medical and workplace markets in the UK and abroad.
It was set up in 1993 by two of its current directors, Dr Christopher Hand and his brother Philip Hand. It made its commercial breakthrough in 2001 when it won a £500,000 contract with the Home Office to supply the Govern¬ment’s Drugs Intervention Program (DIP) with its state-of-the-art testing device, the Cozart® RapiScan (a saliva-based system that can test for five different drugs and give results in minutes).
Cozart then listed on Aim in July 2004 at 30p a share, raising £5.3m as it did so. Today, around 50% of the shares are still held by the management, with the remainder largely owned by institutional investors (encouragingly, Philips NV, the Dutch technology giant, picked up a 4.8% stake last month).
So why should you think about joining this list of shareholders? The first reason is that the RapiScan is a clear success. In October 2005, the Home Office extended its contract with Cozart through to April 2007. Then, a month later, it expanded the scope of the DIP to encompass all arrestees, rather than just those solely charged with offences such as burglary.
The Home Office anticipates that the number of tests performed, and therefore the number of Cozart cartridges used (you need a new cartridge every time you do a new test), will more than double – and perhaps even triple. In the six months up to November 2005, the DIP consumed 59,300 cartridges, so it is entirely possible that within a few years more than 300,000 a year will be being used. The list price of each cartridge is approximately £8, while an electronic reader sells for £2,000, which suggests that this contract alone could deliver well over £2m a year of ongoing revenue.
However, Cozart is not resting on its laurels. Not wanting to become too dependent on revenues from one product, customer, or country, it has recently used part of its cash pile (it still has £400,000 left) to buy two European businesses: Medib, which operates in the Scandinavian drug-testing market for £400,000, and Spinreact, for £8.8m. Spinreact makes its money from a diverse range of diagnostic testing and sells mainly in continental Europe and South America.
Cozart is also making sure that it keeps growing internally too. It is soon to launch a new drug-detection system that should cut the waiting time for test results down from the current 12 minutes to five minutes, making it ideal for roadside testing. In addition, it’s recently signed a development agreement with Philips aimed at providing police forces with a lightweight, hand-held saliva drug-testing kit, which is as speedy and easy to use as roadside alcohol Breathalysers.
This deal is particularly encouraging as it represents a stamp of approval on Cozart’s technology from an industry heavyweight and means the firm has an excellent chance of winning roadside-supply contracts in the UK. And that could really move the firm into the big time. In 2001, there were 624,000 roadside breath tests conducted in England and Wales. If these drivers were also screened for illegal drugs, using Cozart’s kit, the firm could make even more from this than from its current contract with the DIP.
So far so good, but what about valuations? If you look at things very conservatively (assuming the DIP programme is rolled out as planned, but that an extra £500,000 of research and development investment is required in 2007 and that no new large contracts – such as the roadside contract – are won), the shares are trading on a forward p/e of 23 times this year.
Although this is slightly higher than the rest of the healthcare sector, I think that these assumptions are far, far too miserly, given the company’s excellent growth credentials. The gross margins in this industry are excellent, so if Cozart were to sign just one new deal of a similar size to the DIP programme, a good 1p would be added to earnings per share (which are currently forecast to be 1.45p this year), which could lead to a 20p (60%) increase in the share price (or push the p/e down to 13 times).
In light of Cozart’s current roadside trials in Italy and France, its relationship with Philips, its management’s strong historical track record, and possible future licensing deals of the Cozart® RapiScan technology in the US, I believe the likelihood of clinching such a new contract is more than a distinct possibility.
There are risks, of course. As a small firm, Cozart carries a higher level of risk than it would were it larger and more diversified. It also has no real foothold in the US, the world’s largest drug-testing market, and makes a good part of its revenues from the Government – which comes with all the usual risks of delay and contract cancellation. And given the directors hold so many of the firm’s shares, should they sell a lot of their shares in the future, the overall share price could be pushed down.
Still, none of this is putting me off. I have great faith in the firm. Even if its own management turns out not to deliver, one of Cozart’s larger competitors may well take it over. So I have recently put my own money where my mouth is and have bought shares at 28.5p, which I intend to hold for two to five years.
Paul Hill is MD of PMH CapitalAbout This Software Simple Enough for a Child. Powerful Enough for a Developer.
RPG Maker VX Ace improves on every aspect of creating your very own epic adventure. An immensely powerful editor, Ace supports multiple tilesets, offers full control over autoshadow and has a very flexible features system.
Ace gives you all the tools you need to make that game you’ve always dreamed of, including the following features:
• A powerful map editor to build your world.
• A database to track your characters, skill, equipment and more, all improved with the powerful new flexible Features system.
• New event options, including support for Ogg Theora video.
• An expansive set of default resources, including a built in character generator to create your own sprites and faces.
Key Features
Simple, Powerful Tools
RPG Maker VX Ace brings powerful new tools to the table to enhance your RPG-making potential. None of the previous engines can match Ace for flexibility, even for users with no coding knowledge. These features are powerful but also very easy to learn, with most accessed through a simple point and click interface.
Enhanced Default Graphics
RPG Maker VX Ace offers a large collection of new graphics, including 4 tilesets and the long-requested set of fallen character sprites. The engine is also compatible with all of the existing fan-made RPG Maker VX resources.
Export Your Game
Once you’re ready to show your project off, you can easily export your game into a portable EXE file that can be played on ANY Windows system. Share it with your friends, family or with the vibrant RPG Maker community on the internet.Hanger Length: 177mm (6.9”) (Additional options for 100mm, 139mm, and 159mm hangers)
177mm (6.9”) (Additional options for 100mm, 139mm, and 159mm hangers) Axle Length: 249mm (9.8")
249mm (9.8") Baseplate Angle: 45°
45° Mounting Compatibility: 6-hole pattern
6-hole pattern Weight: (single truck without bushings/washers) 421g
(single truck without bushings/washers) 421g Stock Bushing Duro: Customizable
Customizable Retail Price: $99.00 for a custom pair.
One of the few companies that make fully precision TKPs, surfrodz presents the INDeeSZ.
SZ made INDeeSZ to be a transition truck between longboarding and skateboarding, and it’s great at both.
Something that really sets INDeeSZ apart fundamentally as a TKP is that the pivot point is angled in a more natural position for the truck to lean. The result is a very flowy turn and a surprisingly deep-feeling lean. The pivot is also much bigger than any other TKP and the stock pivot cups from SZ are super deep and snug, as you can see in the picture.
The pivot isn’t quite a ball pivot, but it has that little area machined away to allow for the whole hanger configuration to lean a little more, just like how TKPs are supposed to work.
Of course, precision trucks have all the fancy bells and whistles that allow you to take them apart. INDeeSZ are no different and allow you to replace the pivot point/bushing seat and the axles apart for cleaning and maintenance. This also allows you to change your axle length, along with the wheels and bearings attached, with just two 5mm allen screws, not to mention the color combinations you can make with the rainbow of colors SZ offers.
For a truck that turns and leans like a RKP, INDeeSZ are much lower. In the picture above, you can see the height difference when compared to 50 degree Paris.
While you can see it, INDeeSZ can run any combination of standard-sized bushings, your venom barrels will all fit just fine. One thing to note however is that you cannot use a washer rs because it will interfere with the hanger and the washer bs may bite the bottom of the bushing seat near the pivot. The bite doesn’t affect anything, it’s just bad design.
The way the bushing seat is aligned with the pivot will give you more lateral leverage over the bushings than you’re used with RKPs, which may cause your bushings to feel differently which I’ll talk about in a sec.
The 6-hole pattern 45 degree baseplate is nice and light, sturdy, and does its job. SZ also offers adjustable TKP baseplates which add a little height, but allow you to change your baseplate angle with a couple screws. Super handy for LDP, freeride, or even DH applications.
If there’s something I hate about these trucks is the insane difficulty to dial in. No matter what bushings I used, either it felt too twitchy downhill or not enough lean. I suppose that’s kind of asking a lot of a truck.
I did manage to get them how I liked, I used a venom 85a tall barrel rs with a 87a venom barrel bs, but the trucks always leave me wanting something else.
You certainly can freeride these trucks to any speed you’re comfortable with, it’s just bushings act differently with the geometry. Hint: a couple duros harder than your normal RKP bushings should be a good start.
Another issue is that if you’re using the stock SZ kingpin, you will need a 5mm allen key with you to adjust it, as well as shock pads because tightening the kingpin to an extent will have it stick out of the bottom or the baseplate, causing it to dig into your deck if you don’t have shock pads. I recommend buying new kingpins and installing them the normal way versus SZ’s way.
So why should you drop $99 for a set of these precision TKPs? They feature a great amount of versatility for freeride to freestyle, and if you’re looking for something fresh and new to try out, these are great for that. Dialing them in can be tedious, so I can’t recommend them to beginners for freeride, but for LDP, freestyle, or even a park ripper with the smaller hanger widths, they’re perfect.
Additional pictures:Maajid Embarrasses A Caller Demanding Sharia Law In Manchester
Aisha told Maajid she thought homosexuality and adultery should be punished by "stoning to death."
Police say they have made a "significant" arrest this morning in connection with yesterday's tube bombing at Parsons Green station.
An 18 year-old man was detained in the port of Dover in Kent on suspicion of a terror offence.
Maajid Nawaz was discussing how to combat terrorism and Islamist ideology when he received Aisha's call.
Aisha told Maajid that adultery was "disgusting" and should be punishable by stoning to death. Picture: LBC
Aisha said: "I don't exactly agree with liberal values. I consider homosexuality to be sinful."
Maajid asked: "Do you aspire one day to a Sharia state that will criminalise and outlaw homosexuality?"
"Yes I do."
"You aspire to a caliphate that would criminalise and punish homosexuality. Do you aspire one day to a Shari compliant state that would punish adultery?
"Of course, I think adultery is disgusting."
"What should the punishment be?"
"It's stoning to death, I'm not trying to avoid your question. It's in the Sharia."
"Do you endorse the stoning of adulterers to death?"
"Yes."
"Well I thank you Aisha, for continuing this conversation because you've just demonstrated why you, and people like you who sympathise with your ideas, can never be part of the solution.
"That's worse than the BNP, the BNP don't believe in murdering people for mistakes and choices they make in their personal lives.
"People like you will never be part of the solution until you abandon those ideas."
Watch the full clip above.As Protests Emerge, Brothers Agree To Give Trump Administration A Chance
Enlarge this image toggle caption Brian Mann for NPR Brian Mann for NPR
Sunday morning the Jackson brothers stood outside a little diner in Elizabethtown, N.Y. They grew up on Long Island, but for decades they've lived here in Essex County, a deeply rural corner of the Adirondack Mountains. People in these small towns voted strongly for Donald Trump in November.
Asked about the president's first week in office, they jumped at the chance to talk about him.
"The guy's just got in there, he needs a chance," argued Tim Jackson, the younger brother. "You know, I mean, everybody [is saying] he's signed this, he's signed that. It's only been a week."
His brother, Bill, felt more solidly positive about the president's first week and said Trump had captured some of his own spirit.
"I'm also a rebel from way back," Bill says. "I'm sick of people who just stand by. Now that someone's gone in there and stirred the waters up, boy them Democrats are pissed. They're trying to come up with every way they can to push him down."
One issue in particular has sparked controversy and headlines this week: the new president's executive order temporarily banning travelers from seven Muslim countries. Bill Jackson says the action represents common sense. He thinks there's good reason to keep Muslims out.
"I feel the same way," Bill says, describing a broad concern that Islam is incompatible with life in America.
"I feel that if a Muslim woman wants to move into this country, she needs to leave her towel home. Because the reason this country is here and safe today is because of Jesus Christ," Bill says. "We were one nation under God. The Muslims are into Allah. They can't live there [in their home countries] anymore because of all the turmoil and unrest. Here we still have somewhat peace. So if you're going to come here to enjoy this peace, follow our rules and be one nation under God. Or stay home. I'm not making you change your religion, or whatever you want to call it, your belief. But if you want this, what we want, then you got to do what we're doing to get it."
A lot of Americans think one of the great things about this nation is that you can worship whatever god you want. Bill shook his head at that notion.
"That is something I believe that has come along with political correctness and all this other garbage," he said, insisting that America is a fundamentally Christian nation.
These are sentiments you hear a lot in this corner of rural America. Few Muslims actually live in these small towns, and Islamic culture is often viewed with deep suspicion. But at that moment, the conversation took a surprising turn. Tim chimed in again, saying he actually has big reservations about Donald Trump and his ideas.
"I wanted Hillary in the worst way," Tim says. "I thought she was a strong woman. I believed she helped him, Bill, run a lot of stuff that was going on when he was in the presidency."
So given his preference for the Democrats, why was Tim backing Trump? He said it's because he didn't vote. He stayed home on Election Day, when Donald Trump won the White House.
He thinks millions of people like him who didn't cast ballots in November missed their moment and now should give the new president and his supporters a shot at running the government.
"You had the chance to vote," Tim says. "And that's there with me. It's like, I feel like I don't have a say in it."
So after Week 1, these brothers are paying attention, discussing, debating and even fighting over where the new president is taking the country. For now, they're both with Trump; the one watching and supporting guardedly, the other following developments in Washington, D.C., with real excitement.Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) Introduce Bill to Force Government to Disclose Terms of Deals Made With Corporations
For Immediate Release
Washington, D.C. – The Truth in Settlements Act, introduced jointly today by U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tom Coburn (R-OK), would require federal agencies to publicly disclosure the terms of large settlements negotiated with corporations to resolve alleged violations of criminal or civil law.
The bill comes on the heels of a year of record-breaking settlements in Wall Street and other industries. The details of many of the past year’s settlements remain undisclosed to the public.
"When government agencies reach settlements with companies that break the law, they should disclose the terms of those deals to the public,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). “Anytime an agency decides that an enforcement action is needed, but it is not willing to go to court, that agency should be willing to disclose the key terms and conditions of the agreement. Increased transparency will shut down backroom deal-making and ensure that Congress, citizens and watchdog groups can hold regulatory agencies accountable for strong and effective enforcement that benefits the public interest.”
“Taxpayers deserve to know the settlement details corporations arrange with the government, and the best place for Congress to start is with policies that enhance transparency,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said. “Since agencies are not currently required to disclose the financial structure of government settlements, too often the true value of those settlements is not known because often companies are allowed to deduct part of the payment. Our bill gives taxpayers the transparency tools they need to access real information and numbers regarding enforcement settlements.”
The bill will require federal agencies to explain in written public statements that reference the settlement amount whether any portion of that amount is potentially tax deductible. It will also require agencies to disclose other key details of all settlement agreements and to post copies of such agreements online. Any settlement deemed confidential by an agency will require a written reason for its confidentiality.
“The fact that these two Senators who so often disagree came together on this bill shows a broad consensus that governmental deal making over corporate misdeeds should happen in full view of the public,” said Francisco Enriquez, U.S. Public Interest Research Group Tax and Budget Program Associate. “Americans deserve truth in advertising from the federal agencies that work on their behalf. The public should know how much settlements are worth and whether they include hidden subsidies or sweeteners that taxpayers must ultimately foot the bill for.”
While federal law forbids companies from deducting public fines and penalties from their taxes, companies that resolve charges through a legal settlement typically manage to deduct the penalties as a tax write-off unless specifically forbidden from doing so. In essence, companies are allowed to receive a tax break for their wrongdoing without the public ever knowing it.
In addition, the bill mandates that agencies make clear if the settlement amount includes “credits” for routine conduct, as happened in 2012 when the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement included $17 billion in credits for activities such as demolishing homes that were already standard practice for the settling banks. Credits represented nearly 70 percent of the settlement value.
“This is an important step towards making government more accountable to the American people,” Enriquez said.
You can read U.S. PIRG’s research report on the tax implications of legal settlements, “Subsidizing Bad Behavior: How Corporate Legal Settlements for Harming the Public Become Lucrative Tax Write-Offs.”
See additional U.S. PIRG’s commentary on today’s bill introduction in the Huffington Post.
For U.S.PIRG’s statement on yesterday’s JPMorgan settlement that saved taxpayers $595 million by forbidding tax-deductibility, see “Regulators Disallow Tax Deduction for JPMorgan’s $1.7 Billion Settlement, Saving Taxpayers Close to $600 Million.”“What we were hoping for is to have the same turnout as the 25th, so we wouldn’t lose the numbers we had already managed to mobilize,” Mr. Ezz said.
Instead, more than 100,000 people poured into the streets of the capital, pushing back for hours against battalions of riot police, until the police all but abandoned the city. The demonstrations were echoed across the country.
The huge uprising has stirred speculation about whether Egypt’s previously fractious opposition could unite to capitalize on the new momentum, and about just who would lead the nascent political movement.
The major parties and players in the Egyptian opposition met throughout the day Sunday to address those questions. They ultimately selected a committee led by Dr. ElBaradei to negotiate directly with the Egyptian military. And they settled on a strategy that some in the movement are calling “hug a soldier” to try to win the army’s rank and file over to their side. But both newcomers and veterans of the opposition movement say it is the young Internet pioneers who remain at the vanguard behind the scenes.
Photo
“The young people are still leading this,” said Ibrahim Issa, a prominent opposition intellectual who attended some of the meetings. And the older figures, most notably Dr. ElBaradei, have so far readily accepted the younger generation’s lead, people involved said. “He has been very responsive,” Mr. Issa said. “He is very keen on being the symbol, and not being a leader.”
After signs that President Mubarak’s government might be toppling, leaders of Egypt’s opposition — old and new — met Sunday to prepare for the next steps. The first meeting was a gathering of the so-called shadow parliament, formed by older critics of the government after blatantly rigged parliamentary elections last fall. Those elections eliminated almost every one of the small minority of seats held by critics of Mr. Mubarak, including 88 occupied by Muslim Brotherhood members.
Among those present were many representatives of the Brotherhood, the former presidential candidate Ayman Nour and representatives of Dr. ElBaradei’s umbrella group, the National Association for Change, which has been working for nearly a year to unite the opposition around demands for free elections. At the end of the meeting, they had settled on a consensus list of 10 people they would delegate to manage a potential unity government if Mr. Mubarak resigned. And though the religiously conservative Brotherhood was the biggest force in the shadow parliament, the group nonetheless put Dr. ElBaradei at the top of its list. Officials of the Brotherhood said he would present an unthreatening face to the West.
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A second meeting, at the headquarters of the Wafd Party, brought together four of the tiny but legally recognized opposition parties. Critics of Egypt’s authoritarian government often accuse the recognized parties of collaborating with Mr. Mubarak in sham elections that create a facade of democracy. In this case, people involved in the deliberations said, the parties could not agree on how hard to break with the president. One party, the Democratic Front, insisted they demand that Mr. Mubarak resign immediately, like protesters were doing in the streets. The other three wanted a less confrontational statement, people briefed on the outcome said.
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The third meeting took place late in the afternoon outdoors, in Liberation Square, the center of the protests for the last several days, said Mr. Issa, who participated. It was brought together mainly by the younger members, organized as the April 6 Youth Movement, after the date a textile workers’ strike was crushed three years ago, and We Are All Khalid Said, after the name of a man whose death in a brutal police beating was captured in a photograph circulated over the Internet. But the meeting also brought together about 25 older figures, including opposition intellectuals like Mr. Issa. Also present were representatives of Dr. ElBaradei’s National Association for Change, which includes officials of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr. Issa and people briefed on that meeting said the older figures offered to help the young organizers who had started it all. Those organizers, Mr. Ezz and Mr. Issa said, knew that that the uprising had now acquired a life of its own beyond their direction, spread and coordinated by television coverage instead of the Internet. And they knew that the movement needed more seasoned leaders if Mr. Mubarak resigned, Mr. Ezz said. “Leadership has to come out of the people who are already out there, because most of us are under 30,” he said. “But now they recognize that we’re in the street, and they are taking us seriously.”
The group’s goal now, Mr. Ezz said, was to guide the protesters’ demands, chief among them the resignation of Mr. Mubarak, formation of an interim government, and amendments to the Constitution to allow for free elections. The group settled more firmly on Dr. ElBaradei, consulting with a group of other opposition figures, to speak for the movement, Mr. Issa said. Specifically, he said, the group expected Dr. ElBaradei to represent the protesters to the United States, a crucial Egyptian ally and benefactor, and in negotiations with the army, which the group expected to play the pivotal role in the coming days and weeks.
Mr. Ezz said the group also discussed future tactics, including strikes, civil disobedience and a vigil for dead protesters, as well as music performances and speakers in Liberation Square.
Others briefed on the meeting said that the group had also decided to encourage protesters to adopt the “hug a soldier” strategy. With signs that the military appeared divided between support for the president and the protesters, these people said, the group decided to encourage demonstrators to emphasize their faith and trust in the soldiers.
“We are dealing with the army in a peaceful manner until it proves otherwise, and we still have faith in the army,” Mr. Ezz said. “Until now, they are neutral, and at least if we can’t bring them to our side, we don’t want to lose them.”
Then, Mr. Issa said, it was the young organizers who directed Dr. ElBaradei to appear Sunday afternoon, after the curfew, in Liberation Square, to speak for the first time as the face of their movement.Greenland’s white snow is getting darker. Scientists have generally attributed that darkening to larger, slightly less white snow grains caused by warmer temperatures. But researchers have found a new source of darkening taking hold: impurities in the snow.
“It can increase the speed of melting,” says Marie Dumont, a remote sensing scientist at Météo France in Grenoble, who publishes today with her colleagues in Nature Geoscience.
Scientists have known for years that Greenland’s snow is getting darker, based on satellite observations that have revealed lower albedos, or reflectivity. That’s a problem because the darker the snow is, the more sunlight it absorbs, and the faster it melts. Greenland’s melting ice sheets are already predicted to raise sea levels by 20 centimeters by 2100.
But Dumont and her colleagues have found that, since 2009, there has been a darkening that cannot be explained by larger snow grain size alone. Using satellite observations, they found lower albedos at elevations and at times of the year that are too cold for larger snow grains to form.
The researchers instead propose that impurities in the snow—dust, soot, and microorganisms—are responsible. Using satellite observations, they found higher levels of impurities in the snow and atmosphere between 2009 and 2013—a time in which impurity levels over Antarctica stayed constant. They suggest that dust could be arriving from snow-free land areas in Greenland and nearby in the Arctic that are experiencing earlier melting of seasonal snow cover due to climate change. Volcanic eruptions in Iceland in 2010 and 2011 are also important sources of material, they say.
Using a model, the researchers found that impurities could be responsible for melting 27 billion tonnes of ice a year—roughly 10% of the average annual mass loss over the last decade.
The new model is the first to document and quantify this new feedback—one that is not accounted for in climate models, says Jason Box, an ice scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen, who has documented rising impurities at a local scale during field campaigns. Dumont says the new darkening effect could easily add 2 centimeters to the projections of sea level rise by 2100—and perhaps more if impurity levels grow with time.Our latest issue is now on the streets IRL. The link to the printable PDF can be found here (remember to flip on the short edge when printing). It can also be found at Left Bank Books and The Station. The entire issue is formatted for black and white printing and is meant to be distributed autonomously by our readers. Leave a small bundle in an appropriate place where it will be read (and your printing costs or hustling will be worth the effort). Leave a single issue on a long bus-route. Pepper them around the Facebook and Amazon campus. Put one in the break room. Stir the pot. Spread anarchism. Etc.
The political situation in Seattle has never been more dynamic and riddled with fault lines. The consequences of choices made in Seattle are effecting the entire region. Like San Francisco, Portland, and Vancouver BC, the metropolis of Seattle is causing a housing crisis that is rapidly displacing those at the bottom. The politicians and local pundits are paralyzed in the face of Amazon’s threat to open HQ2 in another city and are being economically held hostage by a bald-headed white man with a penchant for Star Trek and the CIA.
In the middle of August, shit-eating Donald Trump tweeted “Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt – many jobs being lost!” In order to obscure this basic fact, Jeff Bezos decided to force dozens of city governments to grovel at his feet by announcing open bidding for his new HQ2. Meanwhile, cheeto-face Trump doesn’t give a shit about anything and went on to tweet about his steaks and support fascism.
Between these two sociopathic white men, the truth is easily lost. Amazon is doing great damage with its blind and reckless activities and the politicians are literally begging for it. In the case of Seattle, they are begging for more displacement, rocketing housing costs, and inequality, all of which Amazon provides. With arch-swine Jenny Durkan receiving defacto-support from Amazon in her mayoral bid, the city is poised to enter a period of intense political chaos. As the primary results have shown, the 20th-century boomers and their corpo children have an unstable hold on democracy in Seattle. The extent to which they maintain their failed vision of capitalism will determine how intense the coming rebellion will be. We hope to see you on the streets when it erupts, which it will, given how fucked everything is. But take heart. Capitalism will end anyway. You decide when.
This issue includes:
–By the Bright Lights of the Empire: Anti-fascism in Vancouver BC
–Mice Without Cheese: The Coming Revolt of Seattle
–The Evisceration of Everett: Drugs, Robots, and Death
–The Facebook Blues: Social Media and Seattle
–Fuck Seafair!!! A History
and more…
LONG LIVE ANARCHY!
AdvertisementsCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfare made the welcome change of extracting the franchise from the endless rut of World War II and moved it into the 21 century. When Treyarch announced that they where moving the game back into the trenches of Normandy, fans where left stunned. It seemed to make no sense why this was happening. I must admit that I was definitely skeptical going in, but tried not to let my preconceived notions get in the way.
After securing some hands on time with the multiplayer beta, I can assure fans Call of Duty 4, that there is absolutely nothing to worry about. Based on the Call of Duty 4 game engine, everything looks crisp and and detailed. Combine that with a rock solid framerate of sixty frames per second, and you have a recipe for a guaranteed success. All of the trademarks of the franchise have made a triumphant return, while adding in the variety that COD 4 was lacking.
The multiplayer gameplay feels like Call Of Duty 4, with a vintage skin. Aesthetic, feel and control have remained the same, while still customizing the game enough to give the impression of an entirely new game. Most importantly, it looks as if Treyarch has distilled what makes World War II games compelling and chose to emphasize that through the gameplay.
With locations straight out of the history book, you can't help but feel like you are in the middle of a conflict that is something far more that just you. This is further amplified when you are thrown into a gametype that teamwork is the key. Communication is now more inporant than ever, becuase of the introduction of the new powerup, attack dogs. Seemly out of nowhere, those diabolical bastards will attack you, unless your teammates have your back. If this communction is not there, you are almost guaranteed defeat.
Also making the transition for Call of Duty 4 is the leveling up and perk system. Even though this component works identically to how it has operated in the past, the weapons have obviously seen a significant change. As you could expect, all weapons are authentic to the period of World War II and lack benefit of the power assist weapons found in the last game.
All in all, so far the multiplayer has delivered solid gameplay that is a perfect balance of the new and the old. We will have a full review when the game hits retail in mid November.
Check out the trailer for Call of Duty: World at War below:What many regard as a gruesome practice may soon come to an end.
Today, male chicks – just a day old, and useless to the egg-producing industry due to their inability to grow large enough for meat and to lay eggs in the future – are thrown into a high-speed industrial grinder, are suffocated, or have their spinal cords severed. The industry disposes of hundreds of millions of newborn chicks this way each year because it’s just not cost-effective to raise them.
But that practice may not continue for much longer, thanks to new technologies in sex identification.
In a historic turnaround Thursday, the United Egg Producers, which represents 95 percent of the industry in the United States, announced it would end the practice of culling male chicks by 2020.
"We are aware that there are a number of international research initiatives underway in this area, and we encourage the development of an alternative with the goal of eliminating the culling of day-old male chicks,” Chad Gregory, United Egg Producers’s president and chief executive, said in a statement released by The Humane League, an animal rights organization which “exclusively” negotiated the pledge with the trade group.
The United Egg Producers plans to end the practice either by 2020, or as soon as technology is “commercially available” and “economically feasible,” with the rest of the industry in the US and abroad likely to follow suit.
This action will virtually end the practice of culling in the United States, said The Humane League, in the statement.
“It is clear that chick culling will soon be a thing of the past,” said David Coman-Hidy, executive director of The Humane League. “We are proud to have played such a pivotal role in doing away with this barbaric convention.”
The United Egg Producer’s pledge is |
pay grade. You can draw no other conclusion than Raikkonen is not up to the standard required when compared to Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel.
While the two drivers he has been paired with are hardly easy opposition, he still should have been closer in what he delivered.
Raikkonen has not won since returning to Ferrari, during which time the team has won three races. He has taken six of Ferrari's 26 podium finishes and has scored 286 points to his team-mates' 535 - at close to half the rate (53.5%). For reference, his scoring rate relative to Alonso was 50.3%, and to Vettel 54.8%.
As for qualifying, the score (excluding sessions that were not representative) is 35-9 against Raikkonen.
That rate isn't good enough for a team with world championship aspirations. To win the constructors', history suggests Ferrari needs Raikkonen scoring at minimum at a rate at least 10% higher, and ideally well beyond that. It also needs him to take points off Vettel's title rivals. He's simply not at the level to be able to do that regularly.
And we're not seeing a particularly convincing upward curve. In the first season, he was dropped into a Ferrari team in which Alonso was well-established and both drivers were confronted with an uncompetitive car. Even if he's given a free pass for that season, what has followed isn't up to scratch.
There's nothing wrong with Ferrari defending its driver and there's no need for Maurizio Arrivabene to condemn his driver in public. But to see comments like "if you look at Kimi in a certain sector he was the faster one at one stage [compared to Vettel]" it makes you wonder what point he is trying to make.
Its reminiscent of the kind of 'karting dad' you encounter in the junior formulas who is unhappy with the coverage of their offspring and points to the fact that if you look at their best sector times from testing they were actually ninth fastest rather than last.
That's not to say Raikkonen is a disaster and there have been some glimpses of form. At the start of last season, he looked much stronger before fading. And there is the odd weekend here and there when he goes well and hits some bad luck - Singapore last year for example.
But no other driver's record benefits from such a strong defence. You could analyse the weakest driver on the grid, picking out very selective high points, but it doesn't make them Fangio or Senna.
There's no doubt Ferrari favours a number one/number two driver setup. And that doesn't help Raikkonen. But even so his scoring rate isn't strong enough and he's not cutting out enough points for Ferrari's title rivals.Oct 17, 2013; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; A general view of the Air Canada Centre ice rink with spotlights on the ice moments before the start of the Toronto Maple Leafs game against the Carolina Hurricanes. The Hurricanes beat the Maple Leafs 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
Toronto Maple Leafs Eastern Conference Preview: A Look at the Philadelphia Flyers
Toronto Maple Leafs Eastern Conference Preview: A Look at the Philadelphia Flyers by Jon Empringham
Toronto Blue Jays Melky Cabrera to have Season Ending Surgery by Chris Okrainetz
According to Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Maple Leafs are considering a tryout for Brendan Mikkelson.
Leafs haven’t set camp roster, but are considering a tryout by former Duck-Flame-Lightning D Brendan Mikkelson, 31st overall in ’05. — Lance Hornby (@sunhornby) September 5, 2014
Mikkelson is a 27 year-old defenceman who has spent time in the NHL with the Anaheim Ducks, Calgary Flames, and Tampa Bay Lightning. He’s also played in the AHL for the Toronto Marlies and finished last season with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ farm club.
But is Brendan Mikkelson’s tryout of any interest? Is there any chance that Mikkelson could stick in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization?
Mikkelson’s Pros and Cons
Pros
In his AHL career, Mikkelson has posted a respectable 104 points in 259 games played.
And, since leaving the Toronto Maple Leafs system (he was with the Toronto Marlies in 2010), Mikkelson has posted positive +/- figures for four straight AHL seasons.
At 6’3, 210 lbs, Mikkelson has the right size for the NHL. Blessed with quick feet and some offensive vision,
His cap hit would almost certainly be negligible.
With some offense, size, a small cap hit, and relative youth, Mikkelson could be a nice fit on the Toronto Maple Leafs blueline.
Cons
The entire story of Mikkelson’s journeyman career is in his advanced possession stats. Take a look:
Brendan Mikkelson has enjoyed a standard PDO rate throughout his NHL playing time.
The neutral luck hasn’t helped him.
Mikkelson’s career Corsi and Fenwick possession rates are approximately 45%. All the negative possession stat news is worsened by Mikkelson’s offensive zone start percentage – 52.6%. This means that Mikkelson has usually started the play in the opposition’s end and has still managed a poor Corsi/Fenwick rate.
That’s bad.
With Brendan Shanahan‘s new analytics department in full swing, don’t expect the Toronto Maple Leafs to ignore these poor possession metrics.
In conclusion…
Last season, TJ Brennan surprised Leafs Nation by winning the Eddie Shore award for bes AHL defensemen. Could Mikkelson achieve similar success and eventaully crack the Leafs roster?
Poor possession rates and a Toronto Maple Leafs lineup that is chock-full of desirable NHL skaters likely leaves Brendan Mikkelson on the outside of the Leafs depth charts.
Sorry Brendan.
What do you think, Toronto Maple Leafs fans? Could Brendan Mikkelson steal an NHL roster spot from a current Maple Leaf?Veronica Mars is all about style. This CW drama, which ended its short run in 2007, followed intrepid private eye Veronica Mars, a teenager navigating the ups and downs of high school while investigating sordid cases on the side. Her life hasn’t always been easy, and she would often adopt a tough and cynical attitude towards, well, everyone.
But she always faced adversity with grace, a cute-as-a-button demeanor, and a razor-sharp quip. Her wardrobe reflects the hard and soft of her personality. Here are our ten of our favorite outfits Veronica Mars wore throughout the years.
1. “Credit Where Credit’s Due” (Season 1 Episode 2)
You can see a general trend of greens and pinks in Veronica’s outfits throughout Season 1. This outfit gets special mention because it’s cute and perky, and the pink calls back to her sweetheart status of yore. But the camouflage skirt gives the ensemble a bit of an edge, and the hat is the perfect accessory.
2. “The Wrath of Con” (Season 1 Episode 4)
Veronica’s outfit for her date with Troy is a great example of how to dress for a special occasion while on a high school budget. The sheer, sparkly top is an inspired way to make jeans look fancy.
3. “You Think You Know Somebody” (Season 1 Episode 5)
This is one of my favorite outfits, simply because it’s so unique, and every piece fits together perfectly. The scarf ties the shirt and jacket together with the orange and blue tones, and the black, ruffled skirt is a great match. What makes this outfit pop even more are the patterned, knee-high socks, paired with butch boots.
4. “Clash of the Tritons” (Season 1 Episode 12)
The camo skirt makes a reappearance in this episode. This outfit is perfectly edgy. The jacket and shirt are plain, but the skirt paired with black tights and black leather boots definitely make a bold statement. If anything, it’s a great outfit for karaoke.
5. “A Trip to the Dentist” (Season 1 Episode 21)
This ensemble is fairly simple, but one should never underestimate the power of a good blouse. This grey blouse is fitted perfectly, and the slightly poofy shoulders make the top both elegant and feminine.
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You might also like:In January 2017, 54 retired Wisconsin judges — with a cumulative service on the bench of more than 1,100 years — filed a petition to the Wisconsin State Supreme Court requesting the court to write new rules for when judges should recuse themselves from cases.
“As money in elections becomes more predominant, citizens rightfully ask whether justice is for sale. The appearance of partiality that large campaign donations cause strikes at the heart of the judicial function, which depends on the public’s respect for its judgements,” the judges wrote. (See letter below). The list of signers, included conservatives and liberals, and two former Wisconsin Supreme Court judges.
The judges knew well that in 2010, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted rules written by one of the state’s biggest spenders in Supreme Court elections, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC). While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 2009 case called Caperton v. Massey, that a West Virginia justice needed to step aside from involvement in a case concerning a person who had made major independent expenditures to benefit the judge’s campaign, no amount of money is too much to require recusal under the WMC’s special interest rules.
WMC and Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) spent over $10 million between 2007-2014 on ads to help elect the court’s right-wing majority. In most cases, the two groups spent more in the races than the candidates themselves.
The WMC recusal rule came in handy when WMC and WCFG petitioned the court to shut down a state criminal investigation into whether or not they had illegally coordinated their activities with the campaign of Governor Scott Walker during Walker’s 2012 recall election. Two justices, David Prosser and Michael Gableman, refused to recuse even after state prosecutors specifically requested that they do so.
Gableman wrote the July 2015 decision exculpating the groups and shutting down the investigation. To do so, he rewrote Wisconsin’s campaign finance law and allowed for the first time direct coordination between candidates and big money groups that do not disclose their funders.
Conveniently, Gableman’s ruling also allows judicial candidates to coordinate with secret money groups. This raises even more concerns about the integrity of the courts. “Because coordination is now legally permissible between judicial candidates and so-called ‘issue advocacy’ organizations, this court cannot rely on campaign finance laws to guard against the appearance or reality of corruption, much less to protect due process and the public perception of the judiciary,” Campaign Legal Center attorneys Brendan Fischer and Catherine Hinckley Kelley wrote in a filing.
The upshot? Wisconsin is now considered to be one of the worst four states in the U.S. when it comes to recusal standards for judges receiving contributions. And Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has devolved from “one of the nation’s most respected state tribunals into a disgraceful mess,” wrote a national expert in the New Yorker.
Rather than take steps to repair their reputation, in April of 2017 the court made short work of the judges petition to rewrite the recusal rules, voting it down 5-2 and voting down a follow on motion to hold a public hearing on the issue. The most clueless comment came from Justice Rebecca Bradley “Every judge and justice in Wisconsin should be highly offended by this petition because it attacks their integrity,” said Bradley.
Gableman was first elected in 2008 after a brutal “Willy Horton” style campaign against Wisconsin’s first African American Justice Louis Butler. Gableman faced charges from the state’s Judicial Commission, which concluded he had lied about Butler’s record in a campaign ad. Gableman recently decided not to run for a second 10 year term and is now reportedly looking for a new home in the Trump administration. The most scandal-plagued administration in history may be an appropriate landing pad for a justice who began and ended his career mired in controversy.
Now with a new Supreme Court election on the horizon in the spring of 2018, citizens of the state are moving to take up the job that the court should have done itself, debating and discussing the types of recusal rules that should apply to justices and judges in the state of Wisconsin.
Public Hearings in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Madison
Wisconsin Common Cause has organized three public hearings on the issue of judge recusal for the month of October.
At these events, citizens can discuss the problems posed by the current rules and discuss proposed solutions with current and former judges.
At the October 2nd public hearing in Green Bay, panelists will include former Wisconsin Supreme Court Janine Geske, former Manitowoc County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Willis, UW-Green Bay Democracy & Justice Studies Asst. Professor Kristine Coulter, and Common Cause in Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck.
At the October 11th public hearing in Milwaukee, panelists will include former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler, former Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Michael Skwierawski, Marquette Law Professor Edward Fallone, and Common Cause in Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck.
At the October 24th public hearing in Madison, panelists will include Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices Shirley Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley, and former Dane County Circuit Court Judge Gerald Nichol, and Common Cause in Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck.
David Armiak contributed to this report.national
This tree on the Aarey-Marol Road is being targeted by miscreants; it is located next to the spot of an upcoming cemetery
It is not just the common trees in the city that face the axe, but even the uncommon ones are at risk. It has been discovered that a rare Baobab tree, whose numbers are less than 40 in the city, might be brought down to make way for a cemetery on the road connecting Aarey to Marol.
A huge chunk of the bark can be seen hanging from the tree, which gives an impression of sabotage. Pic/Kaushik Thanekar
The tree was supposed to get a heritage status. When this correspondent visited Aarey Milk Colony on Monday, he discovered that the Baobab tree had been sabotaged. A huge portion of bark has started to peel off, indicating that the tree is being targeted so that it withers and dies in the coming days.
Speaking to mid-day, Niranjan Shetty, member of Tree Authority, said, “Very few rare species of trees are left in Mumbai, including Baobab. I have already called the K-East ward office, under whose jurisdiction the Marol side of Aarey falls, and have instructed the officer to see to it that strict action is taken against those trying to harm the tree.
We aren’t opposing any kind of development, but it should not be at the cost of rare trees.” Less than 40 Baobab trees are left in the city and can be spotted near Bhabha Hospital in Bandra, Byculla Zoo, Colaba and Seepz.
Expert speak
“The Baobab is one of the oldest tree species in Mumbai, as it was brought along by earlier settlers from Africa. Regardless of the fact that the species is non-native, it is important to preserve the historic heritage of the city,” said Zeeshan A Mirza, a student at National Centre for Biological Sciences.
BMC speak
K-East ward officer Bhagyashree Kapse said, “Protection of trees is our job and we will ensure that the Baobab tree on the Aarey Road near Marol remains unharmed. I have received a complaint from a Tree Authority member that the tree, near the cemetery, is being destroyed. All necessary permissions have been issued for the construction of the cemetery.”A University of Northern Alabama football player has reportedly been kicked off the team after he sent out a racist tweet during President Barack Obama’s speech at a vigil for the victims of last week’s school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
While the president was speaking to the grieving residents of Newtown on Sunday night, DeadSpin noted that a number of football fans sent out insensitive tweets because the 49ers-Patriots game had been preempted by the speech.
“Take that n*gger off the tv, we wanna watch football,” one Twitter user named Bradley Patterson wrote.
[View the story “Storypad” on Storify]
Storypad
Collect around the web and social media sites elements to tell your stories
Storified by David Edwards · Mon, Dec 17 2012 11:41:03
Take that nigger off the tv, we wanna watch football! @Hester52 @Ty_CoolerThanUBradley Patterson
The Birmingham News confirmed that Patterson had joined the UNA football team as an uninvited walk-on in the fourth week of the season.
“Thx 2 everyone who brought the inappropriate tweet to our attention,” UNA Athletic Director Mark Linder tweeted later that evening. “@UNAAthletics does not condone. He is no longer a member of the team.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if the school would take additional disciplinary action and Patterson’s Twitter account has since been closed.
Watch this video from WFAA, broadcast Dec. 17, 2012.
WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL
[Photo: Twitter]An Adityanath-chaired cabinet meeting passed the decision aimed at bringing transparency in process of staff selection for government jobs. (Image: PTI)
In a landmark decision, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday decided to end the process of holding interviews for selection of candidates for government jobs in all the non-gazetted posts of Group B, C and D categories, news agency Press Trust of India reported. An Adityanath-chaired cabinet meeting passed the decision aimed at bringing transparency in process of staff selection for government jobs. “Keeping in mind the system followed by the Government of India, it has been decided to end the interview process for the government jobs in all non-gazetted posts of Group B, Group C and Group D,” an official statement said, PTI reported. Earlier, Narendra Modi government had announced end the of interview for Group D,C and B non-gazetted posts in central government.
The announcement was made by PM Modi as part of efforts to put an end to the menace of corruption in jobs. “The government has completed the entire process to do away with interviews for lower rank jobs. There will be no requirement of interview for Group D,C and B non-gazatted posts in central government. It will come into effect from January 1, 2016,” Modi had announced in his monthly Mann Ki Baat programme.
Earlier in the day, Adityanath had asked several engineering colleges, which are on the verge of closure, to start diploma and certificate courses. Along with announcement regarding colleges, chief minister has also given an assurance that the government will provide jobs to 10 lakh youths in Uttar Pradesh having skills, as per ANI. Apart from the decision to end interview, Adityanath government also decided to fix the support price of common variety of paddy at Rs 1,550 per quintal, and Rs 1,590 per quintal for grade-A paddy.
The cabinet also decided to expand the boundary of the Aligarh Nagar Nigam. In addition, a decision was taken to increase the boundary of Nagar Panchayat Bhawari in Kaushambi district, and upgrade it. In what came as a delight to pilgrims, Adityanath cabinet gave its nod to construction of Kailash Mansarovar Bhawan in Ghaziabad to facilitate pilgrims of Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, Sindhiu Darshan Yatra and Chaardhaam Yatra, the official statement saidThe Death and Life of Great American Cities is a 1961 book by writer and activist Jane Jacobs. The book is a critique of 1950s urban planning policy, which it holds responsible for the decline of many city neighborhoods in the United States.[1] Going against the modernist planning dogma of the era, it proposes a newfound appreciation for organic urban vibrancy in the United States.
Contents [ edit ]
Reserving her most vitriolic criticism for the "rationalist" planners (specifically Robert Moses) of the 1950s and 1960s, Jacobs argued that modernist urban planning rejects the city, because it rejects human beings living in a community characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos. The modernist planners used deductive reasoning to find principles by which to plan cities. Among these policies she considered urban renewal the most violent, and separation of uses (i.e., residential, industrial, commercial) the most prevalent. These policies, she claimed, destroy communities and innovative economies by creating isolated, unnatural urban spaces.
In their place Jacobs advocated "four generators of diversity" that "create effective economic pools of use":[2]
Mixed primary uses, activating streets at different times of the day
Short blocks, allowing high pedestrian permeability
Buildings of various ages and states of repair
Density
Her aesthetic can be considered opposite to that of the modernists, upholding redundancy and vibrancy against order and efficiency. She frequently cites New York City's Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community. The Village, like many similar communities, may well have been preserved, at least in part, by her writing and activism. The book also played a major role in slowing the rampant redevelopment of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where Jacobs was involved in the campaign to stop the Spadina Expressway.[3]
Introduction [ edit ]
Jacobs begins the work with blunt pugilism: "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding." She describes a trip to Boston's North End neighborhood in 1959, finding it friendly, safe, and healthy, and contrasting her experience against her conversations with elite planners and financiers in the area, who lament it as a "terrible slum" in need of renewal. Branding the mainstream theory of cities as an "elaborately learned superstition" that had now penetrated the thinking of planners, bureaucrats, and bankers in equal measure, she briefly traces the origins of this "orthodox urbanism."
Description of orthodox urbanism [ edit ]
In summarizing the development of contemporary city planning theory, she begins with the Garden City of Ebenezer Howard. The Garden City was conceived as a new master-planned form, a self-sufficient town removed from the noise and squalor of late 19th century London, ringed by agriculture green belts, with schools and housing surrounding a highly prescribed commercial center. The Garden City would allow a maximum of 30,000 residents in each town, and called for a permanent public authority to carefully regulate land use and ward off the temptation to increase commercial activity or population density. Industrial factories were allowed on the periphery, provided they were masked behind green spaces. The Garden City concept was first embodied in the UK by the development of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City, and in the US suburb of Radburn, NJ.
Jacobs tracks Howard's influence through American luminaries Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, Henry Wright, and Catherine Bauer, a collection of thinkers that Bauer referred to as "Decentrists." The Decentrists proposed to use regional planning as a means to ameliorate the woes of congested cities, attracting residents to a new life in lower-density fringes and suburbs and thereby thinning out the crowded urban core. Jacobs highlights the anti-urban biases of the Garden City advocates and the Decentrists, especially their shared intuitions that communities should be self-contained units; that commingled land use created a chaotic, unpredictable, and negative environment; that the street was a bad locus for human interactions; that houses should be turned away from the street toward sheltered green spaces; that super-blocks fed by arterial roads were superior to small blocks with overlapping cross-roads; that any significant details should be dictated by permanent plan rather than shaped by organic dynamism; and that population density should be discouraged, or at least disguised to create a sense of isolation.
Jacobs' continues her survey of orthodox urbanism with Le Corbusier, whose Radiant City concept envisioned twenty-four towering skyscrapers within a Great Park. Superficially at odds with the low-rise, low-density ideals of the Decentrists, Le Corbusier presented his vertical city, with its 1,200 inhabitants per acre, as a way of extending the primary Garden City concepts – the super-block, regimented neighborhood planning, easy automobile access, and the insertion of large grassy expanses to keep pedestrians off the streets – into the city itself, with the explicit goal of reinventing stagnant downtowns. Jacobs concludes her introduction with a reference to the City Beautiful movement, which dotted downtown areas with civic centers, baroque boulevards, and new monument parks. These efforts borrowed concepts from other contexts, such as single-use public space disconnected from natural walking routes and the imitation of the exposition grounds at the World's Fair in Chicago.
Sources of orthodox urbanism [ edit ]
Criticism of orthodox urbanism [ edit ]
Jacobs admits that the ideas of the Garden City and the Decentrists made sense on their own terms: a suburban town appealing to privacy-oriented, automobile-loving personalities should tout its green space and low-density housing. Jacobs' anti-orthodox frustration stems from the fact that their anti-urban biases somehow became an inextricable part of the mainstream academic and political consensus on how to design cities themselves, enshrined in course curricula and federal and state legislation affecting, inter alia, housing, mortgage financing, urban renewal, and zoning decisions. "This is the most amazing event in the whole sorry tale: that finally people who sincerely wanted to strengthen great cities should adopt recipes frankly devised for undermining their economies and killing them." She is less sympathetic toward Le Corbusier, noting with dismay that the dream city, however impractical and detached from the actual context of existing cities, "was hailed deliriously by architects, and has gradually been embodied in scores of projects, ranging from low-income public housing to office building projects." She expresses further concern that, in seeking to avoid becoming contaminated by "the workaday city," isolated City Beautiful efforts dismally failed to attract visitors, were prone to unsavory loitering and dispirited decay, and ironically hastened the pace of urban demise.
The significance of sidewalks [ edit ]
Jacobs frames the sidewalk as a central mechanism in maintaining the order of the city. "This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance." To Jacobs, the sidewalk is the quotidian stage for an "intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole."
Jacobs posits cities as fundamentally different from towns and suburbs principally because they are full of strangers. More precisely, the ratio of strangers to acquaintances is necessarily lopsided everywhere one goes in the city, even outside their doorstep, "because of the sheer number of people in small geographical compass." A central challenge of the city, therefore, is to make its inhabitants feel safe, secure, and socially integrated in the midst of an overwhelming volume of rotating strangers. The healthy sidewalk is a critical mechanism for achieving these ends, given its role in preventing crime and facilitating contact with others.
Jacobs emphasizes that city sidewalks should be considered in combination with physical environment surrounding sidewalks. As she put it, "A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It means something only in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it, or border other sidewalks very near it."
Safety [ edit ]
Jacobs argues that city sidewalks and people who use sidewalks actively participate in fighting against disorder and preserving civilization. They are more than "passive beneficiaries of safety or helpless victims of danger". The healthy city sidewalk does not rely on constant police surveillance to keep it safe, but on an "intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves." Noting that a well-used street is apt to be relatively safe from crime, while a deserted street is apt to be unsafe, Jacobs suggests that a dense volume of human users deters most violent crimes, or at least ensures a critical mass of first responders to mitigate disorderly incidents. The more bustling a street, the more interesting it is for strangers to walk along or watch from inside, creating an ever larger pool of unwitting deputies who might spot early signs of trouble. In other words, healthy sidewalks transform the city's high volume of strangers from a liability to an asset. The self-enforcing mechanism is especially strong when the streets are supervised by their "natural proprietors," individuals who enjoy watching street activity, feel naturally invested in its unspoken codes of conduct, and are confident that others will support their actions if necessary. They form the first line of defense for administering order on the sidewalk, supplemented by police authority when the situation demands it. She further concludes three necessary qualities that a city street needs to maintain safety: 1) a clear demarcation between public and private space; 2) eyes upon the street and sufficient buildings facing streets; 3) continuous eyes on the street to guarantee effective surveillance. Over time, a considerable number of criminological studies have applied the concept of "eyes on the street" in crime prevention[4].
Jacobs contrasts the natural proprietors to the "birds of passage", the transient and uninvested block dwellers who "have not the remotest idea of who takes care of their street, or how." Jacobs warns that, while neighborhoods can absorb a large number of these individuals, "if and when the neighborhood finally becomes them, they will gradually find the streets less secure, they will be vaguely mystified about it, and...they will drift away."
Jacobs draws a parallel between empty streets and the deserted corridors, elevators, and stairwells in high-rise public housing projects. These "blind-eyed" spaces, modeled after the upper-class standards for apartment living but lacking the amenities of access control, doormen, elevator men, engaged building management, or related supervisory functions, are ill-equipped to handle strangers, and therefore the presence of strangers becomes "an automatic menace." They are open to the public but shielded from public view, and thus "lack the checks and inhibitions exerted by eye-policed city streets," becoming flash points for destructive and malicious behavior. As residents feel progressively unsafe outside their apartments, they increasingly disengage from the life of the building and exhibit tendencies of birds of passage. These troubles are not irreversible. Jacobs claims that a Brooklyn project successfully reduced vandalism and theft by opening the corridors to public view, equipping them as play spaces and narrow porches, and even letting tenants use them as picnic grounds.
Building on the idea that a bustling pedestrian environment is a prerequisite for city safety in the absence of a contracted surveillance force, Jacobs recommends a substantial quantity of stores, bars, restaurants, and other public places "sprinkled along the sidewalks" as a means to this end. She argues that if city planners persist in ignoring sidewalk life, residents will resort to three coping mechanisms as the streets turn deserted and unsafe: 1) move out of the neighborhood, allowing the danger to persist for those too poor to move anywhere else, 2) retreat to the automobile, interacting with the city only as a motorist and never on foot, or 3) cultivate a sense of neighborhood "Turf", cordoning off upscale developments from unsavory surroundings using cyclone fences and patrolmen.
Sidewalk life permits a range of casual public interactions, from asking for directions and getting advice from the grocer, to nodding hello to passersby and admiring a new dog. "Most of it is ostensibly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all." The sum is "a web of public respect and trust," the essence of which is that it "implies no private commitments" and protects precious privacy. In other words, city dwellers know that they can engage in sidewalk life without fear of "entangling relationships" or oversharing the details of one's personal life. Jacobs contrasts this to areas with no sidewalk life, including low-density suburbia, where residents must either expose a more significant portion of their private lives to a small number of intimate contacts or else settle for a lack of contact altogether. In order to sustain the former, residents must become exceedingly deliberate in choosing their neighbors and their associations. Arrangements of this sort, Jacobs argues, can work well "for self-selected upper-middle-class people," but fails to work for anyone else.
Residents in places with no sidewalk life are conditioned to avoid basic interactions with strangers, especially those of a different income, race, or educational background, to the extent that they cannot imagine having a deep personal relationship with others so unlike themselves. This is a false choice on any bustling sidewalk, where everyone is afforded the same dignity, right of way, and incentive to interact without fear of compromising one's privacy or creating new personal obligations. In this way, suburban residents ironically tend to have less privacy in their social lives than their urban counterparts, in addition to a dramatically reduced volume of public acquaintances.
Assimilating children [ edit ]
Sidewalks are great places for children to play under the general supervision of parents and other natural proprietors of the street. More importantly, sidewalks are where children learn the "first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other." Over countless minor interactions, children absorb the fact that the sidewalk's natural proprietors are invested in their safety and well-being, even lacking ties of kinship, close friendship, or formal responsibility. This lesson cannot be institutionalized or replicated by hired help, as it is essentially an organic and informal responsibility.
Jacobs states that sidewalks of thirty to thirty-five feet in width are ideal, capable of accommodating any demands for general play, trees to shade the activity, pedestrian circulation, adult public life, and even loitering. However, she admits that such width is a luxury in the era of the automobile, and finds solace that twenty-foot sidewalks – precluding rope jumping but still capable of lively mixed use – can still be found. Even if it lacks proper width, a sidewalk can be a compelling place for children to congregate and develop if the location is convenient and the streets are interesting.
The role of parks [ edit ]
Orthodox urbanism defines parks as "boons conferred on the deprived populations of cities." Jacobs challenges the reader to invert this relationship, and "consider city parks deprived places that need the boon of life and appreciation conferred on them." Parks become lively and successful for the same reason as sidewalks: "because of functional physical diversity among adjacent uses, and hence diversity among users and their schedules." Jacobs offers four tenets of good park design: intricacy (stimulating a variety of uses and repeat users), centering (a main crossroads, pausing point, or climax), access to sunlight, and enclosure (the presence of buildings and a diversity of surroundings).
The fundamental rule of the neighborhood sidewalk also applies to the neighborhood park: "liveliness and variety attract more liveliness; deadness and monotony repel life." Jacobs admits that a well-designed park in a focal point of a lively neighborhood can be an enormous asset. But with so many worthy urban investments going unfunded, Jacobs warns against "frittering away money on parks, playgrounds and project land-oozes too large, too frequent, too perfunctory, too ill-located, and hence too dull or too inconvenient to be used."
City neighborhoods [ edit ]
Jacobs bristles at the orthodox conception of a city neighborhood as a modular, insulated grouping of roughly 7,000 residents, the estimated number of persons to populate an elementary school and support a neighborhood market and community center. Jacobs believes this definition provincial and arbitrary; a feature of a great city is the mobility of residents and fluidity of use across diverse areas of varying size and character, not modular fragmentation. Jacobs' alternative is to define neighborhoods at three levels of geographic and political organization: city-level, street-level, and district-level.
The city of New York as a whole is itself a neighborhood, the parent community from which public money flows, administrative and policy decisions are made, and conflicts of general welfare are resolved on behalf of districts. Civic associations and special interest groups – from opera societies to public unions – are often formed at the city level, creating like-minded communities of interest that coordinate local activities. At the opposite end of the scale, individual streets – such as Hudson Street in Greenwich Village – can also be characterized as neighborhoods. Street-level city neighborhoods, as argued elsewhere in the book, should aspire to have a sufficient frequency of commerce, general liveliness, use and interest so as to sustain public street life. They are not discrete units of fixed length, but economic and social continuities of all proximate street-level neighborhoods.
Finally, the district of Greenwich Village is itself neighborhood, with a shared functional identity and common fabric. The primary purpose of the district neighborhood is to intermediate between the needs of the street-level neighborhoods and the resource allocation and policy decisions made at the city-level. Jacobs estimates the maximum effective size of a city district to be 200,000 people and 1.5 square miles, but prefers a functional definition over a spatial definition: "big enough to fight city hall, but not so big that street neighborhoods are unable to draw district attention and to count." District boundaries are fluid and overlapping, but are sometimes defined by physical obstructions such as major roadways and landmarks.
Jacobs recommends four pillars of effective city neighborhood planning:
To foster lively and interesting streets
To make the fabric of the streets as continuous a network as possible throughout a district of potential subcity size and power.
a district of potential subcity size and power. To use parks, squares, and public buildings as part of the street fabric, intensifying the fabric's complexity and multiple uses rather than segregating different uses
To foster a functional identity at the district level
Jacobs ultimately defines neighborhood quality as a function of how well it can govern and protect itself over time, employing a combination of residential cooperation, political clout, and financial vitality. "A successful city neighborhood is a place that keeps sufficiently abreast of its problems so it is not destroyed by them. An unsuccessful neighborhood is a place that is overwhelmed by its defects and problems and is progressively more hapless before them."
Legacy [ edit ]
The book continues to be Jacobs' most influential, and is still widely read by both planning professionals and the general public.[not specific enough to verify] It has been translated into six languages and has sold over a quarter-million copies.[5] Urban theorist Lewis Mumford, while finding fault with her methodology, encouraged Jacobs' early writings in the New York Review of Books.[6] Robert Caro has cited Jacobs' book as the strongest influence on The Power Broker, his biography of Robert Moses.[citation needed] Samuel R. Delany's book Times Square Red, Times Square Blue |
significantly worse than 1-3, statistically, but it sure seems a lot more hopeless.
Here’s a grand sentiment for you: David Phelps is the team’s MVP for week one because he gives the team hope. Isn’t that what an MVP should do?LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) – A Van Buren man was arrested on Wednesday morning after running his car into a newly placed 10 Commandments statue at the Arkansas State Capitol.
32-year-old Michael Tate Reed drove through the statue around 4:47 a.m. on Wednesday while filming on his cell phone and posting it to Facebook.
PHOTOS: Ten Commandments monument at Arkansas State Capitol destroyed Destroyed 10 Commandments monument, Chris Ross Cleaning up of destroyed 10 Commandments monument, Amanda Jaeger Destroyed 10 Commandments monument, Chris Ross Destroyed 10 Commandments monument, Chris Ross Destroyed 10 Commandments monument, Chris Ross Destroyed 10 Commandments monument, Chris Ross
According to CBS affiliate 5NEWS, Reed has a history of similar behavior, destroying a Ten Commandments monument in Oklahoma. He was charged with destruction of state property or improvements, indecent exposure, making threatening statements, reckless driving and operating a vehicle with a revoked license back in 2014.
In 2015, Tulsa World reported that Reed stated his psychotic break was inspired by a Dracula film and that Michael Jackson's spirit was living inside meat. He also believed he was "the incarnation of an occult leader" and attempted to contact "Lucifer's high priestess he called Gwyneth Paltrow."
"I am so sorry that this [is] all happening and I wished I could take it all back," Reed said in a letter to Tulsa World.
Reed is being held in the Pulaski County Detention Center on charges of defacing an object of public interest, criminal trespassing and first degree criminal mischief.
The controversial 10 Commandments monument had been placed at the Arkansas State Capitol on Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours before it was destroyed.
The monument was the brainchild of State Senator Jason Rapert, who held a press conference Wednesday morning after Reed was arrested. We asked him if this situation should shed a new light on mental health in the state.
"Families have to deal with these issues. So we have to address them. But I will say on this, until I know more, I can't say that's the cause of what this guy did, because he has had many instances where he has acted out and done these things, that he was free; that he was walking around,” was his response.
According to his Facebook page, Reed is a "born again Christian" and a self-proclaimed "Pentacostal Jesus freak." Senator Rapert pointed fingers at groups that have opposed the monument’s placement.
"What culpability do some of these groups have when they threaten to tear down the monument? The ACLU, the Freethinkers Society, the Satanic Temple. I've seen 24-48 hours of threats. They're going to promise to take it down. What culpability do they have to hold their rhetoric down? And not stir and ferment hatred and violence that will get unstable people to do what's done here’” Rapert said.
All three of those groups told us they'd never incite violence and would rather see justice come from the court.
"Jason Rapert is contextualizing this to his own convenience, and he's doing so in a very dishonest way. For him to ironically claim incitement on our side, when he's using that type of rhetoric himself, obviously, he's trying to cement a great deal of ire against the organization," said Lucien Graves, spokesperson for the Satanic Temple.
"Having the monument removed, going through the legal system to do it, is so much sweeter than the person who put up the violation, is ordered them by law, by a judge to go and them remove that violation by themselves. That's the high road the Freethinkers would like to pursue, if there's a replacement put back up here at the Capitol,” echoed Leewood Thomas, of the Arkansas Freethinkers Society.
“We strongly condemn any illegal act of destruction or vandalism. The ACLU remains committed to seeing this unconstitutional monument struck down by the courts and safely removed through legal means,” explained Rita Sklar, Executive Director of ACLU of Arkansas, in a written statement.
Reed is set to have a video arraignment hearing on Thursday at 8:30 a.m.
Stay with THV11 and thv11.com for more details as they become available.For many years, a handful of American political leaders -- including the late senator Ted Kennedy and now President Obama -- have been trying to gain passage of comprehensive health care for all Americans. As far back as President Harry S. Truman, they have urged Congress to act on this national need. In a presentation before a joint session of Congress last week, Obama offered his view of the best way forward.
But what seems missing in the current battle is a single proposal that everyone can understand and that does not lend itself to demagoguery. If we want comprehensive health care for all our citizens, we can achieve it with a single sentence: Congress hereby extends Medicare to all Americans.
Those of us over 65 have been enjoying this program for years. I go to the doctor or hospital of my choice, and my taxes pay all the bills. It's wonderful. But I would have appreciated it even more if my wife and children and I had had such health-care coverage when we were younger. I want every American, from birth to death, to get the kind of health care I now receive. Removing the payments now going to the insurance corporations would considerably offset the tax increase necessary to cover all Americans.
I don't feel as though the government is meddling in my life when it pays my doctor and hospital fees. There are some things the government does that I don't like -- most notably getting us into needless wars that cost many times what health care for all Americans would cost. Investing in the health of our citizens will enhance the well-being and security of the nation.
We know that Medicare has worked well for half a century for those of us over 65. Why does it become "socialized medicine" when we extend it to younger Americans?
Taking such a shortsighted view would leave nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance and without the means to buy it. It would leave other Americans struggling to pay the rising cost of insurance premiums. These private insurance plans are frequently terminated if the holder contracts a serious long-term ailment. And some people lose their insurance if they lose their jobs or if the plant where they work moves to another location -- perhaps overseas.
We recently bailed out the finance houses and banks to the tune of $700 billion. A country that can afford such an outlay while paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can afford to do what every other advanced democracy has done: underwrite quality health care for all its citizens.
If Medicare needs a few modifications in order to serve all Americans, we can make such adjustments now or later. But let's make sure Congress has an up or down vote on Medicare for all before it adjourns this year. Let's not waste time trying to reinvent the wheel. We all know what Medicare is. Do we want health care for all, or only for those over 65?
If the roll is called and it goes against those of us who favor national health care, so be it. If it is approved, the entire nation can applaud.
Many people familiar with politics in America will tell you that this idea can't pass Congress, in part because the insurance lobby is too powerful for lawmakers to resist.
As matters now stand, the insurance companies claim $450 billion a year of our health-care dollars. They will fight hard to hold on to this bonanza. This is a major reason Americans pay more for health care per capita than any other people in the world. The insurance executives didn't cry "socialism" when their buddies in banking and finance were bailed out. But to them it is socialism if the government underwrites the cost of health care.
Consider the campaign funds given to the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over health-care legislation. Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat, and his political action committee have received nearly $4 million from the health-care lobby since 2003. The ranking Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa, has received more than $2 million. It's a mistake for one politician to judge the personal motives of another. But Sens. Baucus and Grassley are firm opponents of the single-payer system, as are other highly placed members of Congress who have been generously rewarded by the insurance lobby.
In the past, doctors and their national association opposed Medicare and efforts to extend such benefits. But in recent years, many doctors have changed their views.
In December 2007, the 124,000-member American College of Physicians endorsed for the first time a single-payer national health insurance program. And a March 2008 study by Indiana University -- the largest survey ever of doctors' opinions on financing health-care reform -- concluded that 59 percent of doctors support national health insurance.
To have the doctors with us favoring government health insurance is good news. As Obama said: "We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it."
George S. McGovern, a former senator from South Dakota, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.YOU know that helpless feeling of utter misery when you run out of smartphone storage space?
You can’t take a photo. You can’t download a new song. You can’t stream anything because your phone is now too slow and you can literally hear Tim Cook laughing at you through its tiny, tiny loudspeaker.
After you’re done cursing your stingy former self for not springing for the bigger iPhone in the first place (16GB is never enough, you fools!) you try to get rid of apps to free up space.
Only those useless apps you never use — Wallet, Find Friends, Tips, Stocks — are not removable. They’re just, there. Forever haunting you. Reminding you of your irrepressible pain. Wiggling mockingly, only an ‘x’ mark is not included.
Until now. Apple has just announced a multitude of new features at the WWDC Conference, ranging from a smarter Siri to bigger emojis.
What they didn’t mention was the fact that you will soon be able to delete default apps to save space.
Apple enthusiasts have noticed those annoying default apps are now available to download on the App store.
This means that, starting with iOS 10, Apple will allow iPhone and iPad users to delete any built-in apps you don’t want, and download them again later if you need them.
Users who have downloaded today’s developer beta have tweeted the change, noting that a bunch of default apps, such as Weather, Calendar, Music, Mail and Stocks, can now be deleted.
Confirmed: stock apps are removable!!! pic.twitter.com/hk7Jk98Rli — Matt Ellison (@iWindowsTech) June 13, 2016
I can confirm that stock iOS apps can now be deleted in iOS 10. It'll be out in the fall, w/ a public beta in July. pic.twitter.com/9we1dDlkk1 — Mr. Vernier (@MrVernier) June 13, 2016
There appear to be a few exceptions; Messages, Photos, Camera, Settings, Health, Safari and Clock are all still stuck, perhaps because they’re too integral to the system.
Apple has released a full help page, confirming the apps that can be removed from your home screen with the iOS 10 update.
It may surprise you to know that all of these apps use less than 150MB, but still, space is space. And it’s always nice not to have unnecessary clutter on your home screen.
MORE TIPS FOR MAKING SPACE ON YOUR IPHONE
KNOW YOUR STATS
Under Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage, you can see exactly how much space you have left, as well as a list in descending order of what apps are taking up the most space.
STOP STORING TEXTS
Texting can take up more space than you realise, especially if you send a lot of photos and videos. In addition to deleting threads, you can go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages and select 30 days. (Your iPhone sets it to Forever by default.)
GET RID OF TEMP FILES
Purge cookies, browsing data and your seedy, seedy browser history in Safari. Go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data. This can immediately free up much-needed space.
BEWARE OF INTERNAL DOWNLOADS
If you use Spotify or Podcasts, you may find they’re the biggest culprits. If you have a lot of files downloaded to your phone offline, they can take up several gigabytes of room. Delete files you won’t play more than once, or go to the app’s settings and de-select any option to download files for use when your phone is offline. Check through your notes, ebooks and voice memos too.
STORE PHOTOS ELSEWHERE
Backing up your precious photos is always good practice, but if you keep them on Google+ or Dropbox you won’t need them on your phone. Not to mention, Google+ is free! If you’re still concerned about losing them, you can always chuck them onto an external hard drive or USB stick too.
SCRAP PHOTO STREAM
Photo Stream automatically syncs up your last 1000 photos across your devices. Which means 1000 of your photos are basically taking up twice as much room. To turn this feature off, go to Settings > Photos & Camera and toggle off My Photo Stream.
DO A REGULAR ‘APP CLEANSE’
Once a month or so, go through and delete any app you no longer use. You may have forgotten it’s even there. There’s only so long you can play Angry Birds before you get sick of it.
TURN OFF ‘SAVE ORIGINAL PHOTOS’
If you use photo-based apps like Instagram, there will be an option to save whatever photos you publish to your Camera Roll. In Instagram’s case, it’s switched on automatically, which is kind of pointless when you’ve already uploaded the picture. To turn this off, open the app, go to its Settings and turn off ‘Save Original Photos’.News
Indian Beef Export Growth Slowing But Still World Number One
INDIA – Growth of India’s beef exports is slowing and will continue to do so, according to a Rabobank report.
Fewer male buffaloes is the reason given in Rabobank's beef quarterly report for export growth forecasts declining to eight to ten per cent.
Rabobank said its forecast was “more reflective” of growth in the dairy herd.
This follows last year’s growth rate contraction from around 30 per cent to 11 per cent.
Strong export demand pushed the buffalo inventory down in 2009, resulting in a four per cent drop in male numbers from the previous census at the last livestock census in 2012.
In 2014, production reached 4.1 million tonnes cwt, exports reached 2.1 million tonnes cwt and export earnings broke records at $4.7 billion.
This put India fourth for beef production and top for world beef exports, with Viet Nam as India’s largest export market.
Infrastructure has reacted to growth in exports and production. In 2012 there were 37 approved plants, whereas now there are 53, the report explained.
However, Rabobank stressed that much of this is believed to head to China, which is “clamping down” on beef movement from Viet Nam and Thailand.
The report said trading arrangements with China hinge on a memorandum of understanding since in 2013 with no official access. The report urged India to seek more markets in the future to avoid being exposure to China.
Rabobank noted India’s success re-entry to Russia after being banned for phytosanitary reasons. Processors approved for Russian access was due to more than double from four to 10 in late 2014 with status pending on six sites.
Summarising global beef price performance, the report tracked world prices as being comfortably above the 2009 to 2013 average, although there had been a drop from a peak in October 2014.
Michael Priestley
News Team - Editor Mainly production and market stories on ruminants sector. Works closely with sustainability consultants at FAI Farms
Top image via ShutterstockBradley Manning, the US Army intelligence officer accused of passing sensitive military documents to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, has pleaded guilty to ten separate charges. The army, however, will pursue the grave charge of aiding the enemy.
Although the army judge has accepted Manning’s guilty pleas on ten counts, the remaining 12 charges are still to be reviewed. The army accuses Manning, 25, of aiding the enemy. He is slated to go before a military court-martial this June. If convicted, he could face a life sentence.
Private First Class Manning told a military court that he was responsible for uploading a trove of material to the whistleblower website and pleaded guilty to 10 counts, RT's Andrew Blake reported from the courtroom.
After his plea was read to the court, Pfc Manning for the first time formally admitted guilt in the court, more than 1,000 days after being arrested. Reading a 35-page statement from his seat before Col. Denise Lind, Manning explained why exactly he risked his life to publish state-secrets.
Pfc. Manning pleaded not guilty to aiding the enemy and a number of other lesser charges, but told the court he’d like to take the blame for a series of other counts — charges that were not presented by the government but introduced by the soldier himself. In lieu of a laundry list of charges that could put Manning away in prison for life, he hopes the court will convict him of only ten lesser offenses that come with only a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Manning pleaded guilty to unauthorized possession and willful communication of sensitive material, including the hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and other materials provided to WikiLeaks. By pleading guilty, he waves the right to appeal a decision made earlier in the week in which the court ruled that Manning’s right to a speedy trial was not violated.
In explaining himself, Manning told the court that he communicated with unidentified persons he believed to be working for WikiLeaks, and assumed he was speaking with founder Julian Assange. Manning says he only sent the anti-secrecy website material after being rejected by other outlets, however.
While on break from the Army, Manning says he called up the Washington Post and claimed to have materials with “enormous value to the American public.” Manning told the judge that he “spoke for 5 minutes about the general nature” of the documents but said, “I do not believe she took me seriously.”
Rejected, Pfc. Manning approached The New York Times, an outlet he described as “the largest and most popular newspaper” in the world. “I left a message saying I had access to information about Iraq and Afghanistan that I thought was very important,” he said.
“I never received a reply from the New York Times,” claimed Manning, even though he left the paper with multiple ways to be reached, including his Skype name.
Believing there were few appropriate conduits for the materials he collected as an intelligence officer, he said WikiLeaks “seemed to be the best medium for publishing this information.”
In an interview with British public television, Assange referred to Manning as "America's foremost political prisoner," adding that "the only safe way to get these cowards to publish anything is to get WikiLeaks to do it first."
"All those involved in the persecution of Bradley Manning will find cause to reflect on their actions," Assange asserted.
During pre-trial motion hearings earlier in the case, prosecutors admitted that they would have charged the Times with releasing the information had they published them before WikiLeaks. In January, prosecuting attorney Capt. Angel Overgaard, said, "publishing information in a newspaper [can] indirectly convey information to the enemy." When Col. Lind asked if that would apply to WikiLeaks, Capt. Overgaard said, "'Yes, ma'am.”
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Earlier, during this week’s pre-trial hearing, those in the Ft. Meade, Maryland, courtroom were told that Manning hoped releasing intelligence to WikiLeaks would “spark a domestic debate on the role of our military and foreign policy in general.” Last year, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange credited the materials attributed to Manning with helping end the US war in Iraq.
"If Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and invaluable to all of us,” Assange said during a December address penned from London’s Ecuadorian Embassy. “It was WikiLeaks’ revelations — not the actions of President Obama — that forced the US administration out of the Iraq War… By exposing the killing of Iraqi children, WikiLeaks directly motivated the Iraqi government to strip the US military of legal immunity, which in turn forced the US withdrawal.”
Among the materials Manning said he handed over were State Dept. cables, Pentagon logs referred to today as the ‘Iraq and Afghan War Diaries,’ as well as video published by WikiLeaks under the title ‘Collateral Murder.’ With that release, WikiLeaks showed US soldiers onboard an Apache helicopter opening fire on Iraqi civilians, including a Reuters photographer.
"For me, this seemed similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass,” Manning said Thursday of the footage. In regards to the war logs, he said his opinion remains that the releases consisted of “two of the most significant documents of our time.” The cables, he added, “documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity that didn’t seem” to fit with the public’s perception of an ethically-sound America.
“I thought these cables were the perfect example of a need for more open state diplomacy,” he said.
Previously, Col. Lind expressed concern over having Manning read a sworn statement, instead preferring for him only to answer questions while on the stand. “He can try to read it, but I am going to stop him” if the contents are not relevant to being guilty of committing the lesser offenses of entered in the plea, she said.
“He understands his statement and he understands the elements he needs to plead guilty,” Manning’s attorney David Coombs told the judge.
Manning has been detained for over 1,000 days without a formal military trial, and will see the start of his fourth year behind bars this May. The only other time he has spoken publically on the stand was in December 2012, when he testified about the conditions he endured while detained at a military brig in Northern Virginia.
Lind agreed to take 112 days off any eventual sentence for Manning due to the poor treatment. Earlier this week, she dismissed an attempt by the defense to have all charges against Manning dropped over an alleged violation of the ‘speedy trial’ statute.Today we are happy to announce the 5.0.1.Final release of Hibernate Validator. In case you are wondering what happened with 5.0.0.Final - it has not gone missing. In fact it was released on the 11th of April.
The long story is, that we had to release 5.0.0.Final to meet the Java EE 7 release schedule. At the time the functionality was complete, but documentation was not. Given the amount of changes introduced by Bean Validation 1.1, we felt it was important to wait with the announcement of Hibernate Validator 5 until the documentation is up to scratch. That's the case with 5.0.1.Final. Not only does this release offer a complete Bean Validation 1.1 implementation it also includes an updated online documentation.
The highlights of Hibernate Validator 5 are (with pointers into the freshly baked documentation):
Standardized method validation of parameters and return values. This has been a Hibernate Validator 4 specific functionality, but got now standardized as part of Bean Validation 1.1.
Integration with Context and Dependency Injection (CDI). There are default ValidatorFactory and Validator instances available and you can now use @Inject in ConstraintValidator implementations out of the box. Requested custom implementations (via validation.xml) of resources like ConstraintValidatorFactory, MessageInterpolator, ParameterNameProvider or TraversableResolver are also provided as managed beans. Last but not least, the CDI integration offers transparent method validation for CDI beans.
Group conversion
Error message interpolation using EL expressions
We are also planning to create a little blog series introducing these new features in more detail. Stay tuned!
For now have a look at the Getting Started section of the documentation to see what you need to use Hibernate Validator 5. Naturally you will need the new Bean Validation 1.1 dependency, but you will also need an EL implementation - either provided by a container or added to your Java SE environment. Additional migration pointers can also be found in the Hibernate Validator migration guide.
You find the full release notes as usual on Jira. Maven artefacts are on the JBoss Maven repository under the GAV org.hibernate:hibernate-validator:5.0.1.Final and distribution bundles are available on SourceForge.
We are looking forward to get some feedback either on the Hibernate Validator forum or on stackoverflow using the hibernate-validator tag.
Enjoy!Walking through Sydney’s northern beaches in the height of summer, the dense, humid bush is alive with the buzz of cicadas, the screech of rosellas, and the mouth-watering smell of barbecue.
It sounds like a fate worse than death for a meat-loving Australian
But hiding in the undergrowth is a tiny creature that is forcing some unrepentant carnivores to turn their back on sausages, steaks and meat pies. It sounds like a fate worse than death for a meat-loving Australian. But worse is the extreme allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis which can constrict airways, drop your blood pressure through your boots, and kill you.
Thanks to the common paralysis tick, also known as Ixodes holocyclus, more than 800 people around Sydney’s northern beaches have developed a dangerous and otherwise extremely rare allergy to mammalian meat.
The paralysis tick earned its name and reputation because of the often-fatal effect its bite has on domestic pets. Most humans don’t suffer any particular ill-effects from an Ixodes holocyclus bite. But in some people, the combination of tick proteins and a mammalian protein, injected in the tick’s saliva as it bites for a blood meal, are enough to trigger a potentially life-threatening allergy.
Similar cases are also turning up along Australia’s east coast, in parts of the United States and in Europe, but Sydney has the dubious honour of being the hottest of hot-spots for this strange allergy.
The tale plays out like a great scientific detective story
The tale of Ixodes holocyclus and mammalian meat allergy plays out like a great scientific detective story. Even the main actor – Sydney allergy specialist Sheryl van Nunen – says it reads like a movie script.
Van Nunen came across her first patient with this particular meat allergy more than two decades ago. It was an isolated case and wasn’t noteworthy other than the fact the allergy itself was unusual – mammalian meat allergy is otherwise extremely rare.
Then in the early 2000s, a few more cases of people having allergic reactions to red meat began trickling into van Nunen’s clinic in Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital, all with the same story.
“They’ve had a meal then woken up in the early hours of the morning and had a terrible anaphylaxis, or had an anaphylactic reaction half an hour after eating a meal and they can’t quite work out what it was,” she says. Whether the dinner was beef, lamb, kangaroo, venison or even buffalo, the story was the same.
As any allergy specialist would, she took a detailed history, and one thing kept popping up: all these people had, at one time or another, had a large, local reaction to a tick bite. While most people might have a small itchy red bump at the location of a tick bite, these people had a large area of hardened swelling around 10-15cm in diameter, surrounded by an even larger red rash.
Then in the ensuing few years came what van Nunen describes as a deluge of cases from Sydney’s northern beaches, all reporting allergic reactions such as hives and gastrointestinal upset after a meal of red meat. And in each case, it was the same story; each patient had also, at some stage in their life, had a big reaction to a bite from Ixodes holocyclus.
Not everyone who gets bitten by a tick develops mammalian meat allergy. So what’s going on?
“It’s come to the stage now that if you come from Beacon Hill or north, particularly if you come from the peninsula, and you have an anaphylaxis and you don’t understand why that occurred necessarily … then my first question of you will be ‘what happens when you’re bitten by a tick?’”
But not everyone who gets bitten by a tick develops mammalian meat allergy. So what’s going on?
Ticks are notorious for their ability to trigger life-threatening allergic reactions to proteins found in their saliva. Australia has a particularly high concentration of individuals with serious allergies to tick bite itself, which may be partly due to the especially elongated mouthparts of Ixodes holocyclus. But this meat allergy was something different.
At first, van Nunen wondered whether there might be something in the tick’s saliva from its previous host; perhaps a bit of protein from an animal like a bandicoot that the human immune system associates with the immunoreactive tick protein, and therefore reacts to equally.
In the end, the answer came from the other side of the world.
A group of US doctors had also been seeing an unexplained surge in severe allergic reactions to a drug used to treat colorectal cancer. As they reported in 2007, nearly one in four patients in Tennessee and North Carolina treated with cancer drug Cetuximab developed a severe reaction, compared to less than one in 100 elsewhere in the country.
What makes this story so fascinating is it’s the only situation in which we can trace the trigger for development of an allergy
After lengthy investigation, researchers found the culprit; galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, or alpha-gal. This carbohydrate is present in all mammals except primates, which therefore also excludes humans. Because Cetuximab is developed using a mouse cell line, it also contains alpha-gal, and that was what patients were reacting to.
When the US researchers learned about the Australian tick bite-related mammalian meat allergy, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. These regions of the US have their own culprit – Amblyomma americanum, or the lone star tick. The geographic distribution of this tick neatly matches the distribution of the Cetuximab reactions.
What makes this story so fascinating is it’s the only situation in which we can trace the trigger for development of an allergy. We have no idea why a person develops an allergy to cats or peanuts or egg. All we know is that at some point, some combination of factors has triggered their immune system into reacting against these otherwise benign allergens.
But with tick-related mammalian meat allergy, it’s very clear.
“It’s the complete package,” van Nunen says. “We’ve got the provoking factor – something that changes the immune system – which is the tick.”
The next question for researchers is to work out why this can happen in people who are only bitten once, while others who experience a lifetime of tick bites get away without allergy.
It’s not all bad news, especially for meat lovers who live in or travel to tick-endemic areas. Tick allergy and mammalian meat allergy are preventable. Part of van Nunen’s work in recent years has been developing educational materials which help educate people on how to safely remove ticks so as to minimise the chance of an allergic reaction happening.
Their mantra is “freeze it, don't squeeze it”. When the tick is squeezed, either by tweezers, or when it is scratched out, it injects more of its saliva and stomach contents into the bite, increasing the chance of a reaction. Instead, experts recommend using an ether-containing spray, like those used to treat warts, which can be purchased from a chemist. Freeze the tick, which kills it instantly, and it will drop off harmlessly.
Van Nunen also takes a preventive approach whenever she ventures to the northern beaches. A self-described ‘committed carnivore’, she’s not taking any chances, wearing insect-repellent clothing and spraying herself with insect spray.
But she also has a grudging admiration for the female tick, who is the one responsible for such gastrointestinal misery.
“I think about the tick as another mother,” van Nunen says. “Here’s a living little creature, she’s trying to do a great job raising a family and protecting them from the elements and making sure they find their way in life, and she just happens to have this really nasty side effect [for] humans.”
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If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.It’s not clear what time Donald Trump, our restless President, was told of the latest North Korean nuclear test, which took place close to midnight Saturday, Washington time, and was that nation’s largest yet—Kim Jong-un’s first hydrogen bomb, apparently. But it only took until 7:30 A.M. for Trump to make an extremely dangerous and volatile situation worse. He did so, in part, by attacking South Korea, America’s ally and a country at risk in any confrontation—its capital, Seoul, home to ten million people, is close to the border, within range of the North’s artillery—for a supposed lack of toughness. Even at a moment of historic crisis, Trump can’t shake his bully’s instincts: disdain those who you think are weak; home in on and mock the vulnerable; blind yourself to the realities of your own circumstances and character; and pretend that a brawl will make it all better, despite the certainty that it won’t.
The first tweet was relatively straightforward: “North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States.....” “Major” is an apt word: tremors of the underground test, including an aftershock suggesting the collapse of whatever cave or chamber it was in, were felt in both South Korea and China, and detected as far away as Argentina. North Korea has falsely bragged about the size of its bombs before, and the stage management of this test—a picture of Kim inspecting a mystery weapon, shown on North Korean television hours before—might have signalled that this, North Korea’s sixth nuclear test, was exaggerated. But the seismic measurements indicate that its power is many times that of North Korea’s previous detonations, and also about a half dozen times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. But, as Trump’s elongated ellipsis suggested, he wasn’t just going to talk about the facts. He had some blame to dole out.
“North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success,” he tweeted next. And then: “South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”
What is that “one thing”? War, missiles, tweets, Trumpism? “Fire and fury like the world has never seen,” as Trump promised to inflict on North Korea last month if the country acted in a hostile manner? (Trump made that threat at an event at which he was supposed to be talking about the opioid crisis, and it had the effect of distracting attention from that situation; similarly, his latest remarks may take necessary attention away from the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.) It seems to have escaped Trump that matters with North Korea, never good, have deteriorated during his Presidency. What has changed is not the South’s “appeasement” but his heedless will toward escalation. That the people of Seoul, who have built up their city, and, over the years, their democracy, in the face of the spectre of war, might have their own definition of fortitude is an idea that he doesn’t seem able to grasp. (As the Times noted, Trump’s anger at South Korea appears to be connected to his anger over his so far unsuccessful attempt to rewrite trade deals with that nation—an issue that, one hopes, will not be entangled with the question of triggering a nuclear war.) Instead, last week, Trump said that he thought that Kim had begun to show “respect” for him. That boast was followed by North Korea’s firing of a ballistic missile on a flight path that took it over the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Trump responded by tweeting, “The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” What, again, is Trump’s answer? China, which quickly condemned the test, could certainly do more, but baiting its officials with talk of their “embarrassment” may not be the best mode of persuasion—unless Trump thinks that he has cowed President Xi Jinping into a state of abject respect for him, too.
“Mr. President, will you attack North Korea?” a reporter asked Trump on Sunday morning, as he was leaving church, a couple of hours after his tweets. He answered, “We’ll see.” By then, his national-security team had mustered, to deal with both Kim and, presumably, Trump. In yet another tweet, a little after noon, Trump said, “I will be meeting General Kelly, General Mattis and other military leaders at the White House to discuss North Korea. Thank you.” It is revealing that Trump still classifies John Kelly, his chief of staff, who, like James Mattis, his Secretary of Defense, is retired from the Marines, as a general and a military leader. And was that “Thank you.” directed at them? There are reasons it should be: within an hour of Trump’s rejection of talk last week, Mattis told reporters that “we’re never out of diplomatic solutions.”
Mattis was also asked, in a separate encounter with reporters last week, why he hadn’t quit working for Trump. “You know, when a President of the United States asks you to do something, I come,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s Republican or Democrat; we all have an obligation to serve. That’s all there is to it.” Mattis added that he had had arguments with Trump, he said, but “this is not a man who’s immune to being persuaded, if he thinks you’ve got an argument. So anyway, press on.” Press on, and hope, meanwhile, that President Trump will not press any buttons.
Perhaps Mattis put that proposition to the test in his meeting with Trump Sunday afternoon. Afterward, Mattis emerged to make a brief statement, in which he said that North Korea should be aware that any threat to America or its allies could be met with a “massive military response.” But he also noted that the United States was not a lone |
for the club right now. It’s looking like we’ll possibly see a takeover offer in the future if the chairman is willing to listen to offers and potentially sell.
I took this screenshot the day I got the fixture list, not after the recent results, so those aren’t shown in this image, but here’s our league schedule so far.
Look at this. The board expects us to win the Division Ten title, as well as the Tester Challenge Cup, the Brian Hall Challenge Cup, and the Mid-Sussex Junior Cup.
I can’t say I approve of having the pressure of being told I must win, but the Chairman’s ideas of what the team can accomplish are in line with my own. As I said in the last post, I’m wanting to put in serious challenges for as many cups as I can, and I’m more than up for the challenge of a back-to-back promotion.
I’ll be back sometime in the future with an update on how the team’s looking in the leagues and the cups, and hopefully it will come with good news from what I hope to be quality signings!
AdvertisementsAn Argentinian company have developed an app which they reckon will revolutionise the way you film and record your skate sessions.
The device, which they’re calling Syrmo, consists of a motion tracking sensor which sits under your trucks like a riser, and a phone app. The sensor records a plethora of stats from your shred session and sends them to your phone.
Being just 1mm thick and weighing just 50g, the riser is very small and Syrmo have promised that it has no effect on your riding or how your deck behaves.
Syrmo’s sensors sit around your trucks.
The idea is that the app will help you learn new tricks by showing you not only the stats, but also a 3D animation of what your board did in the air. The variety of stats it creates are pretty clever – pop force, ollie height, air time and distance.
“The variety of stats it creates are pretty clever – pop force, ollie height, air time and distance.”
They’re also touting it as a tool to help you with your edits – if you get a mate to film you using the Syrmo app on your phone then it’ll know which tricks you landed, and cut the footage around them.
It’ll even add slo-mo at certain points automatically to make everything look moooooore eeeeeppppiiiic.
The 3D model skateboard shows you what you did wrong… or right of course!
It’s a clever idea, but will it catch on? Us skaters are a notoriously technophobic bunch and not generally given to accessorising our decks with anything more complex than a few stickers.
“Us skaters are not generally given to accessorising our decks with anything more complex than a few stickers.”
Also I’m not sure to what extent a series of numbers (or even a jazzy 3D model) would help you improve your skating. How would knowing the exact amount of force I used to pop an ollie help me learn to kickflip?
I’ve never bailed and had a sudden urge to know how high I ollie’d because I already know that, clearly, it wasn’t high enough. It’s always handy to have stats, but sometimes it’s nice to step away from technology and just feel our way around.
The riser with the sensors. All this weights less than 50 grams.
Having said that this is a smart piece of kit and assuming it does everything they claim it can, I can see a certain kind of person being into it. These guys are doing pretty well on their Kickstarter campaign already, which I guess is a good sign.
As to whether it’ll revolutionise skating the way say, Strava has changed cycling? Personally I doubt it, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
What do you think, would you use Syrmo? Let us know in the comments section below!
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Somebody’s Invented an 8-Wheeled Skateboard that can Roll Down Stairs!Update: I just noticed a bunch of traffic coming from a range of places over the internet, so this is probably a lot of peoples first time visiting SavyGamer. If you head to the homepage you'll get a good idea of what this blog typically is. I track all the best deals for video games in the UK, and update regularly. I occasionally write longer articles whenever I feel there is anything important I want to write about. Thanks, and on to the Sonic 2 HD goodness -
This right here is why bedroom development is such a good thing.
A while back, there was an artists impression of what an HD remake of the Mega Drive classic Sonic 2 would look like doing the rounds, you may have seen it -
Hot, no?
Well, a bunch of highly talented people from the'sonic community' have decided that they want to make this artists impression a reality.
The team consists of TheSonicRetard (author of the NeedleMouse Engine, and responsible for the graphics engine of Sonic 2 HD), Tweaker (the creator of Sonic Megamix), BlazeHedgehog and Cinossu (who have already put together the remixed soundtrack), Jman2050, the lead game engine programmer and Vincent who is contributing a lot of the art.
Work so far is in early stages, but still looking incredible so far.
This will be using TheSonicRetard's NeedleMouse engine.
The engine is going to be using a colour palette system with 256 simultaneous colours on screen at once, and all the spites are going to be based on the original games colours, but with four levels of lighting.
No plans for how it's going to be distributed as of yet, they aren't looking that far ahead. They really are just doing it out of love for the game.
Sega have a history for looking at fan-made projects like this and hiring teams based on it. Really, this type of thing would sell bucketloads on the various digital distribution platforms, it would be crazy to not give these guys jobs in this humble bloggers opinion.
The end goal is to remake the entire game, and with the passion and talent shown so far, I cannot wait to see the end result.
Head to SonicRetro forums for more. Here's a bunch more WIP art -President Trump has fallen into a Saudi-Israeli trap that won’t solve the Mideast regional conflicts and won’t lead to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, explains ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
By Alastair Crooke
Jared Kushner did his father-in-law few favors when he enticed President Trump into the endless Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” To this end, as one Israeli journalist put it, Trump’s advisers set up the Saudis to “embrace [him], and do the sword dance around [him], add a huge check for the arms deals – and [in return is expected to] create an anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian axis [around them].”
Yes, the iconic salesman (Trump), was himself sold a proverbial “bridge” (by his son-in-law, fueled by the conceit that having known Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for many years, Kushner was “ideal” for bringing peace to Israel). Trump in Riyadh thus paid full homage to the Sunni narrative that they – the Sunnis – are the innocent victims, and the Shi’a, the dark, nefarious, revolutionary, fifth-columnists, who must be driven back into their “pen.”
Trump has thus declared himself an explicit partisan in the geo-strategic power plays between the region’s northern-tier states and the Gulf states. Instead of remaining distant and “above” these Middle East conflicts, he has allowed himself to be persuaded to do the opposite: to dive in, on the Sunni side (perhaps partly to counterpoint with President Obama’s engagement of Iran).
Why? Well, the dollars (should they materialize), will be useful. But essentially, because Kushner persuaded his-father-in-law that flattering the Saudis and demonizing the Iranians, represented the entry price into the peacemaking process between Israel and the Palestinians, which if achieved, would constitute the Trump foreign policy “legacy” for history.
A Long-term Failure
According to the well-regarded Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, in Maariv, “Someone in Washington studied the map and did their homework. The assessment is that this was a joint effort by Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt [Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations]. They heard from Obama’s people, and also from a few Israelis who spent all their time, energy, and health on the peace process in the last eight years, who explained to them how the smoking and explosive powder keg of the Middle East conflict needed to be approached.”
Yes, they probably spoke precisely with those “peace process” experts who have been in denial – for the last 25 years – to its manifest failure. And therefore, have been unwilling to acknowledge the four basic flaws to the Oslo principles. Instead, we repeat the same flawed approach, over and over, hoping always for a different outcome.
Europe and America have shared a settled conviction over the last decades: It is that Israel, out of its own necessity, must seek to conserve a Jewish majority within Israel. And that with time, and a growing Palestinian population, Israel will at some point have to acquiesce to a Palestinian “state,” in order to maintain that Jewish majority: that is, only by giving Palestinians their own state or somehow dispensing with a part of the Palestinian people that it controls, can Israel’s Jewish majority be preserved. This is the first principle.
This notion seems intuitively so self-evident, that most Americans and Europeans decline to question it. But the recent release of transcripts from the Israeli cabinet discussions in the wake of the Israeli victory in the 1967 Six Day War show clearly that even then, Israel leaders understood this basic dilemma: they heard the contemporary U.S. warnings about having to absorb one million captive Palestinians, but remained defiant, insisting to keep all the land that had occupied in the war.
As then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban noted at the time: “[The Americans’] feeling is yes to Jerusalem, but no to the territories. They are stressing that it would be very bad if the world gets the impression that we really intend to hold onto the entire territory.”
Assuaging the Israelis
This first proposition bequeathed to us the second principle: that of the “security-first doctrine”: that Europe and America, in insisting (to the Palestinians) that they must meet and assuage Israel’s own self-assertion of its security needs, would enable Israel to transition, with confidence, to a two-state solution.
This security-first narrative is persuasive – so persuasive that European and American policy has been skewed almost wholly towards the goal of security trust-building with Israel. This latter goal has been pursued à outrance — beyond even, the point at which any sovereignty residual that might remain after Israel’s assertion of its security requirements, would amount to little more than a continued occupation masquerading as a Palestinian “state.”
Yet, to the frustration of Western leaders, and despite whatever additional security was provided by the Palestinian security forces, it was never enough. Western leaders have found no solution, but to press on, insisting on yet more security co-operation and trust-building with Israel. Indeed, President Trump seems to have pursued this same line: apparently shouting and berating Palestinian leader Abu Mazen for inciting against Israel (and for giving financial support to families whose members, now prisoners, had resisted the Occupation).
But Israel has not conceded a Palestinian State — despite many opportunities over the last 25 years — and does not seem any more disposed to “give” a Palestinian state now. Seldom is it asked why, if the logic is indeed so compelling, have two states not emerged?
Perhaps it is because both the original “Israel surely wants a Palestinian state” premise, and the linked premise that building security trust with Israel is the necessary sine qua non to Israel’s transition into the two-state solution, quite simply, are flawed. Perhaps Israel has always hankered after some alternative way to retain the land, and somehow to contain its population (the recently released records of the post-war cabinet certainly suggest so).
The Two-State Mirage
The evidence of Israeli actions on the ground, too, plainly does not support the contention that Israel has been preparing the transition to a two-state solution of fixed borders, and a sovereign Palestinian state. On the contrary, the evidence points in the opposite direction: that Israel has been intent on frustrating the two-state solution within fixed borders.
But there are two further “givens” to the “process” with Israel that also deserve more critical scrutiny: One, (most favored by the Europeans), is that America can “impose” a solution on Israel. On the basis of my experience as a staff member of Sen. George Mitchell’s peacemaking process, this also is a flawed premise. To appropriate the phrase used in a different context, Israel always “has six ways from Sunday” to circumvent American pressures (which in any case are limited by domestic political considerations).
Finally, does the Arab leadership – as opposed to the street – really want a Palestinian state? I am not so sure. I think they are quite comfortable with things just as they are. The presumption of a strong desire to establish a Palestinian State may be flawed too.
So what is Trump’s (or Kushner’s) “new” plan? Daniel Serioti of Israel Hayom reports on May 24: “A senior official in Ramallah told Israel Hayom that during President Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen … that [Trump] intends to lead a peace process based primarily on the Saudi-Arab peace initiative …
“President Trump told the PA chairman that the peace plan that he was consolidating would be based on promoting a comprehensive regional plan first, as part of the Arab peace initiative. The Palestinian official said that President Trump emphatically told Abu Mazen that this did not mean renouncing the two-state vision as the basis for a future agreement between Israel and the PA, under which a Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel, although the American president would like to consider additional possibilities ‘outside the box.’
“The main possibility is promoting the Saudi-Arab peace initiative first, and only afterwards an interim agreement, in the framework of which the parties would discuss ways to reach a permanent status arrangement that would enable the creation of an independent Palestinian state and both sides declaring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The Palestinian official said that President Trump described the fundamentals of the plan that he is drafting in a very general way and did not go into the particulars, although according to him, the Americans would like to promote the Arab peace initiative so that the beginning will involve an act of normalizing Israel’s relations with the moderate Sunni Arab states.
“Additionally … the Americans will take action to promote direct intensive negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, which will be outlined in a preset timetable, and under which the parties will take action to resolve core issues, primarily delineating the borders of the future Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and the holy places, the fate of the settlements outside the large blocs, the right of return and more.”
Not Much ‘New’
The “new” twist here is a “regional (Sunni-Israeli) alliance” that would initially normalize with Israel, but which then could evolve into a “regional defense alliance,” “under American patronage and with full military and diplomatic American support” and which would be targeted explicitly at Iran and its allies.
But there is nothing truly new here. We have had “inside-out” and “outside-in” initiatives before. But what is different about the Trump/Kushner version is that the late Saudi King Abdullah’s initiative was predicated on Israel establishing a Palestinian State first and normalization with Israel occurring secondly. Trump seems to be inverting the order: Arab normalization first and then an interim agreement with the Palestinians second.
In fact, it all sounds rather like a re-make of the “security-first doctrine”: i.e. that Arab States, by assuaging Israel’s own self-assertion of its security anxieties, would serve, through normalization, to enable Israel to transition with greater confidence to an “interim” Palestinian solution – and maybe even to a permanent solution.
We have here the eternal problem that the Arab leaders cannot afford to normalize without an Israeli concession to the Palestinians, and the Palestinians in turn will not make a gesture, until and unless, Israel halts settlement building, which the latter will not do.
Another reason to think that this plan will come to nothing (after being spun out as long as possible by Prime Minister Netanyahu) is that, while it is true that the Palestinians presently are weak and divided – paradoxically Netanyahu is even weaker. Any concessions to Abu Mazen, however banal, could bring down his government. Netanyahu’s right-wing sees no reason to make any – even symbolic – concessions to the Palestinians. Why should they? They are on the cusp of having it all.
The Trap Closes
This – the Sunni-Israeli regional Alliance; the renewed peace process – is a trap into which Trump has been persuaded to enter. It is a trap, because once entered into, the peace process becomes formaldehyde to all other political processes. How often have we been told “you can’t do this; you can’t do that” because it might endanger the (vacuous) “peace process.”
A peace process gives Israel huge anesthetic leverage in the region – as always it has so done. It is a trap – because it ties Trump into trying to assuage the Irano-phobia of Saudi Arabia, which will prove to be just as insatiable as are Israel’s “security needs.”
These liabilities will undercut Trump’s possibilities for defeating ISIS and for détente with Russia. Russia has been trying to bring the Shi’a and the Turks to the negotiating table on Syria. Trump’s role was to be to help bring the Sunni side to the table – in order to forge a wider regional settlement. That will be less likely now, as Saudi Arabia levers Trump’s visit towards weakening Iran.
With Trump’s homage to the Sunni cause, it is more likely that the Sunni-Shi’a fissure will deepen, rather than its sore edges be reconciled. And, viewed from a pure realpolitik perspective, does Trump really believe that Saudi Arabia and its allies will succeed in weakening the Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq and Hizbullah alliance?
And Israel? The writing was plainly on the wall, as we now know, at those post-Six Day War Israeli cabinet meetings. The Americans did warn the Israeli cabinet that it would become progressively harder and harder for America to defend Israel’s hold over the disempowered, disenfranchised and dispossessed (and enlarging), Palestinian people – if Israel insisted on its “winner takes all” end of war policy.
This is something that still has to play out in its own way. But as White House adviser Steve Bannon noted in his film Generation Zero, “the essence of Greek tragedy is that it is not like a traffic accident, where somebody dies. The Greek sense is that tragedy is where something happens because it has to happen … Because the people involved make it happen. And they have no choice, but to make it happen.”
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.My name is Leon Jermane Walker and I am a whistle-blower. For reporting the discovery of a gross waste of government funds and for reporting the endangerment of my child by her politically well-connected mother, I have faced years of ongoing persecution at the hands of Oakland County Government, my former employer. As a result, my career has been ruined, I’ve been financially destroyed, and in only a matter of days, my family and I will be evicted from our home.
On February 1, 2010, only weeks after I had submitted to Oakland County Government the findings of an investigation I had conducted after discovering what appeared to be a financial boondoggle, I was arrested and charged with a five-year felony by the Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney. I’d learned details of this scheme when, out of fear for the well-being and treatment of our daughter, I reviewed emails written by my wife. In reviewing the emails, I discovered that some correspondence outlined the existence of an ongoing wasteful purchasing scheme that was possibly being used to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from Oakland County taxpayers. In this same email, I also learned of the prolonged and ongoing endangerment of my daughter and stepson.
The arrest effectively silenced me, which I believe was my persecutors’ goal. Parties mentioned in the emails as being involved with the financial scheme included my then-wife, who was a long-time government employee; her second husband (I was her third), who is a long-time government contractor; and his attorney, whose brother was a high-ranking elected official in Oakland County. I believe, and admitted evidence has since suggested, that political influence was used to initiate my malicious prosecution. I was charged with a felony under the claim that reading my spouse’s email was a crime. The emails were in an account that I had created before the marriage. I had accessed it with the password I had used when creating the account, and this was during our marriage, in my home, on my computers, and on my network. I read those emails out of concern for the safety of my child, a concern that was validated by my findings—and in reality, the situation was much worse than I’d ever imagined.
My story was published in the local media on Christmas Eve 2010, and within days it became international news. In response to this coverage though, I received additional attacks from Oakland County, this time from multiple agencies within the government, including my employer, the Executive Branch. Their attacks eventually included a second even more baseless computer crimes charge against me, as they claimed that a request I’d submitted eight months prior under the Freedom of Information Act was somehow a computer crime. Lies were spread about me in the media, and authorities began to covertly attack me in family court, providing defamatory claims in written reports released directly to my ex-wife to aid her in custody disputes. They harassed and intimidated my co-workers and friends, making it fundamentally impossible for them to appear in court as witnesses on my behalf out of fear of being persecuted themselves. Some co-workers were even coerced into making dishonest claims about me in criminal proceedings.
It took two and a half years for me to overcome my persecutors. After surviving years of delays, threats, and attacks, I was finally exonerated when the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office dropped the charges against me the day before trial was to begin. After they had persuaded employees to reverse their earlier claims against me, Oakland County dropped the charges outright. A public trial where the facts of the case could have been presented in court was never allowed to occur.
During this process, actually soon after the Prosecutor’s media attacks against me began, I approached a prominent local civil rights attorney to represent me and my interests. At the time, she claimed to be emphatically in support of me but eventually refused to take any action or even speak publicly on my behalf until I’d won the case. When I’d finally succeeded, however, she reaffirmed her support but refused to pursue the case for months. Her claim was that filing charges at that time would harm the Democratic-incumbent Prosecutor in the upcoming election and give her Republican opponent an edge. Totally shocked by this position and statement, I began to seek other counsel. In response to my efforts, my attorney rushed a woefully inadequate complaint and filed it in Federal Court. This complaint omitted almost any reference to the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office as well as its staff and the civilian parties that had aided them in their attacks. She then modified her argument to me as well, now claiming that she wouldn’t make claims against prosecutorial conduct because of immunity. This claim was thoroughly contradicted, though, by her actions in her own successful argument against prosecutorial immunity in Wendrow v. Michigan Dep’t of Human Services, a case in which she aggressively pursued the prior Oakland County Prosecutor, who happened to be from the Republican Party, which she opposes. After I allowed her to drop from my case due to this very obvious conflict making her unfit to represent my interests, I believe that her actions in communicating with other firms have effectively left me blackballed from representation on my civil action. Without counsel for an extended time, my civil case was eventually dismissed with prejudice, fundamentally stripping me of my right to hold Oakland County accountable for a large number of their actions.
With the criminal charges dismissed before trial and the civil case dismissed as a result of the actions of my attorney, I was never given an opportunity to have my name publicly cleared. No opportunity to clarify the facts to the masses, with frivolous criminal charges and slanderous “hacker” claims from the prosecutor leaving my name soiled with the toxicity of doubt, suspicion, and uncertainty. My professional reputation has been destroyed.
This ordeal has had an absolutely devastating impact on my life and the lives of my family. My career path as a successful IT professional has been fundamentally ended. I have been financially ruined, forced into bankruptcy, and unable to find any work for more than a year after being harassed away from my job with Oakland County. I was for a time dependent on welfare, experiencing the social judgment and stigma which that entails. With utilities shut off more than once and trouble paying for my car, I was forced to sell property, work odd jobs, and appeal to charity when possible to take care of myself and my daughter. After more than a year of searching, I was finally successful at finding employment, although with a long commute and significantly less pay than what I’d known before.
Compounding these terrible experiences, my daughter has made a horrifying claim of being abused by family while in her mother’s care. The claim was reported to authorities, but all criminal investigations were halted without action, as the Oakland County Prosecutor first sat on the complaint for months before transferring it to Genesee County, who have held the complaint since without any action or notification of status. It was almost a year before I could even obtain the police report. In the meantime, my daughter is scarred and has faced tremendous scrutiny and pressure by the family of her alleged abuser for speaking out herself. She has been severely traumatized by this. With the political influence that my ex-wife has and the apparent willingness of Oakland County officials to so abuse their authority and influence to attack me, I don’t feel safe for me or my family anymore.
The financial impact on me for speaking out has been tremendous. As mentioned, my career has been ruined. Most potential employers dismiss me even before an interview, even when they acknowledge the quality of my skill set. I have been repeatedly told of the “alarm” and “concern” they have with me because of my experience with Oakland County. As mentioned, after more than a year of desperately searching, I finally found a job late last year. Unfortunately, the damage has largely been done. The expenses and losses I took in defending myself in this process were well over $100,000, far more than I could ever afford. As a result, my mortgage wasn’t paid and I was forced into bankruptcy.
This week though, things have reached depths that even I couldn’t image. I faced the very difficult task of explaining to my wonderful, amazing daughter that soon we’ll very likely be forcibly evicted from the home that we’ve managed to hold on to through all of this fight. What she’s known as home for her entire life is being ripped away by Freddie Mac. With my mortgage company likely exhausted from my long-term financial difficulties, they lied and cheated their way through the foreclosure redemption to prevent me from saving my home, and Freddie Mac’s legal counsel has been equally callous and disingenuous. Our backs are now against the wall. We have been forced to face this traumatizing reality; we may soon lose our home.
The pain this is causing me is difficult to explain. I spoke out in the public interest for something that I thought I’d be rewarded for. I thought we as taxpayers would benefit, as my findings would be used by responsible people in government to save us all millions in waste. Instead, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars were wasted to destroy me for this. I thought that my actions would protect my daughter from abuse. Instead, she’s faced the worst type of abuse while local law enforcement is so politicized and hostile toward me that my daughter and I don’t even receive protection.
These are apparently the consequences of speaking out. My life and the lives of my family are in ruin. My career prospects have been decimated, and clearing my name seems a near impossibility. I’m even facing eviction from my home by a government agency. I haven’t just been failed by the system as a whistle-blower, I’ve been victimized by abuses of government in the worst ways possible.
What is the state of our nation when this has been allowed to happen?Photo Credit: Mayor of Tel Aviv / Twitter
For the first time ever, the flag of an Arab nation lit up Tel Aviv City Hall late Saturday night to show Israel’s solidarity with the citizens of Egypt in the wake of a deadly attack on Coptic Christians Friday.
Tonight we light up the @TelAviv Municipality with the flag of #Egypt. Those seeking peace will not rest until such horrific acts will end. pic.twitter.com/ym2yiRZClz — Mayor of Tel Aviv (@MayorOfTelAviv) May 27, 2017
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Earlier in the evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly condemned the attack, sending condolences to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the Egyptian people.
Israel strongly condemns the severe terrorist attack in Egypt and sends its condolences to President el-Sisi and the Egyptian people. — PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) May 26, 2017
“There is no difference between the terror of the attack in Egypt and that of attacks in other countries, “ Netanyahu pointed out. “Terror will be defeated more quickly if all countries work together against it.”
A small caravan comprised of two buses and a truck making their way to a monastery south of Cairo were attacked by a team of 10 masked terrorists wearing military uniforms from “Sinai Province,” the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State (ISIS/Da’esh) terrorist organization.
The Islamic State’s Amaq news agency said in a statement the group took responsibility for the attack on “crusaders,” claiming 31 were killed, and another 24 were wounded.
According to Egyptian media, at least 29 people were killed, including 10 children. This is the fourth such attack on Coptic Christians since December.
The terrorists, who stormed the caravan in three SUVs, demanded that the passengers recite the Muslim profession of faith, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, and then opened fire.
Three children survived the bloodbath.
In response, Egyptian President el-Sisi ordered air strikes against terrorist bases in eastern Libya that were linked to Al Qaeda. The Egyptian president also called Coptic Pope Tawadros II on Friday and told him Egypt would not rest until the perpetrators were punished.
U.S. President Donald Trump also condemned the “merciless slaughter of Christians in Egypt,” vowing to crush the “evil organizations of terror” who he said are “engaged in a war against civilization.”A window cleaner works at a branch of HSBC in Leicester, Britain May 16, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Staples - RTSEMTH
LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC (HSBA.L) has begun cutting senior posts in its investment banking division in a cull that could lead to dozens of staff worldwide losing their jobs, according to sources with direct knowledge of the cuts.
HSBC began informing staff in its global banking and markets division in London last week, one of the sources said, with a further round of cuts this week expected to affect around 10 senior people in the unit.
A spokesman for HSBC declined to comment.
The latest round of job cuts at Europe’s biggest bank shows new co-chief of global banking Matthew Westerman is making his mark, two of the sources said.
HSBC announced in February that Westerman would be joining from Goldman Sachs to become co-head of global banking in its investment bank, alongside Robin Phillips. The bank announced at the same time it would enlarge the global banking unit by merging its capital financing business into it.
Capital financing, which helped companies raise funds by debt and equity offerings, had become a separate unit under Spencer Lake in a prior reorganisation in 2013.
Its integration back into the banking division has resulted in a number of duplicated and overlapping roles that are now being eliminated to cut costs, the sources said.
HSBC said last June it would slash nearly one in five jobs, as Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver seeks to combat sluggish growth across the lender’s sprawling empire.
Part of that cull involves cutting back risk weighted assets in the investment banking and trading unit of the bank, known as global banking and markets, by up to one third.The Indian Grand Prix will skip a year in 2014 © Sutton Images Enlarge
Bernie Ecclestone has confirmed the Indian Grand Prix will be dropped from the 2014 calendar before returning in 2015 as an earlier round in the season.
The race is scheduled to take part in October this year, but Ecclestone wants to move it to the first half of the year and the prospect of running one in October 2014 and another in early 2015 would have stretched the circuit's resources too far. Instead the race will take a year break before resuming its five-year contract in an earlier slot on the 2015 calendar.
"When we signed the five-year deal with [organisers] Jaypee, we were keen on going to India in the first half and Jaypee wanted it to be in October," Ecclestone told Indian news agency IANS. "We gave in at that time, but now it looks we will have the race early 2015.
"It [hosting one race in October 2014 and another in early 2015] was too close. Therefore, after speaking to promoters, we think it is best not to have a race in 2014 and have one in 2015,"
Moving the race earlier in the calendar will also take some of the pressure off the packed second half of the season that currently sees a gruelling series of three back-to-back flyaway races. Under Ecclestone's plans for 2015 the Indian Grand Prix will likely be tagged onto the early season flyaways in Bahrain, Australia, Malaysia and China.
"We will have to club India with the four rounds in the Asia Pacific region," Ecclestone confirmed.
Skipping India next year also helps accommodate new races in Russia and New Jersey as well as the return of the Austrian Grand Prix. Ecclestone said India is important to Formula One but warned new races are vying for places on the 20-race calendar all the time.
"The second year is always difficult for the organisers," he said, referring to lower attendance figures at last year's race. "I hope bigger crowds turn up for the third edition.
"I really want it to continue, but it all depends on a lot of other factors. The sport is expanding its base every year."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Four Hydro One employees died when their helicopter crashed on a rural property in eastern Ontario Thursday afternoon.
The one pilot and three crew members were part of a crew performing routine maintenance work on a hydro line and at a hydro tower on a property in the municipality of Tweed, Ont., when the aircraft went down, Hydro One spokesperson Ferio Pugliese confirmed.
Hydro One has not released the names of the victims pending the notification of next of kin, but Pugliese said they were based in different regions from across the province.
The crash happened on Kim Clayton's property on Upper Flinton Road. 'Nobody should have to lose a loved one at this time, or any time of year, let alone when they go to do a job,' she says. (CBC News)
The crash happened shortly before noon ET on Kim Clayton's property on Upper Flinton Road.
Clayton said workers had been working on a hydro tower all week, with helicopters going back and forth, and sometimes landing on a field on the property or dropping workers off at the tower.
She was inside her home when she heard the crash and felt her house shake.
She looked outside to see other hydro workers running toward the tree line. She couldn't see the helicopter, nor could she see any smoke or fire, but she said she saw what looked like a piece of the helicopter in one of the trees.
It took ambulances about 15 minutes to arrive at the remote rural location, about 40 kilometres north of Belleville.
The helicopter crash occurred northeast of Tweed, about 190 kilometres west of Ottawa. (CBC)
'These guys didn't make it'
"When the ambulances weren't leaving [the crash scene], I kind of pieced it together … these guys didn't make it," she said tearfully.
"Four guys die here today on the property. It's pretty shocking."
"Nobody should have to lose a loved one at this time, or any time of year, let alone when they go to do a job," she said.
An Ornge air ambulance was dispatched at 11:53 a.m. and a second air ambulance was dispatched at 12:15 p.m. Both helicopters were later called off.
Police with the Ontario Provincial Police Central Hastings detachment were also among the first to respond to reports of the crash, according to OPP Const. Lisa Robson. The OPP emergency response team and other units also responded to the scene.
OPP and Hydro One trucks stand near the crash site. (Lars Hagberg/Canadian Press)
Hydro One has eight helicopters in a fleet it dispatches to perform work along hydro lines in remote locations. It's the first time one of its helicopter crews has been involved in a fatal incident, Pugliese said.
Pugliese added grief counsellors are being made available to employees and their families.
"We're a family here at Hydro One," he said. "This has certainly touched us, it's been a very remorseful day and we're spending a fair bit of time providing the necessary support to our people within the field and throughout the operation and network."
Energy minister Glenn Thibeault offered condolences to "the families of those lost in the crash" and said the province would be monitoring the situation closely and providing updates as they become available.
Hydro One says it is making grief counsellors available. (Lars Hagberg/Canadian Press)
TSB investigating
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has been notified and three of the agency's investigators have been dispatched to investigate.
The helicopter was a 1999 Aerospatiale AS350 B2, according to Alexandre Fournier, a spokesperson with the TSB.
Investigators will take pictures of the aircraft and gather as much data as possible. They'll also interview potential witnesses as part of the investigation.
We are deeply saddened to confirm an incident involving one of our helicopters in the Tweed area has resulted in four employee fatalities. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families & colleagues at this |
go anywhere and that I wanted nothing from them. They suggested that if I performed this task, I would never have problems at all, and 'd be able to even openly teach anywhere, for example, to teach the Arabic language.
Cooperation with the "state" with a pistol in hand
CK: Why did they decide that you need it?
I felt at this moment that I should not take the pistol by my hands, but I had no power; I was, as if paralyzed
Ruslan: Some ten days before I was taken by these people, I was summoned to the Spiritual Administration of Muslims (SAM) of Dagestan. There, they talked with me, asked about my religious understanding of certain issues and about Allah Almighty; they asked about jihad, Syria, how I treat Salafism, how I pray. They asked whether I listen to some preachers or not. I replied that since I speak Arabic, I didn't listen to Russian-speaking preachers. They wrote down all my answers. One of them was a Sufi, wearing a skullcap. And the one who recorded our conversation was clearly a special agent. Even then it seemed to me that they knew something about me.
One of them asked if I wanted to work with them, with the Muftiate. I asked, "What can I do with you?" They answered that I could teach the grammar of the Arabic language, since I know it well; they said that I could teach at their courses. I said that I didn't come to look for work; I just came because I got a call and was asked to come.
CK: Was the interest in you from the SAM associated with your knowledge of Arabic?
Ruslan: Most likely, yes.
CK: You said that FSB agents also spoke about a possibility of teaching. Did they talk about working for the SAM?
I am the state, and I offer you to cooperate
Ruslan: They didn't say that I was offered a job particularly at the SAM. They just said that I could teach Arabic, the grammar, and no one would say anything to me. I replied that I was not going to teach, and that I learned the language for myself. They said that I was certainly teaching somewhere on the Internet. I answered no. They began telling that those who cooperate with the state never regret it and can solve any problem. The one who talked with me, just said, "I am the state, and I invite you to cooperate." He took out some paper and told me to sign it. I said that I wouldn't sign anything, and that I didn't intend to go anywhere. Then, the one who sat next to me said that they would give me 20 years in jail; and that I would be jailed in Russia, not in Dagestan. When asked what they gave such a long term for, he replied that they would find for what. They said that I would be prosecuted as terrorists' sponsor. I said, "What kind of sponsor am I? I'd like someone sponsor me; my own financial position was poor at the moment." The one opposite sat, said, "He's a normal guy. Don't pick on him." However, he said that if the state was offering, one should agree in an amicable way. He said that this was being done for the people, for the country. He said that in the republic "different things" happen, explosions, and that they couldn't control everything; and as a result, Muslims suffer. I said that among my acquaintances there was no one who would have arranged some kind of explosion, and even if my brother did it – it doesn't at mean that I am involved in it.
CK: What was the end of your conversation?
Ruslan: The one, who brought me, came out of the room. Then a knock came on the door; the girl from the reception came in and brought water with transparent glasses. She asked whether we wanted anything else. They asked for coffee with milk and tea. I replied that I wouldn't have anything. She left. I looked – they themselves began drinking water, so, I thought that the water was normal, and I also drank it. It was hot in the room. And after that, as I remember, when talking to them, I ceased to control myself; it seemed to me that my head was now cracked from pain. There was a moment when I was completely sick; these people were sitting around me. I saw that the one who was sitting on the bed all the time in silence, took out a pistol and was putting it into my hand. I felt at that moment that I should not take it, but I had no power to resist, I was, as if, paralyzed. But I think I could push him away. I don't know for how long this state lasted.
CK: Did you touch the pistol as a result?
Ruslan: I pushed it away. I understood that the man behind me would squeeze my hands; I tried to push him away. I don't know whether I did it or not, but I heard the pistol fall, and he cursed.
CK: Do you think that they needed these fingerprints to make you more cooperative? That this pistol with your fingerprints could then be planted on you?
Ruslan: Yes, I think so.
I already didn't care, I had such a bad condition that I was ready to sign anything, for them just to let me go.
Night escape
CK: For how long have you been in the dim state?
I was in such a bad condition that I was ready to sign, just to be able to go
Ruslan: I don't remember for how long it lasted, but when I started to recover, it was clear that it was already dark outside. They talked among themselves and discussed something. One of them looked at me and said, "You look somewhat quite pale. Maybe you got too excited, didn't you?" He asked the other one, "What should we do?" He offered to let me go, so that I come next time. They said that they gave me five days, after which I should come and sign the paper that I would cooperate. It was already the same for me; I was in such a bad condition that I was ready to sign, just to be able to go.
CK: In the end, did you sign anything?
Ruslan: In my right mind, I didn't sign anything. Therefore, they added something to the glass with water, so I could not control my actions. I don't remember everything.
CK: Did you leave the hotel yourself?
Ruslan: No, I didn't. The one, who was sitting on the bed, took me by hand, we went down the stairs and got into the car. It was another car. I was seated behind; he himself sat in front. I came up with an idea that they would take me somewhere out of the city and kill me there. When I got into the car, I felt very easy, maybe because we went out into the fresh air. I lost consciousness.
I thought he would shoot me in the back now
I was awakened by my house. I didn't want to get out, but I saw that they brought me to my home. I didn't believe it yet. I thought he would shoot me in my back. I went into the yard. I don't know how I went up to my room, and fell on the sofa. It seemed to me that I slept for very long. I woke up because I didn't have enough air; and my heart was beating very hard. I knew that I might die now. I intuitively knew that my brother was sleeping in the next room. I don't know how I crawled there, turned on the light, asked to call an ambulance, and again fainted. Then I came to my senses from the fact that someone was pulping me. I was in the sofa, and there were my relatives around me. They called a doctor-neighbour, who said that my kidney pressure had jumped; therefore I felt not enough air. I said that I never had any kidney problems.
I wanted very much to sleep; my eyes were tired, but because I was choking, I could not sleep. The doctor gave me a sedative, I felt a bi better and fell asleep. The next day I still felt a strong weakness, and could not walk and even stand without help. But I couldn't fall sleep for a long time; I often woke up.
CK: How did you decide that you need to leave?
Ruslan: For several days a car with darkened windows stood near our house. It was an expensive car. None of our neighbours had such a car. I realized that I was shadowed. I even went out a couple of times, walked around and tried to see who was in that car, but I could not see them. I think people were there.
I talked to my relatives. I had never had such health problems. I said that they wanted to recruit me. My father asked me if I checked my underwear, and whether there was nothing there. Because they may give a person to drink something like this, then take a picture on some girl; and tomorrow she would write an application that she had been raped. There were a lot of such cases. But I didn't remember anything like that, and everything was clean on me. And I told my father that I didn't think that this had happened to me.
Being gay in the Caucasus is a double tragedy: this person will always hide, even from his closest people, from his family and from his friends
I didn't tell my family about all the details of our conversation, that they had dirt on me and that they had hacked my page.
My relatives told me that I should not just sit and wait; that if those people gave me five days, it meant they would come and make me sign it. I decided to leave. It was on the second or third day after the interrogation.
I decided to escape at night. Through the neighbouring vegetable gardens, I went to the highway. I took nothing with me, not even the phone, because they could trace it, I understood it. Brother drove to pick me up.
For some time I stayed with him, but I understood that I could not hide for a long time in this place. Someone could come to him and see me, someone who knew me. Then my relatives gave me money and a foreign passport, and then we left. We managed to drive to a neighbouring republic, and from there went abroad. Brother saw me off almost to the checkpoint and waited for me to pass through it. We thought that if they stopped me, it means that I was wanted. Five days were over; and they could have looked for me. But on the border, I showed only my internal passport and passed. They asked about the aim of the visit; I said that I was going to visit my relatives.
CK: Was it the border with Azerbaijan?
Ruslan: Yes. At the border, I took a taxi and went to Baku. I stayed there for a while, but I understood that I couldn't stay there for too long, because they could put on the wanted list. I had no phone and no one to contact. I went to an Internet cafe, entered my Skype; I wanted to talk to my brother, but he was not there. I visited it a couple of times more, but he was not there, although we agreed with him that if I passed successfully, then we would meet in Skype.
CK: Did you have some plan?
Ruslan: I had a goal – to go as far away as possible. But even in Baku, I didn't feel calm. It seemed to me that they were following me; that at any moment I could be extradited. I could not believe that I had escaped them. I even thought that I would be handed over by the taxi driver who drove me from the border.
Turkey – temporary shelter
CK: Have any of your relatives or friends learnt about the real reason for your departure, and about the blackmail?
Ruslan: They know only part of the story. My relatives and my brother knew most of all. But the fact that I was blackmailed and that I'm a person of non-traditional orientation – nobody knew that.
CK: Have any special agents contacted you or your relatives after that?
Ruslan: Exactly five days later, they came to our house. They knocked and said they wanted to talk to me. They were told that I was not at home, but they didn't believe. They went into my room – there were my phone and my things there. They searched the house and even the barn. When my relatives were asked about the reason, they showed a piece of paper that they were from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), division for combating organized crime. I learned about this later, when in five or six months I could contact my brother from Turkey. He told me that they had come home, and that at first the car at the house was still standing.
And last year they themselves wrote to me in my WhatsApp. When they did it, I changed the number immediately, and didn't save their messages. They wanted to meet me here, to talk.
CK: Do any of your friends in the Caucasus know about your sexual orientation? How do they treat it?
Ruslan: If someone knows, then only those who are themselves "in the topic".
CK: Have you tried to contact members of the LGBT community with a request to help with the evacuation?
Ruslan: No, I haven't.
CK: Did you understand at that moment that such help could be rendered?
Ruslan: I thought that if such help really existed, it would be connected with some noise, that they would show me everywhere, and I absolutely didn't want it.
CK: What was the danger of the noise?
Ruslan: I'm not ready to openly declare my orientation to my relatives and friends; we're not in Moscow: here, everyone knows who lives where.
CK: How did your move occur? Did your relatives help you?
Ruslan: When I left, my relatives raised money for me. In Turkey, I was helped by a man whom I had known for a long time. He lived in another city. When I was able to contact him, he helped me with a residence permit.
CK: Do you communicate with members of the local gay community in Turkey?
Ruslan: I'm not visiting any clubs and bars here; it's not mine, if I communicate, then somewhere in a cafe, just for the sake of communication. I have a couple of friends here. One guy is Russian-speaking; he has lived here for a long time; and one is a Turk, who finished his studies last year; he works in a bank. I got acquainted with him via my Russian-speaking friend; we are friends, sometimes we meet, talk about life, about what is happening in Turkey; we can go to the movies together, take a walk on holidays. I'm talking about those who are "in the topic".
As for the attitude towards gay people in Turkey, then, according to my Turkish friend, before the attitude towards people with non-traditional orientations used to be more tolerant. I'm not talking about ordinary people; people in themselves here are tolerant, I'm talking about the authorities. I think it's a matter of time. Persecutions may start here, like in Russia.
The situation now, for example, differs from that which was two years ago. This applies not only to gays, but also to people from the Caucasus and other visitors. If earlier the authorities of Turkey closed their eyes to everything or granted asylum, now, it is not so. I have many acquaintances, who have their residence permits not extended. When time comes to update their documents, they are detained and put into deportation centres, trying to expel them from the country. Then, the whole community has to raise money to hire advocates. I'm not talking about those who are "in the topic", I say in general.
CK: If you are threatened with deportation, what will you do? Will you seek help in organizations that defend LGBTs' rights?
Ruslan: No, I will try to leave for one of visa-free countries and get lost there.
CK: There is enough information in the Caucasus that if a person has non-traditional orientation, he may be killed even by his own family members. What is the situation in Turkey?
Ruslan: Here, it seems, it doesn't end in murders. In extreme cases, in religious families, they may reject their child, and break their relationships. But in other families, people are not so conservative. Children can confess to their parents, and they know about it in the family. It's in big cities. They may not approve it, but won't expose a person to be a pervert or an outcast.
CK: Have Russian power agents realized their threats through the spread of compromising materials?
Ruslan: No, they haven't.
CK: What do you think why?
Ruslan: It's possible, not to have noise in the media.
On life of gays in Chechnya and Dagestan
CK: Do you know any other cases of pressing gays in Northern Caucasus?
Ruslan: I can't say anything about myself lately, because I was not there. But from the stories of my acquaintances I know that certain actions were taken there precisely by power structures to recruit young people and use them for their own purposes. This took place in Dagestan and Chechnya.
The let the person understand that they know what he was doing; they know about his connections with other guys, and thus, manage to recruit him. He became an activist, went to the "Mashuk" camp.
He was told that they knew what he was doing; they knew about his connections with other guys, and managed to recruit him. He became an activist, participates in various events organized by the state, films videos; he went to the "Mashuk" camp
I had one acquaintance. He met someone on the Internet, it was an alien man, who invited him to his home; and there, they were already waiting for him; as I understand, the beat him up, took away the phone. He was told that they knew what he was doing; they knew about his connections with other guys, and managed to recruit him. He became an activist, participates in various events organized by the state, films videos; he went to the "Mashuk" camp.
CK: What, in your estimation, is the number of gays in Northern Caucasus?
Ruslan: In the Caucasus, society is more conservative. Nobody advertises, we have no organizations like in Moscow or Saint Petersburg; there are no places where we can meet openly. It seems to me that in Dagestan this is about 5% of the male population.
CK: The male population of Dagestan is about 1.4 million (according to the 2010 census, – note of the "Caucasian Knot"). That is, according to your estimates, there are about 80,000 gays in the republic, aren't they?
Ruslan: I can't talk about numbers in absolute terms. I have no exact information.
You want me killed? They'll kill me. Why are you asking about it?
People usually create families, but this thing remains inside the person. I know there are people in Dagestan who have such stories: they got married, because this was already demanded by the society, but at the same time they have guys with whom they can meet. It's hold back, but the family may know.
CK: And in Chechnya?
Ruslan: In Chechnya, I have only a couple of friends. After the recent events covered by publications in the "Novaya Gazeta", I contacted my friend from there, and he told me that if he said anything on this topic, he would be killed. He asked directly, "Do you want me killed? I will be killed. Why are you asking about this?" I asked another friend of mine, if he had thought of moving to another region, to Moscow or somewhere else, because sooner or later they could learn about him and do something with him; even someone from his own family. He replied that he had not thought of moving, but if they found out, it would be a shame for the family and he would be killed.
CK: What can you say about the scandalous story with secret gay prisons (according to Radio Liberty, such prisons are located in Argun and Tsotsi-Yurt, – note of the "Caucasian Knot")?
Ruslan: As for Chechnya, it seems to me that everything is possible there. The same secret prisons, where ordinary people were kept not because of their orientation, but simply for criticizing the authorities; everyone knows that these prisons exist there. And since they exist, why couldn't they keep gays in them? But these are not special prisons, but the same ones.
About gays in the Muftiate, Caucasian lesbians and farce dating in the network
CK: The "Novaya Gazeta" reported that among the gays persecuted in Chechnya there are representatives of the Muftiate, and other well-known people of the republic. Do you know anything about such cases?
Ruslan: A year ago I talked with my friend from Grozny; he then told me that in the Muftiate itself it is very widespread. How did he know it, I don't know. But he spoke about it confidently and didn't explain how he had known that. I don't know about other cases with famous people.
CK: Mostly, media report about persecutions of gays. Do you know any cases of harassment of homosexual women?
Ruslan: It seems to me, it's easier for them, because in relation to a woman this is never perceived so negatively. They may think that her mind was ill, due to the fact that she had not got married for a long time; and they will try to marry her. But I don't know such cases that there were problems with unconventional women, because it is softer perceived than in the case of guys.
CK: How do members of the gay community communicate in Northern Caucasus? Are there any forms of interaction and support?
Ruslan: There are no public organizations. The only thing thy have there – individual dating through the Internet. They mostly get acquainted with "Hornet" (social network for gays, – note of the "Caucasian Knot"). Usually they communicate with people from their republic, but sometimes they can go to another city, to another region.
CK: How big is the risk to get acquainted, through these networks, with a dummy person, who works for special services?
Ruslan: It happens often. Policemen extorted money from someone; or they wanted to recruit someone. Everyone has a different story. There is a risk, but still people can communicate. Besides, at first, they get acquainted, nobody drags someone into the bed at once; they just communicate; and sometimes it takes months.
CK: How did the gay community in the Caucasus react to the initiative of GayRussia activists to hold parades in the Caucasus (in March 2017, applications were submitted for gay parades in Nalchik and Cherkessk, – note of the "Caucasian Knot")? Do you support such initiatives?
Ruslan: I don't know anything about this. It seems to me, as far as the Caucasus is concerned, the society will accept it with hostility. Now, this problem is hushed up, but if to hold openly, like in Moscow or Saint Petersburg, then, firstly, they will not let you hold the action, and, secondly, no one will go there. Local gays don't support such initiatives, at least those from my circle of acquaintances.
CK: Are they not ready to participate in parades, or don't they support them in principle?
Ruslan: They don't approve it. Being gay in the Caucasus is a double tragedy; this person will always hide it, even from his closest people, from his family and friends.
And what if to return?
CK: Do you consider the option of returning home?
Ruslan: I would like to see my relatives. Being here, I realized how much I'm attached to my home and to my friends, who stayed there, but it seems to me that in the near future this is impossible. If I try to return there, they'll start recruiting me again, or maybe they'll kill me.
CK: Are you ready for the situation when your orientation becomes known at home?
Ruslan: I think not.
CK: What could the consequences be, if your relatives know about your orientation?
Ruslan: At best – expulsion from the family and the society forever.
CK: Have the story with fingerprints on the pistol or any other persecutions received continuation?
Ruslan: At first, the district policeman often came and bothered my relatives. And some person contacted me by the WhatsApp. And then they asked my relatives to contact me to make sure that I hadn't gone anywhere, that I was still in Turkey. They almost threatened my relatives. It seems to me that in any case they wouldn't let me live peacefully. When I talked with their man, he said he would solve all my problems, "It's okay, and you don't have to worry." And when they came to my house, the local district policeman and some other man, they said that they were aware of my affairs and that I could return freely, and I would have no problems. Judging by the way they are interested in my situation and where I am, it seems to me that it is not safe there. Otherwise, they would have forgotten about me.
Interviewed by Oleg Zuber, May 16, 2017
To ensure the respondent's anonymity, certain names and details have been changed.Boko Haram shows girls kidnapped from Chibok in a video released in May (Photograph from AFP)
West African terrorist outfit Boko Haram reportedly kidnapped over four hundred young women and children as it fled from the northeastern Nigerian town of Damasak earlier this month. The jihadist group was driven out of the town by troops from Niger and Chad over the weekend of March 7.
Near the border with Niger, Damasak was originally taken over by Boko Haram in November. The fighters had posed as traders when they attacked the town’s market. In the initial attack, many soldiers and townspeople fled.
One trader stated that in Tuesday’s attack, the insurgents “took 506 young women and children [in Damasak]. They killed about 50 of them before leaving … We don’t know if they killed others after leaving, but they took the rest with them.” Townspeople reported that the terrorists rounded up their captives in the main mosque before taking them away. The exact number has yet to be confirmed by officials.
Boko Haram received international attention last April when the group kidnapped over 200 girls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok. In the attack, the group arrived in a coordinated convoy of some 60 vehicles, including 40 motorcycles. Nigerian forces have yet to locate and rescue the girls.
Three weeks after they were kidnapped, Boko Haram leader Abu Bakr Shekau threatened in a video “I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah.”
Boko Haram displayed the girls dressed head-to-toe in traditional Islamic garb in another video released a week later, stating they had been “converted” to Islam. Shekau later claimed that the girls were married off.
It is not clear yet what Boko Haram will get from their new captives taken from Damasak. However, a Nigerian official commented that they are being used as “human shields.”
During the second half of 2014, Boko Haram stepped up its campaign to carve out a caliphate in northeastern Nigeria. At one point, the group had taken control over a significant portion of the area. However Nigeria, joined by forces from Chad and Niger, launched a coordinated offensive against Boko Haram earlier this year, retaking much of the territory the group had controlled.
Nevertheless, attacks launched last week coupled with an additional mass kidnapping illustrate that the jihadist insurgency remains a threat.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.Dow Jones: -3,12%; SP 500: -3,52%; Nasdaq: -3,18%
La Bolsa de Nueva York ha vivido la peor sesión de 2015 con una corrección de más del 3% en los tres principales índices, que también sufren el mayor retroceso semanal desde 2011. Apple, por su parte, se desploma más de un 5% en la mayor caída desde enero de 2014. Los inversores temen que China provoque un accidente en el crecimiento global.
DOW JONES 25.927,250 -0,50% -130,73 Max: 26.036,53
Min: 25.877,24
Volume: -
MM 200 : 25.076,90
Al cierre de la sesión, el Dow Jones ha caído un 3,12%, el S&P 500 corrige un 3,18% y el Nasdaq se hunde un 3,52%. En el caso del Dow Jones, ha retrocedido más de 500 puntos hasta 16.459,55 puntos. Es la primera vez que sufre una caída de este tamaño desde agosto de 2011 y la tercera vez que ocurre en los últimos cinco años. Mientras que el S&P 500 pierde los 2.000 puntos por primera vez desde febrero.
La semana ha sido nefasta para la Bolsa de Nueva York. El Dow Jones y el S&P 500 han retrocedido un 5,8% mientras que el índice tecnológico se hunde un 6,8%. Son las mayores caídas semanales desde septiembre de 2011.
Lea también: China y Grecia golpean al Ibex: se desploma un 5,58% en la semana y retrocede a mínimos de enero
Este viernes, Estados Unidos ha comenzado la jornada conociendo el Índice manufacturero de China, lo que ha sido una nueva losa para el mercado. El dato ha dejado un nivel de 47,1 puntos, respecto a los 47,7 esperados y los 47,8 del mes de julio, lo que pone de manifiesto que Beijing debe emplearse a fondo para alcanzar el crecimiento estimado para este año del 7%. De hecho, tal y como apunta el analista de ING, Tom Condon, a MarketWatch, indica que “tienen que doblar los esfuerzos hacia el estímulo”.
Si China pasase de crecer a ritmos del 7,5% a hacerlo a ritmos del 4 o 5%, el efecto sobre la economía mundial sería similar a si Estados Unidos entrase en recesión
Así, las dudas sobre China han vuelto a sobrevolar Wall Street, que se ha visto inmerso en una dinámica de ventas globales en renta variable. Las bolsas europeas también se han desplomado, con una caída en el día del 2,98% para el Ibex y del 5,6% en la semana. Los inversores temen que el gigante asiático frene el crecimiento mundial.
“Más allá de los desequilibrios y las tensiones que aparecen en las finanzas chinas, lo que realmente temen los inversores es que el país desacelere significativamente su crecimiento. Si China pasase de crecer a ritmos del 7,5% a hacerlo a ritmos del 4 o 5%, el efecto sobre la economía mundial sería similar a si Estados Unidos entrase en recesión”, señala Daniel Pingarrón, estratega de mercados de IG.
Lea también: La bolsa de China va camino de repetir el crash bursátil de 1929
“La incertidumbre y la negatividad en general está pesando en el mercado. Hay una falta de noticias económicas positivas para motivar a los compradores”, señala David Kelly, jefe de estrategia global de JP Morgan Funds, en declaraciones a CNBC. De hecho, recuerda que “no hay nada particularmente negativo en las perspectivas económicas de Estados Unidos".
A nivel técnico, la caída no debe sorprender ya que este jueves "se rompieron casi todos los soportes técnicos de corto plazo", indica Michael James, de Wedbush Securities, en declaraciones a Bloomberg.
RESERVA FEDERAL
La incertidumbre y la negatividad en general está pesando en el mercado. Hay una falta de noticias económicas positivas para motivar a los compradores
Sin embargo, un frenazo de la economía global podría frenar la incipiente recuperación de Estados Unidos. Para colmo, la Reserva Federal preocupa, y mucho. Las actas de la última reunión del Comité Federal de Mercado Abierto (FOMC) añadieron el mensaje de que “se acercan las condiciones” para realizar la primera subida de tipos de interés en nueve años.
El petróleo también ha vuelto a exhibir una jornada de desplome y ha perdido los 40 dólares por primera vez desde 2009. El crudo está en su octava semana consecutiva de caídas en la racha perdedora más larga desde 1986.
Ante el temor que tienen los inversores a la renta variable en este momento, han apostado por los bonos del Tesoro a 10 años. Los bonos se han disparado y su rentabilidad ha caído hasta el 2,046%, un mínimo en cuatro meses.
EMPRESAS
Todas las compañías del Dow Jones han cerrado en negativo este viernes. La peor parada ha sido Apple, que se ha desplomado un 6,12% en su mayor retroceso desde el 28 de enero de 2011. La compañía genera en torno al 20% de sus ingresos en China, con lo que los temores a una desaceleración del crecimiento del gigante asiático están castigando a los títulos de la tecnológica. Mientras que las devaluaciones del yuan de la semana pasada no ayudan.
Netflix, uno de los grandes ganadores de Wall Street en 2015, está viviendo ahora un momento difícil en bolsa. La compañía ha cerrado este viernes con una caída del 7,58%.
Es difícil encontrar rendimientos positivos este viernes negro en la Bolsa de Nueva York. Uno de ellos es para Hewlett-Packard, que sube un 0,44% después de presentar unos resultados que han sorprendido al alza al mercado.
Lea también: Claves bursátiles de la próxima sesión: discurso de Dennis Lockhart, de la Fed
OTROS MERCADOS
Los futuros sobre el barril de crudo caen 2,47%, hasta $40,30, en el Nymex.
Los bonos del tesoro a 10 años suben +7/32 dólares; su rentabilidad cae hasta el 2,046%.
El euro/dólar cotiza en los 1,1365.
Lee además:
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Krugman y el'macrocastigo' a Grecia: advierte de que el país ha quedado en manos de las empresas
Consultorio de análisis técnico: Dia, Telefónica, IAG, Endesa y seis valores más bajo la lupa
Varoufakis: 'Hemos traicionado a la mayoría del pueblo griego'
EEUU mata al 'número 2' del Estado Islámico en un ataque en IrakThe political instability continued as soldiers attacked an army barracks on Oct. 21, apparently in an attempt to topple the government. A dissident army captain was arrested on an offshore island on Oct. 27 and accused of being the organizer of the countercoup attempt. Two critics of the government were also assaulted and then left outside the capital.
From April to July there were at least 20 landings in Guinea-Bissau of small planes that United Nations officials suspected were drug flights — traffic that could represent more than half the estimated annual cocaine volume for the region. The planes need to carry a one-and-a-half-ton cargo to make the trans-Atlantic trip viable, officials say. Europe, already the destination for about 50 tons of cocaine annually from West Africa, United Nations officials say, could be in for a far greater flood.
Was the military coup itself a diversion for drug trafficking? Some experts point to signs that as the armed forces were seizing the presidency, taking over radio stations and arresting government officials, there was a flurry of drug activity on one of the islands of the Bijagós Archipelago, what amounted to a three-day offloading of suspicious sacks.
That surreptitious activity appears to have been simply a prelude.
“There has clearly been an increase in Guinea-Bissau in the last several months,” said Pierre Lapaque, head of the regional United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for West and Central Africa. “We are seeing more and more drugs regularly arriving in this country.”
Mr. Lapaque called the trafficking in Guinea-Bissau “a major worry” and an “open sore,” and, like others, suggested that it was no coincidence that trafficking had spiked since the coup.
Joaquin Gonzalez-Ducay, the European Union ambassador in Bissau, said: “As a country it is controlled by those who formed the coup d’état. They can do what they want to do. Now they have free rein.”
The senior D.E.A. official said, “People at the highest levels of the military are involved in the facilitation” of trafficking, and added: “In other African countries government officials are part of the problem. In Guinea-Bissau, it is the government itself that is the problem.”
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United Nations officials agree. “The coup was perpetrated by people totally embedded in the drugs business,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the political environment here.
The country’s former prosecutor general, Octávio Inocêncio Alves, said, “A lot of the traffickers have direct relationships |
of blood.
Ortega had stabbed herself in the throat.
'I didn’t do that,' Yoselyn Ortega insisted in jailhouse interview with New York Daily News.
'Someone else did.'
Ortega, who w orked as nanny for Marina and Kevin Krim, did not say who else could be responsible for murdering the children.
Ortega, Lucia and Leo had been due to meet Mrs Krim and Nessie at a dance studio, but the mother became concerned when they failed to turn up and returned to the home.
After learning from the doorman that the nanny had not left the building, Mrs Krim frantically searched the apartment and came across the grisly scene in the bathroom.
Ortega's suicide bid failed and she was put in a medically-induced coma.
When questioned by police after awaking from the coma, the nanny attempted to paint Mrs Krim in a bad light, shifting part of the blame for the tragedy on her.
Ortega, who had told neighbors and family that she was short of money, revealed she resented her employers because they kept telling her what to do and asked her to do the housework.
Plea: Yoselyn Ortega, pictured centre, has pleaded not guilty to killing six-year-old Lucia Krim (right) and her two-year-old brother Leo while they were in her care at their Manhattan home
'She said something like, "I'm paid to watch the children, not clean up and do housework",' a law-enforcement source said of Ortega’s statements to police after she woke from the coma.
Yoselyn became extremely animated when she discussed the incident with police, telling officers that she had numerous disagreements with mother Marina about how the kids were being cared for.
Reports claimed Marina didn't think Yoselyn was interacting with the kids enough and was giving them junk food.
Loss: Two-year-old Leo and his big sister Lulu, six, were found in a pool of blood in the family's home
Victims: Only Nessie, whose picture has been pixelated, escaped harm as she was with her mother
The Krims were also reportedly worried about Ortega's job performance in the weeks leading up to the killings and had told her that if she didn't improve, they might need to replace her.
But the Krims' extended family dispute they treated her poorly, explaining that they paid for her to travel on holidays and even visited her family in the Dominican Republic.
In April, Ortega, was ruled fit to stand trial and will now face a jury for two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Family: Lulu is pictured with her father Kevin Krim and mother Marina Krim, who found her children stabbed in the bathtub and their nanny with a slit throat and wrists on the bathroom floor
Last month the Krim's revealed they are expecting a baby boy in October,
'Hello everyone, We are very happy to let you know that Marina is expecting a baby in the fall,' read the message on the Lulu & Leo Fund.
'Nessie can’t wait to welcome her new baby brother. We are filled with many emotions as we look to the future, but the most important one is hope. We are very grateful to you all for your amazing support.'
In January, Mr Krim, an executive at America's CNBC television station, said that they are drawing strength from their remaining child.
He said: 'Marina and I couldn't be more proud of her - she is very smart, beautiful and tough. And she's grown so much over the past two months. She saves us every day.'
Marina and Kevin Krim, whose son and daughter were stabbed to death last year, held a fundraiser on Wednesday for the charity set up in honor of their childrenCustomers at a McDonald's outlet, the first one that opened in China in 1990, at the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen neighboring Hong Kong on March 18, 2013. REUTERS/Bobby Yip McDonald's global sales at stores open at least 13 months declined 3.7% in August.
That the worst same-store sales decline that the fast-food giant has reported since March 2003, when global sales also fell 3.7%. It also marks the fourth straight month of comparable sales declines in the U.S., which accounts for about 32% of McDonald's revenue.
Same-store sales in the U.S. were down 2.8%, and in the Asia/Pacific, Middle East, and Africa region they dropped 14.5%.
"During August, McDonald's global business faced several headwinds that impacted sales performance," McDonald's President and Chief Executive Officer Don Thompson said in a statement. "We are diligently working to effectively navigate the current market conditions to regain momentum. For the long term, we remain focused on strengthening the key foundational elements of our service, operations and marketing to maximize the impact of our strategic growth priorities for our customers and our business."
The company cited weak performance in Russia and ongoing fallout from a health scandal that affected one of its food suppliers in China as key factors affecting its sales.
Domestic same-store sales dropped 3.2% in July and 3.5% in June.As I said in my last entry, I was in Amsterdam for ECLM 2011, once again smoothly organized by Edi Weitz and Arthur Lemmens, but this time under the aegis of the Stichting Common Lisp Foundation (of which more a bit later). After leaving the comfortable café, where Luke and Tobias (along with a backpack's worth of computing equipment on its way to visit St Petersburg) eventually turned up, it was time to go for the Saturday evening dinner, held at Brasserie Harkema. In the olden days, when I had time to do a certain amount of public-facing Lisp development, I got used to receiving the adulation of a grateful public – this time, at the dinner, I happened to sit next to someone called Lars from Netfonds. “Hmm,” said something at the back of my mind, ”that rings a bell.” Lars who? Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen. My inner fanboy went a bit squeee – even to the point of explaining what gmane was to a third party in his presence. Still, it was nice to be able to say a heartfelt “thank you” in person to someone whose software has saved me time and a certain amount of embarrassment. Other topics of conversation at the dinner included a discussion with R. Matthew Emerson (of Clozure) about the social aspects of Free Lisp development, a topic on which I have written before; contrasting the attitudes and experiences of contributors and users (small and large) of Clozure CL and SBCL was interesting. It was also nice to be able to talk about Lisp-based music analysis, synthesis and generation programs; reminding myself that I do still know about that landscape enough to fill people in.
The meeting itself, as others have observed over the years, is only partly about the talks: a substantial part of the goodness is in the chats over coffee and lunch. Edi and I reminisced about meeting in the venue, Hotel Arena, at a precursor to ECLM (in autumn 2004, I think... I certainly remember being approximately penniless, just after starting my first job); other people present then (as well as Arthur) included Nick Levine, Luke Gorrie, Peter van Eynde, Jim Newton, Pascal Costanza, Marc Battyani, Nicholas Neuss... many of whom were around for the rematch; a total of 95 people registered for the meeting, and the hall (part disco, part church) for the talks felt pleasantly full.
Of the talks, I was most interested in the material of Jack Harper's talk, concerning some of the constraints involved in building a product for (human) fingerprinting, and asserting that using Lisp in this product was not a problem. (Favourite quote: “batteries are complicated things”). I was a little bit disappointed that few of the speakers actually interacted with any code at all (Luke may claim that writing his slides in Squeak Smalltalk counts, but I beg to differ); in fact, Paul Miller of Xanalys was the only one of the speakers spending substantial time demonstrating anything related to the subject of the talk – and that only because the canned demo movie refused to display on the projector. Luke's talk appeared to go down well; the obvious first question came and went, and there were some more interesting questions from the floor. Star of the show was Zach Beane's talk about quicklisp; I spend a lot of time presenting or watching presentations in each of my capacities, and it's nice to have a refreshingly different (and deadpan) delivery, with good use of slides to complement the spoken content. I hope that he's right that his personal scalability will not be taxed, and that volunteers will find ways to assist in the project by taking ownership of particular tasks.
While Hans Hübner may have attempted to be controversial in his opinion slot about style guides for CL, the real controversy for me was Dave Cooper's announcement of the Stichting Common Lisp Foundation. Now, the Foundation has clearly done one thing that is helpful: provided legal and financial infrastructure so that the financial risk of hosting an ECLM is not borne entirely by two individuals; the corporate entity can potentially, after acquiring a buffer, provide the seed funding needed and, if necessary, absorb small ECLM losses (not that I believe there has been one, but hypothetically) through other fund-raising activities. On the other hand, when I asked the question as to how the Stichting CL Foundation would aim to distinguish itself from the ALU, the response from Dave Cooper was that the only difference would be that the foundation would focus on CL, where the ALU's remit extends to all members of the Lisp family. Such a narrowing of focus is, I think, potentially beneficial – indeed, when going through my email archives to look for the date of the 2004 meeting, I found a lucid rationale from Dan Barlow explaining that he had chosen to make CLiki's focus specifically DFSG-free Unix Lisp software in order to promote a sense of cohesion (rather than being motivated primarily by a strongly-held belief about the inherent superiority of DFSG-licensed software). But I don't think that the ALU's only weakness is that it spreads its Lisp net too wide: I think it has lost track of what it as an entity wants to do beyond perform a similar function for the ILC as Stichting has performed for the ECLM; Nick Levine, in his talk about how to find Lisp resources, observed that the ALU has a valuable piece of real estate – the lisp.org domain – which does not seem to be used to grow or meet the needs of the Lisp community, whether Common Lisp specifically or Lisp more generally. I found it a little sad that, Edi and Arthur aside, the overlap between the ALU board and Stichting CL Foundation directors is 100%.
After the longer talks came the lighting ones, and I took the opportunity to repeat my talk and demo about swankr, my implementation of the SLIME backend for R, from the European Lisp Symposium in April. Erik Huelsmann announced ABCL 1.0, a far better milestone to announce at the ECLM rather than my sneaky announcement of SBCL 0.9 (six years ago!? Doesn't time fly! Also, what ugly slides...). And after some more lightning (and less-lightning) talks, it was time to wrap up with drinks, dinner, and good conversation.This post is timed with Inktober. The first part is a review of waterproof pens and inks suitable for sketching and using watercolor over, including a few affordable fountain pens. I do a lot of ink wash painting/sketching with non-waterproof fountain pen inks. I’ve been asked a few times about this, in the second part I’ll give some examples and share tips on that process. I love fountain pen ink, and find it to be a versatile and portable medium. All one really needs is a fountain pen and a waterbrush for a portable ink and wash sketch kit.
Some people know this, for those that aren’t aware- the bold text is hyperlinked to products and pages. If you click on them it will take you to sites. All photos can be clicked on to enlarge them.
There are a lot of links in this post to various sites and sources. I am not associated with any of them, nor did I receive products in exchange for a review. There are many retailers out there, shop around. Places I like to shop for ink and pen purchases:
As may be suspected, or maybe expected- this is a long post, lots of pics. If you are into fountain pen ink, the blog site mentioned at the end is the best part! Tons of info out there about pens for sketchers, these are the supplies that I have used. Most of these options I consider to be affordable, and they are sold at many different local and online retailers.
The first three brands are in a category-disposable pens good for sketching that use waterproof and archival ink. All of them are sold singly or in sets with different size and tip options.
Copic Multiliner. The SP Series is refillable. So smooth. They also come with a couple of different brush tip options. And in sets with Copic Markers- like this Start Sketching Drawing Set or these Doodle Packs, and various other package options.
Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens– these are India Ink and available in many colors, tip variation, singly, and in sets. The brush sets come in 12, 24, 48, 60, and 90- shop around for a good price, because there could be a little sticker shock. Places like Dick Blick sell them open stock (individually). My local art store sells multi tip sets. EDIT: After this posted a few people reported that they have had problems with these pens bleeding after the ink dries and wet media is applied- please see the comments section for what they had to say.
Sakura Pigma Micron/Brush/Graphic, Sakura Pigma Professional Brush Pen FB. These come in the largest variety of tip sizes and shapes, but fewer colors. My local art store sells these in sets and open stock.
Out of all of them, my least favorite is the Sakura Pigma- gasp! This is a favorite for a lot of people. In my experience they dry out way faster than Copic or Pitt Pens and the tips aren’t as smooth and nice. I like the Copic Multiliner best. All brands come in multiple colors, but the Pitt Pens come in the largest color variety. I prefer the Copic Sepia color over the Pitt Pen Sepia color, which is a darker brown.
An example of line variation between the pens/brands. I had an 08 Pigma Micron, but it dried up and I thew it out, so no line example for that size.
Below are different types of refillable brush tip and fountain pens. There are so many options out there, especially when it comes to fountain pens. These are a few that are simple and affordable. I did a few line/writing samples. I love pens, but my handwriting is nothing to write home about, so nothing fancy.
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen – permanent pigment ink. Great pen. Retails for around $20, but I found it on Amazon for $11. Good for line variation and filling in.
Zig Cartoonist Brush Pen No. 22– water-resistant and lightfast. A replacement fill is sold. I like this pen a lot, the ink is very black, not completely waterproof, but close. Around $7. Good for line variation and filling in.
Platinum Carbon Desk Fountain Pen and Platinum Carbon Inks– an inexpensive favorite of a lot of sketchers. I love this pen. Writes the first time every time. Around $10. Makes a fine line. I have a package of cartridges that I use with this pen, the ink is waterproof. There is a little metal ball in the end of the cartridge, so I’m not sure about refilling the cartridge, haven’t tried it yet.
Pilot Desk Pen– very similar to the Platinum listed above- around $10. Makes a fine line. I keep and refill the ink cartridge (info on that below). I’ve had a good experience with all other Pilot fountain pens, they are reliable. But between the two types shown here, the Platinum has worked better for me.
I’m mentioning the Sailor Fude De Mannen because it is popular with sketchers, but I have never used one. Just over $10. Line variation possible.
Line examples of the above pens. Zig black is a noticeably deeper black than the Pentel.
A few other inexpensive fountain pens:
Lamy Safari or AL-star Fountain Pens- Safari usually go for just over $20, and sometimes an Al-star too, depending on the color. Safari is a plastic body, Al-star is aluminum, nibs and the rest are the same on both pens. They range from around $20-$40 depending on where you shop, and they come in a lot of colors. Special color editions come out every year. Cartridge converter sold separately, it comes with one non waterproof ink cartridge. They are reliable and the nibs are super easy to change out, here’s a link on how to do that. Liz Steel uses a Lamy Joy for sketching, I believe with a 1.1mm stub nib. Here’s a link to her page and what all she sketches with. When researching for this post I came across the “The Liz Steel Package Set” from Goulet Pens for $41. Lamy Joy comes with a chisel point (aka stub) nib, and is a little bit of a longer and tapered pen body than the other two. They use the same converter and ink cartridges. The Safari or Al-star models can also be outfitted with a stub nib, or the Joy can fit non stub options.
Platinum Preppy fountain pen- this pen runs about $4. Sold singly or in a set of seven for around $25 with different non-waterproof ink colors. The cap color is the ink color. These can be converted to an eye dropper pen with an O ring and silicone grease. What this means is filling the body of the pen with ink without using a cartridge or converter. The ink capacity is huge. Here is a link to a 5:12 minute video on converting a Preppy to an eye dropper pen.
Line variation examples:
As a general rule, an F (fine) nib on a Japanese pen will write a noticeably finer line compared with a German F nib.
There are many other brands from inexpensive to higher priced pens out there that can also be converted into an eye dropper pen with using a little silicone grease. One of which are the affordable Noodler’s pens, their Ahab– around $23 and Nib Creaper– around $16. I switched the flex nib out for a nice Goulet Pens #6 1.5mm stub nib. That nib size is suitable for writing, but not very suitable for sketching. I really like the Goulet Nib, they come in a range of sizes. I use the converter the pen came with. It has a huge ink capacity if converted to an eye dropper. Noodler’s pens come in a few different models, including a brush tip, pictured above. To my knowledge, this is not eye dropper convertible. I’ve had some trouble getting the brush tip pen clean. This brand of pen is good for people who like to tinker around, they are made to be taken apart and adjusted- here is a 12:26 minute video on adjusting the nib and feed. Here is an 11:27 minute video on how to fill an Ahab model, and how to convert it into an eye dropper pen. Always a good idea to clean and flush a new pen before use.
A few waterproof fountain pen and/or dip pen inks:
FYI- I dilute the bottom part of all my ink swatches with water before the ink dries. Parker Quink Permanent Black or Blue-Black fountain pen inks- I love Quink Black, but I’ve used it for painting more than writing or sketching with it. Platinum Carbon Inks– I like these the best for sketching and use the Black and Sepia. Charlie also uses the Sepia in his sketches.
De Atramentis Document fountain pen inks- permanent, waterproof and comes in a wide variety of colors, some are very bright. I had this ink in the Pilot Desk Pen, but had to wet the nib every time to get it to flow. I’ve had this happen with the Platinum Sepia ink in that pen too. Might work differently in a different pen.
It’s not a great idea to let pigment inks sit in a fountain pen for an extended period of time. They can dry out and it can lead to clogging, the pen will need to be thoroughly cleaned. The Platinum Carbon pen has always worked, and I’ve never cleaned it. It’s been my experience that any ink in a Lamy or Noodler’s pen will dry out and evaporate fast. There one week, gone a few weeks later. Some pens are like that more than others.
Another option for using fountain pen ink and other inks is a dip pen and nib.
Deleter Comic Pen Nib Holder and Comic Pen Nib – Spoon Model
Tachikawa Comic Pen Nib Holder – Model 40 and Comic Pen Nib – G Model
Don’t let the word “Comic” deter you. Nothing funny about these and they work great for serious sketching. A lot of comic illustrators use them.
I also like this Brause 361 Steno Blue Pumpkin Calligraphy Pen Nib – Fine Point
There are lots of different holders, and nibs out there to try. Both of these holders will hold just about any nib. Inserting nibs and removing them is easy.
It’s a good idea to scrub new dip pen nibs off with a toothbrush and mild soapy water prior to use to remove the factory residue.
For the curios, those other things in the top left picture are a ruling pen and a pot of FineTec gold watercolor, see this post for that info.
FW Pearlescent Acrylic Ink
Dip pens can be used with Higgins Black Magic drawing ink, it’s waterproof and fade resistant. Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bombay India Ink is waterproof, lightfast, archival and comes in a lot of colors. FW Acrylic, Liquitex Ink! acrylic inks, or any other drawing type of inks are also good with dip pens. Rinse/wipe nibs off often for good flow and rinse off and dry immediately after use. Do not put these inks in a fountain pen. Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bombay says it can be used in a fountain pen, but I would only try it in a cheapy. Most of these also say they can be used with a technical pen– double check this though.
I’m not going into a complete expiation of the ins and outs of fountain pens (FP), the post would be even larger, and there is info out there from FP experts. I’ve added in some helpful links. If you have questions ask in the comments- I’m happy to answer them, or do your own research- there is a lot of information out there.
A few key points. A must for venturing into fountain pens and ink – a blunt tipped syringe. This is handy to refill or transfer ink into a pen, converter or cartridge, and to suck ink up from a low supply in a bottle or ink sample vial, or measure for mixing inks. Here is a link to a 12:07 video about it’s usefulness. If you don’t want to buy a cartridge converter for the FP- save the ink cartridge that it came with after the ink is used up and refill it using bottled ink and a syringe. Or suck the cartridge ink out if you don’t like it, clean it, and refill it with what you like. I’ve never had a FP come with a waterproof ink cartridge other than the Platinum Carbon Desk Pen mentioned above. The majority of FP ink is not waterproof. Here is a link to the waterproof inks that Goulet Pens sells. In addition to what I mentioned above, Noodler’s brand ink has a few, you’ll see those included in the Goulet link.
Richard Binder’s site has a ton of info on fountain pens. Many thanks to Teri Casper for passing this along. This link is to his section about nibs, but there is tons of other info. Goulet Pens has a lot of helpful videos.
Now we come to the artistic application part.
I love watercolor. Anyone that follows this blog is going – pfft, yeah, no kidding! But what I love almost as much, is ink. I often use ink like watercolor, mostly fountain pen inks, but also sumi, Daniel Smith walnut or anything considered ink. A little fountain pen ink goes a long way! A word of caution about using ink and brush wash- I don’t use my regular “nice” watercolor brushes. I feel the ink travels up the bristles and ferrule a lot and can be difficult to rinse it all out. I have inexpensive brushes, which I use for ink painting. Or a waterbrush, but sometimes those are too wet.
Here are a few examples that are all fountain pen ink, they show the versatility and vibrancy of the medium. The journals are Stillman & Birn Alpha & Epsilon Series, some of the inks used were Parker Quink Black and Daimine Golden Sands. The small rectangles are Fabriano Artistico 140lb cold press watercolor paper with Noodler’s American Aristocracy on the left, J. Herbin Caroube de Chypre on the right.
Fountain pen ink does strange and interesting things when diluted with water and/or applying household bleach. One of my favorite things to do is to put ink on a paper towel, apply a few drops or a spritz of water, and see what separates out. If it is interesting, I know it will be excellent for painting with because all those subtle, or not so subtle, colors will come out in the wash. The example below is Noodler’s American Aristocracy. Look up pictures of ink chromatography if you have an interest in this.
With these cherries, I scribbled and drew with the TWSBI Diamond 580 F nib fountain pen, and then used a wet brush over that. This also allowed me to use what ink transferred into the brush to paint other cherries without drawing with the pen again. The black and gold are sumi ink, and the cherries were done with Sailor Jentle Oku-Yama in a Hobonichi Techo Planner.
When doing ink wash/painting with non-waterproof fountain pen ink, I often dip the tip of the brush into the nib feed or breather hole in the top nib to get a little extra ink to do the wash with. The nib could be slow to start after doing this. If I need more ink, I will take the converter out and dip my brush into that and replace it into the pen when I am done. I also use the bottle or sample container to dip into with a brush, or I give a gentle shake and use the liquid that’s in the lid. When doing these things, I make sure that the brush is clean and not contaminating the ink with other ink or media, or a bunch of water. FP ink is very concentrated, so it doesn’t take much. I also dilute it with water to varying degrees in a mixing palette. Rules are limiting beliefs- be free, be unruly, express yourself fully. There is no right or wrong way- experiment!
There are two places I’ve been getting fountain pen ink sample vials from- Vanness 1938– very generous samples, and Goulet Pens. They range from $1.30 to $2.70 per vial, depending on the ink and the retailer. Both sell different brands from each other, and a wide variety of inks in individual and packaged samples. They are also family owned small businesses, another reason I like to shop with them. There are probably other retailers that sell samples. Other ink ideas I’m throwing out there- recently I’ve been excited about Callifolio, Robert Oster and KWZ inks. To date, my favorite writing color is Pilot Iroshizuku Ina-ho, it looks great in a Leuchtturm 1917 journal and anything else it’s been used it in/on.
The best part that I mentioned in the beginning.
A master at the ink wash art form is Nick Stewart, his blog is Quink and Bleach. First painting below is one of his original pieces that I’m lucky to have- I’m pretty sure he only used two inks on this, look at all the variation. The unusual sky color is Noodler’s Rome is Burning. On the other piece of his I believe only one ink was used. He has some amazing ink art, and ink swatch experimentation on his blog. I really appreciate his blog, I’ve found it to be a special and unique offering. I didn’t include a lot of ink swatches because if you want to see a plethora of fantastic inks swatches, Nick’s blog is the place!
Whew! The end…finally 😉
You and your artistic expression are important! These posts are for you! Happy sketching and painting!
Supply posts are every other Saturday.
I can be found on Instagram- @jessicaseacrest, where all my creative outlets are entertained, and sometimes telling signs of what will be reviewed next can be found.
All previous review posts can be found under “Reviews” on the menu or click here. Doodlewash has a Facebook group called World Watercolor Group. Huge variety of folks from all over, and a wide variety of painting styles and skill levels. The group is large and growing everyday! We have a lot of fun over there, and there are many kind and helpful people in the group. If you haven’t already, please join in and share your watercolor creations!
Published in
Hi I’m the Doodlewash Supply Blogger and offer reviews of various types of art supplies, watercolors, and helpful tips. I approach artistic expression with a light-hearted point of view. I love to see, and support others opening up to, and embracing their creative process with any medium or creative expression. Follow me on Instagram!Nine women have accused the playwright and theater director Israel Horovitz, who wrote more than 70 plays, including "The Indian Wants the Bronx," "Line" and "Park Your Car in Harvard Yard," of sexual assault.
The women, who worked for or with Horovitz, told The New York Times that Horovitz, now 78, kissed, groped or forced himself on them when they were in their teens or early 20s. The incidents date from the 1980s to as recently as last year.
Horovitz issued an apology but said that he has "a different memory of some of these events."
His son Adam Horovitz, also known as Ad-Rock of Beastie Boys fame, has come forward to support the accusers, saying, "I believe the allegations against my father are true, and I stand behind the women that made them."
One woman, Jocelyn Meinhardt, who dated Adam Horovitz in high school, said Israel Horovitz raped her when she was 19.
Meinhardt said the rape took place when she began a summer fellowship in 1989 with Israel Horovitz at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts, where he was artistic director. She told the Times that on the first night, Horovitz drove her to his home, locked the door and eventually raped her. Meinhardt said she continued to work for him after the incident and said, "He was a good mentor, until he was the worst, probably most nightmarish mentor you could have."
#MeToo: Industry leaders on sexual harassment and solutions
Israel Horovitz told the Times, "I apologize with all my heart to any woman who has ever felt compromised by my actions, and to my family and friends who have put their trust in me. To hear that I have caused pain is profoundly upsetting, as is the idea that I might have crossed a line with anyone who considered me a mentor."
Other accusers include an au pair, who said she was 16 when Horovitz groped her breasts and put her hand on his penis in 1991, and an actress in one of Horovitz's plays who said she was 16 when he pushed her against a wall and forcefully kissed her. Maia Ermansons, an aspiring playwright, said that when she went to meet with Horovitz last year, he kissed her and groped her breasts. She was 21 and had known Horovitz since she was a child. She said she felt betrayed by the man she felt close to "like a grandfather."
It is not the first time Horovitz has faced such allegations.
The Times reported that in 1993, The Boston Phoenix, a weekly paper, reported on sexual misconduct accusations by seven actresses and Gloucester staff members and three nannies, which Horovitz called "character assassination." The Gloucester theater's board president, Barry Weiner, dismissed the accusations at the time and called the accusers "tightly wound, if you know what I mean."When you live in a nice warm home, have a good job and are able to enjoy the finer things in life it is easy and possibly convenient for us to forget that thousands of people up and down the country do not enjoy these luxuries. It would be so easy to cast it from our minds but Britain is a rich country and Shelter released figures that should embarrass us all. In what Shelter say is a conservative figure over 250,000 people can be described as homeless in the UK with up to 3500 people sleeping rough every night. In 2015 nearly half of the people in homeless accommodation were aged between 16 and 24 years of age which is truly shocking and should be shameful to the Conservative Government.
In what has been a perfect storm of rising rents, cuts to mental health services, a housing crisis, more people using food banks than ever and the increasing cost of living homelessness is spiralling out of control. Theresa May’s Government has already said they do not recognise the figures and have claimed that they are investing £500 million into dealing with the homeless crisis and protecting services for the most vulnerable. But this is a drop in the ocean compared to the perfect storm that has been unleashed in austerity Britain.
Britain is the 5th richest country in the world with a nominal GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of £2.8 trillion and yet you can walk down any street in my home city of Manchester and see people with sleeping bags outside of major shops on a daily basis. The situation in Manchester is bad with Shelter estimating that 1 in 266 can be described as homeless. The situation is even worse in London with the certain areas in the centre being closer to 1 in 25. One has to question how the Government can justify spending £370 million on renovating Buckingham Palace (please do not think of me as an anti Royalist by any stretch) when there are thousands of people who have just a sleeping bag and the concrete to sleep on.
In the Autumn Statement Philip Hammond promised an extra £1.4 billion for housing in England which could be used to build 40,000 new homes. These houses are said to be affordable but I really have to question how these are affordable when a person living in London can expect to spend half of their monthly incomes on rental costs. That is for someone who has a job, how does someone who is homeless or doesn’t have a fixed address expect to come up with the money to even get onto the housing ladder when a 3 bedroom house for example can cost over £2000 a month?
Today it seems that charities are having to pick up more of the pieces more than ever. With people who are homeless more likely to suffer from severe health problems, alcoholism and drug addiction charities are inundated as the Government continues to fail on this issue. Recently rough sleepers have died in both Manchester and Birmingham, there has been no mass outcry over this. What are local authorities currently doing? Or with constant funding cuts what are they able to do to protect the most vulnerable in society?
Theresa May recently spoke of having sleepless nights and letting her faith guide her on Brexit. I wonder how her religious convictions are informing her views on people who don’t have a house to sleep in. I have to wonder if she actually cares at all when it is a Government that she was part of that has cut housing benefits to the poorest people in society. Once again the youngest people bare the brunt as housing benefits are cut for 18 – 21s when under 25 year old’s make up a third of homeless people. I would like to know what the Prime Minister intends to do to actually help these people. Clearly another spate of cuts is not helping.
Affordable house building is a good thing and we should support it but more needs to be done to help the truly vulnerable in society. A person who has slept on the streets for years and has a heroin addiction needs more than kind words. A person in that situation needs a society where it isn’t just charities supporting these people. The most vulnerable in society or those on the verge of being on the streets do not need more cuts or do not need to be considered as scroungers. Theresa May talked about making society work for everyone, not just those at the top. She now needs to prove the point and go to the very bottom of society and start from the ground up. I cannot express how unacceptable it is for a country such as Britain to have such huge numbers of people ending up on the streets!
References
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/04/rough-sleeper-numbers-homeless
http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/our-research/young-and-homeless-research
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38157410
AdvertisementsAfter report on team's official website, city and county officials can't confirm that the baseball team is considering moving from Orlando.
A source close to the Atlanta Braves says the Major League baseball team is looking relocate its spring training base when its lease in Orlando expires — and Venice is a possible destination.
“The decision is still down the road, but Venice is a name that keeps coming up,” said Mark Bowman, who has covered the Braves on its official website at MLB.com since 2001. “Venice is certainly among the favorites.”
Local government leaders, including Mayor John Holic, said they were unaware of any efforts to recruit the Braves.
The Braves have trained at Disney's Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando since 1998. The lease ends in 2017. Atlanta is said to be concerned that only three other teams are close to the Braves' site, and two of those — the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals — are eying a |
making cash while studying.
There is evidence that suggests fewer students are working while in full-time education.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says its figures suggest 29% of 16 to 24-year-olds were working in 2015.
That's a 7% fall from 10 years earlier.
In November Newsbeat spoke with 20-year-old Clover Pittilla, from Bournemouth, who uses the site.
"It wasn't for chavy people, there is a certain standard they have to meet," she said.
"They are somewhere in life materially where they want to be and they just want to have fun now."
When the subject of sex came up she told us people are very open in the sugar daddy dating scene.
"Sometimes, sometimes [there is an expectation of sex]. But they are usually quite forward with that.
"They usually say it straight away. If that's what they want then that is what they want.
"But if that is not what I want, that is not what I am going to do.
"But if they are attractive or whatever and you wouldn't mind, then why not."
Despite these figures on the amount of students using sugar daddy apps, some of the comments, at the time, about Newsbeat's interview with Clover still suggested it was similar to prostitution.
Student Clover believes that's unfair.
"If you go on the internet, you see what people really think of it.
"Some think it is like prostitution but it really isn't. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."
The types of people signing up to sugar dating services do not seem to fall into a certain wealth or social class.
Seeking Arrangement claims 56% of university Sugar Babies come from middle and upper-middle class families.
A number of other sugar daddy apps are available.
Universities with 'new' sugar babies
1. University of Portsmouth - 216
2. University of Kent - 212
3. University of South Wales - 208
4. University of Cambridge - 207
5. University of Nottingham - 195
6. University of Arts London - 186
7. University of Central Lancashire - 173
8. University of Manchester - 172
9. University of Bristol - 171
10. University of St. Andrews - 165
Source: Seeking Arrangement 2016
For more stories like this one you can now download the BBC Newsbeat app straight to your device. For iOS go here. For Android go here.Six thousand years ago, Adam and Eve were driven from paradise into mortal space. Destined to be founders of the human race. God and angels gave them counsel and commandments to embrace. But, there was a glaring omission of something they were NOT told to stop. Here, I’ll call it Bippity Bop.
Adam and Eve were warned, “Don’t eat that fruit.” But, regarding Bippity Bop, the angels were mute.
Sixteen hundred years passed ’til the great flood doused the earth. In Noah’s story there is no mirth. Except for eight souls, all mankind became has beens….all because of plentiful sins. But, not because of BB. You see…from Adam to Noah, the big B-Bop was never forbidden by God.
The land dried out. People began to sprout. From Shem to Peleg. Nimrod to Nehor. Then Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob’s twelve more. And what about Bippity Bop? Nary a word from our Heavenly Pop. He never commanded that it stop.
Three and a half millennia after Adam, Moses is rescued from the Egyptian river. Finally, we’re at the most prolific law giver. Ten signature commands on tablets were written. You can see them all detailed from Exodus on. Hundreds & hundreds of laws were spawned. Ruling every aspect of those who hold deity in awe. All bound together, they’re called the Mosaic Law. But guess what got missed. You got it. Not even a hiss of Bippity Boppity ever being dissed.
Fifteen hundred more years pass. The Babe is born in the lowest class. The most marvelous of teachings the world would ever hear, are now cherished…held mighty and dear. Did He utter the phrase, “No B-Bop?” Nope. The author of all commands, big and small, never mentions the B’s. Nope, not at all.
Finally, the year 1820 is here. The restoration, just getting into full gear. The famine of God’s word, ends with a seer. Revelation upon revelation. Certainly, there will be a call for Bippity Bop’s cessation.
Joseph Smith? Nope. He never called for Bippity Bop to stop.
The Book of Mormon? Certainly filled with lots of good stuff. But, it ignores the Bippity, strangely enough.
Doctrine & Covenants? As far as a commandment, the Bop is completely absent.
Six thousand years! He’s not a tyrant. It’s time we pay attention to where God is silent.
From Whence Comes the Notion That Loads Bippity Bop with Such Emotion?
For 16 decades, the LDS church harbored racist teachings, doctrines and practices. Where did they come from? We have apostles. Thanks to our current crop, we now know they were all just made up. Simply plucked out of thin air…by men…who were prophets. Not from heaven. Not from revelation. Not from God. Rather, it was our former prophets who put racist words into God’s mouth. It was never God who was racist. It was the leaders of His church.
Fortunately, we now condemn and disavow our racist past. At the thought of our former teachings, we are now aghast.
Into God’s mouth we’ve put lots of words, in our historical past. The words men insert, simply won’t last.
If you still think Bippity Bop is a sin, please go read the most correct book again.
Bippity Bopptiy Boo is natural for kids to go through. And adults? It’s even normal for them, too.
Bippity Boppity, Bippity Boppity, Bippity Boppity……
Boo!Family sues after Arlington Hts. woman infested by maggots at nursing home
hello
The family of an Arlington Heights woman is suing her former nursing home after doctors found and removed 57 maggots from her ear earlier this fall, lawyers said Tuesday.
Catherine McCann, who is 90 and suffers from severe Alzheimer's, lived at Lutheran Home for the Aged, 800 W. Oakton St., for two years before the incident, which since has caused her family to relocate her to a different facility.
According to the lawsuit filed in Cook County circuit court, after a recent ear surgery McCann was required to receive medical drops in her ear several times a day. However, the suit states, about that time a fly was able to get into her ear and lay eggs. Those eggs grew into maggots over the course of several days without being noticed, the suit alleges.
McCann, who cannot speak, was reportedly tugging on her ear Sept. 16 when family members and nurses discovered the maggots crawling out of her ear, said attorney Henry P. Gruss.
She was taken to Northwest Community Hospital, where 57 maggots were removed from her ear.
The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $50,000 for several counts of emotional distress and negligence.
"They owe the patient the highest duty of care to prevent this from happening, to keep the place sanitary and to monitor her care," Gruss said. "It was disgusting; her daughter still has nightmares about maggots crawling out of her mother's ear."
Lutheran Home officials maintain they did nothing wrong.
"The Lutheran Home is concerned about this occurrence and confident that the medical treatment was professionally responsible and attentive," said Phil Hemmer, nursing home administrator.
Hemmer said the hospital is not looking to settle the lawsuit because it is not at fault.
"We've been in business for 120 years and we've never had anything like this before," he said. "It was an extremely unusual incident."
However, Gruss said that if doctors and nurses working at the home did not notice the maggots, they may not have been delivering McCann's ear drops as required.
"As far as I'm concerned the facts speak for themselves," Gruss said.
The lawsuit states McCann "sustained severe injuries and significant elder abuse and neglect, including aural myiasis or maggot infestation of her left ear."
An investigation by the Illinois Department of Public Health found that there were no deficiencies in care, said department spokeswoman Melanie Arnold.
Arnold said she couldn't discuss specifics of the case, but when the department goes to a facility it checks the medical care plan for the patient and checks to see if that plan has been followed. If there is written documentation that the plan was followed, it's hard for the department to prove something different happened.
A court date for the suit has not yet been set.Description
Start building your own personal AR-15 today. This is a complete AR-15 upper receiver (Assembly optional) with a 80% AR-15 lower receiver.
All of our completely assembled uppers are test fired for cycling.
The parts included are below:
AR-15 Upper Receiver
Stainless Steel 7.5″ Barrel, 1/7 Twist (.223 & 5.56) 1/2 x28 trends
7″ Free float Quad Rail Hand Guard
Pistol Barrel Length Gas Tube, and low pro gas block
Forward Assist
Ejection Port Cover
Charging Handle
M-16 Bolt Carrier Group
Flash Hider with Crush Washer
AR-15 80% Lower Receiver
Pistol Buffer Tube with cushioned grip
Lower Parts Kit
Anodize Color Options
This kit comes in the following colors: Black Anodized Green Anodized……….. extra Red Anodized………….. extra Blue Anodized………….. extra Bronze Anodized……….. extra Purple Anodized……… extra
Pink Anodized……… extra
Upper Receiver Assembly
This kit come with upper receiver assembly options. If you choose to do the assembly yourself, there is no cost. We will ship every parts to complete your upper. We can do the assembly for you for $10 extra
*This is a not an FFL item. This is not a complete receiver and still requires machining to be done.
Video ReviewsBut documents revealed last week show the Obama administration may have been willing to get around congressional decisions on spending by using a slush fund of sorts funded by the profits of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two government-sponsored home loan giants.
President Obama never was shy about using his phone and pen to achieve what he could not get from Congress on regulatory matters.
Fannie and Freddie are federally chartered enterprises which buy mortgage loans from banks and bundle them into securities that are sold to investors, thus freeing up capital so that banks can make more home loans.
They are government-sponsored enterprises, which means the government guarantees their loans. But they are run as private enterprises, with private leadership, a board of directors and, most significantly for this purpose, investors. They’re even listed on the stock market.
In response to the mortgage crisis of 2008, Congress passed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which provided $187.5 billion in government loans for Fannie and Freddie and placed them in conservatorship under the newly established Federal Housing Finance Agency.
But Fannie and Freddie were not in such bad shape after all, and in just a few years, they were turning profits and on course to pay back the government with interest and still have money to pay dividends to their investors.
In 2012, the Obama administration came up with a plan to divert those profits to the Treasury that became known as the Net Worth Sweep. Officials said the profits had to be diverted back into the Treasury because Fannie and Freddie were in a “death spiral” and would have to return for loans, and this money would be used for those loans. In other words, Treasury would take all the profits from Fannie and Freddie and hold them for future loans when they again found themselves in trouble.
But -- the administration knew Fannie and Freddie were healthy for the long term, were unlikely to need any more loans and, in fact, had enough money to pay dividends. The dividends were a problem for the administration because it made it hard to explain why it needed to abscond with Fannie and Freddie’s $241 billion in profits, execute an improper taking against the shareholders, and spend the money without congressional approval. Some even pushed to change accounting methods to make Fannie and Freddie look worse on paper and/or force them to “need” loans to survive.
In 2013, Fairholme Funds, one of those investors, filed suit, charging that, in sweeping the money back into the Treasury rather than pay dividends as required by law, the government exceeded its authority and ignored the law’s requirements that it conserve the assets of the enterprises. The government’s response indicates Fairholme’s accusations are probably dead on.
One of the documents released last week said the proposal to sweep the funds into Treasury would have “three primary benefits:”
It would “eliminate the circularity of Treasury funding the GSE’s dividends payments to Treasury.” It would “…capture all future earnings at the GSEs to help pay back taxpayers for their investment in those firms,” and it would “reduce future draws… so such draws would only be made when needed to fund quarterly net losses.”
The administration could have “eliminated the circularity” by following the law and paying the dividends. There is no legal basis for unilaterally deciding to “capture all future positive earnings at the GSEs” -- in fact, the law specifies otherwise. And the government’s own economists acknowledged future quarterly losses were highly unlikely.
Another document suggested announcing the change on Friday after markets had closed. “Rationale: GSE’s will report very strong earnings on August 7, that will be in-excess of the 10% dividend to paid to Treasury.” In other words, wait till late on an August Friday night -- a media dead zone almost the equivalent of Christmas – to say that, even though the GSEs reported “very strong earnings” earlier in the week, it needed these prudent protections.
The documents released last week were made public only after years of government protest. The government has tried to keep 77,000 related documents from being released publicly and 11,000 from being shared even with attorneys for Fairholme.
The government’s out in this always was to claim that “since we intend to wind down the GSEs over time, the GSEs do not need to retain income in excess of amounts required to pay the 10 percent dividend,” which by making the government the largest investor with preferred stock, meant the money went to the Treasury and not the initial investors, such as Fairholme.
But the administration never offered a plan to wind down the GSEs, and the proposal would make little sense at this point.
What happened here is not hard to discern. The Obama administration had a convenient boogey man in the GSEs and a need for cash because of a recalcitrant Congress. It did not take into account the legal rights of the investors. The courts are slowly coming to this conclusion.
In the meantime, we’re left with another abuse of the public trust by double-dealing government insiders. If that’s not an argument for limited government, what is?If you ever thought a bird was giving you the stink eye, but quickly wrote it off as just a figment of your imagination -- you were probably right in the first place. New research is helping scientists better understand how birds use their eyes to communicate, a characteristic thought to exist only in humans and primates.
A new study of Western jackdaws found that the dark-feathered birds, which are in the crow family and can be found in Eurasia and Africa, use their piercing stare to ward off competing jackdaws. The jackdaw’s eyes, with their dark irises surrounded by white pupils, bear some resemblance to those of humans.
The report, published in the journal Biology Letters, looked at whether jackdaws could scare off a competitor just by using its eyes. Researchers rigged up several jackdaw nest boxes with photos that were either completely black (the control), showed a pair of jackdaw eyes, a pair of jackdaw eyes on a jackdaw’s face, or a jackdaw’s face with a pair of black rook eyes.
“Animals often respond fearfully when encountering eyes or eye-like shapes,” the researchers wrote. “Although gaze aversion has been documented in mammals when avoiding group-member conflict, the importance of eye coloration during interactions between conspecifics has yet to be examined in non-primate species.”
After filming the jackdaws’ reactions to these photos, researchers discovered that the birds spent the least amount of time near the nest boxes that contained the picture of a jackdaw with bright eyes.
So why jackdaws? According to Gabrielle Davidson, a scientist at the University of Cambridge who led the study, male jackdaws have a habit of competing with each other for the best nesting spots. Fights often occur when one jackdaw approaches another’s nest. They also have a unique set of peepers.
“Jackdaw eyes are very unusual,” Davidson said in a statement. “Unlike their close relatives, the rooks and crows -- which have very dark eyed -- jackdaw eyes are almost white and their striking pale irises are very conspicuous against their dark feathers.”
Previous studies involving jackdaws’ behavior have also noted the jackdaw’s unique use of its eyes. A 2009 study found that birds that were hand-reared could study a human’s gaze and tell what the person was looking at.
"We can communicate a lot via the eyes, and jackdaws do that as well, in my opinion," Auguste von Bayern, a zoologist at the University of Oxford, told National Geographic in 2009. "They are sensitive to human eyes because they are sensitive to their own species' eyes.”The tax hikes and cuts to the public sector proposed in Saskatchewan's latest budget will hurt middle-income families and would never fly next door, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says.
Saskatchewan Finance Minister Kevin Doherty tabled a deficit budget Wednesday with a projected $696-million shortfall for the 2017-18 fiscal year, which includes a one percentage point provincial sales tax hike.
"That's not how we believe we should approach things in Alberta," Notley said of the "very significant tax increase."
"We want to have the backs of Albertans. We think that we can work with Albertans to help them through... collectively bringing our economy out of a recession period."
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said the budget will help get the province out of the red and secure the local economy.
The easy but irresponsible thing to do would be to simply run huge deficits indefinitely and not make the tough decisions, like the Alberta government has done. - Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall
"Our budget contained some difficult decisions, but it also delivers a plan to reduce Saskatchewan's dependence on resource revenues while returning to balance in three years," Wall said in a statement.
"And, even after the PST increases in this year's budget, every Saskatchewan taxpayer at every level of income will continue to pay considerably less in provincial taxes than they did under the NDP."
Notley criticizes slashed tax exemptions
Notley said the Saskatchewan government is now walking back tax exemptions previously meant to help certain businesses thrive, including in the construction sector.
"In our province we see construction as a handy way to do job creation, as a handy way to build infrastructure, as a handy way to create a strong investment climate," Notley said. "In Saskatchewan, they just raised the cost of that work [from zero] to six per cent."
The Saskatchewan budget also removes a previous tax exemption on the sale of children's clothing items, something that is already drawing the ire of parents.
The Government of Saskatchewan announced in its budget this week that children's clothing would no longer be exempt from the provincial sales tax. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg)
Notley said that kind of change isn't in line with her government's values.
"When you pull money out of the economy, you slow economic recovery... particularly when you pull money away from regular and middle-income families," Notley said. "They're the ones that spend in the local economy, so you don't want to pull money away."
Different approach to labour cuts
The Saskatchewan Party government is also seeking to reduce overall public sector compensation by $250 million.
While the Alberta government has recently embarked on its own path to rein in wages of some taxpayer-funded positions, the main targets have been CEOs of public boards and agencies.
Notley said the key difference is her cuts won't scare investors out of Alberta.
Wall fired back Thursday, accusing Notley and the Alberta NDP of being fiscally irresponsible.
"I'm not sure a premier who has run back to back $10 billion-plus [deficit] budgets should be giving anyone else budgeting advice," Wall said in a statement.
"[The Notley government is] piling billions of dollars of taxes on future generations of Albertans by running massive deficits year after year, with no plan to return to balance, except to hope for oil prices to skyrocket.
"The easy but irresponsible thing to do would be to simply run huge deficits indefinitely and not make the tough decisions, like the Alberta government has done. We have chosen a different direction that will return our budget to balance and keep our economy strong."
The Saskatchewan government says expanding and raising the provincial sales tax, along with a host of other measures, will bring in $900 million more in tax revenue this year.Image caption Service providers want to be able to charge for faster use of their networks
Culture minister Ed Vaizey has backed a "two-speed" internet, letting service providers charge content makers and customers for "fast lane" access.
It paves the way for an end to "net neutrality" - with heavy bandwidth users like Google and the BBC likely to face a bill for the pipes they use.
Mr Vaizey said ISPs must be free to experiment with new charges to help pay for the expansion in internet services.
But critics warn the move could harm free speech and stifle innovation.
'Fast lane'
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are supposed to treat all web traffic equally - serving only as a one-size-fits-all pipe for whatever data is passing from content providers to end users.
But a debate has been raging around the world over how much they should be allowed to control the size of their pipes, and thus the internet speed that users get from the site.
In the US, President Barack Obama has backed net neutrality - treating all traffic equally - and regulators have threatened possible legal action against ISPs that block or restrict access to sites.
In order for the internet to continue as the open, innovative force for good that it has been over the past 20 years it is essential that all elements continue to prosper Ed Vaizey, Culture minister
But some traffic management, where traffic from one source is favoured over another, is likely to be allowed, with a ruling due next year, Mr Vaizey suggests.
The EU has also backed traffic management but with greater transparency to ensure the internet remains "open" - something that will soon be enshrined in UK law.
Mr Vaizey argues that most ISPs already carried out traffic management "to ensure the smooth running of their networks" without any impact on competition or consumer rights.
In his speech, he argues that the continued quality of internet services in the UK is under threat due to the rapid expansion of mobile and wireless networks and the "massive investment" it needed.
As a result, ISPs had to be free to experiment with new ways of raising revenue - provided customers were clear about what they were buying.
He says: "We have got to continue to encourage the market to innovate and experiment with different business models and ways of providing consumers with what they want.
"This could include the evolution of a two-sided market where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service."
He also suggests that content makers could be charged for the first time for the use of the ISP's networks - provided they too were clear about what they were getting.
"Content and application providers should be able to know exactly what level of service they are getting especially if they are paying for it," he says.
'Appalling'
He added that the government did not want to introduce new laws on top of those already being adopted from the EU to guarantee an "open" internet, arguing that light touch regulation was better.
He also argued that, that unlike in the US where some areas only had the choice of one service provider, there was enough rivalry between providers to ensure consumers' rights were protected.
"The essential competition we enjoy in Europe and especially in the UK, will be an essential safeguard against unfair discrimination," he argues.
He said ISPs must also guarantee that net users can continue to access any legal website or content.
"In order for the internet to continue as the open, innovative force for good that it has been over the past 20 years it is essential that all elements continue to prosper.
"This means ensuring that content providers and applications have open access to consumers and vice versa.
"But it also means allowing ISPs and networks to innovate and experiment with new ways of delivering what consumers want so we can ensure continued investment in the infrastructure that delivers the content and applications we all use."
But Jim Killock, of net freedom campaigners the Open Rights Group, said the proposals could have "appalling" consequences for free speech and commercial innovation.
"Ed Vaizey is wrong to assume that there is no problem if BT or Virgin restrict people's internet access for their commercial advantage. Removing 'net neutrality' will reduce innovation and reduce people's ability to exercise their freedom of speech.
"This is why ORG will campaign against any market abuse, should Ed Vaizey allow it to happen."
'Peak times'
But the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) welcomed what it called Mr Vaizey's "lightly-regulated, market-based approach" towards traffic management, adding that ISPs should be "open and transparent" to boost confidence in the industry.
An ISPA spokesman said: "This approach will reassure those who are investing in networks and coming up with new, innovative online business models.
"A number of ISPA members already provide consumers with clear information on traffic management practices and we expect to see this extended.
"ISPs use traffic management techniques so that they are able to effectively and efficiently run and manage their networks for the benefits of all users.
"This enables ISPs to prioritise time-sensitive applications, such as VoIP and online gaming, at peak times."MEMPHIS -- Arron Afflalo worked up a sweat running sprints up and down the floor during Trail Blazers shootaround Saturday afternoon at FedEx Forum. But while his teammates worked on shooting drills, the veteran shooting guard didn't touch a basketball.
Afflalo suffered a right shoulder strain late in the fourth quarter against the Golden State Warriors on April 9. He was initially given a one to two week timeline for his return and is officially listed as doubtful for the Game 1 of the first-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday.
In Portland on Friday, Afflalo went through brief shooting drills from inside the paint under close supervision of of Blazers' Director of Player Health and Performance Chris Stackpole. He went through conditioning drills on Saturday for most of the 30 minutes the Blazers' shootaround was open to the media. Afflalo said he hasn't gone through contact drills since suffering the injury.
"Just a lot of rehabbing," He said of his last nine days following the injury. "Haven't been able to do too much heavy basketball stuff. So I'll just try to see how I feel today and tomorrow morning and go from there."
If Afflalo can't go second-year wing Allen Crabbe could get the nod as the starting shooting guard, but Afflalo wasn't ready to completely rule out a return to the court in Game 1.
"I feel good," he said. "Obviously I don't know about the game tomorrow, but I feel good."
With Afflalo likely out for the opening game, the Blazers will lean on Crabbe and second-year guard CJ McCollum to fill in at shooting guard. McCollum has played the best basketball of his career over the past 15 games since moving into an increased role following Wesley Matthews' season-ending Achilles injury on March 5.
McCollum has injury concerns of his own. He missed the Blazers regular season finale with a sprained left ankle, but says he feels better heading into into Sunday.
"It feels pretty good," said McCollum, who is officially listed as probable for Game 1. "I got a nice workout in yesterday, some conditioning and a lower body lift before practice. So I'm feeling pretty good."
Over the final 15 games of the season, McCollum averaged 13.5 points and shot 51 percent from the field, including 41 percent from three-point range. He scored in double figures seven times over his final eight games, including 26 points in a loss to the Utah Jazz and 27 points in a win over the Lakers. McCollum said his approach won't change regardless of Afflalo's availability.
"Obviously Arron is a big part of this team so I look forward to him returning, but my role is not going to change," McCollum said. "I'm still going to be aggressive when I go out there and try to make plays for myself and others. Still got to be in-tuned to the game plan and be ready to go whether he plays or not."
Notes: Alonzo Gee is officially listed as questionable after injuring his right foot against the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday. He said on Saturday that he expects to be ready to play in Game 1. Nicolas Batum (right knee) said he went through a three hour workout on Friday and should be fine for the series opener. Chris Kaman (lower back) is officially listed as probable, but is expected to be available.
The Grizzlies officially list point guard Mike Conley (right foot sprain), wing Tony Allen (left hamstring strain) and forward Jeff Green (low back tightness) as questionable, but all three are expected to play in Game 1.
-- Mike Richman
mrichman@oregonian.com | 503-221-8162 | @mikegrichMozilla developers have immortalized the great SSL hack that researchers discussed at the Chaos Communication Congress last December.
You remember this one, an international team of researchers was able to create a fake certificate authority by exploiting collisions in the aging MD5 algorythm.
The whole thing unfolded as a bit of a mystery. Tuesday afternoon SecTheory's Robert Hansen told me about a weird thing he'd noticed in its Firefox browser. Firefox had added a strange certificate authority called MD5 Collisions Inc. to the "cert store" list of trusted authorities in the browser.
These certificate authorities are the trusted third parties used by the browsers to establish SSL connections. The whole point of the research was to show how that chain of trust could be undermined and a so-called rogue authority could be created. If the bad guys could do this, they could create SSL certificates for phishing sites, making them appear more trustworthy?
To make sure that their work wouldn't be misused, the researchers created their rogue CA, using a certificate that expired in 2004, and they kept the private key used in their work secret so nobody else could set up the rogue cert.
Still, why was did Mozilla ad this MD5 Collisions cert to the browser? Had someone found a way to add another fake certificate authority directly to the browser?
"That's exactly what I thought when I first noticed that too," said Alexander Sotirov, one of the authors of the SSL hack, when I asked him about this. "But the answer is more mundane. Mozilla blacklisted our cert by adding it into their cert store and setting all trust settings to "untrusted". If you select the cert and click on the "Edit" button, you'll see that the checkboxes that say "This certificate can identify websites/mail users/software makers" are all unchecked. This prevents our rogue cert from being used at all."
Mozilla's Jonathan Nightingale says useless cert was added shortly after team's work was made public in late December. It's an extra precaution against "a really bizarre case where that key had been compromised and someone was issuing rogue certs and one of our users had a rogue clock that though it was 2004," he said.
A pretty unlikely scenario, for sure, but a theoretically possible one, I guess.
"We thought, let's just shut it down," Nightingale said.
Sotirov had an interesting take on the Firefox cert, though. "I find it flattering that our work was immortalized this way by Mozilla," he said. "They will probably ship this cert as part of the their cert store as long as they ship browsers."
Something for the other browser makers to think about, perhaps?Reblog On Tumblr: [link] The robots were commissioned into WW1, WW2, and Vietnam, which I've always thought was due much more attention than the fanbase gives it. For World War II, the timeline has this to say: "America Enters World War II. The robots serve the United States Army, Army Air Corps, and Navy, assisting various Allied troops on the front lines, in the air, and at sea. Reports suggest there were no casualties caused by the robots themselves. Although having been a part of a bombing raid, the robots, going against orders, detracted from the mission to save Allied troops instead." So in this poster, they're all being represented as Air Corps but since it's propaganda, it could just as easily have been any of of the branches. It's fantasy to think that a few robots somewhere would really help keep you safe while you're flying a plane, but maybe there's a bit of a Dr. Manhattan complex there with people feeling like America's got a better chance because they have technically superior robots on their side. The Propaganda machine would milk that idea for all it's worth. I'm also certain the robots would not have looked like this during World War II (likely still more robotic than this) and I highly doubt they would have received dress uniforms, so there's a bit of humanization going on in this propaganda as well.I lost steam for this halfway through but pushed myself to finish it and I"m really glad I did. It turned out pretty closely to how I was hoping so yay for that. From an artistic perspective, I'm drawn to WWII propaganda posters and really any sort of informational poster of that era. I would have liked to do this traditionally to make it more authentic but I don't have my big paper here.I might do individual ones of Rabbit and The Spine later. But.. I'm not sure. I also considered doing ones from the Axis side that demonizes them.I did this at a monster size big enough to actually print into some decent posters (like 11.7x17 at 300 dpi. PRETTY BIG. Though it's pretty sketchy when you zoom in). I'm not uploading the fullsize file here as I may use them for some sort of giveaway in the future.--The robots are from Steam Powered Giraffe Thanks to Trekkiebeth for allowing ref use of her photos: [link] Also reffed a whole host of uniform photos and WWII poster styles from the internet to aim for accuracy.Dust/Scratches brushes: [link] Extra fonts: [link]For a delivery truck making rounds, minor tweaks in a route can save huge amounts of time and gas. That’s why UPS spent a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars building an algorithm to help calculate where trucks should turn. A startup called Routific designed an algorithm to help everyone else–like local flower delivery companies–also save fuel.
To help find the best routes, they took inspiration from bees. Their algorithm is based on the “bees algorithm,” which describes how bees find the best route to flowers. Scout bees fly long distances in random directions, and if they find food, they fly back and buzz around in the so-called “waggle dance” to notify everyone else. When others go to the same location, they’ll come back and waggle even harder if they find a better spot.
It’s a way for bees to very quickly find the best food sources, and a similar approach works for a delivery company trying to figure out which route to take. This is not necessarily the perfect route, because calculating the perfect route could take days. But it’s the best route that can be found in a short amount of time.
“If you have 57 stops, there are already more than a quattuorvigintillion possible combinations,” says Marc Kuo, founder and CEO of Routific. “That’s one with 75 zeros. A very basic algorithm that is going to churn through every possible combination and select the best one, that is going to take you days if not months for a computer.”
Instead, the company’s software churns through the data in a smarter way. “The ones that seem promising, then attract more computational power, similar to the bees–the ones that seem more promising, they will do a waggle dance. So it’s deeper in that particular area. When you get in that particular area you can then find an optimized route that way.”
Right now, a traditional delivery company still plans out routes by hand. “Let’s say they have 20 trucks and 1,000 addresses,” he says. “Somebody at the office, every morning, they spend two to three hours just assigning those addresses to the trucks and manually ordering them just by eyeballing it on a map.”
Not only does it take time, it’s not an easy problem for humans to solve–you’re not just thinking about the roads, but whether a particular customer needs a delivery in a certain time window, or how much can fit on each truck. When an algorithm crunches that data instead, it performs so much better that it saves 40% on driving time and fuel.Element 117 looks set to claim the highest slot yet on the periodic table, thanks to an experiment in Germany that has independently confirmed its existence. In the process, the team also glimpsed a previously unknown isotope of the element lawrencium, thought to have been produced as 117 decayed.
Most elements heavier than uranium are highly unstable and are hard to find in nature. The heaviest of these can only be made artificially by smashing together lighter elements with the correct atomic number, dictated by the number of protons in an atomic nucleus. Finding increasingly heavier elements could lead to the highly anticipated island of stability, a predicted group of massive but stable atoms.
In 2010, a Russian and US team first made element 117 by firing calcium atoms – which have atomic number 20 – into berkelium, which has atomic number 97. The same group was able to repeat the feat in 2012.
In the latest experiment, Christoph Düllmann at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, and his team created four atoms of 117. The atoms survived for less than a tenth of a second before decaying into |
latest update on whether he will break away from movie roles to do his thing in WWE again will not please his fanbase.
According to PWInsider Elite (h/t WrestlingInc.com) Batista's people reportedly don't want him to return to wrestling. The report notes that they believe Batista didn't get an opportunity to use his own ideas and didn't get what WWE had promised him.
That kind of reported frustration as well as the injury risks of the wrestling ring are making his expected comeback less and less of a sure thing.
Perhaps it will just take some time away, allowing the stench of his last run to wear off, before his desire to entertain the WWE fans is strong again. It would be disappointing for his career to end in such an awkward fashion.
A princess wave can't be his last act in WWE, right?
Daniel Bryan Return Update
There's finally some positive news to share regarding Bryan's health. Per F4WOnline (h/t WrestlingInc.com), Brie Bella reportedly said during a recent media interview for Total Divas that the former champ will not need a second surgery.
That has apparently led to some optimism from WWE as to when he'll be back.
According to PWInsider (h/t PW Mania) WWE officials hope that Bryan can make it back by Survivor Series. The report also notes that the company doesn't want to rush him back and risk further injury.
Survivor Series is only two months away. Seeing Bryan in a ring as early as that would be thrilling. WWE has certainly missed his frenzied energy.
It's also comforting to hear that WWE isn't looking to hurry him along. If he can come back and have a long, fruitful career, fans would be willing to wait for several months.
No one wants to see him have to retire before he's ready, a la Edge. While it won't be an issue drumming up the patience required to wait out his recovery, the company at least believes the wait won't be long.
Suddenly, it's not implausible to think that Bryan could be back by WrestleMania 31 and be the one to dethrone Lesnar rather than Roman Reigns.Take a look at this:
National Polls
LA Times/USC: Trump +0.7
IBD/TIPP: Hillary +1 (2-way), Tie (4-way)
People’s Pundit Daily: Trump +0.8
The LA Times/USC and People’s Pundit Daily polls have been oscillating lately with Hillary and Trump exchanging the lead, but the Reuters/Ipsos, FOX News, and Rasmussen polls have all shifted toward Trump and now show a 1 to 2 point race. Now the IBD/TIPP poll shows the race is a dead heat.
State Polls
Virginia: Hampton University Hillary +2 (2-way)
Virginia: Emerson Hillary +1 (4-way)
Iowa: Emerson Trump +5 (4-way)
These are incredible polls of Virginia. Trump was down 13 points in the RCP average. This was one of Hillary’s best swing states. Two polls in two days have come out that show a 1 and 2 point race. Now Trump is up 5 in Iowa. Wow. Something is going on here.
What’s next?
Update: The Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll is the latest poll to tip to Trump. Trump is +0.9 in a 2-way race.Ecotone is a platform game with an evolving gameplay which allows brainwork and/or skill phases. The game’s primary focus is to invite the gamer into a new kind of world and features a unique, dreamlike and mysterious atmosphere. In Ecotone’s strange world, you will embody a weird little character lacking a real identity. As this character passes each level, he will earn some new skills to help him in his journey. However, beware of the environment since it is inhabited by strange creatures and monsters.
The specific characteristic of the game is that the mechanics of each level are different: speed chase, puzzle solving, reversed gravity, stop time and more! Each level is based on a sentence which allows the player to understand the story of the avatar. Sometimes, this sentence is the key to understanding the riddle and finish the level. To develop the gaming experience further, the gameplay brings the player and the avatar close together as they will have to solve the same enigma.
As you progress through the game, you will discover 3 different worlds, each containing 15 different levels.Louisville linebacker James Hearns during the second half against Boston College. (Photo11: Winslow Townson, AP)
Louisville football players James Hearns and Henry Famurewa were among three people shot near the school's campus early Sunday morning, according to WHAS-11.
Louisville spokesman John Karman would not confirm if any victims are student-athletes at the school. He said the university is not releasing any names at this time.
Yusuf Shakir, who coached Hearns at Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, Fla., said Hearns, who plays linebacker, told him he had been shot in the elbow and that “he’s OK,” and, “He knows it could have been a lot worse.”
“If you go through something like that, you’re happy to be alive," Shakir said.
A 19-year-old student who attends Jefferson Community Technical College said he witnessed the shooting. He said he was at a party with Louisville athletes who were celebrating quarterback Lamar Jackson winning the Heisman Trophy. The JCTC student said he told police an argument ensued at the door before it eventually continued into the street.
“A few minutes later I heard chaos,” said the JCTC student, who asked his name not be shared. “It was five or six guys just going at it, fighting on one side and then I see a flash come from the other side. Then I just took cover.”
Police responded to a call of a shooting around 2 a.m. Sunday in the 1000 block of Manor Park Drive, an off-campus housing facility called The Retreat, close to the Louisville campus. When officers arrived, they located a male and female that had been shot. Both were taken to University Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
A third victim arrived a short time later to Jewish Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries from a gunshot wound. Police determined that all three injuries occurred at the same location.
Louisville sophomore Jayvon Smith told WHAS11 he lives two doors down from the scene where students were gathering and celebrating Jackson being awarded Heisman into the early morning hours.
Smith said people started knocking on his door, saying people were shooting.
"It’s always someone who comes from out in the city that usually have weapons or that mean to do any type of harm or violence," Smith told WHAS-11, "but I just think the city of Louisville is really dangerous right now. Crime is just happening, and it's sad that is has to be involved on campus too."
Shakir said Hearns told him the party had taken place in a track athlete’s apartment. “Some local guys decided to crash the party,” Shakir said. “One of the guys started shooting into the crowd."
Chelsea Roy, leasing and marketing manager at The Retreat, said the apartment complex is cooperating with Louisvllle Metro Police Department in the investigation and referred all other questions to police. Roy would not confirm the time of incident or any other details.
The LMPD Major Crimes Unit is investigating. There are no suspects at this time.
Nearly 500 people have been shot in Louisville through November this year, according to Police Chief Steve Conrad, which is an all-time record for the city.The RL MARK VI Space Diving Ensemble, along with the IVA 3G spacesuit from Final Frontier Design, is intended to provide an out-of this world experience for thrill seekers of tomorrow.
Ron Atkins, Curator of the NewSpace Daily, contributed this article to SPACE.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
A futuristic space-suit being developed will take the high altitude adventurer of tomorrow from the total vacuum of outer space, through the searing heat of atmospheric reentry, then down to the surface of the planet earth for a pinpoint landing that even Elon Musk would be envious of and one that Tony Stark, the “Iron Man” himself, would be totally familiar with.
Two fledgling start-ups, Juxtopia LLC and Solar System Express, both of Baltimore Maryland, are combining their respective talents to assemble The RL MARK VI Space Diving Ensemble — hardware that, until now, only a bona fide superhero could truly appreciate. And, with this collaboration will come the ability for future space travelers — both in emergency situations and in recreational pursuits — to exit a spacecraft in low-earth orbit, reenter the earth’s atmosphere and return safely back to the ground. [Spacesuit Suite: Evolution of Cosmic Clothes (Infographic)]
Juxtopia’s augmented reality goggles will feed tomorrow’s space diver with a visual display of all the vital information he will need to successfully navigate his way back to the surface of the planet. A pair of gyroscopic boots from Solar System Express will steady the jumper’s descent through the upper atmosphere until the air becomes thick enough for aerodynamic control.
The developers plan to test their system using traditional parachute jumps, witha production model of the RL MARK VI estimated for delivery in 2016.
Read the full story about the technology in "Revolutionary New Space-Diving Suit Will Rival Anything You’ve Ever Seen In The Movies."
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.Review pledged over use of legal high drug mephedrone
Police said the friends had been out drinking on Monday The legality of the drug mephedrone will be examined "very speedily, very carefully" following the deaths of two teenagers, Lord Mandelson has said. The business secretary said the government would take "any action" needed to deal with the drug. Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, died in Scunthorpe on Monday after taking the drug. Four people have been arrested in connection with the deaths, including two men aged 26 and 20 and a boy of 17. The Home Office said it would receive advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) on 29 March. The ACMD said its chairman, Professor Les Iverson, had discussed mephedrone with Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who had expressed "grave concern". Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. It said: "The council has been looking at the dangers of mephedrone, and the related cathinone compounds, as a priority." According to BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw, a member of the ACMD, speaking anonymously, said he would be "very surprised" if the council did not make its decision at its next meeting in March. The council will then report its recommendations to the home secretary. The ACMD member said there was also "some understanding" of the science behind mephedrone, though it was "far from perfect". Lord Mandelson said the government would take "any action that is justified to deal with this and to avert such tragic consequences occurring in the future". MEPHEDRONE FACTS Recreational drug with effects similar to amphetamines and ecstasy Sold as a white powder, also found in capsules and pills or can be dissolved in a liquid Often sold online as plant food marked "not for human consumption" Completely different drug to methadone, which is a pharmaceutical drug typically used as a very strong painkiller or to treat heroin addicts Reported side-effects include headaches, palpitations, nausea, cold or blue fingers Long-term effect of taking drug unknown Currently legal to buy and be in possession of the powder, but against the law to sell, supply or advertise the powder for human consumption under the Medicines Act Already illegal in Israel, Denmark, Norway and Sweden
How has drug affected users? What is legal high mephedrone? Indecision over mephedrone Parents call for drug ban He also admitted that he had never previously heard of the drug. Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said there was a strong case for banning mephedrone and other "legal highs". He said: "There is mounting evidence to suggest these drugs are doing real damage to people's health. "An incoming Conservative government would mount an urgent review of these substances with a view to adding them to the list of banned substances." The parents of Mr Smith are also calling for a ban. His mother, Elaine, said action was needed to stop children having access to mephedrone, saying: "If that means making it an illegal substance, then that's how it should be." His father, Tony, said the legal status of the drug could have given his son a "false sense of security", saying the government should have acted sooner to make it illegal. Mephedrone is known by various names, including "M-Cat", "MC", "mieow", "meow", "4MMC" or simply plant fertiliser. It is usually a white or yellowish powder, which is snorted, but can also be obtained in pills and capsules. It is marketed as plant food. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) also says a ban should be considered. NAHT general secretary Mick Brookes told the BBC mephedrone use had become more widespread. FROM BBC RADIO 5 LIVE Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
More from BBC Radio 5 live He said: "This drug clearly has the same inherent dangers as any Class A drug and I think serious consideration should be given to banning it. "The problem with that is that you then criminalise the people who take it, so we need to think very carefully about what we do, but act with some speed." Some head teachers say the drug should be made illegal immediately - even if it risks some children getting a criminal record. Schools have become increasingly worried that because the drug is legal, children as young as 12 are trying it. An ACMD sub-committee had been looking into legal highs but its work stopped following the dismissal of Professor David Nutt as the chief drugs adviser last October. Prof Nutt was sacked after publicly disagreeing with the government's decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug and not to downgrade ecstasy. Club scene Five ACMD members then resigned in the row that followed Prof Nutt's departure. Websites selling the drug have told their customers it is a case of "when" not "if" mephedrone will be banned. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. The two teenagers who died were found collapsed at their homes after a night out in Scunthorpe. Humberside Police said the drug appeared to have contributed to their deaths. They had been out drinking in the hours before they died. Post-mortem examinations are being carried out. Mephedrone has become popular on the UK club scene in recent months and is said to have effects similar to the drug ecstasy. Side effects are said to include psychosis, palpitations, burning throat, nosebleeds and insomnia. Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Tell us your experiences using the form below. A selection of your comments may be published, displaying your name and location unless you state otherwise in the box below. Name
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionAG2R-La Mondiale appeared to be arguably the most improved WorldTour squad in the first months of the 2014 season, not only with all their leaders presenting splendid disposition and winning races, but second-row riders in the likes of Alexis Vuillermoz stepping up to a higher level carried by a wave of rediscovered team confidence. Manager of the French outfit, Vincent Lavanu, expressed his satisfaction with latest appearances of their riders and revealed some of the plans regarding the near future, including the Tour de France leadership.
With all four AG2R key-riders – Domenico Pozzovivo, Carlos Betancur, Romain Bardet and Jean-Christophe Peraud sitting inside top 30 of UCI WorldTour individual rankings and ten races won on their account from the beginning of the 2014 season, Lavanu is convinced that few years of a consequent work on building the French squad eventually started to bear fruits.
“It’s a feeling of being rewarded for the work we started several years ago, that it pais off. Reaching a top level requires discovering a magic formula, it does not always work immediately. We are the third strongest WorldTour team now, but it was earned by winning great events like Paris-Nice for the first time with Carlos [Betancur]. That brings a lot of peace,” Lavanu told Ouest-France.
Peraud has been flying last couple of weeks, with victory in the Criterium International overall classification and podium spots at the Tour Mediterraneen or Vuelta al Pais Vasco – thanks to his great time trial on event’s ultimate day. However, the 36-year old Frenchman insists that his disposition is not better than last season and a huge confidence boost brought by AG2R early successes is responsible for respectable results obtained by their riders.
“I’m not sure whether his level is exactly the same as last year. Jean-Christophe seems better than last year when he crashed out of the Tour de France (…). We lacked success. We rapidly gained it this season with several different riders and it’s certainly reassuring,” Lavanu explained.
Satisfied with highly respectable recent performances of Peraud or Betancur, the AG2R manager prefers to concentrate on the future, particularly on the Ardennes and the Tour de France. Despite some uncertainties caused by his latest heal problems, Lavanu confirmed that the 24-year old Colombian will participate in the hilly classics while in-form 36-year old Frenchman is expected to lead the squad in the French grand tour.
“Obviously, Carlos Betancur will step up. He trained well following his withdrawal from the Vuelta al Pais Vasco and he gets better. He will ride Amstel, La Fleche and Liege.”
“Jean- Christophe Péraud will be the number one for the Tour de France, supported by two aces, particularly Carlos Betancur and Romain Bardet.”
“Carlos have to discover this event. He has ambitions, already speaks of the white jersey and certainly will be able to contest it with some additional pressure.”
“By then, Jean-Christophe will ride the Tour de Romandie. This kind of race suits him well, especially with its mountain chrono.”
Even though the complete AG2R roster for the season’s first grand tour is yet to be determined, it is already certain that Domenico Pozzovivo will lead the French team at the Giro d’Italia, supported by frying Alexis Vuillermoz and Maxime Bouet.
“For the Giro, Domenico Pozzovivo will be out leader. He is highly motivated after finishing 10th in 2013 and then 6th in the Vuelta. He will be joined by Alexis vuillermoz and Maxime Bouet,” Lavanu concluded.State environmental officials are overseeing the installation of special machines in Jordan Lake starting today.
SolarBees are water circulators intended to prevent algae from storm water runoff from forming in the lake. Installers are placing a total of 36 machines: 12 in the Haw River arm of the lake and 24 more in the Morgan Creek tributary.
Susan Massengale is a spokeswoman with the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. She says this step begins 18 months of water testing.
"We'll be collecting samples for chlorophyll-a, turbidity, nitrogen, phosphorus..as well as your typical physical data with water temperature, what's the dissolved oxygen like, pH levels and conductivity -- and this will give us a picture of water quality over time," Massengale says.
The General Assembly passed legislation in 2013 making the project possible. The results will be reported to lawmakers in October. Massengale says she knows there will be quite a bit of interest in the results.
"It is more or less a research project for us to see what happens when they're in the lake and see how we're doing," she says. "We've done some baseline monitoring and we'll be monitoring regularly through the period that they'll be in the water."
Water quality will be tested once a month for the next year and a half. Massengale says if the machines work as anticipated, oxygen levels in the lake water should improve. Tastes and odors that adversely affect drinking water should also be diminished.It's really my own fault for forgetting about the spiders.
I'm calling them spiders because they had what any earthling would recognize as spiderlike qualities, but they weren't spiders. They couldn't have been. For one, each was the size of my space boot; for two and three, they were filled with white goo and it often took more than one pulse from my laser rifle to kill them. I'd already taken out at least a dozen of them—some as they crawled up a cave wall, others as they scuttled toward me across the alien landscape—but it wasn't long before other, larger antagonists demanded my attention. And these shot fireballs at me. So I found cover behind a rock to wait out the projectile attack, and I forgot about the spiders.
Actually, you know what? Time out. Let's stop for a second. This is obviously the first part of a story about virtual reality. It's the part that describes the thing I'm doing in VR as though I'm really doing it. And I write a little bit about doing the virtual thing, the simulacrum, and you think Oh, man, that sounds like a fun experience, but then I say Aha, but NO! THIS WAS VIRTUAL REALITY! and we all breathe deep the promise of immersive technology and wonder how our puny brains will handle it. Maybe that thing I'm doing is standing on the edge of a building, or ascending The Wall, driving a racecar, flying like a bird (or Iron Man), or wandering a beach, or being swarmed by alien spiders while distracted by fireballs and then dying an ignominious death of spider bites before I can take out the enemy's energy core.
But every time I do this thing where I describe the thing I'm doing in VR as though I'm really doing it, here's what I'm doing in meatspace: Nothing. I'm standing. Maybe I'm crouching. I'm probably holding a game controller and pushing an analog stick or a button. I definitely have a ridiculous expression plastered on my face and goofy goggles on my head. But I'm not really doing anything.
And that's the thing that Seth Luisi is trying to change.
Seth Luisi, head of Impulse Gear. Peter Earl McCollough for WIRED
So the first part of this story about virtual reality is still that part where I describe the thing I'm doing. The difference is I'm really doing it. I don't mean I'm on an alien planet, obviously; I'm standing in an unassuming cubicle den somewhere in Sony's US headquarters 30 minutes south of San Francisco, and I'm wearing the latest prototype of the Playstation 4's VR headset still known only as Project Morpheus, and I'm playing a demo Luisi and his team created.
But here's the part that's different: in real life, I'm holding a prototype of a gun, and in virtual reality I'm holding the same gun. I can turn the gun this way and that IRL, and it twists accordingly in VR; I can hold it up to my face IRL, and peer through the scope in VR to squeeze off a remarkably accurate shot. Its aim is astounding, using Playstation Move controllers to achieve 1:1 precision. In other words, the game controller itself is virtualized, which means something that changes everything we thought we knew about VR gaming: First-person shooters are possible.
And that's just one very small part of what Sony's planning for Project Morpheus. The headset will be released in the first half of next year, but the company is using this week's E3 gaming conference to win gamers' hearts early. Sony is bringing close to 20 games and experiences to E3, which begins in Los Angeles tomorrow. Tonight at the company's keynote event, it will announce games from multiple game studios: Sony-exclusive ones like Guerilla Games, but also third-party outfits and even small indie teams. There'll be a VR version of Ubisoft's Trackmania racing franchise; Harmonix Music VR, a music visualizer from the Rock Band developer; Wayward Sky, a new game from the team behind third-person shooter Monday Night Combat. This strange tech demo Luisi and his team cooked up will be at E3 as well—not on the show floor, but behind closed doors, where select journalists will glimpse what the future holds.
Sony
All Over but the Gaming
Virtual reality has been solved. We know this now. Sure, it'll continue to improve drastically over the coming years, but the technology exists, and the first half of 2016 sees the wide release of no fewer than three consumer-grade PC- or console-based solutions: Project Morpheus, Oculus Rift, and the HTC Vive.
The question that remains, though, is what we'll do with it. What's going to be the killer app that turns a three-figure gadget or four-figure computer you need to experience VR—from a novelty to a must-have? If Sony has its way, it's games. Lots of games.
"We need to convince PS4 owners to spend several hundred dollars to purchase a Morpheus headset, on top of the PS4 they already have," says Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's Worldwide Studios. "And more gaming content is what will convince them. We have 30 or more games being developed that we are tracking—not all of them will come out at launch, but there are serious efforts being made on all of them."
Adam Boyes, who heads up publisher and developer relations for Sony's game platforms. Peter Earl McCollough for WIRED
"I'm shocked at how broad it is," Adam Boyes, the company's VP of publisher and developer relations, says of the slate of games in development. "You think everything's going to fall into one of four categories—sports, shooters, action, etc.—and that's not the case. Because developers have such great aceess to VR tools in general, they're just throwing everything at the wall." So there are small puzzle games. Relaxation games. First-person exploration games. Networked games where you can play with other people. Games where you can play a different game in a tabletop display—which, just to remind you, is in the virtual space. That is, you're in a VR environment, playing a game you might have once played on a regular console. It's like a 3-D version of picture-in-picture.
Obviously, Sony isn't the only company working to make this happen. Oculus has an internal game studio as well as a number of trusted partners like Epic Games, and the HTC Vive is being developed in conjunction with Valve, an acclaimed game developer and publisher in its own right. However, the Playstation 4 might be poised to raise the bar faster and higher than anyone expected. For one, while the Rift and the Vive are PC peripherals, and PCs can have any number of hardware configurations, the PS4 is a locked platform—developers know exactly what their game needs to run on, and thus don't need to hedge their bets to ensure performance on a wide range of setups.
Further, the fact the PS4 has a very PC-like hardware architecture means it's surprisingly easy for people to develop a game for a PC solution like the Oculus Rift, and then move it to the PS4. Yoshida and Boyes both mention Morpheus titles in development that began as projects on Oculus devkits, but whose developers got them up and running for Morpheus in a matter of days.
Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios. Ariel Zambelich/WIRED
And third, the PS4 already has more than one input solution. For gamers who grew up with a controller in their hand, there's the tried-and-true layout of the Dualshock 4 controller; Sony's Japan Studio development division created a suite of experiences for the Morpheus that effectively virtualized the Dualshock so gamers could see a VR version controller that mapped perfectly to what they held IRL. There's also the Playstation Move for a more intuitive gesture-based option.
Or, if you're Seth Luisi, there's a bizarre frankencontroller that mashes both options into one that might fuel the next generation of first-person shooters.
Building a Better Shooter
Luisi has worked for Sony's videogame wing in some capacity for 18 years. At first, he localized Japanese RPGs so they could be played in the US. If Final Fantasy VII was a formative experience for you, you have Luisi to thank. Later, he worked on the long-running combat series SOCOM, and as part of a subsidiary called Zipper Interactive, he helped create an ambitious multiplayer first-person shooter called MAG. Then, in 2012, Zipper went under, and Luisi began wondering what to do next.
While at Zipper, he'd set about trying to make gaming more intuitive. "I've done a lot of games with a controller," he says, "and a lot of that goes back to the mouse and keyboard days, where you're moving around a cursor to a point on the screen." If he could find a way to implement accurate gestural aiming, he reasoned, he could make a shooting-based game feel more like the real thing. He'd begun exploring the idea by modifying a gunlike peripheral called a Sharpshooter, rubber-banding an extra Playstation Move to it, but it seemed premature.
Then came the sudden resurgence of virtual reality, and with it a brainstorm: Luisi could see not only how to achieve that accuracy, but to do it in a far more immersive environment. He formed a new studio, Impulse Gear, and set about doing just that for Project Morpheus.
There was still one problem, though: first-person shooters weren't supposed to work in VR. The fast-twitch reaction times and high rate of speed, everyone thought, was a recipe for inescapable simulator sickness. Oculus' own best practices for developers recommend that players' characters in first-person-view games move at only 1.8 meters per second—far too slow for a true action game based on player locomotion. (When there's a stationary frame of reference, like a racecar or a spaceship, there's much lower risk of high-speed movement making you lose your lunch.) And of course, there's the dreaded "right analog stick" problem: Players generally don't feel discomfort with walking in a given direction, but using a controller's right stick to move the camera—in a first-person view, that's equivalent to turning your head in a given direction—is a short road to nausea. It's a clash between your eyes and your vestibular system, and your brain ends up telling your body that you've been poisoned.
Luisi with his one-off prototype controller. Peter Earl McCollough for WIRED
So first came the aiming mechanism. "Without detached aiming," Luisi says, "you're stuck with either using your head to aim or moving the whole screen or some sort of cursor in the world—and none of that is intuitive." People have kludged together gun-like peripherals before, and Sony's London Studio has used the Playstation Move controller to allow players to pick up and manipulate objects in virtual space. Impulse Gear's solution was a little bit of both: Based on Luisi's earlier work with the Sharpshooter, they 3D-printed a prototype combining Playstation Move and navigation controllers and the guts of a PS3 Dualshock 3 controller. The result offered aiming speed and accuracy that fit VR needs perfectly.
Then the Impulse Gear team found some creative ways to overcome the other issues. Setting the demo on an alien planet allowed them to boost player speed to 6 meters/second—more than three times what people thought could work. The reason is scale. "When you put someone in a hallway," Luisi says, "they have an understanding of the size of a hallway, ceilings, doorways; if you're moving that fast you feel like you're moving that fast." Keeping the landscape unfamiliar and the distances between objects much greater than they would be in a conventional shooter helps mitigate the effects of your running speed.
Again, this isn't a game. It's not even an official demo. It's just something that Luisi and Impulse Gear cooked up to see if they could. And it turns out they can. The next step is turning it into a game. Luisi won't cop to anything specific, and the game might not end up even taking place in the same world the demo does, but he's pretty sure they'll stick with a sci-fi approach. Not only does it offer opportunities to get around the design bugaboos, but more importantly it's a change of a pace for a guy who's designed earthbound military titles for more than a decade. "I've made lots of modern combat games," he says. "It's good to do something different every once in a while."Disarm Americans Ensure Full-blown Submission
Ladies and Gentlemen; the Imperial Storm Troopers are ready to neutralize the threat from the American people against the Colonial Empire. Obama has declared war to the cheers of the progressive imbeciles, who are the most avid abettor of the Totalitarian Collectivist society. You may not get a visit from ATF, DHS or FBI any day soon, but you can be sure your society is being SWAT by the government domestic terrorists carrying out the wishes of a tyrannical regime. The political class and the underlings that implement their illegitimate dictates want to disarm the public out of fear the peasants may storm the castle. Guns and bullets are only instruments of protection. The crucial war on populist independence is waged against the minds, hearts and souls of thinking and fearless Americans. The long and persistent struggle to demonize self-governing citizens in their local communities, has been a prime objective of a despotic culture that reveres central authority, while condemning any resistance to authoritarian rule. Disarming is not restricted to firearms. Defusing disobedience is the essential goal. Submission and compliance is lionized as the critical attribute for denizens, who now reside in a foreign land, totally different from that of their forebears. Record gun sales were hit before Obama announces gun control executive action. Would anyone think they will drop after the latest draconian infringement against the public’s right to bear arms? All time record number of background checks processed as the “FBI processed a record number of firearms-related background checks last year, indicating that more guns were sold in 2015 than in any previous year in American history.” CNN reports that gun manufacturers like “Sturm Ruger's stock soared more than 75% last year while Smith & Wesson's stock was up more than 132%.” Is it not refreshing to see and know that the rational and well balanced segment of real America rejects the dictatorial pronouncements of a pussy emperor? This is the time to strike a bargain with the devil. When the POTUS abandons Secret Service protection and bans all firearms along with dismissing any personal security details, the grassroots “ bitter clingers ” will think about beating our swords into plowshares. Just how dim-witted has the “politically correct” disconnect from reality become? Obviously, the culture borders on societal insanity. There is no more of an axiom natural law than the right of an individual to protect the safety of their person. The totalitarians from the loony left are the most intolerant and domineering proponents of a slave society. These brainwashed dullards are the quintessential racists. Liberty to their cult system is so dangerous that only the brute force from an all supreme centralized dominance can keep autonomous sovereignty under their boot.
How did this mental sickness come into existence? Now for those brave patriots, who dare to follow the truth, even if the controlled mass media culture calls you chauvinistic names; listen to the audacious Brother Nathanael Kapner in the video, Jews Lead Gun Control Charge. If a Caucasian Christian (other than a converted former Jew) made this argument, they would immediately be dumped upon as a “gun rights extremist who also advocates a theocratic society based on Old Testament civil and religious laws, and a pivotal figure in the militia movement.” Read for yourself what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls Larry Pratt. Revealing, Who Controls the Southern Poverty Law Center lists the twenty-two (22) Southern Poverty Law Center senior program staff members, fifteen (15) are Jews. Folks, it is not anti-Semitic to document factual reality. The perversion in our culture that tears down traditional values and seeks to isolate and marginalize exponents of American individualism is based upon the Totalitarian Collectivism that is taught in the Talmud. You say this is too harsh of a condemnation? Wake up buddy. Liberate yourself from the socialization taught in government schools, from the culture shock in mass media newspeak and from the sick curriculum of academia anarchism designed to strip the goy of their heritage. The right to bear arms is righteous if atrocities and despicable acts are committed by the Irgun, the Stern Gang or Lehi, but if ordinary citizens want to defend their family and home, they risk being charged as domestic terrorists. This disconnect is a direct result from the methodical attack on the time-honored American social order from committed secular subverters. And yes, the most dangerous zealots claim that they are Jews, even if the cold blood of the Khazars runs in their veins. Second Amendment defenders must understand that the state of war that is being fought against them must admit that the ideology of collectivism is embedded in the MTV psyops brain drain indoctrination. This one example illustrates the practice of dedicated decades of creating a cultural wasteland that replaces any connection to the real world. By destroying the minds of the youth, the debauched and debased secular humanism twists and weaves the new age progressivism into the mainstream cesspool. Pray tell, guns can only be put into the hands of law enforcement, since middle class values and church worship are so outdated and dangerous. This obscene mentality is where the actual battlefield of disarmament is taking place. The reason is simple. Individuals have no self worth in this profaned system of submission. Enter the political class and their bureaucratic trolls serving time to draw their retirement benefits. The sport of adhering to the game plan of achieving power requires bonding with the cultural elite’s. When tenured associate professor James Tracy is fired over the controversy from his claims that Sandy Hook was a hoax, the practice of challenging the orthodox gun fear narrative is vividly demonstrated. What gun law did he violate |
vent, staggered quad headlamps, woven-plastic chain-mail grille. But in the flesh, on the road, the Bentayga lacks presence. It is an occasion car, without an occasion.
Not that we’re buying by the inch or pound, but it’s smallish and deficient in visual weight. It looks like the third Bentley SUV to be released—the little one, the volume model. Occasionally, driving in cluster of Bentaygas through the San Jacinto Mountains, I failed to recognize the Bentayga in front of me. An $86,000 Range Rover has gravitas and sincerity; the Bentayga looks like a Touareg tarted up with body makeup, strap-on muscles, and a Party City breastplate. An extra from the automotive version of Game of Thrones. Fortunately, the inside is exquisite. Taking Bentley’s winged emblem as inspiration, it cossets five occupants—four, if you’re willing to shell out $11,000 to replace the rear center seat with controls for the heaters, coolers, recliners, and massagers. Fifteen hides and seven veneers are available as standard choices. Seal embryo and endangered Madagascar baobab can probably be commissioned upon request.
A janky $3,200 padded leather bench or stolid $28,000 trio of leather picnic hampers can be spec’d inside the boot, taking up precious cargo room in a space already limited by a very fast backlight. (Rear legroom is similarly lacking in copiousness.) There’s a $4,900 premium stereo, if the other two stereos aren’t enough to drown out your spoiled children live-casting Candy Crush on the pair of rear-mounted $7,100 Android tablets. If you lack even one iota of shame, a gold-faced, self-winding $164,000 Breitling can be grafted into your dashboard. Only three of the four watches are spoken for in 2016. Praise be Gordon Gekko, there’s still time to jettison your dignity.
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Good news? This thing is absolutely amazing to drive. I had a myriad of opportunities to test the Bentayga on- and off-road—highway, snow-slick mountain passes, an off-road course that’d stump a stump-pulling Wrangler, and even in the gusty sand dunes southeast of the toxic Salton Sea. The new 6-liter, twin-turbocharged W-12 engine, eight-speed auto trans, quad-height air suspension, and other wizardly vectoring doodads make the Bentayga both indomitable and indefatigable. Venturing into the mountainous and desert venturis, the thing never stopped feeling outrageously, impossibly capable. Also, fast as shit.
Few will use a Bentley truck for anything more treacherous than après ski commuting. But it’s comforting to know that, once the revolution begins, all of the globe’s Bentayga can go far and wide seeking refuge from a proletariat mob. Best order the $5,870 optional throwing star wheels and a whetstone. Company execs also told me to expect at least two more vehicles in the future: an even less practical SUV with a coupe-like roofline, a la BMW X6, and a pure sporting coupe, as foreshadowed by the Exp 10 Speed 6 concept. When I asked Michael Winkler, President of Bentley of the Americas, about a larger SUV, one that would provide the space and ambience I think a Bentley SUV should have, he replied: “There are no engineering models, but already the wheels are turning to look at a longer wheelbase model.”
Bentley is first to market in the segment. But Rolls-Royce, Maserati, Aston Martin, and Lamborghini all promise ultra-luxe SUVs in the next few years. You can bet they’ll all be unique and brand-specific in vying for the title of “world’s most expensive SUV.” As we’ve seen in other vehicle categories—from the nineteenth century Duryea Motor Wagon to the Honda Insight—being first doesn’t always mean a lasting impact. I’m certain Bentley will sell every Bentayga they make this year. I just hope they’re not betting the farm on this farmed catfish.Political philosophers have examined what kind of government is, in their opinion, the best kind. In voluminous writings justifying various forms of government they either ignore or quickly dispense with the more fundamental question: DO WE NEED OR WANT ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT?
What is it to be governed? And what is the alternative?
TO BE GOVERNED
To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, censored, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown it all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice, that is its morality.
If Proudhon's description of government sounds too rhetorical or too politically prejudiced, turn to the Oxford English Dictionary for a definition of government: it says that to govern is to rule, conduct, regulate, command, curb, control, sway, influence and determine. These are the same as verbs which Proudhon uses, but they are in the active tense - the tense of the 'doer'. Most of us receive government in the tense of the 'done to'.
Why should we be ruled, conducted, regulated, commanded, curbed, controlled, swayed, influenced and determined by others?
The function of government is supposedly the control of the less enlightened by the more enlightened. Is there really one group of people more enlightened than the rest - or do they have different, rather than better, ideas? By whose standards are they judged to be more enlightened? And if there is a more enlightened group, why should they dictate to others rather than share their enlightenment with them?
Why divide men into two classes, one of which is to think and reason for the whole, and the other to take the conclusions of their superiors on trust? This distinction is not founded in the nature of things; there is no such difference between man and man as it thinks proper to suppose. The reasons that should convince us that virtue is better than vice are neither complicated nor abstruse; and the less they be tampered with by the injudicious interference of political institutions, the more they will come home to the understanding and approve themselves to the judgement of every man.
Goldwin hints that what government does is to obscure rather than to elucidate. It deliberately keeps the majority of people in the dark in order that the few can get their own way (to power, wealth, and so on) with a minimum of opposition. Is government not an enlightened guide bu a Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity?
Let us look at what it means to be governed by some of the systems of government advocated by political philosophers.
TO BE GOVERNED IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC
To be governed by the system of Plato's Republic would entail being subject to a ruling class of Guardians or Philosopher Rulers. Plato divides people into those who have an economic function and those who have a ruling or military function. The economic class may live in a capitalist structure, but the Guardians live communally with no private property and no nuclear family, in order to prevent private interest superseding the common interest in the Guardian class. The Guardians have all political power and no economic function. Plato has separated reason (the Guardians) and spirit (their Auxiliaries) from appetite (most of the people, who have an economic role). The Guardians would be thoroughly educated - but they would have no practical understanding of the people they were ruling as they would be living totally different lives. This system begs Godwin's question: why divide people into two classes...?
Plato draws the analogy between the soul and the state. If the soul and the state are each composed of reason, spirit and appetite, does it make sense to then suggest that people should stop being a balance of all three components and take up a role as either reason/Guardian, spirit/Auxiliary or appetite/economic function? This may theoretically lead to a balanced state, but how can this lead to a balanced individual?
Also, the notion of totally separate classes which do not interbreed creates a situation familiar to the Aryan philosophy of different races having different functions and different values. The horrific outcome of that kind of philosophy was realized in the slaughter of the Jews in Hitler's Germany. So to be governed in Plato's Republic is to live a totally different and separate life from the people who have political power over you.
TO BE GOVERNED IN HOBBES' LEVIATHAN
Hobbes' political philosophy rests on two assumptions: that the state of nature (i.e. people without government) is a state of war, and that everybody wants to avoid death. He moves through four abstractions - the State of Nature, the Right of Nature, the Law of Nature and the Social Contract - to reach his conclusion that the only way for people to avoid death and provide a safe and comfortable way of life for themselves was for them to acknowledge a perpetual sovereign power, against which each of them was powerless.
To be governed in Hobbes' system is to accept the power of a person or group over you because you fear that, without them keeping order, you could not survive.
The problem with both the Platonic and the Hobbesian solution is that in the interests of authority the majority of people lose their autonomy. Proponents of social contract theories such as that of Rousseau say that the solution to the conflict between authority and autonomy lies in democracy. What does it mean, to be governed by a democracy?
TO BE GOVERNED BY A DEMOCRACY
The theory of democracy is that everybody participates in government. By being bother the makers and the obeyers of the law they can combine the benefits of authority with the freedoms of autonomy. The government is the executor of the people's will. In 'The Social Contract' Rousseau says:
...every person, while uniting himself with all,... obeys only himself and remains free as before.
How does this turn out in practice?
In a unanimous direct democracy - a democracy in which every law which is passed and every decision which is made is decided upon by every person in the society to whom it will apply - it would be true to say that every person unites with all and still only obeys themself. This would be possible only in very small communities of like-minded people - possibly in kibbutzim. However, it is difficult to see what the meaning of authority is in such a situation - if people are obeying themselves then they are being autonomous, and if their opinions coincide and they all act together, they are still being autonomous. To call coinciding autonomy 'authority' is a dubious verbal solution - the notion of authority is redundant in a situation where each person obeys their own decision.
As societies are usually too big for unanimous direct democracy the more prevalent form of democracy is a representative democracy. There are various forms of representative democracy, but most of them are neither truly representative nor truly democratic.
Representative democracy entails people choosing from a limited number of candidates the one whose general political platform is nearest to their own. All the issues that the'representative' will be deciding on will not be known at the times of the election, and of those that are known there is unlikely to be a representative for every view - let alone for every combination of views:
Suppose, for example, that in an American election there are four main issues: a farm bill, medical care for the aged, the extension of the draft, and civil rights. Simplifying the real world considerably, we can suppose that there are three alternative courses of action seriously being considered on the first issue, four on the second, two on the third, and three on the last. These are then 3×4×2×3=72 possible stands which a man might take on these four issues.
Therefore, if in this hypothetical situation there were fewer than seventy-two different candidates then this'representative democracy' does not preserve the autonomy of a unanimous direct democracy.
Unanimous direct democracy relies on everybody agreeing about everything. This is very rare. As soon as people disagree the notion of majority rule is introduced - everybody should abide by the decision of the majority. Under the majority rule the majority retain their autonomy and the minority (which may be as many as 49%) have to submit to authority. If the minority submit to authority then they lose their autonomy, and if they retain their autonomy by not co-operating with the government then they deny the authority of that government.
If people agree to majority rule they agree to be bound by laws which they do not will, and therefore they agree to voluntary slavery.
TO BE GOVERNED IN GREAT BRITAIN
In this country once every four or five years people vote in a general election. They usually vote for one of three main political platforms, which are unlikely to coincide exactly with the views many people hold. The choice is narrow - it is between three variations of a mixed economy. There is no radically different alternative within the parliamentary system. Frequently people vote not for what they consider to be the right sort of government, but for what appears to be the least worst choice. Voting is affected by which they think is the least worst for them personally; which they think is the least worst for the nation as a whole; and which they think has a chance of winning - there is a long history of people not voting for the middle party because they think it has no chance of winning. The decision is restricted still further by the information the parties choose to market - often with the aid of an advertising agency. Politics is packaged like soap powder - each year two million pounds of taxpayers' money goes to advertising companies. Recently the conservative party was proposing to spend a million pounds on anti-C.N.D. advertising. Politics is big business - and people's decisions are bound to be influenced by those in control of the business.
To be governed in a so-called democracy such as ours is to be sold the illusion that people are participating in decision-making, whilst in reality a small hierarchical group of capitalists and politicians are in control.
TO BE GOVERNED BY THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
Revolutionary socialists and Marxists of various kinds believe that capitalism and its accompanying structure, the class-based state, must be overthrown for the majority of people (the working class) to be liberated. They propose to abolish the state by first capturing it and using to destroy capitalism. When the workers have seized control of the state machinery there will be a period which Lenin calls the dictatorship of the proletariat. This will be a reorganizing period, after which the state structure will no longer be needed and will wither away.
However, the state is a tool of the oppressor. Why should people use the oppressor's tool? Why should they abolish class society from above, rather than from below? The tool of government is modelled to implement the government of the many by the few - once a revolutionary party has seized that tool is it not in danger of losing its identity as part of the many and becoming the governing few?
The State organization, having always been, both in ancient and modern history (Macedonian empire, Roman empire, modern European states grown up on the ruins of autonomous cities), the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities, cannot be made to work for the destruction of these monopolies. The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main sources of economic life - the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on - as also the management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its hands (education, State-supports religions, defense of the territory, etc), would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny.
In an approximate sense such was the fate of the Russian revolution of 1917.
So to be governed by the dictatorship of the proletariat is to allow the power which has been wrested from one small group of people to be entrusted in theory to the whole of the working class, but in practice only to another small group.
From Plato's Guardians to Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat, to be governed means for the majority of people to be subject to the control of a minority. To be governed means to lose your autonomy and be subject to an authority with which you may or may not agree. It might mean that you are watched, inspected, spied upon, directed in Great Britain......in El Salvador it means that you are imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot.
So why do people want a government? Many, like Hobbes, believe that it is the only way to avoid chaos - they think that people are naturally selfish and chaotic and prone to kill each other. Is this true?
And why do people think they need a government? Is it not because they are so used to having one that they cannot imagine life without one?
Is it that they have lived so long in spite of their bonds that they think they live because of them?
ANARCHISM
Anarchism is the alternative to being governed. Anarchism means, simply, absence of government.
The word 'anarchy' held connotations of chaos, disorder and conflict due to the Hobbesian notion that without government people would be chaotic.
In the English and French revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the term 'anarchist' was used as an insult, to suggest that revolutionaries wanted anarchy in the sense of chaos. Then from 1840 onwards, following P. J. Proudhon, people started calling themselves anarchists, believing that the absence of government need not mean chaos and confusion but could actually be much better for society than the presence of government.
Anarchism is a development of liberalism and socialism. The liberal tradition is concerned with the achievement of freedom, the socialist tradition is concerned with the achievement of equality: anarchism maintains that both must be attained together. Freedom without equality leaves the poor weak and less free than the right and strong, whilst equality without freedom makes us all slaves together. Freedom without equality is not really freedom, and equality without freedom is not really equality. Anarchism arose from the contradiction between liberalism and socialism.
The big difference between anarchism and either liberalism or socialism is that both liberals and socialists depend on the idea of government. Anarchism maintains that freedom and equality cannot be achieved within a system of government because government is, by definition, the control of people by an authoritarian structure.
There is a common assumption that without government modern civilization would crumble. Many people assume that anarchism is a kind of disorganized spontaneity.
This is the reverse of the truth. Anarchists actually want much more organization, though organization without authority. The prejudice about anarchism derives from a prejudice about organization; people cannot see that organization does not depend on authority, that it actually works best without authority.
When compulsion is replaced by consent there will be a need for more organization than ever before - more discussion and more planning - because there will be so many people involved in the decision-making process. Organization will take up more time, but the result will be closer to the feelings and needs of the people concerned.
Anarchism will lead to more complex organization, but it will do away with bureaucracy. Rather than being the bureaucratic instrument of one group imposing upon another, organization will be the interchange of ideas between everybody who is involved in what is being organized.
Anarchists believe that people are not necessarily competitive beings, but are capable of working together for the common good:
The principle of EACH FOR HIMSELF, which is the war of all against all, arose in the course of history to complicate, to sidetrack and paralyse the wall of all against nature for the greatest wellbeing of mankind which can be completely successful only when based on the principle of ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL.
Working together in co-operation rather than being coerced into doing things would make work and every other aspect of life more meaningful and more enjoyable for every individual.
Anarchism combines the notion of solidarity with the notion of each person having control over their own life. People would have a clear understanding of what they are doing, and only do what they want to do and what they think is right, rather than be swept along blindly as they have been in the past.
Until now all human history has been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honor of some pitiless abstraction - God, country, power of state, national honor, historical rights, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare.
Like Marx, anarchists believe that people have been alienated by wage labour and used as pawns by the church and politicians as well as capitalists.
One of the most famous phrases of anarchist literature is Proudhon's "PROPERTY IS THEFT". This sentiment was not new - it had been part of the Diggers' outcry in the seventeenth century:
The sin of property we do disdain,
No man has any right to buy and sell the earth for private gain,
By theft and murder they took the land,
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command.
Proudhon and the Diggers before him believed that an individual has a right to occupancy in the products of their own labour, but no further - and also that nobody has the right to misuse either their own of anybody else's products, either by expropriating, destroying or forcing them to produce something which their rightful possessors do not like or want. Thus property under capitalism is theft, because workers are stripped of the products of their labour.
To achieve anarchism the people must seize control of the means of production by social revolution - and, rather than handing them over to a socialist state, they must destroy the state apparatus and reorganize production on the basis of common ownership.
Anarcho-syndicalists base their case purely in the workplace. The French word'syndicalism' simply means trade unionism. Anarcho-syndicalists today work within the trade union movement and aim to undo the hierarchies which have evolved within trade unions and make every individual member equally important and equally active - thus preparing the ground for an anarchist workers' revolution.
The argument against syndicalism is that, like Marxism, it sees everything in terms of the workplace and class struggle - whereas many people do not have jobs and there are many other crucial struggles such as the women's struggle and the struggles of racial minorities within a country.
Many anarchists involve themselves in a broad spectrum of struggles other than trade unionism - such as anti-militarism, racial and sexual equality, and civil liberties in general.
Some methods of political struggle with which anarchists are particularly identified are propaganda by deed, civil disobedience and direct action.
Propaganda by deed means demonstrations and uprisings which are symbolic actions designed to win useful publicity. After a wave of violent acts by individual anarchists during the 1890s this method became identified with violence, but there is no reason why it should be. Anarchism is often associated in people's minds with violence, but very few anarchists are commit violent deeds and some anarchists are pacifists. The percentage of anarchists who have used violent means is no more than that of other political groups.
Civil disobedience is a particular kind of propaganda by deed which involves the open and deliberate breaking of a law in order to gain publicity.
Direct action used to mean the opposite of parliamentary action. In the context of the unions it means what is now more often called "industrial" action. The point is that the action is applied directly by the people involved in a situation, rather than indirectly by representatives. The aim is to win some measure of success rather than mere publicity.
So anarchism is not merely a political philosophy but a practical alternative to government which people can start to implement now.
Many anarchists get annoyed with philosophical anarchists who believe that anarchism is a nice ideal but not really achievable and are therefore happy to talk and write about anarchism but not work towards it. How do we know what is achievable until we start to work towards it?
As Marx said,
Philosophers have only INTERPRETED the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
One reason why some people believe that an anarchist society is not achievable is that they believe in something which they call "human nature". They say, "Human nature is acquisitive," and "Human nature is competitive." But nobody can really know these things. All we know is what people are like in the society in which we see them - and in an acquisitive and competitive society people are, on the whole, acquisitive and competitive. There are empirical reasons for this. It does not prove that people will always be like this.
Many of people's beliefs are forced on them by the ideology of the ruling class. Why else would they fight and die for what Bakunin calls "pitiless abstractions"? Why else would the oppressed people of one country fight the oppressed people of another country, instead of them all fighting their oppressors?
We do not know of any such thing as "human nature". It is used like Hobbes' "state of nature" - a fictional device dressed up as history and used to endorse the status quo. It is interesting that the status quo is usually endorsed by saying that things could be much worse without the present system, rather than saying that the present system is a good thing.
Some people say that an anarchist society would be unstable. Would it? And if it were, would that necessarily be a bad thing? What does instability mean?
Kropotkin sees the flexibility of an anarchist society as an advantage rather than a problem:
...such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary - as is seen in organic life at large - harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.
When there is no longer government, irrelevant traditions which have become fossilized in our way of life will be dispensed with. Instead of an anomalous jumble of past and present we shall have a society which is a true reflection of the people in it at any particular time.
Critics of anarchism often ask, "What about law and order?" They are concerned that without "law and order" everything would go wrong. But what is this law and order that they talk so highly of? It is the laws of the ruling class, imposed by the police to defend the status quo. These laws frequently do not have a value in themselves, but are modelled to defend the ruling class and most particularly to defend its property from those who think it should be distributed more fairly. As the Diggers said,
They make their laws to chain us well...
And these laws can be altered when they no longer suit the ruling class. In February this year the law was altered concerning Greenham Common - the deeds of the land were revoked in an attempt to stop the women's protest against cruise missiles. A similar incident occurred to stop the Diggers in the seventeenth century when common land was enclosed.
People also ask: "What about exchange?" and many other important questions about how an anarchist society will run. The only answer is that nobody knows. The whole point about an anarchist society is that it will be what its members want it to be. So nobody can prescribe what it will be like. It will evolve form the contributions of all its members.
Anarchism is the most radical political philosophy. It is easier to say what it will not be than what it will be - it will not be a system with a government, but what it will be will be determined by the people who make it.
It is a philosophy which combines autonomy and solidarity by putting faith in people rather than institutions.
Anarchism is often described as destructive. It is destructive only of government, bureaucracy, classes, class-based laws, bourgeois ideology, property stolen from the wage-slave - i.e. it is destructive of capitalism and the state apparatus - which must be destroyed before people can be free and equal.
P.J. Proudhon, in Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia p. 11
William Godwin, in Woodcock's Anarchism p. 76
Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism p. 33
Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism in The Essential Kropotkin p. 109
Nicholas Walter, About Anarchism p. 7
Errico Malatesta, Anarchy p. 29
Michael Bakunin, God and the State p. 59
Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism in The Essential Kropotkin p. 108Heading into January 2016, DC Comics is revealing some changes for the New Year!
Following the announcement at San Diego Comic-Con, January will debut an all-new SWAMP THING series, written by legendary co-creator Len Wein, with art by comics icon Kelley Jones. In this six-issue series, Swamp Thing receives an ominous warning and finds himself under attack from the forces of dark magic. These are more than just your average monsters, however! And if that’s not enough, there’s something much worse looming on the horizon for Alec Holland!
Also announced at San Diego Comic-Con and revealed during a panel at last week’s New York Comic-Con was POISON IVY: CYCLE OF LIFE AND DEATH, written by Amy Chu with art by Clay Mann. In this six-issue miniseries, Dr. Pamela Isley joins the prestigious plant sciences department at Gotham Botanical Gardens. But when a fellow scientist is murdered and it looks like the work of Poison Ivy, what happens next?
For our Digital fans, January also brings a new Digital First series featuring the Amazon warrior princess herself, WONDER WOMAN! THE LEGEND OF WONDER WOMAN is a nine-issue digital series written and illustrated by Renae De Liz, with inker/colorist Ray Dillon. In the beginning there was only chaos. But Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, sees a better future – and eventually her daughter is destined to bring that new world to life. But before her ultimate destiny is revealed, Diana of Themyscira must learn the important lessons of an Amazonian childhood!
Finally, Australia’s finest, Tom Taylor, brings his red-hot storytelling style from INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US to fill in on BATMAN/SUPERMAN #28, with guest artist Robson Rocha. This new three-part epic is an untold tale from Bruce and Clark’s early crime-fighting careers, as Batman and Superman are pitted against a menace that will not only test their partnership, but their friendship as well!
Taylor also gets his chance to go cosmic with GREEN LANTERN CORPS: EDGE OF OBLIVION. Featuring art by fan-favorite Ethan Van Sciver, this series picks up where GREEN LANTERN: LOST ARMY left off, with a John Stewart-led GL Corps still seeking a way home, but with the universe around them on the verge of total collapse! Along the way they’ll face dying gods, worlds torn asunder and a desperate group of survivors whose only hope is this band of ring-bearing cosmic heroes.
Check out the above gallery for the latest images on these new titles!In sports it is a common practice to learn by example. Typically, the NHL executives mimic the ways of the most successful organizations. However, there is also something to be said for learning from the mistakes of others. The Buffalo Sabres provide us with a prime example of how NOT to handle a prospect. Since the end of the 2012-13 lockout, the team has done just about everything wrong while trying to develop Mikhail Grigorenko.
Throw Him Into the Fire
After being drafted in 2012, Grigorenko found himself on the Sabres roster when the lockout concluded. Many questioned whether he was ready to make the jump straight to the NHL. But after a promising training camp, he started the season in Buffalo. Despite only having marginal success through his first few games, he was kept on the roster past his allotted trial time that would allow him to return to his junior hockey team without burning a year off of his contract.
All the while, “Grigs” was never given a real opportunity to succeed. He was on a team with a poor, losing culture that lacked leadership. If a teenage rookie is to perform well, he needs to be brought into just the right situation. He needs to be surrounded by quality veteran players and given an opportunity to perform while still having enough slack to grow through his mistakes. The Sabres were far from an ideal situation for a young player to be thrown into so Grigorenko should have been left in juniors.
Consistently Play Him on the Third & Fourth Line
The Sabres managed to go all in with Grigorenko without actually going all in. For most of Grigorenko’s time in Buffalo, he’s been relegated to third and fourth line duty instead of given a chance within the top six forwards. He’s skated alongside the likes of John Scott and hasn’t been given many opportunities to play with the team’s more skilled players.
The forward also hasn’t been given enough time on the ice to develop properly. He’s typically been given no more than 12 minutes a game, while on numerous other occasions he’s sat in the press box as a healthy scratch.
Fail to Understand/Adhere to Junior Hockey Protocols
This is probably the biggest mistake of the entire Grigorenko situation. Last season, the Sabres waited too long to make a decision on Grigorenko. Not only did the Sabres burn a year off of his entry-level contract by allowing him to play beyond the five-game limit (which was prorated for the lockout shortened season), but also burned a year off of the accrued seasons requirement, meaning Grigorenko will be eligible for unrestricted free agency one year sooner.
The typical 40-game requirement that awards an accrued season was also prorated to 23.4 games due to the shortened season. Unfortunately, Grigorenko wasn’t sent back to junior until the Sabres played 27 games. Although Grigorenko was scratched five times, the rule is counted by games on the active roster and not games played.
Trying to clean up the mess left by the previous regime, the new Sabres brass has been left with a complicated situation. Because of Grigorenko’s age he can’t be sent to the AHL. He can only be sent to his QMJHL hockey club the Quebec Remparts. However, teams in Canadian major junior can only have two import players. The Remparts already filled both of those spots and one of those players cannot be traded or released due to league rules. With such an uncertainty facing Grigorenko’s junior placement, the team tried to send him to their affiliate in Rochester on a “two week conditioning stint” only to be vetoed by the NHL so the young Russian remains with the Sabres. All of this fluctuation couldn’t have been good for Grigorenko either.
Don’t Make Him Earn His Spot
One of the biggest problems with the current Sabres is their lack of work ethic. The organization certainly hasn’t been remedying this problem with the influx of new talent coming in by handing them roster spots. Not only can some argue Grigorenko never actually paid his dues to begin with, but Grigorenko certainly didn’t earn his place before the start of the 2013-14 season.
Before training camp concluded, former Sabres GM Darcy Regier announced Grigorenko would be on the starting day roster even after his poor performance the year before. Knowing this coming into training camp doesn’t exactly light a fire within a player. Had Grigorenko been uncertain about his immediate NHL future, he may have given a little extra in training camp.
Shatter His Confidence
The cumulation of all of this is a young forward possessing little confidence. Sabres interim head coach Ted Nolan knows very well that the confidence is a fragile and important asset. “There’s something beneficial about a 19 year old playing with his peers. It breeds confidence,” said Nolan. “Confidence is a wonderful thing. You can make the player believe in himself. You can make an average player good and a good player great.”
Unfortunately for Grigorenko, he was never given the opportunity to develop his game while playing with counterparts his own age. He’s had to endure a lot of losing and a lot of mistakes. There are many sports pundits who believe winning is also something an athlete must learn how to do. The Russian forward and the rest of the Sabres prospects haven’t been exposed to a great hockey culture. Hopefully, that will be something that changes with the new regime in place.
The future will be very telling for Grigorenko as no one can say with certainty how his career will pan out. Regardless, the Sabres have provided us with a blueprint of what not to do with prospects.* Sales of Mint’s investment coins on record pace in 2013
* US Mint buying all coin blanks suppliers can provide
* American Eagle platinum bullion sales seen resuming in ‘14
By Frank Tang
WEST POINT, N.Y., June 5 (Reuters) - The appetite for U.S. American Eagle gold and silver bullion coins is still at unprecedentedly high levels almost two months after a historic sell-off in gold unleashed years of pent-up demand from retail investors, the head of the U.S. Mint said on Wednesday.
His comments are likely to allay concerns among some traders that frenzied buying by mom-and-pop investors since mid-April - after prices plunged to two-year lows - had started to fade.
Interest in bullion coins, which target investors, has helped gold prices recover to a key support level around $1,400 an ounce, after a better economic outlook and lack of inflation prompted institutional investors to flee the futures market and exchange-traded funds.
“Demand right now is unprecedented. We are buying all the coin (blanks) they can make,” Richard Peterson, U.S. Mint’s acting director, said in an interview inside the Mint’s production facility in West Point, New York, referring to the Mint’s suppliers.
Sales of gold and silver bullion coins, including the popular 22-karat American Eagle and the 24-karat American Buffalo, are on pace to hit a record 45 million coins this year, said Peterson, head of the Treasury Department agency since 2011.
The Mint sold about |
first song on Broadway that wasn’t a blues lamentation about the black-white situation. It was a call to action. “We gotta be free, the eagle and me.” OK? And Dooley Wilson, who was in Casablanca, sang that.
So, again, Yip managed to get his philosophy into his show, which was the second truly integrated American musical after Oklahoma. And while, you know, it hasn’t been played around, it’s still marked that historically. After that came Finian’s Rainbow.
AMY GOODMAN: You mean blacks and whites playing in the cast.
ERNIE HARBURG: No, not in there. In Finian’s Rainbow, I mean that it was a political statement. Bloomer Girl was a political statement, and it was a smash hit. In 1946, Yip conceived the idea, the story, the script for Finian’s Rainbow, which was meant to be an anti-racist and, in a certain sense, anti-capitalist show also.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s find it.
ERNIE HARBURG: Alright, let’s go.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s find Finian’s Rainbow.
ERNIE HARBURG: Here’s Cabin in the Sky, which is the first all-black Hollywood film in the ’40s, which Yip and Harold did also. “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe.” Here’s Bloomer Girl that I’m talking about. So, we should be, somehow, coming onto Finian’s Rainbow. But here’s Yip here. There’s a video of Yip talking, if you want to meet the man.
INTERVIEWER: You got into political trouble in this country at a time when a lot of people got into political trouble, during the McCarthy years. Were you blacklisted?
YIP HARBURG: Thank God, yes.
INTERVIEWER: During that McCarthy period, were they actually going through your lyrics with a fine-toothed comb looking for lines that might be subversive, that might show Yip Harburg’s true political colors?
YIP HARBURG: Yes. I wrote a song for Cabin in the Sky, which Ethel Waters sang and was part of the situation in the picture. Here was a poor woman who had nothing in life except this one man, Joe, and she sang, “It seemed like happiness is just a thing called Joe.”
One of the producers, with not a macroscope, but a microscope, found in this lyric that “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe” was a tribute to Joe Stalin. We’re kidding about it now, but the country, this was the blackest, the blackest and darkest moment in the history of this beautiful country.
ERNIE HARBURG: Now, here we are at Finian’s Rainbow at last. And this was—Yip conceived this in 1946. And Fred Saidy, who was his co-script writer—and Harold Arlen demurred from writing this, because he felt that Yip was too fervent in his political opinions, and he wanted—Harold wanted to do something else. So Yip got Burt Lane and then came out with this great, great score from Finian’s Rainbow, “Old Devil Moon.”
“How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” etc. But the theme of Finian’s was a total fantasy, and it was an American fable in which an Irishman and his daughter come from Ireland, search around and find Rainbow Valley in “Missitucky.” OK? And he believes that if he plants the crock of gold, which he stole from the leprechaun, in the ground, that it will grow, just like at Fort Knox, right? The whole thing was fabulous!
And then, the Southern white senator, a very stereotypic part, finds out that Finian has this land and tries to run him out of town, because there’s blacks and whites living together, and, you know, they’re sharecroppers. And they claim that Finian’s daughter is a witch, and they’re going to burn her at the stake, and all sorts of incredible things that say something about the American scene.
But the score was so great that people who see it do not see it as a socialist tract, which the only one on Broadway; they see it as a very, very entertaining musical and unique in American musicals, because, in the first place, there are very, very few musicals which are original. Most musicals are adapted from books, and this was just conceived by Fred Saidy and Yip as a satiric sendoff on American society. So, you’ve got this great song in here, “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich,” how are you going to know who is who or who is which? OK, you know, like that.
And so, Finian’s Rainbow has become a classic. Now, it’s interesting that Finian’s has not had a tour, a national tour, since 1948. But they play it in every single high school in the United States, three or four times a month in every state of the union.
So, Finian’s was, at the time, 1947, when the Cold War was beginning and the House Un-American Committee was starting up, and they were searching for lefties. And by 1951, Yip had been blacklisted from any chance to do any of the wonderful shows that they did in Hollywood, Dr. Doolittle, Treasure Island. He was blocked from working there. And then he was blocked from going into radio and into TV.
So—and this is an historical fact which Yip himself says—Broadway and the American theater in New York City was the only place where an artist could stand up and say whatever he wanted, provided he got the money to put the show on. So, for Finian’s Rainbow, they had to have 25 auditions, because they said it was a commie red thing. And finally, they got the money up, and they put the show up. But by that time, Yip was blacklisted.
And his next show was Jamaica with Lena Horne, with an all-black cast. One other thing, in terms of Yip’s drive for race or ethnic equality, and that is that Finian’s Rainbow in 1947 was the first show on Broadway where the chorus line consisted of blacks and whites who danced with each other, and the chorus was an integrated affair.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened to him during the McCarthy era?
ERNIE HARBURG: Well, he could not work on any major film that they wanted him to work on from the major studios in Hollywood. The setup was that Roy Brewer, who was the head of the IATSE union—I’m sorry to say that—was the one who—
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
ERNIE HARBURG: Well, I mean this is a stagehands’ union. I’d like to say good things about unions, but they get bureaucratized, and they go right-wing, you know? They get bad. This was a bad leader, and he terrorized all of the Jewish moguls who were being accused of communism by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and they yielded to whatever he said to them, out of fear that they would get branded as communists or that they’d boycott the film, alright?
And so, when, you know, they called Yip in to do Huckleberry Finn with Burt Lane, then Roy and the guys said, “No, he’s on our blacklist, OK? And you can’t hire him.” And then Yip went away. And they wanted him to work on Dr. Doolittle. “No, you can’t hire him.” And the same thing for radio and TV. And that was known as a, quote, “blacklist,” which wasn’t — that wasn’t the first use of the term, because in small towns we had company corporations going, if you did something that the company didn’t like, you were blacklisted from town. You couldn’t get a job in town. But this was the first time, due to the technology, that a blacklist was national and accompanied by a loaded word, “communist,” that could get you fired anyplace.
For Yip, it was horrible, because his friends, who were artists, suddenly had no income. And there were suicides. There was divorces. There were people who left the country. There were people whose lives were just ruined. And so, Yip supported some of them. Dalton Trumbo, who was one of the Hollywood Ten who were first picked out by the House Un-American Activities Committee to go to jail for a year, a citation. “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” You know, Yip fronted him with money, and so forth. It was a horrible time.
AMY GOODMAN: How long couldn’t Yip work for?
ERNIE HARBURG: For about from 1951 to 1962. He came back to Hollywood in 1962, when he and Harold Arlen did Gay Paris, which is with Judy Garland. She asked them to come back. And it’s a cult animated cartoon now, which you can get in your video. And I remember him putting on a show at the Taber Auditorium. “Welcome Back, Yip,” you know? And he—in ’62.
AMY GOODMAN: But that means that The Wizard of Oz made it big during the time that he was blacklisted. That was—and when you consider the social commentary that it was making, that’s pretty profound.
ERNIE HARBURG: Yeah, but I don’t think hardly anyone knows the political symbolism underneath The Wizard of Oz, because, again, it’s a thing that happens in Finian’s Rainbow, even though as Peter Stone, a noted playwright on Broadway, said, “It’s the only socialist tract ever on Broadway.” Alright? People don’t hear the political message in it, OK? They are vastly entertained. The same thing happens with The Wizard. You know, nobody would even think of such a thing.
*YIP HARBURG: *My songs, like “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” caused a great deal of furor during a period in Hollywood when a fellow by the name of Joe McCarthy was reigning supreme. And so, they got something up for people to take care of us, like me, called the blacklist. And I landed on the enemy list.
And in order to overcome the enemy list -– what was the enemy list? Well, it’s, one, that you were a red; another one, that you were a bluenose; and the other one, that you’re on the blacklist. Finally, I thought the rainbow was a wonderful symbol of all these lists. In order to overcome the enemy list and this rainbow that they gave me the idea for, I wrote this little poem:
Lives of great men all remind us
Greatness takes no easy way,
All the heroes of tomorrow
Are the heretics of today.
Socrates and Galileo,
John Brown, Thoreau, Christ and Debs
Heard the night cry “Down with traitors!”
And the dawn shout “Up the rebs!”
Nothing ever seems to bust them —
Gallows, crosses, prison bars;
Tho’ we try to readjust them
There they are among the stars.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can write our names on high
and departing leave behind us
Thumbprints in the FBI.
AMY GOODMAN: Today’s program was actually produced for radio in 1996 with Errol Maitland and Dan Coughlin. Special thanks to Gary Helm, Brother Shine and Julie Drizen.New and improved news, this time with actual FACT CHECKING!
Legislative update from the office of California Governor Jerry Brown:
9-23-2013 SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that he has signed the following bills: … AB 1371 by Assemblymember Steven C. Bradford (D-Gardena) – Vehicles: bicycles: passing distance
Read the press release issued earlier today here.
AB 1371 is Steven Bradford’s “Three Feet for Safety Act” that mandates (sorta kinda) a minimum three feet of clearance when a motor vehicle passes a cyclist. And because people keep asking about this, the law specifies “3 feet between any part of the motor vehicle and any part of the bicycle or its operator.”
“I sincerely thank the Governor for signing this commonsense measure to protect cyclists on our roads,” Bradford said. “When cars and bikes collide, it often turns to tragedy. This bill is a great reminder that we all have to work together to keep our roads safe for all users.”
Bradford’s original bill was a work of genius; subsequent amendments in committee of both chambers of the California legislature weakens the law, mostly to incorporate compromises that Brown deemed essential to guarantee his signature.
The most important compromise is the so-called “Part D exception,” which says:
If the driver of a motor vehicle is unable to [pass more than three feet away from the cyclist] due to traffic or roadway conditions, the driver shall slow to a speed that is reasonable and prudent, and may pass only when doing so would not endanger the safety of the operator of the bicycle, taking into account the size and speed of the motor vehicle and bicycle, traffic conditions, weather, visibility, and surface and width of the highway.
Still, cyclist and cycling advocate organizations statewide supported AB 1371 as a symbolic measure that recognizes the importance of taking increased care while driving around cyclists.
The law will take effect September 16, 2014. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 22 states currently have a minimum passing distance law on the books.
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PocketWhile being part of a small independent studio like Supergiant has its share of challenges, it’s got a lot of advantages going for it, too. For instance, one of the ironic differences I’ve experienced going from a very big game studio to a very small one is that things can often move a lot faster when there aren’t too many people around to say “no.”
This simple fact is core to our creative process at Supergiant. We like quickly coming up with, and trying, new ideas all through development. If you can loop through that kind of process quickly enough, it can start to produce great results, while the many inevitable failed experiments are easy to move on from, having taught you something.
Let me tell you about one unexpected example from recent months, involving a little trick we decided to try on a whim with the Dualshock 4, when we first got our hands on it.
The story of our game, Transistor, revolves around this woman called Red, who winds up with an extraordinary weapon that, among its mysteries, is able to speak to her.
When we tested early versions of the game on our friends, everybody noticed the voice, but not everybody could tell where it was coming from or who exactly was speaking. This was an important problem for us to solve, as there’s a fine line between feeling intrigued by the mystery of a thing, versus feeling bewildered.
So we started trying different things. We iterated on the introductory moments a bunch of times, until we felt like we had a scene that set up the relationship between these characters as clearly and succinctly as possible. We also developed a cool bit of tech that makes the Transistor flash in sync with the voiceover coming from it.
This flashing effect not only helps our main character stand out amid the colourful futuristic scenery, but because of it you instantly infer that the voice you’re hearing must be coming from that weird computer sword Red’s carrying around. We finally felt like we’d solved the who’s-talking problem. Then we started playing with the PS4 controller, and we had another idea.
See, among its many features, the Dualshock 4 has this light bar on it, which can be programmed to display just about any colour. When Sony revealed the controller, they suggested this light bar could have a variety of uses, such as visually distinguishing between four players in a cooperative game and stuff like that. Sony didn’t suggest it could be used to indicate when an extraordinary weapon of unknown origin was speaking to you. We soon found, however, that the light bar works really well for that. We got it to match the exact turquoise hue of the in-game weapon, and the flashing effect was in perfect sync. When I played with this for the first time, it felt a little more like the Transistor was right there in my own hands.
Nevertheless, it’s a subtle enough feature so we didn’t really play it up. We don’t like talking about our games in terms of specific features anyway, plus we wanted to see if anyone would even notice. And sure enough, when we showed Transistor at PAX Prime recently, dozens of people who played it mentioned to us that they caught that little detail, and how cool they thought it was.
Our use of the light bar took nothing more than a quick conversation and maybe a couple of hours of engineering time. But to me it’s a microcosm of our development process. If we can pull together little touches like this spontaneously and often, then Transistor will be filled with them. And I feel strongly that the small stuff in games – those fun and interesting little details you notice in your favourites – are just as important as the big stuff. It’s what gives the best games their distinctive character and personality, and it’s the stuff you end up remembering long after you’ve finished playing.
When you see a game like Transistor, know that it’s not the product of some grand vision or massive design document, where we mapped out every detail on paper and then spent the rest of the time building from a meticulous blueprint. It’s a much more fluid and intuitive process, a feedback loop of listening to the game and responding to what we think it needs over a long period of time, where a hundred thousand micro decisions eventually form the finished work. I love that we found opportunities to apply our process even to things like a light bar on a controller.
You know what? The controller has a speaker on it, too. We’re looking into that.
Feel free to check up on us at any time at
@SupergiantGames on Twitter. Transistor is scheduled to hit PS4 early next year.Jeremy Corbyn criticises former mayor for refusing to apologise while other senior Labour figures say he should be expelled from party
Ken Livingstone will face a new investigation into his recent comments that Hitler supported Zionism, as Jeremy Corbyn criticised his old ally for refusing to apologise for causing deep offence to the Jewish community.
Labour’s ruling body will now launch a fresh disciplinary process against Livingstone, who was suspended from the party for a further year but not expelled over his original comments made in April 2016.
The decision not to expel Livingstone has caused an outcry among senior Labour politicians such as Tom Watson, the deputy leader, who said the party had failed the Jewish community and brought “shame on us all”.
Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, said it was “deeply disappointing” that the suspension did not reflect the severity of the verdict, while Keir Starmer was one of several shadow cabinet ministers who said the sanction should have been expulsion.
Labour’s national executive committee is facing calls from MPs to force the disciplinary body to reconsider Livingstone’s punishment, but Corbyn said he respected the independence of the process.
“Ken Livingstone’s comments have been grossly insensitive, and he has caused deep offence and hurt to the Jewish community,” he said.
“It is deeply disappointing that, despite his long record of standing up to racism, Ken has failed to acknowledge or apologise for the hurt he has caused. Many people are understandably upset that he has continued to make offensive remarks which could open him to further disciplinary action.
“Since initiating the disciplinary process, I have not interfered with it and respect the independence of the party’s disciplinary bodies. But Ken’s subsequent comments and actions will now be considered by the national executive committee after representations from party members.”
Shami Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general who oversaw Labour’s review of antisemitism, also backtracked on her position on Wednesday night, in which she said the party had demonstrated an ability to hold a mirror up to itself.
“Ken Livingstone was fairly and rightly found guilty of bringing the Labour party into disrepute,” she said. “The punishment of suspension was thought inadequate by some members of both the Labour party and the Jewish community that Livingstone has so offended.
“However, his remarks since yesterday’s decision have overtaken those arguments. I am horrified by Ken Livingstone’s lack of contrition and repeated offence which could be potential grounds for further investigation by the party. In the meantime I can only implore Livingstone to maintain a silence and to please stop further damaging community relations, the party to which he has given so much of his life and himself.”
Labour antisemitism row: Naz Shah's suspension lifted Read more
The fresh investigation into Livingstone may not satisfy many in the party, given the first disciplinary inquiry about his comments has taken a year.
Tulip Siddiq, a Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, who has many Jewish constituents, warned that members were contacting her in despair and terminating their membership.
“I am writing to you personally, because I do not believe you wish to lead a party where manipulations of the Holocaust are allowed to stand,” she wrote in a letter to Corbyn. “I believe the insufficiency of the punishment means that the party must explore all options available to it. This includes asking the NEC to convene an emergency session to review the decision.”
Livingstone, a former mayor of London who has been a Labour member for almost 50 years, was censured by the party for suggesting that Hitler at one point supported Zionism, and for defending the Labour MP Naz Shah over an antisemitic Facebook post for which she has apologised.
Afterwards, he refused to apologise and said the panel decided not to expel him because of his long history of contributions to the party.
It is understood new complaints about Livingstone’s conduct relate to his comments last week when he suggested there was “real collaboration” between the Nazis and some German Jews at one point in the 1930s.
Referring to Hitler, Livingstone said: “He didn’t just sign the deal. The SS set up training camps so that German Jews who were going to go there could be trained to cope with a very different sort of country when they got there. When the Zionist movement asked, would the Nazi government stop a Jewish rabbi doing their sermons in Yiddish and make them do it in Hebrew, he agreed to that.
“He passed a law saying the Zionist flag and the swastika were the only flags that could be flown in Germany. An awful lot. Of course, they started selling Mauser pistols to the underground Jewish army. So you had right up until the start of the second world war real collaboration.”
Livingstone ran London so well. Now he’s trashed his reputation | Jonn Elledge Read more
His comments refer to the Haavara agreement signed by the Nazi government, which facilitated the relocation of some Jews to Palestine in 1933, before the Third Reich began its mass extermination.
However, Livingstone’s claim that the agreement had meant Hitler was supportive of a Jewish homeland has been widely disputed by historians including Prof Richard Evans, the expert witness for the defence in the high-profile libel case brought by the Holocaust denier David Irving.
The decision not to expel Livingstone permanently was met with widespread dismay in the Jewish community. Jonathan Arkush, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said relations between the Labour party and the Jewish community had reached an all-time low.
Britain’s chief rabbi accused Labour of failing the Jewish community by not expelling Livingstone. “This was a chance for the Labour party to show that it would not tolerate wilful and unapologetic baiting of the Jewish community by shamefully using the Holocaust as a tool with which to inflict the maximum amount of offence,” said Ephraim Mirvis.
“Worryingly, the party has yet again failed to show that it is sufficiently serious about tackling the scourge of antisemitism. The Labour party has failed the Jewish community, it has failed its members and it has failed all those who believe in zero tolerance of antisemitism.”One of the recurring themes in my posts here at IER is that apologists for government intervention in the name of fighting climate change routinely ignore what the “consensus” says. Then these same people have the audacity to wag their fingers at the “deniers” out there who disagree with them.
Today’s example is a recent essay by Paul Krugman. As we’ll see, he confidently tells his readers “what we know” about the economics of climate change, even though he’s just making it up. The latest IPCC report repudiates Krugman’s statement.
What Do You Mean “We,” Krugman?
Krugman opens his column in his characteristically confident style:
There are three things we know about man-made global warming. First, the consequences will be terrible if we don’t take quick action to limit carbon emissions. Second, in pure economic terms the required action shouldn’t be hard to take: emission controls, done right, would probably slow economic growth, but not by much. Third, the politics of action are nonetheless very difficult.
We can stop right there, and safely disregard the rest of Krugman’s column. Why? Because his first two points don’t fit together. If Krugman thinks immediate action “done right” wouldn’t slow economic growth by much, then delaying such action will not “be terrible.”
Using the IPCC, Just Like a Good Boy
To show why Krugman is just making stuff up, I don’t need to go to some obscure right-wing data archive. Nope, I’ll just reproduce the following table taken from page 16 of the Working Group III Summary for Policymakers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that came out earlier this year:
There’s a lot going on in this table, and for a fuller explanation, refer to my earlier blog post that called out Joe Romm playing fast-and-loose with his readers. For our purposes here, the important information is contained in the blue columns on the far right. These show the percentage increases in the total (undiscounted) mitigation costs necessary to achieve the far-left (brown cells) atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the year 2100, for the years 2030-2050 and also for 2050-2100, for two different scenarios of total emissions (either below 55 gigatons of CO 2 -equivalent, or above).
In other words, these blue cells show us how much a delay of government action through the year 2030 will increase the cost necessary to achieve the specified (and very aggressive) atmospheric concentrations for the year 2100, shown on the far left of the table in the brown cells. Specifically, the blue cells show that by “doing nothing” about climate change until the year 2030, even in a high-emission baseline scenario, the IPCC’s best guess of the cost of achieving the aggressive outcome rises by 44% in the years 2030-2050 and 37% in the years 2050-2100.
Thus Paul Krugman has painted himself into the same rhetorical corner where Joe Romm trapped himself. Both of these climate alarmists are trying to have it both ways: On the one hand, they’re telling us that the burden on the economy from achieving even aggressive climate goals will be no big deal, if the government acts now. On the other hand, they warn us that delay will prove catastrophic.
Yet to repeat, the IPCC itself contradicts their claims. If the IPCC is correct about their climate claims, then as the table above shows, delaying government mitigation efforts through the year 2030 does indeed make it costlier to achieve a given climate objective. But, the increase is not “terrible” as Krugman describes it; it is around 40 percent higher than the costs of achieving the goals under immediate action, even in the worse of the two IPCC scenarios. (In the low-emission scenario, for the latter half of the 21st century the cost only rises a mere 15 percent, as one of the blue cells indicates.)
Furthermore, I should point out that the cost increase drops dramatically if we weaken the atmospheric target. I didn’t include it in the table above (because it was already too cluttered), but the actual IPCC report shows that for a more modest target of limiting atmospheric greenhouse gases to 550 ppm by the year 2100, the cost penalty from delaying action until 2030 is 15-16 percent in the high-emission scenario and a piddling 3-4 percent in the low-emission scenario. Indeed, for this more modest target for 2100 atmospheric concentrations, the optimistic scenario shows the bottom range of the cost estimate from delay being negative. In other words, the IPCC’s own table (not shown above, you have to click the link) shows the possibility that delaying action until the year 2030 might be advantageous.
Conclusion
Like Joe Romm, Paul Krugman has spent years lecturing the “deniers” about the “consensus” on climate change. Yet also like Romm, Krugman simply makes stuff up in his own discussions, effectively denying the very consensus he claims to support. To show his mistakes, we don’t need to quote unorthodox climate scientists. No, we just need to quote the IPCC’s latest report. It shows that “delaying action” on climate change—even for another 16 years—won’t be disastrous. In light of the uncertainties surrounding the topic, I would go further and argue that policymakers should wait for more information, in order to look before they leap. They needn’t listen to the alarmists who claim that such delay would spell catastrophe; the IPCC itself says the alarmists are wrong.Toronto FC vs. Montreal Impact
2017 Canadian Championship Final, 2nd Leg
BMO Field - Toronto, Ontario
Tuesday, June 27 - 7:30 pm ET
WATCH: TSN, RDS (in Canada)
401 Derby bragging rights, the Voyageurs Cup trophy, the title of national champions and a shot at a berth in CONCACAF Champions League are on the line when Toronto FC and the Montreal Impact renew their intense rivalry in the second and decisive leg of the 2017 Canadian Championship on Tuesday at BMO Field.
It's the latest of several high-stakes clashes between these sides, with the most memorable having unfolded in last year's Audi MLS Cup Playoffs, where they battled hammer-and-tongs in the Eastern Conference Championship before TFC produced an extra-time victory in the second leg to advance to MLS Cup 2016.
The host Reds occupy the driver's seat in this week's scenario, having gutted out a 1-1 draw in the first leg at Stade Saputo last week. Under this tournament's total-aggregate-goals format, where away goals are a tiebreaker, that result means any manner of victory or a scoreless draw would spell a second straight Canadian Championship triumph for TFC.
But if Montreal can pull off an upset win or a high-scoring draw on Tuesday, the Impact would take this year's trophy and set up a one-off rematch between these two teams on Aug. 9 to determine which one will represent Canada in the 2018 CCL.
Toronto FC
The Reds are presently navigating a torrid stretch of their schedule, with games coming thick and fast in all directions; Tuesday will be their third match in the past week alone. Greg Vanney's group has scarcely missed a beat, though: They sit atop the MLS standings, boast a 7-0-2 mark at home and have lost just twice all season to date.
Even with superstar Sebastian Giovinco hampered by injuries that have left his production shy of his astronomical norms, TFC's ferociously deep roster has racked up results with both style and effectiveness. They know Montreal will mount a fierce challenge as usual, though, as both sides carry on the spirited rivalry between these two cities that dates back centuries.
“One of the great things about this group is the excitement and the energy and the focus for every game has been consistently at a high, high level,” captain Michael Bradley told the Toronto Star this week. “But with that, you play a second leg at home, against Montreal with the chance to lift a trophy, there’s no doubt there’s big excitement. I think the atmosphere [Tuesday] night will reflect that and it’s our first chance this year to win a trophy and that’s something very important to us.”
Suspended: None
None Int'l Duty: None
None Injury Report: OUT – D Nick Hagglund (torn MCL)
Projected Starting XI (3-5-2): GK: Clint Irwin – Eriq Zavaleta, Drew Moor, Justin Morrow – Steven Beitashour, Marky Delgado, Michael Bradley, Jonathan Osorio, Raheem Edwards – Jozy Altidore, Jordan Hamilton (Note: tournament rules require a minimum of three Canadians in starting lineup)
Montreal Impact
It's been a trying season thus far for IMFC, who sit in last place in the Eastern Conference with a 4-5-6 record in league play. A 1-3-4 start to the campaign left Mauro Biello's side with a deficit to make up, and injuries and tactical adjustments have further complicated matters.
Montreal just concluded a winless three-game road swing punctuated by Saturday's 4-1 loss at Columbus, an occasion where the Quebec club were tied at 1-1 until the late going only to see the game slip out of their reach.
The contentious circumstances of last week's first-leg draw vs. TFC at Stade Saputo – where Ignacio Piatti missed a penalty kick and Jozy Altidore scored Toronto's potentially pivotal equalizer while Impact defender Daniel Lovitz was laid out on the pitch with an injury – present a defining moment for Biello's men. With a steep task ahead and tough luck all around, will IMFC succumb, or rise to the challenge? It could determine the team's course in the months ahead.
Suspended: None
None Int'l Duty: None
None Injury Report: OUT - D Ambroise Oyongo (right knee surgery); Louis Beland-Goyette (undisclosed injury)
Projected Starting XI (5-3-2): Evan Bush – Chris Duvall, Laurent Ciman, Kyle Fisher, Wandrille Lefevre, Daniel Lovitz – Patrice Bernier, Marco Donadel, Blerim Dzemaili – Anthony Jackson-Hamel, Ignacio Piatti (Note: tournament rules require a minimum of three Canadians in starting lineup)
All-Time Series
Toronto lead the all-competition series in the 401 Derby with 16 victories to Montreal's 9. That includes a 9-3 advantage in Canadian Championship play. There have been nine draws in the series, five of those in the Canadian Championship (including last Wednesday's first leg).
Referees
To follow…Illuminating PC components with LEDs seem to be the current trend amongst PC manufacturers these days. One of them is XFX, which has announced its new Radeon RX 480 Crimson Edition graphics card. Interestingly, Crimson Edition is the name of AMD’s newest graphics drivers as well – if you didn’t already know that, of course.
Let’s talk about design. Normally, I would hesitate to compliment any PC component that comes with the overused ‘black and red’ colour scheme, but not with the Radeon RX 480 Crimson Edition. The design of the cooler shroud along with the LED-lit elements of the graphics card looks really, really good. In addition, it also comes with a neat backplate as well.
Like most graphics cards by XFX, the Radeon RX 480 Crimson Edition will ship with Double Dissipation cooler fans, which basically means that they are easily swappable. It’s worth noting, however, that this graphics card is the 8GB variant of the RX 480.
When it comes to performance, XFX mentioned that the Radeon RX 480 Crimson Edition will boast core clock speed of 1288MHz; this is about 22MHz faster compared to the reference RX 480. Meanwhile, the graphics card draws power via single 8-pin power connector. Output-wise, XFX has fitted its newest graphics card with three DisplayPort ports, along with one DVI and HDMI ports each.
Unfortunately, XFX has not stated the price and availability of the Radeon RX 480 Crimson Edition. However, the company did mention that other Radeon ‘Crimson Edition’ graphics cards will be debuted in the near future.
(Source: TechPowerUp, Guru3D)
2 11 0 0 0 1Ice Mountain employee Dan Decator of Hersey checks packages of bottled water coming off the line in the Mecosta County water bottling plant in Stanwood on Feb. 16, 2003. (Photo: Lance Wynn, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Nestle Waters North America's plans to increase its Michigan groundwater withdrawal by more than 2 1/2 times would unravel an accord reached with environmentalists seven years ago that was aimed at protecting the water table and wildlife.
Nestlé announced a $36-million expansion at its Ice Mountain bottling operations in Stanwood, in Mecosta County, on Oct. 31. The addition of two water-bottling lines — the first to begin operation next spring; the next opening by 2018 — is expected to add 20 jobs to the plant, which employs more than 250 people.
But the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has not yet approved the company's request to increase its groundwater withdrawals by 167% — from 150 gallons per minute to 400 gallons per minute — at White Pine Springs well No. 101 in nearby Osceola County. The DEQ has, however, recommended approval under the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act.
Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation sued Nestlé in 2001 over the potential damage to lakes, rivers and streams that groundwater withdrawals from its bottled-water plant would cause. After years of court battles, the two sides reached a settlement agreement in 2009, reducing Nestlé's siphoning to 218 gallons per minute from 400, with additional restrictions on spring and summer withdrawals. The litigation cost the nonprofit more than $1 million, which was covered by supporters.
Now, the proposed permit from the DEQ would take the bottled-water plant's groundwater withdrawals back up to the level that prompted the lawsuit.
"I'm not sure if there is a reasonable amount of water that should be allowed to be taken from an aquifer," said Jeff Ostahowski, vice president of the nonprofit Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation. "But 400 gallons per minute seems more than a bit too much."
The controversy highlights the sometimes-contentious balance between protecting Michigan's most important, abundant natural resource — its fresh water — and using it as an economic commodity. It's particularly |
the parsonage of the Nativity Lutheran Church. The National Baking Association nominated him for the Baking Hall of Fame, but it doesn't appear he made the cut.
More Donut History
How reliable is the old sea captain's tale? The Food History Timeline posts donut recipes before 1858, and they all advise cutting the donut into diamonds, squares or twists. Then in 1877 a donut recipe calls for cutting them into rings.
The Food History Timeline also notes that after the Civil War,'inexpensive tin doughnut cutters with holes were manufactured commercially and sold widely.'
Capt. Hanson Gregory died in 1921. You can visit his grave at the Snug Harbor Cemetery.
Lewis Wickes Hine, by the way, took many photos of very young workers, which then influenced the passage of child labor laws. His caption read, "Exchange Luncheon. Delia Kane, 14 years old. 99 C Street, South Boston. A young waitress."
This story about the donut was updated in 2019.A Post By: Peter West Carey
You’ve seen them.
The beautiful pictures, often repeats of other beautiful pictures. Here, let me give you an example.
This is Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. You may have seen this type of shot before or one much like it. Some people wait until the sun is blocked by the arch and the underside of the arch is glowing red, as in this picture.
Calm. Serene. You can almost hear the light breeze and the whisper of time held still.
Now let me show you what is missing in this frame on that day.
And
This is the reality behind the lens and something not often mentioned.
For this shoot, I was meeting up with fellow photographer Michael Riffle who has been to this location before. He said we needed to meet early….real early. “How early?” I asked. With a sunrise at 7:30, he guessed about 5:30am. That should get us to the park and in position around 6:30am.
Evidently that was not early enough.
We were bested by two workshop groups who had arrived even earlier. I took up a position to the far right while Michael managed to use his charm to gain front row access, but not as close as he had planned. In all, there were over 17 people shooting the arch that day, the crowd getting ruckus when one gentleman decided to walk on top and pose for his workshop group. This brought yells to get off and threats that his act was illegal (for reference sake, we asked a park ranger at the trailhead and were told it is not illegal to walk the arch. “It’s not a very smart thing to do, though.” Were his words).
The atmosphere is not what the illusion of the first image portrays, but that’s ok, because that’s photography. An illusion of what really was, malleable any way we, as artists, please.
Now, let’s contrast that experience with our shoot the next morning in neighboring Arches National Park. It was my idea to head to Delicate Arch for sunrise. This icon is so popular, it even adorns most license plates in Utah.
First, a shot of the classic arch.
You may notice this is not the normal shot people take. That shot is near sunset when the face is lit up. We decided to go early for a different view of the classic and it paid off as this is the crowd we faced:
No one. For an hour and a half we set up, tested, shot and waited. After an hour and a half, one person showed up for about 20 minutes and then left.
In my book, it doesn’t get any better than that. I’ve been to this location at sunset and so had Michael. We exchanged horror stories of tourists being tourists and exploring the arch, much to the consternation of the multiple photographers lined up (to the right in the image above) to get their copy of a classic. I didn’t want to spend half a day trying to edit out tourists (yes, I am one of them too) who, “got in my shot!”
This is a shot of such crowds by Matt Leher on Flickr.
The valley view just off the road in Yosemite Valley. Old Faithful. Mt. Rushmore.
The list goes on and on. Classic shots that leave behind the reality of a crowded scene to get a classic shot.
Crowds are not bad nor evil. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get those classic shots. They are beautiful and help people gain interest in our National Parks.
I want you to be aware; when you plan that ultimate shoot to capture a well worn icon for your own portfolio, realize you may have company.
On the other hand, we spoke with a local Utah photographer who visits Mesa Arch often and he pointed out winter is a great time to shoot and crowds are usually less. But he also said it can’t be predicted as he has been there in bad weather, expecting to have the place to himself, only to find a crowd. The flipside also being true.
What can you do?
Scout first, during the day or day before. Look for a spot when the light is harsh and there are less visitors to contend with. You can do some of this online before leaving to see what others have shot and figure out angles you might want to try.
Arrive super early. Not early; super early.
Be patient. All the others are wanting what you want and it’s not because they hate you. It’s because you all likely appreciate the same beauty.
Be friendly. With the crowd at Mesa Arch, I joked around with a couple of people near me who were lighthearted enough to enjoy the morning even with the crowd.
Bring a second camera. This will allow you to stake a claim to a spot and still take other images.
Enjoy what you came to enjoy.
Despite the crowds I have found at popular shooting locations, I have always enjoyed the experience. Sure, my expectations of a deserted vista were dashed, but once I dropped that expectation and the disappointment that came with it, my mood and shooting improved.
Good luck! And good shooting!Dave Chappelle isn't messing around anymore. The comedian has banned the use of phones at his stand-up performances for years already, but for his 13 sold out shows coming up in Chicago, he's making absolute sure.
Chappelle has teamed with technology startup Yondr to create phone-free zones at the Thalia Hall shows, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
It works like this: Everyone who enters the venue has to put their phone into a Yondr case. When they enter the phone-free area, the case automatically locks and they can't use the phone. If someone needs to use their phone, they simply step outside the phone-free zone and the case will unlock.
For Chappelle, the issue is probably not wanting his fresh material to wind up on YouTube, but this could be huge for all types of live performances. When was the last time you went to a concert and weren't surrounded by people who were watching the show through their camera apps instead of actually enjoying it directly?
It appears to alread be catching on at music venues around San Francisco as well, according to San Francisco Weekly.Taipei (Taiwan News)--A district court Sunday approved prosecutors' requests to detain a local taxi driver suspected of drugging and sexually attacking three Korean women who were on an individual tour of Taiwan.
According to police investigation, the suspect surnamed Chan lives in New Taipei City, is married and has no criminal record. Chan is suspected of using a syringe to inject powerful tranquilizers into probiotic milk beverages at 6:20 p.m. on Jan. 12 at a parking lot in Jinguashi, New Taipei City, and offering them to the three Korean passengers, who took his taxi to the Shilin Night Market.
Two of the Korean women passed out after drinking the beverage, but the third one who just took a sip of the drink remained awake, the investigative report said. The taxi arrived at the night market around 9 p.m., and the one who stayed awake got off the taxi and went to visit the night market alone, the report said.
Chan drove the two sleeping women to a secluded area near the night market and began to rape one of them, the report said. The victim awoke, found out what was going on and called the police, the report said.
Chan came to a police station in Shilin District on Saturday night and admitted to drugging the three women and raping one of them.
After questioning Chan for the second time on Sunday, prosecutors requested a pretrial detention warrant for the taxi driver on the grounds that the suspect could face up to seven years in jail if he was charged with the felony of drugging and raping passengers on a public transportation vehicle.
The court approved the detention of the suspect on Sunday afternoon.Mornings in Honolulu are my absolute favorite. The streets are quiet, the temperatures are cooler and everyone is asleep in the house. My neighborhood coffee shop opens at 5:30 a.m. so it's easy to grab a latte and croissant for the road.
Wawamalu beach park sits next to the more famous Sandy beach park and has a brief white sand beach along a more rugged, rocky shoreline. It's right at the tip of the southern most point of O'ahu and is the perfect location to watch the sunrse.
When shooting water with pinhole I try to look for water features or large rocks to add interest to the image. Water flowing over rocks and trees is much more dramatic. At Wawamalu beach park the rocky shore was perfect, especially as the Hawaiian sun rose and the small pools of water turned to liquid gold. I went every morning, weather permitting and looked for new angles with each visit. Here are a few favorites. Mahalo!Paul Ryan and his dazzling widow's peak.
Just four years after sending the first African-American to the White House, the American people are now just months away from possibly electing the only Mormon president ever. But actually, should Romney win the presidency, his ticket would be historic in two ways: First Mormon president. And first widow’s-peaked vice-president.
Paul Ryan’s prominent widow’s peak has hardly gone unnoticed. Exhibit A: There are dozens of Photoshops online comparing him to Eddie Munster, and it’s not because Eddie Munster wanted to overhaul Medicare. What has received less attention, however, is that America has never before had a vice-president with a widow’s peak.
To be clear, we can’t say this with absolute, 100 percent certainty, but we’re pretty confident. We examined paintings or photos of every man who has ever served as vice-president. No widow’s peaks. We searched Nexis and Google Books for mentions of vice-presidents with widow’s peaks. Nothing. We even called the Senate Historical Office hoping that an expert ruling would definitively settle the matter, but were told, “We cant answer that kind of question. We just don’t have that kind of information.”
A Washington Post article on Ryan’s widow’s peak from earlier this year claimed that George H.W. Bush “has a very minor one that became all but invisible with the passage of years,” but we see no evidence of that. Here is Bush as a young man, sans widow’s peak. Here he is as president, also without a widow’s peak. A receding hairline is not a widow’s peak.
Interestingly, while some of history’s most famous widow’s peaks have been sported by monsters and villains, a study by University of California-Irvine political science professor Shawn Rosenberg showed that politicians with widow’s peaks were viewed favorably. “It was associated with being seen as more competent and with greater integrity,” Rosenberg told the Post. Perhaps this a stealth strength Ryan brings to the ticket which his many detractors are overlooking.
Should Ryan make it to the White House, it will be a proud day not only for his friends and family back in Janesville, Wisconsin, but also for millions of similarly hairlined Americans around the country. For Ryan will have finally pierced the glass ceiling with his sharp, jagged widow’s peak.Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and frequent Fox News contributor, on Tuesday decried that fact that “miraculous substances” like hallucinogenic mushrooms or the club drug ecstasy were stigmatized.
Ablow has received considerable criticism from liberals and progressives for his outspoken and critical views on LGBT individuals, but he appears to have a more liberal stance when it comes to medically-supervised psychedelic drug use.
In an article published on FoxNews.com, Albow noted researchers had found psychedelic drugs like psilocybin — the main psychoactive compound found in “shrooms” — reduced death anxiety in terminally-ill cancer patients.
“The truth is that the likelihood of creating an MDMA [ecstasy] or psilocybin addict out of a terminal cancer patient is exactly zero,” he wrote.
A study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2011 found psilocybin can safely improve the moods of patients with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety.
The study was headed by Dr. Charles S. Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and found a significant improvement of mood up to six months after receiving psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.
In Dr. Grob’s study, twelve volunteers, ages 36 to 58, with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety were given a moderate dose of psilocybin and, on a separate occasion, a placebo. The study employed a double-blind procedure, meaning neither the volunteers nor the researchers monitoring them knew whether they’d been given a placebo or psilocybin.
After receiving a dose of psilocybin or a placebo, volunteers were monitored for six hours. They were encouraged to lie in bed, wear eye shades and listen to soft music during the first few hours after ingesting the drug or the placebo. The volunteers were then interviewed after the six-hour session and over the next six months to assess the consequences of the treatment.
“In many cases, patients are able to cope with their physical pain and psychological turmoil better than before,” Ablow explained. “Some, no doubt, feel the drugs opened doors of perception previously closed to them, allowing them to make peace with their lives and the impending end of their lives.”
Similar studies have recently been conducted using other psychedelic drugs, like ecstacy and LSD.
“Let’s open up our minds to the possibilities that many perilous drugs also hold much promise,” Ablow concluded.He has served on One Nation’s state executive for 15 years. “One should never be overconfident, but we’ve done the hard work," he said. "And I do believe people want a change,” Mr Savage told Channel Seven after declining to return calls from Fairfax. Lockyer could be called One Nation heartland. It was won by One Nation's Peter Prenzler in 1998 and then Bill Flynn in 2001, who ran for One Nation after Mr Prenzler defected to the City Country Alliance while in office.
Pauline Hanson herself pushed the LNP's Ian Rickuss right to the wire in 2015. Mr Rickuss ended up taking the seat with a 0.2 per cent margin, with just over 140 votes. The LNP's Lockyer candidate, veteran Lockyer Valley councillor and Laidley police officer Jim McDonald. One Nation has been confident because Mr Rickuss has retired. But it was a little nervous recently because the new LNP candidate is the well-known Lockyer Valley councillor of 13 years, Jim McDonald, who is also officer-in-charge of Laidley Police. And compulsory preferential voting could edge the LNP over One Nation, with the LNP preferencing One Nation over Labor in 50 seats.
Mr Savage said he respected his LNP rival's profile. “My opponent is well known in this area and I’m relatively new here,” he said. "But I’d like to think that people think a new broom sweeps cleanest.” He also shrugged off stories he could be One Nation's Queensland leader if former LNP minister Mr Dickson loses in Buderim. “That’s not for me to say,” he said.
“I think Steve (Dickson) will get in.” He is backing a plan to build a new cannery in Grantham and said One Nation would put forward $30 million towards the $100 million private-sector project, which has struggled to win government or bank support. He will also try to bring water from the region's dams to Lockyer Valley farmers. Mr McDonald believed poor roads and electricity bills would decide how people voted. He said the media had exaggerated the impact One Nation would have in the 2017 Queensland election. “The seat of Lockyer will be an important seat – as are all of the seats across the state," Cr McDonald said.
"But the journalists got it wrong in Western Australia and I think they have got it wrong in Queensland,” he said referring to predictions One Nation could win several seats in Western Australia and hold the balance of power. “I think the point is Pauline Hanson is not running in this election and their local candidate out here (Mr Savage) is not from this area.” Cr McDonald said while Mr Savage had lived in Beaudesert, until recently he lived near Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast. Mr McDonald disagreed Lockyer was a bellwether seat for One Nation. He said it was an LNP seat to be retained. “I don’t think it is a bellwether seat. You know the LNP are about winning government in their own right," he said.
"And I believe that will happen." One Nation's 29-year-old Brad Trussell (right) has worked in an underground uranium mine and is confident of tackling Labor's Jim Madden in Ipswich West. Further west is the electorate of Ipswich West, where One Nation's candidate is 29-year old Brad Trussell, quite possibly Queensland's only political candidate to have dug tunnels in an underground uranium mine. “When I was 18 I left here and went down to South Australia," Mr Trussell said. “I worked on a big subdivision on the Yorke Peninsula, for a while.
“And then I went and spent two years working underground at the BHP-Billiton mine at Olympic Dam in far north South Australia," he said. “I was an offside on the development rigs underground. “That meant I was digging the tunnels underground.” Mr Trussell is a welder by trade and thinks he has a chance of winning the Labor-held seat, which has recently shifted from One Nation to Labor to the LNP and back to Labor. Mr Trussell said he was now back working as a welder and his youth helped connect with younger people.
“I think I appeal to the younger voter and to the working class at the same time, because of my age. And what I do." Mr Trussell has the enthusiasm of a new candidate and said only "one in 100 people" snickered at him when he knocked on doors. In Ipswich West in 2015, the LNP’s Sean Choat won 35 per cent of first-preference votes, while One Nation’s Christopher Reynolds took 10 per cent of the vote. Labor's Jim Madden won the seat easily and has a 9 per cent margin. However in 2017, with Ms Hanson actively promoting the party, one has to imagine the One Nation vote will be larger in Ipswich West, which is also being contested by Mr Madden and the LNP's Anna O'Neill.
However, preferences will determine who wins Ipswich West and Lockyer in 2017. And it is not clear, depending on which party finishes first, second and third. Mr Trussell said voters understood Ms Hanson was a senator and was not running herself. “She is there through us,” Mr Trussell said. “It is her ideology, it is her policies. "It's her party that we've chosen to join to run for.An update to Gmail started rolling out this morning, bringing it from version 4.6.1 to 4.7. We have the APK for you below, as usual, because waiting is for suckers.
What's New
Vacation responder
The most obvious new addition to Gmail 4.7 is the Vacation Responder. You can set start and end dates, enter a subject and some text, and check a toggle to only send the vacation response to your contacts. Finally, you can enable and disable the whole responder with another toggle. The vacation responder is certainly a welcome addition to the mobile app, considering that by the time you realize you need the feature enabled, you may only have your trusty phone or tablet but no computer.
KitKat printing
Gmail 4.7 also includes support for cloud printing, which is a new feature built into Android 4.4 KitKat. You can print all messages in a thread or select just the ones you want. Yay!
Archive downloading
I can't believe it's finally here - the feature we've been waiting for, since... 2009? Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the banishment of the Unfortunately, you can't save or open this type of attachment message, which specifically applied to several archive formats, and if we're being honest, was the most ridiculous limitation in the name of user security and safety I can think of. Zip downloads are finally a go. And it's only the end of 2013. Amazing!
In fact, it's not just zip extensions - here's the full list of file types that are no longer disallowed:
application/zip application/x-gzip application/x-bzip2 application/x-compress application/x-compressed application/x-tar
Left: Gmail 4.6; right: Gmail 4.7
With the removal of the above limitation, we can now send any files we want as well. Previously, only two annoyingly limiting options Attach picture and Attach video were present. Hooray!
Left: Gmail 4.6; right: Gmail 4.7
According to the official announcement, which was just posted by +Gmail, devices with low RAM should now benefit from improved performance:
Just in time for the holidays, Gmail on Android adds vacation responder, attachment support for any file type and more If you forget to set a vacation responder as you scramble to pack for a flight, you’re in luck since you can now create or update an auto responder message right in the Gmail app on Android. In addition to photos and videos, you can send attachments—documents, PDFs, zip files—of any type. You can also print hard copies of your emails if you’re using Android 4.4 KitKat. And finally, you’ll notice enhanced performance of the app on low memory devices as part of Project Svelte (http://goo.gl/zD5thU).
Spot anything else? You know what to do - drop a comment down below.
Download
The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.
File name: com.google.android.gm-4.7 (941620).apk.
Version: 4.7 (Android 4.0+)
MD5: b1a466e6e205117c0065ba6de87acac4.
Thanks, +DerekTraini, and Stephen Zeck, and Santiago Rosales!Hi All - this week we are unleashing another massive video game soundtrack, this time for the three-quel CONTRA 3: THE ALIEN WARS. This will be the first in our line of CONTRA releases as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of this influential game franchise.
Additionally we are distributing a re-issue of Howard Shore's score for David Cronenberg's THE FLY from our friends at Varèse Sarabande Records.
As always, new releases go on sale on Wednesdays at NOON (CST).
MONDO
Contra 3: The Alien Wars - Original Video Game Soundtrack LP. Music by Konami Kukeiha Club. Artwork by Paul Mann. Remastered for Vinyl by James Plotkin. Pressed on 180 Gram Clear with Red Splatter (Limited to 500 Copies) or 180 Gram Red & Blue Half & Half Camouflage. $25
Beginning our celebration of the 30th anniversary of Konami's CONTRA franchise, Mondo is proud to present the 25th anniversary soundtrack re-issue of the Super Nintendo sequel, THE ALIEN WARS.
Set three years after the original, Red Falcon and his legion have returned to Earth, this time with the intent to launch a full-scale war against its inhabitants. It's up to our heroes, Bill and Lance, to scale walls, ride motorcycles, and cling to soaring missiles to defeat their enemies.
The music of CONTRA 3: THE ALIEN WARS is epic to say the least. The looping sequences of each level are longer, taking full advantage of the new audio capabilities available to the composers on the Super Nintendo. The sweeping scope of these tracks leads to a chaos absent from the previous chapters of the run-and-gun series, while still obeying the structures and pacing of Video Game music... just with complex time signatures and percussion patterns.
In some instances, like with 'Battle Runner' which operates on-the-rails for large stretches, it affords for the composers some sequences that go nearly two minutes before a single loop.
Contra Logo Pin. 1.25" wide hard enamel pin. Double posts with locking clutches on black dyed metal. $10
DISTRIBUTED TITLES
The Fly - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Music by Howard Shore. Pressed on 180 Gram Green Fog Colored Vinyl. Limited to 2,000 copies worldwide. Features Lenticular Cover Art. $30
Thirty years later, David Cronenberg's 1986 sci-fi thriller, THE FLY, is still as impressive today; a powerhouse in acting and makeup effects (the category in which the film earned an Academy Award).
The score strangely fits in the category of classic Hollywood horror... which knowing the films Howard Shore and Cronenberg's collaborated on (including past Mondo releases NAKED LUNCH, CRASH and DEAD RINGERS), you'd expect more often. However, Shore's THE FLY is one-of-a-kind in their partnership.1. Overview
The default method by which SQLite implements atomic commit and rollback is a rollback journal. Beginning with version 3.7.0 (2010-07-21), a new "Write-Ahead Log" option (hereafter referred to as "WAL") is available.
There are advantages and disadvantages to using WAL instead of a rollback journal. Advantages include:
WAL is significantly faster in most scenarios. WAL provides more concurrency as readers do not block writers and a writer does not block readers. Reading and writing can proceed concurrently. Disk I/O operations tends to be more sequential using WAL. WAL uses many fewer fsync() operations and is thus less vulnerable to problems on systems where the fsync() system call is broken.
But there are also disadvantages:
WAL normally requires that the VFS support shared-memory primitives. (Exception: WAL without shared memory) The built-in unix and windows VFSes support this but third-party extension VFSes for custom operating systems might not. All processes using a database must be on the same host computer; WAL does not work over a network filesystem. Transactions that involve changes against multiple ATTACHed databases are atomic for each individual database, but are not atomic across all databases as a set. It is not possible to change the page_size after entering WAL mode, either on an empty database or by using VACUUM or by restoring from a backup using the backup API. You must be in a rollback journal mode to change the page size. It is not possible to open read-only WAL databases. The opening process must have write privileges for " -shm " wal-index shared memory file associated with the database, if that file exists, or else write access on the directory containing the database file if the " -shm " file does not exist. Beginning with version 3.22.0 (2018-01-22), a read-only WAL-mode database file can be opened if the -shm and -wal files already exists or those files can be created or the database is immutable. WAL might be very slightly slower (perhaps 1% or 2% slower) than the traditional rollback-journal approach in applications that do mostly reads and seldom write. There is an additional quasi-persistent " -wal " file and " -shm " shared memory file associated with each database, which can make SQLite less appealing for use as an application file-format. There is the extra operation of checkpointing which, though automatic by default, is still something that application developers need to be mindful of. WAL works best with smaller transactions. WAL does not work well for very large transactions. For transactions larger than about 100 megabytes, traditional rollback journal modes will likely be faster. For transactions in excess of a gigabyte, WAL mode may fail with an I/O or disk-full error. It is recommended that one of the rollback journal modes be used for transactions larger than a few dozen megabytes. Beginning with version 3.11.0 (2016-02-15), WAL mode works as efficiently with large transactions as does rollback mode.
2. How WAL Works
The traditional rollback journal works by writing a copy of the original unchanged database content into a separate rollback journal file and then writing changes directly into the database file. In the event of a crash or ROLLBACK, the original content contained in the rollback journal is played back into the database file to revert the database file to its original state. The COMMIT occurs when the rollback journal is deleted.
The WAL approach inverts this. The original content is preserved in the database file and the changes are appended into a separate WAL file. A COMMIT occurs when a special record indicating a commit is appended to the WAL. Thus a COMMIT can happen without ever writing to the original database, which allows readers to continue operating from the original unaltered database while changes are simultaneously being committed into the WAL. Multiple transactions can be appended to the end of a single WAL file.
2.1. Checkpointing
Of course, one wants to eventually transfer all the transactions that are appended in the WAL file back into the original database. Moving the WAL file transactions back into the database is called a "checkpoint".
Another way to think about the difference between rollback and write-ahead log is that in the rollback-journal approach, there are two primitive operations, reading and writing, whereas with a write-ahead log there are now three primitive operations: reading, writing, and checkpointing.
By default, SQLite does a checkpoint automatically when the WAL file reaches a threshold size of 1000 pages. (The SQLITE_DEFAULT_WAL_AUTOCHECKPOINT compile-time option can be used to specify a different default.) Applications using WAL do not have to do anything in order to for these checkpoints to occur. But if they want to, applications can adjust the automatic checkpoint threshold. Or they can turn off the automatic checkpoints and run checkpoints during idle moments or in a separate thread or process.
2.2. Concurrency
When a read operation begins on a WAL-mode database, it first remembers the location of the last valid commit record in the WAL. Call this point the "end mark". Because the WAL can be growing and adding new commit records while various readers connect to the database, each reader can potentially have its own end mark. But for any particular reader, the end mark is unchanged for the duration of the transaction, thus ensuring that a single read transaction only sees the database content as it existed at a single point in time.
When a reader needs a page of content, it first checks the WAL to see if that page appears there, and if so it pulls in the last copy of the page that occurs in the WAL prior to the reader's end mark. If no copy of the page exists in the WAL prior to the reader's end mark, then the page is read from the original database file. Readers can exist in separate processes, so to avoid forcing every reader to scan the entire WAL looking for pages (the WAL file can grow to multiple megabytes, depending on how often checkpoints are run), a data structure called the "wal-index" is maintained in shared memory which helps readers locate pages in the WAL quickly and with a minimum of I/O. The wal-index greatly improves the performance of readers, but the use of shared memory means that all readers must exist on the same machine. This is why the write-ahead log implementation will not work on a network filesystem.
Writers merely append new content to the end of the WAL file. Because writers do nothing that would interfere with the actions of readers, writers and readers can run at the same time. However, since there is only one WAL file, there can only be one writer at a time.
A checkpoint operation takes content from the WAL file and transfers it back into the original database file. A checkpoint can run concurrently with readers, however the checkpoint must stop when it reaches a page in the WAL that is past the end mark of any current reader. The checkpoint has to stop at that point because otherwise it might overwrite part of the database file that the reader is actively using. The checkpoint remembers (in the wal-index) how far it got and will resume transferring content from the WAL to the database from where it left off on the next invocation.
Thus a long-running read transaction can prevent a checkpointer from making progress. But presumably every read transaction will eventually end and the checkpointer will be able to continue.
Whenever a write operation occurs, the writer checks how much progress the checkpointer has made, and if the entire WAL has been transferred into the database and synced and if no readers are making use of the WAL, then the writer will rewind the WAL back to the beginning and start putting new transactions at the beginning of the WAL. This mechanism prevents a WAL file from growing without bound.
2.3. Performance Considerations
Write transactions are very fast since they only involve writing the content once (versus twice for rollback-journal transactions) and because the writes are all sequential. Further, syncing the content to the disk is not required, as long as the application is willing to sacrifice durability following a power loss or hard reboot. (Writers sync the WAL on every transaction commit if PRAGMA synchronous is set to FULL but omit this sync if PRAGMA synchronous is set to NORMAL.)
On the other hand, read performance deteriorates as the WAL file grows in size since each reader must check the WAL file for the content and the time needed to check the WAL file is proportional to the size of the WAL file. The wal-index helps find content in the WAL file much faster, but performance still falls off with increasing WAL file size. Hence, to maintain good read performance it is important to keep the WAL file size down by running checkpoints at regular intervals.
Checkpointing does require sync operations in order to avoid the possibility of database corruption following a power loss or hard reboot. The WAL must be synced to persistent storage prior to moving content from the WAL into the database and the database file must by synced prior to resetting the WAL. Checkpoint also requires more seeking. The checkpointer makes an effort to do as many sequential page writes to the database as it can (the pages are transferred from WAL to database in ascending order) but even then there will typically be many seek operations interspersed among the page writes. These factors combine to make checkpoints slower than write transactions.
The default strategy is to allow successive write transactions to grow the WAL until the WAL becomes about 1000 pages in size, then to run a checkpoint operation for each subsequent COMMIT until the WAL is reset to be smaller than 1000 pages. By default, the checkpoint will be run automatically by the same thread that does the COMMIT that pushes the WAL over its size limit. This has the effect of causing most COMMIT operations to be very fast but an occasional COMMIT (those that trigger a checkpoint) to be much slower. If that effect is undesirable, then the application can disable automatic checkpointing and run the periodic checkpoints in a separate thread, or separate process. (Links to commands and interfaces to accomplish this are shown below.)
Note that with PRAGMA synchronous set to NORMAL, the checkpoint is the only operation to issue an I/O barrier or sync operation (fsync() on unix or FlushFileBuffers() on windows). If an application therefore runs checkpoint in a separate thread or process, the main thread or process that is doing database queries and updates will never block on a sync operation. This helps to prevent "latch-up" in applications running on a busy disk drive. The downside to this configuration is that transactions are no longer durable and might rollback following a power failure or hard reset.
Notice too that there is a tradeoff between average read performance and average write performance. To maximize the read performance, one wants to keep the WAL as small as possible and hence run checkpoints frequently, perhaps as often as every COMMIT. To maximize write performance, one wants to amortize the cost of each checkpoint over as many writes as possible, meaning that one wants to run checkpoints infrequently and let the WAL grow as large as possible before each checkpoint. The decision of how often to run checkpoints may therefore vary from one application to another depending on the relative read and write performance requirements of the application. The default strategy is to run a checkpoint once the WAL reaches 1000 pages and this strategy seems to work well in test applications on workstations, but other strategies might work better on different platforms or for different workloads.
3. Activating And Configuring WAL Mode
An SQLite database connection defaults to journal_mode=DELETE. To convert to WAL mode, use the following pragma:
PRAGMA journal_mode=WAL;
The journal_mode pragma returns a string which is the new journal mode. On success, the pragma will return the string " wal ". If the conversion to WAL could not be completed (for example, if the VFS does not support the necessary shared-memory primitives) then the journaling mode will be unchanged and the string returned from the primitive will be the prior journaling mode (for example " delete ").
3.1. Automatic Checkpoint
By default, SQLite will automatically checkpoint whenever a COMMIT occurs that causes the WAL file to be 1000 pages or more in size, or when the last database connection on a database file closes. The default configuration is intended to work well for most applications. But programs that want more control can force a checkpoint using the wal_checkpoint pragma or by calling the sqlite3_wal_checkpoint() C interface. The automatic checkpoint threshold can be changed or automatic checkpointing can be completely disabled using the wal_autocheckpoint pragma or by calling the sqlite3_wal_autocheckpoint() C interface. A program can also use sqlite3_wal_hook() to register a callback to be invoked whenever any transaction commits to the WAL. This callback can then invoke sqlite3_wal_checkpoint() or sqlite3_wal_checkpoint_v2() based on whatever criteria it thinks is appropriate. (The automatic checkpoint mechanism is implemented as a simple wrapper around sqlite3_wal_hook().)
3.2. Application-Initiated Checkpoints
An application can initiate a checkpoint using any writable database connection |
, whether it be meditation, hypnosis, forcing, and so on (although take note, you cannot use these to improve your visualization ability alone.) You must convince yourself that there is literally no difference between what you can see with your eyes, and what you can visualize, as the end result either way is an entirely interpreted construction in your brain. Your mental image of the world is entirely subject to your conscious will. Every physical object you see with your eyes is constructed in your mind by the bottom-up process of your eyes reacting to photons emitted by those objects, and your brain translating them into colors and forms. Mental objects you see with your mind's eye, including your tulpa, are constructed by the top-down process of visualization, with details being filled in as needed. A perceptual set must be created to enforce an overactive role for your brain's inherent ability to use top-down processing. You must commit yourself to constantly visualizing your tulpa, ensuring that all details are consistent throughout the day, and accept your tulpa as "real." As time goes on, this constant visualization will become an unconscious routine -- a passive ability. The more your visualization remains consistent not only with itself, but with its surroundings, the sooner you will begin to confuse this as actual perception. Top-down visualization will begin to take priority, dulling your bottom-up perceptions, creating the illusion that you cannot see past your tulpa.
Realistic Visualizations: Basics of Compositing
In order to accelerate the confusion of visualization with perception, you will want to practice the basics of compositing your visualizations into reality in much the same way that a graphic designer or visual effects artist composites computer-generated images into a scene. This is a step by step process that can be replicated through visualization to integrate your tulpa's image into your surroundings as realistically as possible.
In this picture, we can see the tulpa with weak visualization skills. Attempting imposition too early will be unconvincing, as visuals will not be vivid enough.
This will be the base of our imposed visual. Take note that the tulpa looks pasted in and unnatural, as if it was just a picture made by an unskilled nerd with Photoshop. The process of compositing will allow us to make this visualization look more natural given the setting. Rather than using computer graphics though, you will be doing it with your mind.
In graphics, color correction is often done through manipulation of the red, green, and blue channels. By fine-tuning each channel for the tulpa layer, the visualization ends up looking more like it belongs in its setting. This will be easier in your mind, since you don't have to worry about individual color channels. Just use common sense, if you're in a very green forest, there's more green light bouncing around. If you're in a volcano, things will have a fiery color palette.
You will also want to focus on visualizing proper shadows and highlights onto your tulpa, taking into account light-sources in your environment.
Finally you will want to make sure you can visualize any shadows cast by your tulpa (or lights, if your tulpa glows or something).
And voila, you have a more natural looking tulpa. Practice compositing your visualizations so they maintain a realistic look, and in time it will become something you don't even have to think about. After a month or more, depending on how often you practice, you may find you no longer need to put effort into imposition. When you realize your tulpa looks real, and you can no longer immediately see through it, then you have accomplished hallucination.
Resources used:
http://www.intropsych.com/ch07_cognition...ssing.html
http://www.quora.com/What-gives-the-huma...ine-things
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/dis...&aid=55291
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_%28psychology%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination#Visual
http://books.google.com/books?id=vw20LEa...e&q&f=true dedicated to cheesebreadFor many people, complete visual imposition of their tulpa is the end-goal of development. An imposed tulpa can be considered a voluntary, but unconscious, visual hallucination, allowing the host to see and believe their tulpa has a space in the physical world just as any other physical object. The imposition process can be considered complete when the host can no longer immediately see through their tulpa. The most important prerequisites to imposition is that you are able to visualize your tulpa flawlessly and consistently for extended periods of time, and that you have no doubts about your tulpa's existence or "realness."Before we begin imposing, we must discuss a few things about how we see, and how we visualize. Human vision starts with light traveling into your retina, containing tons of rod cells and cone cells responsible for vision in low light and color/detail respectively. The retina contains rhodopsin, which is a chemical that converts light into electrical signals conducted through the optic nerve that the brain interprets as vision. Your brains interpretation from visual data is considered a bottom-up process by brain theorists, because low-level details are turned into high-level models. Perception is largely data-driven because it must accurately reflect events in the outside world. Naturally, the interpretation is determined mostly by information from the senses, not by your expectations. In imagination, the process works in reverse. The brain starts with high-level goals and generates mid-level and low-level details that are consistent with them -- a process that is responsible for things such as spontaneous unconscious generation of details in your wonderland. Visualization of your tulpa is a top-down process.Most people are born with the ability to differentiate between self-generated and external sources of information, as bottom-up and top-down processes must occur without much interference. However, this skill may break down to cause hallucinatory experiences; a hypothesis from cognitive and neuroscientist Stephen Grossberg suggests that overactive top-down processing, or strong perceptual expectations, can generate hallucinations. By exercising influence over our own systems of belief and expectations (as we do in many other areas of tulpa development), we can create an unconscious need for our brain to accept top-down visualizations in the place of bottom-up interpretations of physical perception.In psychology, a set is a group of expectations that shape experience by making people especially sensitive to specific kinds of information. A perceptual set is a predisposition to perceive things in a certain way, leading us to see what we expect to see. Perceptual sets can be created by motivation and suggestion; with mental discipline, we can create a perceptual set that our tulpas are physical and allow it to become an unconscious expectation, hence imposing our tulpas. It is fortunate that imposition is usually considered one of the final steps of creating a tulpa, since it requires expectation-building techniques that are used in much earlier developmental processes such as reaching sentience, sapience, and hearing your tulpa's voice.You can use any expectation-creating technique you like, whether it be meditation, hypnosis, forcing, and so on (although take note, you cannot use these to improve your visualization ability alone.) You must convince yourself that there is literally no difference between what you can see with your eyes, and what you can visualize, as the end result either way is an entirely interpreted construction in your brain. Your mental image of the world is entirely subject to your conscious will. Every physical object you see with your eyes is constructed in your mind by the bottom-up process of your eyes reacting to photons emitted by those objects, and your brain translating them into colors and forms. Mental objects you see with your mind's eye, including your tulpa, are constructed by the top-down process of visualization, with details being filled in as needed. A perceptual set must be created to enforce an overactive role for your brain's inherent ability to use top-down processing. You must commit yourself to constantly visualizing your tulpa, ensuring that all details are consistent throughout the day, and accept your tulpa as "real." As time goes on, this constant visualization will become an unconscious routine -- a passive ability. The more your visualization remains consistent not only with itself, but with its surroundings, the sooner you will begin to confuse this as actual perception. Top-down visualization will begin to take priority, dulling your bottom-up perceptions, creating the illusion that you cannot see past your tulpa.In order to accelerate the confusion of visualization with perception, you will want to practice the basics of compositing your visualizations into reality in much the same way that a graphic designer or visual effects artist composites computer-generated images into a scene. This is a step by step process that can be replicated through visualization to integrate your tulpa's image into your surroundings as realistically as possible.In this picture, we can see the tulpa with weak visualization skills. Attempting imposition too early will be unconvincing, as visuals will not be vivid enough.This will be the base of our imposed visual. Take note that the tulpa looks pasted in and unnatural, as if it was just a picture made by an unskilled nerd with Photoshop. The process of compositing will allow us to make this visualization look more natural given the setting. Rather than using computer graphics though, you will be doing it with your mind.In graphics, color correction is often done through manipulation of the red, green, and blue channels. By fine-tuning each channel for the tulpa layer, the visualization ends up looking more like it belongs in its setting. This will be easier in your mind, since you don't have to worry about individual color channels. Just use common sense, if you're in a very green forest, there's more green light bouncing around. If you're in a volcano, things will have a fiery color palette.You will also want to focus on visualizing proper shadows and highlights onto your tulpa, taking into account light-sources in your environment.Finally you will want to make sure you can visualize any shadows cast by your tulpa (or lights, if your tulpa glows or something).And voila, you have a more natural looking tulpa. Practice compositing your visualizations so they maintain a realistic look, and in time it will become something you don't even have to think about. After a month or more, depending on how often you practice, you may find you no longer need to put effort into imposition. When you realize your tulpa looks real, and you can no longer immediately see through it, then you have accomplished hallucination. WTB: Rare Tulpas (This post was last modified: 02-08-2019, 05:14 PM by Apollo. Edit Reason: Fixed images ) 09-28-2013, 08:11 AM Website Find Reply Sponsors:
Moose
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J...JD1215... actually wrote the imposition guide?
IT'S HAPPENING! THE END IS NIGH!
Anyway, yes. Fantastic guide. J...JD1215... actually wrote the imposition guide?IT'S HAPPENING! THE END IS NIGH!Anyway, yes. Fantastic guide. (This post was last modified: 09-28-2013, 11:57 PM by Moose.) 09-28-2013, 08:34 AM Find Reply Pandoranomicon
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This is quite an impressive guide. I figured visualization would basically be as simple as imposing it onto your view alone, but your photoshop analogy shows there is more work to be done to imposing a tulpa than just imposing form.
One thing I must ask, however, is how would you try to impose a tulpa via the other senses such as hearing? It seems that this guide answers the question on only visual imposition. Can the guide be used still? This is quite an impressive guide. I figured visualization would basically be as simple as imposing it onto your view alone, but your photoshop analogy shows there is more work to be done to imposing a tulpa than just imposing form.One thing I must ask, however, is how would you try to impose a tulpa via the other senses such as hearing? It seems that this guide answers the question on only visual imposition. Can the guide be used still? 09-28-2013, 07:17 PM Find Reply JD1215
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(09-28-2013, 07:17 PM) Pandoranomicon Wrote: One thing I must ask, however, is how would you try to impose a tulpa via the other senses such as hearing? It seems that this guide answers the question on only visual imposition. Can the guide be used still?
The only useful part of this guide for other senses would be the explanation of bottom-up and top-down processing, and the meta-cognitive process of giving one priority over the other. I do not know yet how to explain the intuitive process of imposing realistic acoustics for a tulpa, and I would have to research how audio hallucinations work technically. The only useful part of this guide for other senses would be the explanation of bottom-up and top-down processing, and the meta-cognitive process of giving one priority over the other. I do not know yet how to explain the intuitive process of imposing realistic acoustics for a tulpa, and I would have to research how audio hallucinations work technically. WTB: Rare Tulpas 09-28-2013, 07:26 PM Website Find Reply Sands
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So I tell you to make a guide for imposition and you are pretty "nah" and then few days later, one pops up? Man, JD. So I tell you to make a guide for imposition and you are pretty "nah" and then few days later, one pops up? Man, JD. The THE SUBCONCIOUS ochinchin occultists frt.sys (except Roswell because he doesn't want to be a part of it) 09-28-2013, 08:01 PM Find Reply TulpaCouple
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VERY nice, this guide explains a lot of things in ways I wasn't able to properly explain myself!
At the point I'm at I need to work severely on just visualizing them constantly. Need to stop accidentally spot checking and ruining the imposition.
Great guide! VERY nice, this guide explains a lot of things in ways I wasn't able to properly explain myself!At the point I'm at I need to work severely on just visualizing them constantly. Need to stop accidentally spot checking and ruining the imposition.Great guide!
09-28-2013, 08:02 PM Find Reply JD1215
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(09-28-2013, 08:01 PM) Sands Wrote: So I tell you to make a guide for imposition and you are pretty "nah" and then few days later, one pops up? Man, JD.
I'm sorry Master Sandy plz don't hit me.
(09-28-2013, 08:02 PM) TulpaCouple Wrote: VERY nice, this guide explains a lot of things in ways I wasn't able to properly explain myself!
At the point I'm at I need to work severely on just visualizing them constantly. Need to stop accidentally spot checking and ruining the imposition.
Great guide!
Thanks. I wasn't able to properly explain a lot of stuff either, which is why I held it off. Did a lot of research concerning hallucinations though, and found a lot of useful info that aided in explaining how and why imposition is possible (which I included at the bottom of the post). I'm sorry Master Sandy plz don't hit me.Thanks. I wasn't able to properly explain a lot of stuff either, which is why I held it off. Did a lot of research concerning hallucinations though, and found a lot of useful info that aided in explaining how and why imposition is possible (which I included at the bottom of the post). WTB: Rare Tulpas 09-28-2013, 08:11 PM Website Find Reply TulpaCouple
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I think the research paid off. I've been having trouble explaining to Nate how I've been able to ~mostly~ get my tulpas imposed at this point. This guide helped explain a lot.
I do think it's true, it really is important to realize how everything you see IS being visualized, just through the opposite method. When I changed my mindset is when I first saw progress on my own. I think the research paid off. I've been having trouble explaining to Nate how I've been able to ~mostly~ get my tulpas imposed at this point. This guide helped explain a lot.I do think it's true, it really is important to realize how everything you see IS being visualized, just through the opposite method. When I changed my mindset is when I first saw progress on my own.
09-28-2013, 09:39 PM Find Reply Linkzelda
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Approved, though I wonder if this could cover for both Visualization and Imposition compared to the previous guide you made. The concepts are pretty much the same, though this one takes a more detailed approach on the matter.
I'm guessing this was intended to be an updated version, but either way, I approve for both submissions you've made on visualization and imposition. Approved, though I wonder if this could cover for both Visualization and Imposition compared to the previous guide you made. The concepts are pretty much the same, though this one takes a more detailed approach on the matter.I'm guessing this was intended to be an updated version, but either way, I approve for both submissions you've made on visualization and imposition. 7 Hours of Active Forcing
8 Hours & 29 Minutes of Active Forcing
10 Hours of Active Forcing
12-07-2013, 12:10 AM Find Reply NotAnonymous
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Approved for Guides.
Yet another excellent visualization-themed guide from JD1215.
It covers integrating your imaginary senses with your real senses, what sorts of expectations and prerequisites one needs to impose a tulpa and how to make it all look good and realistic.
It even gives some hypotheses about how hallucinations occur and how imagination works in general, which may help some of the more skeptical crowd who have trouble believing they could visualize so hard that they end up hallucinating. Approved for Guides.Yet another excellent visualization-themed guide from JD1215.It covers integrating your imaginary senses with your real senses, what sorts of expectations and prerequisites one needs to impose a tulpa and how to make it all look good and realistic.It even gives some hypotheses about how hallucinations occur and how imagination works in general, which may help some of the more skeptical crowd who have trouble believing they could visualize so hard that they end up hallucinating. 01-20-2014, 10:34 AM Find ReplyJimmy Butler's ascension from junior college transfer to solid but unspectacular Marquette starter and from 30th overall pick to non-rotation player to All-Star starter is the stuff of movie scripts.
There's one problem: Its star won't sign on for the leading role.
"I ain't done (expletive) man," Butler said. "What's our record, around.500? That's no better than last year. So I'm not impressed. If I can help this team win, that's how I judge myself. And I don't think I'm doing a very good job of that."
It seemed perversely coincidental that on the same day Butler earned his first All-Star start in a vote from fans, his peers and a media panel, the NBA and NBPA officially signed the new collective bargaining agreement. That agreement for the first time contains a designated veteran player extension rule designed to aid teams from losing their franchise stars via free agency.
Butler, who owns a player option on his five-year, $92.3 million deal for the 2019-20 season, could be eligible for such an extension in 2018 that would take effect in 2019-20. He would have to make one of the three All-NBA teams or win Defensive Player of the Year in either 2018-19 or this season and next or win most valuable player for this or either of the next two seasons.
Based on current salary cap projections, Butler would be in line for a five-year, $230 million extension if he qualifies for the designated veteran player extension or a five-year, $198 million deal if he doesn't. Butler will turn 30 just before training camp for the 2019-20 season.
Thus, on the very day Butler earned his first All-Star start, the debate that management engaged in so intensely last June began anew, at least outside the organization: Is Butler the one to build around? Or should he be traded as part of a full rebuild?
The Bulls engaged in serious trade discussions involving Butler with the Celtics and, to a lesser extent, the Timberwolves last June. The Tribune reported at the time that at least one of the four voices from the Bulls' principal decision-makers — Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, President Michael Reinsdorf, executive vice president John Paxson and general manager Gar Forman — advocated for a full rebuild.
Dwyane Wade has said multiple times this season that he signed with the Bulls once talks broke down with the Heat because he wanted to help restore his hometown franchise to respectability and to play with Butler, who openly recruited Wade.
Photos of former Bulls guard Dwyane Wade.
Teams have inquired about Butler's price tag this season in the type of talks that take place all the time throughout the league. Executives from two other teams said last month they were given the impression that Butler isn't available for now.
It's unlikely that changes by the Feb. 23 trade deadline, which comes four days after Butler's third straight All-Star Game, although non-efforts like Friday night's loss at Atlanta give pause. This offseason will bring more inquiries.
As for Butler, to understand his rise, you have to go back to a beginning. Not the beginning, a story well documented about his bouncing from friend's house to friend's house as a youth in Tomball, Texas, until a family took him in.
Not even to his lone season at Tyler (Texas) Junior College, which Butler attended not as a non-qualifier but because he had no Division I scholarship offers.
"Things that don't go his way don't make him quit," Tyler coach Mike Marquis said in a 2015 phone interview. "They motivate him to be better, be stronger, be tougher. His inner drive is very special."
This quality was on display for Butler's NBA beginning, an odd one for all from the 2011 draft class. Thanks to the NBA lockout, Butler had no summer league. He had no contact with team officials, other than Tom Thibodeau's instructions in the week between the draft and start of the lockout.
"Thibs wanted me to do three workouts per day after I got drafted," Butler recalled. "I'm like, 'No problem.' I just worked. I was in the lab, the gym. But I didn't know how to work like I do now."
Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau, left, looks on as Jimmy Butler is is fitted with a Bulls jersey on Monday, June 27, 2011, by general manager Gar Forman, right, at a news conference in Deerfield. Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau, left, looks on as Jimmy Butler is is fitted with a Bulls jersey on Monday, June 27, 2011, by general manager Gar Forman, right, at a news conference in Deerfield. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune) (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
The lockout started. The season started. Butler sat and watched most of it, logging just 359 minutes all season. For comparison, he has played more than 2,000 in every full season since.
"I kept thinking that eventually I was going to get an opportunity and stayed ready. That was the toughest part," Butler said. "I love the game. I want to help win like everybody else does. When you're excited and you don't get to play, you get down. You don't want to work out. You don't want to do anything because you feel like your opportunity isn't going to come. But it did. And that's what's crazy: I was ready."
Indeed, Butler was. He had a memorable stint guarding Carmelo Anthony at Madison Square Garden, a matchup so intense that Thibodeau recalled it last month when he visited as coach of the Timberwolves.
"A lot of it is opportunity and how much you love the game. Obviously, he has a lot of love for the game," said Mavericks guard Wes Matthews, a Marquette teammate. "I've known him since he was 18. He always has had that drive."
Butler also had ears into which he could scream his frustrations over not playing. Luol Deng and assistant coach Adrian Griffin, now with the Thunder, were lifelines.Portland’s first ‘inclusionary housing’ buildings were just proposed in Sellwood
Two buildings could make room for below-market-price homes by omitting parking spaces.
Portland For Everyone Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 27, 2017
By Michael Andersen | Monday, Feb. 27
A proposed 89-unit building at SE 17th Avenue and Tenino, one block off Tacoma in Sellwood. Rendering: Myhre Group Architects via Portland Bureau of Development Services.
Which is more important to the future of Portland:
homes that are affordable to lower-income people, or storage for upper-income people’s cars?
The question doesn’t get much starker than with two projects proposed last week in Sellwood and nearby Moreland, close to the Willamette River in southeast Portland.
If they move forward as proposed, the two apartment buildings — one with 89 homes, the other with 54 — seem to be the first fruits of the inclusionary housing ordinance approved by the city council in December.
Depending on how the design works, the buildings could add as many as 29 new apartments that would rent for as little as older apartments east of 136th Avenue do today.
The new homes would be in the walkable, relatively transit-rich Sellwood-Moreland area, less than half a mile from the new Orange MAX Line and the Springwater Corridor bike path into downtown.
Here’s the tradeoff: in order to afford the lower-rent units, the buildings would have to be built with no on-site parking.
Every underground parking space costs $550 per month in additional rent
Parking garages are expensive, especially underground garages like the ones UDG had previously proposed for the Sellwood area. As of 2013, each underground parking space added $55,000 to the cost of a building, which translates to about $550 per month that comes ultimately from rent payments in the new building.
The city council’s decision last November to waive parking requirements for apartment buildings that participate in the inclusionary housing program was one of the crucial offsets intended to prevent the program from halting new development.
If the two new “early assistance” requests filed last Tuesday by Urban Development Group is any indication, that plan is working.
UDG already owns the land on both sites. The building at 17th and Tenino would go onto the site of a drive-in restaurant:
A new building here would have 89 apartments if it sets aside some homes for lower-income Portlanders, or 79 apartments if it includes on-site parking instead.
The building at Milwaukie and Yukon would be on the site of this house:
A new building here would have 54 apartments if it sets aside some homes for lower-income Portlanders, or 47 apartments if it includes on-site parking instead.
Here’s are the notes from city staff summarizing the request from the would-be developer, spotted Monday by Iain MacKenzie of NextPortland.com:
In other words, the developer doesn’t have to include units affordable to lower-income people in his buildings, because both projects were green-lighted before the city’s new inclusionary housing rule took effect. But if including low-rent units means he doesn’t have to include on-site parking, then including the low-rent units could actually make the building more valuable.
Which is to say: because of the city’s new rules, a developer is now asking to build homes for lower-income people instead of storage for higher-income people’s cars.
A good tradeoff for tenants and the environment, housing advocates say
Vivian Satterfield, standing at right, at a 2016 workshop in support of inclusionary housing.
Vivian Satterfield, deputy director of OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon and a leading advocate for the inclusionary housing rule, welcomed the proposals in an interview Monday.
“Having access to public transportation, being in walkable communities, actually benefits us all, including those of us who have multiple vehicles,” said in an interview Monday. “These are things that should be afforded to lower-income folks.”
If that means that parking a car in central Sellwood gets a little more annoying, she suggested, so be it.
“There are tradeoffs,” Satterfield said, adding that as she spoke she was looking across a “sea of parking lots” along 82nd Avenue.
Tony Jordan of Portlanders for Parking Reform agreed.
“This request is a win-win for affordability and our environment,” Jordan said in a text message. “We hope that other developers will choose the same route.”
David Mullens, a project manager for Urban Development Group who is managing the proposals, declined a request to discuss the projects.
This is only a request for advice from the city’s permitting staff; it’s entirely possible that UDG will decide to pursue its other plan instead. Whatever happens, we’ll be watching this example closely. It could be the first sign of big things for Portland.
Portland for Everyone supports abundant, diverse, affordable housing. This is a reported blog about how to get more of those things. You can follow it on Twitter and Facebook or get new posts by email a few times each month.About: Hello There! My name is Timothy and I am 18 years old and I love biking, Rc, arduino,gadget hacking and 3D designing. I'm currently studying in PATTS College of aeronautic As an incoming 3rd year Avionics s...
Today I will be showing something very interesting especially for those who love flying their quadcopters and doing aerial photography.
THE 3D PRINTED PROP GUARD!......Can also be laser cut
So What is a prop guard??
A Prop guard is something very innovative in a way it protects your quadcopter or your propellers. Removing the risk of hitting someone or something outside or indoors. It is also a cheap accessory that can be printed or cut. I you are aware Of the AR drone it also has prop guards, now what makes it special? Well its because of the hull one for indoor and another for outdoors. It makes things dynamic for the quad right?
Ok so why did i decide to make one?
The dangers of flying a QuadCopter or any other multirotors
First of all flying quadcopters indoor is really dangerous because of the propellers. Hitting someone in the public may cause you serious charges and not only that but you risk destroying your expensive propellers. I know this will come very handy for most aerial photographers out there and If you think prop guards are heavy well think again 4 prop guards only weight aprox. 100g! and that does not really affect your flight does it.
Me as a student Hobbyist
I dont really go out to find some big fields because I have a big house perfect for my quad and a big back yard so why go outside right. I know all parents wont allow their son flying their quadcopters indoor right? So I designed this propguard so that I can play my DJIF450 inside the house or just in my room. And surprisingly when the prop guard arrived from the printing service my parents allowed me and supported me in selling it locally here in the philippines.So to help me mass produce this product here in the Philippines I decided to risk sharing it online to enter this Gadget/Accessorie hacking contest so plss vote/subscribe and hit favorite.
This project was made with the USE of 123D Design
If you have any question or special request PM me I already have tons of prop guard designs
VIDEO Coming soon slow upload here internet problems.....Never miss the latest news from TexAgs! Join our free email list
The attorney for Texas A&M freshman wide receiver Ricky Seals-Jones told TexAgs on Sunday evening that Seals-Jones would fight disorderly conduct charges that were filed against him early Sunday morning."Ricky Seals-Jones is absolutely fighting these charges," Attorney Cameron Reynolds said in a press release given to TexAgs. "He had nothing to drink and was at home when a friend called him to come to Northgate to give him a ride home. Ricky went to Northgate to help his friend toward the car when someone struck him."When Ricky turned toward him that person cursed him and called Ricky the 'N' word. Words were exchanged and Ricky was arrested. The other individual was not arrested."I have personally spoken with an independent witness who confirms these facts. Ricky volunteered to take a breath test since he had not consumed alcohol, but this request was never granted."99.9 (%) in 2015
In 2015, adult literacy rate for Latvia was 99.9 %. Adult literacy rate of Latvia increased from 99.5 % in 1989 to 99.9 % in 2015 growing at an average annual rate of 0.15 %. The description is composed by Yodatai, our digital data assistant. Have a question? Ask Yodatai ›
What is adult literacy rate?
Adult (15+) literacy rate (%). Total is the percentage of the population age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life. Generally, ‘literacy’ also encompasses ‘numeracy’, the ability to make simple arithmetic calculations. This indicator is calculated by dividing the number of literates aged 15 years and over by the corresponding age group population and multiplying the result by 100.Harris County Judge Ed Emmett revealed more details about his latest plan to renovate the Astrodome, pitching a concept that he says can move forward without the approval of voters and would likely cost less than $65 million.
Emmett, the top elected official in Harris County, which owns the Astrodome, insisted in a "State of the County" speech Tuesday that "2016 is the year we make something happen with the Dome."
"It is an asset that belongs to the taxpayers, so the decision is really a matter of asset utilization -- period," Emmett said, arguing there's still useful life ahead for the 50-year-old building. "It cannot and should not be torn down."
Since the Houston Astros baseball team left the stadium after the 1999 season for a new downtown facility, the county has been unable to answer the question of what it should do with the Astrodome or how it should pay for it.
There's been many calls to save or preserve the historic structure, which was the world's first multi-purpose domed stadium and host to events as diverse as Elvis Presley concerts, the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match, and the 1992 Republican National Convention, in addition to football and baseball games.
In 2013, county voters rejected a $217 million bond referendum that would have funded the building's transformation into a sort of convention center. At the time, Emmett heavily insinuated that a "no" vote to that plan would prompt the county to demolish the Astrodome. Since then, he's walked back that threat and continues to enthusiastically make the case for renovation.
During a press conference after Tuesday's event, Emmett told reporters the county hopes to release a renovation plan for the stadium in June.
"We're making a lot of progress," Emmett said. "Everybody realizes we can't tear it down."
But at the same time, Emmett said, it's clear that the private sector has no interest in the building and has no viable plan for how to repurpose it.
Emmett said the county's preliminary plan is to raise the floor of the Astrodome, put a 9-acre park atop it, and leave room for storage or parking underneath. In the future, a conservatory could be developed that might be able to fund a system of trails within that park.
Emmett said he did not know exactly how much the proposed renovations would cost. But, he added, "I think you're talking about a lot less than what we spent on the 1910 courthouse."
The county re-opened its historic courthouse in 2011, following a $65 million renovation.
Emmett said he isn't worried about the political risk of pursuing the project even though voters previously rejection renovation, in part because the cost of the latest proposal is so much lower than what voters saw in 2013. The county often renovates buildings without getting specific approval from voters, he added.
He also said the county is exploring the possibility of creating some sort of light show that would be displayed on the exterior of the stadium -- and possibly on the interior as |
they rented out their house.
For the next three years, the Strikers were on the road. They mountain biked in British Columbia and Mexico and snowboarded through Alaska. When they got tired of driving, they surfed in Baja for a season. They parked the vehicle for a bit; they visited Sri Lanka and Greece, and maxed out European visas.
They traded out Pearl for a roomier rig. They visited family in New England. Jason got his paragliding license. They followed good weather. They got a dog.
When the Strikers set off on their adventure, they'd imagined that their van would be the lone van in many parking lots, that their blog would be pretty unique in its content of van life. But, as they rolled across the continent, they often found themselves in eye contact with another van driver in the rearview mirror or in the next lane or parked along the road on National Forest land for the night.
"We knew people did it," Jes said, "but we were surprised we were so not alone."
…
Madi King grew up on the stories of her parents.
"Before I was in the picture, they went to Alaska and lived out of a Toyota 4Runner for six months," King said. "They'd tell me about how they'd drink coffee and beer out of the same mug and be able to go everywhere they wanted. I always thought that sounded incredible."
During family trips, she'd sleep in the back of the truck with the bikes.
Once King got her driver's license, she found herself gravitating toward the idea of living in a van. A neighbor spotted a classified ad for a van, and King ended up test driving it during her high school lunch period and buying it with every dollar she had.
"(A van has) always been a symbol of going on an adventure," she said.
When King graduated from Steamboat Springs High School in 2016, she completed a three-month NOLS — National Outdoor Leadership School — course in the Pacific Northwest, during which she practiced living simply and resourcefully. Soon after, she and a friend took the van on a month-long roadtrip around the West, a test run for what was next: heading out to Wisconsin and taking on full-time van life as she worked as a river guide on the Menominee and Peshtigo rivers.
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Scott Hendrickson had been fascinated with the tiny house movement and other forms of minimalist living for a while. After graduating college with a degree in natural resource management, he moved from Georgia to New Mexico for a job as a wildland firefighter. During the long drives between his old and new home, and for weekend adventures, he'd camp in his Chevy Avalanche truck, to which he'd added a platform bed and folding table.
Soon after Hendrickson moved to Steamboat for the winter to be a ski instructor, another driver lost control in the snow and hit Hendrickson's truck, totaling it.
"But with every bad thing comes a good opportunity," Hendrickson said.
He started searching for a four-wheel-drive van, but the promising Craigslist postings were pricey and were plucked off the market almost as soon as they went up. Hendrickson broadened his search and eventually came across a listing out of North Carolina for an ambulance.
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If you scroll through posts on Instagram that have been tagged #vanlife or #homeiswhereyouparkit, it becomes easier to see why some potential van-lifers might not truly grasp what they're getting into.
The lifestyle appears on social media in nearly copycat images: smiles and a dog or two around a campfire, strings of decorative lights strung up above van windows, dinner cooking on a two-burner stove at sunset, surfboards and mountain bikes latched to the outside of a van, a silhouette in a yoga position on top of a van, two pairs of bare feet peeking out from a woven blanket, a van's back doors open to a beach or mountain range.
"There's a big misconception that (van life) is all beautiful," Jes Striker said. "We did it to be closer to nature — we loved doing outdoor activities that much. But it's a grittier environment than I think social media portrays it to be. We've definitely encountered people who didn't know, and their van-life experience was short-lived."
"We've met people who are professional Instagram celebrities," Jason Striker said, referencing people who curate accounts featuring sponsored content and have thousands or millions of followers. "But it's marketing, it's an industry, not a true window into their lives. None of them post a picture of going into a Walmart at 2 a.m. to use the bathroom."
"Half the reason I did van life was so that I could turn my phone off and unplug for weeks at a time," Jes added.
Kathleen Morton lives in a 1987 van and has been doing van life for several years. She has more than 96,000 followers on her Instagram account Tiny House, Tiny Footprint, and runs a website of the same name that consists of a blog, podcast and resources for various types of minimalist, sustainable, off-grid living. She's also the American representative to Vanlife Diaries, an online network of stories, photographs and resources related to van life.
"A lot of companies are realizing that there's power in using people in the community to influence their brands," Morton said. "It's a no-brainer, in a way, to be partnering with us. We don't own a lot of things, and several of us are very conscious about what we buy and the value it has on our lives. When we do purchase something, it's a big deal."
The social influencer market was estimated to be worth $500 million in 2015 and poised to increase to
$5 billion by 2020, according to Rachel Monroe, of The New Yorker.
…
Whether or not a van-lifer's goal is to grow and monetize their brand, social media can play an important role in their van-life experience.
Madi King, whose Instagram account has a following of 1,800, often gets messages from people asking if she thinks van life is something they could do and about her thoughts about interior layout strategies.
Part of Kathleen Morton's social media presence is proactively creating content to help people figure out answers to those same questions.
"We've spent a lot of work being a good resource, a good hub, for the information that van-lifers need," she said.
She and Vanlife Diaries are working on a documentary and a book about van-life experiences — works that are coming to fruition largely because of the company's significant social media presence.
Besides technical information, there's also a more personal community piece that some modern-day van-lifers find in social media.
"I had to get more comfortable with the internet (during van life)," Jes Striker said. "After a while, van life could get lonely. We'd see people on Instagram who had common interests and were on our same path. I'd always felt like meeting up was like a blind date and had some social anxiety about it, but we met some wonderful people. It was a breakthrough moment for me to realize you can actually meet people through social media."
Shane Corrigan is a traveling sales representative for the outdoor gear company Wilcor, for which he often comes through Steamboat several times per work season. Where most traveling sales reps would expense hotel rooms along their routes, Corrigan says, he found himself more drawn toward living out of his Subaru and tent camping. Soon enough, he'd moved into a green 1976 Westfalia, which he's been living in for six to eight months out of the year for the past four years.
"Instagram definitely helps people who are in the same area connect on the road," Corrigan said. "But the neat thing about my van is that, even if I don't exchange social media or contact information with someone, people will usually recognize (my van) when I'm in town, and we'll be able to go for a bike ride or beer."
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No matter how a van-lifer hashtags about it — or if they opt to power off their devices entirely — there are pieces of van life that exist outside of social media.
"If you're just looking at the 20- and 30-somethings who are hashtagging 'van life,' they're probably all pretty like-minded," Jes Striker said. "But overall — if you walk into an RV campground in Cabo in the middle of winter, there'll be people from all walks of life. There's a lot of first names out there, people living off the grid. It can have a scary underbelly.
"We also met a lot of people raising their kids outside of the public school system. They're able to offer such exposure — they want to show their children something different," Jes added.
"It's people who've looked at the standard way of life and said, 'that's not for me,'" Jason Striker said. "Part of this whole revolution is this generation (millennials) saying, 'We don't have to do exactly what society says we do: the marriage, kids and constant debt.'"
"More and more people can't afford to pay rent, and van life has become an affordable housing solution to this," Kathleen Morton said.
"I would say the majority of van-lifers I know are saving money living this lifestyle," Morton said. "I surround myself with people in the community who enjoy being in nature and who want to take their time traveling. We camp in public land locations for several days at a time, which ends up saving money on gas and campground fees. We also aren't purchasing as many items because we don't need as many things. I think that spending $1,000 to $1,500 a month is reasonable."
"It's super inexpensive," Jes Striker said. "We escaped the regular monthly utility bills for three years: no electric, gas, trash, water, sewer, internet. And rent / mortgage can now become free if you so choose and your location allows. If it wasn't a cheaper lifestyle, there would be a fraction of people living in vehicles around the world.
"We met many folks living as cheaply as possible and would never even dream of paying to camp. We also crossed paths with a lot of others who chose to have the 'luxury' of plugging in at camp sites or RV parks that offer electric, water/sewer, even cable if that's your thing. So there are very different ends of the life-on-the-road spectrum for sure."
Shane Corrigan sees similarities of people who move to mountain towns and people who move into a van.
"It's people who are sick of their 9-to-5 day job, city living, that's the biggest trend," Corrigan said. "I meet a lot of people in the same age group that I am — mid-20s — who are in between the after-college and the don't-have-a-family-yet. It's a lot of like-minded people trying to do the same thing: ski, bike, meet people and experience life."
"After the first year or two years we were traveling, a friend asked how it was going," Jes Striker said, "and I said, 'I feel 10 years younger and 10 years wiser.'"
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For Scott Hendrickson, who's building out the ambulance named Gerty, the project itself has been a fulfilling adventure, with a steep learning curve and plenty of adjustments along the way.
It took three sketchbooks of brainstorming layouts to reach a decision on how to do the build-out, and the wiring the ambulance arrived with has made some modifications tricky.
"Everything I do has to be meticulous in how I've thought it out," Hendrickson said. "If I was going to do it again, I'd probably get a Mercedes Sprinter van.
"At the same time, I really am glad I was impulsive about getting my ambulance," he said. "It's a neat opportunity and a cool experience. Maybe I keep it forever, maybe I don't. Either way, things come and go, but it's all about the memories and experiences you make."
Those memories and experiences may be best represented by the six pairs of skis and a snowboard that fit into the compartment that used to carry oxygen tanks, which he's taken on ski trips across the West, and the area of the ambulance roof where he sleeps on mild nights of camping — the space that's not covered by the ambulance lights or where, eventually, a solar energy system will be mounted.
"All the lights actually still work," Hendrickson said. "I don't use them on the road, but if I was in the woods and something came up on me, like a bear, I'd use the lights and sirens to scare it away."
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Madi King, the river guide, has gotten to the point of feeling fulfilled by the way she's experiencing life in her van.
"You have to put a lot of thought and work into it, and it's uncomfortable at first, but it's so worth it," King said. "Comfort zones are interesting. It's all what you get used to — now, living in my van has become comfortable."
As much as King enjoys the independence and solo living that she gets out of van life, other people are part of what makes van life so good. She keeps a board in her van, which she invites those she meets along her journey to sign with their favorite quote.
"(Van life) is a really neat way to connect with other people — people who are curious about the adventure and who want to sit and enjoy the ambiance of my little abode," she said. "I love the community van life is creating. It's a really special community with so much knowledge and creativity and really stellar adventurers. I've learned a lot from people who've done van life."
Mary and Paul, who are based in Wyoming and didn't want their last names used, have had their VW van for the past 18 years, taking it on hiking-oriented trips for several weeks or months at a time. They also attended a van gathering in Steamboat in 2016.
"I'd say van life culture doesn't really have a lot of boundaries, whether they're in a van or camper or whatever they're in," said Mary, who's 60. "There are no boundaries as far as age or what you've been doing with your life. There's a lot of acceptance of how you want to do it."
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Dave Walsh owns Vanlife Customs, a custom van build-out company based in Denver, and he also lived and traveled in a Mercedes Sprinter van fulltime for a year. Before he accepts a project, he sits down with the van owner and talks with them about their intentions.
"We want people to make educated decisions," he said. "I try to make sure everybody understands what they're getting into."
Many of Walsh's customers are in their mid-30s — some who are taking a year off from work, some who recently sold a house.
"A common theme when people come to the van world is that they don't want an RV.; that's too many gadgets and too many complex systems. They still want the amenities: a simple bed, to be able to cook and turn on the lights," Walsh said.
Vanlife Customs works on two complete build-outs at a time, meaning a customer has brought in an empty van to be built into a living space from scratch, which takes eight to 10 weeks. A full build-out will usually cost a customer $30,000 to $50,000, Walsh said, depending on the amenities and material finishes they choose.
The company also does smaller projects, like installing solar electrical systems, windows, fans and metal bed frames for customers who are otherwise taking the DIY route to a build-out.
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Other potential van-lifers are interested in testing the waters of van life for a short stint.
In addition to her work with Vanlife Diaries and Tiny House, Tiny Footprint, Kathleen Morton is also head of community with Native Campervans, a Denver campervan rental company that's a partner of Vanlife Customs. In June, Morton organized and guided a two-week, six-van caravan Vanlife Adventure Tour across 1,500 miles of Colorado and Utah. It was the company's first such tour.
Participants came from across the U.S. and were a variety of ages — some solo travelers, some couples, some families. Each participant paid $3,000 for their seat in a four-person van rental, outdoor adventure and group activities in national parks, monuments and hot springs, a welcome party, reserved camping spots, a van gathering and giveaways.
"A lot of people want to do van life, but they don't know how to start and they're nervous, and they might be lacking the community piece of van life," Morton said. "So, we thought we could bring people together and be that resource: show them the experience without them having to do the planning, teach them how to build a fire, how to be comfortable in their space. No one had to worry about where they were going to sleep that night, which is one of the stressful parts of van life."
When the caravan stopped in Steamboat Springs, they hiked, biked, sampled restaurants and floated the Yampa. After the tour, one participant went out and bought herself a van.
"That's what we wanted to happen; that was kind of the point of it," Morton said. "We wanted to spread awareness about van life."
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A space where van-lifers of all ages, backgrounds and level of van-life experience might find themselves together is a van festival.
Carbondale's annual Van Life Rally began in 2012 as part of the 5Point Adventure Film Festival, featuring an open house display of livable vehicles with music and lawn games.
Syncro Solstice, an offroad event in east Moab that describes itself as the paragon of the VW Vanagon culture and experience, marked its seventh annual event in May. Eighty vans showed up for a weekend of outdoor adventure, van-related contests and conversations and an attempt to set a new van-stuffing record — fitting 29 adults into a Vanagon.
Buses by the Bridge, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, markets itself as an event for "VW buses of all vintages and types," accommodating as many as 500 vehicles on a first-come, first-serve basis. The four-day gathering features a Boy Scout pancake breakfast, a kids coloring contest and a corn hole tournament.
Three years ago, two Steamboat Springs couples founded Gathering of the Vans, a local van-life festival. Casey and Ali Gianfagna and John Miller and Sara Boyle lived in houses next door to each other and each had a van for weekend and vacation camping trips.
"Gathering of the Vans is a grassroots version of Syncro Solstice," Casey Gianfagna said.
The first Gathering of the Vans event, three years ago under a red moon on Buffalo Pass, saw two VW vans attend, and several friends in cars and trucks who enjoyed camping and wanted to join.
The 2016 event, on Rabbit Ears Pass, saw a dozen VW vans and 10 vans of other brands. Van-lifers went on mountain bike rides, brought potluck dishes to community meals, played music and had a campfire surrounded by three dozen van and camping enthusiasts, according to John Miller.
"We're not trying to be elitist," John Miller said. "There was a Honda CRV that showed up to one — I called it the Honda CRVan."
"The bigger and more organized these festivals are, the less open they are to people who are in other kinds of vans," Ali Gianfagna said. "We let everyone come camp."
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"Van life is a pretty big thing I didn't really see coming," Shane Corrigan said, "but now it's this whole craze. It definitely seems to be more and more popular each year. The first year I did it, people were pretty confused and were questioning my decision all the time; now, everyone's open to it and wants to know more. The mindset is definitely changing, especially in Colorado."
"Access to National Forest or BLM land makes van life better out here, in Colorado, Utah, the Pacific Northwest and California," Kathleen Morton said. "It goes hand-in-hand with the van-life community being bigger out here — it's nice to have that community piece."
"Van life has existed for a while, but in the last three years, it's gotten a lot more prevalent," Mary said. "At least, there are a lot more people who I see talking about it. Maybe that's more people doing it, or maybe there's more people discussing it."
In northern Wisconsin, Madi King said she and her van still stick out like a sore thumb.
"I have stickers about ohm and the mountains," she said. "As a guide, I talk to a lot of people, and they're usually pretty intrigued about van life; but when I venture out (of the river camp), I definitely get a lot of looks, and people are like, 'Who's that hippie in the van?' It's not something a lot of people do out here.
"It's great how supportive people are of van life in the West, and in Steamboat especially," King added. "It's like, 'Rock on, you're living out of a van.'"
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On the other end of the spectrum, Dave Walsh notes some ways that the lifestyle might be outgrowing itself.
"Van life is getting a little trickier for folks with more people doing it," Walsh said. "In Steamboat, you're fine if you're going up to National Forest area and following the rules, but in towns and cities, especially in the Front Range, people are realizing that people are living in these vans. There's always the question, 'Am I pulling my weight in my community?' In any population, you're going to have people who take advantage of it, and people are starting to frown upon van life. That makes it harder for everybody to stay stealthy."
Even with the abundance of land close to Steamboat city limits that allows car camping, police have seen a recent uptick in people sleeping overnight in their vehicles on public property, which is prohibited under city ordinances.
"This summer was one of our highest number of citations of people sleeping in their vehicles. Not necessarily at campsites, but in the city," said Officer Isis Adams, of the Steamboat Springs Police Department. "If you're going to do it, at least do it in a legal camping space."
Public property, where sleeping overnight or living in a vehicle is prohibited, includes city streets, the Stockbridge Transit Center, city parks and public parking lots.
"I've probably only been asked to move maybe twice in the four years," Shane Corrigan said. "The police have been very kind but for the most part I've been pretty much left alone. In my experience, it's all been really positive. I hope it doesn't get spoiled."
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Van life as a social phenomenon seems to have revved its engine and gained significant attention, for better and for worse. So what's down the road for this lifestyle?
Walsh and his fellow workers in the van build-out world speculate on the future of the industry.
"We're having a tough time predicting what's going to happen," he said. "If we're in a financial bubble right now, what's going to happen is it's going to pop and then our industry could die off. The weekend warriors would stop buying vans, but we'd also see an uptick in the people living in their van full-time, because it's cheaper than buying a house."
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Jes and Jason Striker are now almost half a year into their transition back into their house in Steamboat Springs after full-time van life. The first few weeks, they were thrilled at the ease of taking a shower, cooking and laundry.
"We domesticated immediately," Jes Striker said.
Then slowly the feelings of nostalgia about van living — of sleeping under the stars and the little things — came creeping back in.
"Right now, I know what I'm going to do this winter and next summer," Jes said. "But there's excitement to not knowing. I miss the uncertainty."Pique: 'Barca can overturn Juve'
By Football Italia staff
Gerard Pique believes Barcelona can complete another epic comeback against Juventus and conquer Real Madrid in La Liga too.
The Bianconeri won the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final 3-0 in Turin thanks to a Paulo Dybala brace and Giorgio Chiellini header.
After the second leg on Wednesday at Camp Nou, the Blaugrana face a Liga showdown with Real Madrid next weekend.
“We came back from losing 4-0 to Paris Saint-Germain and we’ve won at the Bernabeu many times in recent years, so I am sure we can do both,” Pique told TV3.
“If we can turn things around with Juventus, then we’ll go to Madrid fired up and ready to win there too. We can do both.
“We are not in the best situation, but we have what it takes to turn this around. I am confident, we can do it.”
Barcelona started out with a 3-4-3 system in Turin and on Saturday went back to 4-3-3 for their hard-fought 3-2 win over Real Sociedad.
“It doesn’t make that much difference. They are different solutions, but we feel just as comfortable with three or four at the back. The good thing is that it gives us options when facing different types of opponents.”HBO: We didn't film Dave Chappelle's Austin stand-up and don't have plans for a special
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - SEPTEMBER 20: Dave Chappelle performs as part of the The Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival at Shoreline Amphitheatre on September 20, 2013 in Mountain View, California. MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - SEPTEMBER 20: Dave Chappelle performs as part of the The Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival at Shoreline Amphitheatre on September 20, 2013 in Mountain View, California. Photo: Tim Mosenfelder, Getty Images Photo: Tim Mosenfelder, Getty Images Image 1 of / 79 Caption Close HBO: We didn't film Dave Chappelle's Austin stand-up and don't have plans for a special 1 / 79 Back to Gallery
A widely cited report claiming that Dave Chappelle filmed a stand-up special for HBO in Austin over the weekend was music to many comedy fans' ears.
After all, the comedic genius hasn't released a special since 2005 and has been on and off of a performing hiatus.
But, unfortunately, HBO says they didn't film the April 2 performance at ACL Live at the Moody Theater and have no plans to broadcast a Chappelle special.
Cecile Cross-Plummer, vice president of media relations for the premium cable network, said in a phone interview on Tuesday that the report from ComedyHype.com, which was shared thousands of times on social media and cited by more than a dozen other outlets including Vibe, is an unfounded rumor.
"We did not film any Chappelle comedy special," she said, adding that she has no knowledge of HBO working with the comic on a future special.
Cross-Plummer added that she has received lots of calls from reporters asking about the special but doesn't have a clue how the rumor got started.
"We read it online the same as you," she said.
The report, which Comedy Hype labels as an "exclusive," doesn't name a source for the claim:
"Over the weekend we discovered that during (Chappelle's) recent shows at Austin’s ACL Live in Texas, Chappelle taped his newest set of material for fans. Sources have revealed that the ‘untitled’ special will be premiering on HBO. A date when it will air has not yet been confirmed..."
For comedy's sake, let's hope HBO changes their mind, or Chappelle releases his own special. In the meantime, fans can catch him on his current tour.
kparker@mysa.com
Twitter: @KoltenParkerImage copyright Reuters
The pound has fallen sharply as traders react to the results of the general election.
The currency markets had been expecting a clear victory for Theresa May's Conservatives, but the party does not appear set to win a Commons majority.
Sterling fell as low as $1.27, down about two and a half cents from its level late on Thursday.
It has since recovered to be down 1.5% at $1.2760, but the market is volatile and traders remain cautious.
The BBC is projecting that the Conservatives will be the largest party with 318 seats - eight short of a majority.
Given the surprise outcome of the poll so far, the pound could have been expected to fall even more sharply.
However, the fact it has not slipped further may reflect the diminishing prospect of a "hard" Brexit.
Although a hung parliament would mean uncertainty, Neil Wilson at ETX Capital said that a "softer version of Brexit" was now more likely.
"Mrs May's mandate to push through her clean, hard Brexit has evaporated. Voters didn't want to hand her the blank cheque for Brexit. It may leave negotiations in limbo but would also tend to suggest that the downside for sterling is limited," he said.
When will we know who's won?
Seat-by-seat result forecasts
Election results live updates
Election 2017: At a glance
Former Business Secretary Sir Vince Cable said "the whole Brexit approach will have to be rethought".
BBC economics editor Kamal Ahmed said that suggested the UK's membership of both the single market and customs union would now be "back on the table".
Sir Vince is returning to the Commons after regaining the seat of Twickenham in southwest London for the Liberal Democrats.
Sterling fell after an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky released as the polls closed at 22:00 cast doubt on an overall Conservative majority, raising concerns about increased uncertainty and a possible delay to Brexit negotiations.
Sterling has been trading in a range between $1.28 and $1.30 in recent weeks.
Against the euro the pound is down 1% at 1.142 euros.An Indian Muslim woman walks past Hindu idols in Bangalore, the capital of the state of Karnataka. There have been protests by Hindu students on college campuses in Karnataka against women wearing burqas and hijabs. (Jagadeesh NV/European Pressphoto Agency)
NEW DELHI — As the world debates whether the burkini is appropriate beachwear, a new fight is brewing in India over burqa-wearing students on college campuses.
This week, some Hindu students began wearing saffron-colored scarves to the classroom in a college in the southern state of Karnataka in protest against the hijab and burqas that Muslim students are allowed to wear on campus.
Burqa vs saffron scarf fight divides students in communally polarised coastal #Karnataka https://t.co/dJpIuWzH9Z pic.twitter.com/Ln6PChWPwa — Firstpost (@firstpost) September 2, 2016
Saffron, or deep orange, is considered to be an auspicious color in Hinduism and is also the color that members of many Hindu nationalist groups in India use in their flags, bandanas and scarves to assert their religious identity.
It all started last week when a pharmacy college in the southern city of Mangalore banned its first-year female students from wearing the hijab or burqa and the male students from sporting long beards on campus.
Almost immediately, the Muslim student group Campus Front of India began protesting the ban, saying the Indian constitution allows them the right to practice their religion.
Groups of burqa-clad students pressed against the gate of the college, shouting slogans and holding placards saying: “We are not silent, we want justice.” Some parents of students joined the protests against the ban as well.
The college responded by ending the ban — angering many Hindu students in the region.
Since Monday, some Hindu students have begun wearing orange scarves to college in the small town of Bellare.
Across Indian campuses, Hindu nationalist student groups have been on the rise since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party came to power two years ago.
B.V. Seetaram, the editor of a local newspaper, Karavali Ale, called it “a tug-of-war” on campuses.
"It is an attempt by both sides to push college managements into a corner. Both sides want to assert their religious identity and muscle power through their attire,'' Seetaram told news portal Firstpost.com on Friday.
Tensions between Hindus and Muslims have been on the rise in Karnataka state in recent years. Conservative Hindu and Muslim groups in the region have opposed romantic relationships between the two religions and have also been against women going to bars in recent years.
A noted writer who attacked Hindu orthodoxy was killed last year by unidentified men. Investigations are still ongoing.
Muslims constitute over 12 percent of the state's population, India's census says.
Last year, the government’s board of education imposed a ban on students wearing hijabs, burqas and long sleeved clothes to medical school entrance exams. The ban was imposed to prevent cheating in tests. Several Muslim groups protested against the ban at the time as well and petitioned the court. But the Supreme Court upheld the ban.
"Your faith won't disappear if you appear for exam on one day without a head scarf,” said the judge.Dylan Martin_Billy Underwood.jpg
(From left) Dylan Martin and Billy Underwood
A Washington teenager abducted his great-grandmother Monday with the help of two friends by throwing dirt in her face, putting an apron on her head and tying her hands, then stuffing her into the trunk of her own car before they all drove to a Walmart more than 200 miles away near Portland, authorities allege in court documents.
The three teenagers stopped at the store to buy toiletries and while they were inside, 86-year-old Hazel Abel of Kennewick, Wash., managed to untie her hands, pull a cord to pop open the trunk and ran to a store employee who called police, a probable cause affidavit said.
The woman's 16-year-old great-grandson, a 14-year-old girl and 15-year-old boy ran when they saw her speaking with the employee, the court documents say. They were arrested hours later when a Multnomah County sheriff's detective spotted them Tuesday near a gas station across the street from the Walmart.
Dylan Martin, 16, and Billy Underwood, 15, appeared Wednesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court on suspicion of first- and second-degree kidnapping, second-degree robbery, unauthorized use of a vehicle and reckless endangering. The girl also is in custody at the county's Juvenile Detention Center, but it's not clear what allegations she faces.
The two boys are being charged as adults.
Martin and Underwood told investigators that while they held the great-grandmother captive, they considered releasing her three miles into a canyon or knocking her unconscious, killing her and torching the car with her body still inside, according to the affidavit. Martin claimed he had stolen $60 from his great-grandmother a week before, the affidavit said.
Abel wasn't injured and declined medical treatment when deputies responded around 1:15 a.m. Tuesday to the Walmart at 23500 N.E. Sandy Boulevard, said sheriff's Lt. Steve Alexander. The store gave her new clothes and food while she was there, he said.
Abel declined comment when reached by phone Wednesday.
She told investigators that she heard a knock on her door about 8 p.m. Monday and got a faceful of dirt when she opened the door, according to the affidavit. She was pushed to the floor when she covered her eyes and mouth, and someone yelled at her to be quiet.
Abel reported someone taping her hands together, stuffing an object into her mouth, putting something over her head, walking her to her car parked in the garage and picking her up and putting her in the trunk, the affidavit said. She couldn't recognize the voices she heard, she said.
Abel escaped when the car stopped. She yelled for help and found an employee. A detective recognized the three Kennewick teens from Walmart surveillance video when he saw them walking near the store around 9 a.m. Tuesday, the affidavit said.
The girl told investigators that they wanted to run away to Portland and that it was Martin's idea to use his great-grandmother's car, the affidavit said. She said Martin and Underwood, her boyfriend, put Abel in the trunk while she waited outside, then they invited her into the car afterward and together set out for Portland.
The girl claimed they stopped in Hood River to get gas and slightly opened the trunk to make sure Abel was still breathing, the affidavit said.
Underwood told investigators that Martin threw dirt in Abel's face while he pushed her down and helped put an apron over her head and tie her hands, the court papers said. The 15-year-old said they put the woman into the trunk because they didn't want any witnesses.
-- Everton Bailey Jr.
ebailey@oregonian.com
503-221-8343; @EvertonBaileyThe U.S. and its allies, after several years of missteps, finally seem to be framing a strategy for combating the Islamic State militarily in Syria, even as they continue to pursue a political settlement with Damascus.
The Syrian nightmare is far from over, and supporters of President Bashar al-Assad continue to insist that the regime will survive the turmoil. But U.S. policy now appears to be working in tandem with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, a rare alignment — although Iran remains a potential spoiler.
The biggest change is the U.S.-Turkish agreement on a plan for closing the Syrian border, with a safe zone tens of miles deep that will be secured mainly by Turkish troops. Officials believe this will cut off supplies for the Islamic State’s “capital” of Raqqa, while U.S. and Turkish warplanes pound the group’s fighters from air bases in Turkey.
The border gap that must be closed is a roughly 60-mile stretch from the Euphrates River to Kilis, north of Aleppo. The border area east of the Euphrates, around Kobane, has already been cleared by Syrian Kurdish forces from the “YPG” militia, operating with U.S. air support.
The United States has quietly warned Syria that it will repel any attack on the forces gathering for the assault on the Islamic State. That’s not the same as a formal “no-fly zone,” but it could become one if Assad’s air force strikes. Despite Turkish misgivings, the United States will continue to provide air support when needed for YPG fighters, whom the U.S. regards as crucial allies despite their political links with the PKK, a radical Kurdish group that Ankara would like to destroy.
A ground assault on Raqqa is still months away. The United States is mobilizing a local tribal force of Syrian Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen that could eventually clear northeast Syria, with U.S. and coalition air support. At present, the United States has no plans to embed Special Operations forces with these fighters.
A U.S. effort to train a Syrian counterterror force also continues under Maj. Gen Michael Nagata |
to maintain financial privacy:The importance of variables in any programming language can’t be emphasised enough. Even if you are a novice, the chances are good that you will have been using variables for quite a while now.
They are the cornerstone of any language and without them we would not be able to accomplish much of anything. However, most of you up until this point have probably only been working with standard variables, variables which can hold single values such as an integer, a single character, or a string of text.
In this tutorial we are going to take a look at a more special type of variable called an array. Arrays can seem quite daunting at first glance but once you get used to working with them you will wonder how you ever managed to program without them.
The reason arrays are special is because they can hold more than one value. Think about this: say you create a variable which contains a line of text like the code below:
myString = “This is a string”
Python makes it easy for us to work with strings as single entities but under the hood your computer treats strings like an array. It sets aside space for each character in memory, and when your application needs to use that string, it will retrieve each character to recreate the whole string.
In other languages an array can be referred to under different names such as an object or a collection. In python it is known as a list, and the best way to get a feel for these special variables is to actually use them.
myList = [‘a’, “string ”,1]
print myList[0]
If you’re feeling a little confused by the code above, don’t worry here is how it works. On the first line we create a variable called myList which contains three different elements; a single character, a string and an integer. The square brackets are important because without them Python would not know that you wanted to create a list.
The second line is where things get interesting because you will notice that we use the print statement and then our variable with the number zero in square brackets next to it.
If you look again at the first line of code you will notice that we create three elements. When working with lists and arrays in general you always start counting from 0. So if you had a list with say ten elements, then you would count from 0 to 9. This is an important concept to keep in mind, especially when you start to use lists within loops which will be covered in another tutorial.
So, you have had a brief introduction to working with lists in Python and although it was only two lines of code, you should see how they can be very useful in your future projects. As you become more advanced you will find that you simply cannot perform certain actions without the use of lists.Home Daily News DOJ to review city's ticketing of black bicyclists
Civil Rights
DOJ to review city's ticketing of black bicyclists
A Florida city’s bicycle-ticketing practices will be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice, following a newspaper investigation that found nearly 79 percent of those ticketed are black.
Mayor Bob Buckhorn said in a Wednesday statement that the DOJ’s review of Tampa bicycle tickets is at the request of Tampa’s police chief, reports the Tampa Bay Times.
“Their expertise and objectivity will bring clarity to us and to the community and may help evolve our current strategies,” the mayor said.
The newspaper recently published a lengthy article about the city’s ticketing of bicyclists, which reported that the majority of those ticketed are black. It also stated that Tampa issues more tickets to bicyclists than Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando and St. Petersburg combined. Many of those ticketed are both black and low-income; some individuals have gotten multiple tickets in a single day.
The city has for years stopped bicyclists for relatively minor infractions, in an effort to gather information that could discover or prevent more serious crimes.
Related coverage:
Tampa Bay Times: “Are Tampa police violating civil rights law with bicycle stops?”She worked through extremely busy peak periods at the hospital at lunch and in the morning, when she would often receive individual orders of up to 20 coffees. But Mrs D'Amico's problems began to worsen when a new employee started at the cafe. The new worker couldn't cope with the large number of customers, forcing Mrs D'Amico to make all the coffees. In 2006, the barista began to feel pain in her elbow and down her right wrist, and was given medication and exercises by her doctor to help. But, as ACT Supreme Court Master David Harper wrote in his judgment, the cafe became more and more busy as the year went on.
''The pressure was constant between 8.30am and 11am,'' Master Harper wrote. ''Her arm got worse. As the months went by during 2006 she had pain from the shoulder to the wrist, and her hand and forearm were swollen and turning blue.'' University students were hired to help out, but customers began to complain about the quality of the coffee, and wanted it made by Mrs D'Amico. ''As this went on, and after September 2006, the plaintiff's right arm symptoms got worse. ''She had severe pain down her arm, which she described as like a toothache. The arm was blue and the fingers were swollen.''
Her doctor feared she had a blood clot in her right arm, and sent her to hospital, where she was put on a heparin drip, and spent four nights in hospital. Doctors were later forced to surgically remove a rib from her right side, and she was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, a disorder of the nerves and circulation. A new company took over the cafe and they introduced lighter jugs, moved the machine, and installed a longer steam nozzle, meaning the worker no longer needed to hold up the jug. But Mrs D'Amico, who had returned to light duties, did not improve and eventually quit. She continued to struggle with everyday household tasks, such as cleaning the shower, lifting things out
of the oven, or holding pots and pans. She eventually lost some feeling and movement in her fingers, and went to see various specialists for help. Calvary Hospital Auxiliary Inc was eventually taken to the ACT Supreme Court for a worker's compensation claim. Master Harper accepted Mrs D'Amico as an honest and reliable witness who had been loyal to the Auxiliary and reluctant to complain about her injuries. He noted the Auxiliary was a not-for-profit organisation, with a board of unpaid members, who should be applauded for their voluntary work with the hospital. But Master Harper said they still owed the same duty of care to their employees as any other employer, noting that she had complained about the injuries she was suffering, and attributed them to the way she was making the coffee.
''The defendant should have done something about this,'' Master Harper wrote. ''If it had, the injury to the plaintiff might have been arrested before her disability became permanent.'' Maurice Blackburn lawyer Andrew Finlay said the cafe had been aware that the system of work was unsafe, but had failed to take steps to reduce the amount of time she spent making coffee. ''This case is a key reminder to employers that they have a duty of care to their staff in ensuring there is a safe system of work in place,'' Mr Finlay said. ''Christine was a loyal employee who loved her job.
''She was held in high regard by her customers. However, because of her injury she is now no longer able to work in any sort of role,'' he said. Mrs D'Amico was awarded $593,700 in compensation.For other people named Robert Edwards, see Robert Edwards (disambiguation)
Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards, FRS CBE MAE[3][4][7] (27 September 1925 – 10 April 2013) was an English physiologist and pioneer in reproductive medicine, and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) in particular. Along with the surgeon Patrick Steptoe,[8] Edwards successfully pioneered conception through IVF, which led to the birth of Louise Brown on 25 July 1978.[9][10][11] They founded the first IVF program for infertile patients and trained other scientists in their techniques. Edwards was the founding editor-in-chief of Human Reproduction in 1986.[12] In 2010, Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of in vitro fertilization".[13][14][15][16]
Education and early career [ edit ]
Edwards was born in Batley, Yorkshire, and attended Manchester Central High School[1] on Whitworth Street in central Manchester, after which he served in the British Army, and then completed his undergraduate studies in biology, graduating with an Ordinary degree at Bangor University.[17][18] He studied at the Institute of Animal Genetics and Embryology at the University of Edinburgh, where he was awarded a PhD in 1955.[5]
Career and research [ edit ]
After a year as a postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology he joined the scientific staff of the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill. After a further year at the University of Glasgow, in 1963 he moved to the University of Cambridge as Ford Foundation Research Fellow at the Department of Physiology, and a member of Churchill College, Cambridge. He was appointed Reader in physiology in 1969.[19]
Human Fertilization [ edit ]
Circa 1960 Edwards started to study human fertilisation, and he continued his work at Cambridge, laying the groundwork for his later success. In 1968 he was able to achieve fertilisation of a human egg in the laboratory and started to collaborate with Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecologic surgeon from Oldham. Edwards developed human culture media to allow the fertilisation and early embryo culture, while Steptoe used laparoscopy to recover ovocytes from patients with tubal infertility. Their attempts met significant hostility and opposition,[20] including a refusal of the Medical Research Council to fund their research and a number of lawsuits.[21] Additional historical information on this controversial era in the development of IVF has been published.[22] Roger Gosden was one of his first graduate students.[4]
The birth of Louise Brown, the world's first 'test-tube baby', at 11:47 pm on 25 July 1978 at the Oldham General Hospital made medical history: in vitro fertilisation meant a new way to help infertile couples who formerly had no possibility of having a baby. Nurse Jean Purdy was the first to see Brown's embryo dividing.[23]
Bourn Hall Clinic
Refinements in technology have increased pregnancy rates and it is estimated that in 2010 about 4 million children have been born by IVF,[13] with approximately 170,000 coming from donated oocyte and embryos.[24][25][26] Their breakthrough laid the groundwork for further innovations such as intracytoplasmatic sperm injection ICSI, embryo biopsy (PGD), and stem cell research.
Edwards and Steptoe founded the Bourn Hall Clinic as a place to advance their work and train new specialists. Steptoe died in 1988. Edwards continued on in his career as a scientist and an editor of medical journals.
Honours and awards [ edit ]
Edwards received numerous honours and awards including:
Personal life [ edit ]
Edwards married Ruth Fowler Edwards (1930–2013), also a scientist with significant work, granddaughter of 1908 Nobel laureate physicist Ernest Rutherford and daughter of physicist Ralph Fowler, in 1956.[36] The couple had 5 daughters and 12 grandchildren.[37]
Death [ edit ]
Edwards died at home near Cambridge, England[37] on 10 April 2013 after a long lung illness.[38] A spokesperson for the University of Cambridge said "He will be greatly missed by family, friends and colleagues."[39] The Guardian reported that, as of Edwards' death, more than four million births had resulted from IVF.[39] Louise Brown said "His work, along with Patrick Steptoe, has brought happiness and joy to millions of people all over the world by enabling them to have children."[40] According to the BBC, his work was motivated by his belief that "the most important thing in life is having a child."[40]
A plaque was unveiled at the Bourn Hall Clinic in July 2013 by Louise Brown and Alastair MacDonald – the world's first IVF baby boy – commemorating Steptoe and Edwards.[41][42]When it comes to coverage of the San Diego Comic-Con, we don’t screw around! If it’s there and it’s horror, we will find it and bring it back to you! Case in point: Your first look at “Ash vs. Evil Dead” Season 1’s steelbook packaging!
About “Ash vs. Evil Dead”
“Ash vs. Evil Dead” (review) premiered on Halloween 2015. The series is executive produced by Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell, the original filmmakers of the franchise, and Craig DiGregorio, who serves as executive producer and showrunner.
Campbell reprises his role as Ash, the stock boy, aging lothario, and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years avoiding responsibility, maturity, and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons – personal and literal. Destiny, it turns out, has no plans to release the unlikely hero from its “Evil” grip.
The cast is led by Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead, “Burn Notice”) in the role of Ash Williams; Lucy Lawless (“Salem,” “Spartacus”) as Ruby, a mysterious figure who believes Ash is the cause of the Evil outbreaks; Ray Santiago (“Touch,” Meet the Fockers) as Pablo Simon Bolivar, an idealistic immigrant who becomes Ash’s loyal sidekick; Dana DeLorenzo (A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas) as Kelly Maxwell, a moody wild child trying to outrun her past; and Jill Marie Jones (“Sleepy Hollow”) as Amanda Fisher, a disgraced Michigan State Trooper set to find our anti-hero Ash and prove his responsibility in the grisly murder of her partner.
Raimi directed the first episode of “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” which he wrote with Ivan Raimi (Darkman, Army of Darkness, Drag Me to Hell) and Tom Spezialy (“Chuck,” “Reaper,” “Desperate Housewives”). Raimi also serves as executive producer with Rob Tapert (Evil Dead, “Spartacus,” Xena: Warrior Princess”) and Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead, “Burn Notice”) along with Craig DiGregorio (“Workaholics,” “Chuck”), who serves as executive producer/showrunner. Ivan Raimi serves as co-executive producer, and Aaron Lam (“Spartacus”) and Chloe Smith (“Spartacus”) serve as producers.Bloggers invent codewords to evade censorship and speculate on trouble at the top of government
Teletubbies, instant noodles and tomatoes might not sound like the stuff of high political intrigue, but this motley grouping has allowed microbloggers in China to evade censorship and speculate on trouble at the top of government.
With facts in short supply since leadership contender Bo Xilai was dismissed as party chief of Chongqing last week, the online rumour mill has been in overdrive – fuelled by the opaque nature of Chinese politics and the knowledge that a power transition is fast approaching.
Internet users disguise their references by using nicknames for the leaders they cannot mention.
"[A few] days ago, Beijing was hosting an innovative tug-of-war for the elderly; this game has nine contestants in all," wrote one internet user on Thursday, in a thinly veiled reference to the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the country's top political body.
"The first round of the contest is still intense … The teletubby team noticeably has the advantage and, relatively, the Master Kong team is obviously falling short."
"Teletubby" is code for Wen Jiabao, who chided Bo publicly before his ousting – the Chinese for the children's show, tianxianbaobao, shares a character with the premier's name. The popular instant noodle brand Master Kong is known as Kang Shifu in Chinese and stands in for Zhou Yongkang, who is reportedly supportive of Bo.
"Tomato has retreated; what flavour will Master Kong still have?" asked another user.
In keeping with the food theme, the former Chongqing party boss has been dubbed "tomato" or "xihongshi".
"It's the classic way that people have evaded keyword filtering: using puns, homonyms, abbreviations or English acronyms of Chinese names," said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei, a website on Chinese media.
"Some are pretty standard, like zhengfu [government] becoming ZF. But a lot of the ones in the last few days are new. With this last round – like Master Kong – you would have to be following internet chatter [regularly] to really get them."
Many of the messages are bewildering or downright bizarre to casual readers. Even the well informed struggle to decode some of the more cryptic references.
But Offbeat China, a blog that spotted the spate of references, said at one point "Master Kong" was the seventh most searched-for term on Sina's popular Weibo service.
Strikingly, Bo Xilai's name was searchable on microblogs for days after he was toppled, even when his wife's name was blocked. Such searches now seem to be blocked and a leading leftist website was reportedly told to remove all articles about Chongqing, where Bo promoted a "red culture" campaign.
At one point the wildest microblog rumours stretched to claims of an attempted coup. But circulated photographs of army vehicles on the streets dated from a military parade in 2009. Much of the chatter seemed to have been prompted by the presence of reporters outside the state guesthouse in Beijing; they were waiting for the North Korean nuclear negotiator.
Steve Tsang, an expert on elite politics at Nottingham University, said that "not remotely credible" rumours appeared to have circulated because people knew there was tension in the leadership but did not know what was going on. In some cases people were "almost certainly ill-wishers with axes to grind; in other cases probably people just having fun," he said.
He suggested that the speculation would end if Bo were removed from the 25-seat Politburo as well as his Chongqing position.
"The fact nothing is decided means the leadership is not yet in full agreement about how this needs to be handled," Tsang added. He said that this probably reflected the increased difficulties of handling the situation so close to the leadership transition, as people were trying to position themselves and their protegés.
Some of the coded messages were deleted within a few hours on Thursday, while others remained. Searches for the phrases "Teletubby" and "Master Kong" together brought the warning that results could not be displayed in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.
Those wanting to read more of the gossip may also have to wade through irrelevant postings.
"Kang Shifu is actually discussed quite a lot anyway on microblogs. It's one of the most discussed brands because typical netizens eat a lot of instant noodles," Goldkorn pointed out.Ever since Aurelia was announced you've been breathlessly waiting for a Northwind demo using Aurelia, Breeze and Materialize.
The wait is over.
Check it out on GitHub Pages: http://jdanyow.github.io/aurelia-breeze-northwind/
For this sample I decided to give the Materialize UI framework a try. My initial thoughts are it looks nice, I like the Roboto font and the Waves effect it uses is pretty nifty. The essential css components are in place- responsive grid, form and tables styles, etc. The javascript components need work to enable better compatibility with data-binding frameworks like Aurelia or Knockout, especially the materialize-select component. Next time I'd probably use the material design bootstrap theme by FezVrasta.
While working on this project I found a bug in the aurelia-breeze plugin where bindings weren't updating when rejectChanges was called. This is fixed as of v0.5.2.
Many thanks to PWKad for the help bundling this application!It's new year's day! (Well, at least in most of the world, I know some of you have already flipped the calendar to the 2nd). And, as you might guess, news is just the littlest bit slow, especially with the first landing on a Friday. Everyone's out and about doing stuff, or whatever. As such, I felt it was a perfect time for a little chat.
2015 brought many new things to Android. Marshmallow is easily the most polished version of the OS yet. Android Auto has started to become available on vehicles. The Nexus 5X and 6P marked the first dual-release Nexus phones. We've got a new not-a-Nexus tablet, the Pixel C. Android Pay launched. And outside of the Googleverse specifically, there were of course many new handsets released. The Galaxy S6 marked a turning point for Samsung's industrial design. Sony built a phone with a 4K display. LG built a phone with two displays... for some reason. HTC built a $500 phone that really shouldn't probably cost that much but is otherwise pretty nice.
But let's look forward to 2016. What do you want to see happen with Android this year? What about with Android phones or other hardware?
For me, and this is just one of many potential topics, I'd love to see Android Auto get a rethink. Yes, it's a lot better than most in-car systems for things like voice input. But it's only marginally better for navigation, often worse for music, and not always very easy to interact with. It's also a total safety nanny in a not-nice way, if I'm being honest.
On the hardware side of things, I want to continue seeing the mid-range ($200-400) spectrum of smartphones proliferate and improve, as 2015 marked a huge jump in the quality of devices in this price bracket, and I think we can keep pushing the commoditization envelope to make these less-expensive devices better and better. I think Marshmallow will make these phones even more appealing, as the newest version of Android generally feels much smoother and quicker than Lollipop, but also handles power management a lot better.
So, let's discuss!A British man just wanted to enjoy some bacon with wife on Sunday.
But what started out as a quick trip to the store, devolved into what could only be described as every bacon lover’s worst nightmare.
After picking up a package of bacon at his local Tesco supermarket, Ben Roberts was floored to find just six pieces in a package that advertised seven. While many would simply be sad and move past the outrage, shock and disappointment were just too much for Roberts to bear. He took to Facebook, and in a 500 plus word rant poured his heart out to Tesco’s community page.
"SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! There was only six rashers of bacon. Six. I could not believe it! Mortified! I called my other half into the kitchen but quickly dismissed her as she did not seem to understand the problem," we wrote.
The clever and passionately worded complaint has gone viral, with over 16,000 shares and 80,000 likes.
But equally clever is the supermarket's response:
Tesco also said they will issue a refund as long he can provide original product information.
Others have since started sharing their own bacon woes and triumphs on social media.
"I also opened a 7 pack of tesco smoked bacon yesterday to find only 6 slices. No matter how many times I counted I could only find 6 in the packet! Unfortunately I have not kept my packaging so little I can do now," wrote Facebook user Joanne Ellis.
"Dear Ben. It would appear that I got your missing rasher of bacon on Sunday. I opened an identical packet of Tesco bacon and found I had eight rashers, not the seven as stated. Just so you're aware, the extra rasher tasted wonderful. Yours, Loz," wrote playful user Loz Birkett.Bay Area firms among 30 not paying federal taxes
OAKLAND, CA - JULY 19: A sign is posted in front of a Wells Fargo Bank branch on July 19, 2011 in Oakland, California. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. reported a 30 percent surge in quarterly profits with earnings of $3.73 billion, or 70 cents per share compared to $2.88 billion, or 55 cents per share one year ago. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Ran on: 08-06-2011 Wells Fargo hasn't been notifying heirs of their right to purchase properties, a group lawsuit says. less OAKLAND, CA - JULY 19: A sign is posted in front of a Wells Fargo Bank branch on July 19, 2011 in Oakland, California. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. reported a 30 percent surge in quarterly profits... more Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Bay Area firms among 30 not paying federal taxes 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
More grist for the anticorporate mill.
Thirty major U.S. public companies, including San Francisco's PG&E Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., paid no federal taxes over the past three years, according to a report released Thursday. A number of them, notably Wells Fargo, also benefited greatly from various tax subsidies.
A number of other Bay Area companies appear not to have paid their fair share - i.e, less than half the nominal 35 percent corporate tax rate - including Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo and Levi-Strauss.
The report, compiled by an advocacy group, Citizens for Tax Justice and the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, examined corporate financial statements from 280 companies on the Fortune 500 list, all of whom were profitable during the 2008-10 period.
"These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $223 billion in tax subsidies," said Robert McIntyre, director at Citizens for Tax Justice and the report's lead author. "This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit."
But other companies seem to be paying their fair share and more. And some companies have questioned the report's accuracy and say the tax breaks have been used for legitimate and positive purposes.
Fourth on the list of non-payers, for example, is PG&E, which according to the study paid no federal income tax on combined profit of $4.85 billion, while netting more than $1 billion in tax breaks over the three-year period. "This goes back to measures to stimulate the economy, allowing for accelerated depreciation to encourage investment," said Brian Herzog, a spokesman for PG&E. "We used the money to make large-scale capital investments in infrastructure, as Congress intended.
"And we're able to use those tax savings instead of raising money in the capital markets, the costs of which would generally be passed along to consumers," he said.
Accelerated depreciation was one of the chief ways companies were able to pay so little in federal taxes, along with stock options, tax shelters and industry-specific tax breaks, according to the report.
Context: Topping the tax savings list was Wells Fargo, which received $18 billion in tax savings over three years while making $48 billion in profit.
Wells Fargo spokesman, Ancel Martinez, said the report "takes data out of context to advance an agenda."
"Over the past 10 years, Wells Fargo has paid more than $30 billion in income taxes to federal and state authorities and billions more in other taxes, and it fulfills all tax obligations. The years cited by the study included significant losses from its (2008) acquisition of Wachovia, which when realized reduced Wells Fargo's taxable income.
"Based on results for the first three quarters 2011, Wells Fargo expects to pay significant income taxes for 2011," said Martinez.
HP, which paid just 3.7 percent of its taxable profit over the three-year period, according to the report, declined to comment. Yahoo (8.7 percent) and Levi Strauss (10.2 percent) did not respond to requests for comment Thursday afternoon.
Paying up: Some tax analysts say there can often be a difference between corporate financial statements, which formed the basis of the report, and actual tax returns, and that major corporations often count state, local and, where applicable, foreign taxes, amongst others, into their "effective" tax rate.
According to a recent analysis of IRS data by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, the effective corporate tax rate from 2003 to 2008 stood at 26 percent of pretax profit. In 2008, as in most years, it said, "taxes paid exceeded after-tax profits."
As itemized in the CTJ/ITEP report, Clorox, headquartered in Oakland, paid 26 percent over the past three years.
Other Bay Area companies joining Clorox in the fairer share list include Chevron and Safeway (24 percent); Visa (28 percent); Oracle (29 percent); Apple, Intel and Charles Schwab (31 percent); Ross Stores (34 percent); and Gap (40 percent).
The economic sector paying the most in total taxes (average, 30 percent) was wholesale and retail - with the exception of Amazon.com, whose business model has long rested on not paying state sales taxes. The online behemoth paid a rate of only 7.9 percent on its $1.8 billion in profit from 2008 to 2010.BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Central Bank’s money-printing plan has so far failed to drive up inflation but the bank does not have an alternative “plan B”, ECB Executive Board member Peter Praet said in a magazine interview published on Wednesday.
European Central Bank Executive Board member Peter Praet speaks during a meeting organised by The Economist in Cascais February 18, 2014. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante
Praet said he remained confident that the stimulus would drive up inflation however, adding: “If you print enough money, you always get inflation. Always.”
The ECB eased its policy further last month to combat stubbornly low inflation, cutting its deposit rate deeper into negative territory and extending asset buys by six months until March. [L8N13S1HC]
“I accept that our policy has not yet been successful: inflation in Europe has for a long time been at a very low level of almost zero,” Praet, the ECB’s chief economist, told Belgian weekly magazine Knack.
Praet said various factors, notably low oil prices and less buoyant emerging economies, meant it was taking longer to reach the goal of inflation of close to but below 2 percent.
“We need to be attentive that this shifting horizon does not damage the credibility of the ECB,” he added.
Inflation has missed the ECB’s target of close to but below 2 percent for almost 3 years and it will still take years at best to drive up price growth towards the target, the bank forecast earlier.
Praet said that, despite this shifting horizon, the ECB did not have an alternative to its policy of low interest rates and 1.5 trillion euro asset buying scheme.
“There is no plan B, there is just one plan. The ECB is ready to take all measures necessary to bring inflation up to 2 percent. If you print enough money, you get inflation. Always. If, as is happening now, the prices of oil and commodities are tumbling, then it’s more difficult to drive up inflation,” he said.
“If a whole series of such things happens, then you can only shift the date by which you will achieve higher inflation.”
Praet also said in the interview that the ECB would continue its accommodative stance for as long as required until inflation moved in a sustainable way towards 2 percent.
“If we look at the economic situation, I think that the current policy will certainly be in place until March 2017 and longer if necessary,” he said.In this episode, Paul, Wilson, and Phil talk about some lists they have been testing on MODO before exploring the “4-of” rule, a logical exercise to help you make better deckbuilding choices.
0:00~16:00 Intro & Current State of ANT
16:01~26:50: TES discussion
26:51~36:00: Dark Belcher discussion
36:01~52:00 Predict Miracles
52:01~1:03:00 Response to CounterTop DeMentor criticisms/praise
1:03:01~END 4-of rule thought experiment discussion
The Brainstorm Show’s ANT List:
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
1 Empty the Warrens
4 Flooded Strand
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Grim Tutor
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Island
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
2 Past in Flames
4 Polluted Delta
4 Ponder
1 Swamp
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Ad nauseam
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Massacre
1 Thoughtseize
1 Tropical Island
3 Xantid Swarm
The Brainstorm Show’s Dark Belcher List:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
3 Seething Song
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Manamorphose
4 Land Grant
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
2 Chrome Mox
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Goblin Charbelcher
SB
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Ill-gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Dark Petition
1 Seething Song
2 Past in Flames
2 Reverent Silence
2 Pyretic Ritual
The Brainstorm Show’s Predict Miracles:
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
1 Preordain
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Counterbalance
3 Predict
4 Monastery Mentor
4 Force of Will
4 Terminus
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
2 Plains
4 Island
SB
1 Mountain
4 Pyroblast
2 Wear // Tear
1 Pyroclasm
2 Surgical
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Flusterstorm
2 Blood MoonIndia has successfully tested its first space shuttle, in a giant leap forward for the country's space programme.
The Re-usable Launch Vehicle (RLV), which took flight on Monday morning, was only a scale model - at around seven metres long, it was roughly a sixth of the size of the proposed final version.
However, the successful test is an important first step towards the goal of a fully re-usable shuttle which could be used to deliver Indian satellites into space.
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Speaking to the Mint newspaper after the test, a spokesperson for ISRO, India's space agency, said: "Mission has been accomplished and all the parameters and trajectories were fulfilled."
Taking off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the island of Sriharikota at 7 a.m, the 1.75-tonne RLV reached an altitude of around 43 miles.
Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Show all 12 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space 1/12 Major Tim Peake blasting off into orbit on board the Soyuz space capsule on his way to becoming the first British astronaut to join the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) PA 2/12 Major Tim Peake (left) blasting off into orbit on board the Soyuz space capsule on his way to becoming the first British astronaut to join the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) PA 3/12 Photographers take pictures as Russia's Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft carrying the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 46/47 crew of Britain's astronaut Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and US astronaut Tim Kopra blasts off from the launch pad at Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome AFP 4/12 Expedition 46-47 crewmembers ESA astronaut Tim Peake, NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and commander Yuri Malenchenko launch into space from Baikonur cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan Getty Images 5/12 The Russian rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in front of the world's media following weeks of preparation PA 6/12 The Russian rocket minutes before launch 7/12 Tim Peake, member of the main crew of the expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), waves to his children from a bus prior the launch of Soyuz TMA-19M space ship at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 8/12 US astronaut Tim Kopra waves as he boards the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome, prior to blasting off to the International Space Station (ISS) Getty Images 9/12 Britain's astronaut Tim Peake (bottom), Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (top) and US astronaut Tim Kopra board the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome, prior to blasting off to the International Space Station (ISS) Getty Images 10/12 British astronaut Tim Peake, member of the main crew to the International Space Station (ISS), during inspecting his space suit prior the launch of Soyuz-FG rocket at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan AP 11/12 British astronaut Tim Peake, left, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, center, and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra, members of the main crew of the expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), walk to report to members of the State Committee prior to the launch of Soyuz TMA-19M space ship at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan AP 12/12 From left, British astronaut Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra, members of the main crew to |
the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
This means that employers and employees can never bargain in a true free-market condition as idealised in theory. Employers will always have a structural advantage absent any laws regulating labour markets. The best one can hope for is a framework of law and custom that levels the playing field and allows for a good approximation of what an unbiased free market might produce - which is precisely what the data above suggest that Sweden has most admirably done, while the US has miserably failed.
Smith had something to say about this as well. More particularly, about the crafting of frameworks in general:
Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.
Economics is a 'political activity'
This is why economics used to be called "political economy", because the great classical economists never lost sight of the fact that economics was a thoroughly political activity, not something outside of the life of a political community. What Sweden has done is "just and equitable" - the proof is right there in the data, showing that almost all have shared more or less equally in its growing prosperity over the past 40-plus years.
Inside Story Americas
Are US corporates exploiting its workers?
Sweden is a prime example of what Gosta Esping-Andersen called the socialist or social democratic welfare state in his classic 1990 book, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, which sought to comprehend the similarities and differences of modern welfare states.
Esping-Andersen presented a three-fold construct of basic types: The conservative welfare state, typified by Germany, which aims to consolidate the existing social order and its hierarchical relations in various ways; the liberal welfare state, typified by English-speaking countries from Britain to the US and Canada to Australia and New Zealand, which aims to deal with imperfections in the market system with minimal interference to the basic market system; and the social democratic welfare state, found primarily in the Nordic countries, which aims to provide maximal protections for all.
One of the key measures Esping-Andersen used in his study was de-commodification - the degree to which social policies reduce individuals' reliance on the market (and their labour) for their well-being. The irony is that de-commodifying labour is the surest route to having it priced fairly as a marketplace commodity. So as long as capital, but not labour, is free to participate or not, there will always be a structural disadvantage against labour getting what even neo-classical economics says it should be due.
In the US (in sharp contrast to Sweden), the dominant politics of the past 30-plus years has been distinctly "free market conservative" - which is to say, 19th century liberal in theory, but heavily favouring haves over have-nots in practice. It's a unique sort of hybrid of liberal and conservative welfare state motivations.
"Solutions" for faster growth have been subsidies and tax cuts at the federal level - whose failure I discussed here recently in "Free Lunch Conservatism: The Santa Who Failed" - and a race-to-the-bottom of competing tax subsidies for businesses at the state and local level.
This has also failed, as is quite evident from a recent story by Louise Story at the New York Times, based on a massive investigation which put together a database of 150,000 awards. The annual value of these subsidies is estimated at $80bn, but there's not much evidence that they do any good at all for the states, cities and counties that grant them.
A full accounting [of the cost], The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid.
This is dirty little secret of the tax-break revolution of the past 30-plus years: Not only is there surprisingly little to show for it, no one's even pretending to keep track. Talk about a faith-based initiative! One might expect that tax-breaks for businesses aimed at job creation would come with some sort of oversight mechanism, to make sure they were delivering as promised.
Living wage protections
If one were actually concerned about the public welfare, one might even require that the jobs created pay a living wage. But not under the influence of conservative ideology, which verges on theology. Once the business-friendly policy is sold, that's the end of it - until it's time for the next go-round.
"It takes a socialist-inspired framework to make capitalism actually work for everyone the way its cheerleaders say that it should."
The city of Long Beach, where I lived for 18 years, was a typical example. As other large industry jobs have been lost - topped off by the closure of the Naval Shipyard in 1997 - Long Beach has spent hundreds of millions of dollars subsidising and promoting its tourism and hospitality industry.
The fact that it now hosts the world-famous TED Talks is emblematic of this decades-long push. But its hotel workers toil in poverty, in part because the city never even considered linking "job-creating" tax-breaks to a requirement that the jobs pay enough for people to live on.
As a result, the city, state and county have to make up the gap with food stamps, healthcare coverage and the like. Over the past few years, there's been an ongoing effort to organise these workers and to press for living wage protections.
On election day last month, they tasted victory, as a $13/hour living wage ordinance for hotel workers was approved by voters. According to one account:
"I have said all along that the second thing I would do when Measure N passes is take my family off of public assistance," said Maria Patlan, a ten-year housekeeper in Long Beach's hotel industry. "But the first thing I will do is a dance of joy."... Economists project the measure will add about $7 million annually into the local economy, creating and sustaining 85 jobs and generating an estimated $800,000 in tax revenues.
But this is just one local victory, trying to play catch-up for a situation that should never have been allowed in the first place. Adam Smith saw it coming over two centuries ago. Why couldn't we?
Paul Rosenberg is the senior editor of Random Lengths News, a bi-weekly alternative community newspaper.CHELSEA FC
v
SCHALKE 04
Stamford Bridge, London
6 November, 19:45 BST
***
Chelsea FCAi??host Schalke in their next Champions League group stage fixture at the Stamford Bridge tonight, in what promises to be another exciting European night.
The last meeting between these two sides ended up being a one sided contest as Fernando Torres scored a wonderful a hattrick to provide a crucial win for Chelsea. The last time Schalke traveled to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea was back in 2007 and the match ended 2-0 in favour of the home side that night as Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba scored. With both the sides tied on points in Group E, the outcome of this fixture could have a massive impact on the final standings.
Team news and tactics
Chelsea FC
Chelsea made a relatively slow start to their season under new manager Jose Mourinho and the fixture list wasnai??i??t too kind to them either. But the London side have picked up the pace in recent times and are currently second in the Premier League table, five points behind league leaders Arsenal. They are coming into this game on the back of poor defeat at the hands of Newcastle United away from home in the league ai??i?? it was their first loss in their last 10 matches in all competitions.
Chelsea started their Champions League campaign with a 1-2 defeat at the hands of Basel at Stamford Bridge, but they have bounced back well from that loss, registering two big wins against Steaua Bucuresti and Schalke. The Blues are not leading the points table in Group E and can move one step closer to qualification with a win against the German side in this game.
Jose Mourinho will be without Marco van Ginkel and Fernando Torres in this game due to injuries, while Michael Essien is ineligible to participate in the Champions League. There are also concerns about the fitness of Eden Hazard after the Belgium international picked up a knock in the match against Newcastle, but he is expected to recover and feature in this game.
Mourinho is expected to make five changes to the side that was fielded against Newcastle United in the league. Samuel Etoai??i??o will replace the injured Torres upfront, while Andre Schurrle will replace Oscar in attack. This means Mata will play a more central role, and will be flanked by Hazard and the German. Lampard will be rested for this game as Mikel makes his way back into the starting line-up alongside Ramires. There will be only one change to the defence which conceded two goals against Newcastle United as Gary Cahill replaces David Luiz at the back.
Expected starting line-up (4-2-3-1):Ai??Cech (GK); Cole, Terry, Cahill, Ivanovic; Ramires, Mikel; Hazard, Mata, Schurrle; Eto’o
Schalke 04
Schalke had a disastrous start to their season and are yet to fully recover from that. They are currently 6th in the Bundesliga points table, twelve points behind league leaders Bayern Munich. But their prime concern this season will be to qualify for the Champions League, and they are currently two points behind Borussia Monchengladbach, who occupy the last qualification spot in the league. Schalke have lost two of their last four fixtures, but are coming into this match on back of a 2-0 victory over Hertha Berlin as Adam Szalai and Julian Draxler scored for the away side.
The German side started their Champions League campaign brightly with two consecutive victories against Basel and Steaua Bucuresti, but stumbled to 0-3 defeat at the hands of Chelsea in their last group stage fixture. Schalke are currently second in the points table, tied on points with Chelsea. While the English club are expected to win this group, Schalke are the favourites among the remaining three to qualify to the next round.
Schalke manager Jens Keller has a long injury list to contain with ahead of this fixture. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Chinedu Obasi and Jefferson Farfan are all out of contention for this game due to fitness concerns. The absence of Huntelaar has been a huge blow for Schalke this season, although Adam Szalai has provided the goals in recent times. Marco Hoger is suspended for this game. There are concerns about the fitness of Kyriakos Papadopoulos, and he is unlikely to feature in this match.
Jens Keller is expected to make only one change to the side he fielded against Hertha Berlin in the weekend. Felipe Santana, who came on as a late substitute in the last game, will replace Joel Matip at the back. Schalke will once again look towards Draxler to provide the magic in attack, while Szalai will be their main threat in front of the goal.
Expected starting line-up (4-2-3-1):Ai??Hildebrand (GK); Uchida, Santana, HAi??wedes, Fuchs; Aogo, NeustAi??dter; Draxler, Meyer, Boateng; Szalai
Players to watch out for:Ai??Eden Hazard (Chelsea);Ai??Julian Draxler (Schalke)
Prediction:Ai??Chelsea 2-0 Schalke
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Union has become at least 15 and arguably 17 countries (depending on how one counts Chechnya). The fall of the Berlin Wall in part began with declarations of independence in the Baltic states. Scotland has negotiated a referendum for independence for 2014. Quebec already held a referendum in 1995; it failed. Singapore left Malaysia peacefully in 1965. Biafra tried to leave Nigeria in 1967, resulting in war. South Sudan successfully separated from the rest of Sudan last year. Yemen was North Yemen and South Yemen for a while, then became a single Yemen, nearly separated again, and remains in flux. Dividing Belgium into two countries is on the table so often, the only detail they’d need to hammer out is who is seceding from whom.
A little over a week ago, parties scheming to break the Mediterranean region of Catalunya away from Spain won local elections, and are now negotiating a pact toward an independence referendum.
So secession is tough, but it’s not unheard of. In aggregate, what do these experiences teach potential American breakaway states?
1. Make the economic argument
The largest city in Belgium, bilingual Brussels is an enclave within the country's Flemish-speaking north. (PHOTO: CRM / SHUTTERSTOCK)
Libertarian economist Daniel Mitchell, who frequently muses about the issue for the Cato Institute, argues that “the cause of liberty is best advanced by having a large number of competing jurisdictions.” His theory is that more options in statehood is better: "Governments are less likely to be oppressive when they know that people (or their money) can cross national borders.”
Take Belgium. “The Dutch part of Belgium pays, and the French part of Belgium takes,” Mitchell argued. “If you’re Walloon and your politicians can no longer mooch off the Flemish, maybe that forces you to improve. Secession becomes a means of limiting the greed of the political class.”
One can argue the point. But it does come off as more reasonable than, “I lost an election so I am leaving the country.”
2. Sell reasonably priced copies of your new flag
Participants in the rally for the independence during the National Day of Catalonia on September 11, 2012 in Barcelona, Spain. (PHOTO: nito / SHUTTERSTOCK)
Data is thin, but symbolism appears to play as much of a role as anything else in secession. In Barcelona right now — capital of maybe-breakaway, maybe-not Catalunya — a senyera costs nine Euros (about $12) and is available at places like bookstores, hardware stores, and gas station mini-marts. (Why? More proof that gas stations don’t really make their money on the gas.)
The easy access to flags means that virtually every block of the city has several banners visible, typically hanging from apartment balconies. To walk down a street in Barcelona right now is to think, “I am in a secessionist territory.” This is probably not true in Austin, and mindset matters.
3. Don’t rattle sabers
(PHOTO: Jordan Tan / SHUTTERSTOCK)
No one wants another Fort Sumter, and it turns out reasonable demands resulted in successful secession several times. Wealthy Singapore is the obvious case. After initially enjoying independence from Britain as part of Malaysia, the Southeast Asian state found itself at loggerheads with national leaders over banking rules, and ethnic tensions rose between Chinese and Malay groups. A negotiated divorce took less than a year. Both states have found success and co-exist peacefully.
Thirty years later, a list of grievances between the eastern and more prosperous western regions of then-Czechoslovakia led to a similarly amicable divorce. Like most divorces, grievances remain. But no one threatened anyone, and ultimately, no one got hurt.
4. Focus on things outside politics. Like sports.
Polish and Scottish soccer fans during Euro 2012 in Poland (PHOTO: BartlomiejMagierowski / SHUTTERSTOCK)
Scotland won the right to represent itself in some international competitions, notably soccer’s prestigious World Cup, and has built a separate identity via its athletes — on the sports page. So has its antagonist: David Beckham played for England all those years, not Great Britain.
Back in Barcelona, the president of the local soccer team has spoken frequently to calm fears that an independent Catalunya would result in the cancellation of the annual match against rival Madrid. In both cases, an international brand-building exercise via sports appears to have bled into sympathy, or at least interest, in the local secession movement.
During last summer’s London Olympics, good feelings from the host city’s role and the fat haul of medals by a pan-U.K. team briefly dented Scottish independence discussions.
5. Don’t petition
(PHOTO: Vereshchagin Dmitry / SHUTTERSTOCK)
Most secession petitions in the U.S. have between 30,000 and 40,000 signatures. Florida’s secession petition has just shy of 35,000. Georgia is at 32,000, Louisiana at 37,000, each of the Carolinas is in the low thirties. The big one, Texas, is at 118,000 and change so far.
However, a petition to “Remove Marijuana From the Controlled Substances Act,” filed with the White House about the same time, got 64,000 signers, or more than double the number of most secession drives. Petitions to repeal Obamacare, to make publicly funded scientific research available online, and to recount November’s ballots, are all out-drawing the secessions by significant margins.
Alternatively, a secessionist rally in Scotland two months ago pointedly did not count its participants very carefully, opting instead for visuals, filling a square in Edinburgh with flags. It looked persuasive.
For the record, the White House’s We the People website — the place where Americans are sending the domestic secession signatures — also has a petition in support of the Catalan secession. It currently has 14,960 signatures. A domestic breakaway filed from Oregon, at the same site, only has 10,000.
6. Don’t vote
(ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK)
After two million people paralyzed Barcelona in a pro-secession rally in September, the Catalan government called for early elections, seeking to identify itself with the independence cause and gain a mandate for a popular referendum. Instead, local infighting took over, and the ruling party, in a vote last Sunday, got clobbered. Polls still show secessionist leaders with a healthy majority — but locally, various parties fell into sniping, and the secession forces now look like anything but a united front.
7. Get the world behind you
A Sudan solidarity mural on a wall in Sardinia (PHOTO: steve estvanik / SHUTTERSTOCK)
Of recent secessions, South Sudan’s successful effort had the advantage of moral certainty in a way America's secession would struggle to match. After decades of religious and ethnic friction, the north/south rupture finally became realistic when the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir on human rights charges in 2009. It’s hard to argue against secession from a butcher.
The same region had seen a previous secession two decades before, when Eritrea broke from Ethiopia in 1993. In that case, again, a consensus of international bodies, including a U.N. vote of confidence, proved key.
Most radically, when East Timor broke from Indonesia in 1999, via a UN-brokered referendum, Australian troops had to arrive and put down a violent reaction by Indonesian military and militias against Timorese civilians.
An effort directly opposed to secession, Puerto Rico’s mutterings about joining the Union as the 51st state, also seems to lack much international outreach. It regularly stalls.
8. Be prepared to get a new job
(PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)
Secession isn’t just a public matter, and it disrupts business. In the Sudans, home of some major oil fields, pipeline issues have dogged the split. Even without Catalunya, Spain would still be a 40 million-plus-person market, and Catalunya would be a fifth of that.
In the U.S., secession would in part mean secession from favored access to the U.S. market. Should North Carolina secede, Bank of America would either need to leave its headquarters in Charlotte, laying off a ton of people as it did so – or change its name, rewrite its loans, renegotiate its tax relationships, and rethink its debt commitments. (A shortcut might be to just run its CEO for president of New Carolina.)
9. Avoid violence
British army paratroopers patrol Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, on July 1, 1999, days after Yugoslav army troops were forced from the province by NATO airstrikes. (PHOTO: Northfoto / SHUTTERSTOCK)
Kosovo’s secession against overwhelming odds suggests that virtually anyone with enough pluck and determination can defend his or her tribe, and hold on long enough for help to arrive – if it’s coming. On the other hand, Kosovo remains a militarized zone more than a decade after independence from Serbia, and it doesn’t seem likely to be “independent” in the sense of self-reliance any time soon. (Spain, by the way, pulled out of the NATO peacekeeping mission a few years back, uncomfortable backing a secession amid its own troubles.)
For the committed secessionist, a fantastic if obscure work of reporting called Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America(fabulously subtitled “How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the US into Kosovo’s War”) is a virtual roadmap for how to get out from under a repressive regime’s thumb. However, it is worth noting that lots of people in the book are in terrible shape by the end.
10. Stay with the group
(PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)
An interesting but little-studied aspect of the post-election secession trend is its collective nature. Though current secessionists are presumably more likely to have voted for the losing Republican candidate, a typically liberal response – petitions, community organizing, a move toward a politics of identity and offense – marks the movement.
On the other side of the line, when Democrats wanted to express dismay after the 2000 and 2004 elections of then-President George W. Bush, they commonly expressed a desire via more typically Republican, individualist action: Moving to Canada, under their own initiative and finances, by themselves, in search of individually expressed freedoms.
In both cases, the desire to quit America expressed itself in the style of one’s opponent. No precedent of which we’re aware exists for this kind of behavior in recent secession cases, other than America’s.
Finally, a last option: Consider moving to New Hampshire
The Crawford Depot in New Hampshire (PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)
Though the recent wave of secessionist fervor seems new, an organization calling itself the “Free State Project” (slogan: “Liberty in Our Time”) in fact long ago hatched a plan very similar to secession, in which like-minded people all decided to move en masse to a small-population state and take over by flooding the polls. “What are the prospects for achieving greater liberty where you currently live?” the movement's organizers write, on their still very-much-active community website. “If you are like many, the outlook is not good. The Free State Project offers a solution: join thousands of other liberty-lovers who are moving to New Hampshire, America's freest state, and working together there to achieve true liberty in our lifetime."
They seek 20,000 people. New Hampshire’s lovely.Ubuntu OTA-14, the latest over the air update to Ubuntu phone and tablet, has begun to roll out to supported devices.
“This time not so many changes released in overall but with the goal of introducing less regressions,” says Canonical’s Lukasz Zemczak in the release announcement mailing list post.
The update features a smaller change-log than releases past, no-doubt in part due to Canonical’s new focus on improving the desktop side of Unity 8.
But this is far from being an invisible update, though…
What’s New in Ubuntu OTA-14
Bug fixes, bug fixes, and more bug fixes are what make up the core change-log, but a small set of visual refinements do feature.
Among them an all-new application spread (aka task switcher, aka the bit you swipe in from the right-hand side to open) that swaps the tall app previews of OTA 13 for uniform, squarer ones. It also shows corresponding application icons beside each app, and there’s mellifluous animation and interaction effects.
New, faster application switcher
A handful of new/improved system icons
New pin lock/lock screen visuals
Opus audio codec support in qtmultimedia
Design tweaks to date/time indicator
Fixes issues connecting to OwnCloud calendars
Working alarms
SMS notifications now arrive when device is locked
Vibration fixes
See the full OTA-14 commit-log for more details on the changes.
Getting Ubuntu OTA-14
Regardless of the change log you’ll want to update your Ubuntu phone or tablet to OTA-14 as soon as possible. As with all OTA release the rollout takes place in ‘phased stages’ over a 24 hour period, so while you may not find an update pending right now, you should definitely have it by this time tomorrow.
To check for updates manually on an Ubuntu Phone or Ubuntu Tablet:Canadians could be forgiven for thinking that the policies associated Cancon in a digital world largely wrapped up with the release of the government’s policy in September. Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly spent months crisscrossing the country, meeting with hundreds of stakeholders, and ultimately delivering a high profile policy that featured the much-debated Netflix commitment alongside various plans to support the sector. While Joly also promised reviews of the Broadcasting Act, Telecommunications Act, and Copyright Act, she puzzlingly re-opened the very issue she had just decided by issuing an Order-in-Council to the CRTC to examine (yet again) policies associated with broadcasting.
As a result, Joly restarted the same policy fight over everything from ISP taxes to net neutrality. The first stage of the CRTC’s consultation into the issue (it is charged with reporting back to cabinet by June 2018) has yielded nearly 300 submissions, many of which envision extensive Internet regulation and taxation. I provided a submission to the consultation, which will be the subject of a blog post later this week. My full submission, which focuses on maintaining net neutrality and rejecting new taxes and fees, can be found here.
While there is much to digest, a quick scan of many of the submissions reveals that the usual suspects are seeking the same rejected remedies raised in the just concluded consultation: ISP taxes, Netflix taxes, iPod taxes, and killing net neutrality. In fact, the submissions add new taxes to the discussion such as a Spotify tax, data sharing of viewer data across the industry, and the creation of a website blocking agency.
For example, the CBC veers strongly toward increased regulation. It is one of many that wants ISP or Internet taxes, including payments from both broadband and wireless providers to support Cancon:
both Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and wireless carriers should be required to contribute to the support of Canadian content since they provide access to programming through their services and profit significantly from the ongoing popularity of programming over both landline and wireless networks.
The CBC is joined by many other groups: ACTRA wants mandated contributions and the creation of a new licensing regime, CMPA supports contributions from broadband and wireless carriers, and Rogers wants Netflix to spend 30 percent of its gross revenues in Canada to finance Canadian productions.
The CBC also wants widespread data sharing of viewer data, noting the mounting importance of data analytics. Its submission calls for a new regulatory regime to mandate sharing of viewer data:
the regulatory regime should ensure that such data is readily available on a non-discriminatory basis. In particular, data about Canadians and their programming preferences should not become the exclusive property of a select group of players. This data should be available to all players so as to benefit the system as a whole.
The Canadian music industry also focuses on data, with the Canadian Independent Music Association demanding that the CRTC or government to impose regulations on the algorithms used by online music services, presumably in support of Canadian music:
Imposing obligations on online music services for the development of local products, including algorithms.
The music industry also wants the expansion of the private copying levy, once described as an iPod tax. The resurgence of the private copying levy would presumably be applied to wireless devices, computers, and anything else that plays music. ADISQ, supported in a separate submission by CIMA, call for the restoration of the private copying levy:
la révision de la loi sur le droit d’auteur, incluant la restauration du régime de copie privée et la disparition de certaines exceptions anachroniques visant les radios
The music industry also supports increased regulation of online music services, with ADISQ seeking a Spotify tax. It argues that online music services are the equivalent of radio stations and should be required to make similar contributions.
Bell wants some of the regulations it faces removed or scaled back, but it also foreshadows its forthcoming application for the creation of a radical website blocking system to be overseen by the CRTC. As part of its argument, it implausibly argues that the company has lost out on as many as 350,000 new subscribers to CraveTV, citing downloads of its show LetterKenny (apparently claiming that roughly 1 in 3 downloads would result in a full paying subscription). Bell is joined by Shaw, which devoting several pages to support for website blocking based on court orders.
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters is concerned with the growing use of smartphones and connected devices that may not include access to radio stations. The proposed solution:
The Government and CRTC should also consider ways to ensure radio’s presence on smart phones, connected devices and in cars sold in Canada.
It offers no advice on how to do that (but does warn against restrictions on food and beverage advertising).
ACTRA pins some of its hopes on full-scale Internet regulation complete with licensing ISPs, creating an ISP tax, and prioritizing Canadian content in violation of net neutrality rules. The ACTRA submission states:
Since the Internet is increasingly being used to watch audiovisual programs and ISPs are the gatekeepers of that content, they should be required to contribute to the creation and distribution of Canadian programming content. Accordingly, Internet Service Providers should make a financial contribution to Canadian content programs proportionate to the extent to which consumers are obtaining programming content through their ISP. Internet Service Providers should also provide priority access to Canadian programming.
The ACTRA approach is supported by Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which wants the CRTC to mandate prioritization of Canadian content on the Internet, including measures such as zero rating, which would presumably require the government to order wireless carriers to eliminate data charges for Cancon.
Topping it off are many, many calls for the elimination of the CRTC’s digital media exemption (which ACTRA calls “one of the most short-sighted decisions in regulatory history” and which would result increased CRTC regulation of online services) and the introduction of Netflix taxes, which the government has consistently said it does not support.
None of this is particularly surprising, but it re-affirms that the Canadian cultural industry views the digital world not for its potential commercial and creative opportunities, but rather for the prospect of new taxation and regulation. Joly may be encouraging the industry to adopt a forward-looking, export oriented approach, but many would prefer protectionist measures, the regulation and taxation of any Internet service, and the creation of preferential treatment requirements for Canadian content in violation of net neutrality rules. All of this was avoidable. However, Joly’s decision to send the culture issue back to the CRTC has now guaranteed months of lobbying on the very issues that the government was supposed to have concluded with an 18-month nationwide consultation and “final” report on which the ink is barely dry.Anthony Davis (born September 6, 1970), better known by his stage name Ant, is an American hip hop producer. He is best known as being one half of the hip hop group Atmosphere, but has worked with many other artists and projects, mostly with Rhymesayers Entertainment, such as Brother Ali, I Self Devine, Felt and The Dynospectrum. He has also released two solo albums, Melodies and Memories, and Melodies and Memories 85–89.
Biography [ edit ]
Ant started to become interested in DJing at a very young age. He would watch his father DJ in the army while he would picture himself as Grandmaster Flash. Years later he would start to use producing and DJing as much more than a hobby. The first CD that he worked on was Comparison by Beyond, later known by Sab the Artist, in 1996. While producing that album, he met Sean Daley (Slug) and they later worked together.[1] With one exception (Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs), Ant has produced every Atmosphere album in full. He also works with various artists that are a part of Rhymesayers Entertainment (including full production of three Brother Ali albums) and many more.
Discography [ edit ]
Solo Releases
2001 – Melodies and Memories
2005 – Melodies and Memories 85–89
with Atmosphere (for more information see Atmosphere Discography)
production for Brother Ali
with Felt
Other Production
References [ edit ]
^ [1], MVRemix Urban Interviews Slug of Atmosphere ^ http://www.discogs.com/Musab-Respect-The-Life/release/363200 - accessed 9/29/10
Media related to Atmosphere (band) at Wikimedia CommonsShare it
The IBJJF announced this Friday, August 7, it altered the standings of the divisions that had athletes disqualified due to anti-doping violations and the World Championship.
It has happened three times since the United States Anti-Doping Agency started performing tests on the world champions in 2013.
Gabi Garcia (2013) – Found not at fault for the presence of clomiphene (lost gold medal in the black belt open class and silver medal in the heavyweight division).
Braulio Estima (2014) – Found with the presence of Methylhexaneamine (suspended for two years and lost the gold medal at the medium-heavy division).
Felipe Pena (2014) – Found with elevated levels of testosterone (suspended for one year and lost gold medal at the heavyweight division).
The IBJJF released the following statement regarding the matter:
According to IBJJF’s agreement with USADA and the anti-doping policy, IBJJF will accept sanctions determined by USADA.
In the event that a sanction results in a loss of title, the rule by IBJJF to follow in reassigning podium positions is listed below:
-The athlete that placed second (lost to the positive doping athlete) will be declared the 1st place winner
-The athlete that placed third (lost to the positive doping athlete) will be declared the 2nd place winner.
-The fourth place athlete, who lost due to the positive doping athlete in the quarter-final, will be moved up to 3rd place.
– The athlete who lost in the semi-final against the “newly promoted first place athlete” will remain in the third place position.
By doing so, we will promote once, every athlete who lost due to the disqualified athlete. In turn this will give us a full standard IBJJF podium (1 first place, 1 second place, and 2 third place winners).
With that, the revised standings for the divisions that had athletes disqualified are now as follows.
2013 World Jiu Jitsu IBJJF Championship – Black Belt Adult Female Open Class division
First – Beatriz de Oliveira Mesquita – Gracie Humaita
Second – Luiza Monteiro Moura da Costa – PSLPB Cicero C.
Third – Tammy Griego – Gracie Barra
Third – Luanna Alzuguir Marton Moraes – Alliance
2013 World Jiu Jitsu IBJJF Championship – Black Belt Adult Female Heavy weight
First – Andresa Correa – Alliance
Second – Maria do Carmo Paixão Teixeira – De La Riva JJ
Third – Luzia Carmem Santana P. Fernandes – Gracie Barra
2014 World Jiu Jitsu IBJJF Championship – Black Belt Adult Male Medium Heavy division
First – Rômulo Claudio Barral – Gracie Barra
Second – Murilo Silva Ferreira de Santana – Barbosa Jiu Jitsu
Third – Gustavo Ramos Campos – Atos Jiu-Jitsu
Third – Thiago Sa Fortes – CheckMat
2014 World Jiu Jitsu IBJJF Championship – Black Belt Adult Male Heavydivision
Fisrt – Andre Luiz Leite Galvão – Atos Jiu-Jitsu
Second – Dimitrius Soares Souza – Alliance
Third – Rafael Lovato Jr. – Ribeiro Jiu-Jitsu
Third – Nivaldo de Oliveira – CheckMat Int.
With the changes in the standings, there were also changes in the overall points count for the teams.
In 2014, Atos Jiu-Jitsu earned six extra points for Andre Galvão’s title, but that was not enough to overcome Alliance, that also had two points added when Dimitrius Souza became the new 2nd place athlete and added two points to the team’s count.
Here are the new standings for teams after the result changes:
2013 – Adult Female
1 – Alliance – 62
2 – CheckMat – 45
3 – Gracie Humaita – 38
2014 – Adult Male
1 – Alliance – 99
2 – Atos Jiu-Jitsu – 97
3 – Gracie Barra – 57
The IBJJF will hold new medal ceremonies for the new standings in the near future.Last night (Sat., Sept. 14, 2013) at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, Floyd Mayweather Jr. defeated Saul "Canelo" Alvarez in the main event of a 152-pound championship catchweight fight dubbed "The One." It was by far the biggest boxing event of the past decade and arguably of all time.
To watch full "Mayweather vs. Canelo" main event video highlights online click here.
"Canelo" was thought to present an interesting stylistic match up, and with Mayweather's age, 36, some believed the time was right for "Money" to fall to a younger, hungrier fighter. That was not the case as Mayweather put on an absolute clinic against Alvarez, who just never seemed to find his rhythm.
If you missed it, I don't know what to tell you. It was one of those "once in a generation"-type fights that will be hard to recreate again.
So, About Last Night...
Mayweather is totally "Money"
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but Mayweather is without a shadow of a doubt the best boxer of this generation. I know, some of you are shocked at that statement. But, the way that he's been able to compete at such a high level for so long, it's like he's getting better with age.
He neutralized most of Alvarez's attacks with that patented Mayweather shoulder roll, and kept his opponent on the defensive for the entirety of the fight just by finding a home for his jab. By the end of the fight, it was pretty clear that Mayweather was the better fighter.
The big takeaway, though, is that there is currently nobody in the world up to 154 pounds who really has a shot at beating him. "Canelo" truly was the best shot. The only thing that will beat Mayweather at this point is Father Time and last night showed that Mayweather has at least another few years left in the tank.
Not all undefeated records are created equally
Without doing any research, this appeared to be a perfect match up. Mayweather entered the ring Saturday night with a 44-0 record. "Canelo" entered with his own impressive 42-0-1 record. But, inside those numbers contained a certain truth:
Alvarez's resume was the product of favorable matchmaking.
And don't take that as a knock on his skills as a boxer. At 23 years old, "Canleo" is one of the young bright spots in a sport that desperately needs stars for the next generation. He has the good looks, charm and popularity to possibly transcend the sport and ensure that boxing doesn't die after Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao retire.
But, he's still got a long way to go. He was caught flat footed most of the bout and wasn't able to keep up with Mayweather's ridiculous pace. That may be because of the weight cut, but if he hopes to rebound, he'll need to make certain adjustments in his training.
Wait... a majority decision? That can't be right.
Mayweather wasn't the only one surprised when Jimmy Lennon Jr. announced that the fight had ended in a majority decision. From my couch, it was a clear win for "Money," who worked over Alvarez for 12 rounds of boxing. If there ever was a clear case for a unanimous decision, it was last night's bout.
But, for some reason, CJ Ross scored it 114-114. She's the same judge who scored the Timothy Bradley vs. Manny Pacquoia fight 115-113 for Bradley. It's a completely indefensible scorecard and one that needs some investigation. Boxing isn't crooked, it's the people who can alter an outcome who are the problem.
And for those conspiracy theorists out there: A majority decision paid out 21:1 odds in Las Vegas.
It's time to stop underestimating Danny Garcia
Yes, his father Angel Garcia is about as grating as they come, but Danny Garcia proved last night that he's one of the elite fighters in the world with his 12 round drubbing of Lucas Matthysse. Entering the bout, Garcia was the +210 underdog despite being the Light Welterweight (140-pound) champion.
Oddsmakers are usually good at evaluating talent and skills. Last night proved that sometimes a fighter's heart and determination are incalculable. Garcia worked over Matthysse and caused a ton of early damage to his right eye. By the end of the fight, it was almost completely shut.
At 25 years old, the sky is truly the limit for Garcia. Especially if he can continue to put on great performances against top-ranked fighters.
Additional Thoughts
I know we love talking about the production of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) being the best in combat sports, but Showtime has brought it to a totally different level. Every aspect of last night's pay-per-view (PPV) was incredible. The broadcast booth added such a nice touch to an already "big fight" atmosphere.
The Molina/Smith bout was fun, but definitely one of the dirtiest fights I've ever witnessed. There was no reason for a referee to get so involved in a fight. But, I guess like the saying goes, 'if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.'
Seriously, that 114-114 card is criminal. I hope that Keith Kizer launches an investigation if only to protect the image of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. I know with other commissions, judges are asked to justify ridiculous cards almost immediately after the fight. I'd hope that Kizer did that with CJ Ross.
My favorite part of the night was that after people already spent $75 on an HD version of the PPV, Mayweather told fans to go buy a $65 hat on his webstore. That's not greed. That's the American dream. Mayweather is a business, and right now, business is booming.
For complete results and blow-by-blow coverage of the entire Mayweather vs. Canelo fight click here. For complete results and blow-by-blow coverage of "The One" under card click here.LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 29: Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar attends the CW, CBS and Showtime 2013 summer TCA party on July 29, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Paul A. Hebert/Getty Images)
Ten years have passed since "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" went off the air and fans are still hoping for more.
Sarah Michelle Gellar weighed in, saying a "Buffy" movie could be a possibility, but only if the right story came along. "My joke is, at this point, the stake would be my walker and I would be hobbling in," Gellar, 36, joked with E! News during a recent interview.
"Joss [Whedon, who created 'Buffy'] and I always talk about [a movie]," she continued. "But the thing with 'Buffy' is that
The original "Buffy" was a 1992 film starring Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry about a teenage cheerleader from the Valley who finds out she is The Chosen One to hunt vampires. According to Box Office Mojo, it grossed a meager $4 million its opening weekend and went on to rake in just $16 million domestically.
The television series premiered five years later. And love for Buffy Summers has lived on.
"It's kind of wonderful," Gellar told The Huffington Post in May, looking back on the show in honor of its finale's 10th anniversary. "I'm incredibly proud of that show -- proud of everybody on it, of what we did... You can't be prouder of that show. It still holds up in reruns and I'm blessed every day... I've been pretty lucky."
Diehard TV buffs have shown enduring faith in the silver-screen potential of certain series. Take "Veronica Mars" fans, who supported the Kickstarter campaign for a movie so much so that it surpassed the goal of $2 million to reach $5.7 million.
Would you want to see a "Buffy" movie? Sound off in the comments!The people who run distances longer than "rushing to catch a train" or "dashing to catch a kid about to fall off a playground set" are different from you and me. They get into a distance-running zone, they lose all sense of time and distance, and strange things happen, like the peculiar event that just occurred at a marathon in Ontario.
Meredith Fitzmaurice was competing in the half-marathon division of the Run for Heroes Marathon in Amherstburg, Ontario this past weekend. The plan was to use this race as a tuneup for the Detroit Marathon next month, the race at which she'd try to qualify to run in the Boston Marathon.
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That was the plan, anyway. But somewhere along the way, Fitzmaurice missed a turn, and instead of running 13 miles she realized she'd run 20, and counting. (Again: different from you and me.)
"I just missed it," Fitzmaurice told the Ottawa Citizen. "I didn't do it on purpose," she said, adding that she was "in the zone" with headphones on.
Once she realized her mistake, Fitzmaurice, while running, checked with race organizers to see if she could swap into the full marathon since she'd registered for the half. The race director signed off on the mid-race swap, and Fitzmaurice went on to win the race with a time of 3:11:48. The icing on the sweaty cake? The time qualified her for the 2014 Boston Marathon.
So, there you go: a wrong turn turns out to be right. Congratulations to Ms. Fitzmaurice. The rest of us: time to pick up the pace.
-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-Six ancient sites in Syria, including the city of Aleppo which has suffered considerable damage in the course of the country's ongoing conflict, have been added to the endangered World Heritage list, UNESCO says.
The other sites to be added are the ancient cities of Damascus and Bosra, the oasis of Palmyra, the castles of Crac des Chevaliers and Qal'at Salah El-Din - also known as the Fortress of Saladin - and the ancient villages of northern Syria.
"Due to the armed conflict situation in Syria, the conditions are no longer present to ensure the conservation and protection of the Outstanding Universal Value of the six World Heritage properties," a UNESCO document said.
All six were placed on the list of World Heritage in Danger by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation committee at its annual meeting in Phnom Penh.
In preparatory documents for a meeting on Thursday, UNESCO said its information on the scale of the destruction was "partial" and came from unverified sources including social media and a report from the Syrian authorities which it said "does not necessarily reflect the actual situation".
'Caught in the line of fire'
Aleppo's old city, in particular, has "witnessed some of the conflict's most brutal destruction", it said, adding that the old citadel had been "caught in the line of fire".
In April, the minaret of Aleppo's ancient Umayyad mosque - originally built in the 8th century and then rebuilt in the 13th century - was destroyed.
"The immediate, near-term and long-term effect of the crises on the cultural heritage of Aleppo cannot be overstated," UNESCO said.
Clandestine excavations, including looting of ancient tombs and grave sites, have also been reported at several of the sites, it added.
More than 93,000 people, including at least 6,500 children, have been killed since the outbreak of civil war in Syria in March 2011, the UN announced last week in a report that highlighted a surge in the number of deaths each month.After a quarter century-plus of WWE Survivor Series matches, wherein teams of 4, 5, or even 10, try to outdo one another in the name of survival bragging rights, certain teams have stood out above the fray as being the most powerful and memorable. Here’s 20 of the all-time greats, with no real criteria in place, except the gut feeling of “how awesome were they?”
20. Owen Hart’s Team (1996)
Members: Owen Hart, British Bulldog, The New Rockers
Result: Lost (Opposing Survivors: Doug Furnas and Phil Lafon)
Why They Were Great: For the most part, this was just a hastily thrown together team that had but one purpose: make Furnas and Lafon look like the world-beaters they could be.
But as far as “workrate” battles go, Hart, Bulldog, and Leif Cassidy (Marty Jannetty was gone early) made proficient tackling dummies for Furnas’ suplexes and Lafon’s strikes. Cassidy was floored by an insane inverted superplex from the Frenchman, and Furnas nearly decapitated Owen with a throwing German suplex, giving two new faces the best WWE debut |
-grade games.[5] It was a springboard to his coaching career as Souths coach George Piggins – himself in his inaugural coaching year – welcomed Gould's opinion & insight on tactics and encouraged Gould to take a leadership role. Souths finished as runner-up in the minor premiership and Piggins was awarded Dally M coach of the year.
Overall, in his playing career, Gould made 104 first-grade appearances across four clubs.[5]
Post-retirement weight gain led to the nickname 'Gus' due to the resemblance to the Mr Squiggle character.
Coaching career [ edit ]
A successful coaching career followed for Gould. His first five coaching seasons brought two premierships (with Canterbury in 1988 and Penrith in 1991) and a loss in a Grand Final (with Penrith in 1990). Following their 1991 grand final victory, Gould travelled with the Panthers to England for the 1991 World Club Challenge which was lost to Wigan.
In 1992, Gould took over as coach of New South Wales in the State of Origin series. The Blues were victorious for the next three series. In 1995, at the start of the Super League war, Gould's NSW side lost 3–0 to the Paul Vautin-coached team of relative unknowns patched together from the ranks of Queenlanders loyal to the ARL. The following year, NSW completed a series whitewash of its own with the Brad Fittler-captained Blues becoming the first and only team to go through a series with the same unchanged squad of 17 players. Gould then stood down, having inspired four NSW series wins in five years.
While coach of the Panthers, during a 1994 match Gould was sent from his seat on the sideline to the dressing room by referee Bill Harrigan. Gould left Penrith for the Sydney City Roosters in 1995 (actually officially coaching the Roosters for the final game of the 1994 season after having departed Penrith mid-season), at a stage when the once high-flying Roosters club was continually dwelling at the bottom of the ladder. Before joining Easts, the Roosters had made the finals only once since 1983. A long rebuilding phase followed under Gould, enabling them to make some quality signings, one of the most important being Brad Fittler, the champion five-eighth/centre who had a close association with Gould at Penrith and with the NSW Blues. The Roosters were consistent semi-finalists from 1996 to 2004, though no Grand Final appearances came until 2000, the year after Gould had stepped down as coach and been replaced in the top job by Graham Murray. Further Grand Final appearances followed in 2002, 2003 and 2004 under Ricky Stuart, who won a premiership in 2002, the Roosters' first since 1975.
Gould returned to State of Origin coaching New South Wales from 2002 to 2004, winning two series and drawing the third. To date, he has been the most successful New South Wales coach.
Coaching director [ edit ]
During Ricky Stuart's tenure as coach at the Sydney Roosters Gould filled a role as Coaching Director at the club.
In May 2011, it was announced that Gould would take up the role of General Manager with the Penrith Panthers. The role was said by club chairman Don Feltis to include direct involvement in all aspects of the football club management particularly the coaching and team support operation.[6]
Gould currently works as an expert for Channel 9 and Triple M radio during rugby league telecasts, including NRL, State of Origin and International football contests. He also writes for the Sydney Morning Herald. He is considered controversial within rugby league fan circles for his blunt opinions about the playing and administration of the game. Many of his repetitious commentary catchphrases are used to criticise refereeing decisions: they include "dear oh dear oh dear", "no no no no no",[7] "that's ridiculous, that is ridiculous" and "modern day gladiators". Phil is renowned for repeating his point over and over again,[7] e.g. "that's a try, that's a try, that's a try, that's a try, that's a try."
He won the TV Week Logie Award for "Most Popular Sporting Commentator" in 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2008.
Honours [ edit ]
In the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Gould was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), for "significant service to rugby league football as an administrator, commentator, coach and player, and to the community".[8]
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]Saturday morning pancakes just got real. Imgur user extracurricular has shared with us the most intricate, most creative, and, well, most bad-a** pancake we have ever seen. It's a tiger face on your pancake. Tony the Tiger has got nothing on this guy.
It used to be that we were giddy when someone added chocolate chips to pancakes. We were really impressed when they made pancakes with chocolate chips AND bananas. But now that we know pancakes can come out like THIS, our pancake standards have just gone up 1,454,468 notches. Imgur user extracurricular's tiger-face pancake has taken breakfast to a whole new level.
Just take a look at his handiwork and see how it's done:
1 It starts with a sketch of the idea. 2 The sketch is recreated in a pan with (what we believe is) CHOCOLATE PUDDING. 3 Like this. 4 Next, pancake batter is slowly and carefully added on top of the chocolate pudding outline. 5 It should cook like this. 6 Et viola. 7 Feed it some butter. 8 And then, EAT.
Do try to make these at home, but be warned, it's even harder than it looks. Redditor leapinglynx's valiant effort, yet massive fail, is proof of that.Presumably to make it look like Caitlin had to get topless to get attention for her angry tweets. But actually, the photo and the tweets were quite separate.
Tabloid press would do well to remember that Caitlin is a person and not her soapie-star alter-ego. Then they’d know that Caitlin just made some insightful points. And this is Twitter, so she only had 140 characters for each thought. The girl is both strong and succinct.
If you don’t know her, Caitlin Stasey is a 24-year-old actress who used to star in Neighbours. She also played the lead female role in Tomorrow When The War Began, and is currently getting naked pretty regularly as King Henry II’s fictional mistress in the TV show Reign.
Last night Caitlin’s Twitter feed became a stream of consciousness that would give any celebrity publicist nightmares. Here it is. Can you handle it?
WARNING: Caitlin uses rude words in graphic context. She also drops a series of truth bombs that have made people uncomfortable enough to call her deranged, filthy, and naughty. If you’re a delicate flower, look away.
For everyone else, here we go. Caitlin’s thoughts…
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Newcastle are chasing Levante's Spanish midfielder Victor Camarasa and plotting a £5million summer move.
Spain Under-21 international Camarasa, is likely to be sold as Levante have financial issues and need to balance the books.
He has caught the eye of scouts at St James' Park, and the Magpies are weighing up a move for the talented 20-year-old when the transfer window opens.
However, they will face competition for the youngster, with la Liga rivals Sevilla and Italian clubs also keeping an eye on Camarasa.
John Carver's side return to action on Sunday when they travel to struggling Everton.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Seven thousand years ago, in Northern Israel’s Tel Beit She’an Valley, ancient residents ate wheat, barley, buckwheat, lentils and peas.
They also raised herds of goats, sheep, cattle and pigs, which were eaten mainly during festive events.
Now, following recent excavations west of the Jordanian border, archeologists from the University of Haifa announced they have found hundreds of olive pits, requiring a reevaluation of prehistoric irrigation techniques in the area.On Tuesday, researchers from the university’s Zinman Institute of Archeology, working in conjunction with researchers from universities around the world, said the pits were likely the result of artificial irrigation.“The existence of an ancient agricultural system that relies on artificial irrigation will require a significant change in how we perceive their agricultural sophistication,” said Haifa University’s Prof. Daniel Rosenberg, who runs the research project with Dr. Florian Klimsh, of the German Archaeological Institute.According to Rosenberg and Klimsh, the prehistoric communities located on the Jordanian border, near Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, were the basis for the establishment of ancient cities and cultures of the Near East.Although considered “the cradle of civilization,” the researchers say little remains known about the region.In their study, the archeologists combined researchers from a variety of disciplines to focus on finding botanical evidence to determine the specific conditions prevailing in the Jordan Valley during that time to understand the economy, diet, agricultural practices and social organization.While the exploitation of olives during this period is well documented, Rosenberg said the large amount of seeds found during the excavation raises a number of questions requiring a rethinking of ancient irrigation methods, and about ancient trade relations involving olives and olive oil.Based on botanical and animal bone evidence collected in the area over the past four years, the researchers said they were partially able to reconstruct the diet and economy of the ancient inhabitants of the Jordan Valley.Indeed, Rosenberg and Klimsh found that “back-up” plant species were grown to accommodate the long maturation cycles occurring during different seasons, based on the possibility of a weak harvest.“For example, the maturation of wheat and barley is different from that of olives, lentils and peas, which were found in the site, and have different nutritional contributions,” said Rosenberg.Meanwhile, thousands of animal bones found in the area testify to the care of herds of goats, sheep, pigs, and various cattle, he added.Ultimately, the archeologists hope their research will contribute to the ongoing preservation of area plants by understanding irrigation techniques used thousands of years ago.“This provides a rare glimpse into the lifestyles of the ancient inhabitants of the Jordan Valley and the heritage of the region in general, and allows us to not just visit their homes, but also their dishes and pots,” said Rosenberg.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>For 50 years, the transistors on computer chips have been getting smaller, and for 50 years, manufacturers have used the same technique — photolithography — to make their chips. But the very wavelength of visible light limits the size of the transistors that photolithography can produce. If chipmakers are to keep shrinking chip features, they’ll probably need to turn to other manufacturing methods.
Researchers have long used a technique called electron-beam (or e-beam) lithography to make prototype chips, but standard e-beam lithography is much slower than photolithography. Increasing its speed generally comes at the expense of resolution: Previously, the smallest chip features that high-speed e-beams could resolve were 25 nanometers across, barely better than the experimental 32-nanometer photolithography systems that several manufacturers have demonstrated. In a forthcoming issue of the journal Microelectronic Engineering, however, researchers at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) present a way to get the resolution of high-speed e-beam lithography down to just nine nanometers. Combined with other emerging technologies, it could point the way toward making e-beam lithography practical as a mass-production technique.
The most intuitive way for manufacturers to keep shrinking chip features is to switch to shorter wavelengths of light — what’s known in the industry as extreme ultraviolet. But that’s easier said than done. “Because the wavelength is so small, the optics [are] all different,” says Vitor Manfrinato, an RLE graduate student and first author on the new paper. “So the systems are much more complicated … [and] the light source is very inefficient.”
Dropping the mask
Visible-light, ultraviolet and e-beam lithography all use the same general approach. The materials that compose a chip are deposited in layers. Every time a new layer is laid down, it’s covered with a material called a resist. Much like a piece of photographic paper, the resist is exposed — to either light or a beam of electrons — in a carefully prescribed pattern. The unexposed resist and the material underneath are then etched away, while the exposed resist protects the material it covers. Repeating this process gradually builds up three-dimensional structures on the chip’s surface.
The main difference between e-beam lithography and photolithography is the exposure phase. In photolithography, light shines through a patterned stencil called a mask, striking the whole surface of the chip at once. With e-beam lithography, on the other hand, a beam of electrons scans across the surface of the resist, row by row, a more time-consuming operation.
One way to improve the efficiency of e-beam lithography is to use multiple electron beams at once, but there’s still the problem of how long a beam has to remain trained on each spot on the surface of the resist. That’s the problem the MIT researchers address.
Lowering the dose
The fewer electrons it takes to expose a spot on the resist, the faster the e-beam can move. But lowering the electron count means lowering the energy of the beam, and low-energy electrons tend to “scatter” more than high-energy electrons as they pass through the resist, spreading farther apart the deeper they go. To reduce scattering, e-beam systems generally use high-energy beams, but that requires resists tailored to larger doses of electrons.
Manfrinato, a member of RLE’s Quantum Nanostructures and Nanofabrication Group, and group leader Karl Berggren, the Emanuel E. Landsman (1958) Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science — together with professor of electrical engineering Henry Smith, graduate students Lin Lee Cheong and Donald Winston, and visiting student Huigao Duan, all of RLE — used two tricks to improve the resolution of high-speed e-beam lithography. The first was to use a thinner resist layer, to minimize electron scattering. The second was to use a solution containing ordinary table salt to “develop” the resist, hardening the regions that received slightly more electrons but not those that received slightly less.
Pieter Kruit, a professor of physics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and co-founder of Mapper, a company that has built lithographic systems with 110 parallel e-beams, says that in addition to being faster, e-beam systems that deliver smaller doses of electrons are much easier to build. The larger the dose of electrons, the more energy the system consumes, and the more insulation it requires between electrodes. “That takes so much space that it’s impossible to build an instrument,” Kruit says.
Kruit doubts manufacturers will use exactly the resist that the MIT researchers did in their experiments. Although the researchers’ goal was to find a resist that would respond to small doses of electrons, the one that they settled on is actually “a little bit too sensitive,” Kruit says: The amount of electricity that an electrode delivers to a chip surface will vary slightly, he explains, and if the resist is too sensitive to those variations, the width of the chip features will vary, too. “But that is a matter of modifying the resist slightly, and that’s what resist companies do all the time,” he adds.Cyclist Chris Lloyd says he was just trying to help other commuters when Montreal police issued him a $651 ticket for obstructing a peace officer yesterday morning.
After riding through a red light at the intersection of Duluth Avenue and Saint-Hubert Street, Lloyd received a $40 ticket from police monitoring cyclists during rush hour that morning.
"After I received a ticket, I realized I had some time; that I was early for work. So I thought I would spend a few minutes at the stop, at the red light, warning cyclists to not go through the red light," says Lloyd.
Lloyd said he was just trying to help fellow cyclists. But police didn't see it the same way and gave him a ticket for obstructing a peace officer.
"I think just warning people, even if I was saying, 'There are police just on the other side of the lights,' it's not interfering with their work because their work, the goal of their work, is not just giving tickets," says Lloyd.
Montreal police said they do not comment on individual cases.
Criminal defence lawyer David Sutton told CBC's Daybreak the incident doesn't seem to fit the common application of the law prohibiting the obstruction of police work.
"I think the police have come up with a very generous interpretation of the notion of obstruction under any piece of legislation," he says.
"If a person were to alert a member [or] members of the public to a covert police operation and show how it interferes with that operation, that would be obstruction. This good person was really just encouraging other cyclists to obey the law."
Though Lloyd says he will not contest the ticket for running the red light, he will fight the charge that he obstructed police.
Listen to caller reactions on CBC's Radio Noon MontrealRome — Pope Francis has issued a public correction to an article by Cardinal Robert Sarah about the changes the pontiff made last month to how the Catholic Church's liturgies are to be translated from the original Latin into local languages.
In the correction, which takes the form of a letter to Sarah but the pope asks to be posted at the same websites where the cardinal's article first appeared, Francis makes clear the Vatican is no longer to undertake a "detailed word-by-word exam" of translations they receive from the world's local bishops' conferences.
Francis says the new motu proprio Magnum Principium ("The Great Principle"), released Sept. 9, "grants the episcopal conferences the faculty to judge the worth and coherence of one or another phrase in the translations from the original."
"The process of translating relevant liturgical texts into a language... must not bring a spirit of 'imposition' over the episcopal conferences with a translation handed down from the Dicastery, as that would betray the right of bishops as set forth in canon law," the pope tells the cardinal.
Sarah is the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, which traditionally has had authority over liturgical translations.
Francis' correction, sent out by the Vatican press office Oct. 22, is a response to an article by Sarah that appeared in the Oct. 14 edition of the French magazine L’Homme Nouveau and was then posted in Italian on several other websites.A wide field of 21 candidates is narrowing to two in a mayoral race whose winner will navigate Seattle through its rapid, tech industry-driven transformation.
Former U.S. attorney Jenny Durkan had a wide lead in the Seattle mayoral primary with 32 percent of the vote when another round of results was released at 4 p.m. Wednesday. Urban planner Cary Moon is still in second place with 16 percent followed by lawyer Nikkita Oliver, who has 14 percent. Whoever wins will be the first woman mayor in Seattle since 1926.
About 59 percent of the ballots that were expected to be returned have been counted and the next round of results will be posted Thursday at 4:30 p.m. In other words, Durkan’s challenger is yet to be determined.
After her first place position came into focus based on early results, GeekWire caught up with Durkan on Wednesday to discuss issues that matter most to the tech industry. We asked how Seattle can avoid some of the problems San Francisco is grappling with due to the rapid growth of its tech industry.
“Seattle can learn from those lessons,” Durkan said of issues in San Francisco, adding that she supports a property tax break for landlords who provide affordable housing and higher property taxes for those who do not.
Durkan isn’t too worried about the breakneck pace at which Amazon is growing, drawing record numbers of newcomers to the region for tech jobs. She said the Seattle ecosystem is “much more diversified than we have been historically.”
“I am from here and it used to be said that if Boeing sneezed, Seattle caught a cold,” Durkan explained. “We have a risk of that because Amazon is such a presence. But if you look across the sectors, it’s not just tech. We have Starbucks. We have Costco. We have Nordstrom. We have the Fred Hutch and the whole biotech industry so I think we really have a more diversified tax base.”
Moon is not doing media interviews today but GeekWire asked all the candidates where they stand on tech issues a few weeks ago. Oliver chose not to participate in the story.
“In the past, the city has played a role in preserving and growing economic clusters, including around high-tech, aerospace, manufacturing, life sciences, high-tech startups, maritime and tourism,” Moon said last month. “That must continue. Together, we have significant opportunities to build upon our existing strengths and draw new talent and ideas to our region.”
She also stressed the importance of training young people for the high-demand jobs of the future and creating an environment where startups can thrive.
“The city can help create an operating environment in which venture capital can help reach new and diverse communities of entrepreneurs and in which those with a vision and energy can deploy solutions to common problems,” she said.
Continue reading for Durkan and Moon’s answers to our questions, drafted with help from the tech community.
Jenny Durkan
How will you improve accessibility to the city’s urban core? What infrastructure plans do you have that would support the tech and business community? “We need to encourage downtown to grow both commercially and residentially, to continue to invest in streets, transit, buses, and sidewalks, and to protect the cultural and historic characters of each neighborhood. One-tenth of residents live in downtown and the downtown job center is the largest in the state and home to thousands of businesses of all sizes. Our region thrives – when our civic center is vital.
Accessibility downtown rests on a fundamental challenge of Seattle’s recent growth but also the 55,000 jobs expected downtown in the next 20 years. We will need to improve and expand options for people to walk and bike, use transit, and take advantage of car sharing and expanded ride-hailing services and prepare ourselves for future innovations – like driverless cars. We also need to expand telecommuting options.
We are not going to get any more roads – so we need to ask: ‘what is the most effective way to move people and goods to and through downtown?’ Making transit more reliable and frequent is critical – both for transportation and our climate goals. Having Sound Transit services up and running as quickly as possible is fundamental. Using ‘smart’ technology — like digital ‘real-time’ information for transit users, delivery and freight trucks and ride-sharing — will help drivers and riders make better choices.
I look forward to learning more about the recommendations out of the One City One Center City, the joint planning effort between SDOT, King County Metro, Sound Transit and the downtown business community. The recommendations will be for a medium-term (10-year) and long-term (20-year) plan for the downtown transportation system. Although there are a lot investments coming on line (e.g. Center City Connector Streetcar, waterfront Tunnel, ST3, etc.) there will need to be additional investments to keep the center city moving.
We need to maintain our busiest streets, encourage businesses to improve employee access to transit passes, bike and car share memberships, and complete the rapid rise plus system. SDOT should first focus on reducing bottlenecks in key locations, optimize traffic signals and pedestrian flow (so, for example, more than one car can get through a light), and work collaboratively with other agencies to accelerate improvements.
But we need immediate relief, as traffic is only going to get worse. There are other changes we could implement quickly including:
1. Make 3rd Ave transit spine more efficient, safer and more attractive to transit riders.
a. All transit riders on 3rd Ave should pay their fare before they get on the bus.
b. Treat 3rd Ave like the transit tunnel and create fare-paid areas that are monitored by security to make it safer for waiting for the bus and address the chronic public safety issues along the corridor.
c. Improve the look and feel of the street, through better amenities and by activating the blocks like we have some parks (e.g., Westlake and Occidental).
d. Have dynamic bus bay real-time signage so riders know where exactly to expect their bus and can queue accordingly.
2. Move buses off 4th and 2nd in downtown that are being replaced by other transit.
a. New Husky Stadium light rail station should be used as a reliable and fast transfer point. We also need to explore more ways to deliver people to this hub.
b. Buses from the south and Bellevue to the east can transfer at light rail stations.
3. Work closely with WSDOT on mitigation to provide additional signage, funds for more bus service, traffic management and control.
4. Increase driver and rider awareness of traffic impact and construction to encourage different travel patterns (modes) and options for times.
5. Encourage telecommuting, and support additional carpooling, biking and transit use particularly during difficult projects/traffic events.
6. Continue to find new ways of increasing downtown buses’ speed and reliability through improved traffic signals and targeting key bottlenecks with transit-only lanes.
a. Consider increasing on-demand micro-transit (shuttle vans) to quickly and easily fill the gaps in our bus and light rail networks,
b. Possibly use micro-transit, shuttles or others to provide much needed first and last mile connections to RapidRide corridors and light rail.”
Do you believe a mayor can be pro-business and pro-social justice? What guiding principles will you use when deciding whether to create more burden and expense for businesses in order to make Seattle a more just and equitable city? “A mayor must be pro-business and pro-social justice. Economic empowerment is critical to any social justice agenda. Right now too many people are being left behind, and are being locked out or displaced from our city. We should be proud of our economic dynamism. But it must be intentionally inclusive. Our prosperity must be shared prosperity. I have spent decades working for social justice in this city and will continue to do so as mayor.
A mayor must be pro-business and pro-social justice. Economic empowerment is critical to any social justice agenda.
We are facing tough challenges — housing affordability, homelessness, and transportation. But we also are presented with tremendous opportunity. We can solve the problems, and seize the opportunities if we join together as a community. If we are to build the just, equitable and dynamic Seattle of the future, we need all hands on deck.
I’m proud that we’re the only campaign that is unifying our city with a coalition that includes labor unions such as SEIU and firefighters, environmental leaders, and the business community. If we’re going to address the challenges of homelessness, housing, and transportation, we will need all hands-on-deck and bring people together to get things done for our city.”
What will you do to drive innovation in our region? When and how should the mayor protect incumbent industries that provide jobs, versus paving the way for new models and technologies that will result in a loss of jobs? “Seattle is the city that innovates and invents the future. We must foster a climate here that both nurtures the vibrant economic base we have and fosters the businesses of the future.
A healthy business climate can be measured by standard indicators – unemployment rates, job growth, business starts, tax revenue, reduced inequality, and more. But a healthy business climate also means a civically engaged business community. Seattle is the land of innovation, where amazing global companies are launched and headquartered. It is also the home to many smaller, critical businesses that often provide the backbone of so many neighborhood gathering spots. I will engage our local businesses – large and small – to build a healthy business climate in our city.
We as a region need to be better at ‘growing’ the workforce and talent for our economy. The city needs to partner with the Seattle Public schools and with businesses to increase opportunities for students to be trained for and have apprenticeships in the strong family wage jobs of the new economy. Such programs should build synergies between community, schools, and business – so we are not only preparing students for the new economy – we are shaping it. From building the new towers, to running and working for the companies that fill them – we have to do a better job of developing the talent here.
Schools are critical to this. Because the city does not oversee the K-12 or post-secondary systems, its role is mainly to help facilitate discussion, engage the tech community and other employers, coordinate with the educational systems, work with private philanthropy and others who are collectively focused on improving the pipelines for talent and pathways for opportunity. We should explore opportunities to build partnerships between the public and private sectors around programs like apprenticeships – to support historically disadvantaged communities entering the workforce.
In addition, the city can help create an operating environment in which venture capital can help reach to new and diverse communities of entrepreneurs and in which those with a vision and energy can deploy solutions to common problems.
“The city can help create an operating environment in which venture capital can help reach to new and diverse communities of entrepreneurs and in which those with a vision and energy can deploy solutions to common problems.”
Ensuring our city has clear rules and regulations for business to follow is key to allowing businesses and key industries to have predictability. In the past, the city has played a role in preserving and growing economic clusters, including around high-tech, aerospace, manufacturing, life sciences, high-tech startups, maritime and tourism. That must continue. Together, we have significant opportunities to build upon our existing strengths and draw new talent and ideas to our region.
A mayor’s role is to both support existing industries that create jobs while also encouraging new economic growth and emerging industries. For example, Seattle can support both a thriving maritime and industrial community as well as technology and biotech industries. Our plans for growth — through zoning and transportation planning — must recognize both.”
What can you do to prepare Seattleites for the jobs of the future and prevent people from being left behind? What will you do to attract foreign investment? “Encouraging innovation while supporting traditional employment structures at the same time is complicated, but it is a challenge that our city has and must continue to step up to. We need to create an environment where organized labor, immigrant communities, social service organizations, employers, educators, and families can work on these nuanced issues. We need to approach these changes as we have so many others in our past: with a commitment to our progressive values, with creativity and ingenuity and with a firm belief that anything is possible in Seattle. I am committed to working together to explore, design and implement pilot programs for new forms of worker power and support here in Seattle.
We must [create] a place that encourages experimentation in new modes of working together while ensuring everyone has access to quality and affordable health care, sick time to take care of themselves and their loved ones, quality time to spend with a newborn or adopted child and an opportunity to save for a retirement with dignity.
Regardless of how any worker earns their income, their work has value beyond their paycheck and the benefits that allow that worker to live healthy, secure, and productive lives should be available. Seattle will remain a place that encourages innovations in this area, while remaining true to our values as a community.
We must also have affordable housing, strong infrastructure (roads, transit, broadband), a strong education system (K-12, higher education, apprenticeship programs, career training), smart land-use and taxation policies, and a laser-like focus on the basics necessary for a well-run and highly-functioning city.
As mayor, I will work with key state and regional elected, business and academic leaders to attract new investments in our region — both foreign and domestic — especially in the areas of technology, biotech, and manufacturing. As one of the most trade dependent areas in the nation and our geographic location make us an attractive place for direct foreign investment. But we must actively work to attract this investment in ways that help our local economy and our workers.”
Do you support municipal broadband? If so, how would you implement publicly-owned internet, which has been talked about and studied for years without real action? “I support the concept but have concerns about the cost of this, especially as it relates to other priorities such as homelessness and affordable housing.”
If you were a tech CEO, which one would you be? Why? “Trish Millines Dziko, co-founder and ‘head’ of the Technology Access Foundation.
She is wicked smart, deeply committed to ensuring equitable access to the tech future, and has figured out the ‘secret sauce’ on how to do it. She could have stayed at Microsoft or done any type of startup. But she saw 20 years ago how critical it was to improve access to STEM and technology fields for students of color and underrepresented communities. We need to infuse this ethos into our approach.
I am also a believer in Bill Gates quote, ‘Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.’ I think this is important. To make progress we must try new things, find new ways of doing things and we cannot be afraid to fail.”
Cary Moon
How will you improve accessibility to the city’s urban core? What infrastructure plans do you have that would support the tech and business community? “I am the only candidate in this race with experience working in the private sector and with Seattle city government to find solutions to our city’s problems. As mayor, my top three priorities would be:
1. Tackle the affordable housing crisis with bold solutions. First, we need to expand affordable housing from roughly six percent of Seattle’s housing supply toward a goal of four times that. I would pursue new progressive taxes to fund affordable housing, perhaps using our bonding capacity to speed delivery; work with Olympia to increase the housing trust fund; encourage more philanthropists to contribute to non-profit housing providers and community land trusts; and aggressively pursue using surplus public land for non-profit housing. Second, we also need to adjust the land use code and the permitting/SEPA/entitlement process to facilitate viable housing options for working people in the ‘missing middle’ like duplexes, row houses, ADUs, congregate housing, and co-ops. Too much of our land is zoned for single family homes, blocking new housing we need. Finally, we need to understand how speculation in our housing market is escalating housing prices and implement target taxes to deter this activity.
2. Invest in transit to match growth: Our transit system must keep up with our population growth. Regional and local jurisdictions need the authority to decide how to allocate investments by mode. When gas tax money is siloed for highways, and transit must be funded with only local limited sources, it starves Seattle of the transit funding we need. Cities must be empowered to determine most efficient and cost effective investments according to local goals and conditions. When transit is fast, reliable, and convenient, people will use it. We also need to shift the culture of SDOT more quickly toward pedestrian safety, expanding bike facilities, transit reliability and convenience, and ensuring we have adequate drop-off and delivery zones throughout commercial areas. And we need to speed up delivery of Sound Transit 3 by optimizing design and planning process, and using our bonding capacity to help fund Seattle projects sooner.
“The mayor must work with employers across all industries to set the vision and then lead the action agenda to guide our thriving economy so that it creates broad prosperity and access to opportunity for everyone.”
3. Establish a 21st century economic development strategy: A robust and diverse business base, with employers across several industries and businesses of all sizes, is essential to the economic well-being and resilience of a city. The mayor must work with employers across all industries to set the vision and then lead the action agenda to guide our thriving economy so that it creates broad prosperity and access to opportunity for everyone. Let’s build a proactive strategic plan: where we’re headed, how we can ensure the prosperity our businesses create recirculates back into the community, how infrastructure and housing can grow in parallel, and how can we improve access to family wage jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities so that our city moves closer to racial and social equity.”
Do you believe a mayor can be pro-business and pro-social justice? What guiding principles will you use when deciding whether to create more burden and expense for businesses in order to make Seattle a more just and equitable city? “Yes. Seattle must stand for racial equity and the liberation of all people. Our city must step up its accountability to communities of color and disenfranchised communities, including transgender and gender diverse people, to build an inclusive and just city that reflects our progressive values. At the same time, we must nurture, expand and sustain our locally owned small businesses. Our city is fortunate to have such a strong base of employers and innovators in our city. The challenge for us is not to attract jobs or more outside investment, but to make sure the wealth we are generating is reinvested locally, building strong base of locally owned community-based businesses, and to make sure we are providing access to the abundance of good tech jobs for our young people with training and education.
I believe that business can be a good partner for a better city in several ways:
Participate in crafting an economic development strategy for Seattle in the 21st century. We need to envision, together, how can we expand family wage jobs, increase access to entrepreneurship for low-income communities, keep a stable and diverse base across many sectors, and support small and local community-based businesses as we grow. This strategy must be proactive, constructive, and forward thinking, and bold about facing the challenges of inequitable growth. How can we establish leadership via innovation in clean energy and climate solution technologies? How can Seattle reclaim and protect leadership in producing and making things, because these activities are where wealth is generated? How can we look with a racial and socioeconomic equity lens at who has access to tech jobs and entrepreneurship, and what do we need to change so communities of color can also benefit?
Help plan urban growth. The tech industry must be at the table planning for future growth to ensure we are expanding |
Best Craft Blog at the 2015 BIB awards… click below on the picture to vote. Scroll to section 12 on the form and select us. Thank you!
~ Laura xx ~
Like this: Like Loading...The Israel lobby is entering the realm of American mainstream media fact. Note the crucial political influence ascribed to the lobby in Anna Palmer’s report at Politico saying the lobby has been silent on a Syrian intervention, and that’s a problem for Obama as he jawbones for action:
As President Barack Obama moves closer to calling for military action against Syria, a powerful ally that could help him win over skeptics is staying quiet. The Israel lobby, including the high-profile American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish groups, isn’t pushing for intervention even as evidence emerged this week that the Assad regime used chemical weapons against its citizens. The silence could be a problem for Obama, since the Jewish groups are connected across the political spectrum, wielding influence from the far right to liberal Democrats on issues critical to the Middle East — especially when it comes to the use of military force.
I’ve always said here that the Israel lobby transcends political party and that it played a crucial role in the disastrous American decision to invade Iraq. Pretty much what Walt and Mearsheimer said too, and were tarred as anti-Semites for doing so. Well now Politico has endorsed both political principles.
As Ali Gharib noted, when he tweeted the piece:
Some of the things pro-Israel activists say on here can get you called an anti-Semite by pro-Israel activists
Palmer points out the broad Jewish organizational endorsement of the Iraq war (even as US Jews opposed the war in political polling). Jewish groups felt blamed for that one, she writes.
Behind the scenes, several veteran pro-Israel lobbyists also said they don’t want a repeat of the Iraq War, when the vast majority of groups and Jewish leaders supported taking out Saddam Hussein. Afterward, many felt they were left with the blame when the war became deeply unpopular with the American public… “They don’t want this to be seen as a Jewish or an Israel war,” said one veteran pro-Israel activist.
Yes, the neocons even felt persecuted because they’d pushed the war. They didn’t want to be held accountable.
Note that in the Politico story, the Jewish orgs defer to Israel, as if they are foreign agents. Former Israeli diplomat Dan Arbel is quoted, then AIPAC is characterized:
[Arbel] “Israel is also cautious about this… realizing that Israel itself cannot intervene. I think the Jewish organizations are looking at also the Israeli position.” There are multiple reasons AIPAC might not feel the need to take a more public posture — it appears the Obama administration is going to move in the direction they would like and they are also looking to Israel for leadership.
Gharib notes that the ADL has called for a strike on Syria. Abe Foxman:John Boehner's debt "reduction" "plan" gets a vote today, with Republicans apparently whipped into fervor by this scene from a movie that was out last year. Sorry, all I've got is faith. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your Rep to oppose the Boehner plan. So does the People's Email Network. So does the AFSCME. So does Color of Change. Our "leaders" from the President on down stand far to the right of their bosses, the American people. The people want the rich to pay more in taxes; Congress does not. The President supposedly does, but also seems awfully quick to give that point up in negotiations. It's almost like that's the idea.
Meanwhile, our leaders are busy setting fires elsewhere. Currently, whistleblowers in the financial services industry must report the lawbreaking they see to the SEC. But H.R. 2483, from Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), would force those whistleblowers to report that lawbreaking to their bosses first. You can see the problem with that, right? It would give their bosses the opportunity to cover up what's going on. The bill even lets employers write their policies so that when they retaliate against a whistleblower, the law won't call it "retaliation," even if it obviously is. It's sad that so many "tough on crime" law-and-order types look the other way when Republicans let corporations nullify laws that protect good citizens. And, ah, guess how much money Mr. Grimm got from the financial sector for his 2010 campaign? $330,000! See a connection there? Demand Progress helps you tell your Rep to oppose H.R. 2483.
In other news, you've probably heard about the phone-hacking scandal in the U.K., where News International (a subsidiary of the News Corporation) allegedly allowed employees to hack into cell phones and bribe police officers, in the name of getting scoops. And, as you might expect, News Corporation's domestic organs, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, have opined that there's nothing to see here in the U.S., though families of 9.11 victims are as we speak meeting with the U.S. Attorney General to discuss similar phone-hacking allegations. Perhaps some folks who watch Bill O'Reilly don't realize that he's an employee of the organization he's telling us has done nothing wrong -- or maybe so many corporations own so many other corporations now that folks have become numb to the obvious conflicts of interest. But we have laws for a reason; one of them, sadly, is to remind us of how we ought to be when we've strayed from the path of righteousness. Free Press helps you tell Congress to investigate the News Corporation.
Finally, I have good news related to Tuesday's opening paragraph: Raquel Nelson, who faced three years in jail for vehicular homicide, a homicide committed against her 3-year-old son by a different and inebriated driver who only served six months for the crime, did not go to jail and will get a new trial. Even if I could be convinced that Ms. Nelson "caused" her son to die -- which, in case I wasn't clear enough the other day, she didn't -- I would not throw her in jail for something someone else did. The perp in this account isn't the mom, it's the guy who never should have taken painkillers with his booze before getting on the road. Am I getting my point across? Are we so addled with rage that we decide that anyone peripherally-related to any injustice must be vanquished? Perhaps not: “When I was upset about what [Guy] got," Ms. Nelson's brother said, "I was angry, and my sister told me not to have hate in my heart." They're better people than I am.Guests: Guy Branum Guy Branum Guests: Wynter Mitchell Wynter Mitchell Guests: Margaret Wappler Margaret Wappler Guests: Karen Tongson Karen Tongson Guests: Abby Stern Abby Stern
This week, we have the gang back together plus celebrity journalist and novelist Abby Stern to talk the evolution and the current disintegration of celebrity journalism. We get a historical outline of celebrity journalism, from Hedda Hopper and Louis B. Mayer to TMZ and Instagram influencers. The gang explores the symbiotic relationship between celebrities and the press, and how that has evolved over time. We find out where each of our panelists' "do not report" line is when covering celebrities, and which era they think is best for celebrity journalism. We get a postmortem from Wynter regarding Phaedra's dramatic exit from Real Housewives of Atlanta and Margaret tells us about the jealousy she feels towards the French people after their latest election. Karen tells us about why she loves May sweeps and Guy gives us a reason to stop being mad at Susan Sarandon.
Abby's brand new book According To A Source, which will be released May 23rd, can be pre-ordered now!
With Guy Branum, Karen Tongson, Margaret Wappler, Wynter Mitchell, and Abby Stern.
Each week we’ll add everyone’s jams to this handy Spotify playlist.
You can let us know what you think of Pop Rocket and suggest topics in our Facebook group or via @PopRocket on Twitter.
Other Links:
Phaedra's Fall From Grace
Guardian article on the French media not reporting on the Macron leaks
Produced by Christian Dueñas and Kara Hart for MaximumFun.orgNEW ORLEANS - A federal judge has upheld Louisiana's ban on same-sex marriages, as well as the state's refusal to recognize gay marriages legally performed in other states.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman's ruling Wednesday broke a string of 20-plus court wins for supporters of same-sex marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act last year. Feldman said gay marriage supporters failed to prove that the ban violates equal protection or due process provisions of the Constitution.
Feldman agreed with state attorneys who argued that states have the right to define marriage.
A spokesman for a gay rights group said an appeal is planned.
The Supreme Court is under increasing pressure to make a definitive, nationwide ruling on same-sex marriages.
So far, the high court has given little indication of when it will eventually take up the fundamental question of whether same-sex couples have a right to marry, or how it would rule on the matter. However, there's been a flurry of activity in the lower courts on the matter, bringing the issue closer to the Supreme Court.More than half of young drivers are failing the new driver-licence tests two years after they were introduced.
However, NZ Transport Agency believes the new tests are making the roads safer.
The agency changed the practical restricted and full-licence tests on February 27, 2012.
Figures released under the Official Information Act show that before the test was changed, pass rates for both tests were about 75 per cent.
Two years on, the pass rate is 43 per cent for restricted tests and 58 for the full licence.
Agency spokeswoman Kate Styles said the tests were achieving the agency's aim of safer drivers, and that pass rates were gradually improving.
"This indicates that applicants are putting in more preparation and practice to prepare for the test," she said.
With the changes, the restricted licence test was lengthened to 60 minutes, including 45 minutes of driving.
It was also split into two stages.
The first, in a lower speed zone, measures the driver's basic skills.
The second is more complicated.
Drivers who do not pass the first stage are not able to continue.
The full-licence testing time was reduced to 30 minutes, including 20 minutes of driving time.
The driver needs to independently drive around a short route, identifying hazards along the way.
The tests were developed using the Australian VicRoads driving test and adapted to New Zealand conditions.
HOW NOT TO FAIL A DRIVING TEST
NZ Transport Agency provides guides for both practical tests. It sets out the dos and don'ts of getting a licence, including immediate failure errors and critical errors that can lead to failure.
Immediate failure errors:
-Failing to follow instructions
-Testing officer intervention
-Collision (including with the kerb or a roundabout)
-Failing to give way
-Speeding
-Dangerous driving.
Critical errors:
-Driving 10kmh over or under the speed limit
-Failing to signal
-Stalling
-Blocking a pedestrian crossing
-Failing to look.Disney is looking for an intern who can help develop counter threat plans and ward off terrorist and cyberattacks.
To help the House of Mouse’s DIS, -0.08% intelligence and counterterrorism team, the intern must be proficient with Microsoft Office MSFT, +0.69% products and make “effective use of the open source and the Internet resources,” according to the job posting.
The corporate intern would join Disney’s team that “provides strategic intelligence, threat assessments, vulnerability mitigation strategies and in-depth analytical products covering existing and developing threats that include counter terrorism, physical threats, cyberattacks and all reputation risks to The Walt Disney Company,” the posting says.
It’s no surprise that Disney is concerned about physical security, given that tens of millions of people visit its parks every year. And the film and entertainment arm of the company can’t be complacent; witness the fallout from fellow media company Sony Pictures Entertainment’s SNE, -0.56% hack last year. Disney may need that extra set of intern hands to up its cyber game.
Disney did not immediately reply to a request for comment.Border enforcement raids have become a regular fixture in Britain, so yesterday activists took matters into their own hands to halt the racist round-ups.
Border enforcement raids have become a regular fixture in Britain, taking to your bike to provide an alternative escort is just one effective way of protecting our communities.
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Instead of powerlessly scrolling through their depressing political newsfeeds, a group of Londoners got on their bikes yesterday in a formation of solidarity and everyday activism.
Encircling an immigration enforcement vehicle on its way to carry out a raid, the cyclists carried a banner emblazoned with the message “STOP RACIST VANS” through the capital. The convoy aimed to raise awareness of the existence of these vans, and to disrupt the daily missions to round people up and detain them indefinitely. And it’s about time too.
Immigration enforcement officials work by attempting to infiltrate neighbourhoods, trying to force their way into homes and businesses. Calling attention to raids in such a way as to remind officers that fear mongering will not be tolerated is a way to provide resistance peacefully and simply.
The rise of Western right-wing sensibility can leave many feeling helpless, as people seem to be becoming more and more out of touch with each other. Reading about incidents of xenophobia and hate related assaults brings a wincing despair. Currently in the UK, the upcoming general election is covered in the press as bickering about leadership, and it’s easy to lose sight of how ordinary individuals fit into that narrative. But there’s no need to throw up your hands.
Knowing what to look for and being aware of your surroundings is the first step in affecting immigration raids. Not so much Theresa May’s controversial “Go home” vans of 2013 – instead, watch out for vans marked “immigration enforcement”, or unmarked vans accompanied by police cars.
Officers work in groups, sometimes with plain-clothes police, and while UKBA numbers should be displayed on their shoulders, they are often covered up to avoid detection. Raids can occur at workplaces and homes, as well as spot checks at underground and bus stations, a practice that has been accused of racial profiling.
Acting when officers are attempting a raid is the most critical time to intervene, as it is much easier to prevent immigration detention than it is to support detainees once imprisoned, or contest for their release in court. Activist groups like the Anti Raids Network collate information when raids are kicking off, and they’ll spread the word to get boots on the ground.
If you see someone being stopped by UKBA officers, or police on immigration grounds, you can make the person immediately aware that according to their rights, they do not have to answer questions, and you can leave the scene with them. Recording the police is an effective deterrent, but ask permission to film the person being questioned if possible.
You can speak to officers directly, challenging their actions, and reminding them of the law. Without a search and arrest warrant, they are not allowed to enter a premises without the express permission given by a person for the stated purpose. Most importantly is getting the word out about what’s happening, for the community to rally behind each other. It’s a tactic that works time and time again.
When people are informed of their rights, and aware of their surroundings, it’s so easy to make a change, and step in to make a real difference. Get out there armed with information, and let’s stand together.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.Everyone knows that Twitter is horrible at fighting harassment, but the Daily Beast recently explained why, quoting anonymous former employees who blame understaffed support teams, inadequate training, and a catch-all response flowchart that doesn’t allow for common sense or individual judgment. They also revealed that reports from verified users get moved to a second, shorter work queue.
Unless you can call in a favor from a friend at Twitter, or go viral by shaming part-time CEO Jack Dorsey, verification is your best chance to get your report noticed. As of last year, anyone can apply for Twitter verification—you don’t even have to be a famously punched white supremacist. Twitter’s listed requirements include that you verify your phone number and email address, fill out your profile including your birthday, and enable two-factor login security. (You might also want to switch back from your Halloween name to your real name.) Then fill out this form. Now, instead of waiting for Twitter to ban the person who sent you death threats, you can wait for them to verify you!
The third-party social media tool Buffer offers some tips for getting verified: Keep your account active, and tweak your profile to look important and connected. In your bio, namedrop other verified accounts that you’re affiliated with. List your areas of expertise. Add specific details about yourself, both to show that you’re real, and to demonstrate what a big deal you are. It’s not pretty, but it’s a way to signal to some poor Twitter employee that if they ignore your request, it might become a scandal. (Don’t actually try to imply that. Nothing screams “I am no one” like screaming “Do you know who I am?”)
Verification comes with other perks, like moving to the top of reply threads and receiving some Twitter features early. But ironically, by singling you out as one of the “elite,” a verification badge can make you a more attractive target for harassers.
And it doesn’t necessarily mean Twitter support will take you seriously. When a Twitter harasser sent rape threats to engineer Kelly Ellis, she couldn’t get Twitter to ban or even suspend the account—even though she was verified, and even though she worked for Medium, a company founded by the creator of Twitter. Twitter didn’t ban the harasser until Ellis screencapped dozens of their harassing messages and got covered by BuzzFeed.
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So verification isn’t a foolproof method for fighting harassment. But in the hellscape of Twitter, it’s the best option you’ve got.
Want Nazis Out of Your Twitter Feed? It Helps to Be a VIP. | The Daily BeastA software industry executive who is an alumnus of UC Santa Barbara has pledged $50 million to the school for energy efficiency research and engineering programs. The gift is the largest in the history of the campus, officials said Friday.
The donation is from Jeffrey Henley, who is chairman of the board of Oracle and graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 1966, and his wife, Judy.
Of their total pledge, $30 million will help finance a new building, which will be named Henley Hall and be the home of the Institute for Energy Efficiency. The other $20 million will be paid from their estate at a later date to support the College of Engineering.
Researchers at the Institute for Energy Efficiency are working on such projects as high-efficiency fuel cells and technologies that will allow communications devices to run faster and with less heat generated.
“We hope to create new opportunities for research and discovery and to support UC Santa Barbara’s already strong commitment to preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers,” said Jeffrey Henley, who has been Oracle’s chairman since 2004 and was its chief financial officer before that, in a statement.
With the Henley gift, UC Santa Barbara has pledges and donations totaling $718 million toward a $1 billion fundraising goal, according to campus spokesman George Foulsham.
ALSO:
Kim Kardashian gets competition in Glendale'mayor' race
Taxpayers' bill for Occupy L.A. protest rises to $4.7 million
Autopsy report: Kendrec McDade shot point-blank by Pasadena police
-- Larry Gordon
Photo: Jeffrey Henley. Credit: OracleFacebook Twitter Pinterest Email
The Amazon Echo Dot is a super compact home automation device that, when connected to the internet, can give you access to all kinds of information. Just ask a question and get the answer! It can also be used to control various things inside your home as well.
Personally, I think that this is the perfect device to help introduce you to the world of home automation.
We put together the ultimate guide to the Amazon Echo Dot right here! We will look at how to set it up properly, how to do various tasks with the device as well as different tricks and tips.
Let’s jump right into it!
What Can The Echo Dot Do?
There are actually so many things that this little thing can do just by speaking to Alexa. Take a look at some of the top uses for it:
1.? — Choosing music to listen to all hands free.
2.? – Using it to tell your smart thermostat to either turn the heat up or crank up the A/C.
3.? – Tell it to add something to a shopping list in progress.
4. ⛅ – Check the weather by simply asking it.
5. ⏰ – Ask it to wake you up at a certain time with a soothing alarm.
6. ⏲ – Keep track of time with a handy timer.
7.?- Control all your smart lights in your home allowing you to turn them off, on, or dimming features.
8.? – Order a pizza!
9. Lots more that will be shown later in this guide.
How Does It Work?
It’s actually very simple. Once it is all set up, you just need to say “Alexa” or another “wake up word” you can set up in the app and the Echo Dot will come alive and begin listening to your voice. You just need to ask for whatever you need.
Features
Here are the basic features that are included:
1. Great for use in any room of your house. Additionally, if you want to have it in multiple rooms, you can simply add one in each room.
2. Built in speaker. I would recommend using another device like a good bluetooth speaker for audio playback for music but the built-in speaker is good for getting back information such as the weather, time, etc.
3. You can control a number of different music services like Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Prime Music, TuneIn and iHeartRadio.
4. It is equipped with 7 microphones and technology that gives it excellent “hearing” capabilities so that it makes sure to get all your voice commands.
5. Simple management using the Alexa mobile app.
What Is The Echo Dot’s Bluetooth Range?
The range is approximately 30 feet.
Getting Started And Initial Set Up
Getting everything all set up and running is actually very simple. Once you get everything out of the box and ready to go, follow these steps:
Get your smartphone or tablet and install the Alexa App from either the Google or Apple App store depending on your device. Plug in the device using the micro-USB and power brick that comes with it. You should see it light up. Wait a moment and you will start to hear the Echo Dot talking to you and basically stepping you through the set up procedure. It will direct you to fire up the Alexa App and run through the set up procedure. Go through all the steps for set up in the Alexa App.
Getting It Ready To Play Music And Other Audio
How To Set It Up With Streaming Music Services Apple iTunes Music
In order to set up your Echo Dot to be able to listen to music from your streaming music accounts like Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio and more. You need to do the following steps:
Step 1 – The first thing you want to have is your iTunes account on a Bluetooth device like an iPad or iPhone and make sure that the Alexa app is installed on that device.
Step 2 – Open the Alexa app and click “Settings” on the left hand side.
Step 3 – Select the Echo Dot and then click “Bluetooth” and then “Pair A New Device”.
Step 4 – Go to your Bluetooth settings on your mobile device and select your Echo Dot to connect.
Step 5 – Open your streaming music app and play a song!
Step 6 – From now on, all you need to do is tell the Echo Dot to “connect” by simply saying “Alexa, connect”.
How To Set It Up With Bluetooth Speakers
If you are looking to connect your Dot to an external speaker like a BOSE Soundtouch, BOSE Soundlink, Sonos Play 5, UE Boom or other bluetooth speakers, you just need to follow these simple steps and you will be good to go:
Step 1 – Put the speaker in close proximity to the Echo Dot.
Step 2 – Give the voice command, “Alexa, connect to a Bluetooth speaker”.
Step 3 – If the speaker in not found, you will have to go to your Alexa app on your mobile device and pair the speaker with your Echo Dot. This should only have to be done once and step 2 should work every time after this.
Whenever you are ready to disconnect from the speaker, you can simply say, “Alexa, disconnect”.
How To Set It Up With Wired Speakers And Receiver
Got a stereo receiver at home that you want to connect to, it is very easy to do. Note – this will disable the internal speaker of the Echo Dot while it is connected this way. Just follow these simple steps:
Step 1 – Get yourself an auxilary cable and connect it from your Echo dot to your stereo receiver.
Step 2 – Select the correct channel for your Echo Dot on your receiver.
Using It To Enhance Your Video Entertainment And Control Your TV
Note – For now, I have only included info on setting up the Harmony Remote for this. Info on Fire TV, Netflix, Chromecast and other TV apps will be added soon.
How To Set It Up With Harmony Remote
Controlling your TV with your Echo Dot using a Harmony Remote is a fairly easy process to set up. Take a look at these steps:
Step 1 – Get your mobile device, open the Alexa app and click the “Smart Home” link.
Step 2 – locate the section that says “Smart Home Skills” and click “Get More Smart Home Skills”.
Step 3 – Search for and enable Harmony.
Step 4 – Using your mobile device, open the Logitech Harmony app and log into your account.
Step 5 – Configure the tasks and TV stations that you want to control with your Echo Dot.
Step 6 – Click “Link Account”.
Now you can control parts of your TV watching experience with some simple voice commands!
Setting It Up For Home Automation Tasks
This device can be used for a variety of different tasks around your house. Anything from controlling your lights, thermostat, door locks and other things. Take a look below for step by step instructions on setting these types of things up.
How To Set Up Echo Dot With Philips Hue To Control Lights
Step 1 – Open the Alexa app and click “Smart Home” to detect new devices.
Step 2 – Alexa should find the Hue Bridge.
Step 3 – Once Alexa is connected to your Hue, you can say commands like “turn off light”, “turn on light”, “set light to 50%”, etc.
Philips Hue light bulbs are basically replacement bulbs that can be controlled remotely. They can also be controlled to dim, change colors and turn off and on. Once you have the Hue set up as per their instructions, you just need to do the following to be able to control it with the Echo Dot:
If you are looking to purchase Philips Hue lightbulbs and are just starting out, I would recommended their starter kit here. This gives you everything you need along with 2 bulbs to start with. If you want to control more lights, you just need to add more bulbs.
How To Set Up Echo Dot With Nest To Control Your Home’s Thermostat
Step 1 – Open the Alexa app and click “Skills”.
Step 2 – Search skills for Nest.
Step 3 – Click “Enable” to start setting it up. You will be redirect to Nest where you need to log in with your login information from when you set up your Nest. You should then see that Alexa now has Nest installed.
Step 4 – In your Alexa app, click “Smart Home” and “Discover Devices”.
Step 5 – Once step 4 completes, click “Create Group” and give it a name (for example, “Living Room”).
Step 6 – You can now use voice commands like “Alexa, tell Nest to turn temperature up” or “”Alexa, tell Nest to turn temperature down” or “Alexa, tell Nest to set temperature to 70 degrees”.
How To Set Up Echo Dot With Smartthings
Nest is an awesome little smart thermostat that can be controlled from just about anywhere. However, when combined with the Echo Dot, it basically takes it to the next level. Being able to vocally tell your thermostat to set a specific temperature. It is an easy setup once you have the Nest installed in your home:
Step 1 – In the menu, click “Smart Home” and scroll down to the Skills section.
Step 2 – Click “Get More Smart Home Skills”
Step 3 – Search for “Smartthings” and then click “Enable”. You will be required to log in with your Smartthings log in information to verify the connection.
Step 4 – Ensure that the “All Routines” checkbozes are on and then click “Authorize”.
Step 5 – Once step 4 completes, click “Discover Devices” to connect.
Step 6 – You can now use voice commands to control any of the devices that you have set up inside of Smartthings.
Samsung Smartthings will give you the ability to control a number of things around your house automatically – turn on and off lights, set up water leak sensors, door and window sensors, control door locks, video monitoring, etc. After you have installed Smartthings, just follow these steps to set it up with the Echo Dot:
Note – in order for this to work, you will need to have the correct devices set up. See this list for examples:
Other Super Cool Uses For This Device
For Seniors And The Elderly
Since all commands are simply spoken, once it is all set up and a quick instruction is done, it is very easy for seniors to use and get a lot of benefits from what it can do. Being able to control things around the home without getting up, monitor things around the home with devices like Smartthings, create grocery lists, etc. While, it does take some getting used to, it is a great way to help an elderly person around the house.
For The Bathroom
Setting it up in the bathroom is a great way to kind of multi-task while you are getting ready to go out or go to work. While you are getting yourself ready, you can ask it things like the outside temperature, play music, etc. It’s not a must have in the bathroom but can be a fun distraction while you are getting yourself ready to go out.
For The Car
There are a number of different reasons to want to use this in your car. If your car has an internet connection, you can get local news while driving with hands-free vocal commands or even traffic reports. You can also ask it for specific music to play. If your car has an external audio jack, you can connect it to your car’s stereo system as well. If you have it set up with a garage door device, you can tell it to open your garage when you pull up to the driveway.
Using It As An Alarm Clock
You can set an alarm for any certain time by simply asking it to set an alarm – “Alexa, set alarm for 8am tomorrow”. Imagine never missing another meeting or sleeping in in the morning. I can’t say how many times my bedside clock radio has failed me and caused me to be late for work. I think that this is an excellent way to remedy this type of problem.
Getting Local Information
At anytime, you can just ask Alexa for many different types of local information like the current temperature, traffic, local news, etc. This is perfect for people that have internet access in their cars (and new ones are starting to include this). A great way to get traffic information ahead of time and keep up to date on other local things. I love this aspect of it because it keeps me informed.
For Making A Grocery List
The Echo Dot can maintain a grocery list very easily. Are you in your kitchen and just used up the last of the milk? Just say “Alexa, add milk to the grocery list”! There are many times that I am at the grocery store, get everything I need and realize when I get home that I forgot something or forgot to write it down on my list. This way, you just say it and it’s there!
Comparisons
How Is The Sound Quality Between The Echo And The Echo Dot?
The Echo’s sound quality is much better than the Echo Dot and this is very easy to tell just by looking at them side by side. As you can see, the Echo is much taller and this is because it includes a 9.25 inch bluetooth speaker built in. The Echo Dot has a much smaller 1.6 inch speaker. Both sound quite good but the Echo has the better sound quality.
What Are The Differences Between The Echo Dot and The Echo Dot 2.0?
The 2nd generation Echo Dot included a number of small improvements over the first version. These included:
An updated speaker grill.
No more rotary volume dial – volume controlled by voice.
Glossier finish.
An updated speech recognition processor for improved voice recognition.
Echo Spatial Perception (ESP) – this allows you to have multiple Echo’s in your home and only speak to one at a time.
Reduced price.
Available in both black and white.
Purchase Guide
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FavoriteAs the publication of the anole genome approaches, one might ask: “Just how was Anolis carolinensis selected to be the first non-avian reptile to have its genome sequenced?” Turns out that it’s a long and convoluted story, and this is one man’s first-hand account.
To set the stage, we have to go back to the early days of genome sequencing, all the way back to 2005. This was a time when to sequence a genome was a really big, time-consuming, extremely expensive affair (the human genome had cost ca. $2 billion; by 2005, the price had dropped to ca. $20 million per genome). Such a big deal, in fact, that there was an NIH committee that decided which species would be sequenced, and assigned them to one of the three genome sequencing centers (Baylor University, Washington University in Saint Louis and the Broad Institute in Cambridge) that had been created as part of the human genome sequencing initiative. The first few species selected were chosen exclusively with regard to their potential relevance to human health. They were the laboratory model systems, the workhorses of biomedical research, such as the mouse, chimp, Xenopus, chicken, Drosophila and C. elegans.
By 2005, a couple of mammals had been sequenced and representatives of all classes of vertebrates except one: reptiles. The NIH committee was not particularly evolutionary in its thinking, but by that time, it recognized that there was a hole in their coverage and that a reptile should be sequenced to fill that phylogenetic lacuna. But, which reptile? There were no reptilian biomedical models. Moreover, the committee did not decide on its own which species to sequence. Rather, it worked by evaluating proposals—usually in the form of “white papers”—submitted from the broader scientific community. In particular, it looked to the “scientific community” (whatever that is) to come to consensus on which species should be a priority for sequencing.
At this point, a scientist at the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center got the idea of convening a group of experts—“the herpetological community”— to decide which reptile to propose to NIH. This idea was driven primarily by a love of reptiles, but also for strategic reasons: the genome sequencing pie was shrinking and the genome centers were fighting for the ever smaller slices. By hosting this group and being involved in the resulting white paper, the Wash. U. workers hoped to get the work assigned their way.
And so it was that in April, 2005, an eclectic group of herpetologists, genomicists, and bioinformaticians gathered in Saint Louis to debate, discuss, and ultimately pick a reptile to propose for sequencing. Now, not to be critical, but I suspect that most herpetologists would guffaw at the suggestion that this group was representative of the “herpetological community.”
A WU colleague and I, chosen because we were local, went to the meeting prepared to push for an anole. This was, we felt, a reasonable choice—more research of all sorts (behavior, morphology, ecology, parasitology, etc.) has been done on anoles than any other group of reptiles, and in the 50’s and 60’s, A. carolinensis was “the lizard” in broad scale comparative studies of physiology. Nonetheless, we felt that we were distinct underdogs. A number of others at the meeting were involved in genomics projects (e.g., development of BAC libraries, etc.) on the American alligator. Given that no substantial genomic work had been done on anoles, or any other reptile for that matter, this seemed to give the alligator a leg up, as good a reason as any to choose that species to move forward, especially since 3-4 people of the dozen or so at the meeting were involved in the effort.
Our approach was simple. When our turn for a 10-minute presentation came around, we pointed out that reptile phylogeny was split into two main groups, the lepidosaurs, represented today by lizards, snakes, and the tuatara; and archosaurs, represented by crocodilians and birds (not counting turtles, whose phylogenetic placement is uncertain and whose bizarre morphology made them, we suggested, a less desirable choice for the first reptile to sequence). We then pointed out that members of the archosaur line had already been sequenced (the chicken, with another bird in the works), whereas the diapsid line had been woefully ignored. Rectify that omission, we argued; sequence the anole!
To our amazement, Team Alligator capitulated, agreeing that our rationale was correct. We had won! It was clear that the committee was going to vote to move forward with an anole genome proposal. At that point, we were at the stage of a meeting that you all probably have experienced at some time. We’re sitting around the table, the conversation winding down, everyone knowing where we’re headed, and it’s just a matter of time before someone takes the initiative and declares, “Then, it’s the anole!” and everyone agrees and we all go home. I felt that I shouldn’t be the one to say this, given my vested interest in the outcome. Rather, wait for one of the non-partisans (some committee members had come to |
-8 foot (2 to 2.5 metre) waves at one of the most powerful beaches in Brazil. The first heat hit the water at 10am marking the start of Event 2 of the APB World Tour and the beginning of the South American leg.
The early rounds were full of Brazilians including Israel Salas, current Brazilian champion, and locals Dudu Pedra, João Zik and Lucas Faria and ensured a packed beach to witness some of the world’s best body boarders in some of the world’s best waves.
Round 1 was walked through after the large swell limited beach entries and the action started with Round 2. Lucas Faria (BRA) set the early standard in Heat 7 with a 9.0, the highest wave score of the day.
In a round dominated by local entries several internationals managed to progress including Airam Caberra (CNY), Nicolas Chiara (ARG), Emiliano Nieves (UY) and Diego Furiatti (UY).
In round 3, wildcard Dudu Pedra (BRA) used his local knowledge to advance in second place behind Israel Salas (BRA). Salas scored a 8.75 and 7.50 for 16.25 points, the highest heat total of the event so far. “Before entering the heat I was looking right at the sea and tried to also pay attention to where in the Dudu Pedra entered. He knows that wave better then anyone. I was lucky to catch two waves and I’m very focused for the rest of the event, ” he said.
John Zik (BRA) proved local knowledge is vital in the large conditions getting a deep barrel that earned him 8.50 points and a spot in round 4 facing off against fellow countryman and 6 times world champion Guilherme Tamega (BRA). “I am very happy to have gotten past and that wave. I do not want to celebrate anything yet as it has so much ahead, but I will fight to put Itacoatiara in the highest place of the podium.”
14 year old Hawaiian Tanner McDaniel made his debut appearance in Brazil with an 8.0, the fourth highest single wave of the day to win his heat reminding everyone why he is considered one of the next “Big Things” in the sport. He will face Jared Houston (ZAF) and Alan Munoz (CHI) in round 4.
Top 10 Wave Scores for Day 1
9.00 Lucas Faria (BRA) – Round 2 Heat 7
8.75 Israel Salas (BRA) – Round 3 Heat 2
8.50 Joao Zik (BRA) – Round 3 Heat 3
8.00 Tanner McDaniel (HAW) – Round 3 Heat 6
8.00 Gabriel Oliveira (BRA) – Round 2 Heat 8
7.50 Israel Salas (BRA) – Round 3 Heat 2
7.25 David Barbosa (BRA) – Round 3Heat 4
7.15 Israel Salas (BRA) – Round 2 Heat 2
7.00 Israel Salas (BRA) – Round 3 Heat 2
7.00 Israel Eduardo (BRA) – Round 3 Heat 5
On Sunday we expect to see the top 16 in the water starting with round 4. Among them current world champion Ben Player (AUS), last year’s winner Amaury Laverhne (REU), 13 times world champion Mike Stewart (HAW) and 6 times world champion Guilherme Tamega (BRA).
The latest draw is available for download here: 2014 APB Brazil Draw after Day 1
The Itacoatiara Pro will run from July 23 through August 3, 2014 and will be LIVE via apbtour.com/live
For additional APB Tour information log on to apbtour.com or facebook.com/apbtourRussian hacking to influence the election has dominated the news. But CBS News has also noticed a hacking attack that could be a future means to the U.S. Last weekend, parts of the Ukrainian capitol Kiev went dark. It appears Russia has figured out how to crash a power grid with a click.
Last December, a similar attack occurred when nearly a quarter of a million people lost power in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine when it was targeted by a suspected Russian attack.
Vasyl Pemchuk is the electric control center manager, and said that when hackers took over their computers, all his workers could do was film it with their cell phones.
“It was illogical and chaotic,” he said. “It seemed like something in a Hollywood movie.”
Vasyl Pemchuk in the control center that was hacked CBS News
The hackers sent emails with infected attachments to power company employees, stealing their login credentials and then taking control of the grid’s systems to cut the circuit breakers at nearly 60 substations.
The suspected motive for the attack is the war in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists are fighting against Ukrainian government forces.
But hackers could launch a similar attack in the U.S.
“We can’t just look at the Ukraine attack and go ‘oh we’re safe against that attack,’” said Rob Lee, a former cyberwarfare operations officer in the U.S. military, investigated the Ukraine attack.
Rob Lee CBS News
“Even if we just lose a portion, right? If we have New York City or Washington D.C. go down for a day, two days, a week, what does life look like at that point?” he said.
He said that some U.S. electric utilities have weaker security than Ukraine, and the malicious software the hackers used has already been detected in the U.S.
“It’s very concerning that these same actors using similar capabilities and tradecraft are preparing and are getting access to these business networks, getting access to portions of the power grid,” he said.
In Ukraine, they restarted the power in just hours. But an attack in the U.S. could leave people without electricity for days, or even weeks, according to experts. Because, ironically, America’s advanced, automated grid would be much harder to fix.Over time, the T-series became the brand’s main driving force and the T60, first introduced in 2006, was Lenovo’s first attempt to continue the IBM legacy. On the outside, it was almost impossible to tell that the T60 was not made by IBM but by Lenovo: together with the ThinkPad brand and the PC business, Lenovo had also acquired IBM’s entire Japan-based ThinkPad engineering and design division. Some minor design modifications aside, the T60 was very similar to the T40 and continued to sell under the IBM logo, which Lenovo had purchased the rights to for a couple of years.
But there’s more. Not only was the T60 Lenovo’s first foray into the ThinkPad T-series arena, it was also the first T-series ThinkPad featuring a dual-core processor, a 3G modem, and the now famous magnesium-alloy roll cage. The latter basically all but eliminated the T40’s flexing defect and made the base unit much more rigid and sturdy. Regarding the display, Lenovo decided against following the widescreen trend just yet and offered the T60 with either a 4:3 FlexView IPS panel (see our review of this particular model here) or an optional 16:10 widescreen panel.After seeing these beautiful statement necklaces on Bauble Bar (this & this) and Anthropologie (this), I really wanted to create one for myself. To recreate my version of these pieces, I did not bother hunting for the perfect bead at the craft store but instead used black-eyed beans since they are the sizes that I was looking for, they are super cheap and they can be transformed into any color you like! So if you want to make a fun statement necklace using beans in a few simple steps, then keep on reading!
Here’s what you will need:
This design template
Any kind of jewelry clasp
Tweezers or toothpick
Two link chains (10 inch & 6 inch)
Two small jump rings
X-acto knife and cutting board
E6000 or any clear strong glue
Leather hole puncher or a sharp needle
Spray paint or nail polish in the color you like
Black-eyed beans (I used 59 and it’s available at any grocery store)
Gold 5 mm pearl beads (I used 52 and it’s by Jewelry Essentials available at Michael’s)
8 x 6 inch clear sheet (2-3mm thick – I used the box that comes with Nair hair remover. The front plus one of the sides is the perfect size)
Before we begin with the step-by-step, print out the design template. It is a 8 x 6 inch rectangle divided in 1-inch grids. Since you can’t string the beans, we will glue the beans and pearl beads on the clear sheet & cutout the extra sheet at the end.
Place your 8 x 6 inch clear sheet exactly on top of the template so you can see where to place each bean or bead. The necklace design on the template is of the same size as the actual necklace I created and has the same number of beads/beans I used. So, make sure to print it in its original size. If you place every bead and bean according to the template, you can skip to Step 9. For details, keep on reading the steps.
You can either spray paint your beans before you start gluing them to the clear sheet or paint them with nail polish when you finish making it. I spray painted the beans with 3 coats and put them to dry for 2-3 hours.
Step 1: Start with the large flower in the center. Using tweezers or a toothpick, add glue to a pearl bead and use your template to place it at the center of the large flower. The center falls at the intersection of 4 inches ( A to B) and 2.5 inches (B to C).
Step 2: Glue four beans around the pearl bead to create the first circle and make sure that the ‘black-eyed’ part of all the beans face the pearl bead.
Step 3: Create the second circle around the four beans making sure that the ‘black-eyed’ part of one bean does not face the ‘black-eyed’ part of another bean. Then create the third circle by adding pearl beads between the second circle beans.
Step 4/5: Following at the template underneath your clear sheet, complete the right side of the large flower in the center and then move to the left side. For each flower, always begin in the middle and add the outer circles.
Step 6/7/8: Once the left and right sides are complete, continue following the template to create the part below the main large flower in the center. After gluing the complete design according to the template, let it dry for 2-3 hours.
Step 9: Once dry, place the clear sheet with the beans and pearl beads on a cutting board and trim the extra sheet around the design. Get as close to the beans and pearl beads as possible so when you wear the necklace, you don’t see the sheet. At the left and right end of the necklace, leave out the dashed area shown in the template. This will used to attach the design to the chain. Using the hole puncher, create a hole on the dot marks in the dashed area at the left and right ends of the design.
Step 10: Attach a jump ring to each of the holes. Add the 10 inch chain to the jump ring on the left and 6 inch chain to the jump ring on the right. Attach a clasp at the other end of the 6 inch chain.
If you had opted for the nail polish option instead of spray paint, carefully apply 2-3 coats of a bright nail polish to the beans. You can add a coat of clear nail polish to both spray paint and nail polish version if you want them to be shiny. Let it dry and then you have your own neon statement necklace made of black-eyed beans!
If you like this, share it & follow along on Facebook and Pinterest for more updates on the next DIY!
I am also on Bloglovin!If you happen to own a company and wish that your logo looked more like a penis, well, friend, you're in luck because there's now a website that specializes in just that.
For a mere $25, Penised.com will give ANY logo that highly sought after dick touch. The website is run by two guys who work in the tech industry, but wish to remain anonymous for obvious reasons and said they came up with the idea the way most idiotic/genius ideas are born -- by getting drunk.
"One day we were at the bar having a couple of beers and doodling some logo concepts for an app we were about to build, and we noticed a couple of sketches had rather phallic shapes to them. The more we drank, the funnier they looked, and we started joking about other logos that looked a bit dick-ish, and, boom!--the idea for Penised was born."
The site's not even been up for a month, but so far they've had over a million hits, and no lawsuits yet! So to reiterate, if for some reason you have a desire to see what the Nike logo would look like as a circumcised dong, these are your guys.
Hey, more dick-related stuff ahead...
12 Unsolicited Dick Pics That Got Shot Down Hilariously
10 Famous People That Definitely Have Weird Dicks
WTF Startup of the Day: Dicks By Mail Dot ComThe Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) has been a mainstay in software development for decades, but choosing the wrong process can have disastrous effects on the productivity of your team. You can use SDLC for anything from software to hardware to even making cars. For purposes of this article, I'll be focusing on its use for software development. There are several flavors of SDLC, so I'll cover the most common ones here to give a good overview of what will work best for your project.
Waterfall Model 🌊
This is one of the oldest and most well known examples of SDLC. It begins with a phase for requirement gathering, followed by a design phase, then an implementation phase, followed by a testing phase, and finally a deployment/support phase. It gets the name waterfall due to the way the ideas come from the business stakeholders and eventually flow through the phases to make their way down to the workers who ultimately create and support the application.
Time spent early in the software production cycle can reduce costs at later stages. For example, a problem found in the early stages (such as requirements specification) is cheaper to fix than the same bug found later on in the process (by a factor of 50 to 200). - Wikipedia
It generally has the reputation of being a reliable, albeit slow process, requiring project managers to create a communication channel between the stakeholders and the programmers & designers making the app. That being said, finding problems early on saves a tremendous amount of effort. Let's be honest, if you aren't doing some analysis before assigning tasks you're racing towards oblivion.
Kanban Method 📝
The Kanban Model is a popular choice for lean startups. It was based on systems created by Japanese car manufacturers. Kanban is far more minimal in its approach to phases compared to Waterfall, allowing teams to create their own combinations. Common phase choices include 'TODO', 'In Progress', 'QA', 'Done', and 'Blocked'.
Example usage of a Kanban Board
The Kanban Board is the main element of Kanban. Tasks can be written onto a note and a team member can be assigned the task. The visualization of Kanban helps teams foster a better understanding of the overall progress and lets managers easily get more insight into the work being done. And hey, it feels great to move your cards into the Done column! If a physical board isn't your style, there are some popular digital options out there such as Trello and Jira. 1
Scrum Model ♻️️
Scrum is a newer contender but has seen tremendous adoption as the go-to for people looking to adopt an agile software development process. It adds quite a few components over other methods in an effort to create more robust feedback loops.
Just as in Kanban, there are digital options to help keep your team organized. The most popular are Pivotal and Jira.
The Sprint 🏃
A critical component of scrum is the sprint. Sprints are time-boxed activities. Generally these are 1 to 4 week cycles. I've personally used 2 weeks sprints to some success.
Sprints usually start with the stakeholders and the project manager or scrum master meeting to discuss which items in the backlog are priority and generally how much they believe the team can safely finish within the sprint. This estimate is usually assisted with the velocity metric. Next, the team will have a sprint kickoff meeting where they meet and go over the sprint backlog. Everybody decides which issues they will tackle to establish ownership and buy-in for completing each task.
As work progresses from sprint backlog through to a completed state, daily scrum stand-ups are performed to increase communication and discover any potential issues early. Finding issues before they are a problem is the key to ensuring a successful sprint.
Scrum Standup Meetings
Standup meetings are typically done daily and early in the morning. This is the time for people to quickly mention what they completed, what they are working on, and if they are blocked on any issue. If external blockers are mentioned, the scrum master or project manager will flag it and bring it up with the proper team to find a resolution.
How do they stack up?
Waterfall
While waterfall does have its place within very structured organizations, it is highly inappropriate for anybody who wants to create something quickly. If you are not in government or a large bank, then you'll want to steer clear of this one. I've noticed even in large banks here in Toronto, they will call themselves agile but really they are practising a hybrid of waterfall with daily scrums.
Kanban VS Scrum
These two make for a better comparison. Both are considered to be in the agile stack and rightly so.
Kanban is much more free-form without rigid phases and without time-boxed objectives. However, some people struggle to implement this properly without it melting into a chaotic mess. I personally prefer Kanban in the initial phases of a product, before the MVP. The nature of it allows for rapid prototyping and quick adjustments to be made without waiting to make the pivot at a set interval.
Scrum shines when you practise it properly and everyone gets used to the slight overhead created by its components. The sprint and daily scrums are a powerful weapon to open up your communication channels as well as keeping focused on very tangible goals. I find it works best when you have a working product and you can take it from one well defined state to another well defined (and ideally better) state.
Conclusion
I hope this article helps you determine which process to use. This is an important decision as it can help you and your team reduce the hurdles of communication and keep process to a minimum. If you want to quickly get something done, try Kanban. If you want to maximize iteration, Scrum is for you.
Bonus Material
Thanks to Paul Krajewski for recommending this incredible YouTube overview of scrum.On the heels of Randy Orton's 60-day Wellness Policy suspension, it appears he was almost not alone.
As WrestlingInc.com is reporting:
SuperLuchas.net reports Cody Rhodes recently tested positive on a drug test for a banned substance but was cleared after providing a valid prescription from a licensed and treating physician. Prior to being cleared, it would appear that Rhodes believed he was facing suspension. The day after dropping the Intercontinental Championship to Christian at Over the Limit, he cryptically wrote on Twitter: "Time off." He appeared at the following day's SmackDown taping in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and all SmackDown shows since then.
I personally went to the SuperLuhas.net website myself. However, after taking only one year of Spanish in high school, I am far from qualified to translate the Hispanic wrestling websites article. That being said, if you are fluent in the Spanish language, feel free to read the full article here.
Now back to Rhodes, if this is indeed true then you have to give kudos to the WWE's appeals process. Ultimately, they could have easily written Rhodes off, no questions asked and not have allowed him to defend himself.
Let's face it, who could blame them as the WWE has been burned by too many of it's stars.
In the past six months alone, they have suspended Evan Bourne, Rey Mysterio, Darren Young and Randy Orton, just to name a few.
In the end, if this story is true, it's refreshing to see a wrestler in the news because of a misunderstanding. Rather, than being suspended for actually taking a banned substance.
So, let me know what you think: Should Rhodes have been suspended, or did the WWE do right by him?Jul 26, 2016
Honda Endurance Racing Previews The Suzuka 8 Hours
The start of the 2015 Suzuka 8 Hours race. Photo courtesy of Honda.
Honda Endurance Racing ready for Japan and the Suzuka 8 hours
Suzuka 8 Hours
Suzuka Circuit, Japan
The Honda Endurance Racing team is getting prepared to head to Japan, for the 39th ‘Coca-Cola Zero’ Suzuka 8 hours, the third round of the EWC Championship and Honda’s home race.
Honda’s endurance specialists Julien Da Costa, Freddy Foray and Sébastien Gimbert are hoping to maintain the momentum from their third place finish aboard the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP at Portimao, and score another podium finish.
It’s a historic event for the Japanese manufacturer, with a total of 27 wins to date at the prestigious track. The Suzuka 8 hours, although part of the EWC calendar sees the permanent teams joined by a host of privateers, all competing for Suzuka victory.
Amongst the riders at the Suzuka 8 hours, Honda’s World Superbike pairing Nicky Hayden and Michael van Der Mark join Takumi Takahashi in the MuSASHi RT HARC-PRO team, and Honda’s World Supersport rider Patrick Jacobsen joins F.C.C TSR Honda, who are currently running fourth in the EWC standings.
Last year, Honda Endurance Racing finished in seventh place and this year they’ll be battling against 70 teams at the legendary 5.821km Honda-owned circuit. The Honda Endurance Racing team are currently sitting in sixth place in the overall EWC standings.
The 39th ‘Coca-Cola Zero’ Suzuka 8 hours takes place on Sunday 31 July at 11.30 Japanese standard time (GMT+9).
For all the latest news and live updates on the team and their progress throughout the race, follow @HondaRacingCBR on Twitter.
Suzuka 8 hour
Event Schedule (GMT+9)
Friday 29 July
0830 – 1030 – Free practice
1130 – 1150 – Free practice – rider 1
1205 – 1225 – Free practice – rider 2
1240 – 1300 – Free practice – rider 3
1510 – 1530 – Qualifying – rider 1
1545 – 1605 – Qualifying – rider 2
1620 – 1640 – Qualifying – rider 3
1800 – 1930 – Night practice
Saturday 30 July
1415 – 1500 – Free practice
1520 – 1645 – Top-10 Trial
Sunday 31 July
0830 – 0915 – Warm up
1045 – 1130 – Race start procedure
1130 – Race start
1930 – Race end
Freddy Foray 111
It was good to be back on the podium at Portimao, it has been a long time coming! After Le Mans the podium has boosted the team and we are heading to Suzuka confident of a good result, but Suzuka is very different, so we will see. I really enjoy riding at Suzuka it is a great circuit and a great event where all the fans and everyone really loves it. Last year we finished seventh and I know that we can do better this year. It’s Honda’s home race so it means a lot to the team and also to us to do well here. Living in the south of France helps a little to prepare for the conditions in Japan as it is very hot, but nothing really prepares you for the high temperatures. It’s a very hard race and different to a 24-hour as you are tired, but also with the conditions the fatigue comes quicker. I am looking forward to getting back out there and riding the Fireblade again.
Julien Da Costa 111
We are coming into the Suzuka 8 hours after finishing Portimao in third place, which was very good for the team. From that race we are now sixth in the EWC championship, which is good, it could be better, which we hope to work on. We had some things as well to change with the Fireblade so hopefully this will all come together for Suzuka and we can move further up the standings. Suzuka is a great race and the atmosphere is good, but it will be difficult, as always with the conditions and also with a lot more teams entered. To prepare for the race and conditions I do a lot of training in the middle of the day when it is the warmest, so I can try to be as prepared as possible. I really like riding at Suzuka, the track is good, but it is just the conditions that are very hard with the heat and humidity, you burn calories very fast and it can be difficult to stay focused during the 8 hours.
Sébastien Gimbert 111
Coming into to Suzuka after the result in Portugal is great and has helped to pick us all up. We all worked very hard in that race to get on the podium, we did a great job and it makes up for some of the difficulties we have experienced previously. I am feeling confident with Suzuka, it is a great race and there are many Japanese teams who are very fast and the teams competing in EWC so we have some competition! Last year we were seventh and it would be great this year to make a podium, it is my dream to finish on the podium at Suzuka. It is an amazing place with a very good atmosphere – the fans love it and very get involved. To prepare for the conditions, thankfully it is very hot at home, so I am very well prepared physically and I have been out a lot on my CRF, so for me I am ready! The race can be very hot, but there is also the chance where it can rain a lot, so we have to pay attention to the weather. I have confidence in my team and also the Fireblade to score the best possible result.
Jonny Twelvetrees
Assistant team manager
I have been looking forward to heading out to the iconic Suzuka 8 hours, along with the rest of the team and now we are almost there! As Suzuka is our home race this is a massive event for Honda and all the Honda teams taking part. The other Japanese manufacturers also all want win and to beat us at home, so we can be sure there will be strong competition as always. After our third place in Portimao we have been making further improvements to the Fireblade that have been well received by the three riders. We have been able to apply some of these in time for Suzuka so I'm keen to see if they translate on Japanese soil. The podium also helped to give the team a boost and we will arrive in Japan confident and ready to get the racing underway.REVIEW: Why do critics hate “The Orville”? beats me…
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There’s a lot of buzz flying around lately about “Star Trek”. Not only is there a new “Trek” series that just debuted, “Star Trek: Discovery”, but Fox has also dropped “The Orville”, a “Trek” spoof created by “Family Guy” main man Seth McFarlane.
“The Orville” chronicles the adventures of the crew of the titular ship, a mid-sized cruiser captained by Ed Mercer (McFarlane). Mercer not only has to deal with the usual travails one deals with when captaining a starship, but also with having his ex-wife, Kelly (Adrianne Palicki), assigned to him as his first officer. The show liberally borrows ingredients from the “Star Trek” recipe, while maintaining a semi-comedic tone that’s closer to a show like “Firefly”.
And critics have not been impressed. The show is currently sitting at a 20% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.com, meaning that the vast majority of critics the website surveys haven’t liked it. Detractors say the show is way too inconsistent tonally, bland, inconsequential and doesn’t know what it wants to be.
Meanwhile, “The Orville” is getting mostly positive word of mouth from TV audiences. They say it’s a fun, funny ride that’s far more respectful of “Star Trek” than “Discovery”. Its audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a healthy 89%. That’s right, 89% of Rotten Tomatoes users have rated to show have done so positively.
Courtesy Fox
This divide fascinates me. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this phenomenon. In fact, it’s an old hat. For years, critics have panned popular movies and TV shows, only to watch audiences make them soar to popularity anyway. But “The Orville” seems to me to be a special case, since it’s connected to a beloved franchise like “Trek” and because another network is premiering its own “Trek” show in such close chronological proximity. So I decided I’d watch “The Orville” for myself and see if I could come up with any answers why the show is getting so bashed.
And after watching the first two episodes, I haven’t any solid ideas why critics hate “The Orville”. I actually enjoyed it.
While far from perfect, “The Orville” is an enjoyable watch. The characters are well-written and acted. Captain Mercer, in particular is well-conceived as a man trying for redemption after his life fell apart. That’s easy to relate to, as most of us have had to go through something similar at one time or another, and it quickly gets us on Mercer’s side.
Kelly is also a solid character, and you can see her perspective on things and why she left Mercer. The second episode sees security officer Alara Kitan (Halston Sage) grow as a result of commanding the Orville while Mercer and Kelly are away on a mission. That’s solid storytelling, human and full of heart, and it puts the show on a solid foundation.
The look of the show is delightfully spare, perhaps an indication of budgetary constraints, or perhaps a tip of the hat to the set design of the original “Star Trek” series back in the 60s. There are crazy looking aliens and the spaceships all seem designed to be visual indicators of whoever is flying them.
And there’s so much else I can’t wait to learn about in “The Orville”. I want to know about Isaac, the Orville science officer and snooty artificial life form who considers all biological life to be inferior. I’m hoping to see more of Mercer’s life before it went in the toilet. I want to see an episode where navigator LaMarr and helmsman Malloy go on an adventure together, cuz they’re fun to watch together. I’m excited by the possibilities.
The biggest flaw in “The Orville” is that not all the jokes work. A lot of one-liners fail to connect with the funny bone. But there were some pretty good laughs to be had to. Hopefully, in the future, McFarlane and the writers will ditch the unfunny jokes and focus on the genuinely funny stuff.
As for why critics hate “The Orville”, well, there are theories. They range from critics distaste for McFarlane to CBS paying them off so “Star Trek: Discovery” will have less competition. As a critic, I know the we often see things very differently from others when we watch a movie or a TV show. But for the life of me, I don’t get what critics are seeing that makes them hate “The Orville”. Because I see a lot of possibilities.WASHINGTON — Calling it a "surreal experience," Mia Macy left the White House Monday with a smile, having just met with President Obama moments before he signed an executive order to protect the LGBT employees of federal contractors and transgender federal employees from discrimination.
"I feel like there's a boulder, and we've all been taking part on pushing this boulder up the hill," she told BuzzFeed after the signing ceremony. Of the discrimination case Macy, a transgender woman, successfully brought against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), she said, "I just had one leg of the journey. I helped on that one, and a lot of other people have helped push it up there. And, it's not all the way — but we got it a little bit, and we gotta keep going."
Macy's claim led the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to rule in 2012 decision that anti-transgender discrimination is barred under Title VII's sex-discrimination prohibition.
"This saves lives," Macy said of the executive order. "For the transgender community, there's one person who's not only not going to lose their livelihood tomorrow and not going to lose their food tomorrow, but they might not lose their life tomorrow. That's the side I know about, and I know it's also in the GLB community also."
Macy was one of several attendees at Monday's executive order signing who had faced anti-LGBT workplace discrimination in their past.
"The reality is that someone might not kill themselves tonight because they have something tomorrow to hold on to," she said. "Someone gets to feed their kids tomorrow. Him signing that today, someone gets to pay their rent and mortgage, and that's life."
In signing the order, Obama told the nearly 300 people in attendance in the East Room of the White House, "[T]hanks to your passionate advocacy and the irrefutable rightness of your cause, our government — government of the people, by the people, and for the people — will become just a little bit fairer."Bitcoin conquers Hollywood hills. In America they plan to make a movie about the crypto-currency under the name of "Bitcoin". The director of the comedy Christian Kashmir said that the film will set in the state of Arizona and tell about the failing brothers who attempted to sell on the black market a digital wallet containing about $ 20 million in crypto-currency. Picture-taking will take place in May 2018. The comedian Theo Von is invited for the role of the main character in the movie, Lauren Cribb is the movie producer.
Disclaimer. These videos are brought to you by CoinIdol.com in partnership with Koles Coin News Channel. This information is provided by a third-party source and should not be viewed as an endorsement by CoinIdol. Readers should do their own research before investing funds in any company.Come-from-Beyond
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LegendaryActivity: 2072Merit: 1007Newbie Nxt source code flaw reports January 03, 2014, 12:26:48 PM
Last edit: March 22, 2014, 05:44:45 PM by Come-from-Beyond #1
The code contains 3 flaws - serious, critical and fatal. The 1st person who reports these flaws will get 1'000, 10'000 or 100'000 NXT reward accordingly.
Each flaw has a small description. Here r SHA256 hashes of these descriptions:
bd34c891e9e3df9ea8b8eafc4dc3edc129f81365d42bf204ea58271e320f3ce5 - 1K reward
888f278c773d39b8334a651d84ee78871bd0e5d45e09be8fdb190ba1b2969530 - 10K reward
f5236644f4306699bb0fa90a905afe2454683c0aad6995e4433d712e2fdb257c - 100K reward
The flaws must be reported before the 3rd of April, after that date they can be revealed at any moment.
If u think that u found a flaw, post here its description. Mathematical proof is not necessary, common sense should be enough. If ur guess is correct u may * get the reward, if u find a non-injected flaw then u'll be asked for more formal proof (u may get a reward too).
NB: Some guys mentioned that they would just decompile 0.4.7e binaries and compare the source codes to find the flaws. As a countermeasure against such the trick u still must explain why there is a flaw.
-------------
* - BCNext reserves the right to refuse to pay a reward without any explanation. This is an anti-troll countermeasure. Nxt source code has been released - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345619.msg4287127#msg4287127 The code contains 3 flaws - serious, critical and fatal. The 1st person who reports these flaws will get 1'000, 10'000 or 100'000 NXT reward accordingly.Each flaw has a small description. Here r SHA256 hashes of these descriptions:The flaws must be reported before the 3rd of April, after that date they can be revealed at any moment.If u think that u found a flaw, post here its description. Mathematical proof is not necessary, common sense should be enough. If ur guess is correct u mayget the reward, if u find a non-injected flaw then u'll be asked for more formal proof (u may get a reward too).NB: Some guys mentioned that they would just decompile 0.4.7e binaries and compare the source codes to find the flaws. As a countermeasure against such the trick u still must explain why there is a flaw.-------------- BCNext reserves the right to refuse to pay a reward without any explanation. This is an anti-troll countermeasure.
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Sr. MemberActivity: 308Merit: 250 Re: Nxt source code flaw reports January 03, 2014, 12:55:57 PM #13 Quote from: luckygenough56 on January 03, 2014, 12:45:51 PM
another polemic to bring the prices down?
how do you mean?
the code was released with the flaws so that people can |
of us has a problem. And it's me. So I take my dog out for a walk and we have a wrestle," he said.
When Rob has nightmares or appears to be overwhelmed, the dog nudges his snout into Rob's lap.
If that doesn't appear to work, the boisterous 31 kilogram Labrador will begin licking his handler's face and nipping his ears.
"He knows when I'm wound up, there's no pressing snooze. He's keeping me calmer."
Aside from the obvious benefits to Rob's mental health, the dog is also helping to start conversations with other members of the force who have been suffering in silence.
"There's a PTSD support group here in town that a copper runs," Rob said.
"I've taken two new people to that, and the reason they've come to that is because they've asked about him."
Assistance Dogs Australia CEO Richard Lord says he hopes to see more PTSD dogs operating in the future.
Topics: depression, police, mental-health, animals, melbourne-3000
First postedThe University at Buffalo medical school is starting to move into its new digs on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
Eight moving trucks recently began to haul boxes of files, equipment and other materials from more than 50 offices on UB's South Campus to the new Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Main and Allen streets, where construction is 99 percent complete.
The $375 million university medical school is expected to be a major advance for UB's expanding medical program when classes begin there in January.
The eight-story, 628,000-square-feet building – which incorporates a Metro Rail station – will replace medical school classrooms and laboratories on UB's South Campus, where the school has been based since 1953. It includes an advanced surgical simulation center for students to hone their operating skills in a robotic surgery site. It also will have clinical training areas for general patient care that are designed to look like hospital rooms, an obstetric delivery room, an emergency trauma center and other patient care facilities.
The building, which was designed by architects at HOK, is wrapped in nearly 28,000 locally made terra cotta panels.
The building's downtown location puts it in close proximity to its clinical and research partners, including Buffalo General Medical Center, John R. Oishei Children's Hospital, Gates Vascular Institute and Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
Most of the materials being moved now are administrative and related to senior associate deans, admissions and graduate medical education, said UB spokeswoman Ellen Goldbaum.
The first major movement of medical school staff and supplies started about a week before the planned opening on Friday of the John R. Oishei Children's Hospital, a short distance away.
UB administrative staff, including Dr. Michael E. Cain, dean and vice president for health sciences, are part of the first phase of the move.
The New York State University Construction Fund granted a temporary certificate of occupancy in early October, and staff and administrators are expected to begin working inside the new medical school soon.
The building is mostly now complete, though some final punch list items are still being done, Goldbaum said.
Final work includes data wiring and furniture coordination and installation.
"As the job goes toward the end, there are finishing stages and things change, technology evolves," said William J. Mahoney, vice president of LPCiminelli, general contractor of the project.
The bulk of what’s being moved now includes files, office equipment and computers, phones and some pieces of furniture, but many offices are getting new furniture. Lab equipment will be moved later this fall, Goldbaum said.
On the exterior, workers are installing the last of terra cotta panels on the building's east wing and finishing metal panels along a canopy section that extends over the sidewalks around the perimeter of the medical school.
Work on a one-block tunnel through the medical school that will extend pedestrian traffic from Allen Street to Washington Street is wrapping up, as well. "We're finishing all the metal panels on the roof of the walkway," Mahoney said. He expects that work to wind down by late November. "It's really coming along nice."
Meanwhile, makeshift pedestrian crossings and temporary dividing posts along Main Street used to shift traffic lanes during the school's construction were fully removed last weekend.David Nicosia seems to have gotten beside himself a bit. According to the Chicago Tribune, Nicosia is facing some serious charges after allegedly spitting on a Cook County judge and then slapping her with his open hand.
Judge Arnette Hubbard, an African American professional and the first female president of black legal groups the National Bar Association and the Cook County Bar Association, was allegedly attacked and called “Rosa Parks” after she smoked a cigarette near business owner Nicosia, outside a civic center, apparently angering him. The two started arguing, and Nicosia said, “Rosa Parks, move,” before spitting in her face.
He then proceeded to leave, but Hubbard followed him, calling for help. That was when the man allegedly turned and slapped Hubbard —whom friends describe as an “icon in [the] community” — with his open hand.
“People of good common sense and decency, people of good hearts, should be outraged by this,” Delores Robinson, a past president of the Cook County Bar Association, told the Tribune. “Not just because of who she is but that this happened to anybody.”
Nicosia, who the Tribune says is president of an information technology consulting business, was soon cuffed and charged with four counts of aggravated battery and a hate crime. He is being held on a $90,000 bond.
Let it be known, it’s rarely OK to put your hands on someone, especially when it’s not in self-defense.On 25 January, the European Commission has launched a online service to make it easier for public administrations to find and re-use semantic assets. More than one thousand assets from fifteen organisations, including several Member States and standardization bodies, can be found via the European Commission Joinup Portal (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/catalogue/all). By increasing the visibility and promoting the re-use of existing semantic assets the European Commission fosters semantic interoperability among information systems developed in different Member States.
For citizens to travel or move across Europe and for businesses to expand within the single market, they need to interact with several public administrations of Member States. To enable this, information needs to flow seamless across borders and sectors. The Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) Programme of the European Commission addresses this need by promoting the re-use of data exchange models, taxonomies, data definitions and reference data, such as country codes. We call these semantic assets. In short, the re-use of semantic assets is vital for information to flow freely between Public Administrations and, unlike before, these semantic assets can now be found through a single search on Joinup.
This new service aggregates descriptions of semantic assets received from 15 partner organisations. This aggregation is made possible by the use of a common metadata vocabulary, known as the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS).This is a standardised metadata vocabulary schema that helps public administrations, standardisation bodies and other stakeholders to document their semantic assets in a uniformed and structured manner (their name, their status, version, where they can be found on the Web, etc). In other words, ADMS defines a common way to describe semantic assets.
ADMS was developed following a process and methodology for creating vocabularies based on best practices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). ADMS is the result of one year of consensus building within a multidisciplinary working group of more than 60 people from 20 EU Member States, several EU institutions, the US and Australia. Furthermore, a public review of the resulting vocabulary was conducted in January 2012. The ADMS specification was published by the W3C’s Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group as the First Public Working Draft for further consultation within the context of the W3C standardization process, potentially leading to the publication of these vocabularies as open Web standards available under W3C's Royalty-Free License.
More than 1300 semantic assets from 15 participating organizations are already available. In more detail:
6 partner organisations from Member States:
BE - Belgian Interoperability Catalogue : This catalogue contains assets from different sources in Belgium that are used for the exchange of information between public administrations.
: This catalogue contains assets from different sources in Belgium that are used for the exchange of information between public administrations. DE – Xrepository : The XRepository is an internet-based library for the provision of specialised and multidisciplinary data models and schemas at a central location. The main objective is to achieve public sector savings and improve interoperability through the re-use of these models and schemas in public projects. In addition, the XRepository serves as a central repository for data as part of the German-Online Project "Standardization" and for development of XÖV core components (reusable technical components for electronic data interchange).
: The XRepository is an internet-based library for the provision of specialised and multidisciplinary data models and schemas at a central location. The main objective is to achieve public sector savings and improve interoperability through the re-use of these models and schemas in public projects. In addition, the XRepository serves as a central repository for data as part of the German-Online Project "Standardization" and for development of XÖV core components (reusable technical components for electronic data interchange). DK - Digitaliser.dk :Digitalisér.dk is a single repository that supports digitisation in Denmark. It brings together key resources, recommendations and guidelines on IT, communication and IT development. The main goal of the repository is to strengthen cooperation between public and private parties.
:Digitalisér.dk is a single repository that supports digitisation in Denmark. It brings together key resources, recommendations and guidelines on IT, communication and IT development. The main goal of the repository is to strengthen cooperation between public and private parties. EE – RIHA : RIHA, short for Riigi Infosüsteemi Halduse Infosüsteem, is the Estonian management system of governmental/ state information. The objective of RIHA is to guarantee the transparency of administration of the state information system, planning for information management and supporting the interoperability of databases of the state, local governments and persons in private law performing public duties. The registration of public databases and information systems on RIHA is mandatory and enforced by law.
: RIHA, short for Riigi Infosüsteemi Halduse Infosüsteem, is the Estonian management system of governmental/ state information. The objective of RIHA is to guarantee the transparency of administration of the state information system, planning for information management and supporting the interoperability of databases of the state, local governments and persons in private law performing public duties. The registration of public databases and information systems on RIHA is mandatory and enforced by law. FI - Yhteentoimivuus.fi :This catalogue is a national portal and publishing platform, which gathers together information for supporting interoperability and enterprise architecture work by Finnish Public Administration.
:This catalogue is a national portal and publishing platform, which gathers together information for supporting interoperability and enterprise architecture work by Finnish Public Administration. GR - Greek Interoperability Catalogue:This catalogue contains assets from the Greek e-Government Interoperability Framework (eGIF). eGIF places among the overall design of the Greek Public Administration for the provision of e-Government services to public bodies, businesses and citizens. It aims to support effectively e-Government at Central, Regional and Local level and contribute to achieving interoperability at the level of information systems, procedures and data.
2 partner organisations from EU Institutions:
EU Semantic Interoperability Catalogue: This catalogue contains assets that can be used for the development of e-government services and supporting an EU policy and/or activity.
This catalogue contains assets that can be used for the development of e-government services and supporting an EU policy and/or activity. EU Publications Office - Metadata Registry: This catalogue contains a number of Named Authority Lists (NAL's) which help standardise the codes and the associated labels used in the Publications Office and on inter-institutional level in the context of the data exchange between the institutions involved in the legal decision making process of the European Union.
3 partner organisations from standardisation bodies:
DCMI - Dublin Core Metadata Initiative: The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative provides core metadata vocabularies in support of interoperable solutions for discovering and managing resources. It contains up-to-date information on DCMI metadata terms, including the classic Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, the DCMI Type Vocabulary, and resource classes used as formal domains and ranges.
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative provides core metadata vocabularies in support of interoperable solutions for discovering and managing resources. It contains up-to-date information on DCMI metadata terms, including the classic Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, the DCMI Type Vocabulary, and resource classes used as formal domains and ranges. GS1 in Europe eDox : eDox is the GS1 in Europe solution repository that publishes a wide range of freely available GS1 assets in over 20 sectors.
: eDox is the GS1 in Europe solution repository that publishes a wide range of freely available GS1 assets in over 20 sectors. W3C Standards and Technical Reports: It consists of all standards and drafts published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
4 partner organisations from the IT sector:
Internal Commission on Civil Status ( CIEC /ICCS) : The aim of the International Commission on Civil Status ("ICCS") is to facilitate international cooperation in civil-status matters and to further the exchange of information between civil registrars. The scope and vision of the ICCS-CIEC Data Exchange Platform and Infrastructure is to bridge the judicial information, collaboration and networking gap in cross-border civil-status matters across Europe, by promoting the creation of a genuine European area of justice and judicial cooperation (beyond geographical barriers) in civil-status matters based on mutual recognition and confidence. It contains assets in the field of civil-status matters and to facilitate the exchange of information between civil registrars.
: The aim of the International Commission on Civil Status ("ICCS") is to facilitate international cooperation in civil-status matters and to further the exchange of information between civil registrars. The scope and vision of the ICCS-CIEC Data Exchange Platform and Infrastructure is to bridge the judicial information, collaboration and networking gap in cross-border civil-status matters across Europe, by promoting the creation of a genuine European area of justice and judicial cooperation (beyond geographical barriers) in civil-status matters based on mutual recognition and confidence. It contains assets in the field of civil-status matters and to facilitate the exchange of information between civil registrars. Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) :The LOV Initiative offers an entry point to the growing ecosystem of linked open vocabularies (RDFS or OWL ontologies) used in the Linked Data Cloud. It contains vocabularies listed and described by metadata, classified by vocabulary spaces, interlinked using the dedicated vocabulary VOAF.
:The LOV Initiative offers an entry point to the growing ecosystem of linked open vocabularies (RDFS or OWL ontologies) used in the Linked Data Cloud. It contains vocabularies listed and described by metadata, classified by vocabulary spaces, interlinked using the dedicated vocabulary VOAF. ListPoint :This catalogue contains code lists to build apps, maintain data standards or to build interoperability between multiple data sources.
:This catalogue contains code lists to build apps, maintain data standards or to build interoperability between multiple data sources. Wolters Kluwer Vocabularies: This catalogue contains two thesauri. The thesauri provide standardized keywords with a thematic structuring of legal content and thus facilitate a search for similar terms and related topics. This may facilitate the incorporation of new subjects and significantly improve electronic legal databases.
Questions and Answers
What are semantic assets?
Semantic assets are highly reusable metadata (e.g. xml schema, generic data models) and reference data (e.g. code lists, taxonomies, dictionaries, vocabularies) that are used by public administrations, in their information systems, to share information.
Who benefits from the ADMS-based federation of semantic assets repositories?
The service addresses both users and publishers of semantic assets.
For users, it offers a single access point to a large number of semantic assets that exist in Europe, enabling them to easily discover what is available for re-use.
For publishers, it enables to describe standards for information exchange in a common way, using the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS), and publish these descriptions on Joinup. This makes their standards better searchable and visible on the web through a single point of access.
Why a single point of access for semantic assets is important?
When two parties exchange information, they need to agree on technical, semantic, and organisational conventions. Such conventions are documented in interoperability standards and specifications. However, in spite of their importance, standards are not easily discoverable on the web because information about them is seldom available. Navigating on the websites of the different publishers of standards is not efficient either. Hence, still today, it is not easy for public administrations to discover what standards are available to them for re-use. Highly reusable data models, valuable code lists and other similar specifications are not easy to find on the web. As these assets are not easy to discover, public administrations spend resources recreating them over and over again. It is not only the money that is spent on reinventing the wheel but also the money needed to fund endless mapping and convergence projects between similar specifications. ADMS and the federation help solve this problem.
How to join the ADMS-enabled federation?
Practically, the ADMS-enabled federation service first supports publishers to describe their interoperability standards (in a common way) using URIs in RDF (Resource Description Framework), a standard by W3C. At this point, publishers have created description metadata of their interoperability standards. The service then helps publishers upload these description metadata (described in RDF) on the EU official interoperability platform, Joinup.
There are several alternatives that currently exist to join the federation. The 15 partner organisations have used one of these alternatives to federate their semantic assets on Joinup:
Use Joinup to provide ADMS-conform descriptions of your assets. Use the ADMS spreadsheet. Publishers can learn how to Generate ADMS asset descriptions from a spreadsheet with Google Refine RDF and download the spreadsheet on Joinup. This alternative has been used by partner organisations such as Digitaliser.dk and the Belgian Interoperability Catalogue. Use a SPARQL CONSTRUCT query on your triple store. This alternative has been used by partner organisations such as Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) Develop an ADMS-conform exporter. This alternative has been used by partner organisations such as Xrepository.
Whatever the solution chosen to join the federation, the ISA programme has set up a dedicated team to support you joining the federation and publishing your semantic assets on Joinup. Please visit the Community of European Semantic Asset Repositories (CESAR) on Joinup.
Additional information
For more information: vassilios.peristeras@ec.europa.euPlease enable Javascript to watch this video
The president of the Beverly Hills school district’s board was arrested after allegedly shoving an 18-year-old woman in at altercation at his home, police said Tuesday.
The incident occurred about 8 p.m. Monday in the 200 block of Tower Drive, according to Sgt. Max Subin with the Beverly Hills Police Department.
Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education President Brian Goldberg was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery after he shoved the teen during a verbal altercation, Subin said.
Goldberg told the Los Angeles Times that he bumped into a woman who lives with her family in the condominium next door to him after a confrontation about how he was driving in the building's parking lot.
The alleged victim approached a KTLA reporter in front of the complex, the Hamptons Condominiums, but declined to go into detail about the event.
There has a longstanding dispute between Goldberg and his wife and the family, the board president told the Times.
“We have had bad blood with these neighbors for some time,” he said.
Subin told the Times that Goldberg knocked the woman to the ground.
Goldberg was released Tuesday morning on a promise to appear in court, Subin said.
Goldberg’s position is elected. The school district had no comment.
KTLA’s Jennifer Thang contributed to this article.
More Video:Dutch intelligence and security agency AIVD posted its annual brain-buster puzzle online. Puzzle lovers, and anyone else who is bored over the holidays, have until 11:59 p.m. on January 15th to solve the puzzle and submit their answers. This year's puzzle consists of 15 pages with 42 exercises, which participants can solve independently of each other.
Last year multiple people solved all the puzzle questions correctly, but a PhD student in mathematics named Carlo was the only person to score 105, RTL Nieuws reports. With that he won the eternal honor of being a Christmas puzzle winner, as well as a Christmas coffee mug with his own puzzle on it.
The AIVD puzzle is considered the most difficult puzzle of the year. It started as an internal challenge to stimulate systematic thinking. The AIVD started posting it online in 2011. The intelligence agency doesn't use the puzzle to recruit, it's only meant for fun. It is compiled by people who work in the national office of connection security NVB in the AIVD. This department's main task is to secure state secrets, according to the broadcaster.
The puzzle is filled with brain teasers. One of last year's questions was: "DJT, FDMH and JMK were invited to a party, just like J-PS, JFS and BLF, YO, JMS and OH and BH. Who was left out?" The answer was BD - Bob Dylan. The question was about the presentation of the Nobel Prizes and the initials of the winners.
Over 1,250 people submitted answers to the Christmas puzzle of 2016. It was downloaded 100 thousand times, nearly twice as much as the 2015 edition.
The Christmas puzzle 2017 can be downloaded on the AIVD's website.Cleaner coal, nuclear, solar, wind: these are some of the options for power generation to feed the U.S.'s electric power requirements. That need is expected to grow by 30 percent during the next 25 years, according to the Energy Information Administration, even with a slew of energy-efficiency measures and improvements to the grid infrastructure that delivers the electricity. But the primary source of electricity in 2034, according to a new projection from consulting firm Black & Veatch, will be natural gas. It is the fossil fuel with the least greenhouse gas impact on the atmosphere—burning it releases 43 percent less CO2 than burning coal—and looks set to increase its share of the electricity market, even with looming regulations to restrain climate-changing emissions. And there's this boost, too: new, vast reserves of natural gas found in places like the Marcellus Shale Formation, which stretches from West Virginia to New York State.
By 2034, according to Black & Veatch, nearly half of U.S. electricity will come from natural gas combustion turbines or combined-cycle units, whereas conventional coal-fired generation will shrink to just 23 percent (although few of the power plants will be shut down). Nuclear will grow to provide nearly 150,000 megawatts of electricity as renewables jump from just 54,000 megawatts today (excluding hydroelectric dams) to more than 165,000 megawatts in 2034.
Mark Griffith, head of Black & Veatch's power market analysis, spoke with ScientificAmerican.com about the U.S. electric grid's future configuration of energy sources.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
You recently released a survey of electric utility CEOs. What did you find?
It's a very interesting survey. On the one hand, it illustrates there is a wide range of opinion in utilities on what needs to be done. Some people are skeptical of the need for carbon legislation and others think it's very important. Looking at the survey and what's going on in the industry, regardless of people's personal or political opinions they want to move towards a lower carbon footprint for the power sector. A lack of legislation right now in some corners creates more concern. It's hard to plan for the future if you don't know what that future is from a regulatory standpoint. Assuming something does happen, the survey supports the concept that utilities see nuclear as a reliable green technology, quite different from what people would have thought 10 years ago. Nuclear has been recast, at least that's how industry is looking at it.
Is there a future for coal?
There still seems to be a lot of interest in coal-fired generation for some time frame. Is there a future for coal? Overall, the answer is yes. We still have a certain amount of reliance on coal for a fairly long period of time in our baseline view of how things would unfold. How is that is possible—even with Waxman–Markey type legislation [the pending American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House] in place, which is what we assume in our baseline? By 2014, [under that legislation] there are standards you have to start meeting and they get stricter over time…. The concept of compliance is melded with the availability of offsets [reductions of greenhouse emissions elsewhere, such as trees in Alaska that are not cut down could count against coal-fired power plant emissions in Alabama] that are allowed for in the legislation. There is a presumption that all sectors including the electric utility industry will have access to some global market of offsets and can utilize them at some cost to them. That allows for compliance as the rules get tighter. You don't just make a fall-off–the-cliff type of change in year one of legislation like that. It is structured to allow for transition, some of that is in allocation of allowances in the early years…. It pushes you into a world of utilities needing to get in line with really reducing carbon emissions out in [the] 2030s rather than sooner. You don't have to shut down all the coal plants tomorrow. You can have a long-term strategy relying on reasonably priced offsets. With a bill like Waxman–Markey it's not this terrible thing that would force people to change behavior dramatically quickly. It does force behavior change, but it's more phased in over time.
You predict a big switch from coal to natural gas going forward, however. Why?
Even with demand-side management and energy efficiency, we still expect some growth in electricity demand. There's still a need for that type of dispatchable [sic] thermal [heat-producing] resource. Natural gas is the best candidate remaining.
That trend [of switching from coal to natural gas, which already exists] continues even with a moderate level of carbon emission prices. The natural gas stays as a competitive fuel. You're not going to build more conventional coal-fired power plants. We're at the tail end of the [coal] building cycle of what's going on now—and that's pretty much the end of that. You're waiting for a breakthrough on carbon capture and storage and, when that happens, then you could resume on coal. If not, I don’t think we'll build anymore.
As carbon prices go up, it starts to become cost effective to back down less efficient coal units or higher-delivered-cost coal and run gas units more…. Gas is taking on a more significant energy role. You already have gas base load power plants [which provide a continuous supply of electricity] in the west. It's a bigger shift in the east, where there's been more reliance on coal-fired capacity. You get out to 2040–2050, you are retiring a lot of the coal fleet at some point. To the extent that you're still relying on thermal generation, you're relying on natural gas.
Do we have enough natural gas to meet that demand?
We're assuming that issues related to gas shales, environmental issues about groundwater, and the [general] use of water get solved. Those look like solvable issues that don't take a technological breakthrough. It's an expense that's incurred. I don't see gas shales having an insurmountable environmental problem that is expensive to fix. Of course, there are the unknown unknowns—you don't know. But there's certainly nothing that would indicate that…concerns…today for Marcellus and other [natural gas sites] will stop the development of gas shales. There's more and more capital flowing into that [because] it does take a lot of capital investment. Gas-shale wells produce quickly and die young. You have to keep on drilling.
What about nuclear?
Nuclear is something that utilities have just been avoiding because of the perception of the political unacceptability of it and the relatively high capital cost. If you can build a coal plant why would you bother to build a nuclear plant in the U.S.? It's the easier solution to do.
The loan guarantee program seems to be essential, given the magnitude of investment in a single one- or two-unit plant relative to the market capitalization of the companies that would own them. It's low cost relative to the amount of money [the government is] providing. A further expansion of the loan guarantee program seems the best way to encourage new nuclear. [But] you would expect there to be a lot of resistance—a wave of resistance to nuclear plants—just as there is currently resistance to coal plants. That battle is yet to come…. Can you even get another 200,000 megawatts of nuclear plants?
And renewables? Under your forecast, they grow from 5 percent of electricity supply to 13 percent, excluding hydropower. What makes that up?
It's primarily wind. That's the lion's share of it. There's a little geothermal in there and a little solar. There's been a lot of advancements in thin-film technology but the balance of [a solar power] plant [all the materials other than the photovoltaic cells themselves] is not getting any cheaper. The [solar] cells are getting cheaper, and it's not at all clear where the bottom for that is. I think there's some validity to the arguments made by folks from the [information technology] sector that say, look at the advances we've had. We've had the transistor, integrated circuits. It does look like there's some significant room for improvement [in photovoltaics] and it will have more dramatic advances than in coal or any thermal technology, which is already pushing against its theoretical limits. Eventually [photovoltaics] is going to break through. Solar is still kind of expensive as any utilities soliciting bids for renewables will tell you. It's not cheap yet.
Does that mean there will be more storage of electricity?
We don't have a lot in the baseline view. We haven't seen the economics of that pan out yet…. It's really hard to generate storage other than batteries, which are kind of expensive. It's really hard to generate the cost of pumped-hydro or compressed-air storage. Every situation for that is so unique. Some can come through but, bluntly, it's been difficult for new storage other than some isolated demonstrations.
Do your predictions for the electricity generation mix put us on a path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, as President Obama has called for?
It does not get us halfway there. [But] once again, it gets back to the amount of offsets that are available. This is an industry emitting 2.5 billion tons per year and would like to get down to 500 million to be in compliance. So are there two billion tons of offsets floating around? There's a lot of slop in the offset number. But you can pick up 500 million [in] offsets and have a decent build out of natural gas. Nuclear could fill a good piece of that role. There's a lot of uncertainty out there.
So what is Black & Veatch actually building today for clients?
We do a lot of things: coal overseas; we do a lot of work in water; gas plants; wind and renewables in general; biomass. We're doing a portfolio of different things…. New construction is going to be renewables or gas for us right now—if it's domestic.As anyone who follows the CFL will tell you, having a roster flush with Canadian (“national”) talent is key to achieving success in the Canadian Football League. Each team is required to field nineteen nationals per game – starting seven – while also being ready to accommodate the injuries that will inevitably afflict these players. Given the limited nature of the Canadian talent pool (the American talent pool is roughly 15-20 times larger), finding and keeping these nineteen national players (along with some talented replacements) is unquestionably the toughest task for general managers across the league.
But where do these national players come from? Typically, this question is answered with the names of Canada’s leading CIS programs like Laval, Calgary, and McMaster. Today, though, I’d like to go one step further: player’s hometowns. As it is, the hometowns of CFL players are typically only discussed when free agency rolls around in the event that a big-name free agent chooses to sign with his hometown team. This discussion happens for good reason, too, considering how often such signings takes place. I’ve made a small chart below to indicate which current CFL players have signed with teams in their home provinces as a free agents. It should also be noted that Medicine Hat’s Dan Federkeil forced his rights to be traded from Toronto to Calgary in 2013, though this move cannot be officially considered a free agent signing.
Player Hometown Former Team New Team (Year Signed) Ricky Foley Courtice, ON BC (and NYJ) Toronto (2010) Scott McHenry Saskatoon Winnipeg Saskatchewan (2011) Simeon Rottier Westlock, AB Hamilton Edmonton (2012) Wayne Smith Etobicoke, ON Hamilton Toronto (2012) Andy Fantuz Chatham, ON Saskatchewan Hamilton (2012) Paul Woldu Regina, SK Montreal Saskatchewan (2012) Brendon LaBatte Weyburn, SK Winnipeg Saskatchewan (2012) James Yurichuk Brampton, ON BC Toronto (2013) Brian Bulcke Windsor, ON Edmonton Hamilton (2013) Craig Butler London, ON Saskatchewan Hamilton (2014)
As we can see from the chart, national players ‘go home’ in free agency at a rate of roughly two per season – a fairly sizeable number given the limited number of nationals that actually make it to free agency every year. I expect this number to grow moving forward for two primary reasons: 1) as the dollar figures allotted for national players grows under the new salary cap, so should the desire for national players to hold out until free agency; 2) the re-introduction of Ottawa has created a club that’s desperate to make connections with fans – having local players is important, doubly so if they can speak French.
Free agency aside, though, where do our players come from? Do players come from all over the country at a fairly even level, or mostly just one or two select provinces? Are players from a certain region more likely to venture back home? Do certain provinces produce players at a significantly higher or lower rate than one would expect their population to allow? Do player home provinces affect what position they play? I will answer all of these questions and more!
Firstly, let’s start with a tally of the CFL’s players based on their province of birth. It should be noted that these figures were adapted from the CFL’s nine team rosters as they appeared on the evening on January 28, 2015. It should also be noted that players who were not born in Canada are included in these numbers based on where they were raised (ie. FB Dahrran Diedrick, born in St. Anne’s, Jamaica was raised in Scarborough, Ontario). Saskatchewan Roughrider punter Josh Bartel is not included in this research because #Australia.
Province Players Ontario 104 Quebec 51 BC 47 Alberta 34 Saskatchewan 16 Manitoba 9 Nova Scotia 3 New Brunswick 2 Newfoundland 1
As we can see, Ontario is on top with 104 – hardly a surprise given their vast population and wide array of post-secondary options for local football players. I was a little surprised to find Quebec at just 51, but the absence of the CFL in Quebec from 1987-1995 undoubtedly had a negative impact on that number. With the Alouettes dominating for so many years throughout the first decade of the 21st century it’ll be interesting to see how that number grows over the next ten to twenty years – by all accounts, there is still a huge amount of untapped football potential within the province of Quebec.
I was also a little surprised to see that just sixteen CFL players were born in the province of Saskatchewan. That isn’t to say sixteen is an unimpressive number – as we’ll discuss in a moment, sixteen is a great number given the population of Canada’s most rectangular province – but sixteen is still a small number. There’s no way around that. Heck – sixteen isn’t even enough to have two Saskatchewan-born players on every team in the CFL. This surprises me because people in and around the league tend to talk about national players like half are down-home country bumpkins from good ol’ Saskatchewan.
Rider Fan: I love Rob Bagg! I grew up next door to him in downtown Regina!
Me: Rob Bagg was not born nor raised in Regina.
Rider Fan: Downtown Regina!
Me: Rob Bagg is from Kingston.
Rider Fan: Downtown Regina!
Me: *face palm*
Again, no disrespect to the province of Saskatchewan for their sixteen players – it’s a great number for a relatively small population. Let’s just stop pretending that 50% of the CFL’s players were born exclusively in Weyburn, Estevan, and Moose Jaw. Please.
One last thing before we progress to discussing how these numbers look per capita: the CFL needs more Maritimers. The CFL only has six players from out east? SIX!? There are good CIS programs out east – Acadia, StFX, Mount Allison, St. Mary’s. Do they only recruit kids from Ontario and Quebec? The combined population of the Maritimes’ four provinces is greater than those of Manitoba and Saskatchewan combined at 2.4 million. How many more CFL players would we have coming from out east if there was a CFL team there? My guess is a lot. Food for thought.
The CFL also needs a player born in Prince Edward Island. Since he’s not going to make it to the Brier anymore, somebody should teach Eddie MacKenzie how to long snap.
Next, let’s take a look at how these provincial player totals compare to their total populations of their corresponding provinces. The numbers found below were achieved by dividing the number of CFL players from a certain province by that province’s population, then multiplying by 100,000.
Province Players per 100,000 residents SK 1.42 BC 1.02 AB 0.83 ON 0.76 MB 0.70 QB 0.62 NS 0.32 NB 0.27 NL 0.19
As we can see, Saskatchewan comes out on top at 1.42, an impressive number as previously mentioned. This chart also illustrates the low numbers from Quebec and the Maritimes discussed above. Sitting low, too, is Manitoba – though Bombers fans such as myself |
9th Circuit Court heard ruled on the case in 2014 and sided with the plaintiff’s that the more restrictive “good cause” language violated the individuals 2nd Amendment rights. Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain’s majority opinion for the three-judge panel emphasized that “the right to bear arms includes the right to carry an operable arm outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense,” Hawkins reported.
The court decided to hear the case en banc (before the entire body of the court) following pressure from the California Attorney General, U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris.
The court’s en banc ruling went in the opposite direction, upholding the “good cause” requirement and unequivocally stating that Americans have no right to carry a concealed gun outside the home for self-defense, Hawkins stated. Writing in the majority opinion, Judge Williams Fletcher said, “We hold that the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public.”
It is not the first time the Texas governor has invoked this iconic symbol of the state’s rebellion against an overreaching government. In April 2014, Abbott responded to the Bureau of Land Management’s land grab along the state’s Red River border with Oklahoma in an exclusive interview with Breitbart Texas. The then Texas Attorney General spoke out against the BLM’s actions saying, ““I am about ready to go to the Red River and raise a ‘Come and Take It’ flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas.”
Earlier this year, Breitbart Texas’ Lana Shadwick reported when the governor responded yet again to President Obama’s threats to impose more gun control through executive action. Abbott tweeted, “Obama wants to impose more gun control. My response.#? COME AND TAKE IT @NRA #tcot #PJNET.”
The response on Twitter to that message was also well received as more than 5,500 people retweeted the message and nearly 6,000 favorited the tweet.
Many responded to the governor’s message on Friday about the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling.
@GregAbbott_TX @barbpaschke23 -Any Law repugnant to the Constitution is VOID- Marbury vrs Madison-1803 — Rob Mazurek (@MazurekRob) June 10, 2016
@GregAbbott_TX @DLoesch So CA’s political elite just gave themselves an exemption to pack heat, while the little people can’t. — Dread Pirate Cates (@drawandstrike) June 10, 2016
@GregAbbott_TX Thank you, Gov. Abbott!! This is one of the many reasons we elected you!!Keep up the great work!! — John Julian (@jhjulian1956) June 10, 2016
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with additional content.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and is a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.Twitter Summary: ViaCyte seeks approval from FDA for first human studies of novel encapsulation stem-cell therapy for #t1D
On July 17, ViaCyte filed applications with the FDA to conduct the first human studies of VC-01, a novel cell replacement therapy for type 1 diabetes. The approach takes pancreatic progenitor (parent) cells and encases them in ViaCyte’s “Encaptra” device (to protect them from immune attack), which is roughly 1 x 3 inches in size. Encaptra is then implanted under the skin, allowing the cells to mature into insulin-producing beta cells. In theory, they will mature to regulate blood glucose in a similar (if not identical) manner to natural pancreatic cells. After implantation, these cells can be easily monitored and readily removed in case of an emergency.
Pending FDA approval of the applications, the early phase 1/2 clinical trial of VC-01 will enroll about 40 type 1 participants over a two-year period. The trial will primarily measure VC-01’s effect on C-peptide, a biomarker for insulin production. If all goes well, ViaCyte hopes to bring this therapy to market by 2020. However, there are several major questions that ViaCyte will need to answer from this early-stage study – Could VC-01 cause tumor growth? How glucose-sensitive will the implanted cells be? How many cells should be implanted for optimal results, and for how long can they be implanted? Will the cells also be able to affect glucagon levels?
While the start of clinical trials are still pending FDA approval, it’s exciting to see a new therapy for type 1 diabetes in the works, as there have been a number of disappointments in the last few years on the cure front. The work of ViaCyte has been supported largely by JDRF, and this makes it the first company projected to bring a cell replacement therapy for type 1 diabetes into human testing. –AJW/AB
*Update: on August 19, ViaCyte announced that the FDA had approved its request to start a phase 1/2 clinical trial for VC-01.CBS News
President Obama invoked the pageantry of his State of the Union address this evening to announce a long-anticipated executive order on cybersecurity, a move that caps months of discussions with technology companies and could reduce pressure on Congress to move forward with controversial new legislation.
The order will "strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy," Obama said.
Obama's executive order doesn't propose new and potentially onerous regulations targeting private businesses, which Democrats had proposed in their unsuccessful legislation last year. It also doesn't appear to rewrite privacy laws by allowing companies to share confidential information with intelligence agencies without oversight, which Republicans had suggested in their own bill, also unsuccessful, called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA.
Because it's an executive order rather than a new law, it's restricted to directing the activities of federal agencies and is much less likely to be controversial. Some of the components include: expanding "real time sharing of cyber threat information" to companies that operate critical infrastructure, asking NIST to devise cybersecurity standards, and proposing a "review of existing cybersecurity regulation."
Some Internet companies had been concerned about being swept in by overly broad definitions of "critical infrastructure." But their lobbyists did their jobs: the executive order says Homeland Security "shall not identify any commercial information technology products or consumer information technology services" as especially critical infrastructure (translated: Facebook and Pinterest are not really that important). DHS will "confidentially notify owners and operators of critical infrastructure" that are considered sufficiently important.
The executive order -- and a related "Presidential Policy Directive" updating Bush-era policies from 2003 -- drew quick praise from civil liberties groups.
The ACLU said it's "encouraged" by it, and in a not-so-subtle swipe at CISPA, added that the order shows "there are smart ways to bolster cybersecurity while protecting privacy."
Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a statement that: "Rather than having the government monitor private networks, it is better for security and privacy to have private entities protect their own systems and networks. Better sharing of what the government knows will enhance that effort."
While the executive order and related directive may sap some of the enthusiasm for new laws, the partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill is hardly over.
House Intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, said today that he'll reintroduce CISPA tomorrow to concede with an event that will be held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
"We need to provide American companies the information they need to better protect their networks from these dangerous cyber threats," Rogers said. "Congress urgently needs to pass our cyber threat information sharing bill to protect our national security, our economy, and U.S. jobs."
While CISPA initially wasn't an especially partisan bill -- it cleared the House Intelligence Committee by a vote of 17 to 1 over a year ago December -- it gradually moved in that direction. The final floor vote last April had 206 Republicans voting for it, and 28 opposed.
Of the Democrats, 42 voted for CISPA and 140 were opposed, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi saying that CISPA "didn't strike the right balance" and Republicans "didn't allow amendments to strengthen privacy protections." CISPA died in the Senate, where Democrats preferred a competing bill backed by then-Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
Despite broad industry support, CISPA alarmed privacy groups because it would would permit -- but not require -- Internet companies to hand over confidential customer records and communications to the U.S. National Security Agency and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
One section says "notwithstanding any other provision of law," companies may share information "with any other entity, including the federal government." By including the word "notwithstanding," CISPA's drafters intended to make their legislation trump all existing federal and state civil and criminal laws.
During a town hall meeting that CNET hosted at our headquarters in San Francisco, Jamil Jaffer, senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, said the protests ignored the fact that the bill was approved by a bipartisan committee majority back in December.
Industry groups appear poised to back CISPA once again. The Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of General Electric, Verizon, Wells Fargo, and Boeing on its board, said after this evening's announcement that it "strongly supports the reintroduction" of CISPA over the Democrats' bill that takes a "traditional, top-down regulatory approach."
Meanwhile, Democrats haven't been idle. Late last month, a group of Democratic senators including Tom Carper, incoming chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a joint statement calling on their colleagues to embrace the Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitiveness Act (S.21). Obama appeared to endorse that approach, saying this evening that "now Congress must act as well by passing legislation to give our government a greater capacity to secure our networks and deter attacks."ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) will announce on Thursday (tomorrow) the verdict in the Panamagate case in which the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was sought for allegedly lying on the floor of parliament.
A five-member larger bench, headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, and comprising Justices Ijaz Afzal Khan, Gulzar Ahmed, Sheikh Azmat Saeed and Ijazul Ahsan, will announce the reserved verdict on Thursday.
According to Supplementary Cause List issued by the apex court on April 20, the verdict in the Panama case will be announced at 2 pm. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed of Awami Muslim League (AML), and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Ameer Sirajul Haq had filed constitutional petitions, seeking disqualification of the prime minister.
The court on February 22 had reserved the judgment after hearing all the parties with the observation that it would not leave the Panama case undecided and vowed to come up with a verdict regardless of the fact that the parties may or may not like it.
Justice Khosa, who was heading the bench, had observed that they were considering the instant matter from every conceivable angle. Since the court reserved the judgment in the matter, the general public, as well as media analysts including TV anchors and columnists, were bent upon giving their respective analysis as well as guessing the date for the announcement of the judgments.
The major theme that revolves around the whole of the case relates to the disqualification of the premier for what the petitioners, particularly PTI Chief Imran Khan and Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, had submitted in their petitions that after lying on the floor of parliament, Nawaz remained no more Sadiq and Ameen as required under the Constitution; hence, he should be disqualified.
Last year in April 2016 with a huge leak of 11.5 million documents from the database of a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, politicians, celebrities, businessmen and criminals who had set up offshore companies were revealed.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family came under fire at home with opposition parties accusing them of widespread corruption, after the names of PM’s children cropped up in the leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm.
Opposition hopeful
While welcoming the announcement of the verdict date, the PTI spokesperson said ‘The decision will reflect the will of the people of Pakistan’.
JUI-F chief Fazl ur Rehman, who is also the collation partner of PML-N, predicted nothing unusual from the Panama case and said nation’s time is being wasted on a non-issue.
Setting aside all the speculations, PML-N leader Talal Chaudhry said there’s nothing to worry about as this case is all political and an attempt to dislodge Nawaz government. The verdict will not affect the prime minster, he said.
Important meetings
The ruling party has convened a party meeting today in the Federal Capital to decide the future course of action after the verdict. PM Nawaz Sharif will chair the meeting.
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari have also summoned the party leadership to Islamabad. The PPP sources said that the decision has been taken to discuss the situation to arise after the SC verdict in the Panamagate scandal.
They said that the party’s legal advisers had also been asked to stay in the capital.What if you could do anything you wanted without worrying about losing some limbs? That day may be here soon! Researchers in the Computational Synthesis Laboratory at Cornell University are working on a 3D printer which will print body parts, all the different tissues included. If you lose a finger or ear, they'll just print you a new one.
Over the past few years 3D printers have taken off and now 3D printers can print a variety of materials; everything from plastic flutes to metal/plastic cars. You can even get 3D printed titanium parts on-demand! But Dr. Hod Lipson and his group of rogue researchers at Cornell hope to start printing biological body parts soon enough.
See the BBC video:
The researchers hope that someday within the next 20 years you will be able to walk into a body scanner(and no, not those wonderful TSA scanners that we all love) which will copy all your features and store them into a database. Then when you lose a body part, the doctors will be able to look up the exact dimensions of that body part in the database and simply print you a new one. The body parts will be fully functional and made of the same separate tissues as your old parts.
[Engadget via BBC / Photo: 'Geekubator' on Flickr; used under Creative Commons]
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Feb. 18, 2015, 10:02 AM GMT / Updated Feb. 18, 2015, 10:06 AM GMT
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Robert Mugabe's birthday is a big deal in Zimbabwe.
The country's economic devastation be damned, every February 21 is celebrated with events including a soccer tournament (the "Bob Super Cup"), a concert and a lavish party in honor of Comrade President who has ruled for 35 years.
This year, to mark Mugabe's 91st, the party is expected to feature wild game on the menu — including elephant meat — a plan conservationists have criticized as "unethical" and which local villagers say will hit their income.
According to The Chronicle, a state-run daily, a prominent local farmer has offered to donate two elephants along with two Cape buffalos, two sable antelopes, five impalas and a trophy lion for the birthday bash.
The farmer, Tendai Musasa, called the donation of animals worth an estimated $120,000 "a perfect gesture." The animals will be slaughtered a few days ahead of the party, and the meat stored by a local hotel, he is quoted as saying.Alberta is the best province in Canada for jobs and services, but it ranks fourth worst for safety. While, Prince Edward Island is the safest province in Canada, as far as accessing services goes, it’s the second worst, next to New Brunswick.
These are just a few of the facts you can glean from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development’s new interactive website Regional Well-being.
See for yourself here
The site rates 362 regions around the world with a relative score out of 10 in eight categories: income, health, safety, services, civic engagement, education, jobs and environment and reveals some large disparities.
While Alberta’s murder rate of 2.4 per 100,000 people is fairly high for Canada, it’s not as bad as the country’s unsafest region, Nunavut, where the murder rate is 17.6 killings per 100,000 people. With a life expectancy of 71.3 years, Nunavut also is the worst region for health, and ranks globally in the bottom 1%.
Other places with similar quality of life to Nunavut include Mississippi, Chihuahua, Mexico and Zachodniopomorskie, Poland.
Here a few more facts from the site:TORONTO -- There has been so much focus this season on Alex Ovechkin's career-low offensive numbers and so little emphasis on why he's been willing to sacrifice those individual totals.
It's all in the eye in the beholder, right?
Is Ovechkin having a so-so offensive season or is he being the ultimate "team first" guy by embracing his club's new ways?
Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals were ousted by Montreal in the first round last season. Francois Lacasse/Getty Images
The Washington Capitals have transformed themselves this season from free-wheeling offensive machine to two-way, responsible play. They're ranked fourth in goals against per game (2.35) compared to 16th last season (2.77).
In doing so, they had to drag down their franchise player's offensive numbers. We sat down with Ovechkin on Tuesday morning in the visitors' dressing room at Air Canada Centre and one thing he made clear is he's on board with what's transpired.
"Everyone here just wants to win so badly,'' Ovechkin told ESPN.com.
Let's not sugar-coat this. The Caps have asked one of the world's most electrifying players to shift it down a gear once in a while.
"Hey, it's a tough transition from being a thoroughbred, where you're used to going, going, going, to saying, 'You know what? I don't care if I don't win the Art Ross, I don't care if I win all these trophies because I've done all of that. I just want to win the one trophy, and if this is what I have to do to win the one trophy, then that's what I'm going to do,'" Caps coach Bruce Boudreau, who has deftly overseen his team's relaunch, told ESPN.com on Tuesday.
It reminds us of Steve Yzerman's famous adjustment in the early 1990s under Scotty Bowman. After another first-round playoff upset loss, the NHL's all-time winningest coach suggested to Yzerman that if he was willing to sacrifice some offensive numbers and play more of a two-way game, the rest of the group would follow given his stature on the team.
Yzerman didn't need convincing. All he cared about was winning. So down went his individual stats and up went the playoff wins. And soon, the Stanley Cups arrived, too.
"It's a good comparison," Boudreau said after we offered it up.
It's not a perfect one, mind you. Yzerman was a center with defensive responsibilities in his own zone that outweighed a winger's. Ovechkin doesn't have the down-low dirty work a center would, but you see the change when he has the puck.
"We try not to make mistakes in the neutral zone," Ovechkin said. "When we have a situation like a 2-on-3 or a 1-on-3, we try not to make mistakes. We just dump it in and go try to get it. It used to be, on a 2-on-3, we'd try to make a play, give it up and they score a goal."
Dumping it in? Alex Ovechkin? You just know that's counter-intuitive at his core.
"And he doesn't really want to do it [dump it in] and you can see it in his face, but he's doing what's right," Boudreau said. "Especially when you're on a 2-on-3 and he cuts to the middle and loses the puck... we've seen enough clips where going the other way isn't that much fun."
We threw the Yzerman/Red Wings comparison to Ovechkin, one which he mulled over for a second.
"Of course it's good when some people are going to compare us with Detroit," Ovechkin said. "But they won the Cup, right? We will see what's going to happen. I hope we win this year, but it's going to be hard. Every game in the playoffs will be like a war and we have to be ready."
That is just the point of what's transpired this season with the Caps: being ready for playoff hockey. The lack of spring success over the past few years forced Washington to change its colors and accept that a certain brand of hockey wins in the playoffs.
But winning over his players wasn't going to fly unless Boudreau had No. 8 on board.
"One of the things that he's done which has been really great is that, when we do video, he really makes a point, that if he made a mistake, to point it out in front of everybody," Boudreau said. "He'll take the heat. He wants to show that he's not above being criticized. I remember the first time that I really did it, and gave it to him pretty good, and I asked him, 'Are you OK?' He said, 'Yeah, everybody saw that, it's great.' So, I mean, he wants that sort of role and he's taken it."
And because of what Boudreau knows from the inside, he bristles at what some people on the outside have said in criticizing Ovechkin for his offensive production.
"It's all they look at," said Boudreau. "He's got 81 points for a team that has scored a lot less goals than it did last year [the Caps were first in the league last season at 3.86 goals per game, now they're 18th at 2.68]. If his power-play numbers were the same [as last year], he'd be leading the league in scoring.
"So, 5-on-5 he's still plus-20 something, he's scored more game-winning goals than anyone in the league, he's done so many good things, but people want to focus on the fact he only has 30 goals."
Well, to be fair, when a player has scored 65 goals in this league, it's only natural for people wonder about a 30-goal campaign. But we get Boudreau's point.
"Well, we'll be lucky in this league this year if we get one 50-goal scorer," Boudreau correctly pointed out. "Everything is down. But are we a better team and is he a better player for it? I think all-around, yeah."
The timing was right for this to happen, Ovechkin said.
"The organization is ready," said the Washington captain. "We have such a good group of guys in the locker room. Everyone wants to win so badly."Recent Examples on the Web
These recent, extreme adaptations raise a question of how cetaceans may continue to change. Brian Switek, Smithsonian, "Today’s Whales Are Huge, But Why Aren’t They Huger?," 27 June 2018
The study showed cetaceans with the largest brain size relative to their body living in more complex groups or pods were more likely to show grief. Jason Daley, Smithsonian, "Study Suggests Dolphins and Some Whales Grieve Their Dead," 20 June 2018
Similar results have been found in other families of mammals, like ungulates (deer, camels, and the like) and cetaceans (whales and dolphins). Cathleen O'grady, Ars Technica, "The evolutionary mystery of gigantic human brains," 23 Aug. 2018
Indeed, there is evidence that many cetaceans—that is, whales, dolphins and porpoises—have strong and complicated family and social ties. Alison Gopnik, WSJ, "Like Us, Whales May Be Smart Because They’re Social," 16 Aug. 2018
Among marine mammals, pinnipeds, such as seals, do—but cetaceans, such as whales and dolphins, do not. Anna Diamond, Smithsonian, "Do Marine Mammals Yawn and More Questions From Our Readers," 28 June 2018
The North Atlantic right whale, for example, reaches over 50 feet in length and is one of the most endangered cetaceans on the planet. Brian Switek, Smithsonian, "Today’s Whales Are Huge, But Why Aren’t They Huger?," 27 June 2018
One of the article’s authors, vertebrate biologist Nel Beaumont, wrote in an email that there were not enough older books about cetaceans in their sample to determine whether accuracy had improved over time. Claire Eamer, Smithsonian, "How Children’s Books Reveal Our Evolving Relationship With Whales," 27 Mar. 2018
As Ruth Schuster at Haaretz reports, bones of both cetaceans were found near Gibraltar, indicating that the whales ranged much further afield, even using the Mediterranean Sea as a calving ground. Jason Daley, Smithsonian, "Romans May Have Hunted Whales to Extinction in Their Home Waters," 11 July 2018
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'cetacean.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.NEW YORK -- President Hillary Clinton is getting a battering from the media following a Thursday press conference that journalists are criticizing for being "well-informed and sane."
The New York Times editorial board issued a blistering review of the President's performance on Friday morning, saying Clinton's "dazzling intelligence, profound understanding of the Constitution and masterful command of policy is, frankly, annoying."
"Who does she think she is? Hermione Granger? Tracy Flick? Leslie Knope? Clearly, we here at the New York Times editorial board are all feminists. But sometimes, Clinton's virtuosity, work ethic and morally superior belief that she knows what's best for the country becomes unbearable, even for Coastal liberals like us."
The Washington Post was more measured, praising Clinton for responding to the media's questions for over 70 minutes on Thursday "in complete sentences, with a series of answers that were remarkable for their intellectual coherence and precision. And she never broke to pee."
Meanwhile, Politico just published a list of "Ten reasons Clinton's excellent press conference will backfire on Democrats in 2028."
On NBC, Megyn Kelly said Clinton's A+ performance could backfire.
"No doubt, this is why polls show Clinton with a soaring approval rating among voters," she said. "But this is also why reporters hate her. No one wants to read about Clinton's excellence, professionalism and courage. They want to read about her enthusiasm problem, aneurysms, and female tendency to lie!"Pictured above, director Amanda Tapping and 1st Assistant Director Brandon Tataryn oversee this morning’s production meeting for Episode 201. Today was the last day of prep for our season 2 premiere as principal photography is scheduled to commence bright and EARLY tomorrow morning in the:
INTERIOR – HYPERION 8 – MINIMUM SECURITY – QUARTERS
While the action unfolds on one side of the stage, director Bruce McDonald will be doing a walkabout of the other sets (10:00 – 11:00) before tomorrow afternoon’s Episode 202 concept meeting. This may well be our most ambitious episode to date and every department head – and yours truly – will have to bring their A+ game (because, let’s face it, we always bring our A game). Stunts! Extras! Dazzling visual effects!
These sets…
…brought to you in part by…
Dark Matter Head Carpenter Craig Tovell.
Check out the final score. It was actually A LOT closer than that. I needed a measly 5 yards from McFadden to secure victory on the final day of the fantasy football regular season. First carry – fumble! Minus 2 points! Despair. He runs for 20 yards so, by halftime, my deficit was back to a mere 5 yards. Hope! He carries early in the second half. Fumble! Another 2 points! And possible concussion! Deep despair. But then they announce he is putting his helmet back on. Hope! But back-up Robert Turbin assumes RB duties on the next drive. Despair. But then McFadden comes back in on the next series, the Cowboys drive it down to the goal line, and McFadden gets two consecutive carries. Hope! Only to get stuffed and have the Cowboys throw a TD to someone else. Despair. On what looks to be their final drive, the Cowboys are forced to kick. Double despair. And then Desean Jackson fumbles! Hope! McFadden rushes – and scores the TD with less than a minute to go, securing the win and a first round bye.
All this to say, this weekend’s first round playoff schedule looks like this:
VFX Supervisor Lawren Bancroft-Wilson’s Gainfully-Employed Hyphens (for now) and my Snow Monkeys get the first-round bye and weekend off, leaving Consulting Producer Ivon Bartok’s Running Dead, Orphan Black writer-Supervising Producer Alex Levine’s This Ones For John, Beats by Ray and whalleyBallrz to duke it out for the right to battle us in the semi-finals.
Exciting, no?
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Like this: Like Loading...IRVING, Texas -- Mike Pope is entering his 34th year as an assistant coach in the NFL and his third with the Dallas Cowboys. Mike Loney is entering his 14th year as an assistant coach in the NFL and second with the Cowboys.
Together they will handle the tight end responsibilities.
While they know what they have in Jason Witten, James Hanna, Gavin Escobar and Geoff Swaim, they have no idea what they have in Rico Gathers.
Last weekend’s rookie minicamp was Gathers’ first football practice since the eighth grade.
“Coach Loney and I, it doesn’t say Houdini on our doors,” Pope said. “It says Coach. We can’t just make a guy, turn over, get up tomorrow and be ready to go. He’s going to be a while.”
The Cowboys know it will take a while for former basketball player Rico Gathers to get up to full speed. Tony Gutierrez/AP
The Cowboys selected Gathers in the sixth round knowing it would take time to turn the Baylor forward into a tight end.
Whenever a basketball player is looked at as a tight end the inevitable comparisons are to NFL success stories, such as Tony Gonzalez, who excelled in basketball and football at California before catching the most passes in NFL history by a tight end. Then, of course, comes Antonio Gates of the San Diego Chargers and Jimmy Graham of the Seattle Seahawks.
Gates at least played football through high school and had visions of playing both sports at Michigan State before eventually ending up at Kent State. Graham played a year at Miami after his basketball eligibility expired.
“He had some semblance but he was still raw when you go back and look at his college tape, which we did when we were evaluating it,” Pope said of Graham. “You wouldn’t say that you could bet this guy is an automatic winning hand. He got better as he got to New Orleans and got to do these things over and over and over again.”
The challenge of coaching Gathers is complicated because he does not have the base knowledge of the game that college players pick up over the years. What might seem elementary to some is foreign to Gathers, but the Cowboys’ approach with Gathers can’t be too much different than the other tight ends.
“As a general comment, you would say, ‘All of these guys need to get their fundamentals down,’ and that starts with stances and get-off and all the basic things that a player at any position needs to work on,” coach Jason Garrett said. “So we’re focused on all that stuff. You got to start from there with each of these players. But they do have to do other things. You can’t just say, ‘OK, it’s all about the stance. We’re not worrying about anything else.’ It’s the stance, it’s the release and some of the other things we’re asking you to do. But you do have to be cognizance of where they are, particularly in his case, where he is and where he’s been and help him.”
There is a good thing about coaching Gathers right now: He has no bad habits.
“He doesn’t have any habits,” Pope said. “That’s a good way to put it.”
But Pope sees the athleticism to work with, even as Gathers learns.
“Well, you just can’t throw him in there with the guys who do know what to do because his job is going to always, especially as a tight end, be related to somebody else," Pope said. "A receiver, if he doesn’t get proper depth, he screws up the timing. If he does the wrong way on an out breaking route, it messes up the receiver on top of him, so it looks ratty.
“He can’t play at full speed until he’s absolutely sure what he’s doing, but I think we’ll see that jump as we go forward.”Sabina Griffith
The new book on fusion describing the progress made in the past two decades.
Determined to tell the ''indispensable truth'' about fusion energy: Francis ''Frank'' Chen.
In 1954, Francis "Frank" Chen was among Lyman Spitzer's first 15 employees at Princeton's Project Matterhorn, now known as PPPL. There, he instituted experiments on linear machines that led to the discovery of resistive drift waves, whose mechanism he worked out while on sabbatical at Fontenay-aux-Roses, France, in 1962-63. Two other young physicists were there at the same time: Paul Rebut and Robert Aymar, who later were instrumental in designing ITER. At UCLA since 1969, Frank opened up research on laser fusion, laser accelerators, and low-temperature plasmas. He never lost interest in magnetic fusion, however, and decided that the greatest need was to explain fusion to the public. This book is his first attempt.Written "for a variety of readers, from green enthusiasts with no science background to Scientific American magazine subscribers," Chen's book gives a comprehensive summary of the stakes of climate change and energy supply—and how controlled fusion fits into the picture. "I tried to give a concise, impartial picture of the facts," Chen writes, admitting that he himself is not an expert on climate topics. "Here I am out of depth. I get my information from the same newspapers, magazines and websites that you do. But I think it is important to put fusion in the proper context within the general scheme of the world's future."An Indispensable Truth is both an entertaining and an informative book that manages to explain the complexity of plasma physics without using formulas. "This is an important book for anyone who wishes to understand the greatest challenge we face," writes Steven Cowley, Director and CEO of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, UK and one of the book's reviewers. "Frank Chen makes the science of fusion and energy clear, compelling, and hugely enjoyable."10 PRINT in Python 3 with Pygame
10 PRINT is a new book which explores the magical power of a single line of code.
That single line of code ran on the Commodore 64, in 1982. It gave us one of the earliest examples of the power of computers to generate entire worlds.
(Gif from Thomas Winningham)
With just a single incantation:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Our intrepid user got to watch an entire universe unfold in front of them.
This magic of new possibilities is a great example of what makes programming so exciting. With just one line of code, we can see an entire world, randomly building itself. We see paths and imagine new places with our eyes.
Understanding How 10 PRINT Builds a Universe
10 PRINT was written in the Basic programming language. This means it has a few quirks, looking back at it from our modern languages.
For one, Basic was just a raw terminal you typed your programs into. With each entered, you were writing a specific set of commands to be followed linearly.
First we have the line number, which is used at the end to repeat the line of code infinitely. Most modern programming languages don’t have this idea of GOTO built in, because we’ve tried to abstract away from line numbers, and into more definite modules and functions with names.
Next, we use the CHR$ function, and pass it the number 205.5 + a random value between 0 and 1. All numbers were floating point values on the platform, and rounded down. So this meant our code would generate either the character 205 ( \ ), or 206 ( / ).
With this, we loop infinitely, generating either a forward slash, or a back slash.
We can do this in Python, of course, in just a single line from the terminal.
As suggested by reddit user WK02, here’s the code to generate 10 PRINT in one line of Python from the shell:
from random import choice ; print ( ''. join ( choice (('\\ ', '/' )) for i in range ( 10000 )))
Rewriting 10 PRINT in Python 3 and Pygame
Unfortunately, writing 10 PRINT in Python and Pygame isn’t really doable in one line.
The code to generate the lines is easy enough, but setting up our window for drawing takes up the majority of our code.
import pygame import random # set our screen's width and height screenWidth, screenHeight = ( 800, 800 ) pygame. init () pygame. display. set_caption ( "10 PRINT in |
way to conduct turn-by-turn'state' analysis.
Even the current system can be improved in some simple ways, however. For example, one small but useful innovation would be to temporarily increase Elo adjustments following a long period not playing Ranked. This accurately models the increased uncertainty about your skill level--you might have not played at all and become terribly rusty, or you might have practiced your ass off and gotten much better. It allows people who tanked their Elo initially, because they started when they weren't ready, or got trolled in their placement matches, to get a jump start moving up the ladder. The same for people who let inactive accounts slide to 1400. And it removes the incentive for such players to smurf another account to 30 and try for better luck in their early matches--by the time they do that, their old account will have just as volatile an Elo.
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If you made it down here, congrats. This was a bit longer than I'd anticipated--after all, it was initially only going to be about one of these myths, rather than all of them. My fingers just wouldn't stop typing.
So, how many of these have you heard before? Got any new ones for me? I'm happy to add 'em.Learning an instrument also teaches kids life lessons
Let's start with a typical scene from my household.
I call: "It's time to practice the violin!" I hear: "No!" and disappearing footsteps indicating that my 6-year-old daughter is running to the other end of the house.
This exchange is strikingly similar -- as history is prone to repeat itself -- to what happened 40 years earlier between my father and myself.
Learning an instrument and dealing with stage fright were major growing pains of my childhood. Coming from East Germany, many people might assume the pain I suffered was under the East German dictatorship and political and social suppression. In fact, the most painful memories of my childhood are the daily practice times at the piano with my father. They were full of pain and tears -- far from the educational model practiced nowadays of "having fun" while learning. Certain things just are not fun. For many children learning a musical instrument the daily practice is their first encounter with a work discipline.
Now that I am in the father role, I recognize the pattern of my daughter negotiating every day about duration and necessity of practicing the instrument.
Why am I doing this?
First there are the obvious benefits of knowing music: awareness and knowledge of other cultures and styles, as well as increased understanding of history and traditions. Music can represent the cultural history of the world in a nutshell. I used to make my daughter listen to classical music, known in her words as "Eckart's song." But there is a huge difference between knowing and doing. Actual music making -- playing an instrument or singing -- has a whole set of skills it can teach. The goal is not to make her a professional musician. Here is why I go through the struggle with my daughter every day: to teach her a work ethic and strategic thinking.
Whoever has learned a musical instrument knows how much time, dedication and patience is required. Learning to play new compositions, for example, teaches students that the process of continuous study will bring results in the future, not right away -- something I find very important in the age of instant gratification. For a child to find out that honing a skill takes a long time can teach systematic and strategic learning habits. Even geniuses work hard. Mozart worked hard; Beethoven worked even harder. Beethoven filled notebooks with sketches -- it took more than 200 sketches to finalize the seemingly simple melody of the "Ode to Joy" from his Ninth symphony.
Emotional expression
When playing an instrument or singing you have the chance of using it as a social and emotional outlet. Part of good parenting is to teach ways of expressing emotions in a healthy way. Music provides a nonverbal way of dealing with anger, frustration or happiness. As a troubled teenager in East Germany I started to listen and play the heavenly music of Anton Bruckner, as well as the multi-emotional symphonies of Gustav Mahler.
Creative problem solving
There are physical, mental and emotional challenges to playing and performing. Be it fingering (depending on the size of your hand) or the frequency of breathing (depending on lung capacity) there are many different solutions to a problem that vary from individual to individual. Also, every time you play music you play it differently. Every time you shape phrases the dynamic balances differently. And whenever you play music with others you have to react to your musical partners and surroundings. Every moment of playing music requires split-second decisions to solve immediate challenges. Music teaches us that trial-and-error is a valid means of problem solving as is a meticulously calculated solution or a sudden inspiration.
Training for the moment of performance
After years of practice and tears (yes, that's OK) we have honed the ability not only to perform under pressure and repeat the same music at the same high level again and again, but we have gained leadership qualities and learned how to become a team player. We have given and taken instructions, developed opinions, made difficult decisions and are ready for the ultimate challenge: to be in the limelight and perform better than ever.
Daily practice of the creative and performance processes develop skills that -- if you think about it -- employers are desperately looking for. That's why I will be ready tonight to get into the next fight with my daughter.
Eckart Preu is music director of the Stamford Symphony.Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon on Wednesday said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should immediately resign from his leadership position and make the move effective after Congress completes its push for tax reform.
"I tell you Sean, I'm to the point that I think Mitch McConnell, to really bring unity to the Republican Party and get things done, I think Mitch McConnell ought to tender his resignation," Bannon told host Sean Hannity on Fox News's "Hannity."
Bannon said while McConnell should not leave his post as majority leader during the tax push, he should provide his resignation this week.
"I think Mitch McConnell, tomorrow, should tender his resignation," Bannon said.
Bannon argued that McConnell has refused to take up bills in the upper chamber that could help oust red-state Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections.
At the end of the television appearance, Bannon said McConnell should provide his resignation Wednesday evening.
The comments from one of President Trump's former top aides come as Senate Republicans prepare their own tax-reform bill that is expected to differ from the legislation currently in the lower chamber.
Bannon has pledged to challenge the Republican establishment in the midterm elections and put up primary challengers against incumbent GOP senators.Marijuana plants for sale are displayed at the medical marijuana farmers market in Los Angeles Thomson Reuters A medical marijuana derivative known as cannabidiol (CBD) has been proved to be effective in reducing seizure frequency in most children and young adults. A yearlong study carried out at the NYU Langone Medical Center found that there was a reduction of seizures in children and young adults by more than a third.
The study is also the first to give a clearer picture of the safety, tolerability and efficacy of prescription CBD in children and adults with treatment resistant epilepsy. Some 214 patients aged between one and 30 were given an oral CBD treatment known as Epidiolox over a 12-week period in 2014, and results showed there was an average drop of 36.5% reduction in monthly motor seizures.
The median frequency of monthly motor seizures dropped from 30 at the beginning to 15.8 over the course of the 12 weeks, according to the research which was led by Orrin Devinsky, professor of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry and director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone and published in Lancet Neurology. Furthermore, the cannabis derivative also showed a sufficient safety profile and was well endured by most patients, but there some adverse side effects such as drowsiness, decreased appetite, diarrhoea, fatigue and convulsion.
Devinsky said: "We are very encouraged by our trial results showing that CBD was safe and well-tolerated for most patients, and that seizures dropped significantly. But before we raise hopes for families who regularly deal with the devastation of treatment-resistant epilepsy, more research, including further studies through our ongoing randomized controlled trial, are needed to definitively recommend CBD as a treatment to patients with uncontrolled seizures.
"I empathize with parents who are looking for answers and will try anything to help their children suffering the devastating effects of intractable epilepsy. But we must let the science, and not anecdotal success stories and high media interest, lead this national discussion. Taking CBD in a controlled medical setting is vastly different from going to a state where medical marijuana is legal and experimenting with dosing and CBD strains."We already knew that General Motors, having announced in early June that something powerful was “hiding” beneath the new hood scoop and new cold air intake system, had something up its sleeve for its 2017 model year heavy duty trucks. Since then, we’ve been patiently waiting for even the slightest bit of info about the 2017 model year HD trucks. The wait is now (partially) over, since GM’s just-published order guides reveal the complete updates and changes to the 2017 Silverado HD family, which includes the 2017 Silverado 2500HD and 2017 Silverado 3500HD.
First and foremost: yes, that new hood scoop and intake system is, indeed, hiding a new 6.6L Duramax Turbo-Diesel V-8 engine. Assigned RPO code L5P, the new B20-compatible Duramax is mated to the Allison 1000 6-speed automatic transmission (MW7) and is available across all trim levels of the 2017 Silverado Heavy Duty. Quite unfortunately, there are no other details on the new oil burner — like power or torque ratings — just yet.
The base engine in the 2017 Silverado HD remains the 6.0L Vortec L96 V-8. The gasoline drinker is still E85-compatible, meaning that it’s capable of running on unleaded or up to 85 percent ethanol. Like in the previous, 2016 model year, it continues to make 360 horsepower (268.4 kW) at 5400 RPM and 380 pound-feet of torque (515 Nm) at 4200 RPM. The L96 continues to be matched with GM’s 6-speed MYD automatic, electronically-controlled heavy duty transmission with overdrive and tow/haul mode. The gearbox also includes Cruise Grade Braking and Powertrain Grade Braking. On to the other changes.
Three exterior colors are deleted while two new ones are added:
Deleted Colors Slate Grey Metallic
Autumn Bronze Metallic
Tungston Metallic
New Colors Graphite Metallic
Pepperdust Metallic
Rounding out the changes to the exterior are new 20-inch 6-spoke polished aluminum wheels and the aforementioned hood scoop for models with the new Diesel engine. Lastly, capless fuel fill is introduced for models with the L96 V-8 gasoline engine, while the capped fuel fill remains on models with the L5P Duramax 6.6L Turbo Diesel V-8 engine and pickup box delete.
Inside, the 2017 Chevy Silverado HD adds Teen Driver mode and a new Jet Black Medium Ash Gray color combination available on the High Country (3LZ) trim.
On the subject of trim levels, the 2017 Silverado HD continues to be offered in four trim levels:
Work Truck (1WT)
LT (1LT)
LTZ (1LZ)
High Country (3LZ)
But there are some changes to the equipment within the trims as well as to the truck’s various standalone equipment packages:
High Country Premium Package is deleted
The LT trim level gains the rear vision camera as standard equipment, causing it to be removed from the LT Convenience Package as well as the Texas Edition and All Star Edition
LTZ Plus Package adds the heated steering wheel feature
A new LPO-level (dealer-installed) Chrome Essentials Package is added, and includes: Chrome recovery hooks 6-inch rectangular chrome tubular assist steps It requires the Crew Cab or Double Cab model and is available only on the LT (1LT) trim level For those interested, the Chrome recovery hooks are available as a standalone LPO option on all trim levels
A new Alaskan Edition package is added and includes: 18-inch black aluminum wheels LT275/65R18E 123/120Q maximum traction blackwall Goodyear Wrangler DuraTrac tires Snow Plow Prep Package Smoked Amber roof marker lamps Spray-on bed liner Unique decal package
The RPO code of the heated and vented seats changes from KB6 to KQV
We should also note that the 2017 Silverado HD changes and updates are quite similar to those for the 2017 Sierra HD.
Stay tuned as we learn more about the 2017 Silverado HD in the days and weeks ahead. Suffice to say, we will be doing our best to dig up anything and everything we can about the new L5P Duramax diesel engine.
2017 Chevrolet Silverado HD RPO Changes & Updates Following is the list of RPO-level changes to the 2016 Silverado HD: Deletions (G1C) Slate Grey Metallic
(G1F) Autumn Bronze Metallic
(GXG) Tungston Metallic
(PDT) High country Premium Package New Features (GPA) Graphite Metallic
(GMU) Pepperdust Metallic
Capless fuel fill
(TDM) Teen Driver mode
New center vent hood with Diesel engine
New Interior trim (HQZ) Jet Black Medium Ash Gray available on 3LZ
(Q7R) 20″ 6-spoke polished aluminum wheels
(L5P) Duramax 6.6L Turbo Diesel V8 engine
(ANQ) Alaskan Edition
(PDV) LPO, Chrome Essentials Package Changes (KB6) heated and vented seats change RPO code to (KQV)
Capped fuel fill is included with (ZW9) pickup box delete and (L5P) Duramax 6.6L Turbo Diesel V8 engine
(UVC) Rear vision camera is standard on LT trim and removed from: (PCM) LT Convenience Package (PDA) Texas Edition (PDU) All Star Edition
(PDF) LTZ Plus Package added (UVD) heated steering wheel
2017 Chevrolet Silverado HD Order Guides Download the 2017 Chevy Silverado HD order guides using the following links (PDF format): 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD order guide
2017 Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD order guide
Chevrolet Silverado Sales Follow this link for Chevrolet Silverado sales numbers and figures, which include Silverado HD sales.
2017 Chevrolet Silverado HDBERLIN, April 2 (Reuters) - Germany’s cabinet gave the green light on Wednesday to a national minimum wage of 8.50 euros per hour in Europe’s biggest economy - a flagship project for the Social Democrats (SPD) who share power with Angela Merkel’s conservatives.
The minimum wage is due to apply from 2015 but will not cover minors, trainees and some interns. Some employers can continue to pay their workers less until the end of 2016 if they are covered by certain collective agreements.
In addition, companies will also be able to pay the long-term unemployed less than the legal minimum wage for the first six months of a new job.
“The minimum wage is coming,” SPD Labour Minister Andrea Nahles said at a news conference in Berlin.
“It is, above all, good news for people who work hard but get such low wages that they can’t live from them so I hope that with this pay package we will create more wage justice and that’s good for cohesion in Germany overall,” she added.
The minister has reassured branches where seasonal work is common such as agriculture, hotels and restaurants, by offering support to help them adjust to the minimum wage.
The Bundestag lower house of parliament is due to debate the law in June before passing it in July. The Bundesrat upper house is due to wave it through after the summer break.
Employer lobbies have denounced the plan, saying it would cost jobs and introduce too much regulation.
Slightly more than a tenth of workers in western Germany earn less than the proposed 8.50 euros an hour, compared with a quarter of workers in eastern Germany, according to data from the IWH institute. (Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Madeline Chambers)Officials in the Philippines have said at least 182 people have died after Tropical Storm Tembin hit the island of Mindanao. Dozens are reported missing after the storm brought mudslides and flash floods to the southern region.
According to the government, most of the deaths were in Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur provinces on the Zamboanga Peninsula.
Several areas on Mindanao, the island worst hit by the storm, are in a state of emergency and more than 70,000 people had to abandon their homes.
Code Red declared by number of Cities in Northern & Central Mindanao affected by typhoon Vinta Marawi included. It means LGUs impose force evacuation. Expect more displaced individuals in the coming days. — Zia Alonto Adiong (@ZeeAlontoAdiong) December 22, 2017
IN PHOTOS: The search and rescue operations of the Philippine Coast Guard for victims of #VintaPH in Mindanao. | via Evelyn Macarian, photos courtesy of the PCG pic.twitter.com/m0pkxmPK6v — The Philippine Star (@PhilippineStar) December 23, 2017
Philippines storm kills more than 100 https://t.co/if7fMD9zT7 ^GM pic.twitter.com/a4QLWNqveT — KBC Channel1 News (@KBCChannel1) December 23, 2017
Tropical storm leaves at least 75 dead, dozens missing in southern Philippines – It’s the latest disaster to hit the Philippines, which is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. https://t.co/LAMZSyfZTY — Deon Guillory (@DeonWLTX) December 23, 2017
#UPDATE Philippines storm death toll climbs to 182, police say pic.twitter.com/FIZbhI3gJR — AFP news agency (@AFP) December 23, 2017
Pray for Southern Philippines. This week, Mother Nature has been nothing but brutal to our countrymen. — christmas tr-iya? (@eggcheeks) December 23, 2017Looking to be a part of a great General/0Day tracker? You timing could not have been better. TorrentVault (TV), a Gazelle based private torrent tracker with tons of torrents and awesome pre times, has just re-opened its invites IRC channel after being closed for months. During the last couple of months, TV has grown from a lesser known private tracker into a well respected torrent site - it now features a torrent index with 40k+ torrents, great pre times, a unique bonus points system and the newly introduced TorrentVault Marketplace. In case you couldn’t get into this site through our special signup URL (which was posted a while back), you can now apply for an invite since the invites channel is open once again. Entry requirements for invites that are being handed out on IRC are not tough – even beginners to the BitTorrent scene stand a chance to gain entry into this tracker.
TorrentVault is by no means a young BitTorrent tracker. The site, which started out on TBDEV source several years ago, is one of the veterans in the BT scene. Things have certainly taken an upward turn for TV since their migration to Gazelle codebase back in November 2009. Pre times and the number of daily torrents added to the site improved drastically – good news is that TV has managed to keep the momentum going even after a full year since the switch. As of today, there are over 43000 active torrents on this tracker – roughly 150-200 new torrents get uploaded every day.
TorrentVault is a General/0Day torrent tracker and majority of the indexed files are scene releases. Both non spam and spam releases including foreign + English content get uploaded here. All sorts of content ranging from music, magazines to movies is indexed – there is a particularly high number of TV episodes available as well. Some of the torrent categories and several zero day packs are visible in the screenshot below:
TV has a unique bonus system based on ‘Gold’. Gold is awarded for seeding completed torrents. Every hour you are awarded a specific amount gold for each completed torrent you're seeding. The amount of gold you receive depends on the size of the torrent seeding. Additionally, you earn 2 gold for every forum post you make and 1 gold for every torrent you thank.Points earned in this manner can be exchanged for upload credit and other goodies in the TorrentVault Marketplace.
How to get invited to TorrentVault
As mentioned in the title of this post, TV has re-opened their IRC invites channel. According to site staff, around 2500-3000 invites will be given out in the first round. Entry requirements are not tough but everyone who is invited will be monitored for rule violations. Follow the step by step guide below to log into the TV invites channel. We recommend you use the mIRC client for this operation.
Close your web browser. Install mIRC. mIRC can be downloaded free of charge from this location. Do not run it yet. TV IRC requires SSL connectivity so you’ll need to install SSL support for mIRC first. This is a one click process – simply download OpenSSL Setup from here and install it. Open your web browser, paste the following link in address bar and press enter irc://irc.torrentvault.org:+9022. This should open mIRC and log you into TorrentVault IRC server. Once logged in, type /ns REGISTER username email in the mIRC console to register your nickname on this server.
Example (assuming your username is filenet and password is mypassword)-
/ns REGISTER filenet mypassword Type /join #tv-invites to join the invites channel. Follow instructions on channel topic and request your invite. Good Luck!
If you encounter any issues with above instructions, feel free to post them in comments section.
Special thanks to Ze0de (TV SysOp) and Chronic Tron for the heads up.
Related ArticlesThe word carries a sense of enforced separation — walls, as in pay walls. Keep out those who don’t belong — meaning those who don’t, won’t, or can’t pay.
Managers of content-provision corporations — there’s no point any more in calling them “newspaper companies” — are desperate for revenue after enduring print ad losses. So, after 15 years of giving away the milk for free online, they’ve finally mustered up the cojones to at least talk about charging for content on their websites. They speak of this in a language the reporters they’ve fired would never use — the content provision managers talk of monetizing their sites, of incorporating paid-content strategies, of generating additional digital revenue.
And if you believe pay-content impresario Steven Brill of Journalism Online, about 1,000 publishers — er, content-provision specialists — expect to make $900 million at $8.33 a month from the 10 percent of online website visitors Mr. Brill thinks would be willing to cough of up the cash. But an American Press Institute study says only 51 percent of publishers (who voluntarily completed a survey) think they can charge successfully for online content.
But what does “successfully” mean? And who gets to define it? Easy: Cui bono?
Those at the top of many content-provision corporations believe they would benefit. Mr. Brill says he has 1,000 publications signed to non-binding agreements. Others aren’t so optimistic. Consultants for the American Press Institute, in an early study with admitted weaknesses, suggest only readers would only pay $4.64 — nearly halving Mr. Brill’s nearly $1 billion estimate.
Content-provision corporations are eager, nay, slaked with thirst for advertising revenue to replace the dollars that have fled print newspapers. Although a few large content-provision corporations have managed to hold share prices lately despite tumbling profits, managers need that pay-wall revenue to reinvigorate investors who lost a bundle on newspaper stocks over that past five years. (And let’s not forget some argue consortium-set, pay-wall prices are tantamount to collusion in pricing.)
Because sound data to predict pay-wall success, erecting that wall risks revenue flight as much as revenue restored. Respected analyst Alan Mutter (“Reflections of Newsosaur“) has written extensively in the past few months about pay walls. Mr. Mutter says:
But what, publishers rightfully wonder, will become of the other 90% of website visitors – and the $3.1 billion in advertising revenues the U.S. newspaper industry generated on the web in 2008?. … Here’s why publishers are sweating: While Brill argues that newspapers can preserve some 90% of their page views and online advertising after erecting a pay wall, publishers consistently have told me that they fear they could lose 75% or more of their traffic and banner revenue if they started to charge for content.
Readers — at least those who pay the toll to cross the pay-wall moat — get to define success. (Here’s a look at what some smaller, rural newspapers in non-competitive situations have done in terms of content behind the pay wall.) Remember that “Members Only” clothing line of the ’80s? That’s what a pay wall promises: Uniqueness. Frankly, that’s always been a good local newspaper’s strength — unique content. Local news about local people and local issues.
Erect a pay wall. Promise quality, unique, premium content. That’s the formula the content-provision corporations promise. Will they deliver in terms of what the readers accept as a fair exchange for fee paid? It’d be easy to snark here. For example, in May more than half of the 45 million visits to the online Palm Beach Post linked to the police mug shots the Post runs online. (It’s not the only online paper that does this, too. And a host of ethical issues are involved.)
Is this the quality, unique, premium content that lies behind the pay wall? No, not really. Most of that unique content will be locally generated news, features and “service” information — school lunches, entertainment listings. But will that local behind-the-wall content have quality in quantity?
If the pay walls had been erected 15 years ago — even five years ago — then the answer would be more yes than no.
In this still-dawning century, thousands of the skilled, experienced professional practitioners who produced the quality, unique, premium content no longer work for the content-provision corporations. That’s because the corporations fired the producers. To maintain profit levels to satisfy the investors to whom content-provision management sold its collective soul, it cut expenses — firing the professionals it desparately needs now to make good on the pay-wall promise.
A successful business model? Or crap shoot?
Even if content-provision companies have that $900 million fall into their laps as Mr. Brill suggests, which is more likely to happen? Stock buybacks and dividend increases? Or investment of at least tens of millions of dollars into hiring professional newsmen and newswomen to make good on the promise of quality, unique, premium content?
Yeah, right. It won’t be the latter.
Recommended reading:
Alan Mutter’s excellent series on arguments for and against pay walls:
Why aren’t we paying for news?
What stops publishers from charging for news?
How publishers can make Web content pay
Paul Farhi of the American Journalism Review, arguing for reinvigoration of the print newspaper:
Build that pay wall highTo read more from our Fall Movie Preview, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
Justice League was always going to be a massive endeavor. Warner Bros.’ superteam tentpole crosses three of the studios’ major franchises and backdoor-pilots a few more, bringing together blockbuster protagonists Batman and Wonder Woman with future solo-film stars Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash. But in May, in the midst of reshoots, the film lost director Zack Snyder, who stepped back from his role in the film. The studio announced that the reshoots would be overseen by Joss Whedon, the Avengers director who had recently universe-jumped to DC to begin work on his Batgirl project.
“It’s a little bit unorthodox,” admits Ben Affleck, who will reprise the role of Batman in Justice League. “Zack had a family tragedy, and stepped off, which was horrible. For the movie, the best person we could’ve possibly found was Joss. We got really lucky that he stepped in.” Affleck, who helmed the Best Picture-winning Argo, describes the resulting film as “an interesting product of two directors, both with kind of unique visions, both with really strong takes. I’ve never had that experience before making a movie. I have to say, I really love working with Zack, and I really love the stuff we’ve done with Joss.”
Clay Enos/DC Comics/Warner Bros.
RELATED: Check out Batman’s massive Justice League plane, the Flying Fox
In conversation with EW, Affleck also brushed off rumors that the Justice League reshoots indicated problems with the film. “I’ve never worked on a movie that didn’t do reshoots,” Affleck says. “Argo, we did reshoots for a week and a half! Four days on Gone Baby Gone!” And though the studio hasn’t said anything official about Affleck’s future as Batman, the actor is confident that Justice League reflects the best ambitions of the DC Extended Universe. “This is a really nice time to work in DC. They’re hitting their stride. They’re getting it right. It’s starting to feel like it’s really working.”New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched a website MyGov that aims to help citizens contribute in governance by giving their opinions and views on important issues like clean Ganga or skill development.
The inauguration of the people-centric platform also marks the completion of 60 days of the new government.
The Prime Minister said in the past 60 days, the experience of his government was that there were many people who wanted to contribute towards nation-building and devote their time and energy, an official statement said.
Modi said MyGov is a technology-driven medium that will provide citizens an opportunity to contribute towards good governance, the statement added.
"The platform would bridge gap gulf between people and government. Democracy cannot succeed without people's participation in government and this participation should not be limited only during elections," the Prime Minister said.
Besides Modi, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth, DEITY Secretary R S Sharma were also present at the launch of the portal. National Informatics Centre (NIC) of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) will implement and manage the platform.
There are multiple theme-based discussions on MyGov where a wide range of people can share their thoughts and ideas with the government, Sharma told reporters after the launch. "It is also an initiative to build a digital knowledge library. We will guide the people on the topics of national importance on which the government would like to know their views and ideas," he added.
The platform presents an opportunity for the citizens to both 'Discuss' and 'Do', Sharma said, adding, any idea shared by a contributor will also be discussed on the discussion forums, allowing constructive feedback and interaction.
At present, there are six groups on the platform -- Clean Ganga, Girl Child Education, Clean India, Skilled India, Digital India and Job Creation.
"Citizens can also volunteer for various tasks and submit their entries. These tasks would be reviewed by other members and experts. Once approved, these tasks can be shared by those who complete the task and by other members on MyGov," Sharma said.
Each group consists of online and on-ground tasks that can be taken up by the contributors. The objective of each group is to bring about a qualitative change in that sphere through people's participation, he said.
"We will review the working on MyGov in three months and over time the number of groups, tasks and discussions will increase. The platform will also be used as a comprehensive knowledge repository," Sharma added.
The portal can even be extended to act like public audit platform for government projects like citizens giving feedback on status of completed infrastructure projects or availability of various social sector programmes, he said.
PTI
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Venezuela's post-election crisis is growing deeper, with at least seven people killed during clashes between the opposition and police. President-elect Nicolas Maduro says he has proof that the US embassy is financing the ongoing protests.
The deaths occurred on Monday, when hundreds of protesters took to the streets in various parts of Caracas and other cities. The demonstrators blocked streets, burned tires, and fought with security forces.
The fatalities include two people shot by opposition sympathizers while celebrating Maduro's victory, state media reported. One person died in an attack on a government-run clinic in a central state. Two others, including a policeman, were killed in an Andean border state, officials told Reuters.
"The most serious thing is that in these violent actions, seven Venezuelans died," said Attorney General Luisa Ortega. She added that 135 people have been arrested in suspected connection with the violence.
According to Maduro, who spoke on Venezuelan television on Tuesday, opposition candidate Henrique Capriles ought to be held responsible for the violent demonstrations now taking place in Caracas and throughout the country, which have already left sixty-one injured. He also made pointed accusations at the US as having a key role in the current instability.
“The Pentagon, the US State Department and the CIA govern the US. Here, in Venezuela, the people govern, ” stated Maduro.
Meanwhile, Capriles has called Maduro's victory "illegitimate" and called on supporters to peacefully protest the results. The Venezuelan election authority has refused to hold a recount, despite calls from the opposition.
But Latin American expert James Petras says the election was anything but fraudulent.
"In the case of Venezuela, there were 100 outside international observers clearly recognized as objective judges who observed the election process, observed the voting, and observed the counting. It's a misnomer to say that this was a questionable election," he told RT.
Maduro said on Tuesday that he will not allow the opposition to hold a march in the center of Caracas planned for Wednesday, to demand a recount of votes following Sunday's election. "It's time for a tough hand," he said.
Speaking to supporters Tuesday, Capriles indicated that the current clashes were the work of the incumbent party, and asked that they not go out into the streets on Wednesday, stating that those who do “only want violence.” He added that, according to intelligence given to the opposition, the government had and would attempt to “infiltrate” demonstrations.
Maduro has spoken out against the opposition protests."Where are the opposition politicians who believe in democracy?"Maduro said, blaming opposition candidate Henrique Capriles for the violence.
His thoughts were echoed by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua. "Those who attempt to take with force what they could not acquire through elections are not democrats," he said.
And Petras agrees. "I think [the opposition] is trying to sabotage the government. They're not engaging in a peaceful protest. They're not raising legitimate questions. What they're doing is essentially calling into question election procedures," he said.
Sunday's election came after the death of Hugo Chavez last month. He named Maduro as his successor before he died.
Maduro won the election with 50.8 per cent of the vote against Capriles' 49.0 per cent.
According to anti-war activist Don Debar, the US is not exactly neutral in the Venezuelan election dispute.
"Venezuela is the nexus point for the standing up of the global South. The organizations ALBA, UNASUR, various structures that are being put in place for economic independence of, first, Central and South America, and then recently moves to bridge to Africa and moves to work in conjunction with the BRICS nations. It’s an alternate economic structure, global in its potential nature, that the United States sees basically as a foundational threat," he told RT.Next month, on Jeremy Clarkson's new DVD bonanza "Powered Up:" Two supercars get driven 100 feet. Jeremy gets sunburned in France. And an old Bentley backfires.
Like a solo album from one of the Beatles, "Powered Up" gives Clarkson a chance to show off his particular skills — in his case, driving a convertible while shouting — in far more depth than he's able to when the rest of the band is around. If your favorite part of "Top Gear" is Clarkson's track time tomfoolery, then "Powered Up's" excursions around the Paul Ricard track in southern France — including a race with Lotus F1 test driver Karun Chandhok in a BAC Mono — are right up your open headers.
The DVD comes for European fans on Nov. 7; those who like what they see stateside will have to wait a bit, considering that Clarkson's 2007 "Supercar Showdown" is just being released in a U.S. format next week.Precipitation has finally extinguished a wildfire that had been burning in Olympic National Park since May.
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Precipitation in Olympic National Park has finally extinguished a wildfire that had been burning since May.
The Peninsula Daily News reports that park fire operations specialist Ty Crowe said Wednesday that the fire in the Queets River drainage known as the Paradise fire was finally out after a series of storms that dropped several feet of rain.
The fire burned more than 4 square miles of rain forest trees and deep duff as of the last update in September and is the largest in the park’s history. A final estimate of the burned area has not been released.
The Queets River valley is 12 miles inside the park border.For Justine Munich and a handful of Lower Mainland asexuals, the day after Valentine's Day is its own yearly tradition.
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Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette.
''It's our annual chocolate sale hunt,'' she says with a laugh. Many asexuals don't want partners, Munich explains, or struggle to find a compatible non-sexual relationship. ''There's a lot of people who feel left out on Valentine's Day. So the day after Valentine's Day, we tend to get together and go chocolate shopping.''
For the past five years, Munich has served as a moderator for AVEN, the A |
irrigation drainage management system, which encompasses about 6,000 acres.
How It Works
In conventional desalination systems, salty brine is forced through a membrane at high pressure, which accounts for the high energy use. In contrast, the WaterFX solar desalination system works on evaporation. It’s the same basic principle behind open-air lagoons, but the WaterFX process is much faster and integrates a system for capturing the evaporated water rather than letting it drift into the atmosphere.
The secret sauce is a modular unit that WaterFX calls Aqua4, which acts like an “engineered aquifer.”
WaterFX claims that the Aqua4 combination of solar energy and advanced absorption, enables it to evaporate and distill water 30 times more efficiently than natural evaporation.
Aqua4 is composed of off-the-shelf components, including a 400-kilowatt trough-shaped solar collector, which is used to heat mineral oil. The oil is then piped to a heat pump to ramp up efficiency, and the heat goes on to operate the distiller.
With an integrated thermal energy storage system, Aqua4 can operate continuously, whether or not the sun is shining.
As for the problem of brine disposal, the efficiency of the system enables it to produce relatively small quantities of highly concentrated brine, which is a much more efficient platform for resource recovery than large quantities of diluted brine.
WaterFX expects that gypsum, calcium compounds, magnesium salts, selenium, nitrates, and boron are among the recoverable substances from reclaimed brine.
Onwards & Upwards For Solar Desalination
Aside from recovering drainage water from agricultural sites, California is also eyeballing the vast potential of solar-powered seawater recovery. The state’s Carlsbad solar-enabled desalination plant, now under construction, will be the largest of its kind in the western hemisphere.
For the record, Saudi Arabia is building the largest solar desalination plant in the world, including a special filtering component to address the jellyfish issue.
An emerging technology I’m keeping an eye on is a fuel cell–based desalination system that partly offsets its energy consumption by generating electricity from wastewater.
Another interesting solar desalination project is Sahara Forest, which aims to use solar energy as part of an integrated desalination system for inland desert agriculture.
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Image: HydroRevolution system, via WaterFX.We want to make something special, not just for food lovers and film buffs, but also for those people who’s viewing pleasure aspires for more than videos of cats or side boob.
Bringing you eye-popping quality, creativity and most importantly entertainment! Have a gander at our current episodes; www.howtokitchen.co.uk What's been done so far? The first series of HTK was used to test the waters. We made some mistakes, it all happened so fast, we were drunk and we promise it won’t happen again. The first series of HTK was used to test the waters. We made some mistakes, it all happened so fast, we were drunk and we promise it won’t happen again.
Despite this, we now have almost 300 subs and a total of 8,600 views so far (and that's in a couple of months, with no funding and limited planning).
Series one, TV Dinners, was inspired by some of the most popular TV series' of the last few years. Money for the props, costumes and of course the ingredients came straight out of our wages. Whilst the months of filming were thoroughly enjoyable and exciting, it was also a bit difficult to keep ourselves alive on just beans and 29p instant noodles.
I'm listening... what do you want from me? Each episode costs roughly £150 to make. This is the bare minimum we need to make an episode, but with more money we can have more impressive sets and costumes, better makeup and more extras.
Get to the point. We want to make How To Kitchen better. We think we have a good thing going here and want to make more of it. We want better sets, more elaborate costumes, better recipes and more ridiculous side-narratives.
The response from series one has been so fantastic that we want to get cracking on series two right away.
What's your target? Our minimum target is £1,500. So that’s £250 each for 6 episodes. This will allow us to create unique sets for each episode and also hire makeup artists and extras where necessary.
So the more money we can raise here, the longer we can keep the channel going, and we'd really like that to be a long time.
Let's try and get it up to £4,000. That's 16 new episodes!Well, here she is! The fourth pony in the little series I'm doing, and this time it's Spitfire!I must say, I am not a fan of Spitfire at all. I mean, I like her design and color scheme, but Ido not care for her personality. What inspired me to draww her however was this fantastic video:I absolutely adore that animation^^ <3 It's so upbeat, and I think pegasi in flight look so happy^^ If Spitfire was anything like how she is in the animation in the actual show, I would love her X3I hope you guys like it! Thanks to Mr., I'm banned from saying anything bad about this art in the description. Darn you, Kyle! Just because I can't say anything doesn't mean that it's not bad!!!Anyways, I'll be back sometime with more art. I'd really like to draw Bay, so we will ssee if that happens or not. Might end up doing some season 6 art instead. I'm so excited!!!!Let me preface this with I did not play Xenoverse 1. I got Xenoverse 2 for the Switch to play with some friends. While there is a story mission, there is a lack of...guidance..? I mean, the guidance is there, but nothing that says do this, do that. Everything is unlocked pretty much from the get go. While you level up or train with instructors you unlock a few other attacks or outfits, but its all very basic. The fighting system is a bit buggy. And while there is an attribute system, nothing seems to affect Defense or Speed, and you can literally get stuck in a NPC loop where you cannot bounce back or defend from. A few people say its because you have to time the defense, but even doing so it still seems a bit buggy - maybe this is just on the Switch version and not really on the PS4/Xbox. Wish there was a bit more customization, but for what the game is its not bad. Overall 3/5 for the Switch as there is a lot that I feel is missing to make the game fully functional, or at least complete. Definitely a game to pick up if you like DBZ and want to play a fighter game to kill some time.
Read more“I won’t get married to a woman unless I’ve had sex with her first,” a friend boldly said, as we caught up over coffee and found ourselves in an interesting conversation about sex, relationships, and love.
“Are you serious?!” I asked, rather surprised by his statement.
“Oh definitely,” he replied.
I tried to wrap my head around his mentality, which was absolutely foreign to me, since I’ve pretty much always embraced the truth that sex outside of marriage is not a true expression of love and does not lead to authentic, lasting happiness. After asking dozens of follow-up questions I began to understand his logic, which went something like this:
Marriage is meant to last forever.
Sex, a true, good, and beautiful expression of love, is an essential part of marriage.
If you don’t test your sexual compatibility with someone, you could get stuck in a marriage that isn’t satisfying to you sexually, at which point, you’d either end the marriage, or spend the rest of your life sexually frustrated.
Therefore, in order to avoid divorce or a life of sexual frustration, you need to test your sexual compatibility with someone before you commit to loving them “til death do you part. ”
At first glance, that seems fairly logical. It seems to make practical sense — I mean, God doesn’t want us to get divorced and he doesn’t want us to be unhappy, even sexually, so shouldn’t we double check whether or not we have good sex with someone before we decide to marry them?
Actually, no.
Although that thinking might seem logical, when you look beneath the surface, you can see that it’s not; it disorders sex, marriage, and love and undoes the very logic that makes those things true, good, and beautiful. Marriage, a covenantal bond between a man and a woman who commit to loving each other until death do them part, is about love, and sex is an essential (but not the only) expression of that love.
Sex is an important part of marriage, but it is not what keeps a marriage intact. Love of the other, true love, self-sacrificing love that is not motivated by selfish desires, is what keeps a marriage intact. True love isn’t self-seeking, but exists most completely in self-giving.
If you need to test your sexual compatibility with a person you “love,” it’s not the person that you love, it’s the way they make you feel that you love.
But what if you do love someone and decide to marry them, but you just don’t happen to satisfy each other sexually? Isn’t sex an important component to a marriage?
Sex is extremely important in marriage — it’s a beautiful expression of love. However, it is not the most important thing in a marriage. The love that sex expresses is the most important thing.
That’s not to say that a married couple that has trouble connecting intimately should simply “grin and bear it” because they said they would. Rather, a married couple that struggles with intimacy will vulnerably and courageously work together to overcome those struggles, not out of obligation, but out of a true desire for the good of the other — out of true love.
All that said, there are some important things to keep in mind when those concerns about whether waiting til marriage to have sex is really beneficial:
Love and attraction grow with time
You don’t love your girlfriend or boyfriend in high school as much as you’ll love them as your fiance when you’re engaged, as much as you’ll love them as your spouse on your wedding day, or as much as you’ll love your spouse 5, 10, 20 years into marriage. Your love for this person will naturally grow and develop over time, as will your attraction, and yes, I mean physical.
You’ll learn how to best love your spouse along the way, you won’t know it all right at the get-go. And as you and your spouse learn to love each other by laying down your lives for one another, you’ll learn how to love each other intimately, over time. It’s this commitment to love over time that makes it so meaningful and Christ-like; in this commitment, you prove that your love is not something that is fleeting, shallow, or selfish, but is an authentic love.
We are more than our bodies and love is more than a feeling
We are body and soul. Therefore, when we give ourselves away sexually and authentically give ourselves away in love, we are giving more than just our body parts — we bear our soul to another. This is important because sexuality, then, is much more than a purely physical experience. Therefore, whether it’s “good” or not depends on much more than the physical experience and so we can’t reduce it to such.
Our bodies and our feelings are two things that change and love is something that doesn’t change. True and authentic love, existing most perfectly in God Himself, is a commitment to desire and seek the good of the beloved totally, holding nothing back, and naming no conditions, so that when things (like feelings and bodies) do change, love remains the same.
Yes, our bodies and our feelings are extremely important when it comes to love. But authentic love is expressed most highly when we continue to seek the good of our beloved, despite any challenges we might face in the process, including the way our bodies and our feelings change.
Don’t be afraid
I get it — those “what if” questions still linger. What if sex once I’m married doesn’t live up to my expectations? What if sex isn’t pleasant for me or my spouse when I get married? How can I reasonably hope that by not first testing out sexual compatibility, that I’m not setting myself up for a bad sex life?
All valid questions… honestly, questions that I myself have asked. But ultimately what it comes down to is not answering these questions, but changing our perspective. We shouldn’t live in fear that we’re going to be sexually unsatisfied. Rather, we should be preparing ourselves to live self-sacrificial love — to actively desire and seek the good of the beloved, forgetting ourselves in the process.
From what little I know, sex between two people that genuinely love each other and truly want to freely, totally, fruitfully, and faithfully give themselves away to one another is rarely a bad experience, even if it doesn’t live up to the Hollywood hype of the “first times” that exist in the movies.
As terrible as an unsatisfactory sex life might be, it’s really only the symptom of a far greater problem: an unsatisfactory love life, which is the result of self-seeking pursuits, rather than self-giving.
Sex, is important for marriage and it is good; yet the love we’re preparing for in marriage is so much bigger than that. The greatest good we’ll ever do for our spouse can’t be contained in sexual experiences.
The greatest good we can ever do in loving our spouse is to lay down our lives for him or her and participate in the total gift of self for which God has created us, and this goes far beyond just sex.A notoriously anti-Israel student group, which told The Algemeiner on Wednesday that it does not “talk to Zionist publications,” has endorsed a global campaign demanding the release from prison of a former leader of a terrorist organization responsible for the killing of Jews.
In a Facebook post earlier this month, the New York City chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) praised participants of its Winter School session for supporting the push to free Ahmad Sa’adat, the former general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Sa’adat was sentenced by Israel in 2006 to 30 years in prison for heading an “illegal terrorist organization,” but NYC SJP described him as “a Palestianian [sic] political prisoner and leader of the resistance,” making no mention of his terrorist affiliations.
The judges presiding over Sa’adat’s case said in their ruling that “there is no doubt that the accused controls the PFLP…a murderous terrorist organization…The offenses the accused has been convicted of indicate that he initiated and participated in military activity with the aim of killing innocent people.”
Founded in the late 1960’s, the PFLP has been behind a series of deadly attacks, such as the July 1968 hijacking of an El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv, in which 21 passengers and 11 crew members were held hostage for 39 days. In 2014, the terror group claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem synagogue massacre, in which four Jewish worshipers and a Druze Israeli policeman were murdered — and seven others wounded — by two terrorists using knives, axes and guns to carry out the deed.
This is not the first time NYC SJP has promoted terrorism against Israel. As exclusively reported by The Algemeiner earlier this month, its president, Nerdeen Kiswani, praised the recent truck-ramming attack in Jerusalem — in which four IDF soldiers were killed and another 16 were wounded — as a “F*** you” to “settlers.” The attack, she wrote on Facebook, should “remind settlers that there will never be peace on stolen land.”
A spokesman for the group declined The Algemeiner‘s request for comment.Computer programs typically need some input on which to perform their purpose. In order to ascribe meaning to the input, programs will perform a process called parsing. Depending on exactly how the author chooses to develop their program, there are a number of fundamentally different ways to convert a byte sequence to something with more semantic information layered on top.
Lexing and Parsing
Lexical analysis is the process by which a program takes a stream of bytes and converts it to a stream of tokens. Tokens have a little more meaning, such as taking the byte sequence "Hello" and representing it as a token of the form STRING whose value is Hello. Once a byte stream has been turned into a token stream, the program can then parse the token stream.
Typically, the parsing process consumes the token stream and produces as its output something like an abstract syntax tree. This AST layers enough semantic meaning onto the input to allow the program to make use of the input properly. As an example, in the right context, a parser might take a token stream of the form STRING(println) '(' STRING(Hello) ')' ';' and turn it into an AST node of the form FunctionInvocation("println", [ "Hello" ]). As you can see, that would be far more useful if the program in question is a compiler.
Parsing in this way is commonly applied when the language grammar in question meets certain rules which allow it to be expressed in such a way that a token stream can be unambiguously converted to the AST with no more than one "look-ahead" token. Such languages can convert "left-to-right" i.e. unidirectionally along the token stream and usually we call those languages LALR(1).
To facilitate easy lexical analysis and the generation of LALR(1) parsers, there exist a number of generator programs such as flex and bison, or re2c and lemon. Indeed such generators are available for non-C languages such as alex and happy for Haskell, or PLY for Python.
Parsing Expression Grammars
PEGs are a type of parser which typically end up represented as a recursive descent parser. PEGs sometimes allow for a parser to be represented in a way which is more natural for the language definer. Further, there is effectively infinite capability for look-ahead when using PEGs, allowing them to parse grammars which a more traditional LALR(1) would be unable to.
Combinatory Parsing
Parser combinators take advantage of higher order functions in programming languages to allow a parser to be built up by combining smaller parsers together into more complex parsers, until a full parser for the input can be built. The lowest level building blocks of such parsers are often called terminal recognisers and they recognise the smallest possible building block of the input (which could be a token from a lexical analyser or could be a byte or unicode character). Most parser combinator libraries offer a number of standard combinators, such as one which will recognise one or more of the passed in parser, returning the recognised elements as a list.
Sadly, due to the strong functional programming nature of combinators, it's often very hard to statically analyse the parser to check for ambiguities or inconsistencies in the grammar. These issues only tend to become obvious at runtime, meaning that if you're using parser combinators to build your parser, it's recommended that you carefully write your grammar first, and convert it to code second.
Homework
Find a program which you use, which consumes input in a form specific to the program itself. (Or find a library which is meant to parse some format) and take a deep look at how it performs lexical analysis and parsing.The Capitals and Rangers face off tomorrow night in Game 7 of their second-round series, setting up a dramatic showdown that seemed unlikely just a few days ago. The Rangers looked like they were in big trouble when they fell behind 3-1 in the series, and they seemed all but done when the Caps held a lead late in Game 5. But a New York comeback has flipped the series around, and now the Rangers head into Game 7 in their own building with all the momentum. Who could have seen this coming?
More 2015 NHL Playoffs All our coverage right here! Well, any Capitals fan could have, if we’re being honest. After all, this is a franchise that carries a certain reputation when it comes to blowing playoff leads. In fact, a loss tomorrow would mark the 10th time in franchise history that the Capitals found a way to lose a series in which they held a two-game lead. That’s not easy to do; historically, teams that lead a series 3-1 go on to win 90 percent of the time, with those that lead 2-0 faring almost as well. And yet the Capitals find a way to do it every few years. That’s almost impressive.
So in the lead-up to Game 7 and what could be yet another Capitals’ collapse, let’s take a trip back through the history of some of those series that got away. Maybe we can learn a few lessons that will help this year’s team avoid a similar fate. Or maybe we’ll just call it a dry run for the inevitable. Either way, it should make for a fun look back.
1985, first round, New York Islanders
The Capitals: This was a good young Caps team featuring three future Hall of Famers just entering their primes in Mike Gartner, Larry Murphy, and Scott Stevens. They finished the season with 101 points.
The opponents: The Islanders were at the tail end of the Bossy/Potvin/Trottier dynasty; they had won the conference five straight years and still had most of the core that had won four consecutive Cups from 1980 to 1983. But they had struggled to stay over.500 and finished 15 points back of the Caps.
The lead: Washington took the first two games in overtime in what was then a best-of-five opening-round format. No team in NHL history had ever blown a 2-0 lead in a best-of-five series.
The collapse: The series went back to Uniondale, where the Islanders stayed alive with a pair of wins. That set up a deciding game in Washington, in which goals by Brent Sutter and Anders Kallur were enough for the Isles to edge the Capitals, 2-1, and take the series.
The lesson: Watch out for those New York teams that lost in the Stanley Cup final the year before.
Heartbreak rating: 5/10. It’s never fun to become the first team in NHL history to squander a specific type of lead, but somebody has to be first. At least they got it over with quickly, right?
1987, first round, New York Islanders
The Capitals: A slightly older and wiser version of the 1985 squad, these Capitals featured names like Mike Ridley, Kevin Hatcher, and Michal Pivonka, who would become the core of the late-’80s/early-’90s teams.
The opponents: The Islanders still featured many of their legendary names, but were now four years removed from their last Cup and firmly transitioning into the Pat LaFontaine era.
The lead: After splitting the first two games in Washington, the Caps stole Games 3 and 4 on the road, giving up only one goal in the process and heading back home with a commanding 3-1 series lead.
The collapse: The Islanders took Game 5 by a 4-2 final, then held on for a 5-4 win in Game 6 at home. That set up a seventh game in Washington, and it turned out to be a classic: the Easter Epic, a quadruple-overtime marathon that ended on LaFontaine’s long-distance bomb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk5a8CzR8ec
The lesson: Why settle for losing one Game 7 when you can lose the equivalent of two in the same night?
Heartbreak rating: 9/10. This was the first time in NHL history that a team had blown a 3-1 series lead, and the drama of the final game made the loss devastating — Bob Mason’s stunned drop to one knee is still burned into the minds of old-time Caps fans. I’d say it can’t possibly get any worse than this, but I’d be worried that this year’s Caps would take that as a challenge.
1992, first round, Pittsburgh Penguins
The Capitals: Gartner, Murphy, and Stevens had all moved on, replaced by a young core that included Peter Bondra. But the most recognizable face may have been veteran Dale Hunter, who’d been acquired from Quebec after the 1987 collapse.
The opponents: The defending Stanley Cup champions were built around Mario Lemieux, Ron Francis, and a young Jaromir Jagr. Despite all of that impressive talent, the Pens finished the season with just 87 points, so Washington held home ice.
The lead: After taking the first two at home, the Caps dropped Game 3 in Pittsburgh. But they responded by winning a 7-2 laugher in Game 4 and headed home with a 3-1 series lead.
The collapse: The Penguins won Game 5 thanks in part to a two-point night from Bryan Trottier (who’d also been on both of the Islanders teams from the previous two comebacks). Game 6 was tied late before Lemieux took over and scored twice. In Game 7, Francis had three assists and the Pens got goals from future Hall of Famers Lemieux, Jagr, and Joe Mullen to take a 3-1 final and win the series. Elvis has just left the building.
The lesson: Stay away from any team that’s ever been associated with Bryan Trottier and you should be fine. Oh, hey, what’s this …
Heartbreak rating: 6/10. By this point, the Caps’ “playoff choker” label had been pretty firmly affixed.
1995, first round, Pittsburgh Penguins
The Capitals: This year featured much of the same cast of characters as the 1992 squad, but with a twist: The Capitals were led by Jim Carey, a 20-year-old rookie goalie who’d go on to win the Vezina the next year before … well, we’ll get to that.
The opponents: Oh, good, these guys again. This year’s Penguins didn’t have Lemieux, who sat out the season for health reasons, but they were still pretty stacked and had the third-best record in the league during the lockout-shortened regular season.
The lead: The teams split the first two games in Pittsburgh before the Caps returned home to take Games 3 and 4 by identical 6-2 scores. That gave Washington a 3-1 series lead, so the Penguins had them pretty much right where they wanted them.
The collapse: Game 5 went to overtime, where tough-guy Pens defenseman Francois Leroux somehow turned into Paul Coffey to set up Luc Robitaille’s winner. That was pretty much it for Washington; the Penguins took Games 6 and 7 by a combined score of 10-1.
The lesson: If you’re up 3-1 in the series, definitely don’t lose Game 5 in overtime.
Heartbreak rating: 3/10. At this point, I don’t think any Capitals fan was really surprised by this. Besides, they were probably too busy praying that they wouldn’t have to play the Penguins in the first round ever again.
1996, first round, Pittsburgh Penguins
The Capitals: Pretty much the same as the year before.
The opponents: Robitaille was gone, but Lemieux was back, so … yeah, you see where this is going.
The lead: Despite being heavy underdogs, the Caps went into Pittsburgh and won the opening two games, returning home with a 2-0 series lead. “What could possibly go wrong?” asked Washington fans while pouring paint thinner into a whiskey bottle.
The collapse: The Penguins won four straight. The most memorable of those was Game 4, a weird classic that saw Lemieux kicked out for fighting, an unsuccessful penalty shot in overtime, and Petr Nedved’s winner in the fourth overtime.
Along the way, the Pens also basically ruined Carey as a top-tier goaltender — legend has it that they figured out he couldn’t go side to side, and they used that knowledge to light him up. Word got around, Carey was never a full-time starter again, and his NHL career was over before he turned 25.
The lesson: Don’t get too attached to amazing young goalies; they’ll just break your heart.
Heartbreak rating: 5/10. Quadruple overtime again. Nice touch, hockey gods.
2003, first round, Tampa Bay Lightning
The Capitals: Seven years after the last collapse, the Caps were a completely different team. They were also old, and not especially good. This was during the brief and uninspiring “Oh yeah, Jaromir Jagr once played for Washington” era.
The opponents: While this was pretty much the same Lightning team that would go on to win the Stanley Cup in 2004, at this point the franchise had never won a playoff series in its 11-year history.
The lead: The Caps went into Tampa and took the first two games, returning home with a 2-0 series lead. Young fans assumed this was a good thing. Old fans just shook their heads at the foolishness of youth.
The collapse: The Caps had a chance at the dagger in Game 3 but dropped a 4-3 decision in overtime. From there, the scoring dried up, as Washington managed just three goals over the rest of the series. The end came in Game 6 on Martin St. Louis’s triple-overtime winner while the Caps were serving a too-many-men penalty.
The lesson: Watch out for that Martin St. Louis guy, he’s good.
Heartbreak rating: 2/10. Nobody really remembers this series, and it even preceded some good news — the Caps bottomed out in 2003-04, then won the draft lottery and picked Alexander Ovechkin first overall. And besides, at least it wasn’t the damn Penguins again.
2009, second round, Pittsburgh Penguins
The Capitals: The Capitals had Ovechkin and maybe some other guys.
The opponents: The Penguins had Sidney Crosby and maybe some other guys. (These two sections were brought to you by the NHL’s marketing department.)
The lead: Ironically, this series followed on the heels of a Capitals comeback in Round 1; they beat the Rangers in seven after trailing 2-0 and 3-1 in the series. They parlayed that momentum into a 2-0 lead over the Penguins, winning a pair of one-goal games at home.
The collapse: In Game 3, the Caps scored late in regulation to force overtime but lost on Kris Letang’s blast off a faceoff. That was the first of three straight losses, but a Game 6 Caps win in overtime forced the series back to Washington for Game 7. That set the stage for what should have been a classic; instead, we got a blowout.
The lesson: Beating the Rangers in seven games is pointless because something even worse will just happen the following round.
Heartbreak rating: 8/10. Caps fans were more than used to all of this by now, so it shouldn’t have stung much. Except … the Ovechkin era was supposed to be different, you know? If anything, the Round 1 comeback over the Rangers was seen as evidence that things had finally changed in Washington. Instead, this series was a cruel reminder that the Caps were still the Caps. (Seeing the Penguins go on to win the Cup didn’t help.)
2010, first round, Montreal Canadiens
The Capitals: By now, the Capitals were the league’s best regular-season team, racking up 121 points to run away with the Presidents’ Trophy. Offensively, they were close to unstoppable; Ovechkin scored 50, Alexander Semin added 40, and Nicklas Backstrom topped 100 points. Defensively, they were just average, but offense wins in the playoffs, right?
The opponents: The 2010 Habs were a no. 8 seed who’d backed into the playoffs and whose second-leading scorer was Scott Gomez. They were bad.
The lead: After dropping Game 1 in overtime, the Capitals won three straight, pumping home 17 goals in the process. That onslaught was enough to have the Canadiens bouncing back and forth between Carey Price and Jaroslav Halak in net, with neither guy having any answers for the Capitals’ firepower.
The collapse: Halak transformed into Dominik Hasek in an inflatable sumo suit, holding the Caps to just one goal in each of the final three games while making 131 saves, many of them ridiculous. Game 7 was a 2-1 heartbreaker that featured a controversial waved-off goal and a late comeback attempt that fell one goal short.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0LrJ5vh0pU
The lesson: Maybe forfeit the first few games of each series, just to be safe?
Heartbreak rating: 10/10. I’m awarding some bonus points in hindsight, because this loss made the Capitals’ organization lose its mind. Instead of accepting that it was a very good team that had the bad luck to run into a crazy-hot goalie, it suffered a crisis of confidence and became convinced it had to remake itself as a defensive team. Bruce Boudreau was fired 19 months later, leading to a revolving door of coaches, and everyone decided Ovechkin was somehow the problem (even as he kept winning MVPs). The fog didn’t really seem to lift until this season, and it may have cost this team a Cup run or two.
2013, first round, New York Rangers
The Capitals: You know the usual names: Ovechkin, Backstrom, Holtby, Carlson, Green, Brouwer …
The opponents: You know all these guys, too: Lundqvist, Nash, McDonagh, Stepan, Kreider …
The lead: The Capitals won the first two games at home to take a 2-0 series lead. Then guess what happened? I bet you’ll never guess what happened.
The collapse: A pair of one-goal losses in New York evened the series, but Mike Ribeiro’s overtime winner in Game 5 gave the Caps the series lead. It was also the last goal they’d score; Henrik Lundqvist’s back-to-back shutouts gave the Rangers the win in seven.
The lesson: Life is horrible and you should never care about anything.
Heartbreak rating: N/A. Heart? What’s a heart? Oh, that squishy thing in my chest? Yeah, I tore it out and flushed it down the toilet years ago. It’s just easier this way.
2015, second round, New York Rangers
The Capitals: Ovechkin, Backstrom, Holtby, Carlson, Green, Brouwer. Hey, wait a second …
The opponents: Lundqvist, Nash, McDonagh, Stepan, Kreider. Oh, good Lord, no, it’s all happening again …
The lead: After splitting the opening two games in New York, the Caps came home and took both games to build yet another 3-1 lead. I’ve seen this movie before and I don’t like how it ends.
The collapse: Well, technically it hasn’t happened yet, since Game 7 is still a day away. But the script has been familiar. The Capitals came agonizingly close to ending the series in Game 5, holding a 1-0 lead until a game-tying goal from Chris Kreider with less than two minutes left forced overtime, which Ryan McDonagh won 10 minutes in. Back home for Game 6, they fell behind early and mounted a frantic comeback attempt that fell just short.
And that leads us to Game 7. With two equally matched teams, anything can happen. Maybe the Capitals find a way to close it out, and we all have a good laugh about the whole “collapse” thing. Or maybe history repeats itself yet again, and Caps fans get to throw one more onto the pile.
The lesson: To be determined.
Heartbreak rating: Let’s not even think about it.It is difficult to be a pacifist and love terrorists, but then logic and accuracy are not required in media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. While some political leaders can simply re–order their front bench to improve competence or coherence, for Corbyn the motive is said to be ‘revenge’. Some commentators, from the Guardian to the Telegraph saw the New Year reshuffle as effective in establishing his authority, but the BBC which shouldn't be taking sides, dismissed it as, "a political pantomime", which, "has again exposed his team’s lack of know–how in just getting things done", with "days of concern and chaos" (BBC Radio 4 News, 6th January 2016). The concern has very largely been with the BBC and the right–wing media, but as Martin Kettle in the Guardian notes, Corbyn has actually stabilised his position, "His project… is about control of the Labour party and by that yardstick… this has been a good week" (6th January 2016).
But the problem is not just with him, the concern also extends to those he leads, described in the Telegraph as his "Praetorian guard", running a "political protection racket" in which "those MPs who do not toe the Corbynite line" will "end up in the river wearing concrete boots" (9th October 2015). In such accounts, the right–wing of the Party are described as "moderate", while their opponents are referred to as "hard core" and "hard left". In this context, "hard" is suggestive of danger, plots, and threats, as in "the Corbyn hard–core plotting to de–select Labour Moderates" (Telegraph, 8th November 2015). And in the Daily Mail as, "hate mobs and death threats, a chilling dispatch on the shady Hard Left network, hell–bent on driving out Labour’s moderates" (5th December 2015).
Behind this, is the concern of much of the media and the right of the party that local members might pick candidate for elections, on the basis that they represent the majority views of the party. The very idea of this is regarded as deeply subversive (as long as the views are left–wing). This argument has a long history. In the 1970s and 80s we examined very large samples of news about industry, the economy, and depictions of political life — looking for example at over 100 TV news bulletins on conflicts between the left and right wings of the Labour party. At the Labour conference in 1979, a call was made for a change in the Party’s organisation: essentially for a shift in power from the Parliamentary Labour Party to the National Conference and to constituency parties. Then as now there were many in the party who believed in the principle that policy should reflect democratic decisions made by its members. But the TV news and much of the media saw such |
method of construction of the separation of powers provisions.
Originalists disagree about other important questions as well. In particular, there is no consensus among originalists about the normative justifications for fidelity to the original meaning. Some originalists belive that originalism is normatively justified by popular sovereignty theory: we should adhere to the original meaning because it was ratified by "We the People." Other originalists, like Randy Barnett, argue that the legitimacy of the Constitution is a function of the justice of its content. And yet other originalists have argued that adherence to original meaning is justified by the rule of law values of predictability, certainty, and stability. These disagreements about normative foundations may lead to further disagreements about the extent to which "original meaning" should trump other considerations. For example, should constitutional actors always adhere to original meaning when it conflicts with historical practice or judicial precedent?
Originalism and Precedent
We are already beginning to see originalists coming to grips with the relationship between original meaning and precedent--both in the narrow sense of Supreme Court decisions and the broader sense of the settled practices of the political branches of government and the states. Some originalists have argued that as a general rule, constitutional actors should follow original meaning, even if it would conflict with longstanding historical practice or settled precedent. Other originalists argue that precedent and/or historical practice can trump original meaning in specified circumstances. Among originalist judges, Justice Scalia has sometimes argued that precedent trumps original meaning, whereas Justice Thomas seems to be more willing to upset precedent that is inconsistent with originalism.
The New Critics of the New Originalism
The most recent installment in debates over the new originalism has been the emergence of a recent body of work that criticizes the new originalism. This work includes "Rebooting Originalism" by Stephen Griffin, "Originalism is Bunk" by Mitch Berman, and "Originalism's Living Constitutionalism," by Thomas Colby and Peter Smith. The distinctive feature of the new criticism is that it takes into account, in various ways, originalisms shift from intentions to public meanings.
Conclusion
This entry in the Legal Theory Lexicon is both too long and too short. Too long, because I strive to make Lexicon entries sufficiently brief so that they can be read in just a few minutes. Too short, because the convulated terrain of the originalism debates can only be fully mapped (much less argued out) in a very long article. Nonetheless, I hope that I have provided enough background for a beginning student of constitutional law to get a sense of the lay of the land. Debates about the new originalism are at the center of contemporary constitutional theory, but the long and twisted history of those debates makes it difficult to get started without a guide.
Related Lexicon Entries
Bibliography
This very selective bibliography includes some of the articles that have been influential in the ongoing debates over originalism.
Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Foundations (Harvard University Press 1991) &We the People: Transformations (Harvard University Press 1998).
Randy Barnett, An Originalism for Nonoriginalists, 45 Loyola Law Review 611 (1999) & Restoring the Lost Constitution (Princeton University Press 2004).
Raoul Berger, Government by Judicary (Harvard University Press 1977).
Robert Bork, The Tempting of America (Vintage 1991).
Paul Brest, The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding, 60 Boston University Law Review 204 (1980).
Robert N. Clinton, Original Understanding, Legal Realism, and the Interpretation of the Constitution, 72 Iowa L. Rev. 1177 (1987).
Richard Kay, Adherence to the Original Intentions in Constitutional Adjudication: Three Objections and Responses, 82 Northwestern Univeristy Law Review 226 (1988).
Gary Lawson, Proving the Law, 86 NW. U. L. REV. 859, 875 (1992).
Jefferson Powell, The Original Understanding of Original Intent, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 885 (1985).
Antonin Scalia, Originalism: The Lesser Evil, 57 U. Cin. L. Rev. 849 (1989)
Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation (Princeton University Press 1997)
Antonin Scalia, Speech Before the Attorney General's Conference on Economic Liberties (June 14, 1986). in Office of Legal Policy, Original Meaning Jurisprudence: A Sourcebook 106 (U.S. Dept. of Justice 1987)
Lawrence Solum, Originalism as Transformative Politics, 63 Tulane Law Review 1599 (1989).
Keith E. Whittington, Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review (Kansas 1999) & Constitutional Construction: Divided Power and Constitutional Meaning (Harvard University Press 2001).
Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate (Stephen G. Calabresi ed., Regnery Press 2007).
Papers Online
(This entry was last revised on June 30, 2013.)Despite public vilification, those who champion traditional values remain stalwart on their issues. The Values Voter Summit, which begins Friday in the nation’s capital, embraces subjects that rivet many Americans but often get short shrift. On the agenda for the two-day event, according to organizers: Saving the American dream, reconciling capitalism and compassion, Israel, Iran and the future of western civilization; silencing the Christians, understanding radical Islam 101, why pastors must engage in politics, preparing for the “economic earthquake” and repealing Obamacare.
The annual event hosted by the Family Research Council has irked a coalition of human rights groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign; the seven groups sent a vigorous letter to conservative lawmakers and officials this week suggesting they shun the summit, claiming it spread “demonizing lies” about the gay, bisexual and transgender community. Nevertheless, the speakers podium bristles with heavy hitters, among them Rep. Paul Ryan, who has returned to Washington for a brief 48 hours after weeks on the presidential campaign trail.
Also on the roster: Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, plus Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Allen B. West of Florida, Steve King of Iowa, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Eric Cantor of Virginia, Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and James Lankford of Oklahoma, U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.
“This is arguably the nation’s premier event for social conservatives, and Gov. Brewer will be among other prominent and well-respected speakers,” says Matthew Benson, her spokesman.
AND IN SUMMATION
“Barack Obama has morphed into Jimmy Carter before our eyes, but the liberal media have refused to report on the Obama administration’s failed foreign policy of apologies and appeasement. Terrified to hurt Obama’s chances of re-election, they are shamelessly seizing on this horrific attack on Americans abroad to push their go-to narrative that Mitt Romney is tone deaf,” observes Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell III, after a very long week in America.
WORD ON THE STREET
“This does not represent us,” “Sorry people of America this not the behavior of Islam,” “Chris Stevens was a friend to all Libyans,” “Thugs and killers don’t represent Benghazi and Islam.”
(Mottos from signs carried by apologetic local citizens during a rallies in Benghazi and Tripoli, following the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya.)
A STRONG CONSTITUTION
Aw, go ahead. Read the U.S. Constitution on its 225th birthday. Despite all the chaos in politics and culture, we’re still “We the People,” and Monday remains “Constitution Day” while next week is “Constitution Week” — as officially proclaimed by President Obama, who has this to say about that:
“We reflect on the basic rights and responsibilities of citizenship, the founding documents from which they were drawn, and the extraordinary legacy of progress they have enabled. Let us forever uphold the ideals the framers enshrined in our Constitution, and let us never cease in our pursuit of the more perfect union they imagined so many years ago.”
Well. That’s a relief.
See original images of the document and much supporting materials courtesy of the U.S. Archives: www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html
WHO’S ON THIRD?
There’s much hubbub over the idea that President Obama has socialist sentiments. But wait, there’s more, says Ian de Silva, a contributor to Human Events newspaper.
“Not only does Obama have socialist thoughts — but he is also a Third World thinker,” Mr. de Silva observes, explaining that he is a naturalized American who grew up in a Third World country and understands the “shenanigans” afoot.
“A mainstay in the propaganda of Third World leaders is the relentless assault on the wealthy, and Obama is a master at that. In fact, many Third World leaders, despite being well-off themselves, are particularly adept at haranguing the public into thinking that wealth is an evil. And Obama, despite being a millionaire himself, is inimitably adept at public castigation of the wealthy,” Mr. de Silva adds.
“Obama’s Third World socialist proclivities were evident even before he became president. Recall the famous ‘Joe the Plumber’ moment during the 2008 campaign, when Obama declared that he wanted to ‘spread the wealth around.’ That is what Third World dictators do — take things from people who earned them and give them to those who did not.”
THE HISTORIC CAMPAIGN
“To err is Truman.”
- (Republican Party slogan, 1948.)
AND THAT’S SHOW BIZ
“Of course it was a setup,” Russian President Vladimir Putin recently acknowledged to Masha Gessen, a journalist with Russia’s Bolshoi Gorod magazine. Mr. Putin explained at last that certain dramatic publicity shots pairing him with exotic wildlife or in rugged locales had been carefully staged.
“His macho appearances with everything from tigers to whales have been a staple of Russian state TV for years, cementing his image as a man of action but drawing mockery from critics who have likened them to Soviet-style propaganda,” observes Gleb Bryanski, a Reuters correspondent who is following this phenomenon.
POLL DU JOUR
• 67 percent of Americans think the U.S. economy will be “good” a year from now.
• 55 percent of Republicans, 62 percent of conservatives, 84 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of liberals agree.
• 37 percent of Americans overall say they are “better off” now than they were four years ago.
• 16 percent of Republicans, 32 percent of conservatives, 47 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of liberals agree.
• 35 percent overall blame “Obama and the Democrats” for the nation’s current economic problems.
• 72 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of conservatives, 7 percent of Democrats and 11 percent of liberals agree.
• 32 percent overall say the U.S. economy is “good” at the current time.
• 9 percent of Republicans, 23 percent of conservatives, 54 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of liberals agree.
Source: A CNN/ORC poll of 1,022 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 7 to 9.
• Tip line always open at [email protected]
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Editor, The Times:
Have you ever been to an Easter egg hunt with no rules? What inevitably happens is that the bigger, stronger kids are able to rush past the smaller, weaker kids and wind up getting most of the eggs.
Those who have organized events like this know there are many ways to make them more fair — limit the number of eggs any one person can find. Divide the kids into age and ability groups. Have kids turn in the eggs at the end in exchange for candy bags. The challenge is to have all the kids be able to participate, have fun and get a fair share of the goodies.
The Bernie Sanders campaign is not about pushing an ideology, but about making sure the rules are working for all of us. It is about meeting the challenges America faces with creative intelligence, fairness and common sense. It’s about making sure that a few of us don’t get to keep all the eggs just because we are bigger, stronger or because our parents organized the activity.
—Jim Strickland, MarysvilleThe eurozone economic crisis has, at least thus far, largely spared Bulgaria [GALLO/GETTY]
London, United Kingdom - Sitting in London, reading the papers and talking to neighbours, one is constantly tortured by the question, "How did it all happen?" Walking on the streets of Athens, the same question has much more dramatic importance. Italy is crumbling. Spain and Portugal are on the edge. The Irish dream turned into an Irish nightmare. The three Baltic jewels of European Union enlargement almost collapsed economically in 2009. Hungary's flight to Western standards abruptly stopped, and in 2008 the Holy Trinity of financial stability - the IMF, World Bank and the European Union - had to provide the Hungarians with a $25bn rescue package. In all the European Union, only Poland somehow avoided severe recession. One would expect that in the face of this unstoppable economic destruction, the weakest would be hurt the worst. But is it so?
Bulgaria is the poorest country in the European Union. With a per capita GDP of just €10,600 in 2010, it is already lagging behind Turkey. Bulgaria is also the most inefficient. To produce a unit of GDP in Bulgaria, you need more than two times more energy than the EU average. And that is if you measure it in terms of purchasing power parity. Measured in nominal terms, the Bulgarian economy is eight times less energy-efficient than the EU average, and 16 times less than Japan.
Bulgaria and Romania are also the most fiercely criticised EU members for their slow reforms, corruption, organised crime and creaking administration, which can't even get the generous European grants to which they are entitled. Recently the two countries were rejected from the Schengen Agreement - the treaty allowing free movement of people within the EU - by the Dutch and the Finnish governments. The Romanians reciprocated by delaying the import of Dutch tulips. Bulgaria cancelled a visit by the Dutch prime minister. The big European club still somehow feels that it made a huge gesture in accepting the last two countries to join its other shiny members.
Yet if you travel from country to country in the European Union, you might notice that besides the general tendency of Bulgarians to complain about their government and their fate, the mood is actually not as depressing as in some of the richest corners of Europe. And there is a reason for that. So far, the poorest EU member is proving surprisingly resilient to the constant waves of European economic disasters. The country is outside the eurozone, but it has a currency board that has firmly pegged the local lev to the troubled euro. It would be naive, however to think that being outside the eurozone is a sufficient condition to survive and prosper. There are other factors beyond that. And there might be some lessons to learn.
Gross mismanagement
In 1989 Bulgaria shed Communism somehow, by accident. Bulgaria's equivalent of Tahrir Square was flooded with people after, not before the change. A moment of hope was followed by disastrous and incompetent policies that wrecked the economy. Bulgaria had inherited a vast foreign debt burden from the last few years of communism, when the regime desperately tried to save the face of its rotten utopia by borrowing recklessly from the West. Less than a year after the collapse of communism, Bulgaria suspended the servicing of its foreign debt. Even this extreme decision, however, did not trigger a proper economic change. The banking system and loss-making state-owned industries remained unreformed, allowing bad domestic debt to build up to disastrous levels by 1996. Finally, in 1997, the otherwise very patient Bulgarian people went out onto the streets and triggered early parliamentary elections.
A new government was elected. It was not necessarily a government of economic wizards, but it was a government with a clear majority that was forced to follow the rules set by the IMF; a government of reluctant economic obedience and discipline. Since then the fortunes of Bulgaria have turned around, the banks were put under strict control, and a currency board arrangement imposed strong fiscal discipline.
The gross mismanagement of the Bulgarian economy, however, left a deep scar in the hearts and the minds of citizens and politicians alike. Both families and the state were spending modestly and did not dare to borrow. Economic confidence never appeared. The government was so scared of overspending that just before the crisis in 2007, tax revenues were €2bn more than the budget, or more than 6 per cent of GDP. Beyond strictly economic explanations, one should also note that the country was absorbed by the wisdom of poverty - don't spend your own money! Even the expectation of others people's money (Bulgaria entered the generous EU in 2007) did not relax the parsimonious attitude.
Used to 'austerity'
A couple of years ago, when I asked a friend of mine whether he thought that the economic crisis would have a dramatic effect on life in Bulgaria, he cynically replied: "I don't think anything will change. Bulgarians live in misery, and after the economic crisis hits them they will continue to live in misery."
There is some truth in this view, but not the full truth. Part of this misery is what Western governments term, with a more sophisticated word, "austerity". Austerity, when compared to European consumers' pre-2008 expectations, is exactly that - misery. However, Bulgarian austerity is something more complex. It predates the economic crisis, and it is not only widespread, but it is also deep and systemic. Social services in Bulgaria are poor. They hardly work. Social spending is low. Schools and orphanages rely heavily on private donations for their routine operations. It seems that the government has realised that it is simply not capable of running a welfare state. Not capable financially, not capable administratively. So, it doesn't.
Bulgaria is not a social state. Arguments for socialism were deeply hypocritical even in the early 80s, at the height of so-called "developed socialist society". Bulgaria is, rather, a socially cruel state. But people have other ways to compensate for the state's cruelty and incompetence. Bulgarians own their homes. Renting is rare; mortgages are rare too. Living with parents, who are always ready to take you back on the living-room sofa and feed you, is common. Grandparents in the country grow enough tomatoes, potatoes and onions on their small plot for the whole family. People's endurance is very elastic.
During Communism, and even before, Bulgarians have never left the country in large numbers. Bulgaria, unlike Poland, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Armenia, Greece, and many other countries, has never managed to produce significant emigration. With the blossoming of Bulgarian democracy, however, people started leaving the country in hundreds of thousands. Nobody knows how many Bulgarians now live abroad, but there are probably more than a million. For a relatively poor country of only 7.5 million, this diaspora is a significant source of income. And that is income that is fairly distributed, untouched by bureaucracy or dubious political projects.
Bulgarians also do not like paying taxes. And the previous government, ironically for socialists, realised this and introduced a flat income and corporate tax rate of 10 per cent. This is probably the psychological tax threshold above which collection becomes really difficult in Bulgaria. Ten per cent is seen as a fair deal between citizens who don't trust government and government which doesn't care much for its citizens.
During Bulgaria's communist era, a popular joke went: "They pretend to pay me and I pretend to work for them". At that time, "they" was only the state; there was no private sector.
One can trace this attitude back to Bulgaria's not-so-distant Ottoman past, and it survives in a new form today. Deep mistrust between government and citizens, uncaring authorities, low taxes and low spending, emigrants growing in numbers and affluence, European subsidies, no borrowing, dilapidated hospitals, small plots of fertile land for most families, beautiful nature and Balkan stubbornness doesn't exactly sound like the sort of economic recipe that you might hear from the World Bank, the IMF or the European Commission. But it seems to work. For now.
Julian Popov is a journalist, consultant, director of the UK charity organisation, Friends of Bulgaria, and chairman of the Board of Directors at the Bulgarian School of Politics.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.U.S. retailers continue to make life more difficult for Canadian shoppers.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., citing rising costs, is ending free home shipping on April 2 for orders of less than $50 before taxes. Home delivery under that price will cost $4.97. Deliveries to a “Grab & Go” locker at a store or to a post office will remain free, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said.
“Shipping is very expensive in Canada,” Alex Roberton, Wal-Mart’s director of corporate affairs, said in an e-mail Monday. “As a result of the rapid growth of Walmart.ca, we are now at a point where it is necessary to apply variable shipping fees, which we are working to do in a fair and democratic way.”
The move follows Target Corp.’s decision to close its stores in the country. Best Buy Co. also said over the weekend that it will close 66 of its Future Shop electronics stores and rebrand the remaining 65 under its own name. Retail chains such as Target and Wal-Mart expanded in Canada in the last several years on signs of faster growth than in the U.S., following its housing market collapse.
Bloomberg NewsWhy Virtual Reality Matters
Richard Enlow Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 11, 2016
I had my first experience with Virtual Reality (VR) while playing with a friend’s development version of the Oculus Rift headset. Honestly, my first time was a pretty jolting experience. There was this definite mismatch between the virtual reality where I was moving and the actual reality where I was very much sitting still. It was very close to what I felt when getting car sick as a child. Even through the nauseousness I could see that this technology had the opportunity to change the world.
To most people, VR still only means immersive 3D gaming, and while I love playing games in VR myself, the potential of the medium stretches far past games. What has me so interested in Virtual Reality is the promise of practical applications that help people do better work, learn faster, and even be more connected to others.
For many, thinking about VR requires a paradigm shift from VR being only a subset of gaming.
Practical VR Application
During a recent meetup in San Francisco, I ran across James Blaha, founder of Vivid Vision, a VR startup. James suffers from a vision disorder known as Strabismus, commonly known as Lazy Eye. The condition is caused by abnormal visual development early in life. It leads to loss of depth perception as eye strength become more and more asymmetrical.
For adults there was no surefire treatment for his condition. Then one day James came across research explaining that with training, the weaker eye could become stronger and alleviate the condition. Using a VR headset, he came up with the first prototype of what would eventually become Vivid Vision.
Vivid Vision works by increasing the signal (through color and objects) to the weaker eye and decreasing the signal in the stronger eye, allowing the weaker eye to gain strength.
And it worked. Over time James began seeing the 3D world that others saw. A year and 1,000+ patients later, the company has seen some amazing success with their clients. The results have caught the attention of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco where the application and its use is currently being studied.
The State of VR
The popularity of the technology is exploding, and companies the likes of Google, HTC, and Facebook are investing time and resources into experimenting with how far they can go in this new digital frontier.
Overall the consensus is that VR is here to stay and it’s for the masses. Courtesy Business Insider
We’re in the early days of the consumerization of VR. Even with the technology becoming more and more accessible, there are still lots of people who haven’t heard about it, and others who view it as mostly a gimmick.
Learning From the Past
But let’s step back. I find that often the best way to talk about the future is by talking about the past, so let’s start there. In 1977 Apple Computers released the first consumer microcomputer, the Apple II. At first these personal computers were seen as mostly a gimmick; we hadn’t figured out what to do with the technology, and the majority of people buying the machines were game players and hobbyists.
It wasn’t until two years later with the release of VisiCalc, a spreadsheet application, that the usefulness of the personal computer was extended past the small niche audience.
VisiCalc is now known as a “killer app”, or an application that proves the core value of some larger technology. VisiCalc showed that the computer could be a useful tool.
Accounting was able to be done faster and more accurately within the application. VisiCalc was an instant hit and sales of Apple II computers grew exponentially. It helped to raise the consumer consciousness. The computer went from being a gimmick to a useful, transformative device.
Designers and developers moved fast to imagine “What can we do next?”.
Exploring VR’s Potential
The computing age launched us into the world of screens that we live in today and our ability to more deeply interface with computing technologies. Now with VR, we ourselves are the interface into those worlds, and with that ability comes fuller immersion (deep mental involvement) and the feeling of presence (the sense as if you exist in another space). These can be quite powerful tools.
At Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, they’ve been working to understand the human/VR relationship. In one experiment, they found that when a participant shared space with a 65-year-old avatar of themselves, it actually prompted participants to save more for retirement.
In another example of the possibility of the medium, filmmaker Chris Milk, in collaboration with the United Nations, worked to see how VR might help people empathize with the refugee experience. Together they created Clouds Over Sidra, an experience that allows the participant to walk in the shoes of inhabitants of a Syrian refugee camp.
The feeling is uncanny; refugees look into your eyes as you pass, and it’s a compelling experience. Experiences like these have led others to describe VR as “the ultimate empathy building machine”.
Designing For Virtual Reality
“VR technology has taken a big step forward, but the thinking behind VR experiences has not. Designing for a flat screen and designing for an immersive environment are two fundamentally different challenges.”
— Matt Sundstrom, on his work with VR
As a designer by trade, I’m passionate about creating intentional, usable, useful, and delightful experiences that fit within the feasibility of the technology and the abilities of the users. While the technology may change, a designer’s work stays constant and through activities like user research, prototyping, ideation, and design thinking, they tackle a wide array of problems across a multitude of products and services.
In this new world of VR, this type of design practice becomes essential, but how do we get started?
Play in the Technology
If you haven’t had a chance to experience modern VR, you should really start there. Top tier VR hardware, or Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), like Facebook’s recently acquired Oculus Rift and HTC’s VIVE, provide the fullest experiences. These top tier experiences come at a cost: you’ll need a pricey HMD and a powerful PC to run them.
From least expensive to most: Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, Playstation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive
But that doesn’t mean that this technology is hard to come by. In October of this year, the release of the Playstation VR will remove the need for an expensive PC. Also, Google Cardboard can give you a taste. The device is a typical Google approach, something that is very accessible. You’re just a smartphone and a pair of cardboard glasses away from virtually walking with dinosaurs and freaking your grandparents out. Samsung’s Gear VR ups the experience for under $100 and provides access to a sizable number of games and experiences.
Read the Research
VR, while being seen as brand new, is actually having a resurgence. Initial VR technology has been around since the 1960s. It’s also been studied extensively in places like the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Lab and Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab.
Extend What You Know
At it’s core, the principles of Human Computer Interaction are consistent across technologies. Sure, not everything you know for screen design will translate 1:1, but exploration is key part of a designer’s process. Take what you know of interaction design, human centered design, and user experience and see what holds up and what needs more thought.
Use the Tools of the Trade
Start experimenting right away. 3D engines like Unity or web libraries like three.js are a core part of VR development and available for free. If you want to do anything interactive, you’ll have to play around with code to get it done, or work with a developer who knows a language like C#. 3D modeling software is the new Sketch or Photoshop. Look at industry standard tools like 3D Studio Max (AutoDesk, $180 monthly) or powerful open source projects like Blender (Blender Foundation, Free).
The one tool that stays constant is the old-fashioned pen and paper. Sketch as often as possible.
What the Future Holds
The industry as a whole is young and we’re still learning. We can’t even imagine what the true potential of VR could look like. We’re still creating the patterns and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And that’s what I find so exciting about the space.
And we’re not alone. Smart and passionate people are starting to experiment and helping to define the direction VR takes. Strong VR communities in Portland, Boston, San Francisco, and other cities pack hundreds into rooms to learn and share their experiences and work.
There is a real passion here, there is a community, and I’m looking forward to what the VR space will be like 20 years from now.The Council of Europe has released an EU-funded report titled Living in dignity in the 21st century: Poverty and inequality in societies of human rights à the paradox of democracies in which a large group of researchers sought to determine what it will take to live with dignity in Europe in the 21st century. The report focuses on the three key principles that underline the Council of Europe’s human rights approach: universality, indivisibility, and integrity. Through contextual analysis of Europe’s social security systems, the report considers many possible policy answers to help citizens live with dignity in the 21st century, with basic income being mentioned as a real possibility. The report mentions basic income over twenty times, and two members of BIEN, Yannick Vanderborght and Louise Haagh, were among the contributors to the report. In fact, basic income is listed as a required policy to combat poverty and inequality and to allow everyone to live with dignity in the 21st century.
To read the full report, click on the following link:
Council of Europe, “Living in dignity in the 21st century: Poverty and inequality in societies of human rights à the paradox of democracies”, Council of Europe Publishing, February 2013.Columnist Mike Smyth writes about next week's federal byelection in Surrey
Voters in Surrey haven’t had this much face time with Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer since — well, since ever, actually.
The Liberal prime minister and the Conservative opposition leader have both made two separate swings through Surrey in advance of a fiercely contested Dec. 11 byelection.
“It’s going to be competitive,” Scheer said Monday during his latest visit to South Surrey-White Rock. “It was close last time and it could be close again.”
And that’s clearly annoying to Scheer and the Conservatives, because the riding has normally been considered safe turf for the Tories.
The seat became vacant when former Conservative MP Dianne Watts resigned to run for the B.C. Liberal leadership. Watts narrowly retained the riding in the 2015 federal election, despite a Trudeaumania wave that gave the Liberals a record 17 B.C. seats.
The Liberals have a great local candidate in Gordon Hogg, the popular former provincial MLA and White Rock mayor.
But now the Conservative are bringing up an incident involving Hogg in the early 1990s and questioning whether the Liberals are tough enough on crime.
Back in 1993, Hogg was the director of the Willingdon Youth Custody Centre when a violent prisoner named Danny Perrault was transferred to an open-custody facility with no guards. Perrault walked away from the no-security facility and raped a 28-year-old woman.
A judge’s report following a public inquiry said Hogg approved the transfer, although another detention-centre official was identified as “the driving force” behind the decision. Hogg was demoted and apologized.
Now, with Surrey citizens concerned about gang violence, the Conservatives say the 24-year-old incident shows the need to be tough on crime.
“Canada’s Conservatives will always put the safety and security of Canadians first, and the rights of victims ahead of the rights of criminals,” said Conservative byelection candidate Kerry-Lynne Findlay.
Hogg said he was “disappointed” the Conservatives were dredging up an old issue, though he didn’t try to hide from the affair, either.
“I think about it often — especially the meeting I had with the victim’s family,” he said Monday. “It motivates me to continue the hard work I’ve done to strengthen our criminal justice system.”
Watch for the Conservatives to keep pushing a law-and-order message in the final week of the byelection campaign.
“The Liberals seem to have greater concern for the rights of criminals than innocent people living in the community,” Scheer said.
But I’m not sure the argument will be enough for the Conservatives to hang onto the Surrey-White Rock seat. Hogg remains a popular figure — the Perrault transfer was an isolated blot on a clean career — and Trudeau attracted adoring crowds on his campaign visits.
I give the edge to Hogg and the Liberals in a byelection battle that’s about as close as they get.
msmyth@postmedia.com
twitter.com/MikeSmythNews• West Ham have now conceded 11 goals in past three league games • ‘Everything that was good last year is bad,’ manager Slaven Bilic admits
Slaven Bilic admitted that the responsibility for West Ham United’s dreadful start to the season lies with him and denied that there is any split in the dressing room after the 3-0 defeat against Southampton here on Sunday.
Bilic spoke as the West Ham captain, Mark Noble, pulled no punches, criticising the “laughable” defending that has led to West Ham conceding 11 goals in their past three league matches
His manager insisted the attitude in the camp remains positive. Yet West Ham’s manager said that confidence evaporated after Charlie Austin’s opener for the visitors and he accepted that credit is quickly running out for him and his players, with his team stuck in the bottom three after five defeats from their first six matches of the season.
Charlie Austin maintains his hot goal streak as Southampton beat West Ham Read more
“It is my responsibility, it is my team,” Bilic said. “I am not flying away from the responsibility and I don’t want to point fingers. We are talking behind closed doors. It is never one player. One player can make a mistake and you can lose a game. It is a team, it is teamwork, it is a team mistake.
“But definitely these are the same players and same manager and crowd that were doing it last year. But it is true that at the moment we have to be clear, everything that was really good last year is bad. Everything that was average last season is way below par.”
Bilic added: “We can say the season is only just started. But it’s happening for four games now and we have to change it big time. It is not working.
“I told the players after Watford or West Brom that there is no need to panic. The credit was there. Now the credit is gone. Same with me. If you ask me if I am low tonight, of course I am low. We lost this today game 3-0 at home and we deserved to lose.”
Southampton rose to ninth place after further goals from Dusan Tadic and James Ward-Prowse. Claude Puel’s side were good value for their victory and a visibly upset Noble was damning in his assessment of the match.
“Eleven goals in three games is laughable,” the 29-year-old said. “We could have kept playing until tonight and we wouldn’t have scored. I thought we started all right and then bang; we conceded a goal and we never looked back in it.
““If I’m honest, it could have been six in the end. On the bright side I don’t think it can get any worse. At the moment we’re just not good enough.”
West Ham restore order off the field, but are in disarray on it Read more
Bilic was asked if the players are pulling in the same direction. “Are they together?” he said. “From what I see I can see, they are good with each other. They are maybe too good with each other. They are a very healthy group of players. They are the same players who did it last year. Of course when it is not going so well you can’t expect the atmosphere to be smashing. But have I noticed any problems in training? No.”
This was West Ham’s third defeat at their new home – following the 1-0 loss against Astra Giurgiu in August and the 4-2 defeat against Watford last month – and Bilic said that it hurt to see supporters leaving long before the final whistle. “It is not a good sight,” the manager said.
For Southampton this was a fourth straight victory in all competitions and their second in the Premier League following the 1-0 win against Swansea City at St Mary’s on 18 September. In those four victories the south coast club have kept four clean sheets.
“The first half was difficult. We looked nervous at the start in a large stadium. It was important to correct that,” said Puel. “In the second half we could see a team and players with a good quality level and we created many chances.
“It was important for the team and important for me that Charlie scored with his first chance. This is a striker with confidence.”So, the wait is over – we’ll be starting our Kickstarter fundraising in January 2014 (pending their approval turnaround time). Whilst we had originally aimed for Q3 2013, |
Vim 7.4/Neovim v0.1.7, and +lua or +python3 is needed.
For more general questions, please read SpaceVim FAQ.Fans have been asking for collector level Overwatch figures since the game was initially released last year. Some fan were pleased that Good Smile Company was releasing stylized Nendoroid figures, while other hoped for a more traditional action figure. Thankfully, Good Smile Company has come through again, revealing the first Figma Overwatch figure in the fan favorite character, Tracer! The 5.5″ tall figure is fully articulated and packed with all the personality and accessories fans would want. Tracer includes multiple interchangeable hands, three interchangeable expressions (smiling face, an excited expression, and a serious, confident expression), Pulse Pistols, Pulse Bombs and an articulated figure stand.
The Figma Overwatch Tracer is available for pre-order directly from the Good Smile Shop. She is scheduled for release in December. The figure is priced at 6,296 Yen (about $57 USD). You can see all of the photos by reading on.Republicans are going hog wild supporting No Millionaire Left Behind. They’re fighting to heep the Bush tax cuts for America’s richest two percent. The most common lie they are using is that it is an Obama tax increase. It is not. The expiration was part of the original bill. Robert Reich explained why we should let the tax cut for rich expier, but let it continue for the poor and middle classes.
The economy is slouching backward because consumers can’t and won’t spend enough to revive it. Congress is about to recess for the summer without doing anything to fill the gap. And it looks like the only issue it will be debating when it returns is who, if anyone, should pay more taxes next year — just the very rich, everyone, or no one? The cuts enacted by George W. Bush will expire in January, and with midterm election pending in November we’re about to be treated to months of tax demagoguery.
Here’s a guide to the perplexed.
From a strictly economic standpoint — as if economics had anything to do with this — it makes sense to preserve the Bush tax cuts at least through 2011 for the middle class. There’s no way consumers — who comprise 70 percent of the economy — will start buying again if their federal income taxes rise while they’re still struggling to repay their debts, they can’t borrow more, can no longer use their homes as ATMs, and they’re worried about keeping their jobs.
But the same logic doesn’t apply to people at the top, earning over $250K, who represent roughly 2 percent of tax filers. Restoring their marginal tax rates to what they were during the Clinton administration (36 and 39 percent) won’t inhibit their spending. That’s because they already save a large portion of what they earn, and already spend what they want to spend. (During the Clinton years the economy created 22 million net new jobs and unemployment dropped to 4 percent.)
But restoring those top marginal tax rates will help bring down the long-term debt, pulling in almost a trillion dollars of revenues over next ten years. That’s not nearly enough to make a major dent in the nation’s projected deficits, but it’s not chicken feed either. It would at least signal to financial markets we’re serious about cutting that long-term deficit — and the rest of us will chip in when the economy strengthens.
So-called supply-side economists don’t like raising taxes on anyone, of course, and argue that raising them on the well-off will slow economic growth. They say people at the top will have less incentive to work hard, invest, and invent.
Unfortunately for supply-siders, history has proven them wrong again and again. During almost three decades spanning 1951 to 1980, when America’s top marginal tax rate was between 70 and 92 percent, the nation’s average annual growth was 3.7 percent. But between 1983 and start of the Great Recession, when the top rate was far lower — ranging between 35 and 39 percent — the economy grew an average of just 3 percent per year. Supply-siders are fond of claiming that Ronald Reagan’s 1981 cuts caused the 1980s economic boom. In fact, that boom followed Reagan’s 1982 tax increase. The 1990s boom likewise was not the result of a tax cut; it came in the wake of Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase.
A final reason for allowing the Bush tax cut to expire for people at the top is the most basic of all. Although Wall Street’s excesses were the proximate cause of the Great Recession, its fundamental cause lay in the nation’s widening inequality. For many years, most of the gains of economic growth in America have been going to the top — leaving the nation’s vast middle class with a shrinking portion of total income. (In the 1970s, the top 1 percent received 8 to 9 percent of total income, but thereafter income concentrated so rapidly that by 2007 the top received 23.5 percent of the total.) The only way most Americans could continue to buy most of what they produced was by borrowing. But now that the debt bubble has burst — as it inevitably would — the underlying problem has reemerged… [emphasis added]There’s a river of shit running through St. Petersburg. It starts in a little town called Novoye Devyatkino and flows into the Neva, where it empties into Neva Bay and then the Gulf of Finland. Locals for some time have sniffed with suspicion at the waterways from Novoye Devyatkino, but a group of ecologists now says it has proof that human feces are sailing unfiltered through St. Petersburg.
Two weeks ago, a group of St. Petersburg ecologists conducted a test in Novoye Devyatkino, a suburb about 12 miles outside the city, of the local sewer system. In a study they titled “Feces Travel,” the activists dropped ten miniaturized, waterproofed GPS-tracking units down the toilet of a single apartment home and began mapping the devices’ signals. On their website, the ecologists claim the trackers spilled out directly into the open-air waterways outside the building, without encountering even the most rudimentary sewage filtration. From Novoye Devyatkino, five of the devices reached the open waters of Neva Bay, where the units’ batteries appear to have died.
Some on the Internet have questioned the ecologists’ results, doubting that GPS units would be able to broadcast a signal from underground. Many of these objections are based on the misunderstanding that the ecologists were tracking GPS units in sewer lines. According to those behind the experiment, however, the trackers—along with anything else one tends to flush down the toilet in Novoye Devyatkino—never made it underground to the sewers: they spilled into the streams directly outside, without slipping through so much as a net.
Some questions, however, do remain about the experiment. On October 29, the ecologists published a video explaining what they did, featuring a woman who identifies herself as Evgenia Dolgova. In the video, Dolgova displays a small gumball-sized item when explaining the use of GPS-trackers (see photo below). The video then flashes a few stock photographs of two different types of waterproof GPS-trackers: the TKSTAR LK109 and the Twin Mask MT-90.
Both these devices have a battery life of about 160 hours, making it possible to receive signals for almost a week, but the units’ faces are almost four square inches, making it hard to believe that either of these two trackers was the object between Dolgova’s fingers in the YouTube video.
On November 17, after learning about the experiment in Novoye Devyatkino, some of the area’s residents started posting complaints on the local utility company’s webpage, uploading photographs of their utility bills and circling in red the 200-ruble (about $4) fee for sewage service. The ecologists’ website, which has been experiencing temporary outages that they attribute to hackers, now includes a link to these complaints.
Update (November 18, 2014): RuNet Echo was able to contact the ecologists responsible for this experiment, and we learned that the trackers they used were not the same devices displayed in their YouTube video. According to the group, they customized their own Chinese-made GPS/GLONASS units, which they enclosed in small waterproof containers. The containers were each filled with a small air bubble, to make them float. Each unit was also covered in a salt mixture, which apparently allowed the devices to sink initially. After that mixture dissolved, the trackers began floating again, making it possible to emit a signal. The ecologists say the units’ batteries are set to economize power, sending a single signal once an hour, meaning that some of the trajectories shown on the map above are based on guesswork.Just days before its international debut at an airshow in the United Kingdom, the entire fleet of the Pentagon’s next generation fighter plane — known as the F-35 II Lightning, or the Joint Strike Fighter — has been grounded, highlighting just what a boondoggle the project has been. With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home.
It’s hard to argue against the need to modernize aircraft used to defend the country and counter enemies overseas, especially if you’re a politician. But the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a mess almost since its inception, with massive cost overruns leading to its current acquisition price-tag of $398.6 billion — an increase of $7.4 billion since last year. That breaks down to costing about $49 billion per year since work began in 2006 and the project is seven years behind schedule. Over its life-cycle, estimated at about 55 years, operating and maintaining the F-35 fleet will cost the U.S. a little over $1 trillion. By contrast, the entirety of the Manhattan Project — which created the nuclear bomb from scratch — cost about $55 billion in today’s dollars.
“The political armor of the F-35 is as thick as the heads of the people who designed the airplane and its acquisition plan,” Winslow Wheeler, a former congressional staffer and outspoken critic of the F-35, recently told Foreign Policy about the longevity of the plane, despite the many setbacks it has endured. The support for the F-35 is so great in Congress that there’s actual a bipartisan Joint Strike Fighter Caucus dedicated to promoting it and keeping it alive. With that in mind, here are just a few of the other things that the insane amount spent on the troubled fighter could have gone towards instead, both at home and abroad:
Buying Every Homeless Person In The U.S. A Mansion
On any given night in 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded, there were an estimated 600,000 homeless Americans living on the streets. Numerous studies, however, have showed that rather than putting money into temporary shelters or incarceration, communities have saved millions of dollars by investing in permanent homes for the homeless. A recent report showed that in one Florida community, it cost taxpayers an estimated $30,000 to take the homeless off the streets through traditional methods, but only around $10,000 per person to give them permanent housing and provide job training and other support. Expanding that concept to the Federal level, even taking into account things like varying real estate prices around the country, it’s possible that $7.4 billion would be more than enough to start a program nationwide. With the full amount spent on the F-35 at its disposal, the U.S. could afford to purchase every person on the streets a $664,000 home.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKnv4PEQoRwThe overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.
While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.
The position of the ODNI, which oversees the 17 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community, could give Trump fresh ammunition to dispute the CIA assessment, which he rejected as “ridiculous” in weekend remarks, and press his assertion that no evidence implicates Russia in the cyber attacks.
Trump’s rejection of the CIA’s judgment marks the latest in a string of disputes over Russia’s international conduct that have erupted between the president-elect and the intelligence community he will soon command.
An ODNI spokesman declined to comment on the issue.
“ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can’t prove intent,” said one of the three U.S. officials. “Of course they can’t, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose evidentiary standards require it to make cases that can stand up in court, declined to accept the CIA’s analysis – a deductive assessment of the available intelligence – for the same reason, the three officials said.
The ODNI, headed by James Clapper, was established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the recommendation of the commission that investigated the attacks. The commission, which identified major intelligence failures, recommended the office’s creation to improve coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies.
In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against American political organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Democratic President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks.
Reports of the assessment by the CIA, which has not publicly disclosed its findings, have prompted congressional leaders to call for an investigation.
Obama last week ordered intelligence agencies to review the cyber attacks and foreign intervention in the presidential election and to deliver a report before he turns power over to Trump on Jan. 20.
The CIA assessed after the election that the attacks on political organizations were aimed at swaying the vote for Trump because the targeting of Republican organizations diminished toward the end of the summer and focused on Democratic groups, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.
Moreover, only materials filched from Democratic groups – such as emails stolen from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman – were made public via WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, and other outlets, U.S. officials said.
“THIN REED”
The CIA conclusion was a “judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked,” one of the three officials said on Monday.
“(It was) a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment,” the official added.
Republican Senator John McCain said on Monday there was “no information” that Russian hacking of American political organizations was aimed at swaying the outcome of the election.
“It’s obvious that the Russians hacked into our campaigns,” McCain said. “But there is no information that they were intending to affect the outcome of our election and that’s why we need a congressional investigation,” he told Reuters.
McCain questioned an assertion made on Sunday by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, tapped by Trump to be his White House chief of staff, that there were no hacks of computers belonging to Republican organizations.
“Actually, because Mr. Priebus said that doesn’t mean it’s true,” said McCain. “We need a thorough investigation of it, whether both (Democratic and Republican organizations) were hacked into, what the Russian intentions were. We cannot draw a conclusion yet. That’s why we need a thorough investigation.”
In an angry letter sent to ODNI chief Clapper on Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he was “dismayed” that the top U.S. intelligence official had not informed the panel of the CIA’s analysis and the difference between its judgment and the FBI’s assessment.
Noting that Clapper in November testified that intelligence agencies lacked strong evidence linking Russian cyber attacks to the WikiLeaks disclosures, Nunes asked that Clapper, together with CIA and FBI counterparts, brief the panel by Friday on the latest intelligence assessment of Russian hacking during the election campaign.Huge PKK ammunition cache discovered after bear digs up soil in northern Turkey
TRABZON
Security forces seized a large amount of ammunition believed to belong to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Black Sea province of Trabzon on Dec. 5 after a bear dug up soil, Doğan News Agency has reported.
Locals in a rural area of the Tonya district alerted the gendarmerie after they discovered ammunition scattered across forested land. The gendarmerie subsequently seized explosives, hand grenades, bullets and remote bombing devices from inside a shelter.
Tantalized by the scent of food coming from below, a bear had dug up the earth and scattered the ammunition while searching for the food.
Among the ammunition items seized were three kilograms of plastic explosives, four remote electric fuses, a number of rifles and bullets, four hand grenades, two handsets and a large amount of survival supplies.
Reports said the shelter was prepared around two weeks ago, with the food not buried too deep in order to prevent it from decaying.
Turkey’s intelligence agencies recently voiced concerns that the PKK was preparing “sensational attacks” in the Black Sea region, with 21 militants believed to have been ordered to carry out attacks in two separate regions.
The militants dug shelters to store food and ammunition following intense security operations in the region, while locals were determined not to store food in rural houses, according to reports.
Security units, which included special police forces, were also deployed to the district from the neighboring province of Giresun in order to provide extra support.
In addition, security forces seized a number of ammunition and weapons, including two Kalashnikov rifles and five hand-grenades, in operations in the Varto district of the eastern province of Muş, the governor’s office stated on Dec. 6.
In a separate operation on Dec. 6 in the Silopi district of the southeastern province of Şırnak, gendarmerie forces raided a shop reportedly being prepared for use as a “call center” to allow PKK militants to coordinate for possible attacks. Technical equipment was also seized during the raid.
Police also detained 32 suspects on Dec. 6 in six provinces across the country. The detainees were suspected of aiding two PKK members caught as they prepared for an attack in the southern province of Adana on Nov. 27.
The suspects were subsequently referred to court for arrest.Update, 9:10 p.m. Eastern: Following near instant outrage from across the political spectrum, The Washington Post removed both the cartoon and the two-paragraph explanation of Ann Telnaes’s cartoon depicted Ted Cruz’s daughters as toy monkeys.
Informing readers of the decision, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt ruled that he could “understand why” Telnaes penned the cartoon, but admitted that he “do[es] not agree” with what she published:
It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it. I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published. I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.
--------------------------------------------------
Commenting on Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters appearing in a campaign ad on Saturday, Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes created a disgusting GIF early Tuesday evening depicting Cruz’s young daughters as toy monkeys being played with and arguing that “[t]hey are fair game.”
In attempting to explain her arguably racist GIF, Telnaes argued that because daughters Caroline and Catherine appeared in a humorous Christmas-themed ad, they have decided “to indulge in grown-up activities” and allowed their father to play them “as political props.”
Under other, unspecified circumstances, Telnaes lectured that “[t]here’s an an unspoken rule in editorial cartooning that a politician’s children are off-limits” since “[p]eople don’t get to choose their family members so obviously it’s unfair to ridicule kids for their parent’s behavior while in office or on the campaign trail- besides, they’re children.”
Not long after the cartoon and two-paragraph post was placed on the liberal newspaper’s website, Cruz responded in the following tweet:
Classy. @washingtonpost makes fun of my girls. Stick w/ attacking me--Caroline & Catherine are out of your league. https://t.co/N61ys6z8w1 — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 22, 2015
Even though the Christmas season is upon us, the liberal media haven’t stopped in their vicious attacks on conservatives. Back on December 14, the elder Cruz and Texas Senator was smeared by Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore as “creepy” with mental problems while guest Aida Rodriguez ruled that Cruz would “do everything the KKK does” if he becomes president.NEW YORK -- Speaking at a conference for 9/11 victims' family members on Saturday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said New Yorkers should remain vigilant but not alter their daily routines in the face of a purported al Qaeda plot to strike the city on the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.
"New York City, this city here, has some of the best and most robust law enforcement in the world, not just in the United States," Napolitano said.
"This weekend should be about commemoration and memory and perseverance and strength and resilience, and... people should be aware of their surroundings," she said. "But like all New Yorkers, let's go about our business and do what we intended to do."
On Wednesday, intelligence officials received a tip that three terrorists, two of them perhaps U.S. citizens, might seek to explode a bomb in Washington or New York to mar Sunday's commemoration services. Since then, however, counterterrorism officials have struggled to find information backing up the tip. Even efforts to put a name on the terror suspects, if they exist, have proved elusive.
At the Voices of September 11th "Day of Remembrance" event, where she was the keynote speaker, Napolitano also told the crowd that there were "no guarantees" the United States wouldn't be struck by terrorists again at some point.
The country is "stronger and more prepared to confront the range of threats we face than we've ever been in our history, and yet we always have more that can be done," she said.Hockey-lover Ron Murphy found an unlikely home to thrive in his sport in Dubai.
Last week, Ron Murphy led the team to their third Emirates Hockey League (EHL) title after finishing on top of the seven-team league in the regular season.
Murphy, a sales manager and father to a 14-year-old son and nine-year-old twins, started playing hockey age four and played at youth level until 17. He then played Ontario Provincial Junior Hockey for two years before a spell at the NCAA Hockey Elmira College, New York in his early twenties.
Q: When did you land in Dubai and what first brought you here?
A: I was 25 when I moved to Dubai in 1999. My wife grew up here as her father worked for the Jebel Ali Free Zone, so right after graduation from Elmira College in New York we moved to Dubai.
Did you have any idea if ice hockey was played in the UAE before you arrived here?
No. When I first moved here I only brought my golf clubs. Hockey equipment I had shipped over after I found out about the Dubai Mighty Camels League here. We planned on staying for a couple years but one of the reasons we have stayed so long is because of hockey. There’s not too many places you can golf, play hockey and ski in the same day.
How do you see the future of hockey in the UAE?
Hockey in the UAE will continue to grow. The Abu Dhabi Ice Sports Club has done a great job promoting hockey in Abu Dhabi and the Dubai Sandstorms youth league does the same in Dubai. It is amazing to see the growth over the years, we need more rinks in Dubai, the main hurdle right now is we do not have enough ice time available to the kids and adults in Dubai. The EHL will continue to grow and become more professional. The league has done a great job in the past three-four years making the league more professional. It runs very smoothly and that is a credit to the league.
Are you from a sporting family and how did you pick up the game back home in Canada?
Yes, obviously in Canada kids are exposed to hockey from a young age. I was fortunate enough to have my brother, two years older than me, show me the way. He played Pro Hockey for 12 years, and my father was drafted in the NHL by the Vancouver Canucks. My dad won the Rookie of the Year in the Quebec Junior League and was in the movie Slapshot [a hockey movie starring Paul Newman]. So I had some great role models in my family.
Who were your sporting role models in the sport?
My role model growing up was Doug Gilmour. He played for the Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs. He was a smaller player but played with a lot of tenacity, fun to watch. I met him a few times as his brother and my father are friends. I played golf with Gilmour, still one of my greatest memories.
What’s your best moment in the sport?
My best moment in hockey has been coaching my son. It is amazing to see them grow and get better, and it is a great feeling knowing we can experience hockey together here in Dubai. sports@thenational.ae
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Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSportExistentialist philosophy isn't about bringing despair and angst into our lives, it's about discovering our inner freedom, explains Sarah Bakewell, the author of At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails. She recommends the best books on Existentialism.
Sarah Bakewell is the author of At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails and How To Live or, A Life of Montaigne, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 2011, and the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction in the UK.
Can you begin by saying what existentialism is?
That’s a difficult question to answer. Most of the people we think of as existentialists denied being existentialists — it’s practically the only thing they have in common. I think of it as a philosophy that broke with the long tradition of defining human consciousness and the material world primarily through abstract concepts or essences. Instead, existentialism starts with concrete, individual existence, and proceeds from that to try and understand how we go about existing. Sartre famously defined it as “Existence precedes essence.” This is a definition of existentialism that is quite puzzling just naked like that, but that’s really what it translates into. It’s a philosophy that starts with the concrete and individual reality right now, and then looks for definitions and ways of understanding it and ways of behaving in the world.
Sartre is describing what it is to be human, isn’t he? For objects, their essence does precede their existence, there is something that they’re like. But human beings are different. We don’t have a pre-existing essence or nature.
That’s right. It is a very specific meaning of “existence” that the existentialists use, which refers to human existence. The way the table sits in front of me is not the same way that I sit in front of the table, because I have the freedom to choose how to sit in front of the table, to choose what to make of my being here in front of the table. I’m not just given as I am, I have to choose how to exist at every moment. So there’s an immense freedom at the heart of existentialism, and at the heart of what a human being is as well. But the freedom is only half of the equation, because I’m also always in a situation. I’m not floating about in space as an abstract, God-like consciousness that can choose to be whatever I want to be. I am in a body, affected by the objects and the other people around me and my position in history and in geography. I’m a person of a certain age and of a certain environment and I have to deal with what’s given to me.
Read 1 Existentialism: A Reconstruction by David Cooper Read
Let’s begin with your first book, David Cooper’s Existentialism: A Reconstruction.
This is a fabulous, clear introduction to existentialist thought. It’s also very philosophically rigorous. It tends to steer away from the literary side of existentialism, and it avoids some of the authors that proceed more through essays or novels like Camus. But it makes up for that by really putting existentialism within the philosophical tradition and looking at it as a system of philosophical thought. Cooper’s starting point is the human condition: we’re situated in the world but we’re alienated from it, we don’t feel that we quite belong, that we quite fit. That feeling is what drives existentialists. He works from that through other key ideas about self and others, about angst and anxiety — the anxiety we feel from being free — about absurdity, about freedom and he finishes up with ethics. So it’s a fantastic tour through the existentialist landscape.
Would you recommend it as a starting point for somebody who knew nothing about existentialism?
Yes, I think it’s a great way into it. There are lots of good books that introduce the ideas of existentialism, but this is one that gives a lot to think about and opens up interesting perspectives.
When did existentialism start?
That’s a good question. Some people have traced it right the way back, to the first time human beings in literature started feeling anxious or separated from the general state of being around them and began worrying about their lives and their existence. If you do that, you can find it in Job in the Bible, for example. Job has been cited as a proto-existentialist. Job definitely captures the spirit of existential questioning, but I think it becomes a bit too general: to say this is to make existentialism practically identical with the human condition. Existentialism is more specific. It’s a particular way of philosophizing about the human condition in terms of situation and freedom.
“Most of the people we think of as existentialists denied being existentialists — it’s practically the only thing they have in common.”
Certain key figures start to show an existentialist sensibility. Kierkegaard is often cited, but he’s very inward, he doesn’t look much at our position in the world. Nietzsche is another precursor: he almost goes the other way because he analyzes all the human condition in terms of forces, of power, of our physical being in the world. Another writer often mentioned is Dostoyevsky: a great way of getting into the real miserabilist side of existentialism is to read his Notes from the Underground. It absolutely captures the anguish of being an isolated individual and a misfit, wondering about your place in the world and being contrary, fighting against the normal human life that you’re supposed to fit into.
But to say where existentialism really begins is not that easy. It’s when all of those things come together, so you’ve got this feeling of being alienated and not fitting into the world of the human individual combined with a reversal of the usual philosophical tendency to say, “Well there’s human consciousness on the one side, and there’s the physical world on the other, and the two are completely separate.” Existentialism begins when people start to look at human life in the world, the fact that we are physical, we are with others, we are embodied. We have to start from that, rather than Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am,” where you wonder if the entire physical world is an illusion and then build it up again from pure subjectivity.
Read 2 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre Read
That leads quite nicely into your second book choice. You’ve chosen Sartre’s novel Nausea. Now, for a start, this is a piece of literary writing…
I chose Nausea for several reasons. One is that it’s the first existentialist book that I ever read. It’s what first made me curious to learn more, and that’s exactly what the book does. It’s readable, it’s powerful, it’s sometimes a bit ridiculous, but it’s intense. Although it is a novel, it’s a novelization of philosophical ideas, so you approach the philosophy through one literary character’s individual crisis and you approach that crisis through a sequence of ideas. It’s the story of a man called Roquentin, who undergoes a kind of philosophical nervous breakdown while he’s trying to write a biography of an 18th century character, the Marquis de Rollebon. He tries to narrate a coherent story about that life, but instead Roquentin finds himself overwhelmed by things. The sheer physical being of the world around him causes a kind of nauseous horror and this crisis leads him to think about what are, in fact, all sorts of existentialist questions: what it is to be free, what it is to be human, what is to be able to look at other people and be looked at by other people, to be in time, to be in history, to try and impose some kind of sense or narrative on the raw facts of existence.
“The sheer physical being of the world around him causes a kind of nauseous horror and this crisis leads him to think about what are, in fact, all sorts of existentialist questions.”
It’s just a fascinating book and a great way into existentialism. You might not come out of it with a very sophisticated conceptual system of existentialist ideas, but you do come out of it — well I did anyway! — with curiosity to read more. It leads you on to his great work, Being and Nothingness, which explores the same ideas, but from a philosophical perspective. There’s also a little book called Existentialism and Humanism which could be a good one to go on to from Nausea. It’s a very short and very approachable primer of Sartre and existentialism, mainly from an ethical point of view. Sartre himself gave it as a lecture, but he didn’t really expect it to be turned into a text that would be a common starting point in existentialism, and he always slightly thought it didn’t represent his ideas very well. So if you enjoyed Nausea, than maybe just go for the big one, and plunge into Being and Nothingness.
For me, Sartre is one of these writers who at times is obscure, but nevertheless exciting to read. There’s a sense that ideas matter, that this is worth thinking about, because this is the question of how we should live. It’s not just an academic exercise for him.
Yes, that’s something we really lost in philosophy, particularly the Continental tradition that followed after existentialism: structuralism, deconstruction, post-modernism. We lost the sense that life matters, being a human being matters, what we choose to do with our lives matters. Sartre passionately felt that, and it led him to some very strange areas. He became involved with Marxist-Maoist politics, for example. But he did that because he thought that we can make human life better, we can actually make a difference in the real world. That was lost with subsequent generations, where philosophy and literature became a bit of a game, a bit of play between different textual significances. I love that passion in existentialism, and particularly in Sartre. He cares about what he’s saying. He cares about how you choose to live a human life. We always need that. There’s never been a time in human history when we don’t need that kind of involvement and engagement.
It’s interesting as well that he’s a novelist, he’s a playwright, a critic — he was even a scriptwriter. He didn’t just define himself as an author of philosophical texts. That’s something that’s unusual in present day philosophy.
Yes. He saw himself as more of a writer than a philosopher. His great passion as a child and young man was to write — and he went on to write in almost every genre except poetry. He even wrote a few lyrics for songs. He was willing to explore ideas in whatever format worked. And the genres were often mixed. With Nausea, the drama unfolds as a philosophical drama. But when you turn to Being and Nothingness — which is supposed to be a work of philosophy — you find that a lot of the ideas in it unfold as little stories, little narratives. That’s one of the great attractions of the book, that he has great examples, these famous little stories — about sitting in a café, waiting for your friend to turn up. The friend doesn’t turn up, so then the absence of the friend is almost a physical presence in the café. He tells little stories about skiing, about peering through a key hole and being a voyeur and then somebody catches you: they turn the corner on the stairs and see you peering through someone else’s keyhole and suddenly the whole situation is reversed and you feel self-conscious. All these little stories are ways of embodying and dramatizing the philosophy.
Do you have a favourite passage in Nausea?
There are so many vivid images, particularly images of horror — of people turning into these strange, hallucinogenic lobster-like creatures. There’s a moment when he’s looking at the roots of a chestnut tree and their sheer physical being just overwhelms him. But the one that sticks most in my mind is this little scene where he’s watching two people walk towards each other around the corner and it’s under a streetlamp at night. He can see both of them |
more targeted form, in the moralizing ideological bedfellows of feminists — tradcons – who essentially feel not an iota different. They just express their contempt for men by shaming women who choose to have sex with them outside the purview of a state sanctioned relationship, not that they don’t express a lot of contempt for men directly.
The answer to this? Red pills, of course. A double dose if necessary.
As men continue to raise their awareness of where they have always been on societies ladder, which is predominately at the bottom rungs; as they peel back the layers of their disposability and their longstanding expectations to suffer and die mindlessly for provision for and protection of women, they will come to recognize that the deification of the “pure” woman and the hatred of men are both on the same sorry road.
There is no enhanced or reduced worth of any woman based on her number of sexual partners. Our tendency to value them, or trust them more, based on a perception of sexual discernment and restraint is a woefully misguided distraction from assessing their true character as human beings. And it is an indictment of all men as unwholesome and immoral for our very existence.
Slut shaming is only a surface attack on women. The real destructive nature of engaging in it is to men. It is just a programmed tactic for men to clear the field of imagined undesirables, leaving them with the illusion of better women; a fantasy that enables them to deny and rationalize their way into slavery and destruction.
Until men learn to evaluate women on their character, which will weed out a thousand fold more women than evaluating their sexual history, they will continue to swallow the blue pill poison, and pay the price. That is the problem with the double standard, and why we should invest in fixing it.IRVING, Texas -- There has been only one defensive back ranked higher on the Dallas Cowboys draft boards than Morris Claiborne: Hall of Famer Deion Sanders.
Sanders was the Atlanta Falcons' fifth overall pick from Florida State in the 1989 draft.
Thursday night, when the Cowboys discussed making a trade for Claiborne with the St. Louis Rams, team scouts told owner/general manager Jerry Jones only one man had higher grades.
Sanders.
"Deion was special with his burst," Jones said. "But certainly he is the best they have graded for us since Deion. That would have included Deion after he came in here. Deion had the highest touchdown-per-touch of any player in NFL history."
Claiborne's high-grade was also higher than Terence Newman, who was the Cowboys' first-round pick, fifth overall in 2003.
Last year, LSU's Patrick Peterson was the highest graded corner coming out of the draft, but Jones said Claiborne's grade was better than his.
Claiborne said he compares himself, not to Sanders or Peterson but to the New York Jets' Darrelle Revis.
"He’s on that level where not too many of the guys are doing the things that he’s doing and I believe I can be that type of player also," Claiborne said.As Noel Gallagher approaches 50, rest assured the fire in his heart isn’t out — and neither is the acid in his tongue. Reached in London as he prepared for a North American tour with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds that’s Toronto-bound on July 10, Gallagher was ever the rollicking conversationalist seemingly able to generate caustic quotables on virtually any topic.
Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds are coming to Echo Beach on July 10. ( Mark Metcalfe / GETTY IMAGES )
Nothing is out of the firing range of his corrosive candour, from U.S. politics, to his fractious family relations, to his own golden-age output. “There was clearly a bit from ’93 to ’97 where every song I wrote was f---ing amazing,” he offers, “then a bit from ’97 to 2000 where they were f---ing awful.” Well, minutes before he planned to ambush Neil Young with a question of his own during a function at Young’s office — specifically, Gallagher wanted to ask why Young hired guitar prodigy Nils Lofgren for After the Gold Rush then had him play piano — the Oasis troublemaker agreed to answer some of ours.
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You’re in the U.S. soon. Are you following the election? I checked out Donald Trump’s bets bits on YouTube. It’s him and Clinton, innit? Which pretty much means America’s f---ed. ’Cause they’ve got enough s--- on Clinton, haven’t they? Aren’t those two in it up to their armpits? Then you’ve got the comedic genius that is Donald Trump. Is Canada preparing for an influx of refugees? We’re building a wall. I don’t really take much notice of American politics. I resent the way you have to know about it. Who gives a s--- who the president of America is? And I hate the way they say “leader of the free world,” just because they’ve got the most rockets. What did you think of the upcoming Oasis documentary (Supersonic)?
Somewhat predictably, it’s quite funny. I come out of it like a bit of a soothsayer really. I was saying we’d be the last of a dying breed; so it came to pass. The dawn of the digital age really put an end to rock stardom. (We treated) our position at the time — the biggest band in the world — with a great deal of contempt. That doesn’t happen now. Now, everybody’s really grateful. To their audience, they’re like: “You guys! If it wasn’t for you... ” F--- you guys. You didn’t even buy any f---ing records! Stop texting your ex-girlfriend. Enjoy “Wonderwall.” You’re not our saviour. Buy a T-shirt and go home. That was the way we operated. Artists worry more about self-promotion now.
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I’m 50 next year. I grew up mythologizing Led Zeppelin and (wondering) what they might be up to. Whereas now everybody knows what Kasabian are up to right now. There’s probably a live blog going on somewhere. Everybody knows what Chris Martin had for breakfast. And if they don’t know, they could find out. I’m guessing you don’t use a streaming service? I don’t stream music. If I want it, I’ll buy it. I don’t need access to 3 billion s--- tunes. Someone tried to sell me Spotify once and I was like, “Why would I want the entire f---ing catalogue of the Kaiser Chiefs? Why would I want access to that? Why would I want a load of f---ing live gigs by the Foo Fighters?” I wouldn’t have it in the house, so why would I want it on my phone? You joked recently that your next record would be “properly ignored” in America. Well, I put records out in America and I go there, and it’s like, seriously, did it get f---ing released? I just hope one day I get nominated for a Grammy just out of sympathy. Someone will say: “Remember that guy who used to be in Oasis? Should we nominate him? We don’t have to give him one. Just let him come to the ceremony with his wife.” I met a guy from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in America and he asked if I had any stuff they could (exhibit). Are you f---ing kidding me? It would probably be the f---ing least observed exhibit of all time. Listen, barely anyone in New York is interested in Oasis. In wherever they are? Cincinnati? Pittsburgh? Cleveland. Cleveland! I guarantee you nobody gives a f--- about Oasis or me. This record, honestly, it’ll probably be over by the time the press release has been written. That’s good though. That means I don’t have to spend six months a year (in the U.S.) getting fat. If you’re in any way weak-willed, you’re just going to come back a fat, drunk drug addict. Your brother (Liam) recently ranted angrily about you on Twitter. What caused that? That’s so unlike him. I guess it was about him staying relevant. If you’re him, what else is there to tweet about? How his spring/summer collections are doing for his clothing firm? I’m not sure that warrants a tweet. Should he ever climb out of the “where are they now” basket and grant you an interview, ask him. I’m sure you’ll get a typically f---ing surreal answer. So you’re not speaking? We’ve not been on speaking terms since 1996. I tolerated him up until he stopped being able to sing. When singing becomes shouting — I switched off then. I was just amassing money. So when you toured together since, you didn’t have anything to do with each other? No, not at all. I’ve always been a loner anyway, even as a child. I prefer my own company. I’m literally the only person who can put up with me. What about your wife? She’s not too keen. She blows hot and cold. She’s like: “Look, get nominated for a Grammy then come and see me.”AUSTIN — Texas will shutter more prisons this year than it has in any single year in history, a response to the state's tight budget and shrinking inmate population.
In the state's two-year budget, which lawmakers approved in May, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was ordered to close four prison facilities by Sept. 1. When all four are closed, tough-on-crime Texas will have shuttered eight prisons in just six years.
Criminal justice reform advocates, agency officials and lawmakers say the closings are possible because of a combination of factors, including falling crime rates and legislative efforts to reduce the number of people who spend time behind bars.
"This is something we have done incrementally over the last decade," said Derek Cohen, deputy director at the Center for Effective Justice at the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation. "We're not any less safe publicly for that."
The drop in Texas' prison population began around 2007, when lawmakers were faced with an expensive decision. The state had spent decades and millions of dollars building hulking prison edifices across rural Texas. Tens of thousands of cells were quickly filling, and without changing the way Texas operated its criminal justice system, the state would soon be forced to spend millions more to house a burgeoning inmate population.The State Police on Wednesday suspended a statewide highway traffic enforcement program and began a criminal investigation into three troopers accused of claiming extra-duty hours they did not work.
The State Police superintendent, Col. Kevin Reeves, ordered a review of the program, Local Agency Compensated Enforcement, and placed the troopers on administrative leave after reviewing surveillance footage provided by New Orleans station WVUE-TV.
The station this week promoted an investigative series on the program, known as LACE, saying it would begin to air its findings Wednesday.
The undercover footage appears to show the troopers "claiming hours for time they weren't working," said Maj. Doug Cain, a State Police spokesman.
The troopers under investigation are Eric Curlee, a senior technician assigned to the agency's Emergency Services Unit; Daryl Thomas, a veteran trooper who works out of Kenner-based Troop B; and Byron Sims, a State Police polygrapher.
It was not immediately clear how many hours the troopers have been accused of fraudulently claiming or how long they worked the extra-duty shifts.
Reeves "was certainly concerned" by WVUE-TV's findings, Cain said, and ordered that an internal affairs inquiry begin after the criminal investigation runs its course.
Two State Police troopers avoid suspension, receive disciplinary letters for Vegas'side trip' Two Louisiana State Police troopers avoided suspension and received only minor discipline for taking an unauthorized "side trip" last year to …
"We're going to step back and look at the entire program, its policies and procedures, in an effort to ensure the oversight is effective," Cain said.
LACE for years has been funded by local district attorneys, who contract with the State Police and reimburse the agency for overtime and mileage claimed by troopers working extra-duty shifts in jurisdictions around the state.
The local governments keep the proceeds of the tickets written by troopers or deputies during the shifts. Under state law, the tickets generate fees and court costs that benefit public defender offices and other agencies.
The WVUE-TV series, titled "State of Unrest," includes footage of the troopers allegedly abusing the program, apparently by writing a full shift's worth of tickets in a relatively short period of time. Investigative reporter Lee Zurik told viewers that one of the troopers in question used LACE to earn "more than any other law enforcer in the state."
"We spent much of the summer and fall on an undercover surveillance investigation and brought our findings to LSP," the station said on its website Wednesday. "If you've seen a state trooper near the Bonnet Carré Spillway or in New Orleans East, they're likely on a LACE shift."
Some of the shifts in question were worked in St. Charles Parish.
"It's disheartening to hear that one or two individuals have claimed to have worked hours they apparently haven't worked," said Joel Chaisson II, the St. Charles Parish district attorney, who reviewed the station's findings.
"The fact that they might have written a normal amount of tickets to be expected in an eight-hour shift doesn't make me feel good if they were only out there for four hours."
Despite the allegations, Chaisson touted LACE as "a very valuable tool for law enforcement in parishes across the state," noting that it frees local law enforcement officers to focus on other tasks.
The St. Charles Herald Guide reported in 2013 that some 80 percent of the traffic tickets issued in that parish stemmed from LACE, which the newspaper said "has up to four officers working in the parish at any given time throughout the day."
"People know that when you come through St. Charles Parish, you need to slow down because invariably there will be a police presence on our highways," Chaisson said. "This is not just about revenue. It's about a police presence on our highways."
The criminal investigation comes on the heels of another misconduct scandal involving a group of State Police troopers who charged taxpayers for an unauthorized road trip they took to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon last year while driving to a law enforcement conference in San Diego.
The controversial trip prompted the early retirement of Reeves' predecessor, Mike Edmonson, and recently led to the demotion of two high-ranking troopers.
LACE and other forms of State Police overtime have generated scrutiny for years. A 2010 inquiry by the state Inspector General's Office faulted the agency for using inconsistent methods to document overtime.
The review found that some State Police troops around the state logged "very detailed" timesheets, while others used a different method to track overtime that often lacked details about the purpose for which troopers worked extra hours.
The inspector general's inquiry followed an investigative report by Baton Rouge station WAFB-TV that found about 30 percent of State Police overtime stemmed from LACE. That report said Thomas, one of the troopers suspended this week, earned more than $80,000 in overtime in 2008.Gail Simone is well known for her work at DC Comics, but she’s taking a detour next Spring as she joins with artist Jonathan Davis-Hunt for their first Vertigo Comics ongoing series, Clean Room. The series was just announced at the Vertigo panel at New York Comic Con, but The Mary Sue has the first exclusive interview with the creator to see what it’s about!
Clean Room is a psychological horror series featuring Chloe, a reporter whose fiancé is murdered while investigating a church that bills itself as being able to cure disorders through an expensive series of therapies. The church, led by Astrid, performs procedures in “the Clean Room,” a “hermetically sealed and biologically impervious high-tech chamber below the church’s main offices.” What could go wrong?
The Mary Sue: Gail, when was the last time you wrote a story about puppies and rainbows? What’s wrong with puppies and rainbows? You hate them, don’t you?
Gail Simone: Well, I do hate nature’s majesty and wonder, because nature is a jerk.
Actually, I feel that this rep I have is a little askew. I do like to write about dark things, but I sincerely believe heroism is about struggling against things that matter. I don’t find it really all that meaningful when our heroes don’t break a sweat, are never really tested in their soul. Even something like Leaving Megalopolis, it’s survival horror, but the emphasis is on the first word through the entire book. And with Batgirl, you know, I wanted her to triumph over a very dark, Gotham world, in ways that weren’t about just punching.
I love action and horror and adventure stories, but the message that means something to me is when people get knocked down, and don’t give up. There’s a lot of heroism in just surviving, sometimes.
TMS: Seems this new story flips the script on what we normally see, which is usually girlfriend or wife murdered and “man seeks answers.” Was that intentional?
Simone: Not as a statement in itself, no. Everyone has some loss in their lives, we all have despaired because someone was suddenly gone. I think that’s a very powerful shared human experience, and that’s part of what motivates Chloe, our journalist protagonist. She’s lost her fiancé, but that’s not what drove her to despair…you’ll have to read the book, Jill.
TMS: Was it inspired by anything in the real world? Is it set in current time?
Simone: It’s in current time, absolutely, and it’s inspired by a theme that I keep coming back to, which is that the seats of power are rarely what we think they are. Some corporate dude we will never even hear of might have more power over the quality of our lives than our own senators, and that’s a scary thing to me. There are forces out there and we can’t fight them because we don’t know them.
I am also very interested in how quickly people are able to weaponize people who feel powerless and disenfranchised, you see it all over the political spectrum. It’s the opposite of a true grass roots movement, it’s often well-funded and carefully executed. You can’t blame people for being fed up, but turning on each other seems to be an easy thing to make happen, it just never stops. There are malevolent forces out there, I want the next great hero to be someone who goes after those forces, not jewel thieves.
TMS: Tell us a bit about Chloe and what her life is like before all the action happens.
Simone: Chloe is a small-town journalist from Florida, and she has a charismatic and talented fiancée who is a bit of an ass at times. Her fiancée becomes obsessed with the writings of a self-help guru, Astrid Mueller, and one day, he kills himself with her open book still on the kitchen counter beside him.
Chloe wants to know what’s in that book that inspired him to do this. So right or wrong, she has nothing to lose, and she goes after Astrid’s incredibly powerful organization. But there’s much, much more to Astrid than Chloe could possibly know, and some of it is far beyond what she could ever have imagined.
Astrid has a Clean Room. And what happens there can’t be explained. And it’s bad. It’s so, so bad.
TMS: And what about Astrid?
Simone: It’s an interesting thing that some of the most megalomaniacal people are the most charismatic. Is Astrid on the side of the angels, or not? In the Clean Room, Astrid knows your secrets. And then she owns you.
TMS: I’m not sure how far along you are yet in the creative process, so I’ll just ask if you were a fan of Jonathan Davis-Hunt’s work before joining him on this project.
Simone: I wish I could say that I had been, but I am a newcomer to his work. We looked at literally dozens of artists, but Jonathan blew our minds immediately. He sent in sketches of the characters that did not match the descriptions I had sent, and was like, “I hope this is okay, I saw them more like this…”
And HE WAS RIGHT. I mean, Shelly and I both immediately were amazed, he got their look better than I did, I changed the scripts to match and Jonathan came aboard and he’s going to be a star. Watch and see. He drew a haunting first page, it takes your breath away, and then he colored it three different ways to see which gave the most impact. He’s astounding. I could not be happier.
TMS: How it is working on the Vertigo side of the company?
Simone: The best. Just the best. I have wanted to do a Vertigo book for some time, but it didn’t happen for whatever reasons. But Shelly Bond has been this book’s champion since Day One and I dearly love her. There would be no Clean Room without her. When she gives notes, they are always spot-on. She cares deeply about the books at every level, and I just find that completely inspiring.
But beyond that, this is a story I really want to tell and they got me a ridiculously great artist and have backed me all the way. I am delighted.
TMS: “Exorcism gone digital” sounds extremely intense, scary, and entertaining. What can we expect from the series as time goes on?
Simone: You know that feeling when you walk on ice, and it starts to crack below you? I can’t ever help but feel, what if there’s nothing below this ice, what if when it cracks, you start falling and never stop?
That’s how I feel reading this book, what if the ground we think is solid is a thin layer and there’s just a void underneath? The world is not what we have been led to believe. There are horrible secrets and a lot of people invested in you never knowing that.
But there are no secrets in the Clean Room.
—
Clean Room will be out Spring 2015 from Vertigo.
Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?RIGA, Sept 8 (LETA) – The Bank of Latvia has increased this year’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast from the previous 3.3 percent to 4.2 percent, Bank of Latvia president Ilmars Rimsevics said in a press conference today.
At the same time the central bank has increased the economic growth forecast for 2018 from the earlier 3.4 percent to 3.8 percent.
"Following a very weak development in 2016, this year Latvia’s national economy demonstrate a steep growth pace," said Rimsevics.
He said that one of the main factors that promotes the steep economic growth is recovery of the external markets and growth of manufacturing. Another important factor is increase of activity in private investments and absorption of the EU funds that has been the main obstacle for growth last year. Recovery of investments ensure a considerable growth in construction and related industries.
"Considering the significantly steep growth in the first half of this year, further rise in the construction sector, reduction of unemployment, and a steeper rise of private consumption promoted by wage growth, and a favorable situation in external markets, the Bank of Latvia has raised the GDP forecast – by unadjusted data GDP in 2017 might grow by 4.2 percent, and in 2018 by 3.8 percent," Rimsevics said.
According to the Central Statistical Bureau data, in the first half of this year Latvia’s GDP by unadjusted data rose by 4 percent year-on-year.The 2014 NFL draft was the 79th annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible football players to the league. The draft, officially the "Player Selection Meeting",[1] was held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, New York, on May 8th through May 10th, 2014.[2][3][4] One of the most anticipated drafts in recent years kicked off on May 8, 2014 at 8 pm EDT.[5] The draft was moved from its traditional time frame in late April due to a scheduling conflict at Radio City Music Hall.[6]
There was early discussion and rumors leading up to the draft on the future of staying at the current location in New York City, where it has been held since 1965. Given the increased interest the draft has garnered over the past decade,[7] there was belief that the event may have outgrown Radio City Music Hall, which has been the venue for the past nine drafts. The possibility of extending the draft to four days was also being discussed throughout the months leading up to the draft. The NFL decided in that summer that the 2015 NFL Draft will take place at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
The Houston Texans opened the draft by selecting defensive end Jadeveon Clowney from the University of South Carolina. The last time a defensive player was taken with the first overall selection was in 2006, when the Texans selected Mario Williams.[8] The Texans also closed the draft with the selection of safety Lonnie Ballentine of the University of Memphis as Mr. Irrelevant, which is the title given to the final player selected.[9]
The 2014 NFL draft made history when the St. Louis Rams selected Michael Sam in the seventh round. Sam, who became the first openly gay player to ever be drafted in the NFL, was selected 249th out of 256 picks in the 2014 NFL Draft. After this, Sam's jersey was the second best selling rookie jersey on the NFL's website. [10] Sam came out publicly in the months leading up to the draft.[11]
A few notable players drafted in 2014 were Jimmy Garoppolo, Johnny Manziel, Derek Carr, Blake Bortles, Khalil Mack, Odell Beckham Jr., Aaron Donald, Anthony Barr, Allen Robinson, Jadeveon Clowney, Mike Evans, Devonta Freeman, Martavis Bryant, and Sammy Watkins.
Early entrants [ edit ]
A record 98 underclassmen announced their intention to forgo their remaining NCAA eligibility and declare themselves available to be selected in the draft.[12] When including four players who received degrees but still had eligibility remaining, the number swells to 102.[13] Fourteen underclassmen—plus Teddy Bridgewater who graduated with eligibility remaining—were selected in the draft's first round,[14] including the first four and six of the first ten players selected.[15]
Overview [ edit ]
The following is the breakdown of the 256 players selected by position:
Determination of draft order [ edit ]
The draft order is based generally on each team's record from the previous season, with teams which qualified for the postseason selecting after those which failed to make the playoffs.[16] The Houston Texans with a 2–14 record in 2013 held the first selection of each round. The Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens finished 2013 with identical 8–8 records and strength of schedule ratings, hence a coin flip was used to determine the selection order — the Cowboys won the flip and thus selected ahead of the Ravens.[17]
Player selections [ edit ]
The 2016 Defensive Player of the Year Khalil Mack was drafted fifth overall by the Oakland Raiders.
The 2014 Offensive Rookie of the Year Odell Beckham Jr. was drafted 12th overall
The 2014 Defensive Rookie of the Year, 2018 and 2019 Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald was drafted 13th overall
Drafted in the fourth round, Devonta Freeman lead the league in rushing touchdowns in 2015
Notable undrafted players [ edit ]
Trades [ edit ]
In the explanations below, (D) denotes trades that took place during the 2014 draft, while (PD) indicates trades completed pre-draft.
Round one
Round two
Round three
Round four
Round five
Round six
Round seven
Supplemental draft [ edit ]
The supplemental draft was held on July 10, 2014. For each player selected in the supplemental draft, the team forfeits its pick in that round in the draft of the following season. 4 players were eligible, but for the second straight year no players were selected.[21]
Summary [ edit ]
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) led all college athletic conferences in terms of first round selections with eleven, including the first two picks of the draft.[14] For the first time since the league's second draft in 1937, no player from the University of Texas was selected.[22]
For the second year in succession — and only the second time since 1967 — no running back was selected in the first round.[23] The first player taken at the position was Bishop Sankey who was selected in the second round with the 54th pick overall. This is the latest point in the history of the draft for the first running back to be selected.[24]
Selections by college athletic conference [ edit ]
Schools with multiple draft selections [ edit ]
Selections by position [ edit ]
Position Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7 Total Center 0 1 2 2 2 2 1 10 Cornerback 5 1 2 9 4 7 5 33 Defensive end 2 3 3 2 5 3 2 22 Defensive tackle 2 3 4 3 3 1 4 20 Guard 0 1 6 1 4 2 0 14 Linebacker 5 3 3 5 8 3 7 34 Offensive tackle 5 4 3 1 1 3 4 21 Placekicker 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 Punter 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 Quarterback 3 2 0 2 2 5 2 16 Running back 0 3 5 5 0 4 2 19 Safety 4 1 2 4 3 2 4 20 Tight end 1 3 3 0 1 0 2 10 Wide receiver 5 7 3 6 3 5 5 34
Position Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7 Total Offense 14 21 22 17 13 21 16 124 Defense 18 11 14 23 23 16 24 129 Special teams 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 3
U.S. television coverage [ edit ]
The draft was broadcast live by the NFL Network and ESPN. This marks the 35th year of draft coverage on ESPN while the NFL Network has covered the draft since its inception ten years ago.[25]
The two networks' combined first-round coverage drew a record 32 million viewers according to Nielsen ratings which was a 28 percent increase over the previous year. In total 45.7 million viewers watched some part of the three-day event, topping the previous record of 45.4 millions set in 2010.[26]
In popular culture [ edit ]
The events of the 2014 film Draft Day, take place during the fictionalized 2014 NFL Draft.
, take place during the fictionalized 2014 NFL Draft. The 2014 NFL draft was also featured in ‘’The League’’.
References [ edit ]
Notes
a b Players are identified as a Pro Bowler if they were selected for the Pro Bowl at any time in their career. ^ Manziel was the 2012 winner of the [18] Manziel was the 2012 winner of the Heisman Trophy which is awarded annually to the player deemed the most outstanding player in collegiate football.
General referencesAggressive climbing perch may make it to mainland Australia, researchers fear
Updated
An aggressive foreign fish that can move across dry land and choke birds and other fish is threatening to make its way onto Australian soil from Papua New Guinea.
Researchers and rangers are monitoring the climbing perch, which has already overrun waterways on two Queensland islands in the Torres Strait.
The noxious fish can last several days on land by using lungs to breathe.
Their gill covers, they can flex them out and get caught in the throats of fish and birds, so that leads to the animal dying. James Cook University scientist Doctor Nathan Waltham
Furthermore, despite being a freshwater fish, it can survive in briny water.
James Cook University scientist Nathan Waltham said not only was the fish aggressive, but if birds or other fish ate them they could die.
"Their gill covers, they can flex them out and get caught in the throats of fish and birds, so that leads to the animal dying," Dr Waltham said.
Dr Waltham said if the climbing perch were not managed in the Torres Strait, the species could make its way to the northern Australia mainland.
"We've only found them on Boigu and Saibai islands, so these are the islands that are closest to Papua New Guinea," Dr Waltham said.
"They haven't been recorded any further south but the threat is if they aren't managed... then they actually may move through the Torres Strait and move into northern Australia."
Perch 'could survive fishing boat trip to Australia'
The director of TropWater at James Cook University, Damien Burrows, said the climbing perch could survive a trip from the Torres Strait on the bottom of a fishing boat.
"Anecdotes are that they are carried between villages on various islands," he said.
"So a trip in a boat across the Torres Strait is not out of the question."
Dr Burrows said if the fish were not managed effectively, then the door would be left open for others to follow.
"It's a bit of a melting pot, there are some pretty nasty exotic fishes," he said.
The research team is helping to educate Torres Strait fishermen and residents to identify the fish and know to throw them away before coming to mainland Australia.
Fisheries Queensland said in a statement that it had not received any further reports of the fish moving from the Torres Strait.
"There is no viable means of eradicating the fish from these islands and an awareness campaign was conducted with island communities to help prevent any further dispersal of these exotic fish," a spokeswoman said.
Topics: fish, animal-science, fishing-aquaculture, cairns-4870, townsville-4810, qld
First postedI was inspired to create this series by former Beatle and vegetarian advocate Paul McCartney(Macca) who partnered with the Meatless Monday campaign to promote less consumption of meat. We not only discuss the advantages of a less meat diet; we also do some cooking, share recipes and listen to great Beatle music!
A big shout out and Thanks to kossack kirbybruno who wrote Meatless Monday...From The Ground Up last Monday. It was fabulously informative and with the beautiful photos of her adorable daughters it was a win-win all around.
If you have been a MMM supporter and would like to write your own MM diary send me a kosmail as I have a super busy summer lined up and could use some help.
When I first became vegan about two years ago, I added tempeh to my diet. To clarify; I was vegetarian before I became vegan and now I am something else I call 'A Cheating Vegan'. What works for me is that I am 100% vegan at home which is about 80-90% of my time, but when I am away from home I sometimes revert back to vegetarianism. I never eat meat, but when I am traveling or a houseguest it's very difficult to avoid some dairy without freaking out my hosts or traveling companions. But it's getting easier and I find that my diet is about 95% vegan.
So, when I removed dairy from my diet, which had been a source of protein along with legumes and grains etc, I started to investigate other sources of plant based protein and that is when I introduced myself to tempeh and it's been a go-to source of protein since that time. It has a nutty, meaty texture that really satisfies. And, like its blander cousin, tofu, it’s great at absorbing the flavors of surrounding ingredients.
Tempeh (ˈtɛmpeɪ; Javanese: témpé, IPA: [tempe]), is a traditional soy product originally from Indonesia. It is made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form, similar to a very firm vegetarian burger patty. Tempeh is unique among major traditional soy foods in that it is the only one that did not originate from the Sinosphere cuisine.
It originated in today's Indonesia, and is especially popular on the island of Java, where it is a staple source of protein. Like tofu, tempeh is made from soybeans, but it is a whole soybean product with different nutritional characteristics and textural qualities. Tempeh's fermentation process and its retention of the whole bean give it a higher content of protein, dietary fiber, and vitamins. It has a firm texture and an earthy flavor which becomes more pronounced as it ages. Because of its nutritional value, tempeh is used worldwide in vegetarian cuisine, where it is used as a meat analogue.
It's taken me awhile to develop and collect some recipes for tempeh and today I will share some of my favorites with you.
TEMPEH BURGERS
Tempeh shines in homemade burger patties. Super healthy and delicious!
1 -8 ounce package 3 Grain or Wild Rice Tempeh
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus extra to oil the pan for frying
1/4 cup finely chopped sweet or red onion
1 stalk celery, chopped fine
1 clove garlic chopped fine
1 shallot, chopped fine
1/2 cup sourdough or whole grain breadcrumbs
2 ample pinches of kosher salt
1/4 cup vegan mayonnaise (I use Vegenaise-yum-o)
1/2 teaspoon mild paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons finely chopped thyme
Cut the tempeh into 8 slices and steam for ten minutes.
When cool enough to handle, crumble into a mixing bowl.
Heat olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat, and cook onion, celery, garlic, and shallot 5 minutes, or until soft.
Add vegetables to tempeh along with the remaining ingredients, and stir well.
When the mixture is cool enough to handle, make 8 patties.
Cook burgers over medium high heat in a lightly oiled skillet, 2-3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Serve immediately with your |
for the Sixth Circuit PN370 Jul 20
163 (51-48) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of John Kenneth Bush, of Kentucky, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit PN370 Jul 19
162 (92-7) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Patrick M. Shanahan, of Washington, to be Deputy Secretary of Defense PN583 Jul 18
161 (88-6) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture Re: Patrick M. Shanahan to be Deputy Secretary of Defense PN583 Jul 17
160 (86-12) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation William Francis Hagerty IV, of Tennessee, to be Ambassador of the United States to Japan PN117 Jul 13
159 (89-11) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture William Francis Hagerty to be Ambassador to Japan PN117 Jul 12
158 (100-0) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation David C. Nye, of Idaho, to be U.S. District Judge PN373 Jul 12
157 (97-0) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture Re: David C. Nye to be United States District Judge PN373 Jul 10
156 (54-41) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Neomi Rao, of the District of Columbia, to be Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs PN478 Jul 10
155 (59-36) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on Neomi Rao to be Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs PN478 Jun 29
154 (88-9) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Kristine L. Svinicki, of Virginia, to be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission PN561 Jun 26
153 (89-10) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Kristine L. Svinicki, of Virginia, to be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission PN561 Jun 22
152 (65-35) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Marshall Billingslea, of Virginia, to be Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing PN366 Jun 22
151 (65-34) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture Re: Marshall Billingslea to be Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing PN366 Jun 21
150 (96-4) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Sigal Mandelker, of New York, to be Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes PN172 Jun 21
149 (94-5) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on Sigal Mandelker, of New York, to be Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes PN172 Jun 20
148 (95-4) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Brock Long, of North Carolina, to be Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency PN455 Jun 20
147 (98-2) Passed On Passage of the Bill: S. 722 As Amended; An Act to Provide Congressional Review and to Counter Iranian and Russian Governments' Aggression. S. 722 Jun 15
146 (100-0) Agreed to On the Amendment S.Amdt. 240: Graham Amdt. No. 240; To reaffirm the strategic importance of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty to the member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its contribution to maintaining stability throughout the world. S. 722 Jun 15
145 (94-6) Agreed to On the Amendment S.Amdt. 250: Gardner Amdt. No. 250 As Modified; To provide an exception for activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. S. 722 Jun 15
144 (97-2) Agreed to On the Amendment S.Amdt. 232: Crapo Amdt. No. 232 As Modified; To impose sanctions with respect to the Russian Federation and to combat terrorism and illicit financing. S. 722 Jun 14
143 (47-53) Rejected On the Motion to Discharge: Motion to Discharge S. J. Res. 42; A joint resolution relating to the disapproval of the proposed export to the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of certain defense articles. S.J.Res. 42 Jun 13
142 (95-1) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Kenneth P. Rapuano, of Virginia, to be Assistant Secretary of Defense PN348 Jun 12
141 (94-4) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Scott P. Brown, of New Hampshire, to be Ambassador to New Zealand and Ambassador to the Independent State of Samoa PN349 Jun 08
140 (91-8) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to S. 722; An Act to Provide Congressional Review and to Counter Iranian and Russian Governments' Aggression. S. 722 Jun 07
139 (67-33) Confirmed On the Nomination: Courtney Elwood, of Virginia, to be General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency PN104 Jun 06
138 (90-0) Agreed to On the Resolution: S. Res. 176; A resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. S.Res. 176 Jun 05
137 (52-44) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Amul R. Thapar, of Kentucky, to be United States Circuit Judge PN105 May 25
136 (52-48) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Amul R. Thapar to be U.S. Circuit Judge PN105 May 24
135 (94-6) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation John J. Sullivan, of Maryland, to be Deputy Seretary of State PN350 May 24
134 (93-6) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of John. J. Sullivan to be Deputy Secretary of State PN350 May 23
133 (82-13) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Terry Branstad, of Iowa, to be Ambassador to the People's Republic of China PN52 May 22
132 (86-12) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Terry Branstad, of Iowa, to be Ambassador to the People's Republic of China PN52 May 18
131 (52-46) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Rachel L. Brand, of Iowa, to be Associate Attorney General PN57 May 18
130 (51-47) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Rachel L. Brand, of Iowa, to be Associate Attorney General PN57 May 17
129 (56-42) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Jeffrey A. Rosen, of Virginia, to be Deputy Secretary of Transportation PN102 May 16
128 (52-42) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Jeffrey A. Rosen to be Deputy Secretary of Transportation PN102 May 15
127 (82-14) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Robert Lighthizer, of Florida, to be United States Trade Representative PN42 May 11
126 (81-15) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Robert Lighthizer, of Florida, to be United States Trade Representative PN42 May 11
125 (49-51) Rejected On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to H. J. Res. 36; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Bureau of Land Management relating to "Waste Prevention, Production Subject to Royalties, and Resource Conservation". H.J.Res. 36 May 10
124 (57-42) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Scott Gottlieb, of Connecticut, to be Commissioner of Food and Drugs, Department of Health and Human Services PN118 May 09
123 (57-41) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture On the Nomination of Scott Gottlieb to be Commissioner of Food and Drugs PN118 May 08
122 (76-22) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Heather Wilson, of South Dakota, to be Secretary of the Air Force PN101 May 08
121 (79-18) Agreed to On the Motion: Motion to Concur in the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 244; To encourage effective, voluntary investments to recruit, employ, and retain men and women who have served in the United States military with annual Federal awards to employers recognizing such efforts, and for other purposes. H.R. 244 May 04
120 (50-49) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H. J. Res. 66; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by States for non-governmental employees. H.J.Res. 66 May 03
119 (51-48) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to the Consideration of H.J. Res. 66; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by States for non-governmental employees. H.J.Res. 66 May 03
118 (61-37) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Jay Clayton, of New York, to be a Member of the Securities and Exchange Commission PN47 May 02
117 (60-36) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Jay Clayton, of New York, to be a Member of the Securities and Exchange Commission PN47 May 01
116 (60-38) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation R. Alexander Acosta, of Florida, to be Secretary of Labor PN88 Apr 27
115 (61-39) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of R. Alexander Acosta, of Florida, to be Secretary of Labor PN88 Apr 26
114 (94-6) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Rod J. Rosenstein, of Maryland, to be Deputy Attorney General PN56 Apr 25
113 (92-6) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Rod J. Rosenstein, of Maryland, to be Deputy Attorney General PN56 Apr 24
112 (87-11) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Sonny Perdue, of Georgia, to be Secretary of Agriculture PN90 Apr 24
111 (54-45) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Neil M. Gorsuch, of Colorado, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States PN55 Apr 07
110 (55-45) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Upon Reconsideration, Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch of Colorado, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States PN55 Apr 06
109 (48-52) Not Sustained On the Decision of the Chair: Shall the Decision of the Chair Stand as the Judgment of the Senate? PN55 Apr 06
108 (48-52) Rejected On the Motion to Adjourn: Schumer Motion to Adjourn Until 5:00 P.M. PN55 Apr 06
107 (48-52) Rejected On the Motion to Postpone: Motion to Postpone the Motion to Invoke Cloture, Upon Reconsideration, of the Nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch Until a Time Certain PN55 Apr 06
106 (55-45) Agreed to On the Motion to Reconsider: Motion to Reconsider the Vote By Which the Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch Was Not Invoked PN55 Apr 06
105 (55-45) Rejected On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch, of Colorado, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States PN55 Apr 06
104 (55-44) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Executive Session to Consider the Nomination of Neil Gorsuch PN55 Apr 04
103 (85-14) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Elaine C. Duke, of Virginia, to be Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security PN59 Apr 04
102 (85-12) Passed On Passage of the Bill: S. 89; A bill to amend title 46, United States Code, to exempt old vessels that only operate within inland waterways from the fire-retardant materials requirement if the owners of such vessels make annual structural alterations to at least 10 percent of the areas of the vessels that are not constructed of fire-retardant materials and for other purposes. S. 89 Apr 03
101 (50-50) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J. Res. 43; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule submitted by Secretary of Health and Human Services relating to compliance with title X requirements by project recipients in selecting subrecipients. H.J.Res. 43 Mar 30
100 (50-50) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to H.J. Res. 43; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule submitted by Secretary of Health and Human Services relating to compliance with title X requirements by project recipients in selecting subrecipients. H.J.Res. 43 Mar 30
99 (50-49) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J. Res. 67; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by qualified State political subdivisions for non-governmental employees. H.J.Res. 67 Mar 30
98 (97-2) Agreed to On the Resolution of Ratification: Resolution of Advice and Consent to Ratification (Treaty Doc. 114-12); Protocol to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 on the Accession of Montenegro Treaty Doc. 114-12 Mar 28
97 (97-2) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on Treaty Doc. 114-12; Protocol to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 on the Accession of Montenegro Treaty Doc. 114-12 Mar 27
96 (52-46) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation David Friedman, of New York, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Israel PN53 Mar 23
95 (52-46) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture re Nomination of David Friedman to be Ambassador to Israel PN53 Mar 23
94 (50-48) Passed On the Joint Resolution: S.J. Res. 34; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to "Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services". S.J.Res. 34 Mar 23
93 (50-48) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J.Res. 83; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to "Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness". H.J.Res. 83 Mar 22
92 (52-47) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J. Res. 69; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Department of the Interior relating to "Non-Subsistence Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska". H.J.Res. 69 Mar 21
91 (98-0) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmations Charles R. Breyer, of California, and Danny C. Reeves, of Kentucky, to be Members of the United States Sentencing Commission PN85 Mar 21
90 (86-10) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Lt. Gen. Herbert R. McMaster, Jr. to be Lieutenant General PN87 Mar 15
89 (85-12) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Daniel Coats, of Indiana, to be Director of National Intelligence PN41 Mar 15
88 (88-11) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on Daniel Coats, of Indiana, to be Director of National Intelligence PN41 Mar 15
87 (51-48) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H. J. Res. 42; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to drug testing of unemployment compensation applicants. H.J.Res. 42 Mar 14
86 (55-43) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Seema Verma, of Indiana, to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services PN49 Mar 13
85 (54-44) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Seema Verma to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services PN49 Mar 09
84 (50-49) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J. Res. 57; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to accountability and State plans under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. H.J.Res. 57 Mar 09
83 (59-40) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H. J. Res. 58; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to teacher preparation issues. H.J.Res. 58 Mar 08
82 (51-48) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J. Res. 44; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior relating to Bureau of Land Management regulations that establish the procedures used to prepare, revise, or amend land use plans pursuant to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. H.J.Res. 44 Mar 07
81 (49-48) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H. J. Res. 37; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration relating to the Federal Acquisition Regulation. H.J.Res. 37 Mar 06
80 (51-46) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to H. J. Res. 37; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration relating to the Federal Acquisition Regulation. H.J.Res. 37 Mar 02
79 (62-37) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation James Richard Perry, of Texas, to be Secretary of Energy PN36 Mar 02
78 (62-37) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture Re: James Richard Perry to be Secretary of Energy PN36 Mar 02
77 (58-41) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., of Florida, to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development PN34 Mar 02
76 (62-37) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Ben Carson to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development PN34 Mar 01
75 (68-31) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Ryan Zinke, of Montana, to be Secretary of the Interior PN31 Mar 01
74 (67-31) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture Re: Nomination of Ryan Zinke to be Secretary of the Interior PN31 Feb 27
73 (72-27) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., of Florida, to be Secretary of Commerce PN32 Feb 27
72 (66-31) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., of Florida, to be Secretary of Commerce PN32 Feb 17
71 (52-46) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Scott Pruitt, of Oklahoma, to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency PN44 Feb 17
70 (47-51) Rejected On the Motion: Motion to Extend Debate Re: Pruitt Nomination PN44 Feb 17
69 (54-46) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture re: Nomination of Scott Pruitt, of Oklahoma, to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency PN44 Feb 16
68 (51-49) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Mick Mulvaney, of South Carolina, to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget PN54 Feb 16
67 (52-48) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture: Mick Mulvaney to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget PN54 Feb 15
66 (57-43) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J.Res. 40; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Social Security Administration relating to Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007. H.J.Res. 40 Feb 15
65 (81-19) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Linda E. McMahon, of Connecticut, to be Administrator of the Small Business Administration PN48 Feb 14
64 (100-0) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation David J. Shulkin, of Pennsylvania, to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs PN39 Feb 13
63 (53-47) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Steven T. Mnuchin, of California, to be Secretary of the Treasury PN26 Feb 13
62 (53-46) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Steven T. Mnuchin, of California, to be Secretary of the Treasury PN26 Feb 10
61 (52-47) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Thomas Price, of Georgia, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services PN33 Feb 10
60 (51-48) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture Re: Nomination of Tom Price to be Secretary of Health and Human Services PN33 Feb 08
59 (52-47) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, to be Attorney General PN30 Feb 08
58 (43-50) Rejected On the Motion: Shall the Senator be Permitted to Proceed in Order? PN30 Feb 07
57 (49-43) Sustained On the Decision of the Chair: Shall the Decision of the Chair Stand as the Judgment of the Senate? PN30 Feb 07
56 (88-3) Agreed to On the Motion for Attendance: Motion to Instruct the Sgt-At-Arms to Request the Attendance of Absentee Senators PN30 Feb 07
55 (52-47) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, to be Attorney General PN30 Feb 07
54 (50-50) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Elisabeth Prince DeVos, of Michigan, to be Secretary of Education PN37 Feb 07
53 (91-4) Agreed to On the Motion for Attendance: Motion to Instruct the Sgt-At-Arms to Request the Attendance of Absentee Senators PN37 Feb 06
52 (52-48) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Elisabeth DeVos to be Secretary of Education PN37 Feb 03
51 (52-47) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J.Res. 41; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to "Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers". H.J.Res. 41 Feb 03
50 (52-48) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to H.J. Res. 41; A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to "Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers". H.J.Res. 41 Feb 02
49 (52-48) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Legislative Session PN26 Feb 02
48 (51-48) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Executive Session to Consider the Nomination of Steven Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury PN26 Feb 02
47 (52-47) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Legislative Session PN33 Feb 02
46 (51-48) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Executive Session to Consider the Nomination of Thomas Price to be Secretary of Health and Human Services PN33 Feb 02
45 (51-47) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Legislative Session PN30 Feb 02
44 (53-45) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Executive Session to consider the Nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General PN30 Feb 02
43 (54-45) Passed On the Joint Resolution: H.J.Res. 38; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule. H.J.Res. 38 Feb 02
42 (56-42) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to H.J. Res. 38; A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule. H.J.Res. 38 Feb 01
41 (55-42) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Legislative Session PN37 Feb 01
40 (52-47) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Executive Session to Consider Elisabeth DeVos to be Secretary of Education PN37 Feb 01
39 (54-44) Agreed to On the Motion: Shall the Journal Stand Approved to Date? PN25 Feb 01
38 (53-44) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Legislative Session PN25 Feb 01
37 (55-43) Agreed to On the Motion to Table: Motion to Table the Motion to Reconsider the Vote on Confirmation of Rex W. Tillerson PN25 Feb 01
36 (56-43) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Rex W. Tillerson, of Texas, to be Secretary of State PN25 Feb 01
35 (93-6) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Elaine L. Chao, of Kentucky, to be Secretary of Transportation PN35 Jan 31
34 (56-43) Agreed to On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Rex W. Tillerson, of Texas, to be Secretary of State PN25 Jan 30
33 (96-4) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Nikki R. Haley, of South Carolina, to be Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, in the Security Council and to the Sessions of the General Assembly PN51 Jan 24
32 (66-32) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation Mike Pompeo, of Kansas, to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency PN43 Jan 23
31 (89-8) Agreed to On the Motion to Proceed: Motion to Proceed to Mike Pompeo, of Kansas, to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency PN43 Jan 20
30 (88-11) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation John F. Kelly, of Virginia, to be Secretary of Homeland Security PN40 Jan 20
29 (98-1) Confirmed On the Nomination: Confirmation James N. Mattis, of Washington, to be Secretary of Defense PN29 Jan 20
28 (99-0) Passed On Passage of the Bill: H.R. 72; A bill to ensure the Government Accountability Office has adequate access to information. H.R. 72 Jan 17
27 (81-17) Passed On Passage of the Bill: S. 84; A bill to provide for an exception to a limitation against appointment of persons as Secretary of Defense within seven years of relief from active duty as a regular commissioned officer of the Armed Forces. S. 84 Jan 12
26 (51-48) Agreed to On the Concurrent Resolution: S. Con. Res. 3; A concurrent resolution setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2017 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2018 through 2026. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 12
25 (49-49) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 86: Motion to Waive the C.B.A. Re: Brown Amdt. No. 86; To create a point of order against legislation that would undermine the historic coverage gains the United States has made in children's health, which have resulted in the lowest uninsured rate for children in the Nation's history. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 12
24 (51-47) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 180: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Hatch Amdt. No. 180; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to strengthening Social Security and repealing and replacing Obamacare, which has increased health care costs, raised taxes on middle-class families, reduced access to high quality care, created disincentives for work, and caused tens of thousands of Americans to lose coverage they had and liked, and replacing it with reforms that strengthen Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program without prioritizing able-bodied adults over the disabled or children and lead to patient-centered step-by-step health reforms that provide access to quality, affordable private health care coverage for all Americans and their families by increasing competition, State flexibility, and individual choice, and safe-guarding consumer protections that Americans support. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 12
23 (49-49) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 82: Motion to Waive the C.B.A. Re: Gillibrand Amdt. No. 82; To create a point of order against legislation that makes women sick again. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 12
22 (52-46) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 184: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Fischer Amdt. No. 184; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to strengthening Social Security or health care for women, which may include strengthening community health centers, and repealing and replacing Obamacare. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
21 (47-51) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 188: Motion to Waive the C.B.A. Re: Wyden Amdt. No. 188; To create a point of order against legislation that does not lower drug prices. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
20 (46-52) Rejected On the Amendment S.Amdt. 178: Klobuchar Amdt. No. 178; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to lower prescription drug prices for Americans by importing drugs from Canada. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
19 (49-49) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 174: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Alexander Amdt. No. 174; To strengthen Social Security and Medicare without raiding them to pay for new government programs, like Obamacare, that have failed Americans by increasing premiums and reducing affordable health care options, to reform Medicaid without prioritizing able-bodied adults over the disabled, and to ensure that any importation does not increase risk to public health according to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
18 (48-50) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 83: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Menendez Amdt. No. 83; To create a point of order against legislation that would eliminate or reduce Federal funding to States under the Medicaid expansion. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
17 (51-47) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 179: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Hatch Amdt. No. 179; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to reforming housing and Medicaid without prioritizing able-bodied adults over the disabled or raiding the Medicare Trust Funds to pay for new government programs, like Obamacare, which has failed Americans by increasing premiums and reducing affordable health care options. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
16 (47-51) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 181: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Barrasso Amdt. No. 181; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to strengthening Social Security and repealing and replacing Obamacare, which has increased health care costs, raised taxes on middle class families, reduced access to high-quality care, created disincentives for work, and caused tens of thousands of Americans to lose coverage they had and liked, and replacing Obamacare with patient-centered, step-by-step health reforms that provide access to quality, affordable private health care coverage for all Americans, including people with disabilities and chronic conditions, and their families, by increasing competition, State flexibility, and individual choice, and safe-guarding consumer protections, such as a ban on lifetime limits, that Americans support. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
15 (49-49) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 61: Motion to Waive the C.B.A. Re: Casey Amdt. No. 61; To create a point of order against legislation that would make people with disabilities and chronic conditions sick again. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
14 (48-50) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 104: Motion to Waive the C.B.A. Re: Tester Amdt. No. 104; To create a point of order against legislation that would limit veterans' ability to choose VA health care. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
13 (50-48) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 176: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Flake Amdt. No. 176; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to enhancing health care and housing for veterans and their dependents by repealing Obamacare, facilitating medical facility leases, and prohibiting the Secretary of Veterans Affairs from employing individuals who have been convicted of a felony and medical personnel who have ever had their medical licenses or credentials revoked or suspended. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
12 (48-50) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 81: Motion to Waive the CBA Re: Baldwin Amdt. No. 81; To create a point of order against legislation that makes young people sick again. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
11 (51-47) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 167: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Heller Amdt. No. 167; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to strengthening Social Security and repealing Obamacare, which has increased health care costs, raised taxes on middle-class families, reduced access to high quality care, created disincentives for work, and caused tens of thousands of Americans to lose coverage they had and liked, and replacing it with patient-centered, step-by-step health reforms that provide access to quality, affordable private health care coverage for all American's and their families by increasing competition, State flexibility and individual choice, and safeguarding consumer protections that Americans support. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
10 (51-47) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 64: Motion to Waive the C.B.A. Re: Manchin Amdt. No. 64; To create a point of order against legislation that would harm rural hospitals and health care providers. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
9 (51-47) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 173: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Barrasso Amdt. No. 173; To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to rural health and repealing and replacing Obamacare. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
8 (48-50) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 60: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: King Amdt. No. 60; To create a point of order against legislation that would reduce health insurance access and affordability for individuals based on their occupation. S.Con.Res. 3 Jan 11
7 (47-51) Rejected On the Motion S.Amdt. 13: Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Nelson Amdt. No. 13; To create a point of order against legislation that would repeal health reforms that closed the |
the components at work behind the scenes of Grasswire. If there’s anything you’d like us to explore in future posts, please don’t hesitate to ask!
– Levi Notik, CTO/Co-founder at GrasswireSometimes people ask me, “Is it hard to go vegan?”. They seemed baffled and amazed, presuming veganism is challenging and daunting at the same time. They would admire my work as “going the extra mile” to sustain my lifestyle. I was once in their shoes, so I rather not give them attitude and feel offended. Instead, I like to clarify that vegan cooking is not complicated.
One example showing vegan cooking is simple, is a dish called roasted tomatoes. All you need are tomatoes and some condiments and spices. To make the process even simpler, you could use a toaster oven instead of an oven and use only three pieces of tomatoes. After all, it’s not practical to use the oven and bake a whole bunch of tomatoes when you’re not feeding a party.
Just because it’s simple, it doesn’t have to be boring. My recipe calls for coconut vinegar instead of balsamic vinegar to change things a bit. Coconut vinegar has less sugar than balsamic so the recipe is good for those watching their sugar intake. The result is reminiscent to the Filipino tomato dish called “Pinangat“.
ROASTED TOMATOES WITH COCONUT VINEGAR:
INGREDIENTS:
3 roma tomatoes, thinly sliced horizontally
drizzle of Nuco coconut vinegar
drizzle of Nuco liquid coconut oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
pinch of salt
pinch of black pepper
few sprigs of rosemary leaves (you may also use thyme, bay leaves or basil)
DIRECTIONS:
Place the tomatoes on a baking dish and drizzle with oil and vinegar. Sprinkle the garlic, salt, and pepper. Add the rosemary leaves. Bake in a toaster oven at its highest setting (usually 450F) for 30-40 minutes. Be careful of drips. I usually use foil for an easy clean up.
You could enjoy the roasted tomatoes as side dish, snack, or appetizer. You could also chop the tomatoes to top on pasta and other noodle dishes. If you have tomatoes already in your pantry, this dish is incredibly simple and easy to make for vegans and non-vegans alike.
Note: The awesome folks at Nuco Coconuts sent me their coconut products to try in my dishes. All views are my own. Nuco sources their coconuts from the Philippines and are sustainably-grown, organic, and fair-trade, improving the livelihood of Philippine coconut farmers. Learn more about Nuco’s products and its story on: nucoconut.com/nuco-story
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The Getty Center in Los Angeles is a multi billion dollar structure built to house the art collection of the Getty Foundation. J. P. Getty was given a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth when it was completed. The reality is that it is a front for a fortress protecting an elevator that goes down into a deep underground sanctuary, intended to house the royal family in the future. The entire structure, and the complete system of underground structures is also home to a Satanic empire that provides massive amounts of children to the caver's that live there, for pedophilia, ritual abuse, and sacrifice, with consumption. This is the bottom of the Iceberg that #pizzagate is the tip of. If you want to end this corruption on every level of our society, you must root out the evil heart of the monster, that we can get to if we force the FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate, and arrest those people, and free the 100,000 child sex slaves held below.
0ccupythegetty
Truthcatradio https://www.facebook.com/groups/345394925810182/
btw, My name is Steven D Kelley, google me if you want more.If you build Web sites, you probably use Javascript libraries. If so, you are probably grateful to the nameless heroes who make these libraries not suck.
One common problem these brave soldiers of the Web have to face is encapsulation. You know, one of them turtles on which the Object-Oriented Programming foundation sits, upon which stands most of the modern software engineering. How do you create that boundary between the code that you wrote and the code that will consume it?
With the exception of SVG (more on that later), today’s Web platform offers only one built-in mechanism to isolate one chunk of code from another — and it ain’t pretty. Yup, I am talking about iframes. For most encapsulation needs, frames are too heavy and restrictive.
What do you mean I must put each of my custom buttons in a separate iframe? What kind of insane are you?
So we need something better. Turns out, most browsers have been sneakily employing a powerful technique to hide their gory implementation details. This technique is called the shadow DOM.
My name is DOM, Shadow DOM
Shadow DOM refers to the ability of the browser to include a subtree of DOM elements into the rendering of a document, but not into the main document DOM tree. Consider a simple slider:
<input id="foo" type="range">
Pop this code into any WebKit-powered browser, and it’ll appear like so:
Simple enough. There’s a slider track and there’s a thumb, which you can slide along the track.
Wait, what? There’s a separate movable element inside of the input element? How come I can’t see it from Javascript?
var slider = document.getElementsById("foo"); console.log(slider.firstChild); // returns null
Is this some sort of magic?
No magic, my fair person of the Web. Just shadow DOM in action. You see, browser developers realized that coding the appearance and behavior of HTML elements completely by hand is a) hard and b) silly. So they sort of cheated.
They created a boundary between what you, the Web developer can reach and what’s considered implementation details, thus inaccessible to you. The browser however, can traipse across this boundary at will. With this boundary in place, they were able to build all HTML elements using the same good-old Web technologies, out of the divs and spans just like you would.
Some of these are simple, like the slider above. Some get pretty complex. Check out the video element. It’s got trigger buttons, timelines, a hover-appearing volume control, you name it:
All of this is just HTML and CSS — hidden inside of a shadow DOM subtree.
To borrow a verse from that magnetic meme duo, “how does it work?” To build a better mental model, let’s pretend we have a way to poke at it with Javascript. Given this simple page:
<html> <head> <style> p { color: Green; } </style> </head> <body> <p>My Future is so bright</p> <div id="foo"></div> <script> var foo = document.getElementById('foo'); // WARNING: Pseudocode, not a real API. foo.shadow = document.createElement('p'); foo.shadow.textContent = 'I gotta wear shades'; </script> </body> </html>
We get the DOM tree like this:
<p>My Future is so bright</p> <div id="foo"></div>
But it is rendered as if it were this:
<p>My Future is so bright</p> <div id="foo"> <!-- shadow subtree begins --> <p>I gotta wear shades</p> </div> <!-- shadow subtree ends -->
Or visually like so:
Notice how the second part of the rendered sentence is not green? That’s because the p selector I have in my document can’t reach into the shadow DOM. How cool is that?! What would a framework developer give to have powers like this? The ability to write your widget and not worry about some random selector fiddling with your style seems … downright intoxicating.
Course of Events
To keep things natural, events fired in shadow DOM subtree can be listened to in the document. For instance, if you click on the mute button in the audio element, your event listeners on an enclosing div would hear the click:
<div onclick="alert('who dat?')"> <audio controls src="test.wav"></audio> </div>
However, if you ask to identify who fired the event, you’ll find out it was the audio element itself, not some button inside of it.
<div onclick="alert('fired by:' + event.target)"> <audio controls src="test.wav"></audio> </div>
Why? Because when crossing the shadow DOM boundary, the events are re-targeted to avoid exposing things inside of the shadow subtree. This way, you get to hear the events, fired from the shadow DOM, and the implementor gets to keep their details hidden from you.
Reaching into Shadows with CSS
One other trick up the sleeve is the ability to control how and whether CSS reaches into the shadow subtree. Suppose I want to customize the look of my slider. Instead of the standard OS-specific appearance, I want it be stylish, like so:
input[type=range].custom { -webkit-appearance: none; background-color: Red; width: 200px; }
The result I get is:
Ok, that’s nice, but how do I style the thumb? We already determined the that our usual selectors don’t go into the shadow DOM tree. Turns out, there’s a handy pseudo attribute capability, which allows shadow DOM subtrees to associate an arbitrary pseudo-element identifier with an element in the subtree. For example, the thumb in the WebKit slider can be reached at:
input[type=range].custom::-webkit-slider-thumb { -webkit-appearance: none; background-color: Green; opacity: 0.5; width: 10px; height: 40px; }
Which gives us:
Ain’t it great? Think about it. You can style elements in the shadow DOM without actually being able to access them. And the builder of the shadow DOM subtree gets to decide which specific parts of their tree can be styled. Don’t you wish you had powers like this when building your UI widget toolkit?
Shadows with Holes, How’s that for a Mind-bender?
Speaking of awesome powers, what happens when you add a child to an element with a shadow DOM subtree? Let’s experiment:
// Create an element with a shadow DOM subtree. var input = document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('input')); // Add a child to it. var test = input.appendChild(document.createElement('p')); //.. with some text. test.textContent = 'Team Edward';
Displaying as:
Whoa. Welcome to the twilight DOM — a chunk of document that’s accessible by traversal but not rendered on the page. Is it useful? Not very. But it’s there for you, if you need it. Teens seem to like it.
But what if we did have the ability to show element’s children as part of its shadow DOM subtree? Think of the shadow DOM as a template with a hole, through which the element’s children peek:
// WARNING: Pseudocode, not a real API. var element = document.getElementById('element'); // Create a shadow subtree. element.shadow = document.createElement('div'); element.shadow.innerHTML = '<h1>Think of the Children</h1>' + <div class="children">{{children-go-here}}</div>'; // Now add some children. var test = element.appendChild(document.createElement('p')); test.textContent = 'I see the light!';
As a result, if you traverse the DOM you will see this:
<div id="element"> <p>I see the light</p> </div>
But it will render like this:
<div id="element"> <div> <!-- shadow tree begins --> <h1>Think of the Children</h1> <div class="children"> <!-- shadow tree hole begins --> <p>I see the light</p> </div> <!-- shadow tree hole ends --> </div> <!-- shadow tree ends --> </div>
As you add children to element, they act as normal children if you look at them from the DOM, but rendering-wise, they are teleported into a hole in the shadow DOM subtree.
This is the point where you admit that this is pretty cool and start asking:
When can I have it in my browser?
Homework Assignment
Did you think you’d read through all this preaching and get away without homework? As a Javascript library or framework developer, try to think of all the different great things having shadow DOM would allow you to do. Then think of specific use cases (actual/pseudo code a plus) of where shadow DOM could be applied. To help you get your thinking groove going, here is current list of use cases.
Finally. share your use cases on public-webapps mailing list. The discussion about adding these capabilities to the Web platform is under way and your help is needed.
If you aren’t a much a framework writer, you can still participate — by cheering for the shadow DOM and spreading the joy on your favorite social networking site. Because joy is what’s it’s all about.
PS. SVG and Shadow DOM
Almost forgot. Believe it or not, SVG has actually had shadow DOM since the beginning. The trouble is, its shadow DOM is very… shady. No, that’s not it. There’s another qualifier that also begins with “sh” and ends with a “y”. Yeah, that one. I could go on, but trust me on this. Or read the spec.Steve Mosko, the chairman of Sony Pictures Television, is leaving the company after 24 years, Variety has learned.
Mosko had been in negotiations to extend his contract, which expires this year, but failed to come terms with the studio, according to three sources.
The 60-year-old executive had just been promoted from president to chairman just last September.
Sony officials were not immediately available for comment. The shakeup is a surprise given that the TV division is the most successful entity within Sony Pictures at present. But there were rumblings within the studio of strains between Mosko and Sony Entertainment chief Michael Lynton and that Mosko was pushing for a bigger role at the studio beyond TV.
Sony Pictures is still recovering from years of struggles on the film side and the damaging effects of the unprecedented hack of its computer network and internal databases in November 2014. The fallout from that cyber attack spurred the exit of former Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal in February 2015.
Mosko has led Sony’s worldwide TV operations since 2009, when he took over the studio’s international TV operations. He started his Sony career in syndication sales, joining what was then Columbia TriStar TV in 1992.
Related Sony Pictures Television Takes ‘The Adopters’ (EXCLUSIVE) Funimation Founder Gen Fukunaga Moves Into Chairman Role, Sony Seeks New GM for Anime Service (EXCLUSIVE)
Potential successors could come from inside Sony, where Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht have long served under Mosko as presidents of programming and production at SPT.
But it’s not clear if Sony will tap a direct successor to Mosko or possibly have his top lieutenants — including Van Amburg, Erlicht, U.S. distribution president John Weiser, international distribution president Keith Le Goy and worldwide networks chief Andy Kaplan — report into Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton.
Mosko is credited with rebuilding Sony’s primetime production division with such major hits such as NBC’s “The Blacklist,” not to mention aggressively expanding into cable and streaming services, from AMC’s “Breaking Bad” to Showtime’s “Masters of Sex” to Netflix’s “Bloodline” and the upcoming Baz Luhrmann drama “The Get Down.”
Mosko was tapped to oversee all domestic TV in 2002 after Sony took the highly unusual step of shutting down its primetime operation and throwing out most of the previous executive regime. That scorched-earth atmosphere presented a leadership challenge to Mosko as Sony slowly but surely returned to the scripted TV business but in a leaner fashion than in the past. And more recently, Mosko was credited as galvanizing the TV team to overcome the operational hurdles presented by the hack.
On the international front, Mosko helped drive the studio’s overseas expansion with Sony- and AXN-branded channels in more than 180 countries. Mosko has also overseen Crackle, the studio’s streaming video service, and the GSN cable network.
The surprise shakeup comes just two weeks after the studio scored big wins with five broadcast TV series orders — a strong showing in a year when networks are particularly focused on in-house development. Sony TV landed a spinoff of “Blacklist,” as well as another drama for the network, “Timeless.” Two more series at ABC, “Imaginary Mary” and “Notorious,” as well as one for CBS, “Kevin Can Wait,” were ordered. “Timeless,” “Kevin Can Wait” and “Notorious” all landed prime timeslots.
The new series join a roster of returning Sony broadcast series including “Shark Tank,” “The Goldbergs,” “Dr. Ken” and “The Night Shift.”Up to now, it seems like Google Glass have only been good for making you into a pariah or getting beat up.
Japan Airlines, however, has found something useful in the eyewear. The company, in conjunction with Nomura Research Institute is conducting a trial with the glasses at Honolulu Airport to see how well the glasses work in performing inspections of planes.
The glasses will be worn by cargo and maintenance personnel working around the plane on the tarmac, since they are the ones who are closest to the birds. They will make visual inspections of the plane, but they won't be making judgment calls, since these people aren't trained in assessing an airplane. Instead, the video and whatever it picks up will be transmitted to JAL headquarters staff, who will take a close look at the plane.
The maintenance staff will also receive information and instruction by audio during ground operations from staff at headquarters and have information and images displayed on the screen of Glass, such as the checklist of baggage loading/unloading work.
Additionally, there will be a barcode reader in the glasses to automatically reconfirm cargo and luggage as it is being checked in or out, and a phone call/email can also be sent or received with the glasses.
NRI's role is that it served as co-developer of the applications and interfaces for the Glass wearers and the people in the office who receive the transmissions from the ground crew. It's part of a larger program called "NRI future garage" to promote the optimization of user interfaces. It aims to achieve more secure operational control services of the JAL business.
In the future, JAL is open to potentially using this in other field areas such as passenger assistance. What the airline does will be assessed based on the result of the trial in addition to how well Google Glass does once it enters the market.Last week Filipino sailor Antonio Libref was in forest in the Horn of Africa marking his 1,672nd day in captivity at the hands of Somali pirates. Kept alongside 25 other Asians, all crew of the Omani-flagged Naham 3 fishing vessel, thin and haggard hostages were treated “like animals” forced “to eat rats just to survive”.
On Monday, the 32-year-old was having his first proper meal as a newly free man in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Two days earlier, he and fellow sailors from Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia and China, captured in March 2012 south of the Seychelles, had been released in exchange for a ransom.
Bile Hussein, the pirates’ representative, claimed in comments reported by one news agency that the value of that ransom was $1.5m (£1.2m), a figure that could not be independently confirmed.
The men’s handover represented “the end of captivity for the last remaining seafarers taken hostage during the height of Somali piracy”, said the NGO Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP). The Taiwan-owned Naham 3 crew were the second-longest held hostages by Somali pirates. Only one other group, who were released in 2015 after five years, were held longer.
“We were treated like animals, so it feels good to be human again,” Libref told the Guardian via phone as he waited to be repatriated to the Philippines, where he hopes to join his family later this week. He said he was thrilled to be free.
“I’m full of happiness,” he said. “It was a surprise; we didn’t expect to be released... If you believe in God, hope is always there – we were in the hands of pirates yet there was hope, there was a miracle and we’re back in normality.”
The happiness of those who were freed, however, may be tinged with the grief felt for those who did not make it. The Naham 3 crew had originally numbered 29, but the captain was killed on the day the ship was hijacked and two others “succumbed to illness during their captivity”, according to OBP.
Details of how the sailors were released – and who paid a ransom – have been kept under wraps. What is known is that the men’s torment came to an end when they were flown to Nairobi on Sunday evening. Images taken at the Jomo Kenyatta international airport show the former hostages, tears in their eyes, hugging each other in disbelief.
John Steed, a retired British colonel who helped to negotiate the release as coordinator of the Hostage Support Partners (HSP), was on the plane to bring the men to Kenya.
“We flew into Somalia yesterday to the city of Galkayo, which is one of these divided cities with a lot of fighting,” he said. “We picked them up in an airstrip outside the city, and they were handed to us by a local community, elders and regional administration, and flew them back here to Nairobi, where they are having medical care.”
Steed said the hostages were beginning to open up, talking about “how cruel the pirates were and how they beat them up and tortured them”. Some of their account is harrowing. The hostages have said that two of the sailors who subsequently died were then kept inside the freezer.
After being captured, Libref and his fellow hostages were kept on board Naham 3 for a year and a half before being taken to land. The OBP said trawler was initially tethered to another hijacked vessel, the MV Albedo, but that both had subsequently sunk, on separate occasions.
“When the MV Albedo began to sink, with its crew onboard, the crew of the Naham 3 courageously assisted in their rescue by jumping into the ocean to save the drowning seafarers. Over a year after its capture, the Naham 3 sank and the crew was brought ashore, where they were subject to much greater risks,” according to OBP.
Out in the forest, Libref said the hostages became so hungry they ate rats. “We suffered a lot, we only ate rice, beans, flour, wheat, so we were forced to catch rats; we had to survive,” he said. They made nets out of rope and tree trunks to capture rats and birds, using rice as bait.
Arnel Balbero, another of the captives, told the BBC his time as a hostage had left him feeling like the “walking dead”.
Many people went to greet the hostages as they arrived in Nairobi, but the presence of one person took all 26 of them by surprise. Michael Scott Moore is a
US journalist who had spent five months with them on Naham 3. Moore, who was captured while researching a book on piracy in Somalia, was released in 2014.
He said he had got along well with all the former hostages, especially the five Filipinos, who spoke English. He said their tales of captivity were an indication of how badly they were treated.
“I was totally hungry. I lost a lot of weight but I wasn’t so desperate that I felt that I needed to catch birds,” he said. “Two of them died of disease; what they always do is throw drugs at the person who is sick. When I came down with something actually serious, they tested my blood, and they found it was malaria and they brought me the proper medication. The fact that they didn’t do that with these guys tells you that on an individual level, the circumstances were worse for each one of them.”
Piracy off Somalia’s coast was once a serious threat to the global shipping industry, but the number of attacks has declined sharply in recent years since vessels began carrying armed guards and EU naval forces increased patrols. No commercial ship has been successfully attacked for about four years, but observers warn the threat remains.
The OBP said on Saturday: “Whilst there has not been a successful attack on a commercial vessel since 2012, there have been a number of attacks on fishing vessels and there remain a number of hostages still held in Somalia.” Among those still far from freedom are 10 Iranians and three Kenyans. In 2015, at least 306 seafarers were attacked in the region.
Libref said he did not have any plans for the future yet. “Now, to be free is enough,” he said. “But my message is to the pirates: what they are doing is very bad. You capture people; you ask for money. What is the value of money?”Protesters try to block newly confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from entering a Washington public school where she was scheduled to speak. (CBS)
The San Diego Board of Education was going to vote on a resolution to invite new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to visit the city’s public schools so that she could make “decisions based on what’s best for students rather than on any political ideology.” But the resolution was pulled before the vote after teachers unions complained to the labor-friendly panel.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the resolution was co-sponsored by the board’s president, Richard Barrera, a former labor leader, and board member John Lee Evans. Barrera issued a statement Monday, before the resolution could be put up for a vote, that it was being withdrawn because it was, after all, not a good time for her to visit the district. He said:
“Given the polarizing nature of the DeVos nomination and confirmation vote, however, it is clear this would be the wrong time to engage the Secretary in dialogue. Now is the time for those of us who believe in public education to stand together and confront the threat clearly posed by the DeVos ideology.”
DeVos was the most controversial nominee for education secretary in the history of the nearly 40-year-old department and was confirmed by the Senate only after Mike Pence became the first vice president in history to break a tie to confirm a Cabinet nominee. Her longtime support for school choice and her history of talking about traditional public schools as a “dead end” sparked intense opposition to her confirmation across the country, and two Republican senators decided to vote against her along with every Democrat.
DeVos recently visited a public school in Washington, but before she could enter, she was turned away at one entrance by protesters. After that episode, several prominent critics of DeVos urged protesters to allow her to enter public schools so that she could learn about them. During her Jan. 17 Senate confirmation hearing, DeVos displayed a lack of knowledge about key education issues, and her critics said she wasn’t qualified to be education secretary because of that and her longtime advocacy for school choice over traditional public schools, which educate the vast majority of U.S. schoolchildren. Supporters said she would make a fine education secretary.
The new education secretary may find friendlier ground in New Mexico, where Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera “absolutely” would welcome a visit to any New Mexico school by DeVos, said a spokesman for Skandera, who was thought to have been considered by President Trump as education secretary when he was president-elect.
The resolution that was pulled was not what anybody could call DeVos-friendly. It said in part that the invitation was being extended to visit the San Diego Unified School District “on a fact-finding mission to learn what the school district is doing to create quality public schools in every neighborhood, so that she can collect the data needed that will allow her to base her decisions on what is best for students rather than on any political ideology.”
Here’s the full resolution that was pulled:The Skype team has just published a post to announce the arrival of Skype video calling for Microsoft Edge browser. And no, it won’t be through a plugin. The news was also announced on the Windows blog.
Specifically, Skype inside Edge will be powered by the browser’s built-in ORTC API, that comes with EdgeHTML version 13.10586 or newer in Windows 10 version 1511 and up. For those unfamiliar, ORTC stands for Object-Real Time Communication, and is drafted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to enable voice calling, video chat and file sharing across browsers without the need for a plugin. The standard is also supported by most other popular browsers, excluding Safari; however, Edge is currently the only browser with the H.264 video codec necessary for browser-based Skype to work.
The experience will work, once it rolls out, across Skype for Web, Outlook.com, Office Online, and OneDrive, and can be previewed by signing into Skype for Web. The team also promises the coming of Skype to other browsers once they add codec support. Right now, it should work across Skype for Web on Microsoft Edge, or with the latest versions of Skype for Windows or Mac.
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Further reading: MicrosoftImage copyright Getty Images Image caption The condemned, left to right, top: Don Davis, Stacey Johnson, Jack Jones and Ledelle Lee; left to right, bottom: Jason McGehee, Bruce Ward, Kenneth Williams and Marcel Williams
Eight inmates due to be put to death over 10 days next month in Arkansas are making last-ditch bids to halt the unprecedented flurry of executions.
Lawyers for the prisoners say the "assembly-line" of four double lethal injections is unconstitutional.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson last month ordered the death row inmates to be killed before the state's execution drugs expire.
Arkansas has not executed an inmate since 2005.
No US state has put eight inmates to death in such an accelerated schedule since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Image copyright AP
What did the eight men do?
Bruce Ward - Convicted of 1989 strangling murder of teenage shop clerk Rebecca Doss
Don Davis - Condemned for 1990 execution-style killing of Jane Daniel as he burgled her home
Stacey Johnson - Found guilty of 1993 murder of Carol Heath, who was beaten, strangled and had her throat slit
Ledell Lee - Sentenced to death for 1993 killing of Debra Reese, who was bludgeoned with a tyre iron that her husband had given her for protection
Jack Jones - Condemned for 1995 rape and murder of accounts clerk Mary Phillips, and the nearly fatal beating of her 11-year-old daughter
Marcel Williams - Sentenced to death for 1994 rape and murder of Stacey Erickson, after kidnapping her from a convenience store
Kenneth Williams - Convicted of 1999 murder of farmer Cecil Boren during an escape from prison where Williams had been incarcerated for murdering cheerleader Dominique Hurd
Jason McGehee - Jailed for the death of 15-year-old John Melbourne, who had been his friend
In the latest legal action in the case, one of men, Stacey Eugene Johnson, asked the state's highest court on Wednesday to block his execution so evidence from his murder trial can be retested.
Attorneys for another of the convicted murderers, Bruce Ward, asked a state judge to block his execution, saying the prisoner is not mentally competent.
A group of former corrections officers wrote to the governor on Tuesday to say the pace of the executions threatens prison staff's mental health.
Two other lawsuits filed this week seek preliminary injunctions to halt the executions, arguing the inmates need time to appeal against their convictions.
Lawyers also argue that state authorities are unconstitutionally hurrying the clemency process.
"The state can show no valid reason it cannot schedule executions at a pace that would allow for meaningful review," said one of the lawsuits.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson last month ordered the inmates to be put to death
The convicted killers are also asking the US Supreme Court to review a ruling allowing the state to keep its source for the execution drugs a secret.
Arkansas has scheduled the executions for 17, 20, 24 and 27 April, citing a shortage of a drug used in lethal injections.
The state's supply of midazolam, a sedative used in its three-drug lethal injection cocktail, is nearing its expiration date.
The sedative has become increasingly scarce as anti-capital punishment drug-makers refuse to supply it to corrections officials.
Midazolam has been blamed for botched executions in Oklahoma, Ohio and Arizona.
Lawyers have argued that use of the sedative amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned under the US constitution.
The condemned prisoners are Bruce Ward, Don Davis, Stacey Johnson, Ledell Lee, Jack Jones, Marcel Williams, Kenneth Williams and Jason McGehee.
The state parole board has recommended clemency requests by Johnson and Lee be rejected. Further parole hearings are due this week.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Life in the deep south of Louisiana, home of writer Rod Dreher. Video by Anna Bressanin/Ilya Shnitser
In 1810, a colourful group of ambitious Anglo-American Louisianans declared a swathe of Spain's West Florida colony an independent nation. More than 200 years later, Rod Dreher explores the revival of West Florida rebel nationalism.
I, for one, have always hated that James Madison.
Actually, this is not exactly true. Until practically the day before yesterday, I revered America's fourth president as the author of the Bill of Rights and the Father of the US Constitution.
Yes, Madison may have kicked off the happily forgotten War of 1812 with the crackpot idea of invading Canada to spread democracy and seize its poutine mines, or some such thing.
The Washington war hawks predicted a cakewalk for the Americans ("a mere matter of marching," Thomas Jefferson reckoned), but it turned into a total debacle when three attempts to invade Canada were repulsed by five guys named Lorne.
If the War of 1812 had been the only imperialistic blot on Madison's record, forgiving him that lapse would have been effortless.
Image caption The author, a Louisiana patriot, wraps himself in the West Florida flag
Alas, Madison had been a land-grabber from way back, though American history books hide this embarrassing fact. I only discovered it last year when I returned to live in St Francisville, my south Louisiana hometown.
I took up residence in an old house two blocks away from a monument on the courthouse square.
Not only had this concrete structure - a star atop a pillar - been erected after I first left, but the townspeople had taken to flying from their front porches a blue flag emblazoned with a large white star.
This turns out to be an expression of a revived nationalist pride.
For 74 days, our little town was the capital of the West Florida Republic, a tiny nation on the North American continent.
In fact, we, not Canada, were the first victims of American imperialism.
According to one historian, the hostile annexation of the West Florida Republic - a territory stretching from the Mississippi River eastward to the Perdido River, the current border of the American states of Alabama and Florida - was "one of the most tragically overlooked events in American history".
As our state's fragrant political history shows, we Louisiana folks have no problem with public-spirited rogues.
In 1803, Madison, then Jefferson's secretary of state, handled the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase, in which the United States bought French-held North American territory from Napoleon Bonaparte.
Though a transaction of dubious legality, it nevertheless doubled the size of US territory in a single stroke.
The sale did not include all of the president-day state of Louisiana. In fact, the Spanish crown held a thin strip of coastal land stretching from the east bank of the Mississippi River - including modern-day West Feliciana Parish - to the Florida peninsula.
Unfortunately for the Spanish, West Feliciana, like most of Louisiana's so-called Florida Parishes, was inhabited not by Castilians, but by settlers of Scots-Irish and English descent.
Those included loyalist Tory refugees from the American Revolution, who had fled to the region when it was under British sovereignty.
Image caption The Republic was born when Anglo-American insurrectionists captured a Spanish fort in Louisiana
Jefferson figured it wasn't worth challenging Spain militarily over the Florida territory, anticipating that the influx of English-speaking settlers would eventually make the territory's absorption by the US a fait accompli.
It was a reasonable assumption: The region's Spanish commandant described its people as "inclined to insubordination and prone to insurgency".
William Claiborne, then the American governor of Orleans Territory on the west side of the Mississippi River and, later, the first governor of the state of Louisiana, said of the Florida Parishes: "A more heterogeneous mass of good and evil was never before met in the same extent of territory."
In 1810, a cabal of the planters' elite gathered in a hotel in downtown St Francisville to begin plotting the revolution.
On 23 September, rebel insurrectionists sneaked into the lightly defended Spanish fort in Baton Rouge and raised the "Bonnie Blue" flag of the nascent West Florida Republic - a white star on a blue field - over colonial headquarters.
The capital of North America's first Lone Star Republic - sorry, Texas - was St Francisville. Its president was a former American diplomat named Fulwar Skipwith.
To be sure, the West Floridians talked about the glories of national independence, but they intended to become Americans, if on their own terms. Skipwith's first address to the legislature was a farrago of gassy folderol.
"We are then entitled to independence, and wherever the voice of justice and humanity can be heard, our declaration, and our just rights will be respected," he said.
"But the blood which flows in our veins, like the tributary streams which form and sustain the father of rivers, encircling our delightful country, will return if not impeded, to the heart of our parent country."
One week later, on Madison's plainly unconstitutional orders and over the objections of the Skipwith government, Gov Claiborne sent troops over the river to seize the capital of the new nation and execute an Anschluss to the United States. The West Florida Republic had lasted only 74 days.
Image caption Run it up the flag pole: The banner of the short-lived West Florida Republic
Historian William Belko describes the Yankee imperialist gesture as the first seeds of Manifest Destiny - the 19th Century ideology under which the US government justified expanding American settlement across the North American continent.
It all started in my backyard - with an American invasion of our friendly nation. Two years later, Madison sent troops into Canada in an attempt |
in Kerala division. If all this sounds normal to you then let me tell you that Ajit Doval was the youngest person to receive the Police medal, which he got only after 6 years of service, while the qualification for the medal is 17 years of service, that’s how brilliant he was. Kirti Chakra which is one of the gallantry awards only given to military personals was given to Ajit Doval for his exceptional service to the country. If we look at the achievements of Doval, there are countless and lets look at a few of them.
Ajit Doval was one of the three persons who were involved in the release of passengers on the IC-814 flight which was hijacked in Kandahar in 1999.
It is said that from a period of 1971 to 1999 Ajit Doval has terminated the Hijacking of at least 15 Indian Air crafts.
In a press conference he said if Pakistan does another Mumbai then they will lose Baluchistan this time.
During the operation black thunder which was to wipe out militants from Golden Temple, it is said that Ajit Doval was inside the Golden Temple to collect critical information.
Ajit Doval played a critical role in the merger of Sikkim with India.
On 30th May he was appointed as India’s Fifth National Security Adviser.
Rumour has it that Ajit Doval Once planned the assassination of Dawood, but the operation was screwed by Police officers.
It is said when India appointed him as National Security adviser in 2014, at that very moment Pakistan had a high official meet, that’s how dangerous he is. Recently he was behind the surgical strikes in Pakistan. He is one man that knows Pakistan in and out as he spent around 7 years as a secret agent in Lahore. He has been the head of Intelligence Bureau from 2004 to 2005. There is very less information available on Ajit Doval as he was an spy and still what we know is astonishing and that really makes Ajit Doval: The James Bond of India.
Himanshuy.He said, "Whatever you put in, you get back a hundred thousand times." Every time I tell this story I end up crying.
Eliezer "Lazer Lloyd" Blumen has released two new CDs. Lazer-Haneshama is a collection of Hebrew songs. Lazer Lloyd Unplugged is an acoustic blues/folk/rock album mostly recorded live from Jerusalem. The Israeli based guitarist has also released a DVD called Lazer Lloyd Live From Israel. The new releases are part of Lloyd's new effort this year as a solo artist. He has previously released solo CDs as well as two discs with the "power rock trio" Yood. He also played guitar for the Jewish jam band Reva L'Sheva.
But jamming with Jewish oriented bands in Israel was not always Lloyd's speciality. Back in the United States, Lloyd Blumen opened for famous pop and rock stars such as Prince, Johnny Winter, Randy Brecker and others. His band The Last Mavericks was brought in to showcase for Atlantic Records and on their way to a big record contract. But the musician was becoming increasingly interested in another path. A visit to Israel introduced him to his first Shabbat experience.
The bluesman describes his journey on a recent episode of Israel National Radio's "Life Lesson with Judy Simon," a program which showcases intriguing individuals and allows them to tell their stories. On the show, he talks about how he got his start in the Jewish music world. The following is an excerpt from the interview:
I had traveled all over the world trying to look for some kind of spirituality that would shake me. After this Shabbat, for the first time, I didn't just go play guitar or watch TV. My neshama [soul] was turned over from this one Shabbat experience. I went back to America and tried to find out what was going on with my Jewish roots. Someone gave me a book on Pirkei Avot [Ethics of the Fathers]. So the next Shabbat I was in Central Park. My parents always taught me not to speak to homeless people. But I saw this old guy sitting by the fountain walking around with a bowl and a bell. He was walking over to people and talking to them.
Can't see INR pop-up player? Click here for mp3 download.
I was just reading in Pirkei Avot that there's no person in the world that doesn't have his time and nothing in the world that doesn't have its place. The commentary for this is that there is something you can learn from everything and everyone in the world. And I thought, I'm going to test this. This homeless beggar, how could I learn anything from him? Let's see what happens.
He walks up to me and rings the little bell and says, 'Whatever you put in, you get back a hundred thousand times.' Every time I tell this story I end up crying.
I didn't know that on Shabbat you weren't suppose to carry money, so I put money in. He saw my book and asked me what I was studying. So I told him I was studying Hebrew. So he started saying a bracha in Hebrew. "Baruch atah Hashem..." I said, "what, are you Jewish?"
And he says, "I pray every day. This rabbi who doesn't have a minyan knows I'm Jewish and knows I sleep on the street so he gives me 5 bucks a kippah and a muffin and I all I have to do is just say amen." We ended up spending the whole day together. He was born during the depression and his parents left him in Central Park.
So I went to his rabbi and two weeks later the rabbi had me playing a concert with Shlomo Carlebach. It all comes from this homeless beggar. It's like an Eliyahu Hanavi story.
I don't look at it like I'm a special person, or I have a special merit. For some people, Hashem knows they won't come close unless Hashem opens the heavens for them. So now I have no choice except to give back to other people.
To hear the rest of Lazer Lloyd's interview on "Life Lessons with Judy Simon", click here
Lazer Lloyd's upcoming concerts will be:
Nov. 9th at Lagansky in Netanya - acoustic show
Nov. 10th at the Rodeo in Haifa - acoustic show
Nov. 12th at the Yellow Submarine in Jerusalem - Carlebach tribute with full band
Nov. 26th at Putin in Jerusalem
Dec. 1st at the Shablul Jazz Club in Tel Aviv
Dec. 10th at Avram in Jerusalem
For more information visit http://www.lazerlloyd.com
Life Lessons with Judy Simon explores fascinating people from all walks of life and follows their stories of lessons learned along the way. The Life Lessons podcast airs every Thursday from 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Israel time on Israel National Radio. For mp3 archives click here.Stop and frisk's potential for "harassment, abuse and systemic discrimination" makes Ross Douthat sympathetic to its critics. "In a city as safe as New York has become, there should be room to weigh the costs and benefits of different policing tactics," he writes, "and at the very least the Bloomberg administration needs to do more to answer the skeptics who question the link between this specific policy and the city's overall success combating crime."
But he isn't yet convinced that it ought to be abandoned. "New York's relatively low incarceration rate does make a powerful case for the Bloomberg approach, since the social costs of stop-and-frisk are much lower than the costs of mass incarceration," he continues. And "it's also important for would-be reformers to have a clear sense of what that success (in New York and nationally) has meant for the average citizen's odds of being victimized. Thanks to two decades of falling crime rates," the chance a city dweller will be the victim of robbery, rape or assault has been halved, he estimates.
As a would-be reformer who wants stop and frisk to end, I'd like to emphasize that I am also fully cognizant of how salutary the nationwide drop in violent crime has been (though the very fact that it is a nationwide drop suggests stop and frisk isn't the reason for it). In fact, I think violent crime is so terrible that, even with the drop, I favor taking additional aggressive steps to reduce it even more. I just don't happen to think massive Fourth Amendment violations and racial profiling are appropriate options, regardless of efficacy -- any more than it would be appropriate to make it easier to convict criminals by lowering the burden of proof or tracking all city dwellers with ankle bracelets. If we're going to incur costs to fight crime, they shouldn't come at the expense of core liberties, and they shouldn't be born almost entirely by ethnic minority groups.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
CLEVELAND- The FOX 8 I-Team has found state Department of Transportation plows played a hidden role for security during last week’s Republican National Convention. And the same thing crews did last week could make a difference on your highways when the snow flies.
We’ve learned ODOT had 15 plows out on local highways last week in mid-July, and those plows had cameras feeding back LIVE video that was recorded as well.
ODOT had said it planned for lots of heavy equipment to stay on the highways during the convention week, so crews would be right there to quickly move debris or help clear an accident and keep traffic moving. In fact, in some cases the crews did that.
But we’ve found the plows with cameras also served as extra eyes for police in case protestors tried to block a highway. And, the cameras in the heavy equipment are actually part of a larger study.
"The cameras that are in those trucks are part of a bigger project ODOT is doing with the University of Akron," said ODOT spokesperson Amanda McFarland. She says ODOT has been testing cameras in 184 trucks in ten counties. They can help supervisors see actual road conditions, and if need be, adjust how the crews are working to clear snow and ice.
McFarland added, "If there's a whiteout condition, and drivers are reporting it, we can verify it, and you know, maybe we need to send a plow to that area for an extra hour or so."
Locally, ODOT has been testing the cameras in Summit and Medina Counties. Not clear when the state may decide whether to start using the cameras in every truck, or even more trucks. The state is considering the cost, how the equipment holds up in severe winter weather, whether mountains or hills affect the cameras and more.
Drivers we met were surprised to learn of the special role of the cameras during the Convention, and they’re anxious for anything that can help make driving in winter weather easier. As one woman put it, “It’s coming.”
**More on the Republican National Convention here**Trystan Reese and Biff Chaplow, of Portland, Oregon, announced that they are expecting a baby boy. The child is biologically related to both of the dads and conceived naturally because his daddy Trystan is transgender. “I think there are a lot of gay couples who would love to have their own biological child without intervention or assistance from other people. For me, I see it as a really amazing gift that I’ve been given. I get to live as a man, and I also get to do this really amazing thing that a lot of people would love to do,” the pregnant man said. The two are together for 7 years and married for 4, they are not new to dealing with kids because they are loving uncles for their niece and nephew. But now they are totally excited about having a child of their own. “I wanted to keep growing our family, and adopting more kids was not something we could do. We could afford another child, but that [adoption] process was very emotionally difficult for our family, and we thought, actually, we already have everything we need to grow our family on our own!,” Trystan said, “I had to stop taking testosterone – I talked to a medical team and made sure that was advisable. We know this seems unique to your viewers, but in our community we actually know a few transgender men who have the ability to carry a child, and who have done so successfully. For us it’s not that groundbreaking. The doctors said, absolutely this is something you can do, there’s no reason you couldn’t have a happy, healthy pregnancy.”Along the walls of Seonreung Subway Station (선릉역) in Seoul, Tesco HomePlus (a popular shopping chain with corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom) has put up photographs of 500 commonly ordered products in a style similar to their display on the shelves of a physical HomePlus. Subway passengers can scan accompanying QR codes with their smart phones; the products will be delivered to their homes that evening.
Yes, yes–this is certainly convenient and suggests the degree to which Seoul is well on its way to becoming a ubiquitous computing city (or u-city)–and well ahead of cities in the United States. But this also offers a more complex view of the occasionally simplistic logic behind the u-city.
When we look at cities and their built environments, we can identify what John Urry calls different “mobilities” that bring together people and objects in different spatio-temporal configurations: riding the subway versus driving an automobile versus walking down a wide boulevard versus sitting at a cafe (Urry 2007). Each divulges a different temporal rhythm. This is partly because of the temporal regimes that have been built into these systems–subway schedules, speed limits, the timing of traffic lights, etc. And this is also partly due to the ways people have engaged these spaces through their own temporal practices (Lefebvre 2004). Through these manifold technologies, we share temporalities with others–waking in the morning, the daily commute, breaking for lunch. Commuting into Seoul from Ansan in Gyeonggi-do, you really get the sense of people marching lock-step in both time and space. But the variations in those temporalities are the most noticeable.
In fact, it is at those precise places where different temporalities collide that have been the most interesting for urban dwellers: the entrance to a Seoul subway station where people wait for each other or sell gimbap. A pojangmach’a (포장마차) (harder to find these days!) set up in alleys where people move by according to different temporal practices–walking from work, socializing, touring, going to class at a nearby language institute. Vast urban markets like Namdaemun (남대문시장) where people alternately sit, scurry, stroll. Isn’t at least part of the charm of these urban oases the confluence of difference? And not only difference in the way that we usually think of it in anthropology, as differences in identity or social class, but differences in temporality–the difference between people caught in the rhythm of work versus those pursuing a variety of modern pleasures.
Of course, these same temporal differences can lead to all sorts of frustrations–when you climb into a car or taxi and find yourself jammed in on Jamsil Brigde (잠실대교), too annoyed to take in the view of Seoul’s skyline. Or when waiting exceeds the 30-minute mark and turns to frustration.
Image from the Urban and Regional Innovation Group (http://www.urenio.org/2010/09/26/u-city-new-trends-of-urban-planning-in-korea/)
But what happens when we are in constant, real-time syncopation with the built environment around us? As Seoul moves to ubiquitous computing, the frisson that comes from the confluence of different temporalities would seem to be threatened. After all, the whole point of ubiquitous computing is the adoption of integrative, networked technologies that span these spatial and temporal differences, creating a vast syntagmatic exchange of information. The dream, then, would be seamless networks that stitch together city services, transit, consumption, together with our home- and work-lives.
And yet, that may not be how ubiquitous computing develops into urban contexts at all. When we look at the HomePlus installation at Seonreung Station, its success depends not on the homogenization of different temporalities, but on their exploitation. It’s precisely because there are different mobilities in subway transit–descending into the tube, walking to the platform, waiting for the train, standing in the subway car–that there’s a temporal residue for HomePlus to exploit. In other words, it’s the between-ness of the subway station that makes QR-code shopping at HomePlus an attractive option.
In the future, I would expect these temporal disjunctures to be fertile grounds for ubiquitous computing; and, perhaps, these may result in the concomitant multiplication of these temporal differences rather than their transcendence. That is, the temporal dissonance between different formations suggests durational spaces for networked action. With them, perhaps, an awareness of heterogeneous temporalities that may lead to new possibilities for human interaction in the interstices of the temporal formations we inhabit.
References
Lefebvre, Henri (2004). Rhythmanalysis. NY: Continuum.
Urry, John (2007). Mobilities. Malden, MA: Polity.
AdvertisementsStudies suggest that a significant number of clicks on mobile ads are accidental. Sukiyaki / Shutterstock.com
It has become a cliche in the tech industry that the future of the Internet is mobile. Studies have repeatedly shown that more people are reading email, browsing the Web, social networking, and playing online games on their smartphones as opposed to their computers. To companies whose revenue is based on online advertising—Facebook, Zynga, even websites like Slate—that’s alarming, because the conventional wisdom is that mobile ads don’t work very well. If anything, they’re seen as even more annoying and intrusive than the ads you see when you browse the Web on your computer.
A few months ago, a series of reports emerged that made people in the mobile advertising business think that maybe the future wasn’t so bleak after all. Facebook reported that its mobile ads were getting more clicks and bringing the company more revenue per click than those it served to people via their computers. Zynga made similar claims.
But now there are signs that the conventional wisdom might have been right after all—at least for now. A study earlier this year by Pretarget and ComScore found almost zero correlation between clicks on mobile ads and “conversions,” which are when someone actually downloads an app or fills out a form on the advertiser’s site. Now we have a better idea why. A study by Trademob finds that some 40 percent of mobile ad clicks are either fraudulent or accidental. Of those, more than half are the result of fat-finger syndrome: People clicked on the ads when they were trying to click on something else.
A Pew Research Center study released this week is consistent with those findings. It finds that just 12 percent of smartphone users ever intentionally click on an ad, and only 6 percent actually buy anything based on those ads. If there’s any silver lining, it’s that these numbers aren’t really that much worse than those for any other platform. When Pew asked respondents where they most like to see ads, 19 percent said their computers, while just 5 percent said tablets and 4 percent smartphones. But by far the most popular response, at 46 percent, was “don’t like ads on any.”Bill and I both linked to stories about this earlier, but the more I’ve read about it, the more it sounds like an actual big deal as opposed to a mere Opening Night hiccup. I’m talking about the Wrigley Field bathroom disaster.
you’re going to hear jokes and hyperbole about the Wrigley bathroom lines. Please note, they are likey UNDERstating the issue. — Harry Pavlidis (@harrypav) April 6, 2015
My first thought when I heard about this was “welcome to what women face at ballparks, dudes” because women’s bathroom lines are always bad, but this does not seem to be a mere issue of men finally being inconvenienced like women always are. This was something a bit more extreme:
@craigcalcaterra I was at the game. The women’s line was utterly DWARFED by the men’s line at the 4th inning — entropy (@MadeleineSaint) April 6, 2015
@craigcalcaterra we left because we needed to find a bathroom much quicker than that — entropy (@MadeleineSaint) April 6, 2015
Deadspin’s take here. Jeff Passan, who was at the game, reports on the problems here. UPDATE: Deadspin now has more pics and emails from people who were at the game, making the problems seem even worse than first reported.
UPDATE: The Cubs have given a full statement in response to this mess. The earlier statement we reproduced in this post came from a news source which, for whatever reason, only ran part of the team statement and excised the apology. Here’s the full statement:
Opening Day at Wrigley Field has always brought challenges with wait times and tonight was particularly extreme. Two bathrooms in the upper deck went down temporarily forcing fans downstairs where we already were experiencing issues with long wait times. With 35,000 fans showing up in the ballpark tonight, we were simply not prepared to handle guests during peak periods. We have high standards for service and we missed the mark tonight. We want to apologize to our fans for the inconvenience tonight. Moving forward we plan to supplement the existing restrooms with additional portable units and will continue to monitor wait times.
Good on them for apologizing, but it’s hard to see how a couple of malfunctions could lead to such a large problem. Maybe excessive daytime pregaming on the part of baseball fans led to, um, a greater overall urge. But ballparks have a finite capacity — Wrigley Field’s being even smaller than usual due to the lack of bleachers during the renovation — and the Cubs knew they’d have a full house. Even the most rowdy, drunk and amateur hour of dude-bro baseball fans would prefer to pee in a bathroom, not a beer cup out on the concourse, and the fact that they couldn’t suggests an issue with the facilities.
And at least one HBT reader says that this was not some unusually crazy-drunk crowd:
@craigcalcaterra I’ve never seen anything like it. Also, I’ve been in some very drunk Wrigley crowds, this was not one of them. — Tim Stewart (@timstwrt) April 6, 2015
I’m less interested in the apologies here than a breakdown of what has happened to the bathrooms in the course of the renovation. Specifically if the fan-to-toilet ratio has gotten “particularly extreme” while the work is being done. I’m not even joking when I say that, maybe, this is all the result of a trough deficit. You know, those ugly old communal urinals from days of yore?
Wrigley Field was, I think, the last ballpark to feature them. I wonder if they’ve lost some in the renovation and with them some efficiency. I’d go on about how perhaps this dark cloud could, perhaps, have a golden lining in that it could lead to the glorious return of the men’s room trough, but I feel like doing so would be to oversell the point.
In any event, it wouldn’t shock me if there were porta-potties at Wrigley for Game 2.This website adopts the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) as the accessibility standard for all its related web development and services. WCAG 2.0 is also an international standard, ISO 40500. This certifies it as a stable and referenceable technical standard. WCAG 2.0 contains 12 guidelines organized under 4 principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR for short). There are testable success criteria for each guideline. Compliance to these criteria is measured in three levels: A, AA, or AAA. A guide to understanding and implementing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 is available at: https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/ Accessibility Features Shortcut Keys Combination Activation Combination keys used for each browser. Chrome for Linux press (Alt+Shift+shortcut_key) Chrome for Windows press (Alt+shortcut_key) For Firefox press (Alt+Shift+shortcut_key) For Internet Explorer press (Alt+Shift+shortcut_key) then press (enter) On Mac OS press (Ctrl+Opt+shortcut_key) Accessibility Statement (Combination + 0): Statement page that will show the available accessibility keys. Home Page (Combination + H): Accessibility key for redirecting to homepage. Main Content (Combination + R): Shortcut for viewing the content section of the current page. FAQ (Combination + Q): Shortcut for FAQ page. Contact (Combination + C): Shortcut for contact page or form inquiries. Feedback (Combination + K): Shortcut for feedback page. Site Map (Combination + M): Shortcut for site map (footer agency) section of the page. Search (Combination + S): Shortcut for search page. Press esc, or click the close the button to close this dialog box. ×Glitterati is a 2004 American film directed by Roger Avary assembled from the 70 hours of video footage shot for the European sequence of The Rules of Attraction in October 2001. It serves to expand upon the very minimally detailed and rapidly recapped story told by the character of Victor Ward (portrayed by Kip Pardue, featured in Avary's other film The Rules of Attraction) upon his return to the United States after having traveled extensively around Europe. Expanding upon those events, the film was intended as a connecting bridge between The Rules of Attraction and a planned film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1998 novel Glamorama, which was to be directed by Avary and star Pardue. Avary has called the film a "pencil sketch of what will ultimately be the oil painting of Glamorama."[citation needed]
Plot [ edit ]
The film uses song lyrics to tell the story of how Victor Ward becomes involved with a Florence bombing and then plans a second bombing in Rome, after sightseeing the ruins of the Colosseum and the Vatican.
Creation [ edit ]
The film was shot non-stop over a fifteen-day period throughout Europe, with Pardue remaining in the character of Victor Ward the entire time. The characters in the film, with the exception of Kip Pardue, are all non-actors. Apparently, the entire film was improvised, with Pardue remaining in character as Victor Ward 24 hours a day. The people he met during his travels (mostly models) through over 15 cities "fell into the movie" and became part of it without knowing that it was a movie.
Release [ edit ]
During an interview in Premiere, Avary called the film "ethically questionable" and stated that he has no intention to release it on DVD, but only to show it privately in "sporadic surprise screenings". Bret Easton Ellis said of the film that "for many legal reasons, it will never see the light of day" as it's "basically about 90 minutes of him (Pardue) actually in character seducing women throughout Europe."[1]
References [ edit ]'Feminists' don't have to be your audience. a guest Nov 15th, 2014 16,052 Never a guest16,052Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 8.20 KB 'Feminists' don't have to be your audience. 'Feminists' are over. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I never said I was a feminist culture writer, but lately I feel I need to say something. ‘Feminist culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s whining about things, reporting memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet. It’s young women writing on tumblr with blue/purple hair and collecting non-binary pronouns. Blogging passionately for hours, around the world, to cry about all the things that feminists want them to fear. To find out whether they should feel offended or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave. You browse these listless posts, and often catch the expressions of people who don’t quite know why they themselves are writing there. ‘Feminist culture’ is a petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice or ‘gender journalism ethics,’ straight-faced, and cause genuine human consequences. Because of 'justice'. Lately, I often find myself wondering what I’m even doing here. And I know I’m not alone. All of us should be better than this. You should be deeply questioning your life choices if this and this and this are the prominent public face you presents to the rest of the world. This is what the rest of the world knows about you -- this, and headlines about hundred-thousand-dollar youtube videos or those junkies with the overpriced t-shirts. That’s it. You should absolutely be better than this. You don’t want to ‘be divisive?’ Who’s being divided, except for people who are okay with an infantilized cultural desert of shitty behavior and people who aren’t? What is there to ‘debate’? Right, let’s say it’s a vocal minority that’s not representative of most people. Most people, are mortified, furious, disheartened at the direction conversation has taken in the past few weeks. It’s not like there are reputable outlets publishing rational articles in favor of the trolls’ ‘side’. Don’t give press to the harassers. Don’t blame the entire humanity for a few bad apples. Yet disclaiming liability is clearly no help. Social media websites with huge community hubs whose fans are often associated with blunt Twitter hate mobs sort of shrug, they say things like ‘Holocaust? Women have it much worse’ and ‘those people don’t represent our community’ -- but actually, those people do represent theircommunity. That’s what their community is known for, whether they like it or not. When you decline to create or to curate a culture in your spaces, you’re responsible for what spawns in the vacuum. That’s what’s been happening to feminism. That’s not super surprising, actually. While feminism itself were discovered by strange, bright haired pioneers -- they thought social justice would make conventions more fun, or that social media would make for amazing cross-cultural meeting spaces -- the extremist arm of the form sprung up from marketing scams to ‘media critics’. You know, young white women who gets their income from Patreon, who are 'harrassed'. Suddenly a generation of lost women had marketers with hula hoop earrings whispering in their ears that they were the most important oppressed demographic of all time. Suddenly they started colouring their hair and started making echo chambers that sold the promise of diversity to kids just like them. By the turn of the millennium those were echo chambers’ only main cultural signposts: No fun. Have issues. Get a Patreon and then a bigger Patreon. Be an outcast. Celebrate that. Block anyone who threatens the narrative. You don’t need cultural references. You don’t need anything but the narrative. Public conversation was led by an echo chamber press whose role was primarily to tell feminists what to buy, to score products competitively against one another, to gleefully fuel the “oppressed gender” atmosphere around creators and companies. It makes a strange sort of sense that white men of that time would become scapegoats for moral panic, for atrocities committed by "cis white male shitlords" in hyperfeminist America -- not that the men themselves had anything to do with tragedies, but they had an anxiety in common, an amorphous cultural shape that was dark and loud on the outside, hollow on the inside. Yet in 2014, the narrative has changed. We still think angry young women are the primary demographic for echo chambers -- yet average block-lists from the social justice space have grown massively year on year, with only a few sterling lists enjoying any success. It’s clear that most of the people who drove feminism in the past have grown up -- either out of feminism, or into more fertile spaces, where small and diverse thoughts can flourish, where communities can quickly spring up around diversity, self- expression and mutual support, rather than upholding the narative. There are new audiences and new thoughts alike there. Traditional “feminism” is sloughing off, culturally and ethically, like the carapace of a bug. This is hard for people who’ve drank the kool aid about how their identity depends on the aging cultural signposts of a rapidly-evolving, increasingly broad and complex world. It’s hard for them to hear they aren't needed, anymore, that they aren’t the world’s most special-est oppressed demographic, that equality and incusivity is ubiquitous. We also have to scrutinize, closely, the baffling, stubborn silence of many media outlets amid these scandals, or the fact lots of stubborn, myopic internet comments happen on tumblr and social media sites. This is hard for gender feminists who are being made redundant, both culturally and literally, in their unwillingness to address new audiences or reference points outside of their tumblr- and twitter-echo chambers as their traditional domain falls into the sea around them. Of course it’s hard. It’s probably intense, painful stuff for some young kids, some older women. But it’s unstoppable. A new generation of egalitarians and humanists are finally aiming to instate a healthy cultural vocabulary, a language of community that was missing in the days of “feminist pride” and special interest groups led by a product-guide approach to conversation with a single presumed demographic. This means that over just the last few years, the real world focuses on personal experiences and independent people, not approval-hungry obeisance to the demands of a loud minority. It’s not about ‘equality’ anymore. It’s not about telling people what to think, it’s about providing spaces for people to discuss what (and whom) they want. These straw man ‘social justice’ conversations people have been having are largely the domain of a prior age, when all they did was negotiate feels and Patreon and scraped to be called ‘oppressed’, because they had the same powerlessness complex as their audience had. Now part of an equality feminist job in a creative, human medium is to help curate a creative community and an inclusive culture -- and a lack of commitment to that just looks out-of-step, like a partial compromise with the howling trolls who’ve latched onto ‘social justice’ as the flag in their onslaught against evolution and inclusion. Men and women alike want interactions about more things, and interaction with more people. We want -- and we are getting, and will keep getting -- tragicomedy, vignette, musicals, dream worlds, family tales, ethnographies, abstract art. We will get this, because we’re creating culture now. We are refusing to let anyone feel prohibited from participating. “Feminist” isn’t just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use. Feminists are over. That’s why they’re so mad. These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-victims, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had. There is what’s past and there is what’s now. There is the role you choose to play in what’s ahead.
RAW Paste Data
'Feminists' don't have to be your audience. 'Feminists' are over. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I never said I was a feminist culture writer, but lately I feel I need to say something. ‘Feminist culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s whining about things, reporting memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet. It’s young women writing on tumblr with blue/purple hair and collecting non-binary pronouns. Blogging passionately for hours, around the world, to cry about all the things that feminists want them to fear. To find out whether they should feel offended or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave. You browse these listless posts, and often catch the expressions of people who don’t quite know why they themselves are writing there. ‘Feminist culture’ is a petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice or ‘gender journalism ethics,’ straight-faced, and cause genuine human consequences. Because of 'justice'. Lately, I often find myself wondering what I’m even doing here. And I know I’m not alone. All of us should be better than this. You should be deeply questioning your life choices if this and this and this are the prominent public face you presents to the rest of the world. This is what the rest of the world knows about you -- this, and headlines about hundred-thousand-dollar youtube videos or those junkies with the overpriced t-shirts. That’s it. You should absolutely be better than this. You don’t want to ‘be divisive?’ Who’s being divided, except for people who are okay with an infantilized cultural desert of shitty behavior and people who aren’t? What is there to ‘debate’? Right, let’s say it’s a vocal minority that’s not representative of most people. Most people, are mortified, furious, disheartened at the direction conversation has taken in the past few weeks. It’s not like there are reputable outlets publishing rational articles in favor of the trolls’ ‘side’. Don’t give press to the harassers. Don’t blame the entire humanity for a few bad apples. Yet disclaiming liability is clearly no help. Social media websites with huge community hubs whose fans are often associated with blunt Twitter hate mobs sort of shrug, they say things like ‘Holocaust? Women have it much worse’ and ‘those people don’t represent our community’ -- but actually, those people do represent theircommunity. That’s what their community is known for, whether they like it or not. When you decline to create or to curate a culture in your spaces, you’re responsible for what spawns in the vacuum. That’s what’s been happening to feminism. That’s not super surprising, actually. While feminism itself were discovered by strange, bright haired pioneers -- they thought social justice would make conventions more fun, or that social media would make for amazing cross-cultural meeting spaces -- the extremist arm of the form sprung up from marketing scams |
to the possibility, although Jack suggested German greetings might be equally apt.
However, several councillors have ruled out using a high-polling local slogan, "Timaz Hard".
The slogan, which appears to have no specific meaning but which Wills described as a "trendy saying that is thrown about regularly amongst the younger population" topped an unscientific online poll of possible features for the sign, winning more than half the 189 votes.
Wills said he knew several men with "Timaz hard" tattooed on their bodies.
Both Odey and Brien said they had never heard the term before. Brien said googling the term "brings up some very distasteful and disrespectful media - so, no, I most certainly do not support this slogan".
Burt said "Timaz hard" was "not a true reflection of a modern, progressive, family and business friendly town so I would not support it", preferring a public competition to find ways to depict "the benefits of the lifestyle choices available here".
"It is a saying that's been around for a few years and is very student-based and used by teenage and young adults," Burt said.
Jack was unfamiliar with the term, and said it "sounds like a sex toy". He preferred promotion of local amenities like Caroline Bay, Timaru's restaurants and the CBay aquatic centre.
Including the Caroline Bay penguin colony in Timaru's branding, which council chief executive Peter Nixon suggested in an off-the-cuff discussion in February, might attract criticism from TImaru's southern neighbours.
Waitaki District mayor Gary Kircher commented at the time "time to get your own identity and branding Timaru, without trying to take ours".
"Waitaki has a strong identity for our penguins. "
Te Runanga o Arowhenua chairman John Henry said the runanga had not discussed the sign project.How it works Edit
At the start of the show, audience members who wish to play Johnny Utah are called on stage and put through a quick faux-audition. The winner is then selected by audience Applause-o-meter. A cue card assistant (cast member) leads Utah around the stage throughout the play and shows him or her the lines on laminated cards. Some have said that the winner is frequently a "ringer," because the person chosen is often a good actor and always fits into the wetsuit. The play is an over-the-top, action-packed comedy.[2]
History Edit
Current productions Edit
Cast Edit
Awards Edit
Mayor Gavin Newsom declared April 11, 2008 " Point Break Live! Day" in San Francisco. [26]
Day" in San Francisco. Point Break Live! hit the #1 spot on E! Daily 10 in 2008. [27]
hit the #1 spot on in 2008. ABC News Nightline aired a segment about Point Break Live! in 2009. [28]
in 2009. WGN aired a segment of Chicago's Best with Brittney Payton, daughter of Walter Payton interviewing the cast[29]It is not uncommon for politicians, media figures and the general public to claim – without question – that those serving in the armed forces are heroes. Military service is unique, and the challenges faced by service members are unlike those of other professions. Violent death is a real possibility while wearing a service uniform. But does this make everyone who served a hero?
Like many veterans, I’ve been called a hero for my military service. As I see it, I didn’t accomplish anything extraordinary during my time in the Army or my two tours in Iraq. I did my job. I had good days and I had bad days. Yes, on really bad days things were nasty and might involve multiple fiery explosions or being under severely oppressive heat for hours, wearing a full kit. Despite these hardships, I tried, generally, to do as good a job as I could while serving, and I left military service honorably. Even though I didn’t participate in any solitary acts of heroism, like jumping on a grenade or being the guy who got Osama bin Laden, there are many who would say I am a hero for doing what others would not while putting myself at extreme risk.
I understand the sentiment, and I trust that there are those who truly believe that all service members are heroes, simply for signing up. But I can’t help think that for some, “hero” is a throw-away word, designed to demonstrate a “support the troops” position or guarantee applause at an event.
For this new generation of veterans, the term “hero” usually comes partnered with the decision to join the military during a time of war, after 9/11, when deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan was all but guaranteed. I unheroically joined before 9/11, in April 2001, having barely graduated high school and after a semester toying with community college. My goal was to straighten myself out and figure out what I wanted out of life, while being somewhat productive and useful. In the Army I joined, the dreaded assignment was not a 15-month deployment to the “Triangle of Death” or Helmand province, but a yearlong “hardship” tour to South Korea or peacekeeping duty in Kosovo.
The peacetime Army I joined disappeared while I was in Airborne school at Fort Benning on Sept. 11, 2001. I was only a trainee, fresh out of basic training, but I saw it in the faces of the lifers; the Army just got real. Years later, in conversations about my service, I’m often asked when I joined, and being young, I can sense that the inquisitor anticipates the response that I joined after 9/11, fully knowing the dangerous consequences that I would have faced. They are ready to applaud me for being so brave. I can see their enthusiasm wash from their face when I inform them that, no, I did not join knowing I would go to war. “But surely you would have joined after 9/11, right?” Not actually knowing the answer to that question, I can only respond with, “I don’t know.” “Well, you’re a hero anyway…,” they say.
I don’t feel comfortable being called a hero. In fact, my brow furrows and my mind sharpens when I hear it. Words matter, and “hero” is so loaded and used so frequently that it stands to lose its meaning altogether. Maybe this is just New York cynicism, but I know I’m not the only veteran who feels skeptical when he or she is placed in the hero bin along with every other service member from the past 10 years. I admire the fact that men and women with whom I served chose a dangerous profession for their country – often making the decision after 9/11. But, these are soldiers. Soldiers are human beings. There are good ones and bad ones. A few do amazing, heroic things. The rest do their jobs – incredible, unique jobs – but jobs, nonetheless. Some perform happily, others grudgingly. And I argue that most feel embarrassed when lauded as heroes.
This sentiment is especially true, considering there are real heroes out there. Like Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, the first woman to receive the Silver Star since World War II for her role in crushing an enemy ambush on a supply convoy near Baghdad, helping to kill or capture an enemy force of 30 insurgents. And Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta, whose actions in Afghanistan in 2007 earned him the Medal of Honor, becoming the first living recipient of the award for this generation of veterans. He will soon be joined by Sgt. First Class Leroy Petry, who, after being shot through both of his legs, lost his hand in an attempt to throw back an enemy grenade in Afghanistan in 2008. His selfless action prevented his fellow Rangers from being wounded or killed.
Men and women like these are my heroes. To call everyone who puts on a uniform a hero cheapens these extraordinary actions. My fear is that being called a hero has become the new “thank you for your service.” That line, also awkwardly received by veterans everywhere, at least makes sense. Our nation has an all-volunteer military and military service can be tough, especially during war, so a thank you is appropriate and in good order.
Calling everyone a hero is unfair to the real heroes who accomplish extraordinary things. It’s also unfair to the rest of us who do important work, only to have it wiped away by being equated to the work of everyone else. Yes, people’s hearts are in the right place when they call us heroes. But I’d much rather a person struggle to understand what military service is all about, rather than just assume it’s all heroic, all the time. In a country where so few people serve in a military that plays such a prominent role in global affairs, a little understanding can go a long way.
Don Gomez is an Iraq War veteran and spokesman for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He served two tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division in 2003 and 2005. You can follow him on Twitter @dongomezjr.The Royals long established links to the Nazis are back in focus gain, following the publication of footage of a young Queen apparently giving a Nazi salute, accompanied by her mother, sister Margaret and uncle David—later King Edward VIII—and now a new Channel 4 documentary is planning to unearth once again on the long and complicated history of the royals and the Nazis.
It's old but still shocking news, but Prince Philip had three sisters who married into the Third Reich.
The film, entitled Prince Philip: The Plot to Make a King, also features an interview with Philip’s nephew Prince Rainer von Hessen, who shares the unpublished memoirs of his mother—Philip’s sister Sophie. In them she describes a private lunch with Adolf Hitler. In the previously unseen extracts Sophie talks of her early admiration for him.
The Daily Mail reports that Philip’s sister said Goering had been “very enthusiastic” about the Nazi party and its leader, and had urged her and her husband to meet Hitler in person. She noted in her memoir, written in old age: “As Germany was going through hard times and there was a lot of poverty and general dissatisfaction everywhere, we were interested to hear about the great improvements his party was planning to do.
“As Goering was insistent we should meet Hitler personally, we decided to ask him to lunch at our flat… I have to say here, that, although Chri [her husband Prince Christoph] and I changed our political view fundamentally some years later, we were impressed by this charming and seemingly modest man, and by his plans to change and improve the situation in Germany.”
To be fair, the Nazi connection is not exactly new.
Moscow-funded TV channel Russia Today was the last outlet to revive the controversy, when Prince Charles compared President Putin to Hitler.
A presenter pointed out that Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson had friends among Hitler’s high command and met the Fuhrer himself.
She added that Prince Philip’s sister Sophie married into the Third Reich and mentioned how Prince Harry dressed in a Nazi uniform for a fancy dress party.The presenter added: “If anyone knows real Nazis, it’s the Royal Family.”Photos.com LUCKY BREAK: The ginger cat (not pictured) was at death's door. Related Links Cats plus dogs equals peace? Relevant offers
A gamble to give a transfusion of Labrador dog blood to a rapidly deteriorating cat has paid off with a quick recovery by the feline that had been at death's door.
It was realised that six-and-a-half-year-old ginger cat Rory needed a transfusion late on a Friday evening. There was not enough time to find his blood type by sending a sample to a laboratory before it closed.
Giving a cat just a millilitre of the wrong type of cat blood would kill it, vet Kate Heller of Tauranga Vets said.
It was suspected Rory, who had bled internally, had eaten a poisoned rat or got into someone's rat bait.
"Rory was going to die before we were going to get his blood type," Heller said.
"He was really dying before our eyes."
She talked to Rory's owners about the risks of giving the cat a blood transfusion from a dog and they decided to give it a go.
Cat-to-dog transfusions were given at times, although she had never done one before, Heller said.
"There are some significant risks of doing what we did. He could have died because of it. He would have died without it."
Rory's owner Kim Edwards knew someone with a Labrador, and the dog was rushed to the vets.
After starting the transfusion, Heller monitored Rory for an hour, then went home to have some dinner.
"I came back to check him after about an hour, and he was sitting up eating and purring. He responded really quickly to the transfusion," she said.
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Viz Media announced the full English dub cast for the Terraformars television anime series at its industry panel at Anime Expo on Saturday. Voice actors Erica Lindbeck and Christopher Niosi were in attendance for the announcement.
The English dub cast stars:
Viz Media also revealed the full staff for the dub version:
Viz Media describes the story:
In Terra Formars, after humanity's first manned mission to the Red Planet was lost a second expedition arrives. The explorers prepare to exterminate the cockroaches that were used to transform the Martian environment, but are shocked to discover that the insects have mutated into giant, aggressive humanoids with one overriding goal – exterminate the humans! However, this crew of explorers has each undergone the “Bugs Procedure,” terrifying experimental surgery designed to make them more than human…
The first 13-episode television anime series adapting the Annex 1 arc of Yū Sasuga and Kenichi Tachibana's Terra Formars manga premiered in September 2014, and Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired. The 13-episode Terraformars Revenge anime premiered in April 2016.
Viz Media began streaming the first series along with the Terraformars Revenge sequel series in April 2016.The German mega-utility RWE provided another dismal reminder today of the painful transition European power companies are undergoing.
According to 2013 financial results, the utility lost more than $3.8 billion last year as it cycled down unprofitable fossil fuel plants due to sliding wholesale prices. The yearly loss is actually quite historic; it's RWE's first since 1949 when the German Republic was formed.
This follows poor earnings news from Vattenfall, a Swedish utility with the second-biggest generation portfolio in Germany, which saw $2.3 billion in losses in 2013 due to this same "fundamental structural change” in the electricity market.
The problem is well documented: high penetrations of renewables with legal priority over fossil fuels are driving down wholesale market prices -- sometimes causing them to go negative -- and quickly eroding the value of coal and natural gas plants. At the same time, Germany's energy consumption continues to fall while renewable energy development rises.
RWE's CEO Peter Terium called it "the worst structural crisis in the history of energy supply."
To make matters worse for utilities, their commercial and industrial customers are increasingly trying to separate themselves from the grid to avoid government fees levied to pay for renewable energy expansion. According to the Wall Street Journal, 16 percent of German companies are now energy self-sufficient -- a 50 percent increase from just a year ago. Another 23 percent of businesses say they plan to become energy self-sufficient in the near future.
It's a real-world example of the "death spiral" that the industry has so far only considered in theory: as grid maintenance costs go up and the capital cost of renewable energy moves down, more customers will be encouraged to leave the grid. In turn, that pushes grid costs even higher for the remainder of customers, who then have even more incentive to become self-sufficient. Meanwhile, utilities are stuck with a growing pile of stranded assets.
When unveiling today's dismal earnings, RWE's Terium admitted the utility had invested too heavily in fossil fuel plants at a time when it should have been thinking about renewables: "I grant we have made mistakes. We were late entering into the renewables market -- possibly too late."
As power company executives collectively gnash their teeth, green energy advocates are praising the tumultuous shift these utilities are enduring. Although both sides disagree on the ultimate value of the outcome, the underlying situation is undebatable: Germany is in the midst of a massive "structural" change that is ripping gaping holes in the traditional utility business model. And now the cash is bleeding faster than ever.
In a shareholder document from last September, the German utility EnBW illustrated how bad the bleeding has gotten. EnBW has the fourth-biggest generation pipeline in the country, and has been forced to make a serious shift in its own strategy.
The first graph shows how far forward prices for conventional power plant generation have plummeted since 2011. As the profitability of fossil fuel plants continues to fall, EnBW concluded in a strategy document that it needs to "develop new business models...without delay."
EnBW offered another snapshot of how bad things are getting for utilities. These two graphs show the gross margins from coal plants (clean dark spread) and gas-fired plants (clean spark spread) after accounting for fuel purchasing and carbon allowances. Both have taken a serious hit, but natural gas has fared worse as fuel costs remain high and market prices for power fall.
Do these graphs remind you of anything?
Europe's biggest utilities are falling down a rabbit hole and could soon find themselves swimming in a pool of their own tears. Many of them already are.
Over the last five years, the top twenty utilities in Europe have lost half their value. Recent poor financial results, stranded assets and mass selloffs of power plants highlight how tough things have gotten for power providers. But there are signs of change.
In its own strategy document, EnBW made a simple declaration about its future: "Conventional business models of larger power supply companies no longer work."
By 2020, the utility plans to cut its electricity generation and trading business by around 80 percent. It will try to make up for the decline by investing further in wind power, transmission and distribution projects to connect renewables, and by working on the consumer level to implement services like home automation.
Ben Kellison, GTM Research's senior grid analyst, said EnBW's approach "provides a window into one possible path in which the value of energy trading and peaker plants systematically erodes, pushing large utilities into more service-oriented work."
RWE is also headed in this direction. That utility, which is Germany's second-biggest, said last fall that it was planning to divest many of its large-scale fossil fuel plants and implement a "prosumer" business model to help integrate renewables projects. These emergency declarations are the only way some big power companies can ensure their future.
The German experience is just the beginning of a long, tumultuous shift for the broader utility sector. But it highlights the question: will American utilities soon deal with the same issues? With much lower penetrations of distributed renewables and less aggressive promotion laws, the U.S. power sector won't face the same kind of violent death spiral in the near term. But the same forces driving change in Europe are starting to raise concerns within the utility sector here.
There's a scene in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon ask about Alice's exploits. She replies: "It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."
That may be how some utilities in Europe are feeling now -- finally reaching the point of no return where looking back is not an option.
American utilities have the benefit of learning from that first-mover experience. Will they use it to land safely in a wonderland of distributed generation and consumer empowerment? Or will they fall down the rabbit hole, not knowing where they're headed until its too late?
Those are the questions we'll be asking at Greentech Media's Grid Edge Live conference this summer. Come join us.0
In its fourth season, Louis CK‘s excellent, experimental, auteur FX series Louie reached new artistic heights. Louie is a show that has always been good, yet also finds ways to get consistently better. Last season’s “So Did the Fat Lady” was one of Louie‘s most lauded episodes for the time and voice he gave to a powerful, one-off female character, and his run of “Elevator” episodes were a dreamy, surrealistic journey through the strange world he creates so cinematically.
The fifth season of Louie — which will run for only 8 episodes — doesn’t carry over that same tone from Season 4, though, and is far more grounded in its reality. For fans of the last two seasons in particular, it’s a little disappointing, but it’s easy to move on, thanks to the show’s renewed comedic devotion. In fact, it signals that turn from the start by bringing back its title sequence, which as been missing since Season 3.
The new season starts out with a great episode, “Potluck,” that is truly hilarious. Relying on cringe humor and Louie’s penchant for accidentally getting caught up in things (its vibe is very Curb Your Enthusiasm), Louie’s odyssey around town is scored by a banjo-playing street musician. Like Curb‘s “Frolic” theme, by Luciano Michelini, it sets a playful, whimsical, and almost carnival-esque tone that augments the absurdity and humor of the situations (none of which can be described, or the jokes will be ruined).
It’s also worth noting that the first four episodes of the season (available for review) don’t feature any flashbacks, like in prior seasons — one that Louie attempts is shut down immediately by Pamela Adlon. This is a world lived in the now. Pamela, though, is again a central figure in Louie’s life, but there’s a lot of time given to her militant cynicism about relationships, juxtaposed against Louie’s optimistic desire to have something more. It’s reflective of how Season 5, and Louie himself, seem dominated by strong women and sad men. Like in “So Did the Fat Lady,” Louie ends up being lectured by a number of different women, and even beaten up by one. Maybe it’s a subversion to some of his issues with women in the last season, although his work isn’t typically reactionary.
Louie spends reluctant time talking to his brother, Bobby (Robert Kelly), and an obnoxious ex-boyfriend of his sister’s, (Michael Rapaport), who lament about how women aren’t interested in them, and that they are being left behind. That theme carries over to yet another lecture Louie endures from a young, female business owner who gets to the root of why he feels uncomfortable around younger people: “because you feel like you aren’t needed.” He agrees, and shuffles off.
Louie as a series has always been tinged with melancholy — it’s woven into the fabric of the show. In one of the series’ best moments, the Season 3 episode “Daddy’s Girlfriend Part 2,” Parker Posey (his manic love interest) goes on a rooftop with him. Her perching there fully distresses him; there’s a good possibility should might go over. But there’s a particular moment when her face, which had had a smile plastered on it for so long, slowly begins to fall as she looks out over the city. It was a crushing moment in its simplicity, and was also one of the most beautiful scenes ever broadcast.
Season 5 is a move away from those kinds of ponderous moments, and for fans, that’s either welcomed or disappointing news. The season is certainly funnier overall, even though the lectures and monologues are a little tiresome, especially regarding Louie’s relationship with Pamela (it all feels like ground covered many times before, aside from one scene that takes the season’s male/female domination subversion to a surprising conclusion). Like in past seasons, though, some of the episode’s best vignettes are the shortest, and are ones that take a banal situation and turn it into something operatic and absurd. They also, rightfully, keep Louie as the focus, and not as the foil.
There’s a sense in this new season, though, of a passing of the torch. It almost feels like Louis CK doesn’t think he should have the floor anymore, so he’s giving it to others. The problem is, he is the one who holds all of our empathy and interest. The way his alter-ego earnestly bumbles around the city, trying to just be a decent guy as he’s provoked, prodded, and occasionally punished for things he doesn’t deserve, is the comedic tragedy that draws us in. If Louis CK is indeed thinking about passing on the mic, we should in no way be ready or willing to let him. No matter how his storytelling changes, it never stops being good.
Rating: ★★★★ Very good — Damn fine television
Louie Season 5 premieres Thursday, April 9th at 10:30 p.m. on FX.NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission will measure the powerful X-rays emitted by supermassive black holes. The mission will launch three space telescopes in 2020
Monster black holes, neutron stars and pulsars are the targets of a new NASA space telescope mission scheduled to launch in 2020.
Black holes can heat up nearby gases, which, in turn, emit high-energy X-rays. NASA's new Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission will use three space telescopes equipped with cameras to measure the polarization (direction of vibration) of these X-rays. The mission will cost about $188 million, NASA officials said.
"We cannot directly image what's going on near objects like black holes and neutron stars, but studying the polarization of X-rays emitted from their surrounding environments reveals the physics of these enigmatic objects, Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement from NASA. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]
The IXPE mission was selected for launch by NASA's Astrophysics Explorers program and will be led by Martin Weisskopf, principal investigator of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The Italian Space Agency is helping to develop the cameras capable of measuring the powerful X-rays radiating from black holes. Ball Aerospace will provide the IXPE spacecraft and mission integration.
"NASA has a great history of launching observatories in the Astrophysics Explorers program with new and unique observational capabilities," Hertz said in the statement. "IXPE will open a new window on the universe for astronomers to peer through. Today, we can only guess what we will find."
Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.It is with glee in our hearts and clumsy 70s karate vengeance on our minds that we present to you the amazing, undefinable Death Promise. So goofy, so full of confused non-actors wandering through their dialogue like kids lost at the mall, and with so much more gentle sincerity than you’d expect in a movie about systematic revenge against a group of evil slumlords. It’s Guy From Harlem meets Kill Bill meets an after-school special about friendship - in other words, we really like it.
A boardroom full of comically-dressed, openly-evil New York City rich guys are hassling their slum tenants for reasons that don’t quite get around to becoming clear. Fortunately, their harassment methods don’t go much beyond “empty a box of rats into a building that’s already filled with rats.” But when they kill an old drunk boxer, the old drunk boxer’s son makes a vow, a pledge… oh, what to call it… an oath to demise? A commitment to casualties? Well, however you want to phrase it, he and his surprisingly agreeable friend Speedy work their way through the list of baddies who wronged them. All in pursuit of the main baddie, a shadowy figure who - and we’re not making this up - sits so that you can’t see his face, only his evil hand stroking the evil cat in his lap. Again, this movie is taking itself seriously. Again, we really like it.
Settle in for some upbeat revenge with Mike, Kevin, and Bill. We don’t just promise you’ll have a good time: we Death Promise.Renault have pulled the canvas sheets off their new concept car, the DeZir (pronounced: Desire), and have announced plans to present the car at this year’s Paris Motorshow. The DeZir is a 100% electric vehicle and uses the same battery system as the Nissan Leaf with the addition of a 148bhp mid-mounted electric motor to propel the car to a top speed of 112mph. This is the car that
Renault has said embodies their new design language so expect to see future Renault cars borrowing design elements from the car, such as the distinctive front grill (probably not the rear-opening scissor doors and mores the pity).
The DeZir uses a steel space-frame chassis and lightweight components and a kevlar body to tip the scales at just 830kg (1,829lbs), the car also has a 100 mile range (claimed) and unlike the Nissan Leaf, the battery pack is configured for quick-drop exchanges (very useful for racing). Interestingly Renault have opted to use Formula 1 derived KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) to utilise power lost under braking for a quick power boost (also useful for racing).
The rumour flying around at the moment is that Renault is actually going to build and sell this car (or a production version of it), we won’t really know if this is true till Paris in October (2nd-17th). We really like the concept but think the name is a little too 1987 and that Audi R8 style blade on both sides could do with being painted over.Borders Battles On Kobo E-Reader Price Cuts
Responding to Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook price cuts, Borders is including a $20 gift card and credit toward future purchases.
Borders has responded to electronic-reader price cuts from rivals Amazon and Barnes & Noble by bundling a $20 gift card with its Kobo e-reader.
Borders announced the offer on Tuesday, a day after Amazon and B&N said they would drop the price of their devices 27% and 23%, respectively. Besides the gift card, Borders its offering Kobo buyers double "Borders Bucks," which amounts to a $10 credit toward a future purchase from the bookseller.
While Borders's offer is less dramatic than competitors, it marks the latest volley in a price war among the three booksellers, who appear to be adopting a strategy of getting their e-readers to as many people as possible in order to see more digital books. A fourth major e-reader seller, Sony, has yet to respond to the latest price cuts.
Amazon lowered the price of its standard Kindle to $189 just hours after B&N announced that it would sell the Nook 3G for $199. Both e-readers had sold for $259. Amazon did not change the price of its larger Kindle DX, which still sells for $489.
The price cuts are not unexpected. Analysts have said for quite awhile that the growing number of e-readers in the market, and increasing competition from tablet-style computers, such as Apple's iPad, would eventually drive prices down.
Indeed, in announcing the gift card, Borders said research has identified the "consumer sweet spot" for e-readers between $100 and $150. Borders sells the Kobo for $150, but does not offer a Wi-Fi or 3G wireless connection for buying and downloading e-books. Instead, books must be purchased through a PC or Mac and transferred to the e-reader. The same is true for Sony's $200 Reader Touch.
Amazon's Kindle and B&N's Nook offer both wireless connections, making it much easier for customers to buy e-books from the respective bookseller.
We welcome your comments on this topic on our social media channels, or [contact us directly] with questions about the site.Print Article
Law enforcement in the Riggins area are searching for two missing Coeur d'Alene men.
Patrick Lusk, 27, and Jason Gritten, 35, reportedly planned to canoe across the Salmon River and hike to a hot springs, according to a press release issued by the Idaho County Sheriff's Office this morning.
"The pair failed to return home when planned and were reported overdue by family," the press release states.
On Sunday at 7:15 p.m., Idaho County dispatch was advised of the two missing men who were possibly missing in the French Creek area of Salmon River Road.
Idaho County Cpl. Jonny Wilson responded to the area and located the vehicle the men were reported to be driving. Wilson searched the immediate area by spotlight and was unable to locate the men.
Then, on Monday, Cpl. Justin Scuka and Idaho Department of Fish and Game Officers Roy Kimmer and Dennis Brandt searched the river for several hours by boat, but still could not find the men.
The search, which resumed this morning, will continue with the assistance of members of the Idaho County Sheriff's Office search and rescue team.
Lusk, who works at Ground Force Worldwide in Post Falls, and Gritten are neighbors and were bear hunting in the Riggins area last weekend, according to posts on Facebook.
"We have found their camp, trailer and canoe," Lusk's wife Megan posted on Facebook on Monday. "There have been no signs of them. Please keep us in our prayers. We are praying and hoping both guys are found safe."
Several friends of the two men indicated they are headed to Riggins to join the search with Megan and others.
More information will be released when it's available.On this episode, we may have just learned the name of IDW comics’ next Hasbro mega-crossover. The new Transformers Movie media juggernaut continues with its IMAX Global Fan Event, and we sit down with the folks from Space Ape Games to talk about the new Beast Wars event coming to Transformers Earth Wars. All this and much, much more on this episode of TransMissions Alt Mode!
This episode of TransMissions Alt Mode is sponsored by Prime Toys, where you can get collector grade toys without the collector grade prices! Use the coupon code TRANSMISSIONS at checkout for 10% off all regularly priced Transformers-related items!
Order our TransMissions Exclusive Cover Variant of IDW’s Transformers Till All Are One #1!
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Contact us:“Mind if I join you, handsome?”
Varh looked up from his meal, mildly amused. It’d been some time since anyone had referred to him as handsome, let alone a Ferengi woman. Curious, he nodded and pointed at the seat across from him. “Be my guest,” he said with a smile. The young Ferengi smiled back and pulled up a chair.
“I’m Onna. I’m also the only reason this crate’s warp core hasn’t breached six times today,” she said as she picked at the array of replicated food cubes on her tray. “And you are?”
“Varh. I suppose I’m the reason this crate hasn’t plowed into a star at warp 5.”
“Helmsman?”
“And navigator when the Orion with the job title isn’t sober, which is most of the time.”
Varh smiled as Onna made an amusing combination between a snort and a giggle. “I’m afraid you have me to blame for his lack of sobriety,” she said after wiping her mouth with a cloth. “The case of Romulan ale he’s so fond of helped pay for my passage to Nimbus III, along with engine room shifts.”
“So his taste in liquor is as bad as his talent for navigation,” Varh replied before popping a cube in his mouth. |
avoid" the spread of Ebola to the kingdom, the official news agency SPA reported.
The virus, for which there is no treatment or vaccine, has claimed 1,552 lives out of 3,069 reported cases -- 694 in Liberia, 430 in Guinea, 422 in Sierra Leon and six in Nigeria, according to latest figures from the World Health Organisation.
Saudi Arabia made a similar decision in April when it announced the suspension of visas for Muslim pilgrims from Guinea and Liberia.
The hajj annual pilgrimage, the world's biggest Muslim gathering, draws two million people to Saudi Arabia each year, including many from the West African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak. This year it falls in October.
The "temporary suspension" of labour visas from the three African nations "will not affect the labour market in Saudi Arabia" where the number of workers from these countries "is very little," SPA quoted deputy labour minister Mufrej al-Haqbani as saying.
He said laboratory tests before arrival were "strictly required" by the labour ministry for all foreigners coming from west Africa.
Apart from Nigeria, Ebola has also spread to Senegal.ASUS is to launch a new convertible Chromebook priced at $249 later this year, the company has announced at a joint press event hosted with Google.
The device, called the ‘ASUS Chromebook Flip’, offers a 10.1-inch HD IPS touchscreen on a 360-degree rotating hinge, allowing it to fold in to variety of form factors including a tablet.
Better still, the Flip is made out of metal rather than plastic, the standard material used for most Chromebook casing.
But the best part isn’t a material, a screen or a swivelling hinge, its the price: just $249.
How can ASUS offer all of that for such a low price? By not using Intel processors, of course.
Like ASUS other (now confirmed) Chromebook in the C201, the new Chromebook Flip uses a Rockchip 3288 quad-core processor and paired with Mali-T764 graphics and 4GB of RAM. 16GB of onboard eMMC flash storage takes care of files.
This SoC is capable enough for casual needs, both at home, on the move and in the classroom, but it’s best no one comes to this device hoping it will outpace a pricey Chromebook Pixel.
For connectivity there are two regular USB ports (there’s no USB-C here), plus an ever reliable MicroSD card slot, headphone jack and full-sized HDMI out.
Chromebook Flip Specs At a Glance
10.1-Inch IPS Touchscreen Display
Rockchip 3288 Quadcore Processor
Mali-T764 GPU
4GB RAM
16GB SSD
16GB eMMC
2x USB, 1x HDMI
10 Hour Batter Life
Touch Optimised
Google and ASUS say that the by the time the Chromebook Flip ships in the summer Chrome OS 42 will be ready on the stable channel. This release brings a number of touch-friendly optimisations to the table screen, including handwriting recognition (including support for recognising emoji), the new ‘Touch View’ UI (when in ‘tablet’ mode apps run in fullscreen rather than windowed) and plenty other tweaks.
The Chromebook Flip will launch in the usual territories (read: America first, everywhere else thereafter) in the summer priced from $249.I was sent a review copy of Penetration Testing with Perl by Douglas Berdeaux. I really didn’t like it. Here’s the review I’ve been sharing on Amazon and Goodreads.
I’ve been wanting to learn a bit about Penetration Testing for a while and as Perl is my programming language of choice this seemed like a great book to choose. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
I have no doubt that the author knows what he is talking about when it comes to Penetration Testing, but there were several things that prevented this book from transferring much of that knowledge to me.
Firstly, the typesetting in the book is terrible. I was reading the Amazon eBook edition – it’s possible that the printed version is better. For example, there’s a lot of code in this book and it’s in a proportional font. In order for code to be readable, it needs to be in a fixed-width font. Also, there are two or three places where an equation appears in the text, but it appears in an unreadably small font. I have just checked in the PDF version of the book and neither of these problems appear there. It would seem that this is down to a problem in Packt’s eBook creation process.
Secondly, it’s obvious that English is not the author’s first language. At times this really prevents him from getting his point across clearly. I’m very happy to see non-native speakers publishing books in English. But the publishers need to provide high quality proof-readers to ensure that the language is good enough.
Thirdly, the organisation of the book is a little haphazard. The first couple of chapters are introductions to Perl and Linux, but after that we are dropped immediately into a discussion of network sniffing. Later in the book there are chapters on intelligence gathering, social engineering and password cracking. These are all far simpler topics which could have served as a gentle introduction to the book, getting people up to speed on Perl before delving into the complex internals of network packets. Once again, I think this should be the responsibility of the publisher. There should be a good editor working on the book alongside the author and shaping the manuscript so that the story it tells guides the user through the subject as easily as possible.
Finally, the book falls short in its technical content. I can’t comment on the author’s explanations of Penetration Testing (I was, after all, reading the book to learn about that topic), but the Perl code that he uses throughout the book is really bad. He is obviously someone who only ever learned enough Perl to get his job done and never bothered to learn how Perl really works or to keep his knowledge up to date. As a result, the book is full of the kind of code that gives Perl its reputation as a write-only language. The idioms that he uses are often out of date (using ‘-w’ instead of ‘use warnings’, for example), confusing (predeclaring subroutines unnecessarily, using ampersands on function calls) or just plain wrong (‘my ($x, $y, $z) = 0 x 3’ just doesn’t do what he thinks it does). Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s not just Perl he doesn’t understand, it’s the fundamentals of good software engineering. His code is a confusing mess of global variables and bad design. This is another failure by the publisher. There should have been a competent technical editor checking this stuff.
I’ve read four or five Packt books now. They’re all of this standard. None of them should have been published. But Packt seem to have hit on a good business model. They find unknown authors and produce books as cheaply as possible. Their publishing process omits all of the editing and checking that more reputable publishers use. The books that come out of this process are, of course, terrible. But, for reasons I can’t understand, people still buy them.10.4K Shares
Originally published on Huffington Post and cross-posted here with permission.
I know what you’re thinking.
I can read it on your face… the distracted smile, the unconvincing nod, the slightly furrowed brow…
You’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. Or at the very least, what I’m doing wrong. The questions you ask yourself at the moment you’ve discovered I’m single and childfree is: “Why is this woman still single and childfree? What’s wrong with her?”
If we haven’t yet met, let me take a moment to describe what will happen when we do. You’ll notice I’m attractive. Not a cover girl beauty, but attractive. You’ll notice I’m petite and slim. I’ll probably be wearing something that flatters me. I’m articulate and bright. I’m certainly someone who some men might find appealing enough to want to be with.
And all this makes my circumstance even that much more curious to you.
And as you’re thinking this, you’ll notice I’m smiling back at you, and looking straight into your eyes as I shake your hand firmly, yet femininely. And a conversation will begin or continue about something other than what you are thinking…
So naturally, you’ll be distracted, searching for clues in what I say, or don’t say… in my mannerisms and in my face. You’ll wonder how this happened to me… how I ended up single and without the children I always dreamed I’d have.
If you’re younger than I am, you’ll either confirm to yourself that it could never possibly happen to you, or, now that you’ve met me, you’ll wonder if it possibly could.
If you’re married and a mom, you’ll pat yourself on the back for knowing better that I did. Knowing ‘what’ exactly, neither of us is quite sure, but you’ll let out a sigh of relief that you’re safe and sound, despite any hidden challenges you are facing behind closed doors.
You knew better, and that’s enough for you.
And the gentlemen… well if we’re on a date, you’ll find a way to let me know that you’re OK with my age, notwithstanding your own. You’ll credit yourself for dating a woman who may no longer be able to have biological children — or be relieved for that very fact.
Either way, you’ll let me know. You’ll tell me how you usually date younger women but find women ‘my age’ (often your age) refreshing. Or, you’ll tell me that your friends ‘warned’ you about my age, but you told them it didn’t matter. “You don’t look it!” you’ll say as if it were consolation.
And I’ll be smiling. I’ll take a sip of my wine. I’ll still laugh at your jokes.
But I know what you’re thinking: What is wrong with this woman?
And before I can answer, you’ve come to a series of possible conclusions:
She’s a ‘career woman’ and too focused on her career to be interested in love.
She’s a ‘career woman’ and too cold to know love.
She’s a ‘career woman’ and cannot make a man a priority in her life.
She’s a ‘career woman’ and probably never really wanted a family.
She’s too picky.
She’s not picky enough and made bad choices.
She made a choice.
She never made a choice.
She’s too needy. She’s not needy enough. She doesn’t need a man. She needs a man too much. She’s trying too hard. She’s not trying hard enough. She’s too hard. She’s too soft. She’s inflexible. She’s been too flexible. She thought she had forever to get married and have children; clearly, she is completely naïve about her fertility. She never really wanted children or she would have had them. She’s too much of a feminist. She’s too much of a romantic. And in your exasperation of final possibilities you think: There must be something unlovable about her, otherwise, she’d be loved by now. But you’ll notice something else about me; throughout this encounter, I’m still smiling. You’re now thinking that I’m more confident than an unmarried, childfree woman should be at my age. You’re thinking that I’m happier than I should be… that I’m practically glowing, even! What is that about, you ask yourself? The thing is, you don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that my life is not defined but anyone else’s thoughts. Only my thoughts have the power to control my attitude toward life. If you read my thoughts, they would say: I’m not in the wrong life being the wrong wife. My womb is empty but my life is full. My mother gave me a life and I’m not wasting it on grieving or thinking less of myself for not becoming a mother as well. I am loved. I am loveable. I am, in this moment, the very best me I can be. And while it may not be the life you, having just met me, would expect for me… it’s the life, knowing myself for 43 years, that was meant to be mine. I’m still growing, still tweaking my imperfections. Every single day, I take another bite out of my potential. But I never bite off more than I can chew. I have left plenty of room for love. There may be many reasons why I’m not yet married and why I have not become a mother. But the only reason that matters is that it wasn’t yet meant to be. Hear me when I say I know what you’re thinking. Know me when you believe what I’m saying. Life is good. Tomorrow is better. And tomorrow we may meet again. And perhaps then, you will think differently. 10.4K Shares Melanie Notkin is the national bestselling author of Savvy Auntie: The Ultimate Guide for Cool Aunts, Great-Aunts, Godmothers and All Women Who Love Kids. Learn more at SavvyAuntie.com or join the Auntourage on Facebook Found this article helpful?
Help us keep publishing more like it by Help us keep publishing more like it by becoming a member!Rental properties will have to meet a set of minimum standards under rules to be unveiled by the Government next month.
The move will stop short of a full "warrant of fitness" for rentals but is aimed at ensuring all tenants have a safe and healthy home to live in, Government sources confirmed.
That is likely to include a requirement for insulation, although sources said there was still work to be done to set any standards at a practical level. It is due to be announced next month by Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith, along with an assessment of a warrant of fitness trial in state houses, and would apply to all rentals both private and public.
The signal comes in the wake of a coroner's finding last week that the death of Emma-Lita Bourne from a brain haemorrhage could partly be blamed on the poor condition of the state house she lived in. The family had been provided with a heater but could not afford to put it on.
However, a full warrant of fitness has been rejected by the Government as too difficult to police and requiring regular "rechecks" that would hike compliance costs.
READ MORE: Housing NZ to look at upgrades after child's death
Toddler's death a broken promise, says Labour
Prime Minister John Key on Monday said some of the advice the Government had seen on a warrant of fitness suggested rents would rise and it was likely some landlords would pull out of the market.
Andrew King of the Property Investors' Federation said if insulation became mandatory there should be a carrot in the form of a tax deduction for installation.
"It's very expensive to put in."
He said it was not just an issue of insulation and some tenants did not put their heating on.
But Key rejected the idea of a one-off payment for heating, instead backing current provisions including emergency assistance for those who needed it.
The Government earlier this year rejected Labour's Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill which would have required every rental home meet minimum standards of heating and insulation to ensure they were warm and dry.
It would have taken effect in about five years, as tenancies rolled over.
However, sources said the Government considered that timeframe was too short for landlords.With the secondary market reflecting positive sentiment, there have been many new issuances in the primary market in the recent past and many are in the pipeline. The Indian capital market, more specifically the primary market, is expected to have a very busy schedule in financial year 2018.Over the past few years, investor perception about IPOs has changed from just being a fund-raising option for companies to being an excellent opportunity for them to enter the market or a good way to earn decent market returns.Going by the recent performances of IPOs (year and a half), it would not be wrong to say primary issues can hold a substantial portion of overall investments in the coming years. The IPO market is heading for a rush with a number of high-profile names such as CDSL, UTI Mutual Fund, NSE, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management, HDFC Life and SBI Life, to name a few, lining up issues.In June alone, few companies are in the process of raising approximately Rs 5,300 crore. In the last 12 months, the IPO market has given investors the opportunity to invest in companies such as Equitas Holdings, Avenue Supermart and Shankara Building Products to name a few.By taking the IPO route, companies will have the benefit of listing their equity shares on the bourses. Improved business confidence and regulatory reforms are also driving Indian companies to look at growth and expansion opportunities overseas by way of cross-border IPOs.Few measures such as application through ASBA (application supported by blocked amount), which is mandatory for all the investors – be it retail or institutional – and concentrated efforts by the government to channel savings into financial markets has helped the IPO market. In addition, Sebi has permitted major non-banking finance companies ( NBFCs ) to be eligible for the quota reserved for QIB in IPOs, bringing them at par with banks and insurers. This is expected to strengthen the IPO market and channel more investment.Investor participation has increased manifold in the primary market. Even the implementation of GST may prompt more companies to list on the exchanges, as smaller firms will become tax-compliant. It is expected that some 1,000 companies would follow the IPO rote to get listed on the bourses over the next four years. An IPO gives an opportunity to companies to re-invent themselves.The flurry of IPO issues is likely to continue, driven by a supportive political environment, upbeat economic sentiment, improved business confidence, easing inflationary pressure and stable flow of foreign direct investment.Foreign investors are willing to buy the India growth story and are looking for more issuances going ahead due to a lot of positivity around (markets making new highs, decent corporate earnings, reforms initiative by the government). This is probably the best time for companies to raise funds through IPOs. With more companies waiting to go public, it is expected that the IPO market would see continued growth with more private equity-backed companies making it to the market.Then what ensues is a perilous antinomy between traditional faith (God imbues the world with meaning) and existentialism (crudely put, meaning is constructed).
The principal virtue of Wilder's argument is that it defuses the antinomy that has befuddled critics of Cesaire, right down to Romuald Fonkoua in his 2010 biography, who have been unable to understand how Cesaire could have practiced a surrealist poetics if he was a Marxist.
This paper explores the connection between Kant's first antinomy and the set-theoretical paradox of the largest cardinal.
I am, however, going to argue (i) that it is doubtful whether there is in the concept of law a dualism of reality and validity of the type that Ross has in mind, (ii) that while the first antinomy in the concept of law and the first antinomy in the concept of the sources of law do arise, they have nothing to do with such a dualism of reality and validity, (iii) that the second antinomy in the concept of law and the second and third antinomies in the concept of the sources of law do not arise at all, (iv) that while the first and the second antinomies in the concept of subjective law do arise, they have nothing to do with such a dualism, and (v) that the third antinomy in the concept of subjective law does arise but can be handled.
The topics include examining Kant's political antinomy through his Third Critique, the re-semantization of the human from an ethico-political perspective, liberty as a precondition and limit of public space: preliminary considerations for a reflection on the metaphysical meaning of liberty, the network as global public sphere, public and private in biopolitical times: toward a radically immanent perspective, the role of religious language and symbols in the public sphere, and the truth of cynicism and nihilism.
The reception of SaA[macron]d's work strengthened this cultural relativism: Concerns for honor and shame drive everyone, and the simplistic antinomy "shame-guilt cultures" must be ultimately "racist.
Eng Aziz said part of some of the project like antinomy will come up in the area earmarked for second phase development.
The company also assayed raised levels of thorium, antinomy, silver, zinc, manganese and potassium.
Those who share in this desire are faced with an absurd antinomy.
In the time that remains, I will try to show how Lacan is consciously distorting the notation of the predicate calculus in an attempt to suggest what lies beyond the phallic order by articulating the antinomy that woman is both subject and not subject to the phallic order.
These questions lead him to conclude that religion is based on the experience of the antinomy of God's transcendence and immanence that is best expressed in his sophiological interpretation of Christianity.Second-hand electronics dealership CeX says two million customers may have had their personal information swiped by hackers.
Several Reg readers dropped us a line after receiving an email from the Brit biz that informed them their personal details including first name, surname, address, email address and phone number had been illegally accessed by miscreants.
In some cases passwords were also stolen. The company says these were hashed, but warns – correctly – that weak passwords could still be cracked, so if you have reused one it's time to make some changes.
"We take the protection of customer data extremely seriously and have always had a robust security programme in place which we continually reviewed and updated to meet the latest online threats," CeX said in a statement.
"Clearly however, additional measures were required to prevent such a sophisticated breach occurring, and we have therefore employed a cybersecurity specialist to review our processes. Together we have implemented additional advanced measures of security to prevent this from happening again."
Some credit and debit card data was also slurped, but CeX says that's not a problem because the store stopped taking that data in 2009, and so all of the cards have likely expired. CeX says it can't share more details while investigations are continuing.
The data loss came as part of an "online security breach" – its in-store terminals weren't affected. That'll be a relief to those using the stores, since credit card-slurping point-of-sale malware is becoming increasingly common, particularly in the US. ®The November election for governor of Connecticut will be a rematch of 2010’s razor-close contest.
Thomas C. Foley, a Greenwich businessman and a former ambassador to Ireland, handily defeated the State Senate minority leader, John P. McKinney, on Tuesday to win the Republican nomination, according to unofficial results.
Mr. Foley, who captured about 56 percent of the vote to Mr. McKinney’s 44 percent, will take on Dannel P. Malloy, the incumbent Democratic governor, who beat him by about 6,500 votes four years ago.
“Change is on the way; change is coming to Connecticut,” Mr. Foley said, addressing supporters in Waterbury late Tuesday. “Dan Malloy has had his chance, and change is coming.”
“I’m a businessperson,” Mr. Foley said, after ticking off some problems in the state such as high taxes, poorly maintained bridges and underperforming schools. “I know how to fix these problems. I’ve been doing them for 35 years and will represent everyday citizens, not insiders, not special interests.”From The Forward:
Donald Trump and the Fragility of White Jewish Privilege
SCRIBE CONTRIBUTOR
Michael L. Rock
Michael Rock is a writer, researcher, and blogger with a profound interest in domestic and global affairs.
October 20, 2016
The United States has been kind to the Jews. European physical features have helped them become recognized as white in the American racial caste system. The First Amendment’s promise of religious freedom has helped too. However, the whiteness, and in effect the general welfare of American Jewry may soon be a thing of the past, and Donald Trump is partly responsible.
While mostly Ashkenazi American Jews have had white privilege since at least after World War II, they have never experienced some examples of it that other ethnicities have. Jews generally don’t have to fear for their lives in interactions with law enforcement, and media depictions of Jews are generally positive. On the other hand, Italian-Americans don’t go through security checkpoints at their cultural centers out of fear of hate crimes. Irish-Americans aren’t accused of dual loyalties when many, like New York Rep. Peter King, supported Irish Republican Army terrorism against the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest ally, decades after the immigrant generation. Clearly Jews are still more “ethnic” than other white Americans, leaving them more vulnerable to prejudice. …
A future Supreme Court with Trump-appointed justices threatens the American republic. Several American legal scholars have acknowledged that such a court could create a constitutional crisis. It would be natural for Trump to appoint justices with similar authoritarian tendencies. Once he had enough of his own appointees on the court, he could easily use them to interpret the constitution out of existence, dismantling the foundations of the republic and making himself dictator.
As a dictator, one can only imagine what Trump would be willing and able to do to the various ethnic, racial, and religious minorities toward whom he has promoted animosity throughout his campaign. Once he has his way with African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Muslim-Americans, Trump will need to find a new scapegoat to preserve the paranoia his supporters experience which drives them to rally behind him.
If history is any guide, this new scapegoat will be Jewish-Americans. The left-wing political tradition and stances of many American Jews has always played a major role in the anti-Semitism of the American far-right. The latter has a long tradition of holding the former responsible for such social “ills” as ending Jim Crow and supporting immigration policies that are more equitable for non-European immigrants. Considering anti-Semitism is a core tenet of the “alt-right,” which has served as the political and intellectual core of Trump’s base of support, now is the perfect time for American Jews to start questioning their white privilege.
Many American Jews will continue to deny that their whiteness, and in effect their welfare in American society, is at stake as a result of Trumpism. They are deeply naive. Even Trump’s former opponent, Ohio Gov. John Kasich released a campaign ad using Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, “First they came…” to aptly compare Trump’s bigoted brand of authoritarianism to that of the Nazis.
Trump’s rise has proven that American Jews are only white when it benefits white supremacism for them to be seen as such. A Trump presidency would likely eliminate Jewish whiteness completely, causing American anti-Semitism to be perhaps more virulent than ever before. If American Jews want to keep their whiteness, or at least their welfare in the United States, they must do everything in their capacity to help stop or contain Donald Trump and the bigoted ideology he has incubated.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.This is an article similar to a previous one we wrote: Parsing in Java, so the introduction is the same. Skip to chapter 3 if you have already read it.
If you need to parse a language, or document, from Python there are fundamentally three ways to solve the problem:
use an existing library supporting that specific language: for example a library to parse XML
building your own custom parser by hand
a tool or library to generate a parser: for example ANTLR, that you can use to build parsers for any language
Use An Existing Library
The first option is the best for well known and supported languages, like XML or HTML. A good library usually include also API to programmatically build and modify documents in that language. This is typically more of what you get from a basic parser. The problem is that such libraries are not so common and they support only the most common languages. In other cases you are out of luck.
Building Your Own Custom Parser By Hand
You may need to pick the second option if you have particular needs. Both in the sense that the language you need to parse cannot be parsed with traditional parser generators, or you have specific requirements that you cannot satisfy using a typical parser generator. For instance, because you need the best possible performance or a deep integration between different components.
A Tool Or Library To Generate A Parser
In all other cases the third option should be the default one, because is the one that is most flexible and has the shorter development time. That is why on this article we concentrate on the tools and libraries that correspond to this option.
Note: text in blockquote describing a program comes from the respective documentation
We are going to see:
tools that can generate parsers usable from Python (and possibly from other languages)
Python libraries to build parsers
Tools that can be used to generate the code for a parser are called parser generators or compiler compiler. Libraries that create parsers are known as parser combinators.
Parser generators (or parser combinators) are not trivial: you need some time to learn how to use them and not all types of parser generators are suitable for all kinds of languages. That is why we have prepared a list of the best known of them, with a short introduction for each of them. We are also concentrating on one target language: Python. This also means that (usually) the parser itself will be written in Python.
To list all possible tools and libraries parser for all languages would be kind of interesting, but not that useful. That is because there will be simple too many options and we would all get lost in them. By concentrating on one programming language we can provide an apples-to-apples comparison and help you choose one option for your project.
Useful Things To Know About Parsers
To make sure that these list is accessible to all programmers we have prepared a short explanation for terms and concepts that you may encounter searching for a parser. We are not trying to give you formal explanations, but practical ones.
Structure Of A Parser
A parser is usually composed of two parts: a lexer, also known as scanner or tokenizer, and the proper parser. Not all parsers adopt this two-steps schema: some parsers do not depend on a lexer. They are called scannerless parsers.
A lexer and a parser work in sequence: the lexer scans the input and produces the matching tokens, the parser scans the tokens and produces the parsing result.
Let’s look at the following example and imagine that we are trying to parse a mathematical operation.
437 + 734 1 437 + 734
The lexer scans the text and find ‘4’, ‘3’, ‘7’ and then the space ‘ ‘. The job of the lexer is to recognize that the first characters constitute one token of type NUM. Then the lexer finds a ‘+’ symbol, which corresponds to a second token of type PLUS, and lastly it finds another token of type NUM.
The parser will typically combine the tokens produced by the lexer and group them.
The definitions used by lexers or parser are called rules or productions. A lexer rule will specify that a sequence of digits correspond to a token of type NUM, while a parser rule will specify that a sequence of tokens of type NUM, PLUS, NUM corresponds to an expression.
Scannerless parsers are different because they process directly the original text, instead of processing a list of tokens produced by a lexer.
It is now typical to find suites that can generate both a lexer and parser. In the past it was instead more common to combine two different tools: one to produce the lexer and one to produce the parser. This was for example the case of the venerable lex & yacc couple: lex produced the lexer, while yacc produced the parser.
Parse Tree And Abstract Syntax Tree
There are two terms that are related and sometimes they are used interchangeably: parse tree and Abstract SyntaxTree (AST).
Conceptually they are very similar:
they are both trees : there is a root representing the whole piece of code parsed. Then there are smaller subtrees representing portions of code that become smaller until single tokens appear in the tree
: there is a root representing the whole piece of code parsed. Then there are smaller subtrees representing portions of code that become smaller until single tokens appear in the tree the difference is the level of abstraction: the parse tree contains all the tokens which appeared in the program and possibly a set of intermediate rules. The AST instead is a polished version of the parse tree where the information that could be derived or is not important to understand the piece of code is removed
In the AST some information is lost, for instance comments and grouping symbols (parentheses) are not represented. Things like comments are superfluous for a program and grouping symbols are implicitly defined by the structure of the tree.
A parse tree is a representation of the code closer to the concrete syntax. It shows many details of the implementation of the parser. For instance, usually a rule corresponds to the type of a node. A parse tree is usually transformed in an AST by the user, possibly with some help from the parser generator.
A graphical representation of an AST looks like this.
Sometimes you may want to start producing a parse tree and then derive from it an AST. This can make sense because the parse tree is easier to produce for the parser (it is a direct representation of the parsing process) but the AST is simpler and easier to process by the following steps. By following steps we mean all the operations that you may want to perform on the tree: code validation, interpretation, compilation, etc..
Grammar
A grammar is a formal description of a language that can be used to recognize its structure.
In simple terms is a list of rules that define how each construct can be composed. For example, a rule for an if statement could specify that it must starts with the “if” keyword, followed by a left parenthesis, an expression, a right parenthesis and a statement.
A rule could reference other rules or token types. In the example of the if statement, the keyword “if”, the left and the right parenthesis were token types, while expression and statement were references to other rules.
The most used format to describe grammars is the Backus-Naur Form (BNF), which also has many variants, including the Extended Backus-Naur Form. The Extended variant has the advantage of including a simple way to denote repetitions. A typical rule in a Backus-Naur grammar looks like this:
<symbol> ::= __expression__ 1 <symbol> ::= __expression__
The <simbol> is usually nonterminal, which means that it can be replaced by the group of elements on the right, __expression__. The element __expression__ could contains other nonterminal symbols or terminal ones. Terminal symbols are simply the ones that do not appear as a <symbol> anywhere in the grammar. A typical example of a terminal symbol is a string of characters, like “class”.
Left-recursive Rules
In the context of parsers an important feature is the support for left-recursive rules. This means that a rule could start with a reference to itself. This reference could be also indirect.
Consider for example arithmetic operations. An addition could be described as two expression(s) separated by the plus (+) symbol, but an expression could also contain other additions.
addition ::= expression '+' expression multiplication ::= expression '*' expression // an expression could be an addition or a multiplication or a number expression ::= addition | multiplication |// a number 1 2 3 4 addition ::= expression '+' expression multiplication ::= expression '*' expression // an expression could be an addition or a multiplication or a number expression ::= addition | multiplication |// a number
This description also match multiple additions like 5 + 4 + 3. That is because it can be interpreted as expression (5) (‘+’) expression(4+3). And then 4 + 3 itself can be divided in its two components.
The problem is that this kind of rules may not be used with some parser generators. The alternative is a long chain of expressions that takes care also of the precedence of operators.
Some parser generators support direct left-recursive rules, but not indirect one.
Types Of Languages And Grammars
We care mostly about two types of languages that can be parsed with a parser generator: regular languages and context-free languages. We could give you the formal definition according to the Chomsky hierarchy of languages, but it would not be that useful. Let’s look at some practical aspects instead.
A regular language can be defined by a series of regular expressions, while a context-free one need something more. A simple rule of thumb is that if a grammar of a language has recursive elements it is not a regular language. For instance, as we said elsewhere, HTML is not a regular language. In fact, most programming languages are context-free languages.
Usually to a kind of language correspond the same kind of grammar. That is to say there are regular grammars and context-free grammars that corresponds respectively to regular and context-free languages. But to complicate matters, there is a relatively new (created in 2004) kind of grammar, called Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG). These grammars are as powerful as Context-free grammars, but according to their authors they describe programming languages more naturally.
The Differences Between PEG and CFG
The main difference between PEG and CFG is that the ordering of choices is meaningful in PEG, but not in CFG. If there are many possible valid ways to parse an input, a CFG will be ambiguous and thus wrong. Instead with PEG the first applicable choice will be chosen, and this automatically solve some ambiguities.
Another difference is that PEG use scannerless parsers: they do not need a separate lexer, or lexical analysis phase.
Traditionally both PEG and some CFG have been unable to deal with left-recursive rules, but some tools have found workarounds for this. Either by modifying the basic parsing algorithm, or by having the tool automatically rewrite a left-recursive rule in a non recursive way. Either of these ways has downsides: either by making the generated parser less intelligible or by worsen its performance. However, in practical terms, the advantages of easier and quicker development outweigh the drawbacks.
If you want to know more about the theory of parsing, you should read A Guide to Parsing: Algorithms and Terminology.
Parser Generators
The basic workflow of a parser generator tool is quite simple: you write a grammar that defines the language, or document, and you run the tool to generate a parser usable from your Python code.
The parser might produce the AST, that you may have to traverse yourself or you can traverse with additional ready-to-use classes, such Listeners or Visitors. Some tools instead offer the chance to embed code inside the grammar to be executed every time the specific rule is matched.
Usually you need a runtime library and/or program to use the generated parser.
Context Free
Let’s see the tools that generate Context Free parsers.
ANTLR
ANTLR is a great parser generator written in Java that can also generate parsers for Python and many other languages. There is also a beta version for TypeScript from the same guy that |
United States with Social Distortion in 2009, was scheduled to tour South America with them in April 2010, and had been in the studio recording their seventh studio album.[21] On March 8, 2010, due to scheduling conflicts with Angels & Airwaves, Willard announced he was no longer in Social Distortion.[22] He was replaced by Fu Manchu drummer Scott Reeder for their South American tour.[23]
2011: theHELL [ edit ]
In February 2011 Willard joined Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio for a side project called theHELL.[24] Their debut EP, Sauves les Requines, was released in January 2012.
2011–2013: Danko Jones [ edit ]
In June 2011 he became the permanent drummer for Canadian group Danko Jones.[25] As of July 2013 he is no longer in Danko Jones
2013–present: Against Me! [ edit ]
Willard filled in with Against Me! for the band's 2013 Australian tour dates.[26] On July 31, 2013, Willard officially announced on his Twitter page that he was the full-time drummer for Against Me!, led by Laura Jane Grace[27] In 2018, he also became a member of Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers.[28]
Musical equipment [ edit ]
When performing with Angels and Airwaves his drum kit consists of two snare drums (6.5"x14" and 7"x12"), two tom-toms (6"x6" and 8"x12"), two floor toms (14"x16" and 16"x18"), and a bass drum (18"x26"). For cymbals he uses Zildjian K custom session hi-hats (14"), an A custom EFX crash cymbal (20"), one A custom projection crashe (20"), a K custom ride cymbal (22"), and a K custom medium ride cymbal (20"). Since 2010, Atom is an official Drum Workshop endorser, both for hardware and drums.[29][30]
Discography [ edit ]
This section lists albums and EPs on which Willard has performed. For complete listings of releases by each act, see their individual articles.
Videography [ edit ]
Music video appearances [ edit ]The report by the Bundestag Scientific Office, a team of non-partisan legal experts, stated that it is the role of the Bundestag (German parliament) to decide on all matters of essential relevance to the state.
In the document, the main findings of which were published by Die Welt on Friday, the experts do not explicitly say that the decision made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on September 4th 2015 to take in tens of thousands of refugees was a decision “of essential relevance to the state.”
Instead they refer to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court on refugees reuniting with their families in Germany. The ruling stated that “parliament is obliged to decide on whether, and to what extent, the proportion of non-Germans in the population will be altered by the arrival of foreigners inside the country.”
Die Welt states that the implication is that the parliament should indeed have voted on whether Germany opened its borders, as the decision led to a change in the proportion of non-Germans to Germans in the country.
Merkel made the decision to take in several thousand refugees who were stranded in Hungary on September 4th 2015 after conversations with only the most senior members of her cabinet.
To this day, the government has not explained the legal grounds upon which it took the decision.
Even after September 4th, as tens of thousands of asylum seekers entered the country on a daily basis for a period of several months, parliament never voted on the policy of allowing them to enter the country.
German law states that refugees do not have a right to apply for asylum in Germany if they have entered the country through another signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The Bundestag legal experts state that, according to German law, refugees should have been turned away at the Austrian border. Exceptions to this rule can be made when the Interior Ministry issues an order to allow people to enter the country, but this order was never made.
Both the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the pro-business FDP parties say they want to establish a commission to look into the Chancellor's border policies if they are voted into the next Bundestag.
Die Linke (the Left party) also responded critically to the report.
“It was right to help those people,” Die Linke MP Sevim Dagdelen told Die Welt. But she added that Merkel and her vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel had carried out the policy in such a way that they strengthened the far right.
“Unfortunately they never brought the Bundestag or neighbouring countries into the decision- making process.”
SEE ALSO: 10 things to know about refugees and asylum in GermanyGet the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Teenage girl gangs armed with knives have been roaming the streets of North Belfast, police have said.
Emergency response officers were sent to the Antrim Road area last night after reports to police from frightened residents.
No arrests were made and no injuries reported.
It was the latest incident involving young people in the north of the city with police urging parents to do more before somebody is killed.
A senior PSNI officer said: "Police responding to reports of large groups of young females in area carrying offensive weapons including knives in area of Antrim Road and waterworks.
"This is a serious matter and could lead to death or serious injury. How many warnings will it take to stop this behaviour?"
Parents told of their horror at the ongoing problems.
One said: "Disgraceful they will end up killing someone and ruining the life of the person's family not to mention their own family and they will say I didn't mean to kill them well.
"Unfortunately that's what happens when you choose to carry a knife, silly wee girls."
Another said: "My eldest daughter is coming eight and this frightens the life out of me, not because she will be involved in this sort of thing but because she will probably come up against it.
"It's so scary. I want to protect her so much but I know I can't. It's a horrible world we live in."
Earlier this month police sent letters to the parents of 30 teenagers in North Belfast about their children's bad behaviour over Easter.
Officers in the Ardoyne and Oldpark area have dealt with an increased reports of anti-social behaviour in recent months with a huge surge in crowds of young youths gathering and terrorising residents.
In particular officers have expressed concern about young girls they have had to help who were so drunk they could barely walk.
The PSNI in North Belfast said there were ongoing problems with teens gathering in the Bone Hill on the Oldpark Road which has lead to numerous fights and vandalism to the cars and property of residents.AT LAST. By Edward St. Aubyn. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) The final and most meditative of St. Aubyn’s brilliant Patrick Melrose novels is full of precise observations and glistening turns of phrase.
BEAUTIFUL RUINS. By Jess Walter. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.) Walter’s witty sixth novel, set largely in Hollywood, reveals an American landscape of vice, addiction, loss and disappointed hopes.
BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK. By Ben Fountain. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99.) The survivors of a fierce firefight in Iraq are whisked stateside for a brief victory tour in this satirical novel.
BLASPHEMY. By Sherman Alexie. (Grove, $27.) The best stories in Alexie’s collection of new and selected works are moving and funny, bringing together the embittered critic and the yearning dreamer.
THE BOOK OF MISCHIEF: New and Selected Stories. By Steve Stern. (Graywolf, $26.) Jewish immigrant lives observed with effusive nostalgia.
BRING UP THE BODIES. By Hilary Mantel. (Macrae/Holt, $28.) Mantel’s sequel to “Wolf Hall” traces the fall of Anne Boleyn, and makes the familiar story fascinating and suspenseful again.
BUILDING STORIES. By Chris Ware. (Pantheon, $50.) A big, sturdy box containing hard-bound volumes, pamphlets and a tabloid houses Ware’s demanding, melancholy and magnificent graphic novel about the inhabitants of a Chicago building.
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BY BLOOD. By Ellen Ullman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) This smart, slippery novel is a narrative striptease, as a professor listens in on the sessions between the therapist next door and her patients.
CANADA. By Richard Ford. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $27.99.) A boy whose parents rob a bank in North Dakota in 1960 takes refuge across the border in this mesmerizing novel, driven by fully realized characters and an accomplished prose style.
CARRY THE ONE. By Carol Anshaw. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) Anshaw pays close attention to the lives of a group of friends bound together by a fatal accident in this wry, humane novel, her fourth.
CITY OF BOHANE. By Kevin Barry. (Graywolf, $25.) Somewhere in Ireland in 2053, people are haunted by a “lost time,” when something calamitous happened, and hope to reclaim the past. Barry’s extraordinary, exuberant first novel is full of inventive language.
COLLECTED POEMS. By Jack Gilbert. (Knopf, $35.) In orderly free verse constructions, Gilbert deals plainly with grief, love, marriage, betrayal and lust.
DEAR LIFE: Stories. By Alice Munro. (Knopf, $26.95.) This volume offers further proof of Munro’s mastery, and shows her striking out in the direction of a new, late style that sums up her whole career.
THE DEVIL IN SILVER. By Victor LaValle. (Spiegel & Grau, $27.) LaValle’s culturally observant third novel is set in a shabby urban mental hospital.
ENCHANTMENTS. By Kathryn Harrison. (Random House, $27.) Harrison’s splendid and surprising novel of late imperial Russia centers on Rasputin’s daughter Masha and the hemophiliac czarevitch Alyosha.
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FLIGHT BEHAVIOR. By Barbara Kingsolver. (Harper/HarperCollins, $28.99.) An Appalachian woman becomes involved in an effort to save monarch butterflies in this brave and majestic novel.
FOBBIT. By David Abrams. (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $15.) Clerks, cooks and lawyers at a forward operating base in Iraq populate this first novel.
THE FORGETTING TREE. By Tatjana Soli. (St. Martin’s, $25.99.) In Soli’s haunting second novel, a mysterious Caribbean woman cares for a cancer patient on an isolated California ranch.
GATHERING OF WATERS. By Bernice L. McFadden. (Akashic, $24.95.) Three generations of black women confront floods and murder in Mississippi.
GODS WITHOUT MEN. By Hari Kunzru. (Knopf, $26.95.) Related stories, spanning centuries and continents, and all tethered to a desert rock formation, emphasize interconnectivity across time and space in Kunzru’s relentlessly modern fourth novel.
HHhH. By Laurent Binet. Translated by Sam Taylor. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) This gripping novel examines both the killing of an SS general in Prague in 1942 and Binet’s experience in writing about it.
A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING. By Dave Eggers. (McSweeney’s, $25.) Eggers’s novel is a haunting and supremely readable parable of America in the global economy, a nostalgic lament for a time when life had stakes and people worked with their hands.
HOME. By Toni Morrison. (Knopf, $24.) A black Korean War veteran, discharged from an integrated Army into a segregated homeland, makes a reluctant journey back to Georgia in a novel engaged with themes that have long haunted Morrison.
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HOPE: A TRAGEDY. By Shalom Auslander. (Riverhead, $26.95.) Hilarity alternates with pain in this novel about a Jewish man seeking peace in upstate New York who discovers Anne Frank in his attic.
HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE? By Sheila Heti. (Holt, $25.) The narrator (also named Sheila) and her friends try to answer the question in this novel’s title.
IN ONE PERSON. By John Irving. (Simon & Schuster, $28.) Irving’s funny, risky new novel about an aspiring writer struggling with his sexuality examines what happens when we face our desires honestly.
A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME. By Wiley Cash. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $24.99.) An evil pastor dominates Cash’s mesmerizing first novel.
MARRIED LOVE: And Other Stories. By Tessa Hadley. (Harper Perennial, paper, $14.99.) Hadley’s understatedly beautiful collection is filled with exquisitely calibrated gradations and expressions of class.
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NW. By Zadie Smith. (Penguin Press, $26.95.) The lives of two friends who grew up in a northwest London housing project diverge, illuminating questions of race, class, sexual identity and personal choice, in Smith’s energetic modernist novel.
ON THE SPECTRUM OF POSSIBLE DEATHS. By Lucia Perillo. (Copper Canyon, $22.) Taut, lucid poems filled with complex emotional reflection.
PURE. By Julianna Baggott. (Grand Central, $25.99.) Children battle for the planet’s redemption in this precisely written postapocalyptic adventure story.
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THE RIGHT-HAND SHORE. By Christopher Tilghman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) A dark, magisterial novel set on a Chesapeake Bay estate.
THE ROUND HOUSE. By Louise Erdrich. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) In this novel, an American Indian family faces the ramifications of a vicious crime.
SALVAGE THE BONES. By Jesmyn Ward. (Bloomsbury, $24.) A pregnant 15-year-old and her family await Hurricane Katrina in this lushly written novel.
SAN MIGUEL. By T. Coraghessan Boyle. (Viking, $27.95.) Two utopians from different eras establish private idylls on California’s desolate Channel Islands; this novel preserves their tantalizing dreams.
SHINE SHINE SHINE. By Lydia Netzer. (St. Martin’s, $24.99.) This thought-provoking debut novel presents a geeky astronaut and his pregnant wife.
SHOUT HER LOVELY NAME. By Natalie Serber. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24.) The stories in Serber’s first collection are smart and nuanced.
SILENT HOUSE. By Orhan Pamuk. Translated by Robert Finn. (Knopf, $26.95.) A family is a microcosm of a country on the verge of a coup in this intense, foreboding novel, first published in Turkey in 1983.
THE STARBOARD SEA. By Amber Dermont. (St. Martin’s, $24.99.) Dermont’s captivating debut novel, whose narrator is a boarding school student and a sailor, takes pleasure in the sea and in the exhilarating freedom of being young.
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SWEET TOOTH. By Ian McEwan. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.95.) The true subject of this smart and tricky novel, set inside a cold war espionage operation, is the border between make-believe and reality.
SWIMMING HOME. By Deborah Levy. (Bloomsbury, paper, $14.) In this spare, disturbing and frequently funny novel, a troubled young woman tests the marriages of two couples.
TELEGRAPH AVENUE. By Michael Chabon. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Chabon’s rich comic novel about fathers and sons in Berkeley and Oakland, Calif., juggles multiple plots and mounds of pop culture references in astonishing prose.
THE TESTAMENT OF MARY. By Colm Toibin. (Scribner, $19.99.) This beautiful work takes power from the surprises of its language and its almost shocking characterization of Mary, mother of Jesus.
THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER. By Junot Díaz. (Riverhead, $26.95.) The stories in this collection are about love, but they’re also about the undertow of family history and cultural mores, presented in Díaz’s exciting, irresistible and entertaining prose.
THREE STRONG WOMEN. By Marie NDiaye. Translated by John Fletcher. (Knopf, $25.95.) In loosely linked narratives, three women from Senegal struggle with fathers and husbands in France. This subtle, hypnotic novel won the Prix Goncourt in 2009.
TOBY’S ROOM. By Pat Barker. (Doubleday, $25.95.) This novel, a sequel to “Life Class,” delves further into the lives of an English family torn apart by World War I.
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WATERGATE. By Thomas Mallon. (Pantheon, $26.95.) This novelistic reimagining of the “third-rate burglary” proposes surprising motives for the break-in and the 18-minute gap, and has a sympathetic Nixon.
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK: Stories. By Nathan Englander. (Knopf, $24.95.) Englander tackles large questions of morality and history in a masterly collection that manages to be both insightful and uproarious.
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THE YELLOW BIRDS. By Kevin Powers. (Little, Brown, $24.99.) A young private and his platoon struggle through the war in Iraq but find no peace at home in this powerful and moving first novel about the frailty of man and the brutality of war.
NONFICTION
ALL WE KNOW: Three Lives. By Lisa Cohen. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) The vanished world of midcentury upper-class lesbians is portrayed as beguiling, its inhabitants members of a stylish club.
AMERICAN TAPESTRY: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama. By Rachel L. Swarns. (Amistad/HarperCollins, $27.99.) A Times reporter’s deeply researched chronicle of several generations of Mrs. Obama’s family.
AMERICAN TRIUMVIRATE: Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and the Modern Age of Golf. By James Dodson. (Knopf, $28.95.) The author evokes an era when the game was more vivid and less corporate than it seems now.
ARE YOU MY MOTHER? A Comic Drama. By Alison Bechdel. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22.) Bechdel’s engaging, original graphic memoir explores her troubled relationship with her distant mother.
BARACK OBAMA: The Story. By David Maraniss. (Simon & Schuster, $32.50.) This huge and absorbing new biography, full of previously unexplored detail, shows that Obama’s saga is more surprising and gripping than the version we’re familiar with.
BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. By Katherine Boo. (Random House, $27.) This extraordinary moral inquiry into life in an Indian slum shows the human costs exacted by a brutal social Darwinism.
BELZONI: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate. By Ivor Noël Hume. (University of Virginia, $34.95.) The fascinating tale of the 19th-century Italian monk, a “notorious tomb robber,” who gathered archaeological treasures in Egypt while crunching bones underfoot.
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THE BLACK COUNT: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo. By Tom Reiss. (Crown, $27.) The first Alexandre Dumas, a mixed-race general of the French Revolution, is the subject of this imaginative biography.
BREASTS: A Natural and Unnatural History. By Florence Williams. (Norton, $25.95.) Williams’s environmental call to arms deplores chemicals in breast milk and the vogue for silicone implants.
COMING APART: The State of White America, 1960-2010. By Charles Murray. (Crown Forum, $27.) The author of “The Bell Curve” warns that the white working class has abandoned the “founding virtues.”
DARWIN’S GHOSTS: The Secret History of Evolution. By Rebecca Stott. (Spiegel & Grau, $27.) Stott’s lively, original history of evolutionary ideas flows easily across continents and centuries.
A DISPOSITION TO BE RICH: How a Small-Town Preacher’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States. By Geoffrey C. Ward. (Knopf, $28.95.) The author’s ancestor was the bane of Ulysses S. Grant.
FAR FROM THE TREE: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. By Andrew Solomon. (Scribner, $37.50.) This passionate and affecting work about what it means to be a parent is based on interviews with families of “exceptional” children.
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FLAGRANT CONDUCT. The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans. By Dale Carpenter. (Norton, $29.95.) Carpenter stirringly describes the 2003 Supreme Court decision that overturned the Texas sodomy law.
THE FOLLY OF FOOLS: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. By Robert Trivers. (Basic Books, $28.) An intriguing argument that deceit is a beneficial evolutionary “deep feature” of life.
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THE GREY ALBUM: On the Blackness of Blackness. By Kevin Young. (Graywolf, paper, $25.) A poet’s lively account of the central place of the trickster figure in black American culture could have been called “How Blacks Invented America.”
HAITI: The Aftershocks of History. By Laurent Dubois. (Metropolitan/Holt, $32.) Foreign meddling, the lack of a democratic tradition, a humiliating American occupation and cold-war support of a brutal dictator all figure in a scholar’s well-written analysis.
HOW CHILDREN SUCCEED: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. By Paul Tough. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27.) Noncognitive skills like persistence and self-control are more crucial to success than sheer brainpower, Tough maintains.
HOW MUSIC WORKS. By David Byrne. (McSweeney’s, $32.) This guidebook also explores the eccentric rock star’s personal and professional experience.
IRON CURTAIN: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. By Anne Applebaum. (Doubleday, $35.) An overwhelming and convincing account of the Soviet push to colonize Eastern Europe after World War II.
KAYAK MORNING: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats. By Roger Rosenblatt. (Ecco/HarperCollins, paper, $13.99.) This thoughtful meditation on the evolution of grief over time asks the big questions.
LINCOLN’S CODE: The Laws of War in American History. By John Fabian Witt. (Free Press, $32.) A tension between humanitarianism and righteousness has shaped America’s rules of warfare.
LITTLE AMERICA: The War Within the War for Afghanistan. By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. (Knopf, $27.95.) A beautifully written and deeply reported account of America’s troubled involvement in Afghanistan.
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MEMOIR OF A DEBULKED WOMAN: Enduring Ovarian Cancer. By Susan Gubar. (Norton, $24.95.) A feminist scholar recounts her experience and criticizes the medical treatment of a frightening disease in a voice that is straightforward and incredibly brave.
MY POETS. By Maureen N. McLane. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Part memoir and part criticism, this friendly book includes essays on poets canonical and contemporary, as well as lineated poem-games.
THE OBAMAS. By Jodi Kantor. (Little, Brown, $29.99.) Michelle Obama sets the tone and tempo of the current White House, Kantor argues in this admiring account, full of colorful insider anecdotes.
ODDLY NORMAL: One Family’s Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms With His Sexuality. By John Schwartz. (Gotham, $26.) A Times reporter’s deeply affecting account of his son’s coming out also reviews research on the experience of LGBT kids.
ON A FARTHER SHORE: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson. By William Souder. (Crown, $30.) An absorbing biography of the pioneering environmental writer on the 50th anniversary of “Silent Spring.”
ON SAUDI ARABIA: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future. By Karen Elliott House. (Knopf, $28.95.) A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist unveils this inscrutable country, comparing its calcified regime to the Soviet Union in its final days.
THE ONE: The Life and Music of James Brown. By RJ Smith. (Gotham, $27.50.) Smith argues that Brown was the most significant modern American musician in terms of style, messaging, rhythm and originality.
THE PASSAGE OF POWER: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. By Robert A. Caro. (Knopf, $35.) The fourth volume of Caro’s magisterial work spans the five years that end shortly after Kennedy’s assassination, as Johnson prepares to push for a civil rights act.
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THE PATRIARCH: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. By David Nasaw. (Penguin Press, $40.) This riveting history captures the sweep of Kennedy’s life — as Wall Street speculator, moviemaker, ambassador and dynastic founder.
PEOPLE WHO EAT DARKNESS: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo — and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up. By Richard Lloyd Parry. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, paper, $16.) An evenhanded investigation of a murder.
RED BRICK, BLACK MOUNTAIN, WHITE CLAY: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival. By Christopher Benfey. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) Mixing memoir, family saga, travelogue and cultural history.
RULE AND RUIN. The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party: From Eisenhower to the Tea Party. By Geoffrey Kabaservice. (Oxford University, $29.95.) Pragmatic Republicanism was hardier than we remember, Kabaservice argues.
SAUL STEINBERG: A Biography. By Deirdre Bair. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $40.) A gripping and revelatory biography of the eminent cartoonist.
SHOOTING VICTORIA: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy. By Paul Thomas Murphy. (Pegasus, $35.) An uninhibited and learned account of the attempts on the life of Queen Victoria, which only increased her popularity.
SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. By Timothy Egan. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28.) A deft portrait of the man who made memorable photographs of American Indians.
THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH. By Edward O. Wilson. (Norton, $27.95.) The evolutionary biologist explores the strange kinship between humans and some insects.
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SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID: Memoirs of an Outsider. By Zakes Mda. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35.) The South African novelist and playwright absorbingly illuminates his wide, worldly life.
SPILLOVER: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. By David Quammen. (Norton, $28.95.) Quammen’s meaty, sprawling book chronicles his globe-trotting scientific adventures and warns against animal microbes spilling over into people.
THE TASTE OF WAR: World War II and the Battle for Food. By Lizzie Collingham. (Penguin Press, $36.) Collingham argues that food needs contributed to the war’s origins, strategy, outcome and aftermath.
THOMAS JEFFERSON: The Art of Power. By Jon Meacham. (Random House, $35.) This readable and well-researched life celebrates Jefferson’s skills as a practical politician, unafraid to wield power even when it conflicted with his small-government views.
VICTORY: The Triumphant Gay Revolution. By Linda Hirshman. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Written with knowing finesse, this expansive history of gay rights from the early 20th century to the present draws on archives and interviews.
WHEN GOD TALKS BACK: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God. By T. M. Luhrmann. (Knopf, $28.95.) Evangelicals believe that God speaks to them personally because they hone the skill of prayer, this insightful study argues.
WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL? By Jeanette Winterson. (Grove, $25.) Winterson’s unconventional and winning memoir wrings humor from adversity as it describes her upbringing by a wildly deranged mother.
WHY DOES THE WORLD EXIST? An Existential Detective Story. By Jim Holt. (Liveright/Norton, $27.95.) An elegant and witty writer converses with philosophers and cosmologists who ponder why there is something rather than nothing.Losing My Anti-Racism
by R.L. Stephens II on February 10, 2016
The Box
It was my junior year at Carleton College in Minnesota. I had just returned from four months studying in Bolivia. My identity was in flux as I tried to integrate my changing worldview after experiencing political struggle at a level far more advanced than anything I’d seen stateside. My first week in the country the rightwing attempted a coup that killed nearly thirty people, resulting in the president declaring a state of emergency. At one point during my research project, an interview subject showed me a cache of homemade dynamite he claimed to have stolen from Cuban radicals in the neighborhood. I had to decide whether he was lying or if I should break my research ethics and tell everyone he was a snitch. What a time to be alive.
Throughout Bolivia, I lived places where they had never even heard the word nigger before. I was in a country where people in the street would pinch each other upon seeing me because Black people were thought to bring good luck. I didn’t have to worry about strangers expecting the worst of me. It was the most free I’d ever felt. Obviously, once I returned, I hardly felt comfortable back among the first-world comforts of campus life in a town known for “Cows and Contentment.” Then, I got the box.
My school placed me in temporary housing as a result of overcrowding and my room’s door didn’t lock. Within a couple days of being on campus, someone snuck into my room and stole a few of my personal things. Then, days later, the burglars sent me a box filled with my stuff as well as a number of seemingly random items. Among the random trinkets was a novel from the school library about a Black lawyer lynched by a white mob in the middle of the street for not knowing his proper place. It was well known that I wanted to be a lawyer, so the book’s message combined with the the break-in obviously felt racially menacing.
Carleton had the trappings of an inclusive liberal college space. The school had a commitment to diversity, with student support centers for race, international students, and gender/sexuality. We also had anti-discrimination and sexual assault policies in the student conduct handbook, which were recently updated after a campus climate survey. Nonetheless, I still felt incredibly alienated and powerless.
The months lingered and no one came forward. I had no one to lash out against. My anger turned inward. I started drinking more, the type of blackout drunk where the next day your friends have to tell you to whom you owe apologies because you can’t quite remember who carried you back to your room the night before.
The months continued to tumble along. Junior year turned to senior year and there was still no resolution. With about two months left in college, someone finally admitted to being behind the harassment–two Black girls. One apologized to me privately. Then, she wrote a letter–anonymously–in the school paper. The other didn’t feel she did anything wrong. The revelation certainly didn’t make the situation any less racist in my eyes, but it definitely added a whole new layer of betrayal.
The deans spoke to the students, following the spirit, if not the letter, of the school’s anti-discrimination policy. I’m unaware of any disciplinary actions that resulted, but in hindsight, what punitive measures would I have wanted? Did I want them expelled? Did I want their actions to follow them for the rest of their lives? Did I want them hurt in some way? In the end, we simply graduated and never spoke again.
Clearly, this situation had an impact on me psychologically. But truthfully, writing to you at this moment is the first time I’ve thought about it in years. Once I left college, the nature of racism’s impact on my life changed. Racism is no longer just about hurt feelings. No matter how many slurs I was called or times I felt alienated in white schools, I still ate each day and had somewhere to live. Up to that point, a hearty fuck you was the way out of much of the racial hostility I faced. In life beyond school, personal courage and strength are no match for pervasive systemic racism that threatens my very physical existence.
The Basement
In spring 2014, five years after the box, I was working a dead-end job at a boutique grocery in DC. The owners were two white women who met in the Peace Corps in West Africa. They were that type of liberal white women, and I imagine they’re super excited about Hillary Clinton right about now. Every employee was hired on a two week probationary period. They assured me that it was just a formality and everyone was always hired once the two weeks passed.
One of the owners was a mother who had an immigrant Latina nanny, a fact made all the more odious by the store’s role in gentrifying the surrounding Latino neighborhood. Cops were a fixture on the block just outside the door; that’s how you knew the neighborhood clearout was serious. I was the only Black employee, and usually the only Black person to even enter the lily white store. “Are the cows grass fed?” white liberals often asked as they perused the beef section. “Yes,” I responded, stomach growling. I could barely afford to feed myself on my $10 an hour wage.
My first day working, the boss ushered me to the basement. She told me to take money from the cash register to the bank across the street. Before handing me the bills, she looked me in the eye with a strained expression and said “NOW, DON’T RUN OFF WITH THIS.” She didn’t yell, but with her expression and tone, the gravity of the situation was frighteningly apparent to me. I smiled and nodded, like a fucking Sambo, because I had just lost my housing and I needed this $10 an hour job. She repeated, “DON’T RUN OFF WITH THIS, YOU WOULDN’T GET VERY FAR.” My first day, and she already suspected me of being a thief. Immediately, I knew I was in trouble.
Unlike college, there was no diversity office I could visit, and no dean of students I could call. It was just me, alone in that basement of that lily white store in that gentrifying neighborhood with this liberal white woman who had all the power while I had none. One day, the register was short and from the look in her eye, I knew she thought I stole. The tension mounted. What was I to do? I couldn’t call out her micro-aggressions. I was a lone Black worker and she was the white boss, no conversation about race would change the dynamic. When the two weeks was up, the boss again told me to meet her in the basement. I was fired. I was the only person to ever not be hired after the probationary period. I had nowhere to live, no way to feed myself, and no job to dig my way out.
Racism, I discovered, was more like that basement than that box. It was a polite termination. It was quiet. I was quiet. What could I say? In any other situation, telling off with some racist liberal white woman came as easy as breathing. But this wasn’t just any racist liberal white woman, this was a boss at my dead-end low-wage job. How could I check her privilege?
As she told me I was out of a job, it felt like a body blow. I lost my balance. I felt ashamed. I felt humiliated. I lost my confidence and sense of pride. I felt new depths of |
construction for the headquarters, as well as posting 50,000 jobs.
READ MORE: Amazon looks for a new city for second HQ
“There’s a lot of fear mongering out there around about what this will mean, 50,000 workers won’t show up at once, we’re talking about small additions of incremental job opportunities over the next 15 to 20 years,” said Elbe.
Ontario and Manitoba have also thrown their hats in the ring in an attempt to lure the Seattle-based online company to Toronto and Winnipeg.Darwin was not even a board-certified perfusionist, never mind a surgeon. The only medical training he had ever had was as a dialysis machine technician. Alcor's retired surgeon, Jose, was listed on the front page of the OR log as "Surgeon," yet the only mention of Jose in Erico's notes is that he was called in once when Darwin had a problem - and regarding that one instance, Erico wrote, "it seemed to me Jose didn't complete his job." Reading the OR log notes, it was Darwin who obviously performed the surgery, assisted by Hugh Hixon, who also had no medical training or certification for this type of procedure. It wasn't Jose who called out for a carving knife on two occasions, it was Darwin. Erico's notes are full of other references to Darwin sawing, cutting, and complaining. So the question is: Why was Jose listed as the surgeon on the front page of the OR log? Was it to mislead the family or anyone else reading the OR log into thinking, at a glance, that qualified medical personnel had performed the surgery?Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said, “the Democratic Party has not been in this bad shape since the 1920’s.”
Reich said, “Right now, there is a disconnect, George, between a rather sclerotic Democratic apparatus which is in complete disarray. I mean the Democratic Party has not been in this bad shape since the 1920’s and a huge uprising at the grassroots, mostly against Trump. How can Tom Perez, can he actually utilize that, turn the Democratic Party from a vast fund-raising machine into a movement?”
“Hasn’t been done before very easily. you remember in the Vietnam war days, we had a huge uprising. but the Democratic Party had nothing to do with that. The thing that worries me most of all, if you look at the problems inside the Democratic Party, they have a lot to do with the same sort of populist uprising we’re seeing across the country, including the Donald Trump campaign.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNENThe United States government, at this moment, is aligned with many fascists and neo-Nazis.
In Ukraine, a swastika-wearing gang called “the Right Sector” was the primary force in the campaign of street violence and terror that brought down the elected government. The “Right Sector” is just one of a number of Ukrainian ultra-nationalist groups that openly admires Hitler. Various figures in the Kiev-based regime, backed by the United States as it threatens Russia, have openly praised Adolph Hitler. The Kiev regime is dependent on these crazed anti-Russian fanatics as it wages a war against its own population in the East.
In Syria, the US has aligned itself with Takfiri extremists. These are armed Islamic groups that call for the extermination of those who hold unacceptable religious beliefs. The Takfiris are known to torture, recruit child soldiers, and commit other heinous crimes against humanity. They are known to summarily execute people by means of beheading for nothing other than their religion or ethnicity. The US government and its allies have funded these forces in the hopes of toppling the Syrian Arab Republic.
In Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and other Bolivarian countries, the US-backed “opposition” contains many who admire fascist dictators Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet. The anti-Bolivarian minority in Latin America openly talks of a campaign of terrorist violence to overthrow the elected, pro-socialist governments. Venezuelan official Robert Serra was already assassinated by these extremists, and their campaign of violence is likely to escalate as these popular anti-capitalist governments solidify themselves.
Even within the US borders there has been a revival of fascist and Neo-nazi sentiment. The Ku Klux Klan revealed itself on the streets of Ferguson, threatening those who dared protest the killing of Michael Brown. Anti-immigrant groups in Arizona and New Mexico often display swastikas and advocate what they call “racial purity” in the United States. Anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio has proudly taken photographs with white nationalists, and figures aligned with white supremacist groups hold public office in some parts of the southwest.
How can any of this be morally justified? The crimes of Nazis and fascists are well known and well documented, and horrify anyone with a basic sense of human morality. In addition, so much of the national identity of people in the US for the last seven decades has been based on concepts like “freedom” and “democracy.” To be aligned with forces who call for fascist dictatorship and racial slaughter is antithetical to the propaganda about “the American way of life.”
In order to justify the current policies of the United States government, both domestically and internationally, a campaign of historical revisionism is being waged. Writers like Timothy Snyder and Roger Moorhouse are being widely promoted throughout US media. Timothy Snyder is treated as an “expert” on Ukraine and gives interviews on the subject on almost every TV network. Snyder’s book Bloodlands is widely circulated, reviewed and promoted. More recently, Moorhouse’s book The Devil’s Alliance has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and other prominent publications.
These texts are not about current events in Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria, or Arizona. Rather these texts speak only of events that took place in the 1930s and 40s. However, these historical texts are being widely circulated because they serve to justify the current actions of the rulers of the United States.
The message of these books is simple: “Soviet communism and German Nazism were morally equivalent.” If this historical falsehood can be established, continued US support for fascism can be rendered far less immoral.
One primary talking point of these historical revisionists is that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were at one point “allies.” This is the message of Moorhouse’s The Devil’s Alliance and is stated in Snyder’s Bloodlands.
This is absolutely false. The Soviet Union and the German Nazi state were never allies. At no point did the two governments ever express mutual admiration for each other. The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact did not constitute an alliance. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were antagonistic societies, based on principles that were absolutely contrary to each other. The two societies not only never aligned, but could not peacefully coexist.
Anti-Sovietism: The Foundation of Nazism
What separates fascism from other forms of western capitalism, and even from other autocratic police states, is its obsession with ideology. While police states and military regimes will repress and slaughter for purely pragmatic reasons, fascism is unique in its ideological approach. Fascism is not identified by mere repression, but by the building of a mass movement that carries out extreme acts of extrajudicial violence. Fascist states are dependent on a mass base of bloodthirsty fanatics, who willingly carry out its operations.
The entire ideological foundation on which the Nazi State, led by Adolph Hitler, based itself was anti-communism and anti-Sovietism. The National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) was founded in the 1920s, when the Social-Democratic Party and the Communist Party were largely influential in German society. Hitler proclaimed that “decades of Marxism have ruined Germany. Bolshevism would destroy her. The fairest territories of the earth would be reduced to smoking heaps of ruin.”
Hitler’s book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is considered to be the sacred text of German Nazism. The book is partly an autobiography of Hitler, and partly a document laying out the principles and beliefs of the Nazi movement. In the text, Hitler blames the defeat of Germany in the First World War on the influence of Marxism in German society. He goes on to proclaim Marxism to be a Jewish conspiracy. From there, the pages of Mein Kampf argue that the reason Marxism and “Bolshevism” had never been defeated by previous German governments was due to the lack of a strongly anti-communist ideology. Hitler presents Nazism as an ideology with which to rally the German people, so they can defeat the “menace of Bolshevism” and restore Germany to its previous greatness.
Both before and after taking power, Hitler numerous times stated that the official goal of Nazism was to “rid the world of Bolshevism.” In 1933, one of the first acts of Germany’s new chancellor was to fly to Vatican City in Rome. At the Vatican, Hitler asked the Pope to call for a holy crusade and order Catholics from around the world to attack the Soviet Union.
The extreme suppression of civil liberties in the aftermath of Hitler’s seizure of power was allegedly done in response to the burning of the German Parliament building, the Reichstag. Hitler blamed this act on the German Communist Party, claiming they had done it on orders from the Soviet Union. Communist leaders Georgi Dimitrov and Ernst Thalmann were arrested, and the Nazi state went to great lengths of falsely convincing the German public that the parliament building had been destroyed by Soviet-inspired conspiracy.
The entire foundation of Nazism was anti-communism, and the entire justification for nearly all of its actions was hatred for the Soviet Union. The persecution of Jews was carried out on the basis that “Jewish Marxism” was to blame for the country’s woes, and that German Jews were secretly loyal to the Soviet Union.
If an alliance between the USSR and Nazi Germany had ever been formed, it would have discredited the Nazi state completely. The fanatical rank and file, as well as even the upper levels of the leadership of the Nazi Party, were all motivated by extreme hatred for the Soviet Union and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which it promoted internationally.
In addition, the Nazi state promoted extreme hatred for the peoples of the Soviet Union on a racial basis. Nazism viewed the Slavic peoples as genetically and culturally inferior to Western Europeans. The contempt that Nazis had for Jews may have been their primary racial obsession, but Slavs, Africans, and at some points Asian and Latino peoples were also deemed racially inferior to “Aryans.”
These racial theories of Nazism cause big problems for modern Hitlerites as they attack progressive anti-imperialist governments and progressive forces, with the backing of Wall Street. The growing Latin American skinhead fascist movements, which displayed themselves during recent turmoil in Brazil, have not been able to sufficiently address the fact that Nazis saw brown-skinned peoples as racially inferior. In addition, it is no secret that while the Nazis made alliances with anti-communist forces in Ukraine, the Nazi ideology still defines Ukrainians as Slavs, and thus ethnically inferior to Aryans.
For any “Nazi-Soviet Alliance” to have taken place, the Nazi state would have been required to repudiate the very foundations of its entire ideology and existence. This did not happen during the pact of 1939, nor at any point in the existence of the Third Reich.
The Nature of Soviet Socialism
Just as the Nazi state depended on a rank-and-file movement of bloodthirsty fanatics to exist, the Soviet Union depended on millions of people who could be motivated to take action by ideology. The ideology of the millions of people who were the strength of the Soviet Union was absolutely contrary to those of Nazi Germany.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, basing itself on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, was virulently hated by the German Nazis because it was their almost absolute opposite.
The Nazi Party based itself on racism, anti-Semitism, and theories of racial superiority and inferiority. The Soviet Union was not only opposed to such principles, but actually outlawed them in its constitution. Preaching racial hatred or supremacy in the Soviet Union could result in being arrested and imprisoned.
Harry Haywood, an African American who visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s, described how a drunk man who made a racist comment to him on a train was immediately taken into custody by the police, and forced to apologize to him in addition to further penalties.
The founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, famously castigated the South African Communist Party for its support of racism in the trade union movement. The South African Communist Party was forced to adjust its entire political program to entirely exclude racism, as a condition of entering the Communist International.
The Nazi state based itself on an obsession with the German nation, singing “Deutschland Uber Alles” (Germany Over Everything) as its national anthem. The slogan on which the Soviet Union and its allies around the world based themselves was “Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!” Lenin had added the phrase “and oppressed peoples” to the early slogan coined by Karl Marx.
Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, was not ethnically Russian, but of Georgian heritage. Stalin had written extensively about the right of oppressed nationalities to self-determination and independence.
When Italy invaded Ethiopia, the Soviet Union loudly supported the African peoples in their fight against the European invaders. When the Spanish Republic faced a fascist insurgency, backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, the Soviet Union was the only country to send military aid to the Spanish Republic.
The Soviet-led Communist International worked to build a “People’s Front Against Fascism” in each country that its forces existed. The Soviet Union sent military and financial assistance to underground armed resistance groups in Germany, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, Albania, and all other areas the Nazi regime was able to dominate. Over 26 million people in the Soviet Union perished in the fight to defeat Nazi Germany.
Hostility from the West
The Soviet Union had spent almost a decade attempting to build an anti-fascist alliance, only to be repeatedly snubbed by Britain, France, and the United States. The “Neutrality Act” passed by the US Congress made joining an anti-fascist alliance with the USSR illegal.
Many wealthy billionaires in the United States openly admired Hitler. Henry Ford was awarded the Iron Cross by Adolph Hitler, and distributed anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler books and newspapers at car dealerships.
The owners of the General Motors Corporation sponsored the radio broadcasts of Hitler supporting Roman Catholic Priest Charles Coughlin. General Motors also employed a pro-Hitler organization called the “Black Legion” to attack labor unionists.
IBM, which now has facilities on illegal Israeli settlements, had a close financial relationship with the Nazi state. IBM designed the punchcard machines used by the Nazis to run their concentration camp system.
Prescott Bush, the grandfather of former US President George W. Bush, had his accounts seized under the “Trading With the Enemy Act.” Bush’s Wall Street firm had essentially been operating as a stockbroker for the Nazi state.
The British Royal Family and many wealthy British bankers had a financial relationship with the Nazis, lending them money in order to enable their repression and military expansionism.
The Soviet Union had worked very hard to build an anti-fascist alliance with the west, but was unable to do so. Western bankers and capitalists had too much admiration for Hitler for such an alliance to be formed.
The Pact of 1939
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 did not contain any approval or validation for Nazism or the actions of the Nazi state. The pact did not result in any joint military activities. The pact did nothing more than establish that the two countries would not engage in military activities against each other for a brief period.
While the pact was in effect, the Soviet-aligned communist parties of the world did not cease their anti-fascist activities. Protests against pro-Nazi and pro-fascist organizations continued. Boycotts of goods from Germany, Italy, and Japan did not cease.
Many leftists raised objections of one kind or another to the nature of the pact, or the way it was carried out. Many Jewish leftists and Social-Democrats in the United States felt the pact was inappropriate, and were very vocal about this. Trotskyists composed a song entitled “My Darling Party Line” that mocked the pact. The pact, which changed the relationship between the Roosevelt Administration and the US Communist Party, resulted in communist leader Earl Browder being briefly imprisoned for a passport violation.
However, no one could argue that the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact constituted an alliance. The pact was a temporary measure, done in the hopes of holding off what Soviet officials and all voices representing the Nazi state deemed to be inevitable: a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
TIME Magazine and other media attempted to use the pact to malign the Soviet Union. Prominent Trotskyist Max Shachtman used the pact to justify his theory of “Bureaucratic Collectivism.”
However, a large number of intellectuals and artists stepped up to defend the Soviet Union against these attacks. Ads in newspapers, signed by many prominent non-communists, declared that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany simply could not be morally equated. This sentiment was widespread in the labor movement and all throughout US society.
In 1941, when the US and the Soviet Union became allies against the Nazi state, there was no confusion among the US public. The pact that Japan, Italy, and Germany had signed prior to the outbreak of the war had been entitled “The Anti-Comintern Pact.” The anti-communist nature of fascism, and the anti-fascist nature of communism, were commonly understood.
Historical Revisionism
During the Cold War, the writings of George Orwell – author of the phrase “who controls the present, controls the past” — were used to foment hatred of the USSR among the US public. Orwell’s texts are currently taught to schoolchildren throughout the US. Most people in the United States base their knowledge of communism not on Soviet history, but on Animal Farm, Orwell’s allegorical novel about livestock.
Anti-communism as an aspect of US media, culture, and society did not end with the Cold War. As the standard of living of western capitalist societies declines, anti-communism is becoming much more shrill and prevalent.
As homes are foreclosed, wages go down, and police repression increases in the United States, the capitalists are reduced to: “Sure our system is bad — but look how bad things could be if we got rid of it!”
This logic is expanding on an international level as well. In Ukraine, Venezuela, and elsewhere, the United States is reduced to: “Sure we’re aligned with Nazis — but at least we are fighting against communists!”
The mythology of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — and more widely of “Stalin was worse than Hitler” — has huge implications for global events, as well as political struggles within the United States.
As many epic battles are breaking out in the 21st Century, one of them is the battle to define the history of the 20th Century. To some, history may seem abstract, irrelevant, and disconnected from the tasks at hand, but this is a misconception.
History defines the framework from which we view the present. For oppression to continue, history must continue to be written by the oppressors. For things to improve, the real history of resistance and revolution, including the great achievements of the Soviet Union, must come into popular consciousness.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is preparing to defend itsef against a lawsuit by a former employee who claims he was demoted and then fired for promoting his views on intelligent design.
NASA’s explanation is that computer specialist David Coppedge lost his status as “team lead” after his co-workers complained of harassment and was let go when the project he was working on ended. According to Caltech, Coppedge was just one of 246 JPL employees terminated last year due to budget cuts.
Coppedge, however, says “he was discriminated against because he engaged his co-workers in conversations about intelligent design and handed out DVDs on the idea while at work.”
“The question is whether the plaintiff was fired simply because he was wasting people’s time and bothering them in ways that would have led him to being fired regardless of whether it was about religion,” professor of First Amendment law Eugene Volokh told the Associated Press, “or whether he was treated worse based on the religiosity of his beliefs.”
According to the Associated Press, Coppedge “is active in the intelligent design sphere and runs a website that interprets scientific discoveries through the lens of intelligent design. His father authored an anti-evolution book and founded a Christian outreach group. He is also a board member for Illustra Media, a company that produces video documentaries examining the scientific evidence for intelligent design. The company produces the videos that Coppedge was handing out to co-workers.”
Despite this background, his lawsuit asserts that he was not attempting to proselytize, but that his attempts to share his beliefs — combined with his support for California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 and his request that the lab’s annual holiday party be relabeled a “Christmas party” — gave him a reputation for being a conservative Christian, and that led to his demotion.
A representative of the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute, which is supporting Coppedge’s case, described his treatment as “part of a pattern. There is basically a war on anyone who dissents from Darwin and we’ve seen that for several years.”
On the other side of the debate, a director of the National Center for Science Education insisted that the argument isn’t really about intelligent design and that “it would be unfortunate if the court took what seems to be a fairly straightforward employment law case and allowed it to become this tangled mess of trying to adjudicate scientific matters.”
Coppedge originally brought suit in April 2010, after his demotion, alleging religious discrimination and harassment, and amended it after he lost his job to include wrongful termination. He is seeking damages and a statement that his rights were violated. The trial is set to begin Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Photo from NASA via Wikimedia Commons'I Don't Believe in Regrets': John Travolta Opens Up at Zurich Film Fest, Hints at Playing Vince Lombardi in Upcoming Biopic
Thursday night, Oliver Stone kicked off the 2012 Zurich Film Festival with his latest thriller “Savages,” but all eyes were on the film’s sole star in attendance, John Travolta, this year’s recipient of the Golden Eye, the festival’s lifetime achievement award.
Despite a scene-stealing supporting turn in “Savages” and being the toast of Zurich, Travolta has had a rough year. Since May, Travolta’s been plagued by controversy after a number of lawsuits were filed against him, including two from masseurs who claimed he had inappropriately touched and propositioned them (both have since dropped their lawsuits).
READ MORE: Zurich Film Festival Unveils Official Lineup: “Amour,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Dans La Maison” Set to Screen
Speaking to the press alongside Stone opening night, Travolta seemed reasonably nervous and cagey, but he did respond to a journalist who asked if he had any regrets. “I don’t believe in regrets,” the actor replied. “I believe your future’s in your tomorrows, but I do believe you learn from the past. It’s been a good life. It’s been filled with ups and downs, and fascinating adventures.”
Asked (slyly, I think) if it’s important to have a strong woman (in Travolta’s case, actress Kelly Preston) and family by your side, Travolta said, “As long as it’s the right wife and the right family, I think it’s marvelous. I have the right one, and I’m very happy for it. I know we’re kind of dinosaurs in Hollywood, being together so long. But it works.”
In a break from the personal, Travolta also hinted at some upcoming projects in the works: one that would re-team him with his “Face/Off” and “Broken Arrow” director John Woo, and another that would see him embody iconic football coach Vince Lombardi.
Travolta said he’s hoping to get a 3D remake of Woo’s classic 1989 action film “The Killer” off the ground, with Woo on tap to produce and John H. Lee attached to direct from a script by Josh Campbell. As to whom Travolta would play, he didn’t say. But with Jung Woo-sung confirmed to play the lead role of the assassin (played by Chow Yun-fat in the original), my guess is that Travolta would play the detective assigned to hunt him down.
As for the other project, Travolta told the press that Lombardi actually coached his dad, Salvatore Travolta, before he went professional. Lombardi is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers, which he led to their first two championships, and the NFL’s Super Bowl trophy is named in his honor.
The Zurich Film Festival runs through September 30.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.Have you ever been watching a movie and seen one of the characters walk around looking all slick carrying a suitcase filled with money or drugs and thought “Why not me?” Well, dream no longer. The website TheCheeky.com is selling a series of decals to stick on your suitcase so that you can transform into a) some kind of supervillain and, b) some kind of supervillain with x-ray vision. Grab yourself an awesome suit, put on some cool sunglasses, and (optional) handcuff yourself to your new be-stickered suitcase and you are ready to strike fear into the hearts of man and annoyance into the days of airport security workers everywhere!
The options include a bunch of packages of cocaine, stacks of cash, a pile of sex toys, and a kidnapped woman. They’re all pretty cool although I’d have to go with the money one as the coke and sex toy stickers are just asking to get you in trouble and the kidnapped woman one is just plain creepy. Seriously, pretending you’re an international drug runner is one thing, pretending you’ve got a gagged, crying woman in your suitcase is pretty much a sign you need therapy. Or a very, very accommodating girlfriend.
TheCheeky foresaw any possible trouble you might get in with these stickers and points them out in the, well, cheeky description:
“Take a stand against monotonous travel with Suitcase Stickers. Designed to stick to anything, they will draw attention to your bag making it easily identifiable and sure to make you some new friends. Caution: Some of these stickers may cause offense to airport and immigration staff. But you would have figured that out whilst enjoying those cavity searches.”
Right. I definitely think I’d go with the money one. Anyway, check out the rest of the selections below. You can buy them here.
UPDATE: God, I wasn’t looking at these closely enough. I just realized the kidnapped woman is a flight attendant. That’s really gonna endear you to airport security.
(via a tip from our good buddy Jonathan Elliott over at Cinema Blend)Image copyright Fuse Image caption Sosefina Amoa had travelled to the US from Samoa to begin a five-month programme to join a convent
A trainee Catholic nun has pleaded guilty to killing her newborn infant in a convent in Washington DC in October.
Sosefina Amoa, 26, accepted a plea agreement for voluntary manslaughter, punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
A prosecutor has said she will seek a four to 10-year prison term.
A lawyer for Amoa said the Samoan woman smothered the infant in her room at the Little Sisters of the Poor convent but did so out of panic and shock after a difficult delivery.
She put her hand over the infant's mouth to "quiet the baby so she could figure out what she was going to do", lawyer Judith Pipe said.
Amoa is said to have arrived in the US from Samoa on 5 October 2013 to begin a five-month programme to become a member of the convent.
She gave birth to son Joseph in her room on 10 October.
Prosecutor Cynthia Wright told the Washington court Amoa was standing when the infant was born and that he fell, hitting the floor before he was smothered.
Amoa later cleaned her room and showed the infant to a sister at the convent the following day, saying she had found the child outside.
The unnamed nun allegedly found the child cold and not breathing and took the body in a bag to a local hospital along with Amoa, court documents said.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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This story originally appeared at Truthdig. Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books).
Mark the name of R. Glenn Hubbard, the man who will make your life miserable if Mitt Romney is elected president. Unless, that is, you happen to be one of the swindlers who has profited mightily from the nation’s economic pain.
Hubbard is the ideological hit man instrumental in justifying the mortgage derivatives bubble that caused the Great Recession during the George W. Bush years. He now serves as Romney’s key economic adviser and is the front-runner to be the next Treasury secretary should the Republican win. Ad Policy
“Romney’s Go-To Economist” read the headline on a New York Times profile of the dean of Columbia University’s Business School, which notes that “during a stint as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Hubbard was known as the principal architect of the Bush tax cuts.” In that capacity, and after returning to Columbia, Hubbard was also the chief cheerleader for a runaway derivatives market that spiraled out of control and left the Great Recession in its wake.
While pocketing millions in fees from the financial industry that he was ostensibly studying as a neutral academic, Hubbard was an enthusiastic backer of the virtues of a burgeoning unregulated capital market that sold toxic derivatives to the world. In a landmark paper that he co-wrote in November 2004 with William C. Dudley, at the time the chief US economist at Goldman Sachs, it was asserted, “The capital markets have helped facilitate a major transformation of the US mortgage financing system over the past twenty-five years.… The result has been a dramatic decline in the cyclical volatility of housing activity.”
Their study was published by the Global Markets Institute of Goldman Sachs at the very time that Goldman, a leader in the capital market, was packaging and selling some of the toxic mortgage-based derivatives that would come close to destroying the world’s economy.
Hubbard’s article celebrated this “revolution in housing finance [that] has led to a large increase in mortgage equity withdrawal.” It extolled the madcap equity lending as “one reason why consumer spending held up well during the 2001-2003 period, even as employment and investment spending faltered.”
That’s the housing bubble that was destined to pop and left the Bush and Obama administrations running up huge deficits to contain the damage. Hubbard’s co-author knows this well, for Dudley left Goldman in 2007 to work for Timothy Geithner, then the head of the New York Fed that led the charge to rescue Goldman and other banks in the aftermath of the crisis they caused. As evidence of the bipartisan spirit informing the banking bailout, when Geithner was appointed Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Dudley replaced him as president of the New York Fed.
But this is a crisis first enabled by the Bush administration’s policy of mindlessly celebrating the mortgage industry’s wild irresponsibility. As Hubbard and Dudley bragged: “The revolution in mortgage finance has increased the ability of households to purchase their own homes. The closing costs associated with obtaining a residential mortgage have fallen, and the terms (for example, the loan-to-value ratio) have become less stringent. At times homeowners can obtain 100 percent financing to purchase a home.”
This is the mortgage bankers’ equivalent of The Anarchist Cookbook—a recipe for disaster. The 100 percent loan meant that the homeowner was not at risk, nor was the investment firm that initiated the mortgage because it packaged it, along with other irresponsible loans, into securities sold to unwitting buyers.
In the paper published by Goldman, the authors take issue with Warren Buffett who as early as 2002 had warned that these “derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.” Buffett argued that “huge–scale frauds and near frauds have been facilitated by derivatives trades.”
Not so, said Hubbard and Dudley, siding with then–Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. “This use of derivatives leads to improved economic performance,” they wrote, insisting, “The capital markets have also acted to reduce the volatility of the economy. Recessions are less frequent and milder when they occur.”
Hubbard, who testified as an expert witness on behalf of two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers in an investment fraud case, is a frequent recipient of financial industry largess in the form of consulting and research fees. Last year, he was paid $785,000 for serving on three corporate boards and has been handsomely rewarded as a consultant to Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. He was paid $420,000 for supporting Fidelity in just one court case.
In the second presidential debate, Romney sought to distance himself from the Bush administration, ever so slightly. But it is Hubbard, a prime architect of the Bush strategy of unfettering Wall Street greed, to whom the Republican nominee turned to co-write “The Romney Program for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs.”
That plan not only extends the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, but it would repeal the mild Dodd-Frank legislation holding Wall Street a bit more accountable. If Romney wins, it will be Bush reincarnated, and Hubbard’s ideology, a proven failure, will prevail.
Besides the threat of taking an economic step back with Mr. Hubbard, Doug Henwood gives another reason to support Obama.
Want more election coverage? Be sure to subscribe to The Nation Election 2012 mailing list for weekly updates.WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is suing the nation’s largest servicer of both federal and private student loans for systematically and illegally failing borrowers at every stage of repayment. For years, Navient, formerly part of Sallie Mae, created obstacles to repayment by providing bad information, processing payments incorrectly, and failing to act when borrowers complained. Through shortcuts and deception, the company also illegally cheated many struggling borrowers out of their rights to lower repayments, which caused them to pay much more than they had to for their loans. The Bureau seeks to recover significant relief for the borrowers harmed by these illegal servicing failures.
"For years, Navient failed consumers who counted on the company to help give them a fair chance to pay back their student loans," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. "At every stage of repayment, Navient chose to shortcut and deceive consumers to save on operating costs. Too many borrowers paid more for their loans because Navient illegally cheated them and today's action seeks to hold them accountable."
Formerly part of Sallie Mae, Inc., Navient is the largest student loan servicer in the United States. It services the loans of more than 12 million borrowers, including more than 6 million accounts under its contract with the Department of Education. Altogether, it services more than $300 billion in federal and private student loans. Named in today’s lawsuit are Navient Corporation and two of its subsidiaries: Navient Solutions is a division responsible for loan servicing operations; Pioneer Credit Recovery specializes in the collection of defaulted student loans.
Servicers are a critical link between borrowers and lenders. They manage borrowers’ accounts, process monthly payments, and communicate directly with borrowers. When facing unemployment or other financial hardship, borrowers rely on their student loan servicer to help them enroll in alternative repayment plans or request a modification of loan terms. A servicer is often different from the lender, and borrowers typically have no control over which company is assigned to service their loans.
Starting in 2009, the vast majority of federal student loan borrowers gained a right to make payments based on how much money they earn by enrolling in repayment arrangements known as income-driven repayment plans. These plans are part of the federal government’s effort to make student loans more affordable. For borrowers who meet certain income and family-size criteria, these plans can offer monthly payments as low as zero dollars. Another important benefit of income-driven repayment plans is that for the first three years after enrollment, many consumers are entitled to have the federal government pay part of the interest charges if they can’t keep up. All federal student loan borrowers enrolled in these plans may be eligible for loan forgiveness after 20 or 25 years of monthly payments.
In today’s action, the Bureau alleges that Navient has failed to provide the most basic functions of adequate student loan servicing at every stage of repayment for both private and federal loans. Navient provided bad information in writing and over the phone, processed payments incorrectly, and failed to act when borrowers complained about problems. Critically, it systematically made it harder for borrowers to obtain the important right to pay according to what they can afford. These illegal practices made paying back student loans more difficult and costly for certain borrowers. Specifically, among the allegations in today’s lawsuit, the Bureau charges that Navient:
Fails to correctly apply or allocate borrower payments to their accounts: As soon as a borrower begins to pay back their loans, student loan servicers are supposed to take a borrower’s payment and follow instructions from the borrower about how to apply it across their multiple loans. Navient repeatedly misapplies |
transplants, dialysis, radiation therapy, etc. In addition, Americans would be able to buy health-status insurance that would guarantee that they could purchase health insurance at reasonable prices in the future.
The good news is that such policies are available even now. A quick check on online health insurance clearinghouse eHealthInsurance pulls a quote of $131 per month from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield for a single 55-year-old male with a $3,000 annual deductible, no co-pay after the deductible, reasonable pharmaceutical benefits, and lifetime maximum benefits of $7 million, with a health savings account (HSA) option. With HSAs, consumers make annual deductible contributions, which lowers their income tax bills, and then take tax-free withdrawals to pay for routine uninsured medical costs. That was the cheapest plan, but over 80 other insurance policies were available. Of course, as deductibles went down, the prices for other plans went up. The UnitedHealth Group has begun offering a policy that guarantees purchasers the right to buy an individual medical insurance policy in the future even if they become sick.
So markets mean more choice in health care, but would they make it cheaper as well? President Barack Obama famously read surgeon Atul Gawande's New Yorker article, "The Cost Conundrum." Gawande argues that medical costs are high because incentives are skewed toward providing ever more treatment as a way for physicians to earn more money. Gawande analogizes health care to building a house without a general contractor. Without someone keeping an eye on what's really necessary or desirable, house buyers would pay an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and so forth. Doctors get paid for each procedure they recommend. Curing patients becomes an incidental side effect of their treatments. What matters, says Gawande, is not who pays.
Gawande gets his diagnosis right, but botches his prescription. Cost-conscious general contracters exist in the housing market because of consumer demand, not government mandate. Similarly, consumer choices have driven the housing market to create the huge variety of options including high-rise condos, gated communities, rental apartments, manufactured housing, townhouses, and suburbs filled with ranch houses, Tudors, and Cape Cods. Competition in medicine would force physicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and other practitioners to figure out ways to reduce costs. Perhaps a medical general contractor model would prove most effective at lowering costs, but why not let some people go a different route?
Gawande also argues that consumers are not in a position to negotiate prices. In the New Yorker article, Gawande and Texas cardiologist Lester Dyke try to imagine how an elderly woman might bargain over bypass surgery. Gawande writes:
"They discuss the blockages in her heart, the operation, the risks. And now they're supposed to haggle over the price as if he were selling a rug in a souk? "I'll do three vessels for thirty thousand, but if you take four I'll throw in an extra night in the I.C.U."—that sort of thing? Dyke shook his head. "Who comes up with this stuff?" he asked. "Any plan that relies on the sheep to negotiate with the wolves is doomed to failure."
But Gawande and Dyke miss the crucial point—markets force the wolves to compete among themselves and end up benefiting the sheep. Cardiac surgeons and all other physicians would be vying with one another for patients helping to push down the costs. Competition would provide a strong impetus for medical practitioners to provide consumers with good information about the effectiveness of various treatments and drive innovation. Heart patients in future medical markets would be in a much better position to consider the risks, benefits, and costs of bypass surgery, stenting, pharmaceuticals, and/or stem cells for treating their disease.
Once consumers are unleashed, the medical marketplace would be transformed. Most likely, a lot of routine care would be done through retail health centers located in shopping malls, drug store chains, and mega-stores. Such centers would not be staffed with physicians but with nurse practitioners or other qualified personnel. Consumers would generally pay for routine, everyday care directly out of their health savings accounts.
Competition would also transform the medical information market, making it radically transparent. In fact, baby steps toward transparency have already begun. Angie's List now allows consumers to submit reports about their experiences with physicians. Sources of information for medical comparison shopping would proliferate, just as there are now dozens of publications devoted to comparing the features and prices of cars, computers, guns, and vacations. A core of savvy shoppers in the medical market will mean better price and quality comparisons for everyone.
Wondering what shopping in a competitive medical market might be like? Check out the admittedly clunky California government's common surgeries and cost comparison website. Browsing reveals that the cost for heart valve replacement varies from $72,000 to $368,000, and the cost for angioplasty varies from $9,000 to $204,000. Other websites, such New Choice Health, enable consumers to go shopping for relatively routine procedures like colonoscopies, laparoscopic hernia repair, and MRI scans. Prices for colonoscopies in Washington, DC, for instance, vary from $580 to $1,386, hernia repair from $974 to $2,519, and abdominal MRIs from $936 to $1,960.
Opponents of markets in health care worry that patients in extremis will be in no position to negotiate. Actually, the slow progress of the kind of chronic illnesses that are driving up health care costs—cancer, coronary artery disease—allow consumers time to shop around for suitable treatments. Prostate cancer patients can evaluate and choose between options like watchful waiting, various radiation therapies, surgery, and soon, a new biotech immunological treatment. Information gathering would take no more time than the current wait for a follow up appointment.
Finally, one would expect that competition would spark that virtuous cycle in which innovation progressively drives down costs, just as it has in so many other areas of commerce. Medical care would become ever more affordable and thus reduce the perceived need for government intervention on behalf of the poor. In the meantime, the government should dismantle its medical entitlement programs—Medicaid, SCHIP, and Medicare—and use those funds to provide vouchers to the poor who could then purchase health insurance and health care in the private market.
Why bother outlining a vision of how market reforms of health care might play out? Perhaps the impending collapse of top-down reform proposals will open up a policy discussion about how markets can improve health care and reduce its costs. One can dream, anyway.
Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.This is actually what happend right before The Dark Crystal.
If you like to see what goes into the making of the comic I have posted a step by step (or layer by layer) “comic making process” gallery of this comic (can I use the word “comic” again?) in The Vault along with the original, unedited script. To get access the The Vault for the rest of the month make a one time donation. To get constant access and REALLY help me keep this comic-ship afloat, please consider starting a donation subscription. Thanks!
Don’t forget, this weekend is Comicpalooza in Houston, TX. I just found out I will be doing a webcomics panel with Randy, Malki! and Phil Foglio so if you are in the area you might not want to miss that (or you might… I don’t know you that well).Hello all. Been a while!
Was earning gold for a new character slot T_T
My first Charr Reaper!
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Edgar stood outside his mountain lodge and gazed into the distance as the thunderheads rolled into view across the icy plains of the north. Beside him, his wife pulled her coat tight and huddled deeper into his embrace. "I've never seen so many thunderheads gather before...and they are huge!", she exclaimed. Edgar could only nod his head as his forehead creased in worry. A storm was coming...and it was going to be of a magnitude never seen before...
Far off, at the eye of the storm, a creature stood. Its past was unimportant. It was changed. Changed by the artifact that it now grasped in its right paw. An artifact left by the Gods of time past. Lost...and forgotten...until now...
The artifact had a name, granted by the Gods...ANEMOI THUELLAI, and referred among men as Spirit of the Storm...Throughout history, its appearance meant chaos...it meant destruction.
And on this day, as Edgar and his wife turned and trundled back to their lodge, closing the door softly against the howling winds, history was about to repeat itself...When it comes to handling a sports car, the way that you handle that accelerator is certainly no joke and while we would recommend that you refrain from speeding altogether, the situation is just insanely wrong in every way.
At nearly triple the speed limit according to what the video uploader says was in the ballpark of 90 mph in a 30 mph zone, this guy was lucky to have walked away with his life.
When you take a look at the carnage left behind by the driver, that idea is reinforced tenfold as the Ford Mustang was ripped limb from limb.
If you simply checked out the remnants of the car, we would venture to think that more people than not would fear for the worst, being a fatality. However, because the contrary is true, maybe this guy should go buy a lottery ticket.
Check out the video below that shows what remains of this tattered Ford Mustang that somehow saved the occupants lives even while wrecking at 90 mph.Photograph by Gloria Tatum
(APN) ATLANTA — Following a recent poll that 63 percent of respondents are saying yes to MARTA service being extended into Gwinnett County, environmental activists and Democrats are among those beginning to organize for a possible future referendum.
On Tuesday, July 28, 2015, Art Sheldon with the Sierra Club’s Greater Gwinnett chapter attended the Gwinnett Democrats to discuss next steps in bringing MARTA to Gwinnett.
Gwinnett has seen rapid growth and changing demographics that has made it more diverse, with a twenty percent Latino, 26 percent Black, and eleven percent Asian population that is more accepting of mass transit.
On the other hand, there are some older, more conservative, and White voters, who do not believe rail is an efficient use of tax money, and who are not comfortable riding MARTA.
“People are coming from other parts of the country where riding transit is not a big deal. We are trending toward younger people riding transit, so we have to prepare for that future,” Sheldon told Atlanta Progressive News in a phone interview.
According to the survey, the highest support for MARTA was in Districts 2 and 3, which represent the southern and eastern parts of the county.
A light rail line would probably extend from the Doraville MARTA station to possible stations at Indian Trail, Beaver Ruin, and up to the Civil Center area at Sugarloaf and Satellite Boulevard.
“We are talking about one and a half billion dollars to build a light rail system from Doraville to the Civic Center. The roads can’t handle the traffic and to widen the highways, you are talking billions of dollars also. Then in a few years they will be clogged up again. It is not a long-term solution and people are beginning to realize that, and that’s why there is more support for transit,” Sheldon said to APN.
The Board of Commissions would have to approve putting the referendum on the ballot and the entire County voting for the MARTA extension.
That may not happen until 2017 or 2018 because an education SPLOST referendum (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) will be on the ballot this year. Then next year, in 2016, the County may renew another SPLOST.
“We don’t want to have two votes and two SPLOST’s at the same time: that’s some of the reason why we may not have MARTA on the ballot next year. We don’t want to be voting on two raises of taxes,” Sheldon said.
Sheldon explained one of the ideas to get people talking about transit now is the Great Exchange or Gr8Exchange.com happening August 24 to the 28, 2015. It is a week long conversation on the future of Gwinnett.
Community leaders will encourage residents to participate in one of hundreds of hosted conversations in coffee shops, restaurants and in homes about transportation issues and what they would like to see happen in Gwinnett County.
The data gathered from the Gr8Exchange will be made available to any group including the county government and cities. The feedback will be used to show trends of what types of transportation residents want.
“We agreed with his presentation… We are losing jobs, people can’t get to jobs, and it’s holding the entire region back,” Ilene Johnson, Communication Chair, Gwinnett Democratic Party, told APN.
“Business are leaving like NCR; we spent a lot of money to recruit NCR and now they are moving into Midtown [Atlanta],” Johnson said.
“The biggest thing we feel is needed is a change in leadership on the Gwinnett County Commission and we are going to work to get that,” Johnson said
“That’s what they did in Clayton County, but they had a more favorable Board of Commissioners. The Chairman ran on a pro-MARTA, pro-transportation platform. We don’t have that, but we are looking to recruit new leadership and new representation on the Board of Commissioners,” Johnson said.
(END/2015)EMBED >More News Videos Firefighters used water and foam to make quick work of a massive fire at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo.
Firefighters battled massive flames raging near storage tanks at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo, which sent thick black clouds of smoke into the air.With multiple fire agencies responding to the scene, firefighters used massive quantities of water and foam to make quick work of the flames, extinguishing them in about 45 minutes. No one was injured.The flames touched power lines, sending off big electrical flashes and sending some lines to the ground. The fire also threatened storage tanks at the refinery.The fire came after a reported explosion in the area around 10:30 p.m. Firefighters from the refinery's on-site industrial fire department were first to respond."It was putting off a lot of heat, a lot of energy, but they've dealt with this before and they were kind of Johnny-on-the-spot and did a fantastic job over there," said Battalion Chief Breck Slover of the El Segundo Fire Departement.With smoke blowing into nearby residential areas, the fire department asked people in the area to close their windows and shelter in place. No evacuations were ordered."It can always be worse than it is," Slover said. "It was really spectacular looking, and I think because of the quick action, the quick thinking of everybody involved, that it kept it down to what it was."The refinery, built in 1911, is located at 324 W. El Segundo Boulevard.According to Chevron, the refinery is the largest on the West Coast, processing more than 274,000 barrels of crude every day. The property covers 1,000 acres and has a storage capacity of 12. 5 million barrels in 150 storage tanks larger than 30 feet in diameter.The refinery is just south of Los Angeles International Airport. It did not immediately appear the smoke interfered with flights.Refinery officials released a statement addressing the blaze."Chevron's primary concern is to ensure the safety of its employees and the surrounding community and the environment. Chevron is working very closely with the local agencies to ensure that we meet those expectations in responding to this incident," the statement said, in part.Multiple fire agencies were called in to assist Chevron and El Segundo firefighters, including Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach firefighters.El Segundo police said Vista Del Mar would remain closed due to downed power lines. It was unclear how long the road would be closed.The cause of the fire was under investigation."At this point, Chevron does not expect this incident to have an impact on its ability to supply petroleum products to its customers in the region," the company's statement said.TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – After I-Mei Foods Co. (義美食品公司) received praise last year for using locally produced soy beans and black beans to launch “100 percent non-genetically modified Taiwanese soy milk,” it again purchased contractually produced soy beans, black beans, red dates, camellia seed and red quinoa to turn into fresh quality products.
On Friday, I-Mei presented its most recent efforts to support local agriculture at a news conference under the motto “Support Taiwan agriculture and contractual local products.”
I-Mei Foods CEO Luis Ko said Taiwan produced many types of quality agricultural produce, but because they went mostly undiscovered, they could not face up to international competition, leading to a limited degree of competitiveness for local agriculture. Consumers were unable to obtain food they could feel safe about, while farmers could not receive a fair income, Ko said. In order to fulfill the company’s social responsibility, I-Mei had raised the prices it paid in the hope of helping Taiwan’s agricultural development and guaranteeing food safety for consumers, as well as inspiring other enterprises to follow its example.
Ko said that apart from witnessing the government’s efforts to promote agricultural development, he personally felt the inspiration of a member of the Paiwan people aged over 100 who still worked the land. The main reason for his healthy condition was the use of the local red quinoa while maintaining a simple way of life, Ko said.
However, because of a shortage of manpower, a high cost of growing and competition from the quinoa imported from Latin America, it has been difficult to raise prices for local red quinoa, so enthusiasm to increase production has been weak. As a result, Ko decided to sign contracts directly with the farmers, announcing fixed prices above the going market rate online in order to fulfill the company’s social obligations.
No matter what the outside world did or what government policies were, I-Mei would directly buy products from the farmers for a transparent price, Ko said, promising more similar contracts were in the pipeline for more than ten kind of products later this year and next year. The program would promote Taiwanese agriculture with fewer pesticides in order to protect the environment and the land, Ko said.
The current program covered soybeans and black beans from Yunlin and Chiayi, red dates from Gongguan in Miaoli County, camellias from Taichung and Taitung, and red quinoa from Pingtung. I-Mei promised to purchase the items at favorable prices, such as NT$625 per kilo for red quinoa, NT$75 for soybeans, and NT$225 for camellia seeds, with the purchase of rising quantities helping local agriculture.
Council of Agriculture officials praised I-Mei’s move, but said it should form an example for other corporations to follow suit and help local farmers to use fewer pesticides and make a better living.
Ko said there was no reason for people to be pessimistic about the state of Taiwan’s agriculture if the direction was right and if correct government policies helped along the way.So excited to finish my first piece for my Patreon! I don't have many supporters yet but it's really helped to make sure I am doing work for myself. Anyways this piece started off by being inspired by The Kingkiller Chronicles where Kvothe meets the Cthaeh but then it morphed into my own thing. Red hair, butterflies, and trees in fairy land still stuck. No fancy brushes to help with grass or textures. Mostly all done with a basic brush except for where I used a hair brush for the character's hair. I'm happy with this in that it's a good representation of what I hope to do with my Patreon pieces which is more hours invested, no shortcuts, extensive reference, and stuff that you might hang on your wall.
Please come support me on PatreonSen. Elizabeth Warren unloaded on bank regulators Thursday about the fact that British bank HSBC is still doing business in the U.S., with no criminal charges filed against it, despite confessing to what one regulator called "egregious" money laundering violations.
Her comments came just a day after the attorney general of the United States confessed that some banks are so big and important that they are essentially above the law. His Justice Department's failure to bring any criminal charges against HSBC or its employees is Exhibit A of that problem.
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing about money laundering, Warren (D-Mass.) grilled officials from the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency about why HSBC, which recently paid $1.9 billion to settle money laundering charges, wasn't criminally prosecuted and shut down in the U.S. Nor were any individuals from HSBC charged with any crimes, despite the bank confessing to laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels and rogue regimes like Iran and Libya over several years.
Defenders of the Justice Department say that a criminal conviction could have been a death penalty for the bank, causing widespread damage to the economy. Warren wanted to know why the death penalty wasn't warranted in this case.
"They did it over and over and over again across a period of years. And they were caught doing it, warned not to do it and kept right on doing it, and evidently making profits doing it," Warren said of HSBC. "How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords and how many economic sanctions do you have to violate before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution like this?"
The regulator she was questioning, David Cohen, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, repeatedly refused to answer the question. Like the other regulators at the hearing, he said that his department has no authority to shut down a bank unless the Justice Department -- not represented at the hearing -- convicts the bank of a crime. He said that Treasury had come down as hard as possible on HSBC. But he wouldn't answer Warren's question about when a bank deserves to be shut down in the U.S.
"You sit in Treasury and you try to enforce these laws, and I've read all of your testimony and you tell me how vigorously you want to enforce these laws, but you have no opinion on when it is that a bank should be shut down for money laundering?" Warren finally asked. "Not even an opinion?"
Another regulator, Fed Governor Jerome Powell, said closing a bank is appropriate when that bank has been convicted of a crime. But he also said that only the Justice Department has the authority to prosecute a bank for a crime.
The regulators said they did answer Justice Department questions about the potential repercussions of convicting HSBC, but offered no opinion about whether the Justice Department should do so.
A frustrated Warren, who has sounded off on the issue of big banks repeatedly in the past week, was less constrained.Also available on Kindle (and all other E-Readers) for the special Halloween price of just $2.99!
Read Lisa Mannetti's collection, including the Bram Stoker nominated novella, Deathwatch
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Introduction by New York Times Best-Selling Author, Heather Graham
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Read an Interview with Robert Dunbar by Lisa Mannetti Read House Without End by Vera Searles
Read The Doll by Kevin McFarlane
Read The Jersey Devil and I by Robert Dunbar
Read A Review of P.D. Cacek's THE WINDCALLER by Robert Dunbar
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The "Digimarc Digital Watermarking" Web Button is a trademark of Digimarc Corporation, used with permission.This is part 1 in a series of tutorials in which we explore methods for robot localization: the problem of tracking the location of a robot over time with noisy sensors and noisy motors, which is an important task for every autonomous robot, including self-driving cars.
The methods that we will learn are generic in nature, in that they can be used for various other tasks that involve rational decision making in the face of uncertainty. We will, for the main part, deal with filtering, which is a general method for estimating variables from noisy observations over time. In particular, we will explain the Bayes Filter and some of its variants – the Histogram Filter, the Kalman Filter and the Particle Filter. We will show the benefits and shortcomings of each of these algorithms and see how they can be applied to the robot localization problem.
Motivation
The traditional approach in reasoning over time involves strict logical inference. In order for this to work, a few assumptions have to be made about the environment we wish to make decisions in. For instance, the environment has to be fully observable, which means that at any point in time we can exactly measure each aspect of the environment that is relevant to our decision making. Additionally, the environment needs to be deterministic, which means that, given the state of the environment at a certain point in time and a decision we choose, the resulting state of the environment is already determined – there is no randomness whatsoever. Last but not least, the environment has to be static, which basically means that it waits for us to make our decision before it changes.
None of these assumptions hold in realistic environments. We can never measure every aspect of an environment that might have an influence on the decision making. We can, however, use sensors to measure a small portion of the environment, but even this small portion we can not measure with complete certainty. We call such environments partially observable.
Whether realistic environments are deterministic or not is actually an unanswered philosophical question. At least for humans and agents, it appears to be non-deterministic, because even though we know physical laws that allow us to describe most natural processes, there are just too many influential factors that we are unable to model precisely (e.g. wind turbulence causing a seemingly random change in the trajectory of a flying ball). Regardless of the nondeterminism, we can usually tell what is likely to happen and what is unlikely to happen. Thus, we call realistic environments stochastic. Moreover, realistic environments are dynamic as opposed to static – they are always changing. For a more thorough treatise of the nature of environments cf. [NORVIG, pp. 40 – 46].
All of these properties of realistic environments result in uncertainty about the state of the world. It is a big challenge to make rational decisions in the face of uncertainty. Humans do a great job at this every day. Even though we can never know the true state of the world and predict what is going to happen next and how we should act to achieve a desired outcome, we still manage to achieve many of our goals remarkably well. We do this by maintaining a belief about the state of the world at a certain point in time, which we arrive at by both prediction and observation. This belief can be thought of as a probability distribution over all the possible states of the world, conditioned by our observations. Given a belief, we can, for each possible decision, determine the probabilities of each possible outcome. After that, we choose the decisions that are most probable to achieve a desired goal state, maximize a performance measure, or the like. This behavior can reasonably be called rational. Of course, we do not actually maintain precise probability distributions in our brains and carry out calculations, but this is a way of imagining how this cognitive ability of ours roughly works and it gives us a first idea of how it can be implemented algorithmically.
It is a difficult but interesting task to implement such a behavior for autonomous agents. The purpose of this text is to give an insight into how the first half can be done – the task of maintaining a belief about the state of an environment that is updated over time through making predictions according to a model of how the system develops, interpreting periodically arriving, noisy observations (more specifically, sensor measurements) and incorporating them into the belief.
Robot Localization
Robot localization is one of the most fundamental problems in mobile robotics. There are multiple instances of the localization problem with different difficulties (cf. [NEGENBORN, pp. 9 – 11]). In this article, we shall deal with the problem that the robot is given a map of the environment and then either needs to keep track of its position when the initial position is known, or localize itself from scratch when it could theoretically be anywhere.
One might use methods like GPS for positioning, but in many scenarios it is not accurate enough. Self-driving cars, for example, need a few centimeters accuracy to be considerable for road traffic. As everyone with a car navigator knows, the accuracy for GPS can be grim. Therefore, it is not always an option. Since there is no reliable sensor to measure a position directly, we need to rely on other observations and infer the actual position from it. A possible way to do so would be to install cameras, use pattern recognition to spot landmarks whose positions on the map are known, determine the distances of the landmarks and then use trilateration to determine the robot’s position.
It is reasonable to assume that the distance sensors are noisy. It becomes even more difficult when we assume that the robot is moving through the world, because movement is usually noisy as well: Even though the robot can control its average speed, motors are subjected to an unmodeled inaccuracy, resulting in unpredictable speed variations. As we can see, this is a situation as described in the previous section: The robot cannot infer its exact position from sensor data and, even if it does know its exact position at a certain point in time, it does not know it for certain anymore a moment later. This is due to the fact that the model it uses to describe the environment cannot describe the marginal factors that cause the motor to be inaccurate. As such, this problem is a good example for filtering and will therefore be used to elucidate the algorithms presented in this article.
Recursive Bayesian Estimation
Before we can deal with the concrete filter algorithms, we have to lay a theoretical foundation. In this article, we will model the world in such a way that all the changes in the environment take place at discrete, equidistant time steps $t \in \mathbb{N}_0$, where sensor measurements arrive at every time step $t \geq 1$. To model uncertainty over continuous time is more difficult, since it involves stochastic differential equations. The discrete-time model can be seen as an approximation at the continuous case. [NORVIG, p. 567]
State
At each point in time $t$, we can characterize a dynamic system by a state vector $x_t$, which we simply call the state. This state vector contains the so-called state variables that are necessary to describe the system. We assume that it contains the same state variables at each time step. We define the so-called state space $dom(x_t)$ as the set of all the possible values that $x_t$ might take. If we consider a moving robot on a plain, the state could be $x_t = (X_t, Y_t, \dot{X}_t, \dot{Y}_t)$ where $X_t$ and $Y_t$ refer to the robot’s current position and $\dot{X}_t$ and $\dot{Y}_t$ to its movement speed in the X and Y direction, respectively. In this case, the state space would be $dom(x_t) = \mathbb{R}^4$.
For each environment, there are virtually infinitely many possible state vectors, where additional state variables generally make the description of the environment more precise, with the downside of increasing the computational complexity of maintaining a belief. For example, if we consider the robot on a plain again, we could include the wind direction and force in the state vector to account for variations in the robot’s movement that are caused by the wind.
A state is called complete if it includes all the information that is necessary to predict the future of the system. In realistic examples, the state is usually incomplete. For example, if we assume that there are human beings interfering with the robot on the plain, then the state would have to include data that makes it possible to predict their decisions, which is practically impossible. Even in situations where we could in principle include all the influencing factors in the state, it is still often preferable not to include them to reduce computational complexity. In practice, the algorithms described in this article have turned out to be robust to incomplete states. A rule of thumb is to include enough state variables to make unmodeled effects approximately random. [THRUN, p. 33]
As alluded to in the introduction, the state $x_t$ is usually unobservable, which means that we cannot measure it directly. Instead, we have sensors that generate a measurement $e_t$ at each time step $t \geq 1$, which is a vector of arbitrary dimension. This measurement vector contains noisy sensor measurements that are caused by the state. In our modeling, $e_t$ always contains the same measurement variables. If we have a GPS sensor, then this measurement vector could consist of the measured X and Y coordinates. It is important to realize that these measured coordinates are generally not the same as the actual coordinates. Instead, they are caused by the actual coordinates but underlie a certain measurement noise due to the inaccuracy of GPS.
Belief
As we said, the state $x_t$ is unobservable. All we can do is maintain a belief $bel(x_t)$, given the observations. The process of determining the belief from observations is called filtering or state estimation (cf. [NORVIG, p. 570]). In mathematical terms, the belief is a probability distribution over all possible states, conditioned by the observations so far: $bel(x_t) := P(x_t \mid e_{1:t})$, where we use $e_{1:t}$ as a short-hand notation for $(e_1, e_2, …, e_t)$. We also define $\overline{bel}(x_t) := P(x_t \mid e_{1:t−1})$, which is the projected or predicted belief, i.e. the probability distribution over all the possible states at time $t$, given only past observations. As we can see, the number of measurements we have to condition by in order to determine the belief increases unboundedly over time. This means that we would have to store all the measurements, which is impossible with a limited memory. Additionally, the time needed to compute the belief would increase unboundedly, since we have to consider all the measurements so far. If we want to have a computationally tractable method for calculating the belief at deliberate points in time, we have to find a function $f$ such that $bel(x_{t+1}) = f(bel(x_t), e_{t+1})$. This means that in order to calculate the belief at a certain time step, we take the belief of the previous time step, project it to the new time step and then update it in accordance with new evidence. Such a method is called recursive estimation (cf. [NORVIG, p. 571]). The Bayes Filter is an algorithm for doing this. But before we can formulate the algorithm and prove its correctness, we have to specify how the world evolves over time and how we interpret sensor input. Also, as we will see in the next sections, we have to make some assumptions about the system in order to arrive at a recursive formulation. Transition and Sensor Models As stated in the introduction, realistic environments are non-deterministic but stochastic – given a state $x_t$, we can not tell what the state $x_{t+1}$ will be. Regardless of that, we can tell how likely each of the possible states $x_{t+1}$ is, given the state $x_t$. In mathematical terms, we can specify the conditional probability distribution $P(x_{t+1} \mid x_t)$. We call this distribution the transition model, since it is a model of how the environment transitions from one time step to the next. Analogously, due to the partial observability of the environment (in particular, the inaccuracy of the sensors), we cannot tell which state causes exactly which sensor measurement, since there is always some measurement noise. However, we can tell how likely each possible sensor measurement $e_t$ is, given the state $x_t$. In mathematical terms, we can specify $P(e_t \mid x_t)$, which we call the sensor model. Given a sensor measurement $e_t$, it tells us how likely each state is to cause this measurement. We will see examples for transition and sensor models in the following sections. The Markov Assumption In order to be able to arrive at a recursive formula for maintaining the belief $bel(x_t)$, we have to make so-called Markov assumptions about both the transition model and the sensor model. We will see in the next section that these two assumptions allow us to arrive at a method to calculate the belief recursively. For the transition model, the Markov assumption states, that, given the state $x_t$, all states $x_{t+j}$ with $j \geq 1$ are conditionally independent of $x_{0:t−1}$ (cf. [DEGROOT, p. 188, 189]). This gives us $P(x_{t+1} \mid x_{0:t}) = P(x_{t+1} \mid x_t)$. Intuitively speaking, this assumption means that if we know the state at a certain point in time, then no previous states give us additional knowledge about the future. We also make a sensor Markov assumption as follows: $P(e_{t+1} \mid x_{t+1}, e_{1:t}) = P(e_{t+1} \mid x_{t+1})$. This means that if we know the state $x_{t+1}$, then no sensor measurements from the past tell us anything more about the probabilities of each possible sensor measurement $e_{t+1}$. The Bayes Filter Algorithm As we stated in section 3.2, we want a method to calculate $bel(x_{t+1})$ from $bel(x_t)$ and $e_{t+1}$. We can do this in two consecutive steps First, we calculate the projected belief $\overline{bel}(x_{t+1})$ from $bel(x_t)$. This step is usually called projection: We project the belief of the previous time step to the current time step. We can do this in the following way (a proof for this statement can be found in [NORVIG, p. 572]): $$
\overline{bel}(x_{t+1}) = \int_{x_t} P(x_{t+1} \mid x_t) bel(x_t)
$$ The process of calculating $bel(x_{t+1})$ from $\overline{bel}(x_{t+1})$ is called update: We update the |
music, the Internet Archive has a keen interest in copyright law. In a submission to the U.S. Copyright Office the Archive says since the major studios often send invalid notices, they're suggesting a change in the law to allow content to remain up while disputes are settled.
Every single day millions of takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to online services ranging from YouTube and Google to KickassTorrents. The aim is to have copyright-infringing content removed, quickly.
As Internet usage has grown, the volume of notices being sent has exploded and as a result the debate over DMCA takedown procedures has become a hot topic, to the point that U.S. authorities are involved once again.
Under pressure from rightsholders, on the final day of 2015 the U.S. Copyright Office launched a public consultation with the aim of assessing the costs and burdens of the notice-and-takedown process on copyright owners, online service providers, and the general public.
As a free and public repository of a wide range of media (26 petabytes overall), the Internet Archive has a keen interest in how U.S. copyright law is shaped. In its just-published submission to the Copyright Office the Archive is quite clear – without the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA its valuable work would become impossible.
The certainty of Safe Harbor
“As we move increasingly towards a world where human knowledge is stored digitally, we are likely to see more libraries playing the role of host and curator of content posted by users. As such, it is important to understand how library interests intersect with the DMCA safe harbors and to ensure that libraries continue to enjoy the protection of these safe harbors in the future,” the Archive writes.
With some reservations the Archive believes that the DMCA and its system of shared responsibility is “working well” and should not be significantly overhauled. It notes that as a curator of everything from feature length films, old radio programs and cylinder recordings, to pre-1964 architectural trade catalogs, house plan books, and technical building guides, the Archive deals with an almost unprecedented range of material. That is only possible due to the “important certainty” offered by the DMCA.
“Without the protection of the DMCA safe harbors, we might not be able to host collections like these — despite the fact that no one has complained about the vast majority of the materials,” the Archive warns.
‘Notice and Staydown’ will chill free speech and fair use
While acknowledging that burdens are felt on both sides, with copyright holders keen to have content taken down and third-party organizations expected to respond swiftly in doing so, the Archive expresses concern over proposals for a “notice and staydown” system in which content that has been taken down once must never reappear again.
“The DMCA’s express provision that service providers have no affirmative duty to monitor for infringing activity remains an extremely important safeguard both for free speech and for the continuation of traditional library activities in the digital age,” the Archive says.
In its submission the Archive goes to some lengths to highlight differences between those engaging in commercial piracy and those who seek to preserve and share cultural heritage. As a result the context in which a user posts content online should be considered before attempting to determine whether an infringement has taken place. This, the organization says, poses problems for the ‘staydown’ demands gaining momentum with copyright holders.
“This is why proposals for ‘notice and staydown,’ which would appear to require platforms to use automated processes to make sure certain materials are never again able to be posted to the internet — regardless of context — threaten to chill legitimate speech and fair uses of materials,” the organization warns.
Interestingly the Internet Archive cites the Library Bill of Rights, which encourages libraries to “challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.” A ‘notice and staydown’ regime would violate these fundamental principles, the Archive says.
Reducing erroneous, sloppy and cynical takedowns
While warning against changes to the law that could increase non-profit service providers’ liability for infringing content, the Archive has some suggestions as to how the DMCA could protect against improper takedown notices.
Noting that incomplete and/or erroneous notices are received by the organization every week, the Archive concludes that the major culprits are agents of major studios and publishers. Over the years their notices have demanded the takedown of public domain works such as Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Moby Dick, while ‘dumb’ keyword matching continues to claim innocent victims.
“For example, we received a takedown notice regarding an old Salem cigarette commercial based on the term ‘Salem’ which is also the title of a major television series. Similar keyword misidentifications frequently show up as “matches” for music, concerts, home movies, and public domain books,” the Archive explains.
“We are deeply concerned that automated filtering could lead to taking down many materials that are being used in reasonable, legitimate and legally protected ways — especially when the underlying purpose of the complaint is not copyright related but rather an attempt to silence critical speech.”
To this end the Archive is calling for a tweak to the DMCA which would allow providers to leave content up as long as they have a genuine belief that the takedown notice they have received is erroneous.
“It might make sense to create a provision in the law that would grant the service provider the ability to refuse to take material down when they have a reasonable, good faith belief that the material identified in a DMCA notice is non-infringing,” the Archive writes.
“For example, if a work appears to be in the public domain, or if the use of the material appears to be a fair use, then the service provider could refuse to take the material down without risking the imposition of statutory damages.”
The Internet Archive’s submission (full text here) is an excellent example of what is at stake in respect of possible amendments to the DMCA. While the fight between copyright holders and hardcore pirates might be the key issue, the battle has the potential to wreak havoc elsewhere and the Internet Archive and similar groups are desperate to avoid the crossfire.Editor's Note: shuddertothink may be a City supporter but be kind to him, he's obviously put some time and effort into this FanPost. Basically, don't act like a Liverpool fan in the comments section.
On Sunday night in a London awards ceremony Robin van Persie was crowned the PFA's player of the season for 2011/2012. He had been the heavy favorite with the bookies and considering the vote was cast sometime around March, he was the thoroughly deserved winner on the night.
Without going too much into the stupidity of holding a vote for the seasons best player nary half way through the actual season, what would a vote for the PFA's player of the season look like if voted for today?
Considering that a forward usually wins this award (16 times out of the last 20 votes) I shall specifically write about the strikers who were up for the PFA player of the year award.
So Robin Van Persie became the 2012 PFA player of the year as voted by his fellow professionals. Not to dismiss the individual contributions of the 3 other nominees up for the award, who were Joe Hart, David Silva and Scott Parker I shall only be looking at the 3 outstanding strikers.
Each can lay claim to an individually successful season so far in this fascinating Premier League campaign.
Robin Van Persie for his electric start and, at times, single handedly winning games for Arsenal.
Sergio Aguero for stepping seamlessly into the most competitive league in the world and excelling.
Wayne Rooney who after a slowish start has become increasingly influential on his Man Utd team.
All 3 players have already broken their own individual season records for goals in a single season with 3 games to spare. They have all had incredible seasons and they are a credit to the EPL and a joy for fans to see week in and week out.
Previous career high for goals
Wayne Rooney 26 goals in 2009/10
Robin Van Persie 18 goals in 2010/11
Sergio Aguero 20 goals goals in La Liga in 2010/11
A comparison By Numbers
Goals
Wayne Rooney 26 goals 4 assists (6 pens)
Robin Van Persie 27 goals 10 assists (2 pens)
Sergio Aguero 22 goals 7 assists (3 pens)
These are all career years for these respective players.
% of his teams goals
Robin Van Persie 27 of 67 for 40 % of total goals
Wayne Rooney 26 of 86 for 30 % of total goals
Sergio Aguero 22 of 87 for 25 % of total goals
This just highlights Arsenals dependency on Van Persie's excellent play so far this season.
Minutes Per Goal
Wayne Rooney 99 mins
Sergio Aguero 106 mins
Robin Van Persie 113 mins
Robin Van Persie led the league in this stat for full time players for the majority of the season. Only 1 goal scored in the last 7 games has see Van Persie fall from the top spot.
Longest Goal Drought
Robin Van Persie 4 games
Wayne Rooney 9 games
Sergio Aguero 3 games
Rooney's goalless streak is staggering considering he now has 27 goals in this seasons EPL.
Shots
Robin Van Persie 155 shots 73 on target.470%
Wayne Rooney 144 shots 67 on target.465%
Sergio Aguero 115 shots 46 on target.400%
Van Persie's total shots is very high here as it has had to be.
Scoring % (shots on goal/goals)
Sergio Aguero.48%
Wayne Rooney.39%
Robin Van Persie.37%
Now, a good way to determine if a striker is having an abnormally good season, and possibly a season driven by luck in terms of scoring % is to look at his historical scoring % previous to this current season.
Historical Scoring %
Sergio Aguero.357
Wayne Rooney.214
Robin Van Persie.389
Note Robin Van Persie's historical data does not include the Eredivisie due to incomplete data. Rooney's low number can be seen in context to his career starting at an extremely young age.
Van Persie is the consistent scorer and the one player least likely to fall away in terms of next years scoring. One wonders just what his career might have looked like without the injuries and being played deep or wide earlier in his career.
Sergio Aguero has a high historical scoring % considering his young age, but the.48% leaves me a little concerned going into next season. It may be reasonable to expect his high scoring % to drop next season (which would affect total goals) but it may not due to factors such as better quality of team-mates at Man City this year, and increasing his total number of shots, which trail Van Persie's high number by a wide margin.
Goals By Game Situation
Goals at -1,0,+1 home/away
Robin Van Persie 14/9 for 85 % of 27 goals
Sergio Aguero 10/4 for 63 % of 22 goals
Wayne Rooney 10/3 for 41 % of 27 goals
Not all goals are equal, some goals have more significance than others. The 5th goal in a 5-0 will has little value and tells us nothing about the said strikers ability to score when the game is on the line and his team need him.
I believe that goals scored at -1,0,+1(one goal behind, game tied, one goal ahead) goal situations tell us about a striker who doesn't pad his stats, who doesn't turn it on against the already beaten sides, but one who excels in pressure situations.
It's Van Persie who excels by this measurement. There may be some corrections due agaisnt him as he plays on a weaker side, and a side more liable to be a goal behind or to tied late in the game. But having said that his 85 % of goals scored at the important -1,0,+1 situations is just extraordinary.
I'll predict we wont see that many goals of such importance, scored in such numbers in a single season for a long time to come.
Conclusion
If we take into account all the measurement tools I have used agaisnt each striker, Goals, the assist, the Scoring % etc we can hope to gain a purely statistical outcome.
There is also the'seen 'em good' train of thought, where we we just base our opinions solely on what our eyes see. This is an attempt to strip away some of the occasional bias and present a cold look at the respective players. Bear in mind the PFA award was voted on by the players' peers and voted on many months ago.
Solely by the numbers, if the award was voted on today I would give the award to Robin Van Persie.
His 27 goals on the season for a weaker team, and also the situations he scored his goals in are just extraordinary numbers. Not just that, he has also assisted on the highest number of goals of this group of players and scored the highest percentage of his teams total goals.
All told Arsenal would be somewhat lost this season with Van Persie's incredible performances.
He is irreplaceable for the Gunners and there may well be dark clouds and a few of the worlds biggest clubs circling for the players signature at the end of the season with his expiring contract status looking increasingly worrisome for the clubs fans.
Now a little fun! A measurement tool devised to mix in all these numbers and come up with a value system to evaluate these players.
I'll call it DSB rating for now. It's a mix of the scoring %, goals and assists/the Mins per goal. The lower the number the better the player.
Sergio Aguero 29
Wayne Rooney 30
Robin Van Persie 39
Now it is only a little fun, but having done this for all the strikers in the top 20 of the EPL scoring race, the measurement fits with some uniformity.
If a players shooting % is low, your DSB number rises (which is a bad thing, lower the DSB number the better), it also rises if the players goals total is low, or the minutes per goal is too high.
The one player it doesn't fit for for is Cisse from Newcastle who has a scoring % of.69, for 11 goals and a goal every 68 minutes. His rating is an astronomically low -12! Safe to say, knowing about scoring %'s and other such stats for strikers, Cisse will not repeat a.69 scoring % nor a goal every 68 mins. He is the anomaly.NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota signed with the Tennessee Titans on Tuesday, becoming the last of the NFL's first-round draft picks to finalize his deal.
The former Oregon quarterback is expected to start immediately, with the timing of the contract keeping the No. 2 overall pick on track to open the season Sept. 13 at Tampa Bay against Jameis Winston - the No. 1 overall selection from the draft.
The Titans started three quarterbacks while going 2-14 in coach Ken Whisenhunt's debut season. They were so excited about adding Mariota that Whisenhunt began tweaking his offense to fit the quarterback's skills weeks before the draft.
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''I am very grateful and honored to have this opportunity,'' Mariota said in a statement. ''I look forward to the future with my teammates, and I'm truly excited to be part of this team.''
Mariota left Oregon after his redshirt junior season. In 2014, the 6-foot-4 222-pounder from Hawaii directed the most efficient offense in the country and led all quarterbacks with a 90.9 rating. Mariota threw for 4,454 yards and 42 touchdowns, while rushing for 770 yards and 15 scores. He was only intercepted four times last season.
That combination of size, mobility and efficiency prompted the Titans to make him their third quarterback drafted within the first eight selections since 2006, and a franchise with only one winning record in the past six seasons has been busy selling Mariota since the moment he was announced as their newest player.
But the timing of Mariota's contract caused a bit of apprehension for fans of the team. Whether or not the Titans would have Mariota signed in time for the first practice of camp July 31 had been a hot topic on talk radio the past few weeks.
Story continues
''We look forward to him starting his career on time with his teammates when we open camp next week,'' general manager Ruston Webster said. ''This is an exciting time for the Tennessee Titans organization, and we look forward to a bright future.''
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AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP-NFLThe teapot tempests are raging in DC over Judge Neil Gorsuch’s qualifications to become a Supreme Court Justice. Senate Democrats vied with Republican Senators for ideological supremacy yesterday, but the most ridiculous attack on the eminently qualified candidate appeared from an unanticipated source on Sunday.
Jennifer Sisk, a Denver attorney and former student of Judge Gorsuch at the University of Colorado law school wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee claiming that during a class on legal ethics and professionalism Judge Gorsuch “told the class that not only could a future employer ask female interviewees about their pregnancy and family plans, companies must ask females about their families and pregnancy plans to protect the company” because, Sisk says, “he asked the class…if they knew of a female who had used a company to get maternity benefits and then left right after having a baby.”
Her concern was that the “question was not about parents or men shifting priorities after having children. It was solely focused on women using their companies.” Sisk goes on to complain that “There was no discussion of the reasons women may leave employment when having children or the difficulties in raising young children and meeting the high billable hours required in law firms. Instead, Judge Gorsuch continued to steer the conversation back to the problems women pose for companies and the protections that companies need from women.”
She concluded by saying “I was distressed by the tenor of this conversation. I was surprised and upset that a bright, articulate, and educated federal judge could think so little of female attorneys, even more so considering that in that class half the students were female…It concerned me that a man educating female lawyers would be discounting their worth publicly. Now it concerns me that a man who is being considered for our highest court holds views that discounts the worth of working females.”
Oh horror of horrors! Let an eminent jurist present a hypothetical as a valid subject for discussion and debate on the subject of the actually knotty problem of women who do in fact take advantage of employers for precisely the reasons he articulates in a class on legal ethics and professionalism and all she can draw from the lesson is the narrow-minded conclusion that her instructor is some sort of anti-feminist sexist troglodyte.
It causes one to weep over the decline in the ability of law school students to think rationally and step outside their personal prejudices and biases for even a moment in order to learn something. What does that say about the quality of law students who eventually become lawyers?
What Judge Gorsuch was doing, as any rational, thinking person would know, was to play devil’s advocate in order to stimulate argument and reasoning among his students by posing an inflammatory position that challenges conventional liberal feminist wisdom that women can do whatever they want and are immune from both criticism and the law.
In response to a challenge by one student claiming that it’s illegal for an employer to inquire into a woman’s reproductive plans Judge Gorsuch stated that it is not illegal and is both reasonable and necessary for employers to do so because it happens to be true that some women (not all women as Sisk suggests) do in fact engage in what amounts to fraud against the employer in order to get legally-mandated maternity benefits.
In a class on legal ethics and professionalism for lawyers Judge Gorsuch used this controversy to inform students on the ethical pitfalls of maternity, something only women experience, from the perspective of attorneys and their employers. That Judge Gorsuch limited that particular class to the discussion of those ethical pitfalls as they apply only to women is hardly an indication that he’s a sexist or misogynist, it only means that in the limited time available to him he kept the class focused on his intended lesson, which had absolutely nothing whatever to do with discounting the worth of working females and everything to do with teaching students about ethical dilemmas that they might face as lawyers, who are a special class to whom this issue is of particular concern.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from even this brief description of the class is that female lawyers should carefully consider their reproductive plans as a part of their chosen career path because they have a much greater ethical duty to their clients than a convenience store clerk does when it comes to abandoning their jobs in favor of having children. It is women, after all, who have the legal ability to do so under current law.
Sisk’s ire is both misplaced and indicative of an unwillingness to acknowledge either biology or the fact that in law school, professors make unpopular arguments for the purpose of stimulating debate and education, not as statements of personal policy or belief. To haul out this specious complaint in an attempt to impeach the integrity or character of Judge Gorsuch is an unconscionable attack by someone who seems more interested in advancing a personal political agenda than adhering to professional ethics or even simple courtesy and respect for someone who had the courage to try to educate her.Since its very beginning in 2012, DC’s interconnected serial dramas on the CW have created a passionate fandom who discover classic comic book characters and mythologies as they’ve been introduced in live-action TV. Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and especially Legends of Tomorrow have made once-obscure characters into household names (at least for households that adorn their shelves with Funko figures), and in turn, the rest of DC’s Multiverse has lifted some of its inspiration.
Let’s make it clear: The comics are still king, but the accessibility and popularity of these TV shows have shaped parts of the DCU in some way, shape, or form. Here are just three ways the Arrowverse has changed the DC Universe.
1. Racebending Firestorm, Iris, and Wally West
If there is one fault in the many decades of American comic books before the 1970s, it’s that comics were overwhelmingly straight and white. Few characters of color, let alone female characters of color, existed on the page. (And queer comics characters is a whole other story.) Things began to change during the Bronze Age, and exponentially more so in the current Modern Age, though there’s still plenty of roads to be paved. But in the mass adaptation wave to live-action TV and movies, it’s still a question if characters should “stay true” to the source material or reflect the spectrum of the ticket-buying audience of the modern age.
There’s not one broad solution, but in terms of The CW’s Arrowverse, racebending characters like the Wests into a black family or replacing Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell) in favor of Jax (Franz Drameh) has successfully reset the image of these characters in the fans’ imaginations.
In DC Rebirth, Wally West — aka Kid Flash — is now a young black teen. In the DC Extended Universe, a fan-run campaign to “Keep Iris Black,” contradictory to the character’s original Caucasian portrayal in the comics, won over Warner Bros. casting to hire Kiersey Clemons to portray Iris in Justice League. And in the popular Injustice 2 video game, the no-name Firestorm now features a black Ronnie Raymond in a very pivotal role in the game’s narrative.
Of all the legacies the Arrowverse is leaving onto the DC Universe, it’s that changing characters to be more inclusive isn’t an outrageous ask. There’s no reason why Iris West should be white or black — so why not choose the most inclusive route? This is a great thing.
2. Green Arrow’s Costume
Not as significant but no less eye-pleasing is the Green Arrow’s current costume in the “Rebirth” DC Universe. Introduced in 2016 by artist Otto Schmidt, it’s very clearly riffing off the Green Arrow’s costume worn by Stephen Amell in the fourth season of Arrow.
A departure from the rugged, Robin Hood-esque attire he wore in the first three seasons, Oliver Queen became the Green Arrow in the fall of 2015, wearing new tactical gear that left his beefy biceps exposed. His costume changed again in the most recent season by adding sleeves, but what could only be described as a “tactical turtle” fits DCU’s social justice warrior.
From the pages of 'Green Arrow: Rebirth' #1
3. D-Level Characters Are Turned Into Stars
Broadly speaking, the Arrowverse has made some stars out of obscure-as-heck characters. While the Atom certainly can’t rival Batman, characters like Captain Cold, Firestorm, Wild Dog, Vixen, and even Supergirl herself are enjoying more name recognition than ever.
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Yes, these characters have existed in comics for many years, and Supergirl had her own movie, starring Helen Slater. But in what galaxy could Captain Cold and Firestorm be included as major characters in Injustice 2 instead of more recognized figures like Batgirl and Zod?
And DC Rebirth’s Justice League of America roster is a who’s who of the Arrowverse, instead of who’s that? Black Canary, Killer Frost, Vixen, and the Atom all join Batman, Lobo, and the Ray, whom it just so happens will be getting an animated Arrowverse spin-off this fall.
The Justice League of America (2016)
Heck, just look at this Google Trends result for “Wild Dog” (with the associated “Comics” tag, so we’re not seeing results for wild, feral dogs). You can see that, in the past five years, interest in the character spiked in the summer prior to his debut on Arrow last fall.
And here’s the results of “Vixen.” That first spike dates back to roughly around the time of her appearance in live action on Arrow.
These numbers pale in comparison to someone like Harley Quinn, but the point remains: These shows get people interested in characters. And that’s a good thing, because there’s always a library of classic stories waiting for them on the trade paperback shelf.
See also: How Arrow Won Back Its Fandom in Season 5As the World Cup comes to its conclusion, next season's Premier League kickoff is just over five weeks away.
Those who will find themselves covering Manchester United have a glint in their eye. This Louis van Gaal chap seems like he might provide some good stories win, draw or lose -- though especially lose.
The Dutch master has carried himself as if he were the coach of the tournament. His public pronouncements are never slow in awarding himself credit.
He has revealed himself to be no respecter of reputations, with the successful removals of Robin van Persie and Jasper Cillessen bringing in match winners for both the Netherlands' knockout matches. The Tim Krul introduction for the penalty shootout did a fine job of shrouding what had been a poor display against Costa Rica. The general who makes his own luck is a fine characteristic to call on in top-level coaching.
At such a time, it is difficult not to draw comparisons with David Moyes, Van Gaal's hapless predecessor-to-be or "Poor David," as he became known to many in United circles. Van Gaal, brusque, self-assured and flamboyant, has looked in Brazil like everything Moyes could not be at Old Trafford.
Moyes remains well-liked in football, except among those who helped bring about his fall in April. Plenty of goodwill is retained for him.
He won much credit among the English press pack when showing up in Miami as the England squad prepared for its embarrassingly premature exit. Away from the glare of the postmatch flash interview or those uncomfortable news conferences that got shorter with each defeat, Moyes is a sociable, clubbable cove and won back the appreciation of those who became his tormentors during that disastrous nine months in charge.
Louis van Gaal might not be the friendliest coach, but his management skills are top notch.
One thing remains clear: Moyes was never a fit for United. On arrival, the place shrank him, one of British football's finest managers, and he never allowed himself to grow back. Van Gaal does not strike as a man to be so bowed, so humble. If the aim of the Glazer family's appointment is to reduce the residual influence of Sir Alex Ferguson, then such a dominant figure is necessary.
Van Gaal has never been known to duck a challenge.
Making returns to Barcelona, Ajax and the Dutch team suggests either reckless abandon or total self-assurance. Things did not work out at either club, but a return to the national team has provided vindication. Failing to get a generation containing Ruud van Nistelrooy, Patrick Kluivert, Clarence Seedorf and Edwin van der Sar to the 2002 World Cup was the biggest blot on his résumé, yet with a group of lesser talents, he has gone far beyond expectations in 2014.
Like Moyes, Van Gaal is a tracksuit manager, but the evidence suggests that the results of their training ground work are very different. Moyes preached solidity, shape and linear football to players who refused to be converted. Van Gaal's Netherlands have played several different formations in five matches in Brazil, with adaptability, a tenet of "Total Football," at the heart of his dictations.
The Netherlands' opening win against Spain will probably end up being the most devastating display of this entire World Cup. It was achieved through Van Gaal striking at the heart of Spain. Where others had previously sat back to be eventually lulled by Spain's possession game, the Dutch asked questions that the ailing holders could no longer answer.
Van Persie and Arjen Robben in particular, players beyond their supposed peak years, performed as if given fresh footballing lives. Around them, their teammates always stuck to their coach's rigorous instructions; those United players whose interest dipped under Moyes will not get away with it now.
"He is the brain behind everything," said Krul on Monday. "We know before each game what we have to do."
In choosing to take on United after a World Cup, Van Gaal, hardly getting any younger at 62, placed great pressure on himself. Had the Dutch exited Group B, as many expected, then he faced arriving in Manchester as a lame duck. Now, no matter what might happen from this point on, he will arrive with his swagger fully justified, his blow-dried head held high.
"I'm asking you, if you have such a clever question, if you're going to ask me questions, I'm going to ask you questions" is a sample of his World Cup news conferences. He has not joined Manchester United to make friends. Those expectant journalists are in for a far tougher ride from Van Gaal than they ever gave Moyes.
John Brewin is a staff writer for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @JohnBrewinESPN.It's perfectly acceptable to design college courses, and even entire degrees, around women or minorities, but devote one course to how men are treated in literature — not even in society, but specifically in literature — an uproar ensues.
That's what happened to Professor Dennis Gouws at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. Since 2005, Gouws has taught a course titled "Men in Literature" eight times. The course didn't seem out of place when classes titled "Women and Literature" and "Native American Literature" were also being taught. But Gouws suddenly found himself on the wrong end of political correctness.
In the Fall of 2014, Gouws was also teaching two level-one writing courses. The final essay assignment was reminiscent of his literature course, and required students "to write about how men are treated in their respective academic environments."
Gouws had 31 students in his writing class, and four wrote critical evaluations of the final assignment. One of the students merely noted that they "would suggest a different topic for paper #5." One suggested that including women on campus in the assignment and another called the paper "absurd." The final student wrote that they found the assignment "insulting" and that they did "not appreciate having to write about how men are treated unequally on campus when there is no unequal treatment." But of course, the assignment didn't necessarily suggest there was any inequality, at least not in the negative sense. The student very well could have written an essay about how men are treated better than or equal to women on campus.
The other 27 evaluations were generally positive, but because four students had gendered complaints about the assignment, Gouws was eventually forced to cancel the course.
The dean who lead the charge against Gouws, Anne Herzog, already seemed to have it in for him. She had denied his request for leave in late 2014, likely because he would be working on projects that included teaching male-positive literature courses. She also reprimanded him for missing a "sexual harassment prevention" seminar, even though he had previously been excused.
Gouws was already disliked by Herzog and the colleges director of Human Resources, Rosanne Captain, because of his reactions to campus posters dealing with rape. The campus had a poster that said "Men can stop rape." Gouws put up a poster next to it that said "Women can stop false rape accusations." He also posted flyers that included statistics about rape and false accusations.
For this he was said to have created a "hostile environment."
The National Association of Scholars, the academic advocacy association that first publicized the Gouws story, described Springfield College as favoring "a feminist view of the relations between the sexes." When such a faction was exposed to a competing view, such as Gouws, they acted to silence him, using language similar to what is found in Title IX, a law designed to prevent sex discrimination.
The school administrators used the four students' evaluations as a pretext to silence Gouws and get him to stop teaching a course that dared to focus on men. Gouws was told he needed to add more "traditional literature" to his course, without defining the term. Gouws didn't argue; instead, he agreed and suggested new readings to the departmental chair. Gouws would now teach The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Martian by Andy Weir. Dean Herzog responded by cancelling the course.
After futile attempts to reason with the school's administration, Gouws reached out to NAS for help. Its president, Peter Wood, took up Gouws' cause, writing that the school's administrators, "once they understood that Professor Gouws was marked out as the Enemy, were tireless in their efforts to discredit him," and "should cease to treat him as a public enemy."
"A moment has arrived in American higher education when the fear of complaints from students that a male bias lurks somewhere in a course is sufficient reason for slashing the course from the curriculum," Wood wrote. "A pernicious ideology has been let loose, and it is all the more pernicious because its proponents congratulate themselves for striking a blow for gender justice every time they narrow the curricular choices to their own preferences."
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner."It sat in front of him, on top of a pillow that rested on a milk crate. He sprinkled baby powder on it -- what looked like a huge watermelon encased in a compression bandage -- but the unmistakable smell of urine couldn't be completely smothered. "Hard to believe, isn't it?" 47-year-old Wesley Warren Jr. said in the poorly lit apartment. "It's freakish." What sat in front of where Warren was seated in shorts -- what is actually attached to him -- was more than 100 pounds of scrotum, the protective sac of skin and muscle that contains his testicles. "It's not easy to get around," he said, standing and groaning as he lifted his scrotum off its makeshift pedestal and carefully let it hang almost to the floor. "It makes me stay in most of the time." If there is a more unusual medical condition afflicting someone from Southern Nevada, the medical community or patient hasn't come forward with it. Warren has gone public, even though he knows there will be those who laugh at him, because he desperately wants a costly surgery to correct the scrotal elephantiasis that became part of his life nearly three years ago." - Las Vegas ReviewSan Diego home prices have had quite a run since we last checked in on local housing valuations.
Let’s take another look at home valuations since the end of the year, what this may portend for the future and (bonus nerd topic) whether housing is in a bubble.
The graph below compares local home prices to their two most important economic underpinnings: incomes (which tell you how much San Diegans have available to spend on housing) and rents (which tell you how much it costs to put a non-owned roof over one’s head, and also how much landlords can earn from owning a house). The graph simply charts San Diego home prices divided by an equally weighted average of San Diego rents and incomes. When the ratio — the red line — is high, that means homes are more expensive than rents and incomes would suggest they should be; when it’s low, they are cheaper. The blue line is the median or midpoint of all historical values, and the orange line denotes the current level.
Here’s what this graph is telling us:
Despite the recent price run-up, San Diego homes are nowhere near as expensive as they got during last decade’s bubble.
• They are expensive, though: They are 12 percent above the historical median valuation (down from 13 percent in November), and very nearly at levels reached in both the 1979 and 1990 valuations peaks.
• The first two times we hit this level of expensiveness in the past, valuations soon began a multi-year decline. The third time, valuations went straight up for several years before totally collapsing. So what happens this time? I don’t think anyone can know the answer to that question, unfortunately. There are a number of reasons why:
• While valuations peaked at this level two times in the past, there were specific factors helping to subsequently push them down: a double-dip recession and really high interest rates in the early 1980s, and a pretty bad local recession in the early 1990s. I do believe that housing’s overvaluation puts it at more risk from negative economic events, but unless and until those events happen, valuations could remain higher than normal.
• We also have an example where valuations reached this |
made — forcing boiling water through pressed coffee grounds. And although espresso has more caffeine per volume than coffee, it would take three shots to equal the amount in a regular cup of joe.
8. The world's most expensive coffee can cost more than $600 a pound.
One of the most coveted varieties comes from the feces of an Asian palm civet. The cat-like creature eats fruit including coffee cherries, but is unable to digest the beans. The excreted seeds produce a smooth, less acidic brew called kopi luwak, but the means of production has drawn criticism from animal welfare activists.
9. Multiple people have tried to ban coffee.
Back in 1511, leaders in Mecca believed it stimulated radical thinking and outlawed the drink. Some 16th-century Italian clergymen also tried to ban coffee because they believed it to be "satanic." However, Pope Clement VII loved coffee so much that he lifted the ban and had coffee baptized in 1600.
Even as recently as the 18th century, the Swedish government made both coffee and coffee paraphernalia (including cups and dishes) illegal for its supposed ties to rebellious sentiment.
10. You can overdose on coffee.
Don't worry, you would need to drink about 30 cups in a very short period time to get close to a lethal dose of caffeine, Vox reports.
ozgurcoskun Getty Images
11. Finland is home to the biggest coffee lovers.
The average adult Finn goes through 27.5 pounds of coffee each year, according to the International Coffee Organization. Compare that to a measly 11 pounds per American.
12. Coffee drinkers tend to live longer.
Research has linking moderate consumption (about three to four cups per day) with a longer life span, plus a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's, according to Harvard Health Publishing.
13. The largest cup of coffee ever filled a 9-foot tall cup.
The 3,487-gallon serving earned a Guiness World Record in 2012.
14. The Boston Tea Party helped popularize coffee in America.
In the lead up to the Revolutionary War, it became patriotic to sip java in lieu tea, of PBS reveals. The Civil War also made the drink more pervasive because it helped energize tired troops.
An engraving of an 18th-century coffee house. Culture Club Getty Images
15. Decaf does not mean caffeine-free.
An eight-ounce brewed cup of decaf coffee actually contains two to 12 milligrams of caffeine, the Mayo Clinic states. In comparison, a regular cup of coffee supplies between 95 to 200 milligrams, while one can of cola has aout 23 to 35 milligrams of caffeine.
16. The word "coffee" comes from the Arabic word for "wine."
Qahwah later became kahveh in Turkish, and then koffie in Dutch, which is where we get the English word coffee.
17. Starbucks opens an average of two stores per day.
You can now order grande lattés at more than 29,000 locations around the globe, 47 years after the first store launched in Seattle.
Justin Sullivan Getty Images
18. One cup of black coffee only has one calorie.
Adding sweeteners, cream, and other mix-ins can quickly jack up the total. A venti Java Chip Frappuccino from Starbucks contains 88 grams of sugar and 600 calories — more than a McDonald's Big Mac!
19. Teddy Roosevelt reportedly coined Maxwell House's slogan.
Our nation's 26th president loved coffee so much that one of his son's described his custom cup as "more in the nature of a bathtub," according to Smithsonian.com. On a 1907 visit to Andrew Jackson's former estate, the commander in chief supposedly dubbed a cup of Maxwell House joe "good to the last drop," a catchphrase still used today.
20. You can order coffee 25,000 different ways at Dunkin'.
The recently renamed doughnut chain did the math on its customizable java drinks. It sells 2 billion cups globally per year, enough for customers to pick each option 80,000 times.
21. The grounds can beautify your skin.
Save your leftover beans for a DIY scrub. "Coffee grounds are physical exfoliators that can lift off dead skin cells, making skin feel smooth and look brighter," says Good Housekeeping Beauty Lab chemist Danusia Wnek. "And caffeine is thought to improve blood circulation in skin, but there isn't yet sufficient clinical data on its use in topical products."North American motorists are paying full value for fuel this summer, as refiners across the continent reap a windfall from lower crude costs that they have not passed through to the pump.
Independent refiners in the United States reported eye-popping second-quarter profits, while integrated Canadian companies such as Suncor Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc. were able to offset slumping crude prices with fatter earnings from their downstream operations.
They expect a similar trend in the current quarter. But with the summer driving season winding down, the party may soon end for the refiners, as the spread between prices for crude and wholesale gasoline – known as the crack spread – is expected to shrink back to a more typical size after Labour Day.
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"You're going to see the gasoline crack come under pressure simply because the gasoline season is ending with more than adequate inventories," Houston-based industry consultant Andrew Lipow said in an interview. "Refiners here in the U.S. and in Europe are well able to supply the North American markets, and we're going into a lower demand period."
Consumers are understandably frustrated. Crude prices have tanked since early May, but gasoline prices have remained stubbornly high. The leading international benchmark, North Sea Brent, fell to $50 (U.S.) per barrel last week from $69 on May 1 – a drop of 28 per cent. But the average Canadian pump price actually rose over that period by three cents to $1.17.6 per litre last week, according to a survey done by Kent Group Ltd.
Crude prices are 50-per-cent lower than last year, while the average pump price last week was down a mere 10 per cent, from $1.31.1 in the first week of August, 2014. Refining and marketing margins in Canada were 10 cents per litre higher as of July 21 than for the corresponding period last year, Natural Resources Canada reports.
Industry officials stress that crude market and petroleum product markets often operate independently, with their own supply and demand dynamics, though clearly the cost of oil is a key determinant for products such as gasoline, diesel and heating oil.
"There is a natural tendency to want to make a direct link between the price of crude and the price of gasoline," said Carol Montreuil, a vice-president of the Canadian Fuels Association, which represents refiners and independent marketers. "It is very dangerous to make that correlation in all cases. … These two commodities both have their own markets, and react to their own variables."
The declining Canadian dollar has offset some of the drop in crude prices, which are set in U.S. currency. And gasoline prices typically rise in the late spring and summer because of higher consumption, then fall in autumn and winter.
More importantly, refiners have been operating above 95 per cent of their capacity – or essentially full out – to meet rising demand in North America, which has seen crude consumption rise by nearly 500,000 barrels per day over the past year. U.S. companies have also boosted exports to grab a greater share of rising demand in foreign markets, including Latin America and Europe.
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"All of this compounds the pressure on the finished product market and keeps the market of finished product very firm, irrespective of what's happening to crude," Mr. Montreuil said.
Critics charge the fattening margins show a lack of competition in the refining market. But like the crude side of the business, the refining side is intensely cyclical. Just five years ago, companies were closing plants in eastern North America and the Caribbean because of poor returns.
Longer-term prices on the futures markets suggest the margins will shrink this fall and into the winter, Mr. Lipow said, particularly as major new refineries in Saudi Arabia step up the battle for a share of the diesel market, which is much larger on a global basis than the one for gasoline.
For now, the biggest winners are the independent refiners in the U.S. – companies such as Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Petroleum Corp., both based in San Antonio, Tex.
Tesoro – which operates six refineries in western states – posted record levels of operating income, net income and earnings per shared last week in the second quarter, with its quarterly profit more than double the healthy level it posted in the second quarter of 2014.
Valero – which processes nearly three million barrels per day – saw its refining profits soar to $2.2-billion in the second quarter, also double its 2014 figure.
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Valero chief executive Joe Gorder said he doesn't anticipate a significant downturn in the business, thanks to rising demand. "I think it will be here for an extended period," Mr. Gorder told analysts on a conference call.
In Canada, companies such as Suncor, Cenovus and Husky Energy Inc. are benefiting from the natural hedge that ownership of refining and marketing assets delivers in periods of low oil prices.
Cenovus reported last week that a 42-per-cent drop in its upstream operating cash flow was partially offset by a 36-per-cent increase in cash flow from its refining and marketing assets – two U.S. refineries it owns jointly with Phillips 66 of Houston.
For its part, Suncor reported reduced operating earnings and cash flow, but still reported net earnings of $729-million for the second quarter. Some 70 per cent of that profit was attributable to its downstream operations, which include four refineries and a network of 1,500 Petro-Canada outlets across the country.Clearing of the Chimera group continues. Much progress is being made, but not much can be said about that now. I am waiting for the right circumstances to release massive intel that will broaden the horizons of the surface population about many things.
Some members of the Cabal are trying to spin Disclosure, hoping to appear as part of the positive faction in order to avoid arrest at the time of the Event:
Some media are trying to spin that partial Disclosure even further, making it into a joke:
But nevertheless, the truth about JFK assassination and its connection to Disclosure is coming into the mainstream:
Dragon sources have communicated that current militia standoff in Oregon is a false flag operation which has been designed by the Cabal to test the reaction of militias to certain conditions. This situation will not escalate as the vast majority of the Cabal does not want civil war in USA, knowing very well that civil war would accelerate the process towards the Event and their final defeat. What they want instead is a state of controlled chaos and tension which enables them to keep control and delay the inevitable for as long as possible.
The following study clearly shows that in a stratified society with pronounced inequality, the elites can not survive the collapse of the society for much longer than the commoners, regardless of their superior material and financial resources:
There are massive preparations for the financial Reset happening behind the scenes. Veterans Today is hinting at the joint Positive Military / Templar / Dragon group that is preparing the Reset:
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is the banking vehicle through which the Reset will be triggered and it will become operational in about a week from now:
The second pillar of the new financial system, the Shanghai Gold Exchange, is expected to start with Yuan based gold price fix in April:
Russia and China will start denominating their crude oil futures in Rubles and Yuan and not in US dollars anymore:
This is the true beginning of the end for the Petrodollar.
Maybe it is time now for you to start preparing yourself for abundance:
And to proudly keep shining the Light as a Lightworker or a Lightwarrior:
The concept of „false light“ was introduced by the Archons to further confuse the awakening part of the surface population and to promote distrust towards the Light in order to weaken the surface population even more. In reality, Light is Light, and darkness is darkness, it is that simple. If you are in touch with your inner guidance, you can never mistake the Light for darkness and darkness for Light.A participant holds a placard reading “Muslims-Mantes United” in a silent march on Sunday in Mantes-la-Jolie, France, in memory of the June 13 slaying of two police officers. Eliot Blondet/Getty Images
Over the past several years, Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, has come to be regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on political Islam.* Roy has offered up a theory, generally applied to Europe, on the “Islamization of radicalism.” It essentially holds that young followers of Islam have broken with their parents (a “generational revolt”). Roy believes that these young people “find in Islam the best way to express, experience, and to live their rejection of society.” This theory has proved controversial among other scholars, who tend to stress the opposite: the radicalization of Islam through the spread of Salafist ideas.
I spoke by phone with Roy, who is also the author of Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways. In our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, we discussed Donald Trump’s strange brand of Islamophobia, how Muslims are assimilating in Europe, and what the Orlando shooter tells us about radicalism.
Isaac Chotiner: How does Omar Mateen fit into your thinking about radicalization?
Olivier Roy: The first point is that the guy is second-generation, which is the most common pattern for terrorists. The second point is that, to the extent we know—and every day we learn something new about him—he was not very religious: He was an angry man without a precise cause. One thing that is interesting is that his family was Afghan, and his father has made political statements. But he never mentioned Afghanistan during the killing. He could have said he was attacking the American people in revenge for Mullah Mansour, the Taliban leader killed by an American drone. He could have justified his anti-American stance by referring to events in Afghanistan. He didn’t.
This is a very common pattern among terrorists. Terrorists almost never refer to their own country or the country of origin of their parents. They usually refer to global jihad, not to concrete situations. You can be angry at the United States government for good reasons, or at least real reasons: drones, the invasion of Iraq, and so on. But these guys always refer to virtual, global jihad.
What does that signify to you?
They are not reacting to a real situation. They are not reacting to a real conflict. They are in a virtual war. The key thing about Daesh is that it has evolved to promote a narrative of global or virtual jihad: Daesh almost never mentions real conflicts. It attracts these types of guys who are what I call de-culturated and who never adjust to any society, whether it is American society or any society. It is not the revenge of the Afghans against the Americans. It is not connected to real struggles. They live in an imaginary world.
It sounds like you think this guy was on a path to some sort of radicalization or violence, whether or not it was through Islam.
I think that these guys do not become radicalized because they become more and more religious. It is not religious radicalization that leads to political radicalization. When they became radical, they are religious. They frame their wrath in a religious narrative. They think they will go to paradise. It is Islamization of radicalization. I think Islam is the framework of the radicalization; it is not the primary cause. What I am saying, which there is a lot of misunderstanding about: It is not because they pray more and more, or go more and more to a mosque, that they become radicals. When they became radicals, they choose the religious narrative and believe in it.
These guys are not Salafi. The idea that this is the Salafization of Islam does not make sense because their approach to salvation is not the Salafi approach. The Salafis do not believe in suicide. They think that suicide is a sin against God, like the Jews and the Christians. If you kill yourself or put yourself in a position where you will necessarily be killed, you preempt the will of God. But in the mind of the suicide bombers, the idea is that you don’t need to be a good Muslim, you don’t need to pray five times a day, you don’t need to go for hajj. If you make a supreme sacrifice, you will go directly to paradise and there is no need to be strict believer.
If what you are saying is true, how do we stop these attacks? We often hear that the solution is to “moderate” Islam, but that wouldn’t seem to be the solution in the narrative you just laid out.
These guys are attracted by the narrative of Daesh. And Daesh today is the only international anti-society, anti–world order group. There is no more global international extreme left. If you take [left-wing parties] Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece, these movements are now anti-globalization. The only global movement now is radical Islam, which explains the number of converts—which is extraordinary. The number of converts who have joined the jihad is between 20 percent and 30 percent.
The issue now is to debunk the narrative of Daesh. We should penalize Daesh by not depicting it as the biggest threat to Western civilization—that condones their propaganda. The second point is that we should not allow radical Islam to have a monopoly on Islam. For that, we should let rise a normal Islam, not a moderate Islam. The concept of moderate Islam is totally misleading: You do not have moderate religion. Calvinism is not moderate. Calvin and Luther were not moderates. They were radicals. But you can have moderate believers who are not necessarily moderately believing. We should let normal Islam emerge as a religion in the public sphere. In the United States, this is easier because religion is accepted. But in Europe it is a problem. The trend in Europe is to consider any religion as a potential problem.
Is this why you think countries like France tend to have a bigger problem with radicalization than the United States?
Yes. Because the answer to radicalism in France is to marginalize religion more and more. It is to expel religion from the public space. And if you expel religion from the public space, then you give religion to the extremes and the radicals.
I am guessing you don’t like Donald Trump’s approach to Islam.
It is interesting because Trump is not a religious guy. His Islamophobia is linked with some sort of contempt of religion. That’s the ambiguity of it. It isn’t a Christian Islamophobia. Trump does not pay lip service to religion when he attacks Islam. He doesn’t say you can be a nice believer or anything like that. He rejects Islam as a rule and he never speaks about good religion, even Christianity.
We just had far-right forces in Austria get near a majority, and we have the Brexit vote this week—which has been driven in part by xenophobia. And there is always France. How optimistic are you about integration of Islam into European society and the politics around it?
I think there is a discontinuity between the realities in Europe and the perception. The crisis now is terrorism and refugees, and it is linked, according to public opinion, with Muslims. But if you look at Europe, you see in fact that integration works more than is believed. You have Sadiq Khan winning the election in London. In Germany, you have 16 members of Parliament of Turkish descent, and they all voted for recognition of the Armenian genocide. We have, in France, two female ministers who are from Muslim backgrounds. In every place in Western Europe, you have a new Muslim elite. Everybody is focusing on the losers, the disenfranchised second-generation youth who are making trouble. But the kind of trouble they make is more related to disenfranchisement and petty delinquency than to Islam.
You must have read more pessimistic accounts, from Michel Houllebelq and others, about the future of Europe, particularly France and its supposedly coming Islamization. Despite your concerns about radicalization, you don’t seem to buy that pessimism.
I don’t buy it. We do not have an Islamization of society. In polls, only 20 percent of Muslims in France are really practicing Islam. In fact, we have a secularization of Muslims. But the more secularization you have, the more religion is visible because religion is not integrated into the dominant secular culture. Religion now in Europe seems weird to people.
*Correction, June 22, 2016: Due to a production error, an earlier version of this article misstated that the city of Florence was in Spain, not Italy. (Return.)This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch, a research professor at New York University and author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” This first appeared on her blog.
By Diane Ravitch
When one foundation has amassed over $30 billion, it has the financial power to shape the policies of government to its liking.
Bill Gates (Win McNamee/GETTY IMAGES)
Educator Anthony Cody published a guest column on his Education Week Teacher blog that describes how the Gates Foundation intervenes in agricultural and environmental issues around the world, often in ways that support corporate profits rather than the public interest. (Education Week is in part funded by the Gates Foundation.)
I have never believed that the Gates Foundation or the Gates family puts profits above the public interest. I work on the assumption that anyone who has more riches than they can ever spend in their lifetime or in 100 lifetimes is not motivated by greed. It makes no sense.
I believe that Bill and Melinda Gates want to establish a legacy as people who left the world a better place.
But I think their their efforts to “reform” education are woefully mistaken.
I have tried but had no luck in my efforts to meet Bill Gates. On the two occasions when I was in Seattle in the past year, I tried to arrange a meeting with him well in advance. He was never available.
I am puzzled by what I read in the column cited abovee. I am also puzzled by the Gates Foundation’s persistent funding of groups that want to privatize public education. I am puzzled by their funding of “astroturf” groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.
I am puzzled by their funding of groups that are promoting an anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda in state after state. And I am puzzled by the hundreds of millions they have poured into the quixotic search to guarantee that every single classroom has a teacher that knows how to raise test scores.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone at the Gates Foundation has any vision of what good education is, or whether they think that getting higher test scores is the same as getting a good education. I wonder if they ever think about their role in demoralizing and destabilizing the education profession.
When Bill or Melinda Gates is asked whether it is democratic for one foundation, their foundation, to shape a nation’s education policy, they don a mask of false modesty. Who, little old us? They disingenuously reply that the nation spends more than $600 billion on education, which makes their own contribution small by comparison. Puny, by comparison.
Anyone with any sense knows that their discretionary spending has had a powerful effect on the policies of the U.S. Department of Education, on the media, on states and on districts. When Bill Gates speaks, the National Governors Association snaps to attention, awed by his wealth. They are pulling the strings, and they prefer to pretend they aren’t.
But their disclaimers do not change the fact that they have power without accountability. They want accountability for teachers, but who holds them accountable?
When I see Bill or Melinda make a pronouncement on education, I am reminded of the song in “Fiddler on the Roof:” “When you’re rich, they think you really know.”
They don’t. And no one will tell them that they are out of their depth. They may be well-meaning but they are misinformed, and they are inflicting incalculable damage on our public schools and on the education profession.
Who elected them? Why should they have the power to shape American education?.
It’s puzzling.
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Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet.On Wednesday, it was revealed that ESPN’s Dan Le Batard had turned his Baseball Hall of Fame vote over to Deadspin to allow the site’s readers to fill out his ballot. He was subsequently stripped of his Hall of Fame vote “for transferring his Hall of Fame ballot to an entity that has not earned voting status.” This was pretty much the expected result for Le Batard.
However, further review reveals that Le Batard wasn’t the first writer to get a little outside help with his ballot. It turns out that BBWAA vice president Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle has crowd-sourced his ballot for years, in a very public manner.
In 2007, Ortiz posted on his blog inviting readers to join him at a Mexican restaurant to help him fill out his ballot:
“I hope you come join me and a group of baseball fans to discuss the ballot and fill it out together. Ever since I earned my first ballot, I vowed to always fill it out with the help and guidance of the readers who know as much and sometimes even more about the history of the game. Last year I filled it out with a Texas Supreme Court Judge, several big-time lawyers in town and my father in-law.”
We can only assume that none of the fans, a Texas Supreme Court Judge, some lawyers or his father-in-law had “earned voting status,” so what exactly differentiates what Le Batard did and what the BBWAA’s vice president has done in the past?
It seems that if Le Batard had just polled his followers for “help” filling out his ballot rather than flaunt the privilege, he would have been in the clear.
Obviously the BBWAA didn’t like being shown up in such a public manner, but when its own vice president (who is slated to become president in October) has consistently done something so strikingly similar, the organization has displayed a shade of the self-righteousness that Deadspin and Le Batard set out to prove.
Requests to Ortiz seeking comment were not immediately returned.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - An appeals court has ruled that state universities can ban students from having guns in their dorm rooms.
The 1st District Court of Appeal on Friday sided with the University of Florida against a gun rights group.
The court ruled that UF is allowed to ban guns from campus housing. Florida Carry sued the university over the ban in 2014 and a trial court sided with the university.
Florida Carry sued the school in the wake of an appeals court ruling that said universities couldn't enforce rules banning students from storing guns in their cars.
UF got rid of its ban on guns in cars but left intact a strict prohibition on guns elsewhere on campus.
The Florida Legislature is considering a bill that would allow concealed permit owners to carry guns on college campuses.Number of consecutive days at or above 95 degrees in Washington, D.C. since 1872 (Ian Livingston)
This record is just one of countless extraordinary heat records established over the course of the last three summers.
Unrivaled flurry of summer heat records
Consider all of the following heat records which have been set since 2010 (and it’s possible I’m missing some)...
* The hottest two summers on record (2010 hottest and 2011 second hottest)
* Two of the top four hottest Junes on record (2010-warmest and 2011-tied for 3rd warmest with 1943)
* Hottest June day and tie for second hottest June day (2012 at 104, and 2010 at 102 tied with June 9, 1874)
* Hottest two Julys (2011 and 2010)
* Hottest month (July 2011)
* Most 90+ degree days in a month (July 2011, 25 days)
* Earliest 100-degree reading in a day (July 6 2010, before noon)
* Longest uninterrupted stretch of temperatures above 100 (July 6, 2010, 7 hours)
* Longest uninterrupted stretch of temperatures above 80 (July 21 to 24, 2011 - over four days)
* Most and second most nights above 80 degrees (7 in 2011 and 4 in 2010)
* Warmest low temperature (84 on July 23 and 24, 2011 tied with July 16, 1983)
* Hottest days so early (102 on June 9, 2011, tied with June 9, 1874) and late (99 on September 24, 2010) in the season
* Most 90+ degree days in calendar year (67 in 2010, tied with 1980)
That’s quite the (dirty) laundry list.
Warm in winter, spring and fall, too
But wait. We’re not done. Not only have recent summers been unusually hot, but warm weather records are falling year-round. Consider these additional records in the last 3 years:
* Warmest and second warmest spring (2012 and 2010)
* Warmest first six months of year (2012)
* Third warmest winter (2011-2012)
* Earliest last freeze (February 27, 2010, even after snowiest winter)
* Third latest first freeze (December 7, 2011)
Could all of these warm weather records over such a short time span be a coincidence? I have my doubts.
Urban warming effect
An undisputed local factor in increasing heat records in Washington, D.C. is urbanization. Since records began in the late 1800s, the population has grown, and an expanding radius of land surfaces have been built on and paved over. In other words, an ever increasing portion of the region has been covered by dark, heat-absorbing surfaces expanding and intensifying the so-called urban heat island effect.
The heat island effect has its greatest impact on night time temperatures, essentially trapping the heat in the urban core rather than allowing it to escape into space. So the recent tendency towards more record high nighttime temperatures is strongly related to this phenomenon.
Increasing greenhouse gases
Coinciding with the increasing heat island effect, heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the burning of fossil fuels have risen to levels in the atmosphere unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. Global and U.S. temperatures have warmed over the last 100 years, and most publishing climate scientists believe the increase is largely related to GHG trends, although there is a small minority who dissent.
Attempting to sort out how much of D.C.’s high temperature records are related to the urban heat island, GHG warming, and possible other factors is very involved. Scientists - for the most part - have not tackled this. Not to mention, in Washington, D.C., the official weather observing station has changed location from near downtown (prior to the 1940s) to the airport - which further muddies the water.
Last year, I took a stab at analyzing D.C.’s summer temperature records. To try to get a handle on the GHG warming effect, I examined records in D.C. that had removed the urbanization effect and calculated a summer warming rate of 1.4 degrees F. per century - which one might conclude is related to GHGs (and/or other factors). But - on closer inspection - I noticed little warming (after removing the urban effect) over the period from the late 1970s to present - the time during which we’ve established many of the heat records listed above.
That finding might call into question GHGs are strongly influencing local temperatures. On the other hand, we don’t know how temperatures would have evolved had GHGs not been increasing. In the absence of rising GHGs, perhaps D.C.’s temperatures would have cooled.
Some global warming skeptics are fast to point out D.C.’s hottest recorded temperature of 106 occurred on August 6, 1930 and July 20, 1918 well before GHGs ramped up. They may also mention the record for most 100 degree days in Washington, D.C. occurred in 1930. But - overall - records from first half of the 20th century are vastly outnumbered by the records since 1980.
The bottom line is that we’re just not in position to tease out the size of the observed global warming signal (from GHGs) in Washington, D.C. But the more records we set, the less likely they are happening by chance.
The future
The messy discussions about the recent course of D.C.’s temperatures notwithstanding, the recent onslaught of heat records is eye-opening.
Assuming climate scientists are right, and global, regional and local temperature substantially warm in the coming decades, the kind of summer we’ve recently experienced will occur at greater frequencies and potentially get worse.TruTV has ordered a 13-episode third season of comedy series Those Who Can’t for premiere in 2017.
The series stars show creators and executive producers Adam Cayton-Holland, Andrew Orvedahl, and Ben Roy – all members of the Denver-based comedy troupe The Grawlix – as trouble-making high school teachers at Smoot High. Maria Thayer also stars as the school’s librarian.
“From day one, we have loved this show and are proud of the world of rich characters that Adam, Andrew and Ben have built through two successful seasons,” said Chris Linn, president of truTV. “There are more hilarious stories to tell at Smoot High, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with next.”
In the series, it’s the faculty members – not the kids – of the fictional Smoot High in Denver, Colorado who are responsible for the outlandish exploits taking place inside the school’s walls. Throughout its first two seasons, the show has featured guest stars including Susie Essman, Kyle Kinane, Hana Mae Lee, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patton Oswalt, Cheri Oteri, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Rory Scovel, and Baron Vaughn.
Those Who Can’t, TruTV’s first scripted series, originallyy premiered on the network on February 11, 2016. Season 2 aired in fall 2016. The series is produced by Thank You Brain! Productions and 3 Arts Entertainment, and executive-produced by Tracey Baird and Krysia Plonka of Thank You, Brain! Productions; Michael Rotenberg and Josh Lieberman of 3 Arts Entertainment; and Richard Korson.2.5 Weeks + 1000 Miles + 4 States + Countless Encounters. Follow Cindy Gilbert, program director for the Sustainable Design program at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, as she bikes from Montana to Minneapolis to raise awareness about sustainability challenges and opportunities in the region while raising need-based scholarship money for students.
Ever since my first dispatch from the road I have been mentioning (complaining?) about the weight of the stuff I've been hauling over mountain passes, through canyons and to places that are in the middle of nowhere. I decided I would throw a bone to the cyclists in the crowd as the question I most frequently asked to anyone I could catch on cycling tour before starting the Ride the Talk campaign was, "what item is the most valuable to you on your trip?"
It is amazing how after a few days of travel you discover what is important and what it just dead weight. As one cyclist put it, "whatever you discover in the bottom of you panniers at the end of the trip is what you didn't need." I decided not to wait until the end of the trip to tell you what's risen to the top.
Below are my top ten picks for (lightweight) "keepers" on a long bicycle tour. (This list doesn't include the "must-haves" such as bike shorts, helmet, sunscreen, water, multitool, extra tubes/patch kits, mobile phone, maps, etc., as they are a given.)
1. "Utter Butter" (10 oz): This item is by far the heaviest of all listed but seriously something you should not leave home without. It is oft overlooked in blogs about long-distance cycling but I refuse to keep the myth alive that people simply cycle for hundreds of miles on end in hot/wet weather without incurring serious chaffing, or possibly worse, callusing, in areas that should never, ever be chaffed or calloused. Use the stuff, whether it's "real" chamois butter or diaper cream. Use it. I repeat: use it. One cautionary note, it looks a lot like sunscreen; don't make the mistake. I did!
2. Comprehensive bicycle maintenance knowledge (0 oz): I took a full day class to learn the ins and outs of maintaining and repairing my bike on the road. This knowledge is nearly priceless (although the class did run me $70 at REI). Having the confidence that I could fix my bicycle should something happen grossly out weighs the burden of worry of not knowing how to help myself.
3. Mirror (2 oz): I am quite certain that my cycling mirror has saved my life dozens of times. At about a dozen dollars, I'd say that it is more than worth its weight (in fact, at this point, the thing is priceless).4. Backcountry Boiler (8 oz): If you are planning on making your own food or will be out of range of any kind of food service, I highly recommend this boiler made by The Boilerwerks. It is extremely lightweight, allows you to carry water within it, and boils water in just a few minutes with any locally-available fuel including twigs, grasses, sticks, etc, no traditional fuel necessary.
5. Cleat screws (0.25 oz each): Speaking from experience, it only takes one situation where you're unable to release your foot from your clip-less pedals in traffic to decide to carry replacement cleat screws. The guys at Bike Doctor in Missoula, MT, taught me if one's gone, the other is surely gone or nearly there; always carry two.
6. Small MP3 player (2 oz): Load your iPod Shuffle or the like with motivational tunes and this tiny piece of electronics will get you up and over mountain passes that you didn't think possible. Personally, I find Lady Gaga unbelievably motivating (I guess it's out that I am a "little monster").
7. Handkerchief (1 oz): This item is the jack-of-all |
national security or national interests, or other illegal criminal activities. The Public Security Exit and Entry Administration must seek out a visit with the passport holder on their return and conduct a face-to-face interview, and if any illegal activities are discovered, the passports without exception shall be canceled or declared invalid. II. Conscientiously carry out good work on tour group passport applications In accordance with Article 9, Chapter II of the “Tourist Agency Regulations” promulgated by the State Council, and the provisions of Article 10, Chapter II of the “Detailed Implementation Measures,” earnestly strengthen the handling of tour groups’ ordinary passports. When travel agency tour groups travel abroad, citizens from our region applying for an ordinary passport necessary for travel must carry out their passport application in strict accordance with the relevant provisions, being checked and approved one-by-one, and in strict accordance with the principle of “whoever checks also approves and is also responsible.” Travel agencies must sign a formal travel contract with the traveler. When travel agencies complete their handling of passports, a responsible person shall go the autonomous regional Tourism Bureau Supervision and Management Office to receive a “Form for a Namelist of Chinese Citizens Leaving the Country in a Tour Group,” and complete it conscientiously. Once completed by the tour group operator, the third copy of the “Form for a Namelist of Chinese Citizens Leaving the Country in a Tour Group” shall be retained by the autonomous regional Tourism Bureau Supervision and Management Office. Strict tour-group management of passports. Regarding citizens from our Region who have participated in a tour group and applied for an ordinary passport, and upon such tour group participants’ return to the country, without exception, their passports shall be collected and handed in to the prefecture (prefecture-level city) Public Security Exit and Entry Administration department by the travel agency organizing the tour group for safe-keeping. III. Further strengthen management work on the approval and issuance of public affairs passports Strictly strengthen management work on public affairs passports in accordance with the “Notice on Printing ‘Diplomatic Passport, Service Passport, and Public Affairs Passport Retrieval Measures’ (MFA Doc [2006] No. 60)” issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the “Notice on ‘Detailed Measures on the TAR Public Affairs Passports Issuance and Management Implementation’ (Experimental)” and the “Notice on the ‘TAR Public Affairs Passport Retrieval and Management Detailed Implementation Measures’ (TAR External Affairs Doc [2007] No. 53)” issued by the TAR External Affairs Office, and in accordance with the spirit of the “Notice on Printing ‘Diplomatic Passport, Service Passport and Public Affairs Passport Issuance and Management Measures’ (MFA Doc [2006] No. 23).” All tour groups and individuals traveling abroad on public affairs who apply for a public affairs passport must handle formalities though application channels for going abroad on public affairs. Public affairs passports must be returned to the agency nominated by the issuing department within seven days of returning to the country for safe-keeping or for cancelation. Individuals or work units which delay handing in passports or who do not carry out document management provisions shall be temporarily prevented from going abroad on public service. Strengthen passport management for foreign travel by enterprises and work units in our region, increasing the rigor of approvals for public affairs passports for going abroad on public affairs, and put an end to ordinary passport-holders going abroad to conduct public affairs. Copies sent to: TAR Military District Political Department, Air Force Lhasa Command Office Party TAR Party Committee General Office Private Secretary’s Office. Printed on April 29, 2012.
Appendix III TAR regulations issued May 6, 2012. Unofficial translation from Chinese. TAR Regulations on Strictly Forbidding Exiting the Border to Participate in Splittist Activities Such as the Dalai Clique’s “Kalachakra” (May 6, 2012, Promulgation of Tibet Autonomous Region People’s Government Order No. 110, effective from the date of promulgation.) Article 1: In accordance with the provisions of the “PRC State Security Law Implementation Measures,” “Religious Affairs Regulations” and relevant Entry and Exit Administration laws and regulations, it is forbidden for all residents within the administrative area of the autonomous region to leave the country in order to participate in any form of splittist activity such as the “Kalachakra” [Ch.: fahui] held by the Dalai clique. These regulations are formulated by integrating the realities of the autonomous region. Article 2: The Dalai clique is luring the masses into participating in various activities such as the “Kalachakra,” advocating “Tibetan independence” thinking, using religion to harm the unity of the nationalities and the unification of the country, and completely deviating from the religious traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, constituting the criminal behavior of splitting the nation. Article 3: The current venues for religious activity, facilities, and professional religious personnel within the administrative area of the autonomous region satisfy the requirements of the believing masses’ normal religious activities, and the broad masses of believers should participate in religious activities in venues for religious activities registered according to law. Article 4: All villagers (neighborhood residents) residing within the administrative area of the autonomous region and all incoming business people and workers are without exception not permitted to leave the country to participate in any form of splittist activity such as the “Kalachakra” held by the Dalai clique. Article 5: In accordance with the principle of territorial management, all prefectures (prefecture-level cities), counties (county-level cities, districts) and townships (towns) must strengthen education and management over the masses in their jurisdiction. All successive levels of government must sign a certificate of responsibility, making villages (neighborhoods), families [Ch.: hu], and individuals responsible for putting an end to persons from our region participating in splittist activities such as the “Kalachakra” held by the Dalai clique. Article 6: "Autonomous regional Public Security Departments must conduct a thorough cleansing [Ch.: qingli] of persons [Ch.: renyuan] holding a passport who go abroad on private travel, and public affairs passports shall be approved and managed by the autonomous regional Public Security Department in strict accordance with the law, and prefectural (prefecture-level city) and county (county-level city, district) public security agencies shall have no authority to approve public affairs passports. Starting from the day that these regulations are promulgated, all persons applying for an ordinary passport must be examined and reviewed by successive village (neighborhood), township (town), county (county-level city, district), and prefectural (prefecture-level city) levels, and those complying with conditions must be reported to the autonomous regional Public Security Department for approval. Strict checks shall be implemented in accordance with the principal of responsibly falling on whosoever examines, reviews, and approves. Article 7: All persons [Ch.: renyuan] who leave the country to participate in any form of splittist activity such as the “Kalachakra” held by the Dalai clique shall be punished in accordance with the following provisions: Countermeasures against planners, organizers and backbone elements shall be in accordance with the “Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China,” and judicial agencies shall pursue criminal responsibility according to law. Members of village (neighborhood) committees shall be dismissed in accordance with legal procedures, and punished according to law depending on the circumstances. All incoming business people and workers with a business license shall have their business license suspended, and be punished according to law. All urban and rural residents crossing the national border to attend such activities as the “Kalachakra” shall without exception undergo concentrated education [Ch.: jizhong jiaoyui] from a prefecture-level (prefecture-level city) level people’s government, and punished according to law depending on the circumstances. Those persons who are sentenced to criminal punishment or re-education through labor because of participating in any splittist activity such as the “Kalachakra” organized by the Dalai clique shall cease enjoyment of all forms of financial assistance granted by the autonomous region as well as preferential policies and public services, and shall not be permitted enjoyment of any new preferential policies issued by the state or the autonomous region. Those persons who have not been sentenced to criminal punishment or re-education through labor but who refuse to repent following education shall have all forms of financial subsidy stopped, and shall not be permitted enjoyment of any new preferential policies, subsidies or grants issued by the state or the autonomous region. Those persons who leave the country to participate in splittist activities such as the “Kalachakra” organized by the Dalai clique may be given lighter punishment or be exempt from punishment if they are able to repent following education, if they voluntarily account for their problems, or if they report others. Those persons who cross the border to participate in any splittist activity such as the “Kalachakra” held by the Dalai clique shall without exception not be permitted to be recruited or hired by all levels of government agency, government institution or state-controlled enterprise. Article 8: Those persons who illegally leave the country to participate in any form of splittist activity such as “Kalachakra” held by the Dalai clique shall without exception not be permitted to enter the border. Article 9: All levels of Nationalities and Religion department and other relevant departments and media bodies must publicize the Party and state’s religion policies to the broad masses, expounding upon the splittist nature of any activity such as the “Kalachakra” held by the Dalai clique, thereby reducing and canceling out its impact. Article 10: Leading cadres at all levels and in all departments shall be strictly punished in accordance with relevant regulations if they take weak measures or adopt an ambiguous attitude when handling the issue of splittist activity such as exiting the border to participate in the Dalai clique’s “Kalachakra.” Article 11: These regulations are effective from the day of promulgation.
Appendix IV Extract from the Work Guide for Processing Border Entry and Exit Documentation, date of issue believed to be February 2008. Unofficial translation from Chinese. The term “special areas” here refers to those prefectures or counties in Gansu which are accorded autonomous status because they have substantial minority populations. Control measures for citizens' private passport applications in special areas In order to effectively prevent activities such as people individually going on pilgrimage [Ch.: lingsan chaojing] and exiting the border to attend Buddhist rites [Ch.: chujing chaofu houdong], and to thoroughly uphold state security and stability, the following control measures for citizens’ private passport applications in special areas are hereby formulated in accordance with the provisions of Article 3 Clause 5 of the “PRC ordinary passport and border crossing permit issuance management measures”: I. Application content and conditions (i) Family visits: limited to visits to immediate family only. Immediate family is: spouse, parents or spouse’s parents, children, and brothers and sisters; the applicant’s spouse and children under 16 years of age may accompany the applicant. [NOTE: In the sections that are not addressing “special areas,” the Work Guide allows broader and more distant familial relations for family visits and does not include an age restriction for children in such visits.] (ii) Tourism: limited to group travel only. (iii) Business: sent abroad for business by the work unit. “Work unit” indicates an enterprise or its branch agencies registered with the National Industry and Commerce Administration and has independent legal person credentials, or that has processed a taxation registration with the State Taxation Bureau and which has operating production work units and a foreign enterprise’s representative agency permanently stationed in the mainland. The period of operations is more than two years, and there must be proof of individuals conducting business operations at the foreign trading enterprise. (iv) Study abroad: those who are fresh graduates or who graduated in the past from upper middle school or vocational middle school or above. (v) Labor services: those over 18 years of age and those under 65 years of age who have certain specialist expertise, and who are essential personnel at a production work unit (company). (vi) Residential: those holding proof of an immigrant visa for the country of intended residence. (vii) Others. II. Materials to be submitted Aside from submitting materials provided for in Article 6 of the Passport Law, citizens applying for an ordinary passport should also provide other materials relevant to their application. Visiting family: original documents and their copies which are able to prove the familial relationship must be provided, the original and copies of the relative’s residence permit from their country of residence, and when necessary, relevant confirmation and documentation from our country’s overseas embassy or consulate may also be requested. Tourism: an invoice for the full costs of travel issued by a travel agency in our province and which is authorized to conduct international travel business must be provided, and citizens from our province who have not resided in their place of hukou [residential registration] for a long time should provide a temporary residence permit from their current place of residence, or certification from their work unit. Business: a copy of the company’s Industry and Commerce business license, the company’s taxation registration certificate, and a letter of invitation from a company in the country (region) of intended travel must be provided. Relevant documentary materials issued by our province’s Department of Commercial Affairs and our country’s overseas embassy or consulate must be provided for those who are dispatched abroad by the government to participate in international trade negotiations. Study abroad: individuals who are self-funding their study abroad must provide the notification of acceptance for study documentation issued by the overseas institution, authenticated by the overseas embassy or consulate. Students going overseas for whom arrangements to go abroad were brokered by a legitimate brokering agency must provide the notification of acceptance for study documentation or proof of credentials and other relevant materials issued by the brokering agency. Personnel dispatched abroad to study by public institutions [Ch.: gongpai liuxue renyuan], dispatched by state public school and dispatched by work unit public school overseas students [Ch.: guojia gongpai he danwei gongpai liuxue renyuan] must provide a fully completed “Passport application and registration form for overseas students dispatched by public schools,” or relevant certification issued by the provincial Department of Education. Employment: individuals filling a position of employment must provide a letter of invitation from the country of intended travel, and a letter and certification of employment from the hiring work unit or employer. Laboring personnel who were organized to go abroad by a labor services company must provide original foreign labor services project description certification issued by a labor services company authorized to dispatch laboring personnel abroad, or relevant approval and agreement documents from People’s Governments above the level of city (prefecture). (The labor services description should include a signed labor services project, the intended country of travel, the time of dispatch, and a name list of those being dispatched for labor services abroad, which should be affixed with the company’s seal and the signature of the company’s legal representative.) Residence: residence permit certification from the responsible government agency in the country of intended travel or from that country’s embassy or consulate in China must be provided. Others: Cultural exchanges. An invitation letter from abroad and approval certification issued by the Department of Culture at the provincial level or above must be provided.
Those leaving the country to study courses in religion [Ch.: xuexi zongjiao kecheng ] (including those going to study at religious institutions) must provide approval certification issued by the Religious Affairs Department at the provincial level or above.
] (including those going to study at religious institutions) must provide approval certification issued by the Religious Affairs Department at the provincial level or above. Religious personnel and professional religious personnel [Ch.: zongjiao ji jiaozhi renyuan] applying to go abroad must provide opinions issued by the United Front Work Department or the Government Religious Affairs Department, as well as providing the relevant materials described above that must be provided for exiting the border. The precise provisions are as follows: first, general religious personnel and professional religious personnel applying to exit the country (border) on private business must provide opinions issued by the county-level United Front Work Department or People’s Government Religious Affairs Department in the locale of their hukou; second, religious personnel and professional religious personnel who have a degree of influence in their city (prefecture) and who apply to exit the country (border) must provide opinions issued by the city (prefecture) Religious Affairs Department; third, religious personnel and professional religious personnel who have a degree of influence within the province and who apply to exit the country (border) for personal business must provide opinions from the provincial-level Nationalities Affairs Committee [Ch.: min wei] or Religious Affairs Department; religious personnel who apply to exit the country (border) for personal business and who are in a position at any level of People’s Congress, Government, CPPCC, or religious organization should provide opinions issued by their corresponding Party tier of United Front Work Department. III. The issue of transferring hukou In order to effectively resolve pilgrimages at the same time every year [Ch.: jiejue meinian chaojing qianhou] and the issue of frequently transferring hukou, people who apply for their hukou to be transferred to their place of residence of less than five years shall not be issued a passport for pilgrimage. IV. Post-issuance management of passports Once travel is completed, the passports of travellers in tour groups are to be collected in by the travel agency that organized the group tour and then handed in to the examining and approving agency for safe-keeping. When it is not possible to collect all passports or the collected passports have a record of a pilgrimage, sanctions dependent upon the circumstances will be levied against the travel agency that organized the group travel. Those still holding a passport for a pilgrimage that should have been returned to provincial-level government departments and Party agencies shall be sanctioned by means of annulled documentation. V. Scope of application of the special control measures The above control measures are principally applicable to the two prefectures of Linxia and Gannan, and the two counties of Zhangjia Chuan and Tianzhu. Other areas can be administered in accordance with the overall intent and basic spirit of these special controls. During the course of application and approval work, strictly implement systems for examining and interviewing applicants. Passports must not be granted to those suspected of traveling individually on pilgrimage or exiting the border to attend Buddhist rites. Three months prior to a pilgrimage being arranged, passports shall not be issued to relevant persons throughout the entire province. VI. Extensions to passport validity limits, and areas of application According to the provisions of Article 12 of the “Management Measures”: “In remote areas or areas where communications are not convenient and ordinary passports cannot be issued on time, following approval from personnel responsible at the provincial-level Entry and Exit Administration of the Public Security Bureau, the issuance time-scale may be extended to 30 days.” It is decided that the passport issuance time-scale will be extended to 30 days for our province’s geographically remote Lintan County, Lüqu County, Zhouqu County, Zhuoni County, Diebu County, Akesu Kazakh Autonomous County and Subei Mongolian Autonomous County.
Appendix V Public order issued in Yining City, the capital of Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, April 30, 2015. Unofficial translation from Chinese. Notice In accordance with requirements of the Ili Prefecture and City Chinese Communist Party Politics and Law Committee, notice is hereby given to citizens holding ordinary passports to submit them to the police station in their jurisdiction for concentrated management: Citizens holding an ordinary passport are hereby requested to submit them at the police station prior to May 15, 2015. Those who do not submit them on time shall be reported to the Exit and Entry Administration by the Public Security Bureau, and the passport shall be canceled in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. District Officer: Kaha’er Contact number: 13779132483 Yining City Public Security Bureau Yuqidalewazi Police Station April 30, 2015“Let’s get right to the big news, Hillary Clinton has passed away,” Samantha Bee said at the top of her first Full Frontal episode in weeks. And with that, she was off and running and reminding us how vital she is to this election cycle. “She says she’s not dead, but as we know she is a liar,” the host joked.
After showing the latest poll numbers that see the gap closing between Clinton and Donald Trump, Bee said, “Yay, we’re back within the margin of terror!
“Come on, Hillary, God has given you the gift of opponents even less appealing than you,” Bee said after breezing through a recap of what Gary Johnson and Jill Stein have been up to. “Just keep your eyes on the prize and take that high road straight to the White House.”
That declaration brought us to Clinton’s second-biggest scandal of the weekend: calling half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables.”
“No! Bad!” Bee said. “Swear to God, Hillary Clinton is the only woman I know who can trip over her own dick. What was that? Did your team just decide, hey, nothing else is working, why don’t we try insulting Americans into voting for her?”
While saying “it’s true that Trump’s rhetoric has inspired some bigots and mentally ill people to commit hate crimes and terrorize people of color,” Bee wondered if it that group really amounts to “half of all Trump supporters.”
Then, in old school Daily Show fashion, she proceeded to quote multiple surveys that show 65 percent of Trump supporters believe President Obama is a Muslim, and 59 percent believe he was born outside the U.S. On top of that, 60 percent of the GOP candidate’s fans associate immigration with “criminality,” and “nearly half” believe African-Americans are “more violent” than whites.
“OK,” Bee concluded, “We are going to need a bigger basket.”By
There was only one thing to do on a cold and miserable Sunday – go hunting! No guns or ammunition were required for this hunting trip. We armed ourselves with warm clothing and a keen eye to find some retro gaming gear and other vintage items.
Once the target was found, we went in to prowl. It was clear from the outset that this hunting trip was not going to disappoint. Once we got past the usual household kitsch items, we found precious arcade machines from the 1970s, lots of comics, vinyl records and a number of classic video gaming systems and games.
The selection of retro gaming systems and games did get the nostalgic nerve quite excited. There was no way we were going to leave empty handed on this hunt. Sorry wallet.
Didn’t know where to focus on this collection of action figures. Daytona USA lurked in the background
Aha, there it is!
The perfect tube to play some Pong
Found hiding – some MOTU pals
These Atari games look lonely
RoboCop action figures!
Robie Junior would not have been happy if this guy came home with us
Alex Kidd tuned in on a proper vintage TV! Hells yeah!
Sega delights
Did someone say Sega, Atari and Nintendo?
Vintage vinyl!
Keeping it reel
Perfect price for a fighting game
Perfect price for an ice hockey game
KISS!
More KISS baby!
Can’t hide from me Mr Macintosh SE!
CIB Battlecat? No way!
The dreaded Castle Grayskull
LCD goodness in this cabinet
A throwback to the WWF!
More Sega goodies
I spy with my little eye something beginning with N
The holiest of holy, 1974’s Speed Race. And it’s in working order!
More old arcade beauties found!
The perfect ending to a great huntOverclocking of processors and graphics cards has been a staple of the PC enthusiast community for years, but it looks like a new component will soon be available for the tweaking set.
Intel, which offers CPUs with unlocked multipliers (the "K" series) to ease the overclocking process, is now apparently working on letting users overclock their solid-state drives. The company just previewed the overclocking potential of its SSDs at the PAX Prime festival, with more info supposedly coming at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum next week.
According to LegitReviews, Intel showed off two ways to goose more performance from SSDs, increasing the controller clock speed and the NAND flash memory chip speed. It used an updated version of its Extreme Tuning Utility to change the settings. (Myce subsequently posted code that it says comes from a new version of Intel XTU and that will allow SSD setting tweaks.)
ExtremeTech has confirmed that the tech giant will provide more details in a panel titled "Overclocking Unlocked Intel Core Processors for High Performance Gaming and Content Creation." While that session will be mostly devoted to how to squeeze the most from Intel's new processors, we may find out that the company is planning a "K" line of its SSDs.
It may also touch on the potential risks of overclocking. Adjusting the settings of your processor or graphics card can lead to system stability and other issues; tweaking SSD settings could potentially threaten your data on the drive, so Intel will need to address this concern as well as the potential for shortening the life of your SSD.
Would you overclock your solid-state drive if Intel released a K-series SSD? Let us know in the Talkback section below as we await further details from Intel at the upcoming IDF conference.Contents: What is Shell? Why Boycott Shell?
The Problem
Environmental Degradation (Natural Gas Flaring, Oil Spills, Pipelines and Construction, Health Impacts)
The "Shell Police"
The trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8: The Struggle Continues
The Ogoni 20 and others...
Not just the Ogoni! Why does the Nigerian government allow this to happen? What are groups in Nigeria doing about stopping Shell?
MOSOP demands
Refugees What are the United States and other countries doing to stop Shell?
The Commonwealth
The United Nations
The US: words without action Sources
Return to Info & Resources
1. What is Shell? The "Royal Dutch/Shell Group," commonly know as Shell, is an amalgam of over 1,700 companies all over the world. 60% of the Group is owned by Royal Dutch of the Netherlands, and 40% is owned by the Shell Transport and Trading Group of Great Britain. These two companies have worked together since 1903. Shell includes companies like Shell Petroleum of the USA (which wholly owns Shell Oil of the USA and many subsidiaries), Shell Nigeria, Shell Argentina, Shell South Africa, etc. Shell Nigeria is one of the largest oil producers in the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. 80% of the oil extraction in Nigeria is the the Niger Delta, the southeast region of the country. The Delta is home to many small minority ethnic groups, including the Ogoni, all of which suffer egregious exploitation by multinational oil companies, like Shell. Shell provides over 50% of the income keeping the Nigerian dictatorship in power. Aside from letters, the only way to reach the powers of Shell Nigeria is through other Shell companies like Shell Oil of the USA. When Shell Oil feels the impact of a boycott and understands that our grievances lie with Shell Nigeria, it puts pressure on the Shell Group to influence change in Nigeria. 2. Why boycott Shell? Since the Nigerian government hanged 9 environmental activists in 1995 for speaking out against exploitation by Royal Dutch/Shell and the Nigeria government, outrage has exploded worldwide. The tribunal which convicted the men was part of a joint effort by the government and Shell to suppress a growing movement among the Ogoni people: a movement for environmental justice, for recognition of their human rights and for economic justice. Shell has brought extreme, irreparable environmental devastation to Ogoniland. Please note that although the case of the Ogoni is the best known of communities in Shell's areas of operation, dozens of other groups suffer the same exploitation of resources and injustices. The Problem " The most conspicuous aspects of life in contemporary Ogoni are poverty, malnutrition, and disease. " -Ben Naanen, Oil and Socioeconomic Crisis in Nigeria, 1995, pg. 75-6 Although oil from Ogoniland has provided approximately $30 billion to the economy of Nigeria 1, the people of Ogoni see little to nothing from their contribution to Shell's pocketbook. Emanuel Nnadozie, writing of the contributions of oil to the national economy of Nigeria, observed " Oil is a curse which means only poverty, hunger, disease and exploitation " for those living in oil producing areas 2. Shell has done next to nothing to help Ogoni: by 1996, Shell employed only 88 Ogoni (0.0002% of the Ogoni population, and only 2% of Shell's employees in Nigeria) 3. Ogoni villages have no clean water, little electricity, few telephones, abysmal health care, and no jobs for displaced farmers and fisher persons, and adding insult to injury, face the effects of unrestrained environmental molestation by Shell everyday. Environmental Degradation When crude oil touches the leaf of a yam or cassava, or whatever economic trees we have, it dries immediately, it's so dangerous and somebody who was coming from, say, Shell was arguing with me so I told him that you're an engineer, you have been trained, you went to the university, I did not go to the university, but I know that what you have been saying in the university sleeps with me here so you cannot be more qualified in crude oil than myself who sleeps with crude oil. - Chief GNK Gininwa of Korokoro, "The Drilling Fields", Glenn Ellis (Director), 1994 Since Shell began drilling oil in Ogoniland in 1958, the people of Ogoniland have had pipelines built across their farmlands and in front of their homes, suffered endemic oil leaks from these very pipelines, been forced to live with the constant flaring of gas. This environmental assault has smothered land with oil, killed masses of fish and other aquatic life, and introduced devastating acid rain to the land of the Ogoni 4. For the Ogoni, a people dependent upon farming and fishing, the poisoning of the land and water has had devastating economic and health consequences 5. Shell claims to clean up its oil spills, but such "clean-ups" consist of techniques like burning the crude which results in a permanent layer of crusted oil meters thick and scooping oil into holes dug in surrounding earth (a temporary solution at best, with the oil flowing out of the hole during the Niger Delta's frequent bouts of rain) 6. Natural Gas Flaring
Ken Saro-Wiwa called gas flaring "the most notorious action" of the Shell and Chevron oil companies 7. In Ogoniland, 95% of extracted natural gas is flared 8 (compared with 0.6% in the United States). It is estimated that the between the CO 2 and methane released by gas flaring, Nigerian oil fields are responsible for more global warming effects than the combined oil fields of the rest of the world 9. Oil Spills
Although Shell drills oil in 28 countries, 40% of its oil spills worldwide have occurred in the Niger Delta 10. In the Niger Delta, there were 2,976 oil spills between 1976 and 1991 11. In the 1970s spillage totaled more that four times that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tragedy 12. Ogoniland has had severe problems stemming from oil spillage, including water contamination and loss of many valuable animals and plants. A short-lived World Bank investigation found levels of hydrocarbon pollution in water in Ogoniland more than sixty times US limits 13 and a 1997 Project Underground survey found petroleum hydrocarbons one Ogoni village's watersource to be 360 times the levels allowed in the European Community, where Shell originates 14. Pipelines and construction
The 12 by 14 mile area that comprises Ogoniland is some of the most densely occupied land in Africa. The extraction of oil has lead to construction of pipelines and facilities on precious farmland and through villages. Shell and its subcontractors compensate landowners with meager amounts unequal to the value of the scarce land, when they pay at all. The military defends Shell's actions with firearms and death: see the Shell Police section below. Health impacts
The Nigerian Environmental Study Action Team observed increased " discomfort and misery " due to fumes, heat and combustion gases, as well as increased illnesses 15. This destruction has not been alleviated by Shell or the government. Owens Wiwa, a physician, has observed higher rates of certain diseases like bronchial asthma, other respiratory diseases, gastro-enteritis and cancer among the people in the area as a result of the oil industry 16. The Shell Police and the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force Both Shell and the government admit that Shell contributes to the funding of the military in the Delta region. Under the auspices of "protecting" Shell from peaceful demonstrators in the village of Umeuchem (10 miles from Ogoni), the police killed 80 people, destroyed houses and vital crops in 1990 17. Shell conceded it twice paid the military for going to specific villages. Although it disputes that the purpose of these excursions was to quiet dissent, each of the military missions paid for by Shell resulted in Ogoni fatalities 18. The two incidents are a 1993 peaceful demonstration against the destruction of farmland to build pipelines and, later that year, a demonstration in the village of Korokoro 19. Shell has also admitted purchasing weapons for the police force who guard its facilities, and there is growing suspicion that Shell funds a much greater portion of the military than previously admitted. In 1994, the military sent permanent security forces into Ogoniland, occupying the once peaceful land. This Rivers State Internal Security Task Force is suspected in the murders of 2000 people 20. In a classified memo, its leader described his plans for "psychological tactics of displacement/wasting" and stated that "Shell operations are still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken." 21 Since the Task Force occupied Ogoniland in 1994, the Ogoni have lived under constant surveillance and threats of violence. The Nigerian military stepped up its presence in Ogoniland in January of 1997 and again in 1998 before the annual Ogoni Day celebrations. The trial and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8: The Struggle continues... Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8 were leaders of MOSOP, the Movement for Survival of the Ogoni People. As outspoken environmental and human rights activists, they declared that Shell was not welcome in Ogoniland. On November 10, 1995, they were hanged after a trial by a special military tribunal (whose decisions cannot be appealed) in the murder of four other Ogoni activists. The defendants' lawyers were harassed and denied access to their clients. Although none of them were near the town where the murders occurred, they were convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that many heads of state (including US President Clinton) strongly condemned for a stunning lack of evidence, unmasked partiality towards the prosecution and the haste of the trial. The executions were carried out a mere eight days after the decision. Two witnesses against the MOSOP leaders admitted that Shell and the military bribed them to testify against Ken Saro-Wiwa with promises of money and jobs at Shell 20. Ken's final words before his execution were: " The struggle continues! " The Ogoni 20 and others... On September 7, 1998, the Ogoni 20 were released on bail! The 20 had been imprisoned for the past four years under the same unsubstantiated charges as those used to execute Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8. It is unclear whether they will be tried. Sadly, another 25 people were arrested in January, 1998 for organizing the annual peaceful Ogoni Day celebration. There are unknown other Ogonis imprisoned because they appeared to support the Ogoni cause or for helping others remember Ken Saro-Wiwa. Not just the Ogoni The majority of Nigeria's oil comes from the Niger Delta in Southeast Nigeria. All across the Niger Delta, ethnic minority communities suffer the same environmental devastation and oppression under multinational oil companies and the Nigerian military. In 1990, Shell specifically requested that the military protect its facilities from nonviolent protesters in the village of Umeuchem. 80 villagers were killed in two days of violence. A later judiciary panel determined that the villagers posed no threat against Shell 21. There have also been accusations of the military arming some communities to fight other communities and prevent the growth of cohesive groups like MOSOP, because wide-spread movements could lead to the end of the flagrant prosperity for Shell and the military. However, communities like the Ijaw, Ekwerre, Oyigba, Ogbia, and others in the Niger Delta have taken measures to reclaim their despoiled lands and human rights 22. Since October 1998, Ijaw groups have been occupying oil industry platforms and pipeline transfer stations, at one point blocking a third of Nigeria's oil exports. As of early December, 1988, the groups were still shutting off flow and demanding environmental and economic justice.
3. Why does the Nigerian government allow this to happen? In Nigeria, it is questionable whether it is multinational oil companies like Shell or the military which hold ultimate control. Oil companies have a frightening amount of influence upon the government: 80% of Nigerian government revenues come directly from oil, over half of which is from Shell. Countless sums disappear into the pockets of military strongmen in the form of bribes and theft. In 1991 alone, $12 billion in oil funds disappeared (and have yet to be located) 23. Local governments admit that oil companies bribe influential local officials to suppress action against the companies. Hence the interests of the Nigerian military regime are clear: to maintain the status quo; to continue acting on Shell's requested attacks on villagers whose farms are destroyed by the oil company; to continue silencing, by any means necessary, those who expose Shell's complete disregard for people, for the environment, for life itself. Shell and the Nigerian military government are united in this continuing violent assault of indigenous peoples and the environment. And just as oil companies exploit numerous communities in the Niger Delta, the government's involvement in the above crimes is not limited to the Ogoni. To allow the Ogoni to continue raising local and global awareness and pressure would be political suicide for an oppressive, violent military regime, whose only mandate is its own guns 24. The Nigerian military government could not allow this movement of empowerment to spread into other impoverished communities of the Niger Delta. By harassing, wounding and killing Ogoni and others, the military ensures that it remains in power and that its pockets remain lined with the blood money of Delta oil. 4. What are groups in Nigeria doing to stop Shell? The first highly visible action organized by the Movement for Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) occurred on January 4, 1993 with 300,000 Ogoni ( |
Saturday.
He said that clashes continued, with Peshmerga and YPG forces fighting together against the militants.First, I want to share some love for the many cities out there that birthed and raised bike sharing to what it is now. It has been a lot of hard work with much risk and - fortunately - reward. Personally, it has been thrilling to watch various ideas get their chance on the street: scrappy free bike systems on U.S. college campuses (pre-1998), bright green City Bikes in Helsinki with shopping cart-like 1-Euro lock/key mechanisms (2001), Deutsche Bahn's red "Call-a-bike" solos with SMS controls that caught my eye on Cologne's Hohestrasse (2006), Paris' fixed station public-private partnership that really launched the concept of major city systems (2007), Montreal (2008), then London, D.C., Miami, and so on. As we all watch the mammoth bike share system go online in New York City, few may realize that a quiet revolution in bike sharing is actually happening just a wee bit west of Manhattan Island. The evolution of today's infrastructure-intensive bike sharing systems has been a hard-fought learning process; alas, the current paradigm is about to get turned on its head, and it's happening – surprise - this week in Hoboken, New Jersey.
I submit that from today forward, all cities big and small will not only see bike sharing in a more feasible, if not different way, they will also be forced to ask themselves the question, "Why aren't we doing it like Hoboken?" The so-called "hybrid" bike sharing pilot kicking off this week in Hoboken is different in many ways, and arguably it is not complete with all the desired accessories at this point, but the key contrasts between Hoboken's model and contemporary bike sharing are fixed to the elimination of the most costly and restrictive component of modern bike-sharing: the docking station. Tom Glendening of E3Think - who is contributing to the launch and development of the Hoboken pilot - calls it a move from "Smart Dock to Smart Lock", and for good reason.
Without the docking station, users are not only free to "return" the bikes wherever is most convenient to them, cities no longer have to face the furor of controversy about placement of static, space-taking stations. Cities don't need to sacrifice precious public space to additional infrastructure or devise ways to keep these areas maintained. There's a long list of benefits, and while the main difference ostensibly seems entirely about reduced capital cost, it is much more about program flexibility. Here's why:
It's Cheaper: A good rule of thumb is that each modern bike-share bicycle costs $2,000 and each docking station $10,000. So, for a modest 100 bicycle system at 10 bikes per stations, you need $300,000 just to get started. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the capital cost to buy-in to bike sharing is daunting to all cities. Hoboken's system nixes the stations and relies on less expensive bicycles, dropping costs to less than half.
It's Modular: With no stations to locate, the system can grow organically from a very small number of bicycles as demand increases without the "critical mass" required to privately fund most systems. Cities need not argue at meetings or frustrate residents with the placement of bike stations, all that is required is a simple ordinance containing the do's and don'ts of operating bike sharing within city limits. Eliminating the requirement to return bicycles to a station reduces the external variables impacting use to just cost, so bicycles start to naturally populate places where they are in most demand, which translates to less relocation.
It's License-able: While the pilot version of the program is a partnership, the broader concept is that docking station-free bike sharing requires no exclusive vendor contract for huge infrastructure installations; rather, the program can be licensed to any number of smaller mom-and-pop operations who take on the responsibility of operating and maintaining their "fleet", similar to the way taxis are licensed by municipalities. Licensing is much fairer to the business community, and it allows the city to hedge its bets by managing a system with multiple operators rather than a single entity. This is key; instead of the program costing the city huge sums just to get in the game, the model is inherently revenue neutral. Future implementations will benefit more greatly from Hoboken's innovative stance, but the program is born from the potential for costing the city little to nothing.
It's Local: Since a bike share license only requires a very small investment to get started (bike or bikes and license fee), the concept is a great way to encourage local "green" jobs and strengthen the local small business fabric. In fact, bike sharing licenses can easily be offshoots of existing brick-and-mortar businesses, and there are unlimited ways to combine the two to strengthen the sometimes-puzzling relationship between local merchants and bicycling.
It's Hardware Agnostic: At the moment, only the persistent pioneers of the dock station-free concept have hardware that works well, such as Social Bicycles' powering Hoboken's system, but as the technology matures, certainly other manufacturers will appear, further reducing prices and introducing improved equipment and more options. Just as cities simply list the safety and functional requirements for taxis to be licensed, bike sharing licenses will allow businesses to use their own discretion to choose their hardware within the given criteria.
It's Low/No Maintenance: Cities do not want to be in the fleet management business, whether it's buses or bicycles. Hoboken's model offsets fleet maintenance and management to the individual licensees. Failure of any individual bike share license holder to do so is at the peril of their business. All the city has to do is inspect and enforce the rules - same as they do for any number of other licenses – which is a significantly less intensive staffing prospect than contemporary bike sharing systems. In terms of infrastructure, all cities need to do is maintain their standard bicycle parking program, as they would normally do.
Only time will tell if my predictions here are true, but my gut tells me that the model being introduced this week by Hoboken is the way of the future, and cities investing, or planning to invest in contemporary docking station-based bike sharing systems may want to think twice before passing that resolution to award a contract.Taoiseach Enda Kenny had a phone conversation with Apple CEO Tim Cook on Sunday at Mr Cook's request, ahead of an EU Commission ruling that Ireland granted illegal state aid to Apple amounting to €13bn.
During the call, Mr Cook recommitted himself to the company's operations in Ireland.
The Taoiseach expressed support for Apple's presence in Ireland.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said the Government intends to appeal the commission's ruling, but members of the Independent Alliance have expressed reservations.
However, a senior source in the group this evening told RTÉ News that the IA has no wish to destabilise the Government, and that IA ministers feel a deal is possible that would allow them to back a decision to appeal the ruling.
Tonight Independent Alliance Minister of State Finian McGrath said a decision must be made at Friday's meeting and that the matter must be sorted.
Detailed discussions are likely ahead of Friday when a Cabinet meeting on the issue is set to resume following inconclusive talks today.
The Taoiseach and Mr Noonan met independent ministers for an hour this morning ahead of a four-hour Cabinet meeting on the issue.
Mr Noonan and the Attorney General addressed the meeting. The AG will clarify a number of legal and technical issues at Friday’s meeting.
After the meeting, the Government issued a statement saying it "had a thorough discussion of the European Commission decision with regard to Apple, based on a Memorandum from the Minister for Finance proposing that Ireland lodge an appeal to that decision".
The statement said Cabinet received a detailed briefing from Mr Noonan.
It continued: "Following the discussion, it was agreed to adjourn the meeting to allow further time to reflect on the issues and to clarify a number of legal and technical issues with the AG's Office and with officials.
"The Government meeting will resume on Friday at 11am to make a decision on the matter."
A Government spokesman said this evening that Mr enny had no aversion to recalling the Dáil but clarity on the Government’s position on appealing the ruling was needed first.
Independent Minister Katherine Zappone welcomed the adjournment, saying it was important to allow time for the issues to be further explored.
Minister for Transport Shane Ross has said there had been a very frank of exchange of views at the Cabinet meeting.
He said ministers had a great deal of reading to do as the judgment was lengthy and complex.
Finian McGrath said they would be consulting with the other members of the alliance and would not be commenting in detail on the meeting.
Mr Ross said they had difficulties with taking any of the courses proposed to Cabinet and did not know if those concerns would be met. He confirmed that the recall of the Dáil had been discussed.
Independent Alliance TD Kevin 'Boxer' Moran indicated that he would support an appeal, telling the Westmeath Independent: "We have got to show that if multinational companies come in here, if they get into difficulty, we are here to protect them.”
Responding to a request from RTÉ News about the availability of the Dáil chamber should the house be recalled, a spokesman for the Houses of the Oireachtas said: "The programme of improvements on technology supporting the Dáil Chamber is still ongoing.
"However, the Houses of the Oireachtas Service has a back-up sound system in place which could be used."
Speaking before today's Cabinet meeting Taoiseach says Apple ruling has created 'unprecedented' situation pic.twitter.com/nJORvPORsC — RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 31, 2016
Earlier, the Taoiseach said time was needed to properly absorb the commission's decision.
Mr Kenny added that the decision created an "unprecedented situation" and it is important that everyone have the opportunity to have any anxieties they have addressed and to raise questions they may have.
He pointed out that it is a complex judgment that runs to 150 pages and it needs time to be absorbed properly.
Govt and Apple set to appeal EC tax verdict
Apple reasserts commitment to Ireland after tax ruling
White House says Apple ruling unfair
Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe rejected calls for an early recall of the Dáil to discuss the Apple case.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said that the Dáil will sit in a few weeks - it is next scheduled to meet after the summer recess on Tuesday, 27 September.
Mr Donohoe said considering the sum of money involved, he fully understands why the public might find this "a challenging decision for our country to make".
He said he "believes strongly that what we need to do here is to appeal this ruling but before we get to that point, Cabinet needs to first understand this matter and that's what we'll be doing today".
Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe'strongly believes' the Govt should appeal Apple ruling pic.twitter.com/QWWyr6osJ6 — RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 31, 2016
Speaking on his way into the meeting, Minister for Health Simon Harris said it was important for the Government to speak to the international community with one voice on the issue.
"It's important that all Cabinet ministers, including the independent ministers, get the opportunity to get fully briefed by the Minister for Finance."
"I'm sure our independent colleagues are looking forward to that opportunity before we reach a collective Cabinet position."
He added: "It's very important that the Government robustly addresses this matter."
Minister for Housing Simon Coveney rejected the suggestion that Ireland did a "sweetheart deal" with Apple.
"This issue was managed by Revenue and not by Government and Revenue are adamant there was no sweetheart deal."
Meanwhile, the European Commission has said Ireland would have discretion on how to spend the €13bn if and when it was recouped from the US multinational as a result of yesterday's decision.
At the commission's daily news briefing spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said: "The amounts that are recovered by a member state in a state aid investigation simply go back to the member state's budget.
"It can then use it, of course, according to its own decisions."
Elsewhere, US Ambassador to Ireland Kevin O'Malley has rejected a description of US companies in Ireland as "tax cheats".
In a speech in Dublin's Mansion House, Mr O’Malley said that corporations had a duty to minimise their taxes and also be compliant.
He pointed to the presence of US multinationals in Ireland and their Irish staff as evidence that Ireland is not a tax haven.
Independent Alliance urged to oppose appeal
The Anti-Austerity Alliance has called on Independent Alliance ministers to oppose plans to appeal the commission's decision.
Cork North Central TD Mick Barry said EU Competitions Commissioner Margrethe Vestager and Mr Donohoe had "already contradicted" Mr Noonan's assertion that the tax would not be available for current spending.
"A cynical attempt was made to pull the wool over the eyes of the public by saying 'even if we get the money, we can't spend it anyway because of the fiscal rules'," Mr Barry said.
"This has been exposed as untrue after the intervention of EU Commissioner Vestager and the admission by Minister Paschal Donohoe on Drivetime that any funds received by the State through the ruling could be spent on capital projects such as housing".
AAA TD Paul Murphy said the Government should welcome the Apple ruling instead of going to war to defend the right of the company not to pay tax.
He said the Government represents the interests of Apple and the model of this country is turning it into a tax haven.
He said there are multiple crises in Ireland, in particular housing, and the €13bn could be used to build homes, adding that the Government did not go to war in terms of fighting against the Troika or in terms of the minimum wage cut.
Howlin shocked by Govt's 'unpreparedness' on decision
Labour Leader Brendan Howlin said he was shocked at the unpreparedness of the Government to the Apple decision but said the Government now needs to get on the front foot.
"Everybody who invests here wants to know with certainty what the tax regime will be.
"If that is undermined in any way, if there's uncertainty about it that really is a mortal blow to the strategy that has developed those hundreds of thousands of jobs over the last number of decades."
Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy said that the European Commission's judgment should not be challenged.
She told RTÉ’s Drivetime that there is no preferential taxation treatment for SMEs, adding that "I don't think you can have a situation where some multinational companies can dictate national taxation policy because, if that's the situation, then you are asking people in the domestic economy, PAYE taxpayers and small business, for example, to invest in your education system; your infrastructure so as that the multinationals then can take advantage of that investment without paying the appropriate taxation."
She said it is absolutely appropriate that the Dáil debate this at the earliest opportunity.Copyright by WCMH - All rights reserved Raymond Boyd Gates
Copyright by WCMH - All rights reserved Raymond Boyd Gates
COLUMBUS (WCMH) -- A $500,000 bond has been set for a Columbus man accused of raping a 17-year-old girl while a 19-year-old woman live streamed the whole thing over the social media app Periscope.
Raymond Boyd Gates appeared before a judge Tuesday on the rape charge.
The criminal complaint said Gates, the 17-year-old girl and the 19-year-old woman were drinking at his home on February 27.
According to court documents, at some point in the evening Gates allegedly held the 17-year-old down with his body weight, forced her pants and underwear off and began to rape her.
The complaint also says the 19-year-old live streamed the incident using the social media app Periscope.
The 17-year-old victim called police and made a report on February 29.
Columbus Police obtained a copy of the Periscope video. In the complaint, police say a blanket is covering both parties, but that there appears to be a struggle and the victim can clearly be heard screaming "No, it hurts so much"; "Please stop" and "Please no" several times.
The 19-year-old woman was originally charged with pandering obscenity involving a minor. That charge was dismissed, but the Franklin County Prosecutors Office says the case is still under investigation.Or, as I first said on watching this, “Holy *****….”
I mean, myself and Ian Dowse built a micromouse robot once, way back in the mists of prehistoric time, but, well…
It wasn’t exactly going to finish in 4.766 seconds, you know?
And it certainly didn’t look as slick as Tetra did:
Makes you wish there was money and facilities for doing robotics hardware in an Irish college, doesn’t it? I mean, look at it, the sheer elegant efficiency of the design, the purpose to it – the PCB extends out in front to put the weight on the front drive wheels so that it’s fast when turning, and the rear wheels come into play when it’s accelerating forward – it’s very elegant minimalist design, mechanically. We just never had the money, facilities, tools or other necessary things to do that sort of work 😦
AdvertisementsMauro Martino
To completely understand how a living organism works one would have to take it apart, the great physicist Niels Bohr once observed — but then the organism would certainly be dead1. In general, systems of high complexity, including living things but ranging from the Internet to social networks, are often impossible to track in all their details.
But what if you didn't have to? Network-theory researchers now have come up with some clever mathematics that reveals complex systems by tracking a selected few of their components.
Say, for example, that you wanted to find a biological marker that identifies people with a certain disease. You can track down all the genes that are expressed differently in people with the disease and assemble a network that shows their interactions, but how do you then pick out those that are specific to the illness?
The new work may help researchers to identify the key nodes in a network that determine the state of every other node, greatly simplifying the search.
To demonstrate their technique, Yang-Yu Liu of Northeastern University in Boston and his colleagues looked at the entire human metabolic network and found that concentrations of about 10% of the body's 2,763 metabolites could be used to determine the levels of all the rest.
But the method could also be used in social networks to identify the people whose opinions determine everyone else’s, helping to predict the outcome of, say, a presidential election. Or it could help ecologists to single out the particular species to track to follow changes in an entire ecosystem, to name just a few potential applications.
Needle-like nodes
To imagine how this works, start with a simple network in which a chemical A becomes chemical B. Because any changes in B are exclusively determined by A, monitoring B over time will also enable you to determine the state of A. The same would not be true if you monitored only A: Without knowing the initial level of B, changes in A aren’t enough to determine the level of B. The team pictured the situation above as a pair of nodes, A and B, with an arrow going from B to A to represent how information about B leads to information about A but not vice versa.
More complex reaction systems don’t yield such obvious results. Liu's team tackled the problem by examining clusters of strongly connected components in a network, again represented by nodes with arrows connecting them. For clusters that have no incoming arrows, as is the case of B above, the researchers freely picked a single node from each cluster.
They found that most of the time (and almost always in real-world networks), these selected nodes alone are sufficient to determine the state of every other node in the network. The team published its results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2.
Although theoretically possible, it is extremely difficult to reconstruct the entire network from these nodes. In many applications, however, that will not be necessary, because the needle-like nodes in the haystack of links should reveal the network's most important properties.
“This paper shows how you can reduce a network to the really important component parts that drive the system’s behaviour,” says Joseph Loscalzo of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “It begins to make the system more tractable,” adds Loscalzo, who would like to apply the technique to medicine.Nielsen will officially be introducing out-of-home ratings next April. Using its sample of 75,000 portable people meters across 44 markets, Nielsen will start to give clients a more scientific look at who’s leaving their humble abodes to watch NFL games and “Empire.”
These out-of-home numbers won’t be integrated into the ratings used in ad deals (the “currency”) until “a later stage,” according to Nielsen. The data that will be released to clients starting in April will include numbers stretching back to January, with more batches including data from September through December of this year to follow.
Out-of-home viewing wasn’t being entirely discounted by the TV industry this whole time, though. Particularly when it came to sports, advertisers all knew a certain percentage of their viewership was coming from bar, airports, and other places without Nielsen meters, and wasn’t showing up in the official Nielsen tally; the percentage was being guessed at and baked into the pricing of the spots bought.
But one of the big beefs with counting out-of-home viewing is that environments like bars and airports can be hellish audioscapes, and for advertisers, if someone can’t hear an ad, it doesn’t count. With the portable people meters, only ads that the meter can “hear” will be counted.
And now that ESPN has actually found a major agency to tack the out-of-home numbers onto guarantees (though likely at a discount), there’s a real impetus for Nielsen to push this product into the marketplace at large.
“This new service gives us the ability to capture out-of-home viewing precisely as it happens, and helps us double down on the power and delivery of live sports, while transacting on new, valuable audience segments for advertisers,” said Artie Bulgrin, ESPN ’s senior vice president of global research and analytics.
ESPN had resurrected talk of including out-of-home in guarantees at its upfront event in May. It was seeing lifts of 9% for certain college football games, and up to 16% for other programming. In a world of skyrocketing sports rights fees and shrinking subscriber numbers (ESPN has seen its subscriber base erode to under 90 million homes), the ability to show where those eyeballs are going — and what they’re watching — is important.
Not that these out-of-home numbers will be some sort of panacea. They’re unlikely to truly lift ratings for primetime NFL games out of their current funk, and by the time the data has been rolled out in April, the season will have long been over. But it is one more piece of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Measurement,” an attempt to create a full picture of viewers on all devices (and their ad-watching behavior) that will be available for use in transactions on March 1.Leading Republican lawmakers balked on Sunday at supporting a White House spending request aimed at bolstering the U.S. border with Mexico, where thousands of children have crossed recently, while calling for changes in the law to allow faster deportations.
The White House has asked for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to help pay for border security, temporary detention centers and additional immigration court judges to process asylum cases.
The Obama administration warned lawmakers on Thursday that border security agencies would run out of money this summer if the request were not approved.
Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., said when asked about the spending bill that the priority had to be stopping the flow of children and teenagers from Central America to the United States.
"The best way to do that is for planeloads of these young people to be returning to the country of origin," he told CNN's State of the Union. "As soon as they (parents) see their money is not effective in getting their kids to this country, it will stop."
More than 52,000 children traveling alone from Central America have been caught at the U.S.-Mexico border since October, twice as many as the same period the year before.
U.S. immigration officials say the crisis is being driven by poverty and gang and drug violence in Central America, as well as rumors perpetuated by smugglers that children who reach the U.S. border will be permitted to stay.
House of Representatives Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers said last week that the Obama administration asked for "too much money" but declined to say what an appropriate figure would be.
Representative Michael McCaul, R-Texas, also declined to support the spending bill. "We're not going to write a blank check for over $4 billion," he told "Fox News Sunday." McCaul is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
McCaul said he would support changing a 2008 law that requires deportation proceedings for children that arrive from countries that do not share a border with the United States. This would allow authorities to quickly deport newly arrived Central American children, as they do Mexican children.
McCaul said that bill could see action this summer.
"It's a very tragic human crisis at the border, none like I've ever seen before. I think we have to act before the August recess," he said.
The bill saw opposition from one Democrat, Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas.
"That 2008 law, passed under George W. Bush, was passed for a reason," he told NBC's "Meet the Press." "Many people believe that these kids should have a chance to make their case for asylum. So I think we've got to be careful when we consider completely doing away with that law."
Texas Governor Rick Perry pressed the White House to send National Guard troops to the border to aid the border patrol, which has been stretched thin by the influx of minors.
"They need to be right there on the river because that's the message that gets back to Central America. It's important to do that because this flood of children is pulling the border patrol away from their normal duty of keeping bad people (out)," he told "Fox News Sunday."
Perry also said that conversations among Central Americans had been monitored.
"We listen to the conversations. Er, I should say that, the conversations are being monitored with calls back to Central America and the message is, 'Hey, c'mon up here. Everything is great. They're taking care of us,'" he said.
ReutersIt is now widely understood, based on Edward Snowden's leaks, that the government had standard encryption algorithms intentionally weakened to provide a backdoor for NSA surveillance.
Essentially confirming these reports in the strongest possible terms, RSA Security -- the network security firm born of the same creators of the RSA public key cryptography algorithm -- warned its developer customers to avoid using the widely implemented, NSA-weakened algorithm (known as Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generation, or "Dual EC DRBG").
Advertisement:
Wired reports:
In its advisory, RSA said that all versions of RSA BSAFE Toolkits, including all versions of Crypto-C ME, Micro Edition Suite, Crypto-J, Cert-J, SSL-J, Crypto-C, Cert-C, SSL-C were affected. In addition, all versions of RSA Data Protection Manager (DPM) server and clients were affected as well.
The NSA reportedly used its influence, having intentionally weakened the encryption algorithm, to have the code added to the national standard for random number generators, used in everything from standard email encryption, to firewalls, to credit card transactions -- used by private and government sectors alike. Wired noted, "The algorithm was approved by NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] in 2006 for a standard governing random number generators."
It is a troubling thought that government influence pervades even the mathematical formulae determining standard encryption, to enable easier surveillance.
As professor Matthew D. Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University, has commented on the issue: the “NSA has a hard time breaking encryptions, so what they’ve done is they actually tried to take the products that perform encryptions and make them worse, make it weaker so it is easier for them to break that encryption.”Buster Olney is confused as to why Baltimore would give up future assets to acquire Phillies pitcher Jeremy Hellickson in order to prop up this year's team (0:53)
Jeremy Hellickson got a trip from the NL East cellar to an AL East team still clinging to playoff hopes, but the right-hander hit a bump in the road on his way out of Philadelphia.
The veteran pitcher, who was traded by the Phillies to the Orioles on Friday, has not yet arrived in Baltimore, as he was rear-ended on his way to the airport.
Orioles manager Buck Showalter said that Hellickson is doing fine and has been in contact with Baltimore's staff but had to go with his girlfriend to the emergency room following the car accident.
Editor's Picks Trade grades: Orioles take a flyer by acquiring Jeremy Hellickson Baltimore will need a miracle two-month surge to make the postseason, and the righty with an ERA near 5.00 might not offer much help in the playoff chase.
Showalter said Hellickson will now go to Baltimore, instead of joining the team for the finale in Texas on Sunday. The Orioles will start a seven-game homestand on Monday.
The 30-year-old is 6-5 with a 4.73 ERA and joins an Orioles pitching staff that has the second-worst ERA in all of baseball, at 5.15.Sturgill Simpson Sheds Light on 'A Sailor's Guide to Earth,' Shares New Single
Published Mar 03, 2016
Ahead of further details, Simpson offered up a taste of what's to come with new single "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)."
Psych-country songwriter Sturgill Simpson impressed fans of the genre back in 2014 with the release of his sophomore Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. In anticipation of his follow-up record, the Nashville-based performer appeared on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 radio show to shed some light on his forthcoming effort A Sailor's Guide to Earth."I wanted to express a lot of influences outside of country music, I think there's a lot of room to explore in terms of sonic templates in the genre," he told Lowe. "If there was any intentional approach it was that I wanted to sort of reverse engineer the song craft this time around. In country music especially, it can get very formulaic. You have to have your verses and a chorus but a lot of these songs were written as plain and simple poetry on the road. I decided I was going to frame those poems to music in the studio."When asked if he entered the studio with a renewed confidence after the success of Metamodern, Simpson was candid in his response. "I'm still pretty scared. If I didn't feel this way then I'd be worried," he admitted. "This record came from a lot of me figuring out my place in that world while it was all happening. We already did Metamodern... so I didn't want to make another psychedelic country album. The band's off the charts, we're just ready to go out and do it."Read through the tracklisting the track and conversation with Lowe in the players below.A Sailor's Guide to Earth:1. Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)2. Breakers Roar3. Keep It Between The Lines4. Sea Stories5. In Bloom6. Brace For Impact (Live A Little)7. All Around You8. Oh Sarah9. Call To ArmsRight-wing Polish party KNP has agreed to link up with Geert Wilders’ PVV and France’s Front National in forming an anti-EU group within the European parliament, Trouw reports on Thursday.
Wilders originally opposed working with the Kongres Nowej Prawicy because of ‘our free market ideology’, a spokesman is quoted as saying by Trouw. Neither Wilders or the Front National has yet commented on the claim.
The KNP holds sharply differing views to Wilders in several areas. The party opposes same sex marriage and wants the use and production of all drugs to be decriminalised.
In addition, party leader Janusz Korwin-Mikke reportedly opposes giving women the right to vote because they ‘are not interested in politics’.
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The decision by the Poles to join the alliance is also noteworthy considering Wilders’ hostility to Polish workers in the Netherlands. Two years ago he set up a hotline for people to report ‘problems with Poles’.
On Wednesday it emerged that Britain’s eurosceptic Ukip had managed to form an alliance with six other parties. It includes one former member of the Front National who quit several days after being elected.
The Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group will also include MEPs from Lithuania, France, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Sweden among its 48 members, the BBC said.
Far right
The extreme right Flemish party Vlaams Belang, Austria’s FPO and Italy’s Lega Nord have already agreed to join Wilders and Le Pen.
The addition of the KNP means Wilders and FN leader Marine Le Pen still need one more party in order to qualify for funding and more speaking time within the Brussels parliament.
Under EU rules, each group must have at least 25 MEPs from a minimum of seven member states.MADRID, Spain - When the quarterfinals begin at the Mutua Madrid Open on Thursday, half of the tournament's final eight will be flying the Romanian flag with pride. While it's no surprise to see 2014 finalist Simona Halep in the mix, Romania's alpha is joined by Irina-Camelia Begu, qualifier Patricia Maria Tig, and wildcard Sorana Cirstea in a tournament owned and operated by Romanian legend Ion Tiriac.
It seems the Bucharest Open has come a couple of months early.
"It's a Romanian tournament, I can say," Halep said with a laugh after her strong 6-2, 6-3 win over Timea Bacsinszky. "I feel [at] home here. I feel good always. I have great memories from 2014. I just try to make it best tournament for myself. I try just to enjoy it, because I like it very much."
Halep is the only seed left in the draw and will face Begu on Thursday, ensuring Romania will have a representative in the semifinals. Begu has never been further than the quarterfinal stage at a Premier Mandatory, while Halep made back-to-back quarterfinals in March in Indian Wells and Miami. The two have played three times with Halep winning all six sets, but they have not squared off in over four years.
"I expect a tough match," Halep said. "She plays well on clay. Last year she did quarterfinals here, so [that] means that she likes the court.
"I know her pretty well, since long time ago, but officially we didn't play too many matches. It's a big challenge for me tomorrow."
The big surprises in the draw were Cirstea and Tig. Cirstea has made good on a wildcard into the tournament to make her first Premier Mandatory quarterfinal. The former No.21 has not lost a set in three matches, beating Jelena Jankovic, Danka Kovinic, and Laura Siegemund to join her compatriots among Madrid's Elite Eight.
"I think that's amazing," Cirstea said. "Four girls in the quarterfinals means half of the girls are Romanians, which I think is impressive coming from a country like Romania. I think everyone knows we don't have a system or anything. We were each separate and trying to find a way. I think it's amazing that we are one of the biggest forces now in tennis."
At 26 years old, Cirstea is the oldest of the bunch. "We grew up together," she said. "I played Simona when I was eight years old. "We both had short hair, we were very boyish. Our parents were there [pushed up] against the fence [watching]. It's funny how we all grew up together and now to be all here is really impressive."
"Patricia is younger but I remember her skinny legs when she was 14 when we went to a winter camp together. She was this quiet girl. We've known each other for a very long time. I'm happy to see all of us here and all of us succeeding and having a good run.
"I think it shows if you really have character and if you really want this and you work hard, you can do it."
With her run to the quarterfinals, Cirstea will return to the Top 100 for the first time since January 2015 (read more about her journey back here). Not bad for a player who was ranked No.248 last November and has played ITFs for most of the year. On Thursday she'll play Dominika Cibulkova, who got past Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in three sets.
Last but most assuredly not least is 21-year-old Tig, the most improbable quarterfinalist of them all. Ranked No.134, Tig has racked up an impressive list of wins this week as a qualifier, beating Nicole Gibbs and Maria Sakkari in qualifying, and then Daria Kasatkina, Sloane Stephens, and Madison Keys for the biggest result of her career.
"I'm feeling unbelievably happy," Tig told WTA Insider. "It was a great week for me. I didn't expect this to happen. But since I was working so hard, I think sometimes you don't know when you get rewarded."
Before this week, Tig's best result came last year when she made the final in Baku. Her successful qualifying campaign here put her into the main draw of a Premier Mandatory for the first time in her career and she's on the verge of breaking into the Top 100.
"Actually when I first came here I felt so good being here. I had a feeling that everything was going to be fine. I had a first practice which was going good. I thought, "OK I just have to go on the court and play the best I can for every point and don't expect anything.'"
Tig's straight-set win over Gibbs in the first round of qualifying gave her the belief that she could compete with the top quality field in Madrid. On Thursday she'll find out how her game stacks up against a Slam champion in Sam Stosur, who defeated Carla Suárez Navarro in three sets to make the quarterfinals.
"I mean I was watching her for 10 years playing on TV," Tig said. "I really like her and her game. She's a really top player. She's going to make me do some stupid things but I'm going to try not do them," she said with a laugh.
"I cannot say anything about the match because I'm not expecting anything. I just want to go on court and just play the best I can and whatever is going to happen I will |
at their position in the standings. My opinion of Dortmund is very high. In tomorrow's game, we will see the best BVB, it's impossible to think that they will not play at the highest level (It seems that Pep didn't understand the question, despite Markus Hörwick's translation,as he is not really addressing the question) The last 4 games at home, we have lost 3 out of 4 against this team. They have great players, we will see great performances.
On whether Dortmund will play differently because of their current position - (15th in the league, 7 points total from 9 games, 1 point above relegation) I'm not thinking about what will happen if we win or we lose, or what happens to the opponent after we play them. I'm only focused on what we need to do, our game, our tactic. We won't change our tactics from the past year and a half, just because of one opponent. On Sunday, we start preparing for Roma, after that Frankfurt, then we get a break while the national team players are gone. We are only focusing on us and our game. Sure, it's a special game for me, because they are a good team, but it's only 3 points, and it's October. Last season, we lost 0-3 to them, and we won the BL title.
On whether it will be a chippy game, due to the rivalry and the strained relations between the clubs - I know how important this game is for our fans and for BVB's fans, but I'm sorry, for me only our tactic is important. They have quality, what do we need to do to control that quality, what are their weaknesses, and how do we attack them. That's it.
On why Bayern has so much trouble against Dortmund - They are an outstanding team, that's the reason. They have outstanding players, that's the reason. Of course, our playing style is great for them. We play 40 meters in front of Manuel Neuer, and for them, that's great.
On whether Pep can change tactics for this game - No. I'm sorry (that gets a laugh, the coach apologizing for not changing tactics) If I thought that we could win by playing in our penalty box, I would. But I trust that the further away we are from our penalty box, and the closer we are to Weidenfeller's box, the more chances we have of winning. I'm sorry, from the very beginning, in the 4th division in Spain with Barcelona's reserves, my time with the senior Barcelona team, and here, is to always play up front. Sorry.
On how happy he is with the team's playing style - Compared to last season, much better. We're not perfect, but much better. Our possession game has more purpose, possession for the sake of just passing is nothing, our passes are made to set up the next pass, to be able to attack. Last season, our possession was slower, from the backline to the midfield, then to the forwards, we won games, but I wasn't happy with the playing style. Having Xabi Alonso here, and with Philip Lahm in that position, our play is a little faster. That's why we are scoring more goals, and allowing less ( he's right, this season they have scored 21 and allowed 2, last season they scored 19 and allowed 4, after 9 games).
On whether the team will be even better after the winter break, because Pep has said the team still needs time - Of course, that's why I'm here. If we can't play better by the Rückrunde (second half of the season), we'll stay home.
On whether Mario Götze is more important to the team since his WC-winning goal, and is Pep giving him more responsibility - I'm very satisfied with Mario Götze, also because he's a very professional player. He's here an hour early, his life is focused on football. We can't forget that he is still young, but we are here to support him.
On who is currently the strongest competitor for the BL title, since Dortmund is having trouble - You can ask me that question in March or in April, and I will tell you which team is our strongest rival for the title. Right now, Dortmund is still our strongest competitor for the title. A few years ago, Bayern had an 8 or 10 point lead on Dortmund after 7 or 8 games, and Dortmund won the title at the end of the season. In October, the point lead doesn't mean anything. But this season, I said from the start that Leverkusen has a strong team, and Gladbach, with Lucien Favre, as well, and Hoffenheim and Wolfsburg are there as well. We have to try to win and keep our lead on our opponents.
On whether the fourth official has the most thankless job, having to stand between two very emotional coaches like Pep and Klopp -He won't get any problems from me. He's not Bibiana (Steinhaus, the 4th official from the Gladbach game, with whom Pep had a bit of a run-in. He does get some laughs for this answer.)
On how much of an advantage it is for Bayern that Philip Lahm doesn't have to worry about the national team - It was his decision, but in the last 10 years, his level of play was the same for Bayern, whether he played for the national team or not. Always at a high level. But I think his wife is very happy, she has more time with him now.
On what fascinates Pep about Marco Reus - Next question, please (he didn't look very pleased when the reporter followed up with another question about Reus coming to Bayern, and again didn't answer).
On which Dortmund players Pep thinks are the most dangerous for Bayern tomorrow - Immobile is not slow, neither are Ramos, Aubameyang, Mkhitaryan, or Reus. If we turn the ball over, we will see the real Dortmund. If we want to control the counter attack, we could give them the ball, that would be better for us, but that won't happen, because I want the ball.While the other major carriers in the US have all revealed their plans to release the Samsung Galaxy S4, Verizon Wireless has been a bit more secretive. The carrier now says that it will begin pre-orders for the S4 tomorrow, but it is still leaving us in the dark as to when it will ship the phone and how much it will cost. The news comes as other carriers have delayed their launch plans: T-Mobile expects to sell the phone online starting on April 29th, while Sprint will have the phone available online on the 27th. Both were forced to push back retail availability due to inventory problems. AT&T, meanwhile, still plans to have the Galaxy S4 in stock online and in stores on the 27th.
Update: Verizon tells us that the on-contract Galaxy S4 will begin at $249.99 for the 16GB model, though it will be sold with a $50 mail-in rebate. That brings it down to the same $199.99 AT&T's charging for the phone. The Galaxy S4 starts at $249.99 on Sprint, while T-Mobile is charging $149.99 upfront as part of its new "uncarrier" pricing model.
Update 2: Verizon also informs us that the 16GB Galaxy S4 will cost $649.99 unsubsidized. Not cheap, but those who are holding onto grandfathered unlimited data plans may want to take note.
Update 3: The Galaxy S4 will be available at Verizon retail stores on May 30th, well after other major US carriers. Phone Scoop first reported that date, and Verizon has since confirmed the news to us.Style ambassador Hiroshi Fujiwara, Nike design legend Tinker Hatfield and Nike Inc. CEO and designer Mark Parker have once again collaborated to deliver the latest chapter in the story of Nike Flyknit technology.
The latest addition to the Nike HTM line blends the clean, modern style of the chukka boot with Nike Flyknit technology, creating an iconic new silhouette. The knitted, form-fitting upper is enhanced by Nike Flywire technology and a Nike Lunar outsole.
The Nike HTM Flyknit Chukka appears in two colors, both drawing on a winter-inspired “Snow Style” palette. The first shoe blends the natural tones of grey and blue with a white highlight detail, while the second, more muted version, features a subtle mix of grey and white.
Launching in February 2013, the Nike HTM Flyknit Chukka will be available at select retailers around the world and at Nike Stadium Milan, Nike Stadium Paris and 1948 in London.
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Words by Brian Farmer Managing Editor Brian Farmer is Highsnobiety's Managing Editor and is based in New York City.TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott exchanged emails dealing with vetoes, the state budget and his speeches from a private email account, according to records turned over to the Associated Press on Tuesday.
Scott has previously said he used a Google email account to communicate with his family and not for state business. He also said that if ever he got an email dealing with state business he would forward it to his public email accounts.
"If anybody sends me an email to my private account, I do the right thing," Scott said in August. "I try not to use my personal email for anything."
Scott spokesman John Tupps, however, acknowledged in a statement that "after a thorough review of this old email account, there were occasions the governor failed to forward messages."
"This email account is closed and the personal email account the governor uses now has not been given out beyond his family," Tupps said.
The Scott administration turned over the emails more than three months after the AP first asked for them.
Most of the emails appear to be from 2011 and 2012, though there are some also from 2013. It is not a violation of law to have a private email account, but it would be a violation if someone asked for emails and the governor's office failed to turn them over.
Many emails released Tuesday include exchanges between Scott and his former chief of staff Steve MacNamara. Some are also from his press aides and other top officials who worked for Scott.
One set of emails concerns legislation dealing with Florida's university system, including an unsuccessful effort by MacNamara in 2012 to persuade Scott to sign a bill that would have let the University of Florida and Florida State University raise tuition above caps set in state law. MacNamara in the same email urged Scott to veto legislation that created Florida Polytechnic University. Scott signed it into law.
"You have inherited an awful higher ed system," MacNamara wrote Scott. "… To say it has been wallowing in a swamp of indifference or in receivership these past 5 to 10 years would not be an understatement. (Former Gov.) Jeb (Bush) could have cared less and (former Gov.) Charlie (Crist) cared even less than Jeb. The chancellor hasn't even asked to sit with you and discuss the most important piece of higher ed legislation his lifetime. We are rewarding indifference and bad behavior and it sickens me."
In another email. Scott thanks Alan Levine, a health care executive who was on the UF board at the time, for defending him to a reporter writing about changes on the UF board of trustees. A couple of the emails include Scott sharing what he wanted in either veto messages or bill signing letters.
Scott's Google email account has been at the center of an ongoing lawsuit filed against Scott by a Tallahassee attorney and a frequent critic of the Republican governor
Steven Andrews is suing over records related to a dispute about land near the governor's mansion that Andrews wants to buy. During the ongoing legal tussle Andrews got permission from a Florida judge to ask Google about email accounts set up by Scott and other Scott aides. But the governor has privately hired lawyers in California to fight the request.Over the winter, the Cardinals talked a lot about upgrading their defense and getting more athletic in the outfield,in particular. They let longtime Cardinal Matt Holliday go become a DH in the American League, preferring not to put his glove in left field any longer. After trying to trade for Adam Eaton, they eventually signed Dexter Fowler to play center field, allowing them to move last year’s center fielder (Randal Grichuk) back to left field.
Fowler’s not a great defender, but Grichuk is a better athlete than most left fielders, and Piscotty appears to be a decent right fielder, so this group looked like a solid-enough group of gloves. It’s not the Rays or the Red Sox, but the new Cardinals outfield looked capable of running down enough balls in the gap that outfield defense wouldn’t be a huge problem.
But then, when putting the team together in spring training, the Cardinals were won over by Jose Martinez’s monster performance, and decided they wanted to carry the 6-foot-6 28-year-old as a right-handed bat off the bench. Keeping Martinez meant that the team wasn’t going to have a roster spot for Tommy Pham, who looked like the projected fourth outfielder headed into camp. So, without Pham around, the five-man bench included the backup catcher, two hulking first baseman, and a couple of utility infielders.
And that meant that a non-outfielder was going to have to play some outfield, because no team can just play three outfielders every game, and Grichuk specifically hasn’t been particularly durable. So, with a few weeks left before the season started, the Cardinals decided to see what Matt Adams looked like in left field. And apparently Mike Matheny was impressed enough that Adams, not Martinez, has become the offensive lineman whom the team is willing to stick in left field.
And this isn’t just a once-in-a-while experiment; Adams has started four of the team’s first nine games in left field. If he kept playing outfield this regularly, he’d rack up about 500 innings in left field by the end of the year. He probably shouldn’t keep playing outfield this regularly, though.
So far, there have been nine balls hit in Adams direction while he’s been playing left field. He’s caught six of them, and according to the Statcast hang time and distance numbers, they were all routine flies that most every outfielder makes. Here are three he didn’t catch.
Anthony Rizzo, April 6th.
“The first tough chance Adams has had.”
“Right.”
Zack Cozart, April 8th.
“How tough is this play for a left fielder?”
“I was just going to say… this is a really tough play, especially where he was positioned.”
Stuart Turner, April 9th.
*Silence*
Adams didn’t look very good on any of these three plays, with the first two looking like balls a better outfielder maybe or probably catches. Which is normal, of course, because he’s never played the outfield before, and it would be weird if he already looked like he’d been playing out there forever. This is a guy a month into learning a new position, and doing it on the big stage. None of this is his fault. He’s clearly trying to do something his team wants him to be able to do, and it’s getting him in the lineup, so of course he’s putting in his best effort.
Playing the outfield at a major-league level is just difficult, though. There’s a reason you don’t see many guys trying to learn to play a more difficult position in the big leagues. And when a team is willing to experiment with a position switch at this level, it’s usually because the offensive upside is so great that the experiment is worth trying. But that’s the weird thing about this one: I don’t know why you’d suffer through Adams’ transition to the outfield in order to get his bat in the lineup more often, because there’s not a lot of evidence that he’s a demonstrably better hitter than Pham — an actual outfielder already — to begin with.
Adams has 1,503 regular season plate appearances. In that time, he has a 110 wRC+. That mark is okay but nothing special for a guy who is hurting you defensively and doesn’t run the bases well. And just looking at career data gives even weight to all the years of his career, even though his one really good offensive year came back in 2013, when he put up a 135 wRC+. That was four years ago, and he hasn’t really looked like that guy since.
Now 28, ZIPS projected Adams to put up a 97 wRC+ this year. Steamer was a little higher on him, putting his expected mark at 104. But the consensus is that he’s a league-average hitter, or something close to it.
Tommy Pham, whom the Cardinals sent to Triple-A, is five months older than Adams. He doesn’t have the same amount of MLB experience, having only racked up 358 PAs over the last few years, but he has a 113 wRC+ during the time the Cardinals have put him in the lineup. His minor-league track record isn’t as strong, so ZIPS (98 wRC+) and Steamer (94 wRC+) both project him as a slightly below-average hitter, but the Cardinals have thought enough of his defense to give him most of his playing time in center field the last few years, and while he’s maybe stretched a bit there, he’s pretty clearly a better outfielder than Adams is at this point, or likely will be any time soon.
Pham, right now, is almost certainly a better overall player than Adams if you have to play him primarily in the outfield. And because the team thinks so little of Adams’ defense right now that they’re using Martinez as an early-game defensive replacement, the Cardinals are effectively playing with a four-man bench anyway. All this to get a not-special left-handed bat in the lineup.
It’s not like Adams has a real future in St. Louis, anyway. Even if he took a step forward offensively, he’s blocked at every corner by a better player under control to the organization well beyond 2018, which is when Adams will be a free agent. Adams could turn into a decent big-league first baseman if he ever taps into his power the way it seems like he should be able to, but the Cardinals aren’t in a position to give him 600 at-bats and hope that happens, and they’re giving away runs in a year they’re trying to win on the hope that he becomes something he hasn’t yet been.
There are plenty of teams that could use a cheap left-handed first baseman who might have some upside left. Maybe it will hurt to see him blossom elsewhere, if that happens, but if the Cardinals really thought he was going to turn into an offensive monster, they wouldn’t have moved Matt Carpenter to first base this year. Let him go be a first baseman elsewhere, call Pham up to be a reasonable major-league fourth outfielder, and put your best team on the field. Whatever you get back for Adams will probably help you win more than having Adams playing left field, anyway.The esports business is attracting more high-end investors. Today, film studio Lionsgate and financier Michael Milken are investing in the professional esports team The Immortals.
After many years in the wilderness, esports has matured. It grew to $892 million in 2016, according to market researcher SuperData Research. And the investors in the market are in a bit of a rush to stake out territory that they believe will be valuable in the future. In this case, investors with considerable financial and entertainment clout are stepping up to participate in esports.
Previous investors who are also contributing include Steve Kaplan, cofounder of Oaktree Capital and co-owner of The Memphis Grizzlies basketball team; investor Gregory Milken; Third Wave entrepreneur Allen DeBevoise; and CrossCut Ventures, among others.
The Immortals currently compete worldwide for over 200 million fans in League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, and Super Smash Brothers.
Image Credit: VentureBeat
“We’re delighted to be an early mover in a market that has the potential to transform the face of sports entertainment,” said Lionsgate president of Interactive Ventures & Games, Peter Levin, in a statement. “Our involvement in eSports creates tremendous opportunities to develop new content and utilize our suite of distribution platforms for a coveted consumer demographic with compelling engagement metrics. Collaborating with an elite group of partners, the combination of the Lionsgate and Immortals brands will be formidable.”
The esports business is getting to be a lot like pro physical sports. The Immortals was formed in September of 2015 with the acquisition of Team 8. And The Immortals acquired another pro team recently: Tempo Storm‘s Counter-Strike group, as part of an attempt to establish a powerhouse franchise in a fledgling industry.
“Lionsgate joins a dream team of media, tech, and traditional sports partners who share our vision of building a dynamic Immortals organization and a strong e-sports foundation,” said Immortals chairman and CrossCut Ventures managing director Clinton Foy, in a statement. “What we’re doing today in eSports is like the early days of building the NFL and NBA. It’s not the evolution of games — it’s the evolution of sports, technology, and media.”
Lionsgate’s investment in Immortals is the latest step in the company’s esports initiatives. Last year, Pilgrim Media Group, in which Lionsgate is a majority investor, announced that it was partnering with ESL, the world’s largest eSports promoter, to create original esports entertainment content for television and digital platforms. Their first collaboration, in partnership with Microsoft, will be centered around the gaming brand Halo.
“Lionsgate is the perfect entrepreneurial partner for our Immortals family,” said Immortals CEO Noah Whinston, in a statement. “Immortals and Lionsgate are both focused on developing new entertainment formats, and we’re thrilled to collaborate with them at the cutting edge of eSports media.”User Comments (53)
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If you were blessed by this message, please email the broadcaster | add a comment... Randy Hall (5/13/2018) from Tennessee Great Sermon!
Thank You... For the intro to Mr Paisley, and what a great sermon to start with... There is little courage like that to be found in the pulpits today, I sadly confess
ladybug (11/17/2017) message for today
Yes and amen! So many are apathetic towards error, like 'free will' or 'decisionism' preached by B. and F. Graham. They think it 'unloving' to challenge error, and stay on the sidelines while error takes over. Preaching like this is a must in this day of apathy and compromise. This was a powerful message, to God be the glory.
Kenneth (7/22/2015) Great Sermon!
Excellent sermon, and I got to it 46 years late! I was feeling the impact of this powerful preacher less than 30 seconds in! Generation of Vipers... Wow! Keep that Sword of the Spirit sharp!
B. McCausland (4/21/2015) Worth listening
This sermon stands as a contrast against the relapsed attitudes, practice, strategies, and approaches of the today's contemporary church and leaders.
Dave Black (4/20/2015) from Northern Illinois Great Sermon!
Quite possibly the greatest preacher of my time. Makes me want to jump and Shout! I didn't hear anything I didn't agree with 110%... Remember when he rebuked the Pope publically a few years ago? Thank God for an example like this.
Florin Motiu (10/12/2014) from Oradea, Romania Blessed message.
I listened to this sermon in 2008 and I was impressed. I listened again today and I praise the Lord I can say I liked it more. I identify with this message.
Ernesto Ezequiel Mármol (12/27/2013) from BA, Argentina Beautiful Sermon!
kelly (10/3/2013) Great Sermon!
We need more true men of GOD not afraid to tell it like it is.
Ernesto Ezequiel Mármol (9/23/2013) from BA, Argentina Great Sermon!
I've enjoyed this sermon very much. I think of fundamentalism vs. apostasy is a today's matter that needs to be preached among different denomination of christians. Thank you.
Matthew Maxwell-Carr (2/8/2013) from United Kingdom Brilliant Message
This sermon is just AWESOME! What a man Paisley is! Finish well, brother, finish well! Lord, help him to finish well!
BoyinChrist (12/8/2012) from Ontario Canada Great Sermon!
Only by the Grace of God, His Son and the in dwelling of The Holy Spirit, can Bless us with a Great Preacher like Dr.Paisley!!! Godly men like him are hard to find!!! Most of the Preacher's today are too worried about the numbers for "THEIR" mega Churches. Sad Really.... One of the BEST SERMON's I've heard!!! Praise God!!!!
Jimmy (12/5/2012) from Texas Greatings from Texas!!!!
Hey great sermon!!!Love it!!! I hope ya'all will be blessed in the Lord!!All should hear this!!!
Samuel (9/27/2011) from USA Great Holy Ghost Preaching!
One of the best messages I have ever heard on biblical separation! I recamend every one to listen! thank the Lord for a preacher that will stand aginst Billy Graham and the apostasy in this world!!!!
Mr. Prince (8/20/2011) from Virginia USA Great Holy Spirit empowered Sermon!
Awesome man of God that is not afraid of what people thinks about him. Speaks the truth about the pope billy graham and others concerning apostasy! Great man of God and I aspire to be like him concerning truth and boldness.
Frank G. (10/8/2010) from USA Great Sermon!
Where are the Ian Paisleys' in America? May God in his Mercy send us one or raise up such a one for these confusing, soggy and messy ecclesiastical times in this nation. Preach on, Preach loud, Preach clear. Preach strong. By the power of the Holy Ghost. Preach the Word, Preach the Gospel, keep on opposing the false bretheren, the apostasy, and false unifiers. Thank You brother.
nealon lessey (9/8/2010) from grenada Great Sermon!
he is a great speaker and a man which earnestly contend 4 d faith
Kailash Agnihotri (5/21/2010) from Noida, U.P. Great Sermon!
Sir, I had heard of you on the BBC. I am glad you got to explaining fundamentalism and apostasy. I confess, the Irish have made some distinctions in the mind of some Indians who are likely to be apostates if the English overrule them. A matter like this tells of some invisible influence on the Indians seeking Christ with the aid of the Devil and only to find they have run into accusings on names and such ills that do not but show some form of contmpt on the belivers where God's grace can mend them into a respectable silence. If only we had more self-control then all the ills made from the pandora's box of the modern mouthpiece might have more music to hum than recall bouts of irritants that can solve no problem Thanks for sharing Fundamentalism and Apostasy. I might require prayer for saying things I could never got out of. But it so happens, they were all inside, Luke 12:2-3 and my rooftop has a sky opening to it. Psalm 19:1.Thank God.
Nathan Ham (8/25/2009) from Independence, KY Holy Ghost Language!
I'm praying for Holy Ghost language! Every preacher needs to listen to this message.
Charles Richardson (6/1/2009) from Bloomington springs, TN Powerful message!
This is a strong message that calls out the pretenders. Also some of the best of Bro. Paisley's stories in this one. Stay quick with the sword!
Dennis (2/18/2009) from Northern California Great Sermon!
Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! May continue to strengthen us with such powerful preaching! To God be the glory for ever and ever. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen!
Genti (12/28/2008) from Albania,eastern europe Great Sermon!
A great message to hear. It will encourage any-one to stand and defend the Faith and how to stand against apostasy. A highly recommended sermon!
Florin Motiu (4/25/2008) from Oradea, Romania Men of God today.
I praise God for lifting in our days preachers with so a courageous standing for the Lord and for the old Gospel! We need them!
Cassandra (10/21/2007) from Tn Great Sermon!
Oh, how I long for the good old days and old meaningful hymns. Sadly, apostacy is more and more prevelant. But, thank God, this very apostacy will bring the Rapture and we will meet him in the clouds as we enter our real and everlasting home.
Curt Ashburn (10/3/2007) from Washington, DC Great Sermon!
Anti Billy Graham, but "contending for the faith" fire!
Curt Ashburn (10/3/2007) from Washington, DC Great Sermon!
Anti RC elements, but 'challenges the darkness'
Luc Aube (3/20/2007) from Ottawa Canada Great Sermon!
I would highly recommend this sermon. Well worth 30 minutes of your time. Very powerful and anointed preaching.
Dessie (3/18/2007) from WV Excellent!
Thank God for this precious sermon and Dr Ian Paisley.
Michael J. McGovern (2/1/2007) from New York Great Sermon!
Thank God for the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and men who dare to fear God, fall under conviction for their sin and then rise again to preach the truth, in season and out of season. Am I a Calvinist? No I am not, and in Christ, it matereth not.The truth transcends manly issues, blessing the speaker and the hearer,without regard. It's wonderful to hear men preach as men, a characteristic found less and less in our American Pulpit. Preach on, Dr. Paisly, may there be 10,000 more, and then ten times that.
Tracie Hall (8/10/2006) from Wilmington, NC Great Sermon!
Lord, we need more men like Dr. Paisley in America! He surely sets the standard for Godly preaching from strong conviction. So needed is this message today; so needed for ears to hear what thus says the Word of God for this age. May this sermon reach the ears of many, and open the eyes of the sleeping professing church of Laodicea.
Aidan McDowell (7/8/2006) from Las Vegas, Nevada We need 1000 more like him!
Back in the 1980s (I believe) Dr. Paisley was a prominent figure in the news. Unfortunately, I accepted the caricature of Dr. Paisley that the media offered us. But this is not the Ian Paisley that comes through in the sermons I've heard at this site. Nowadays we could use a few Paisleys in America, as an alternative to the tired, shopworn, spiritually-threadbare, politically-correct stuff that goes by the name "Evangelical Christianity." It's this "Christianity," whose preachers take their cue from contemporary self-help gurus, which poses an even greater threat to Biblical religion than Romanism. I wish Dr. Paisley could find time to come to Las Vegas and give a sermon. It would be an historical event. Aidan McDowell
myra (5/15/2006) from China My First Time
Wow...what a sermon...very strong. Indeed he is a man of principles!
Jan (3/31/2006) from alberta canada Great Sermon!
i listened to his message several times and will continue to do so. We need more preachers on fire like Dr.Paisley, not afraid to preach. May God Bless him and others like him.
Laurel (10/26/2005) from CA, USA I thank the Lord!
Wow. I just discovered sermonaudio and this is the first sermon I have listened to. I thank the Lord for providing on the internet, the edification, exhortation and real preaching my soul longs to hear from the Word of God that is so hard to find (in a church) in this time. I praise God for the boldness, the truth telling and the burning of the Holy Spirit of this man of God and for his service unto the Lord in preaching to the saints. Thank you Lord for providing your Word for the thirsty souls of your little children.
Paul Thompson (8/22/2005) from Nebraska Great Sermon!
This is one of the best sermons I've ever heard. Ian Paisley's words ring truth and pierce my own soul, convicting me. I thank God for this man and men like him who stand for Biblical Righteousness.
David Gunn (8/6/2005) from Kentucky Great Sermon!
Thank God for men that aren't afraid to stand on God's word without compromise.
Marcel (6/17/2005) from Canada Great Sermon!
Needed words for these days of apostasy! We need in our day more courageous and zealous preachers like Ian Paisley and less compromising, Rome-embracing, Pelagians like Billy Graham. Praise God for raising up men to defend the truth in this evil age! http://www.timeforchri st.ca
Audi Steinwand (5/8/2005) from HayRiver,NT. Canada Great Sermon!
More relevent today than ever before, God's people are asked all throught scripture to be seperated from unbeleif of this world, and as we see the atack against GOD's WORD as never before. God Bless you Pastor in proclaimation of GOD's WORD! TRUTH can burn,for it is HOLY FIRE.
Geoff (3/31/2005) from uk Great Sermon!
A fantastic sermon as much for today as it was for 1969
Michael Gray (12/7/2004) from London Great Sermon!
What a sermon!! We must praise God for the men who are willing to make their stand in this evil day. These comments were a real inspiration to fight the battle with renewed vigour and zeal.
Jason McIntyre (4/30/2004) from Chatham, ON Canada Great Sermon!
Solid Biblical teaching is too hard to find now days, Dr. Paisley's sermons are a blessing. Download them now!
Brian Foster. (3/10/2004) from Brit. Great Sermon!
Hi there, to seriously listen to Dr Paisley is to be half afraid. Do we draw closer or do we run away? Should we have this amount of determination and agression as a Christian. For sure, there will not only be me that feels a confused wimp in comparison to the master. What he must do, he must do, and he exhorts us to do likewise. It is obviously a case of being sure of your backup. This is not smug certitude, but a biblically trained approach. If i had intruders i would send Dr Paisley to check it out. All darkness and he hates the lot of them. What sounds a bit like the grumpy old man speach at times, is quite impelling. It is a message for all, and draws attention to a high point in Christianity. Why dont we always kick the enemy into touch? What are we afraid of? If God has sent Dr Paisley to do the wake up call, we may as well give up on the idea of sleep!!! Maybe we should all be praying for the same backup as Dr Paisley - THE LORD - so that we stand very firm and dont fall asleep. God bless, Brian.
Angela Clum (8/29/2003) from Michigan Great Sermon!
Wonderful!! Praise God we have preachers who serve the Lord and not the apostasy of this world!!
Michael (7/29/2003) from Louisiana Who is on the Lords side?
Oh that this message was preached from every pulpit in America! The liberal preachers of today have the message of peace at any price rooted in their perverted definition. of love. I imagine the "lovie dovie" Christians that Dr. Paisley speaks of would say that even Christ was not very Christlike. There is a reason Paul exhorts us to "take on the armor of God". May we all heed Dr. Paisleys admonition to fight for the truth.
Steven McDougall (6/3/2003) from Faifley Clydebank Scotland U.K. Praise the Lord God Almighty
Praise the Lord God Almighty for setting up a Standard of Truth such as this message.This message calls Gods people to stand up for Truth in the mids of the darkness that is surounding us daily,put up a Banner of Truth and proclaim the Truth in the face of darkness that light may abound. Praise the Lord for servants of Christ such as Ian who can proclaim the glory of the Lord with such boldness.
Dan (4/24/2003) from Ohio Great Sermon!
Apparently the modern day "soft boy sissies" have not heard this sermon. This one needs to be sent out to all the "pulpit ornaments" that profess to |
with one of the defendants and planned to marry him.
After the trial, Mr. Ellison went to prison, entered the Federal witness protection program and eventually ended up living on parole in Jasper, Fla., midway between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. He later left the witness program, finished his parole on April 21, two days after the Oklahoma City bombing, and was last seen that day in Jasper with two women, driving a car with Oklahoma plates.
From his prison cell in Varner, Ark., Mr. Snell began publishing a periodic newsletter, The Seekers, which told of the "war to establish righteousness," a war in which he considered himself a P.O.W.
The Militia of Montana, which rallied to Mr. Snell's cause in the March issue of its publication, Taking Aim, reminded its readers that his execution was set for April 19.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
"If this date does not ring a bell for you then maybe this will jog your memory," the newsletter said. "1. April 19, 1775: Lexington burned; 2. April 19, 1943: Warsaw burned; 3. April 19, 1992: The fed's attempted to raid Randy Weaver, but had their plans thwarted when concerned citizens arrived on the scene with supplies for the Weaver family totally unaware of what was to take place; 4. April 19, 1993: The Branch Davidians burned; 5. April 19, 1995: Richard Snell will be executed -- unless we act now!!!"
The action suggested in a note written by Mary Snell, his wife, and published by the newsletter, was to flood the Arkansas Governor's office with letters.
As his execution approached, Mr. Snell was frequently visited by Mr. Millar, who shared Mr. Snell's final hours, witnessed his execution and took his body to Elohim City the next day for burial.
Mr. Snell watched televised reports of the Oklahoma City bombing on the very day he died, Mr. Millar said, and was appalled by what he saw.
Mr. Snell's last words, however, were threatening. He addressed them to Gov. Jim Guy Tucker just as he was strapped to a gurney for execution by lethal injection.
"Governor Tucker, look over your shoulder," witnesses quote him as saying. "Justice is coming. I wouldn't trade places with you or any of your cronies. Hail the victory. I am at peace."After talking about suing the NSA for weeks, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) After talking about suing the NSA for weeks, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) followed through on his rhetoric yesterday. But if the goal was to help start a conversation and generate some attention, the senator may not be entirely pleased by the direction of the discussion thus far.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is going after the National Security Agency – in court this time. “I am filing a lawsuit against President Barack Obama because he has publicly refused to stop a clear and continuing violation of the 4th Amendment,” Paul said in a statement Tuesday announcing his filing of a class-action lawsuit against the NSA. “The Bill of Rights protects all citizens from general warrants. I expect this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court and I predict the American people will win.” Paul is teaming up with former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and the conservative advocacy group Freedomworks in filing the suit against the NSA over its collection of phone records from American telecommunications companies.
At the outset, there are some relevant questions surrounding the senator’s new lawsuit. For example, if there’s already a pending federal case, filed months ago by conservative provocateur Larry Klayman, raising the identical concerns, isn’t Rand Paul’s lawsuit redundant?
For that matter, why did Paul wait so long between saying he’d file the suit and actually going to court? Why did the Kentucky Republican run this entre effort through his campaign operation instead of his Senate office?
But by last night, an unexpected question had emerged: was the text of Paul’s lawsuit stolen from someone else? [Updated below.]
A few months ago, the GOP senator found himself in the middle of a humiliating plagiarism scandal. As we documented in detail at the time, Paul presented others’ work as his own, on a wide variety of occasions, and in several types of media (speeches, op-eds, and books). After presenting a series of odd and unpersuasive defenses, Paul eventually acknowledged that he and his staff had “made mistakes” – but he was still a victim of journalists who accurately reported on his missteps.
The controversy eventually faded, but the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reports that Paul, already caught plagiarizing late last year, is now being accused of stealing his NSA lawsuit from its author.
Since December, the libertarian lawmaker, a tea party favorite, had been working with former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein to draft a class-action suit seeking to have the National Security Agency’s surveillance of telephone data declared unconstitutional; the two men appeared together as early as last June to denounce the NSA’s activities. But when Paul filed his suit at the U.S. District Court in Washington on Wednesday morning, Fein’s name had been replaced with that of Ken Cuccinelli, the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia who until last month had been the state’s attorney general. Cuccinelli has never argued a case in that courthouse, and he isn’t even a member of the D.C. bar (he also filed a motion Wednesday seeking an exception to allow him to argue this case in D.C.). But he is, like Paul, a tea party darling.
Fein, a well-known D.C. constitutional lawyer, especially prominent in Republican circles, was reportedly supposed to be paid by Rand Paul’s political action committee, but according to Milbank’s reporting, he has not yet been fully compensated for his work. That Fein’s name was apparently removed from the lawsuit that Fein wrote only adds insult to injury.
Milbank has seen both documents and told readers, “[A] Jan. 15 draft of the complaint written by Fein has long passages that are nearly identical to those in the complaint Cuccinelli filed Wednesday. Except for some cuts and minor wording changes, they are clearly the same documents.”
The senator was supposed to have a conference call with reporters yesterday afternoon to talk about his new lawsuit. That call was later canceled.
Update: The executive director of Paul’s PAC was paid for work on this matter.” What’s more, while Milbank quotes Fein’s ex-wife as the attorney’s spokesperson, Paul’s group produced an email from Fein saying she does not speak for him. : The executive director of Paul’s PAC insists Fein “
Second Update: Bruce Fein : Bruce Fein confirmed to msnbc this morning that the concerns raised by his spokesperson “did not represent” his views.P
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Yes today is Thursday, and NOT Sunday... But since I missed out the last two weekend rants and there is indeed so much happening around our sick world that I feel I need to put in my two cents worth, I figured it would be time for a "special" rant....What can I say that has not already been said by everyone with two brain cells to rub together about the most evil and wicked person on planet Earth, Hillary "Killary" Rodham Clinton that has not already been said? This crypto Jewish freak of nature is now the US Democratic Party candidate to become the next President of the United States, and may God, if there is one, have mercy on the American people if they are actually STUPID ENOUGH to vote for this sick demonic freak! Yes, the so called Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that just ended (thank goodness) last night was a sham and a farce...It was so surprising to witness that other Jew, Bernie Sanders, throw in the towel and throw his support behind the freak Killary considering everyone knew that the US primaries were fixed and Killary was a long time ago selected to be the next President by the Jewish Elitist pigs that run America....Yes, Killary will most definitely be the next US President for the simple fact that the Jew spew media will LIE their asses off for the next few months leading up to the November vote stating that the "election" will be "too close to call" and that will signal the criminals that run the Diebold voting machines to switch over as many votes as possible to give Killary a "narrow" victory over Donald Drumpf.... It is a fact that most Americans are too brain dead now to actually do anything about it, and the fixed and stolen elections for this November will signal the beginning of a new Clinton crime family era in the White House with Killary in control as the new Empress of America... And again may any God (if there actually is one..) have mercy on the failure called the United States of America....I have watched and listened while on vacation as the Jew spew media has done their utmost to try to criminalize everything possible against Donald Drumpf who of course should be able to win the vote this November to be the next US President barring the Diebold voting machine fix.... I do agree with Buelahman's assessment of Drumpf as absolutely not the answer for America by a long shot... Drumpf is of course almost as much controlled by the Jewish elite as Killary with one exception.. Drumpf will not have the US launching World War III as quickly as Killary wants, and Drumpf will possibly actually try talking to the Russian Federation and the Iranians rather than Killary's want for war..... But of course again the fix is in and Drumpf will go down to defeat this November by outright cheating and the American people will once again be too stupid to do anything about it....Yes the two party system in America is a farce and sadly there is no third party candidate with an actual conscience to take America away from the criminal Jewish control and grip... And it does sadden me to watch and listen to the laughable rhetoric between the Democrats and Republicans knowing full well that they are just two sides of the same coin.... The criminal Jews will continue to maintain their control and sadly the only chance for Americans to break their evil grip is outright revolution....OK, I was right about the Nice France false flag attack being a fraud, and more and more the evidence is crystal clear that NOBODY died in that event and it was indeed a set up... I also saw the report while on vacation where the French government had the nerve to demand that all CCTV videos that may have captured what really happened during that "event" be destroyed! Honestly, that should have raised a red flag immediately that the whole thing was a farce due to the fact that the French government itself was in on the charade and wanted to have evidence of the fakery destroyed....Then we have the case of the Mossad agent masquerading as a "reporter" named Richard Gutjahr who was at BOTH the Nice "trucking incident" as well as the more recent Munich "Mcshooting"... Honestly, that was a dead giveaway that BOTH incidents were indeed conceived and run by the Israeli Mossad to try to strike fear in the German and French public so that they would stupidly surrender their rights for the fraud of more "security".... I am also surprised that even the Midgetman from Idaho who runs the Ugly Troll website has picked up on this, considering that troll has blindly and stupidly called most of the other shooting false flag incidents in the past as being real... Honestly, if this fool cannot put two and two together and realize that ALL so called "shootings" and "bombings" and even "truck ramming" that we have seen over the last decade are absolutely false flags and phoney, then the fool is an idiot and should never be in this fight....Yes, the Munich "shooting" was absolutely 100% phoney and a set up... It involved a "hit squad" of at least 3 Mossad agents and of course the Mossad agent Gutjahr there to "film the event" (Yes, the Jews love to film their actions which again shows their sickness...).... But the shocking thing is that the German people are truly that stupid and are willing now to surrender their rights and freedoms for the fraud of "security" much like the French.... Honestly, are the Europeans now as gullible as the Americans and Canadians?Please do not get me started about the most recent "incident" in France where an agent of the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service, or "ISIS" for short went out and "beheaded" a frail 84 year old priest in Normandy... The moment I heard that "ISIS" claimed responsibility for that fiasco, I knew it was another false flag to further stir up anger in the French... And of course thanks to the French Jew spew media whipping up the anger in the French due to this attack, it has worked like a charm with the French government calling for an "all out war" against ISIS..... How gullible indeed are the French?I have been very pleased to see the news in Syria get better and better by the day... Right now the good guys, the Syrian army and their allies, have the US financed mercenaries and killers aka the "rebels" all holed up in Aleppo with no escape routes left.. The good guys are now giving these mass murdering criminals a chance to surrender or else be slaughtered.. And with the reconquering of Aleppo by Assad's forces, the war to free Syria from the US/Israel/NATO criminal cabal will have turned fully in favour of the good guys and any more talk of demanding Assad to leave will have been defeated... Yes, the fall of Aleppo could indeed signal the beginning of the end of the sick Israeli dream of having Syria cut up into small pieces to allow its sick dream of a greater Israel be demolished....When I heard that the US was indeed behind the "coup" attempt in Turkey, I thought to myself "what else is new?"... The criminal US government has for decades now stuck its nose in the affairs of other nations and has been behind dozens of coups in nations worldwide.... Now that the truth has surfaced, it is time for President Erdogan of Turkey to take his nation out of the American/Israeli sphere of influence and turn towards the Russian Federation for an alliance..... It would be also in Turkey's best interests to get the hell out of NATO and demand the US get the hell off their territory immediately... Lets face it, for the failed coup in Turkey has once again shown the criminality of the United States and should be a wake up call for all nations that they are better off by not being a patsy for the American empire....Greencrow, ( www.greencrowasthecrowflies.blogspot.com ) a great fellow Canadian truth seeker put out in this week's "Caw Rant" the astonishing fact that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has indeed "surrendered" to the criminals at Lougheed Martin and is willing to fork over billions of dollars now for the most useless F35 fighter POS (Stands forieceh*t for those who have been wondering...) plane, due to the fact that Lougheed Martin did exactly as I predicted before and "threatened" to pull some 10000 jobs out of Canada if Canada did not accept their POS fighter! Yes, this is indeed BLACKMAIL, and I am so surprised that Trudeau turned his back on the Canadian people and his own ethics (and of course his own election promise..) and agreed to surrender to Lougheed Martin! Honestly, Trudeau should have let the Canadian public know exactly what Lougheed Martin was up to and pulled the F35 contract immediately... Considering the fact that the Canadian government is about to spend upwards of 100 BILLION dollars for the useless F35 "fighter", it would have been better that Canada pull out of the contract and take that 100 BILLION DOLLARS and use it to find work for those 10000 people that would have been out of a job once Lougheed Martin pulled out of Canada... Considering the much better F18 Super Hornet was a better fighter and much cheaper than the F35 POS, that 100 BILLION would have not only been able to give Canada easily several hundred F18's and still have plenty left over to find the best jobs for the people thrown out of work by Lougheed Martin as well! And we could also consider the fact that Boeing, the company behind the F18 Super Hornet would have indeed with a Canadian contract be willing to give jobs to many of the people thrown out of work by Lougheed Martin as well..... Honestly, Justin Trudeau is an idiot for accepting blackmail and I am so surprised that the Jew spew media here in Canada has absolutely NOT reported at all on this fiasco.....I saw last week reports about this being the second anniversary of the MH17 fiasco over Ukraine that the US is still stupidly trying to blame the Russian Federation for their arrogant false flag attack.... And these reports are still calling the MH17 a "mystery" when it is no mystery at all... For those who still do not get it, the fateful flight of MH17 was in fact that final flight of the long "missing" MH370 that was flown out of Malaysia and secretly flown directly to the US military base at Diego Garcia.... From Diego Garcia, the now repainted and relabeled MH370 Boeing 777ER was flown with other military aircraft to the United States where it was decided to have it sent as a flying bomb to destroy the delegation gathered in March 2014 in The Hague Netherlands to discuss the Iranian "crisis" situation... Luckily the Dutch did indeed intercept this flying missile and it was diverted to a base in Europe. It was then decided by the Jewish power elite that the MH370 aircraft would be used as a false flag attack to blame Russia and it was conveniently flown out as MH17 with the long dead bodies from the original MH370 flight taken out of cold storage and reloaded into the aircraft... But everything went awry with the MH17 flight and even after the Ukrainian airforce on cue blew this robotic aircraft out of the sky over Ukraine, every shred of evidence gathered from the wreckage including the already rotting bodies on board showed that it was indeed the last flight of MH370! How anyone cannot see the link between MH370 and MH17 is beyond me..... There is no riddle at all, for MH17 does indeed equal MH370!Well, there you have it... I have indeed tried to cover as much of what I have missed over the last 11 days as possible... And for those issues that I may have not covered in full, I will touch on them here in what I usually call my "last minute tidbits"..... What the hell is the US trying to pull now in the South China Sea? Poking China to try to get a nice little war going over some small islands that they have no business in what so ever, and now I see that even the French are getting involved? Yes, the US is desperately trying to get a war going just to save itself from economic disaster.... I saw a report today that a US spy surveillance aircraft had to make an "emergency landing" in the Russian Federation? Honestly, I do not know what Barry Soetoro is trying to do now, but this "landing" in Russia stinks to high heaven.....The daughter of Mossad agent Richard Gutjahr was ALSO in Munich during that phoney "Mac attack"? How convenient is that? And again is glaring evidence that this attack as well as Nice were indeed conceived and run by the Mossad.......Israel is now wanting to further seize more territory in southern Syria under the lie that they need it for "security"? Bad enough they have illegally seized the Golan Heights, but it is so obvious now that since Assad is winning his war to gain his country back, Israel will now try to create their "Greater Israel" by other methods......Not sure about the "attack" in Japan, but that looks and stinks like a set up like all the other false flag attacks. And yes these false flag events will continue until either the people stupidly surrender their guns and their freedoms or they wake the hell up!..... Let me get this straight: A busker and activist living in Jasper Alberta, Monika Shaefer, is being attacked by the Jewish pricks that control Canada for questioning their so called "Holocaust"? I have many questions for these pricks including their numbers of deaths and their claims of "gassings" during that so called "Holocaust", but that could take up most of this rant, and I have not the time for their arrogance and stupidity. Honestly, anyone with any logic can see the flaws in the "Holocaust" religion, but as usual Canadians are muzzled from questioning and even research thanks to the draconian and fraudulent "hate crimes" here. Yes, truth never needs laws to support itself, only lies do........For those that want to know, Banff and Lake Louise are not cheap and most activities were absolutely ridiculously expensive. Yes, I did go up the Sulfur Mountain Gondola ride in Banff, but that was $44 Canadian per person for the round trip ride to the top of the mountain! A rip off by all accounts, but considering how many people in Banff were willing to fork over their money so willingly for the experience, I do wonder...... Someone asked if I saw any wild animals at all in Banff National Park, and honestly I saw NONE. But again that makes sense when you consider that most wild animals will stay clear of any humans (they can smell us for miles...), and there were thousands of tourists everywhere I went in that park.....I see the criminal Rothschild empire private army called "NATO"'s build up in eastern Europe is still going on at a rapid pace. It still shocks me that people are gullibly believing their government's and of course the Jew spew media's outright lies that the Russian Federation is somehow a "threat" and could "invade Poland" in an instant without actually looking at the facts. The facts are simple in that Russia is not threatening anyone and the real pricks here are NATO themselves that are wanting this war with Russia for their Jewish masters to avoid economic disaster and the people turning on them. It is my hope that people do wake up in time and stop this madness before World War III and the end of the world that we know it becomes a reality........ NO need here to put up anything about the Kardashians in this rant for Killary the Kackling, Killer, Kommie Kanckled, Krazy, Kooky, Kike, Kunt, Klinton, has done enough this week to make everyone with any intelligence sick to their stomachs. The hard part to swallow is that there are still some 10% of the American people still gullible enough to actually vote for this satanic demonic creature?It is good to be back....... Too bad the world is as fucked up as ever.....More to comeNTSUnreal Engine 4 launches today. What we’re releasing is both simple and radical: everything.
Epic’s goal is to put the engine within reach of everyone interested in building games and 3D content, from indies to large triple-A development teams, and Minecraft creators as well. For $19/month you can have access to everything, including the Unreal Editor in ready-to-run form, and the engine’s complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub for collaborative development.
This is the complete technology we at Epic use when building our own games, forged by years of experience shipping games like Gears of War for Xbox and Infinity Blade for iOS, and now reinvented for a new generation. Having the full C++ source provides the ultimate flexibility and puts developers in control of their schedules and destinies: Whatever you require to build and ship your game, you can find it in UE4, source it in the GitHub community, or build it yourself – and then share it with others.
Develop in the Unreal Ecosystem
Beyond the tools and source, Unreal Engine 4 provides an entire ecosystem. Chat in the forums, add to the wiki, participate in the AnswerHub Q&A, and join collaborative development projects via GitHub.
To help you get started, we’re shipping lots of ready-made content, samples, and game templates. You’ll find it in the Marketplace in the Unreal Editor. Right now, it simply hosts free stuff from Epic, but its resemblance to the App Store is no coincidence: It will grow into a complete ecosystem for sharing community-created content, paid and free, and open for everyone’s participation!
Ship Games with Unreal
We’re working to build a company that succeeds when UE4 developers succeed. Anyone can ship a commercial product with UE4 by paying 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users. If your game makes $1,000,000, then we make $50,000. We realize that’s a lot to ask, and that it would be a crazy proposition unless UE4 enables you to build way better games way more productively than otherwise!
So, will this effort succeed? That’s up to you and your judgment of the engine’s value. Unreal Engine 4 has been built by a team of over 100 engineers, artists and designers around the world, and this launch represents all of our hopes and dreams of how major software can be developed and distributed in the future.
We find this future very exciting. It’s no longer dominated by giant publishers and marketing campaigns, but by a simple and honest proposition: Gamers pay for great games, and anybody who can valuably contribute to building those games can succeed, from indie developers, to large triple-A teams, and to individual programmers and content creators, too.
A New Beginning
This first release of Unreal Engine 4 is just the beginning. In the C++ code, you can see many new initiatives underway, for example to support Oculus VR, Linux, Valve’s Steamworks and Steam Box efforts, and deployment of games to web browsers via HTML5. It’s all right there, in plain view, on day one of many years of exciting and open development ahead!
We have enjoyed building Unreal Engine 4 so far and hope you will join us on this journey as a contributor to the future of Unreal!
Tim Sweeney
Founder, Epic GamesImage copyright DHA Image caption Those affected were treated at the scene but could not be saved
Three children and two adults who tried to rescue them have been electrocuted in a water park in north-western Turkey, local media say.
The incident happened in the town of Akyazi, in Sakarya province, 100km (62 miles) east of Istanbul.
The park manager and his son dived in to help the three children. The five, believed to be all Turkish, were taken to hospital but could not be saved.
It was unclear how the pool had become electrified.
Rescuers and park personnel flushed the pool's water away as others turned off electricity in the facility.
One other person was injured in the incident and taken to hospital.
An investigation has already begun.
The Hurriyet newspaper named the park manager as Mehmet Kaya, 58, and his son as Kadir Kaya, 30.
The children were aged 12, 15 and 17, Turkish media said.Jeremy Taylor & Friends // Reggae Interpretation of Kind of Blue (Recorded in 1981. Released in 2009)
Jeremy Taylor, a music professor at NYU and jazz musician himself had this to say in his 1979 book, “A Space Between:”
My first trip to Jamaica (May 1977) was the most eye-opening musical experience of my life. I met so many incredible players who had been brushed off by the snobby musical establishment…..I had to find a way to showcase their unparalleled talent in a different medium and this was the spark that lit the fire to create this reggae tribute to Miles Davis’ best selling jazz album of all time.
Now, I normally regard albums like this as throw-away camp but in this case it’s truly a great album and it really showcases the talent these Jamaican musicians had and still have.
So, for those Jazz fans completely unfamiliar to Reggae this is a perfect place to start.
*Note: The heavy vinyl crackle passes after about 30 seconds
Beat Under Control // The Introduction // 2003
Less a Dub album than an album that explores Dub themes mixing all kinds of other genres including, at times, Drum N’ Bass. The horns are always spectacular and very chilled out like Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way with a touch of Bitches Brew at wilder moments, over a Trip Hop beat and Dub bass lines. The 14 minute Speechless even has some Krautrock sounds sneaking in. Quite a nice trip that would suit a dimly lit party where smoke hangs in the air like honey would drip from a spoon. Beer is out of the question, this music calls for something like an Old Fashioned, a dry martini or red wine from Spain.
The 14 minute Speechless, which does a great job at showcasing all the low grumbles, ambient horns and beaty goodness the album offers.
http://rd.io/i/QVWLmDcBFm0
Dub Guerilla // Dub Guerilla // 2005
I wish I could enjoy Dub Guerilla, a band that literally combines Dub with Jazz, a little more. The band features 3 trombonists playing over Dub rhythms. To my ears and soul only a few tracks are good on this album. Which, in many ways, is a testament to their love of Dub as there are a plethora of Dub albums out there (even by the greats) that only have a few key tracks on an album worth mentioning while the others, be it good, not great. That said, due to the content and purpose of this list, here is a fantastic track from their well received self titled album
Tomorrow we’ll take a look at some of the legends of Dub.Stating that Pakistan is not an architect of present crisis in Kashmir, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today said India was unwilling to own people of Kashmir inspite of stating that Kashmir is integral part of India.
"When you say Kashmir is an integral part of India, you are talking about the land, not the people. You need to own the people with the land. It is not good enough to say Kashmir is part of India, what about Kashmiris then. Please own the people, not just the land. If you are unwilling to address the anger, then you are unwilling to own the people," Abdullah said while addressing reporters after chairing meeting of all opposition parties. The opposition parties are going to present a memorandum to the President to urge the Centre to take steps to address present crisis in the Valley.
"DIALOGUE IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD"
Omar Abdullah strongly pitched that a dialogue is the only way forward.
"We are supporters of a dialogue, whether it be National Conference, Congress, CPI(M) or any other smaller group. We believe dialogue is the only way forward. Both India and Pakistan should take requisite steps to improve the environment so that a dialogue is possible," said Omar. He said separatist and mainstream parties in Kashmir remain relevant whether Kashmir was undergoing peace or crisis.
Citing example of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's response to agitation in Gujarat early this year, Abdullah said, "It is mind-boggling that far lesser agitation in Gujarat had no lesser the person in India than the prime minister addressing that state in Gujarati from Delhi because he owned the people, he owned the state. Why is it that we don't get owned, why is that our anger doesn't get owned, why is it that our sentiment doesn't get owned, why is it that we get the feeling that you have to be forced to recognize the problem."
OMAR APPEALS TO THE CENTRE
"We are appealing to the Centre that it should recognise that there is problem. Please recognise that there is anger and this anger is not created by Pakistan. Yes, they may, as is past practice of fishing in troubled waters but they are not the architects of this problem and they are not the ones to keep it alive. It is our inability to recognise anger in Kashmir and inability to address this anger. We need to first recognise it and accept it and then we can hope this anger dies down," Abdullah said.
Abdullah while comparing present protests in the Valley with uprising of 2010 when he was Chief Minister of the State, said that New Delhi's refusal to recognise the problem is complicated. "If the Valley erupted in 2008 against the economic blockade of Kashmir, it was addressed by opening of Srinagar-Muzafferabad trade route," he said. "Today both the Centre and State are turning a blind eye to the situation. If you don't recognise the anger, if you don't seek to address the root cause of the anger, how will the anger die away," Abdullah asked.
"Kashmir crisis was only taken into note as the Parliament was in session. Twice the opposition brought this issue for discussion in the Rajya Sabha and once in the Lok Sabha," said Abdullah.
He said unlike 2010 when the PDP actively lobbied for dismissal of his government, he has not sought dismissal of Mehbooba Mufti government. "This is not battle for chairs. This is not about pulling Mehbooba Mufti down so that one of us can get on that chair. This is about safeguarding future generation of Jammu and Kashmir," he said.
Also read:
India will talk to Pakistan only on cross-border terrorism, not Kashmir
India ready for talks with Pakistan but only on'relevant issues', says MEAAvery Island, the birthplace of Tabasco Brand Products including TABASCO® pepper sauce, has been owned for over 180 years by the interrelated Marsh, Avery and McIlhenny families. Lush subtropical flora and venerable live oaks draped with wild muscadine and swags of barbe espagnole, or Spanish moss, cover this geological oddity, which is one of five "islands" rising above south Louisiana’s flat coastal marshes.
The 2,200-acre tract sits atop a deposit of solid rock salt thought to be deeper than Mount Everest is high. Geologists believe this deposit is the remnant of a buried ancient seabed, pushed to the surface by the sheer weight of surrounding alluvial sediments. Although covered with a layer of fertile soil, salt springs may have attracted prehistoric settlers to the island as early as 12,000 years ago. Fossils suggest that early inhabitants shared the land with mastodons and mammoths, giant sloths, saber-toothed tigers and three-toed horses.
A salt production industry dates back to about 1000 AD, judging from recovered basket fragments, polished stone implements, and shards of pottery left by American Indians. Although these early dwellers remained on the Island at least as late as the 1600s, they had mysteriously disappeared by the time white settlers first discovered the briny springs at the end of the next century. After the Civil War, former New Orleans banker E. McIlhenny met a traveler recently arrived from Mexico who gave McIlhenny a handful of pepper pods, advising him to season his meals with them. McIlhenny saved some of the pods and planted them in his in-laws’ garden on Avery Island; he delighted in the peppers’ piquant flavor, which added excitement to the monotonous food of the Reconstruction-era South.
Around 1866 McIlhenny experimented with making a hot sauce from these peppers, hitting upon a formula that called for crushing the reddest, ripest peppers, stirring in Avery Island salt, and aging the concoction he then added French white wine vinegar, hand-stirring it regularly to blend the flavors. After straining, he transferred the sauce to small cologne-type bottles, which he corked and sealed in green wax.
"That Famous Sauce Mr. McIlhenny Makes" proved so popular with family and friends that McIlhenny decided to market it, growing his first commercial crop in 1868. The next year he sent out 658 bottles of sauce at one dollar per bottle wholesale to grocers around the Gulf Coast, particularly in New Orleans. The public responded positively and soon McIlhenny had introduced Tabasco sauce to consumers in major markets across the United States. By the end of the 1870s McIlhenny was exporting Tabasco sauce to Europe. So began the fiery condiment that is now a global cultural and culinary icon.
Today, Avery Island remains the home of the Tabasco Factory, as well as Jungle Gardens and its Bird City waterfowl refuge. The Tabasco factory and the gardens are open to the public. For more information, visit the Tabasco website.Patna: A violent clash broke out between the police and the locals in Vaishali district of Bihar when the police was in the middle of demolishing a temple yesterday in which several cops were injured.
Sub-Inspector of Police Sanjay Kumar’s rifle was snatched and he was severely beaten. The injured are being treated in a hospital here. The police had gone to demolish a temple following the court’s order.
Earlier also, the police had gone with the district magistrate to demolish the temple, but failed to do so due to the locals’ anger against the administration. The locals included both Hindus and Muslims who unitedly objected to demolition of the temple.
The High Court had ordered to demolish the Vasudev temple. The locals raised slogans against the administration and claimed that the real situation was not being revealed to the court. According to them, it is a private land but the administration is claiming it to be government’s property.So I watched Z for Zachariah…
I was quite eager to see this movie. The post-apocalyptic theme is one that isn’t exactly original in today’s day and age but the idea of it being told with characters that aren’t teenagers immune from some unknown virus is (yes, I’m looking at you Maze Runner and Divergent). The cast also comprised of some of my favourite actors in Hollywood so I couldn’t resist.
Okay, basic plot: After a nuclear apocalypse wipes out the majority of civilisation, Ann (Margot Robbie) leads a solitary lifestyle out in a valley which was unaffected by the radiation from the nuclear fallout. Ann begins to think that she may be the last remaining survivor on Earth until one day she meets John Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) – an engineer who had been camped out in a nuclear bunker. The two find comfort in each other with Ann providing John a home and food, and John using his skills to improve life in the valley. Their new found peace is disrupted when another survivor – Caleb (Chris Pine) – turns up. John is distrusting of Caleb and fears his intentions may be sinister, especially those aimed at Ann’s heart.
There’s no shortage of post-apocalyptic films out there at the moment but very few of them are as focused on the humanity of the survivors as this one. This film reminded me a lot of Ex_Machina – both films are a thought experiment about the nature of humanity and what definition it takes in the most extreme of consequences. This film doesn’t focus on the conditions but rather on how the characters in the film react to these conditions and what each of them is willing to do in order to survive. I enjoyed this because it depicts the world such an environment |
several others on this page. I've also added more detail and color to some objects.
Not shown due to size Title [[#{{{title}}}|{{{title}}}]] Author Herrbdog Dated 2007-10-30 Tile Size 20×32 Resolution 1600×800 Comments Hi res won't slow the game as it doesn't use graphics, so if your monitor can display it, go for it, really...
I strongly recommend to enable blackspace in the init: [BLACK_SPACE:YES]
Made from the 24pts cleartype lucida console above (from winterwing). I added some stuff (some original, some ideas taken from others tilesets). Basically I try to avoid symbols that are often seen in menus, etc. The main "problem" is the bag, because its the male symbol, but it was too good looking to not put it ;) Hope you enjoy :)
...
TerminusAliased text
Terminus24 text
Not shown due to size Title [[#{{{title}}}|{{{title}}}]] Author Shaja Dated 2008-3-27 Tile Size 20×32 Resolution 1600×800 Comments Alphanumerics based on Dimitar Zhekov's Terminus font with light antialias shading added, walls and some symbols redrawn, others carried over from Thom's 20x32 tileset.
Not shown due to size Title [[#{{{title}}}|{{{title}}}]] Author Shaja Dated 2008-5-19 Tile Size 24×32 Resolution 1920×800 Comments Revised version of my earlier Terminus 20x32 character set for 1920x800 display.
Title [[#{{{title}}}|{{{title}}}]] Author IBM, I think Dated 2017-02-28 Tile Size 24×36 Resolution 1920×900 (80×25 grid size); 1920×1080 (80×30 grid size) Comments Original curses_640x300.png enlarged to 300%. Good for FullHD displays.Prime Minister Julia Gillard meets with Boao Forum Secretary General Zhou Wenzhong Picture: Luke Marsden
JULIA Gillard has accused North Korea of trying to exacerbate tensions in the region over its warning to nations with embassies in the rogue state to consider evacuating its diplomats.
The Prime Minister, speaking in Boao, China, said it was a continuation by North Korea of conduct that was unacceptable.
"I see that as another statement which is about trying to exacerbate tensions in the region, '' Ms Gillard said.
Read Next
"What we have seen is a continuing set of provocative statements from North Korea designed to cause tension, cause concern in the region...
"This conduct is unacceptable and we condemn it and we condemn it absolutely.''
Australia does not have an embassy in North Korea.
Ms Gillard will raise the North Korean situation with the new Chinese President Xi Jinping when she meets him tomorrow.
China has supported United Nations Security Council resolutions against North Korea over its latest defiance of the international community.[Download link is in the top-right corner of this page!]
This mod gives Alex his look from the SFIII series. The mod includes an alternate costume replacing the Story outfit, giving Alex his winter jacket from the SFIII cutscenes art.-----Model and textures : Pior ObersonRiging and cloth : Chay Johanssonwww.pioroberson.compiortumble.tumblr.compfunkk.deviantart.com/ <<< SFV and USFIV modsyoutube.com/user/chayboScreenshots gallery :-----Mod provided as is, use at your own risk. It could break the game after an update or be considered a cheat as files are edited. That said, have fun! And let me know if you spot any issue with it. Mod Manager and.pak versions are included.This mod is best used in combination with the character portraits fix :(Depending on the way you want Alex to show in the hud you might need to rename the.pak files so that they load in the desired order. For classic Alex to show up in the UI while running the character portrait fix mod, SFIII_Alex.pak needs to be renamed so that it loads first.)-----[2016.04.13] 1.0 - Initial release. Pak distribution is a bit of a new thing, so don't hesitate to let me know if there are any issues with it. If it causes any problem use the Mod Manager version instead. Both are included in the download.[2016.04.13] 1.1 - Ooops! Missing hair physics added for costume2.[2016.04.13] 1.1b - Minor edit in the Mod Manager description file (not worthy of a re-download if you already have 1.1).-----But Steve Bruce is unhappy at the sale of the winger
Ince is the sixth player to join Derby this summer following Darren Bent, Alex Pearce, Scott Carson, Chris Baird and Andreas Weimann
Derby and Hull have agreed an undisclosed fee, though it is thought to be in the region of £4.75million
Steve Bruce has been left incensed after the sale of Tom Ince to Derby, claiming he would never had allowed the winger to leave given the choice.
Ince sealed a move to Paul Clements' Rams on Friday afternoon for a fee in the region of £4.75million.
The 23-year-old signed a four-year deal at the iPro in a significant switch given Hull's relegation to the Championship. They should be direct rivals for promotion to the top flight this season.
Tom Ince shakes hands with Derby County head coach Paul Clement on signing for the club permanently
Ince spent a successful loan spell at Derby last season and proved to be a major hit with the fans
Steve Bruce has been left livid after Hull City allowed Ince to depart the KC Stadium
And the prospect of facing Ince, who scored 11 goals in 18 games for Derby last year, has left Bruce livid.
'I certainly wouldn't have sold Tom and I did all I could to keep him,' Bruce told the Mirror.
'We shouldn't be selling our top young players when trying to put together a team to challenge for an immediate return to the Premier League.'
Ince managed just three starts for Hull in his only season at the KC Stadium, but has always impressed when in the second tier.
Bruce also inferred the player was allowed to leave without his consent.
'I saw Tom as an integral part of my plans. But Derby met the buy-out clause and then it was the choice of others to let him leave.'
Ince shields the ball from the oncoming challenge of Middlesbrough midfielder Adam Clayton (right)202 SHARES Share Tweet Whatsapp
Get the latest viral stories daily! Like us:
A couple days ago, a video capturing a rickshaw spinning by itself in a wet market in China went viral on social media.
In just two days, the video got over 2 million views and tens of thousands of shares on Facebook.
In the video, the vehicle looked like it was being spun aggressively by a mysterious force, which gathered quite a large crowd, onlooking the fascinating incident.
Although the rickshaw can be seen hitting the side of the stalls, there’s no stopping the force that’s driving this vehicle wild!
Netizens were baffled at the footage, exclaiming, “it seems like no one is inside? how is this possible?????”
However, many viewers commented on the strange occurrence, claiming it was ghosts.
“The dog is barking. So there is a ghost” wrote one user.
“Ghost rider.” said another.
Some even took to joke on the matter, commenting:
“Looks like a GTA glitch”
“This seems normal for the Julu lu wet market.” implying the crowd’s casualness.
Watch the video here:
One possible explanation for it is that the rickshaw has a motor attached behind of it and it is experiencing motor failure.
However, some rebutted that it’s a manual rickshaw with a bicycle infront so how is there a motor?
Personally? I don’t see the motor. What do you guys think? Is Halloween arriving early this year?Abstract
Consumption of resistant starch (RS) has been associated with various intestinal health benefits, but knowledge of its effects on global gene expression in the colon is limited. The main objective of the current study was to identify genes affected by RS in the proximal colon to infer which biologic pathways were modulated. Ten 17-wk-old male pigs, fitted with a cannula in the proximal colon for repeated collection of tissue biopsy samples and luminal content, were fed a digestible starch (DS) diet or a diet high in RS (34%) for 2 consecutive periods of 14 d in a crossover design. Analysis of the colonic transcriptome profiles revealed that, upon RS feeding, oxidative metabolic pathways, such as the tricarboxylic acid cycle and β-oxidation, were induced, whereas many immune response pathways, including adaptive and innate immune system, as well as cell division were suppressed. The nuclear receptor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ was identified as a potential key upstream regulator. RS significantly (P < 0.05) increased the relative abundance of several butyrate-producing microbial groups, including the butyrate producers Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Megasphaera elsdenii, and reduced the abundance of potentially pathogenic members of the genus Leptospira and the phylum Proteobacteria. Concentrations in carotid plasma of the 3 main short-chain fatty acids acetate, propionate, and butyrate were significantly higher with RS consumption compared with DS consumption. Overall, this study provides novel insights on effects of RS in proximal colon and contributes to our understanding of a healthy diet.
Introduction
Dietary resistant starch (RS)10 is a complex polysaccharide that resists digestion and absorption in the small intestine. Resistant starches occur for a variety of reasons, including milling, thermal processing, and chemical modifications such as cross-bonding and acylation (1). The effects and potential health benefits of RS have been extensively studied (2–5). Beneficial effects have been reported for the large intestine, i.e., cecum and colon, where RS is highly fermentable by microbiota, resulting in, among others, the well-known formation of SCFAs but also of a variety of phytochemical metabolites that have only been partially characterized (6). Compared with other polysaccharides, RS preferentially favors the production of butyrate in humans (5, 7, 8).
With regard to pigs, several studies showed that RS increases cecal, colonic, and fecal concentrations of total SCFAs and the main individual SCFAs acetate, propionate, and butyrate, concomitant with changes in microbiota composition (9–13). Concentrations of SCFAs gradually decrease along the colon in pigs fed RS, with the lowest concentrations present in the distal part (10, 13), and these regional differences have been linked to the pathogenesis of colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease (2, 5, 10). Studies in rodents corroborated the findings that RS may play a role in the prevention of colorectal cancer (14, 15) and inflammatory bowel disease (16, 17).
Genome-wide transcriptional profiling, or transcriptomics, is extensively used to study how cells respond to certain stimuli or to diagnose and predict clinical outcomes (18, 19). Similarly, there is a major interest in characterizing the genes and networks that are regulated by food components, because this contributes to our understanding of a healthy diet (20, 21). Remarkably, data on the genome-wide effects of RS in the intestinal tract are scarce. It has only been recently reported that differential gene expression due to consumption of type 2 RS for 4 wk suggested improvement of structure and function of the gastrointestinal tract in rats compared with a cornstarch diet with the same energy density (22). In addition, the effect of colonic butyrate administration on gene expression profile in distal colonic mucosa has been investigated and showed that butyrate affects fatty acid metabolism, electron transport, oxidative stress, and apoptosis pathways in healthy humans (23).
We previously showed in pigs that 2-wk consumption of a diet high in RS changed cecal and colonic microbiota composition, increased cecal and colonic SCFA concentrations, and modified the mucosal gene expression of SLC16A1 (monocarboxylate transporter) and GCG [in intestine precursor for glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 and GLP-2] in cecum (13). However, genome-wide transcriptional profiling was not performed in that study. Thus, extending these findings, the aim of the current study was to identify genes and corresponding biologic pathways that are modified by RS in the mucosa of the proximal colon (pCO), together with alterations in the luminal microbiome. To this end, a crossover study was performed in pigs that were fitted with a permanent cannula in the pCO for repeated collection of luminal content and tissue biopsy samples. The colonic gene expression profile and luminal microbiota composition were obtained by microarray techniques. Pigs were used as a model for humans, because the anatomy and physiology of the gastrointestinal tract of pigs and the pig genome bear many similarities with those in humans (24, 25).
Materials and Methods
Experimental design, pigs, and housing.
Ten male Landrace barrows (17 wk of age; initial body weight: 57.9 ± 1.61 kg) from 8 litters were fitted with cannulas and catheters and assigned to 2 dietary treatments in a crossover design. Each treatment lasted for 14 d and differed with regard to the type of starch in the diet: digestible starch (DS) or RS. Pigs were individually housed in 2-m2 metabolism pens equipped with a feeder. Artificial lights were on from 0500 until 1900 and dimmed during the dark period. All experimental protocols describing the management, surgical procedures, and animal care were reviewed and approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Wageningen University and Research Centre (Lelystad, The Netherlands).
Diets and feeding.
The 2 experimental diets used were identical except for type of starch. The main source of starch in the DS diet was pregelatinized potato starch (Paselli WA4; AVEBE), which was replaced on a dry matter basis in the RS diet by retrograded tapioca starch (Actistar; Cargill). According to the supplier, this starch was ≥50% resistant to digestion in the small intestine (Megazyme RS assay, certificate of analysis Actistar; Cargill). On the basis of physical and chemical characteristics, the RS used in this study can be classified as RS type 3 (3). The composition of the experimental diets is presented in Supplemental Table 1. Diets were fed twice a day at 0700 and 1600 as a mash and mixed with water (water:feed = 2.5:1) in the feeders immediately before feeding. The diets were isoenergetic on a gross energy basis. The daily feed allowance was adjusted to 2.8 times the energy required for maintenance [Net Energy for Maintenance = 450 kJ/(kg0.75 ·d)] and was based on metabolic body weight (kg0.75). Pigs were weighed every week to allow the adjustment of their feeding level in accordance with metabolic body weight. All pigs had free access to water throughout the study. During the 1-wk adaptation period before surgery, pigs were fed a 50:50 mix of the DS and RS diet and were adapted to the feeding pattern and individual housing.
Surgery.
In the second week after arrival, pigs underwent surgery for the placement of a cannula in the pCO and a catheter in the carotid artery. The pCO was chosen as site of investigation because of the greater fermentation and higher SCFA concentrations compared with more distal colonic regions (10, 13). Pigs were surgically fitted with a simple T-cannula in the pCO 1.45 ± 0.16 m distal from the ileocecal sphincter, as was confirmed at section. The cannula was inserted in the intestinal lumen, exteriorized through a hole, fastened to the exterior part, and closed with a stopper (26). In addition, pigs were fitted with a permanent blood vessel catheter (Tygon; Norton), as described previously (27). The catheter for blood sampling was placed in the carotid artery, fixed firmly at the site of insertion, tunneled subcutaneously to the back of the pig, and exteriorized between the shoulder blades. See Supplemental Methods for more details.
Colon biopsies.
Biopsy samples from the intestinal wall were collected 300 min after the morning meal on day 14 of each dietary treatment. See Supplemental Methods for experimental details.
Digesta collection.
Digesta were collected via the gut cannula on day 14 of each dietary treatment, both 30 min before and 300 min after feeding. Samples were collected and stored for determination of microbiota composition, SCFA concentration, and dry matter content as described in the Supplemental Methods. SCFA concentrations and dry matter content were determined in the luminal content as described before (13).
Blood collection.
Blood was drawn from the carotid artery on day 14 of each dietary treatment, 300 min after feeding. Blood was collected in 6-mL Vacutainer EDTA tubes (Becton Dickinson) supplemented with protease (Complete, EDTA-free; Roche) and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (Millipore) inhibitors and then placed in ice water. Tubes were centrifuged for 10 min at 1300 g at 4°C within 20 min after blood collection. Plasma was separated into aliquots and stored at −80°C.
RNA isolation and quality control.
Total RNA was isolated from biopsies by using TRIzol reagent (Life Technologies) according to the manufacturer's instructions, followed by RNA Cleanup using the RNeasy Micro kit (Qiagen). Concentrations, purity, and quality of the RNA samples were determined as described in the Supplemental Methods.
Microarray hybridization and analysis.
The pCO biopsies of all 10 pigs, collected on day 14 of both dietary treatments, were subjected to genome-wide expression profiling. To this end, total RNA (100 ng) was used for whole transcript cDNA synthesis by using the Ambion WT expression kit (Life Technologies) and subsequently labeled by using the Affymetrix GeneChip WT Terminal Labeling Kit. Samples were hybridized on Porcine Gene 1.0 ST arrays (Affymetrix), washed, stained, and scanned on an Affymetrix GeneChip 3000 7G scanner. Detailed protocols for array handling can be found in the GeneChip WT Terminal Labeling and Hybridization User Manual (P/N 702808, Rev. 4; Affymetrix). Packages from the Bioconductor project (28), integrated in an online pipeline (29), were used to analyze the array data. Various advanced-quality metrics, diagnostic plots, pseudoimages, and classification methods were used to determine the quality of the arrays before statistical analysis (30). Array data have been submitted to the Gene Expression Omnibus under accession number GSE45554.
The ~600,000 probes on the Porcine Gene 1.0 ST array were redefined using current genome information (31). In this study, probes were reorganized on the basis of the gene definitions as available in the NCBI Sus scrofa Entrez Gene database, build 4.1 (Sscrofa10.2 genome assembly) (32) as well as the gene predictions made by the AUGUSTUS software (33). Because the annotation of the pig genome is still poor, the functional annotation was improved by mapping the AUGUSTUS gene predictions to the human RefSeq database (34). Of 17,118 pig gene predictions, 14,505 were found to have a human orthologous gene. Unless otherwise stated, the functional interpretation of the transcriptome data was performed by using the human orthologs.
Normalized gene expression estimates were obtained from the raw intensity values by using the robust multiarray analysis preprocessing algorithm available in the library “AffyPLM” using default settings (35). Differentially expressed probe sets (genes) were identified by using linear models, applying moderated t-statistics that implemented empirical Bayes regularization of SEs (library “limma”) (36). To adjust for both the degree of independence of variances relative to the degree of identity and the relation between variance and signal intensity, the moderated t-statistic was extended by a Bayesian hierarchical model to define an intensity-based moderated t-statistic (37). Probe sets that satisfied the criterion of P < 0.01 were considered to be significantly regulated.
Changes in gene expression were related to functional changes using gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) (38). GSEA takes into account the broader context in which gene products function, namely in physically interacting networks such as biochemical, metabolic, or signal transduction routes, and has the advantage that it is unbiased, because no gene selection step is used. The Enrichment Map plugin for Cytoscape was used for visualization and interpretation of the GSEA results (39). See Supplemental Methods for details.
Upstream Regulator Analysis in IPA (content version 14400082 released 1 November 2012; Ingenuity Systems) was used to identify the cascade of potential upstream transcriptional regulators that may explain the observed gene expression changes in the data set, and whether they are likely activated or inhibited.
Microbiota analysis.
Microbiota composition was determined in the luminal content collected from the pCO via the cannula 300 min after feeding on day 14 of each dietary treatment, essentially as described previously (13). Due to technical issues, samples from only 9 of the 10 pigs could be analyzed. Samples were analyzed on the second-generation Pig Intestinal Tract Chip (PITChip), an updated version of the original phylogenetic microarray (13, 40), which is composed of >3200 tiled oligonucleotides targeting the 16S rRNA gene sequences of 781 porcine intestinal microbial phylotypes. PITChip images were processed by using Agilent's Feature Extraction Software version 9.5 and further processed in R (library “microbiome”) (41).
To determine the relative abundance of bacterial groups, the probe-level information was summarized on the basis of nonnegative matrix factorization, which removes cross-hybridization effects based on oligo-phylotype mappings. With the nonnegative matrix factorization output, the relative abundance of bacterial groups defined at the approximate genus level (90% 16S ribosomal RNA similarity threshold) was calculated and used for further univariate testing. Univariate testing of differences for individual microbial groups was performed by using the paired Mann-Whitney U signed-rank test. P values were corrected for multiple testing by using a false-discovery rate method (42). Groups that satisfied the criterion of P < 0.05 were considered to be significantly affected. Multivariate analysis was applied for PITChip data interpretation as described in the Supplemental Methods.
SCFA determination by NMR spectroscopy.
SCFA concentrations were determined in plasma samples obtained from the carotid artery 300 min after feeding on day 14 of each dietary treatment as described in the Supplemental Methods.
Standard statistical methods.
SCFA concentrations measured in digesta were analyzed by using a mixed model in SAS (version 9.1; SAS Institute). For samples derived from the pCO cannula, time and individual pigs were included as repeated measurements. The model included period, diet, time, and interaction of diet and time as fixed effects and pig as a random effect. SCFA concentrations measured in plasma were analyzed by using a paired samples t test in IBM SPSS Statistics 19. Differences were considered significant if P < 0.05. Results were expressed as means ± SEMs.
Results
Anthropometric variables.
All pigs remained healthy during the experiment and showed normal growth and appetite. Mean body weight at the start of the experiment was 57.9 ± 1.6 kg and increased by 21.8 ± 1.1 kg during the study period. No significant effect of treatment order was found with respect to body weight development (data not shown). The mean lengths of the small intestine and colon, determined at section, were similar for both treatment groups (16.1 ± 0.62 and 3.96 ± 0.18 m, respectively).
Differentially expressed genes in colon.
Microarray analysis was performed to identify genes that were differentially expressed in pCO by RS compared with DS. When remapping the probes to the Sscrofa10.2 genome assembly, the expression of 748 genes was found to be significantly changed by RS (P < 0.01). Of these genes, 459 were induced and 289 genes were suppressed by RS (Supplemental Table 2). Among the changed genes were SLC16A1 and SLC5A8, both being involved in SCFA transport. RS treatment resulted in a 1.5-fold induction of SLC16A1 expression, as we observed previously (13), whereas SLC5A8 expression was reduced by 1.4-fold. The most induced gene was intestinal-type alkaline phosphatase-like (LOC100521756), showing a 2.9-fold increase with the RS treatment, whereas the most suppressed gene was chitinase 3-like 1 (CHI3L1), with a 3.7-fold decrease (Supplemental Fig. 1).
Functional implications of differential gene expression.
To gain better insight into the underlying biologic phenomena affected by RS, pig genes were mapped to human orthologs and GSEA was performed. Results of GSEA were summarized in an enrichment map to enhance the functional interpretation of enriched gene sets. By using conservative significance thresholds, an enrichment map was generated that consisted of 329 nodes (gene sets), of which 57 were positively and 272 were negatively enriched (Fig. 1). These numbers demonstrated that the majority of the tested gene sets were suppressed with RS feeding. To enhance the interpretation of the results, functionally related modified gene sets were then manually summarized in more general categories (Fig. 1); a high-resolution color map that includes names of all gene sets is shown in Supplemental Fig. 2. Induced gene sets described clusters related to lipid and fatty acid metabolism, tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, biologic oxidation, olfactory system, and cell-cell contact. Moreover, sets containing target genes of the transcription factors peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPARA) and nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (NRF2) were enriched with RS feeding. The suppressed gene sets were similarly interpreted (Fig. 1, Supplemental Fig. 2). The enrichment map revealed a very large cluster of 154 overlapping gene sets that contained descriptors of many, if not all, aspects of the immune response, including activation of innate and adaptive immune response and proliferation of immune cells. The second largest cluster described processes related to DNA replication, DNA assembly, histone acetylation, and mitosis. Other processes that were suppressed related to nuclear export of RNA, noncoding and messenger RNA processing, posttranslational protein modification, and endoplasmic reticulum stress/unfolded protein response (UPR).
FIGURE 1 View largeDownload slide Enrichment map for effects of RS on colonic gene expression. The map shows the enriched gene sets in proximal colon after 2-wk consumption of the RS diet compared with 2-wk consumption of the DS diet. Nodes represent functional gene sets, and edges between nodes represent their similarity. Black circles indicate enrichment after RS consumption (i.e., induction after RS feeding), whereas white circles represent enrichment after DS consumption (i.e., reduction after RS feeding). Node size represents the gene set size, and edge thickness represents the degree of overlap between 2 connected gene sets. Clusters are manually grouped and labeled to highlight the prevalent biologic functions among related gene sets. See Supplemental Fig. 2 for a high-resolution color version of the map that includes the names of the gene sets. DS, digestible starch; ER, endoplasmic reticulum; RS, resistant starch; TCA, tricarboxylic acid; UPR, unfolded protein response.
FIGURE 1 View largeDownload slide Enrichment map for effects of RS on colonic gene expression. The map shows the enriched gene sets in proximal colon after 2-wk consumption of the RS diet compared with 2-wk consumption of the DS diet. Nodes represent functional gene sets, and edges between nodes represent their similarity. Black circles indicate enrichment after RS consumption (i.e., induction after RS feeding), whereas white circles represent enrichment after DS consumption (i.e., reduction after RS feeding). Node size represents the gene set size, and edge thickness represents the degree of overlap between 2 connected gene sets. Clusters are manually grouped and labeled to highlight the prevalent biologic functions among related gene sets. See Supplemental Fig. 2 for a high-resolution color version of the map that includes the names of the gene sets. DS, digestible starch; ER, endoplasmic reticulum; RS, resistant starch; TCA, tricarboxylic acid; UPR, unfolded protein response.
Next, changes in the expression of genes that contributed to the enrichment of the 3 large clusters of processes—i.e., TCA cycle, lipid and fatty acid metabolism, and immune response—were visualized (Supplemental Fig. 3). Most important, these results showed a modest yet consistent regulation of genes involved in the before-mentioned processes, supporting the robustness of the analysis. In addition, it revealed regulation of several key genes including PDK1 and PDK4 (both involved in controlling and connecting glucose and fatty acid metabolism and homeostasis), ANGPTL4 (regulates plasma TG concentrations), as well as NFKB, TLR4, BCL6, ICOS, and CR2 (that all play a role in controlling the adaptive and innate immune response).
Upstream regulators.
The underlying mechanisms by which RS modulated gene expression changes are not well understood. We therefore aimed to identify potential upstream transcriptional regulators that could explain the observed shift in gene expression profile. Results of this analysis predicted the transcription factors peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARG) and v-ets avian erythroblastosis virus E26 oncogene homolog (ERG) to be significantly activated with RS treatment, whereas X-box binding protein 1 (XBP1) was predicted to be inhibited (Table 1). Because the highest Z-score (3.069) was found for PPARG, we had a closer look at the downstream PPARG target genes. Out of 21 PPARG target genes affected by RS, 15 genes had an expression change consistent with activation of PPARG (Table 2). Because TGFBR1 and CXCL14 are known to be downregulated by PPARG, and we indeed observed reduced expression of these target genes, this suggests that RS enhanced PPARG activation. The other 13 target genes were induced in our data set, which corresponds with observations from literature suggesting PPARG activation.
TABLE 1 Upstream regulator Molecular type Predicted activation state Activation Z-score2 P value of overlap3 PPARG Ligand-dependent nuclear receptor Activated 3.069 3.10 × 10−4 ERG Transcription regulator Activated 2.828 1.33 × 10−2 XBP1 Transcription regulator Inhibited −2.041 3.96 × 10−2 Upstream regulator Molecular type Predicted activation state Activation Z-score2 P value of overlap3 PPARG Ligand-dependent nuclear receptor Activated 3.069 3.10 × 10−4 ERG Transcription regulator Activated 2.828 1.33 × 10−2 XBP1 Transcription regulator Inhibited −2.041 3.96 × 10−2 View Large
TABLE 1 Upstream regulator Molecular type Predicted activation state Activation Z-score2 P value of overlap3 PPARG Ligand-dependent nuclear receptor Activated 3.069 3.10 × 10−4 ERG Transcription regulator Activated 2.828 1.33 × 10−2 XBP1 Transcription regulator Inhibited −2.041 3.96 × 10−2 Upstream regulator Molecular type Predicted activation state Activation Z-score2 P value of overlap3 PPARG Ligand-dependent nuclear receptor Activated 3.069 3.10 × 10−4 ERG Transcription regulator Activated 2.828 1.33 × 10−2 XBP1 Transcription regulator Inhibited −2.041 3.96 × 10−2 View Large
TABLE 2 Name Gene symbol Prediction of activation state2 Observed mean log 2 fold-change3 Literature findings4 Transforming growth factor, β receptor 1 TGFBR1 Activated −0.25 Down Chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand 14 CXCL14 Activated −0.26 Down Carbonic anhydrase II CA2 Activated 1.36 Up Angiopoietin-like 4 ANGPTL4 Activated 0.58 Up 3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA synthase 2 (mitochondrial) HMGCS2 Activated 0.49 Up Uncoupling protein 3 (mitochondrial, proton carrier) UCP3 Activated 0.39 Up Caveolin 1, caveolae protein, 22 kDa CAV1 Activated 0.38 Up Vascular endothelial growth factor A VEGFA Activated 0.37 Up Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ PPARG Activated 0.33 Up Solute carrier family 25 (carnitine/acylcarnitine translocase), member 20 SLC25A20 Activated 0.32 Up 3-Hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase, type 1 BDH1 Activated 0.31 Up Lipase, hormone-sensitive LIPE Activated 0.27 Up Diacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 1 DGAT1 Activated 0.25 Up Monoglyceride lipase MGLL Activated 0.23 Up Acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, C-4 to C-12 straight chain ACADM Activated 0.22 Up Phosphodiesterase 3B, cGMP-inhibited PDE3B Inhibited −0.45 Up Serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade A, member 1 SERPINA1 Inhibited −0.60 Up Angiotensinogen (serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade A, member 8) AGT — 0.87 Regulates Insulin-like growth factor 1 (somatomedin C) IGF1 — 0.62 Regulates Glutamic-pyruvate transaminase (alanine aminotransferase) GPT — 0.45 Regulates Protein tyrosine phosphatase, receptor type F PTPRF — 0.27 Regulates Name Gene symbol Prediction of activation state2 Observed mean log 2 fold-change3 Literature findings4 Transforming growth factor, β receptor 1 TGFBR1 Activated −0.25 Down Chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand 14 CXCL14 Activated −0.26 Down Carbonic anhydrase II CA2 Activated 1.36 Up Angiopoietin-like 4 ANGPTL4 Activated 0.58 Up 3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA synthase 2 (mitochondrial) HMGCS2 Activated 0.49 Up Uncoupling protein 3 (mitochondrial, proton carrier) UCP3 Activated 0.39 Up Caveolin 1, caveolae protein, 22 kDa CAV1 Activated 0.38 Up Vascular endothelial growth factor A VEGFA Activated 0.37 Up Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ PPARG Activated 0.33 Up Solute carrier family 25 (carnitine/acylcarnitine translocase), member 20 SLC25A20 Activated 0.32 Up 3-Hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase, type 1 BDH1 Activated 0.31 Up Lipase, hormone-sensitive LIPE Activated 0.27 Up Diacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 1 DGAT1 Activated 0.25 Up Monoglyceride lipase MGLL Activated 0.23 Up Acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, C-4 to C-12 straight chain ACADM Activated 0.22 Up Phosphodiesterase 3B, cGMP-inhibited PDE3B Inhibited −0.45 Up Serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade A, member 1 SERPINA1 Inhibited −0.60 Up Angiotensinogen (serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade A, member 8) AGT — 0.87 Regulates Insulin-like growth factor 1 (somatomedin C) IGF1 — 0.62 Regulates Glutamic-pyruvate transaminase (alanine aminotransferase) GPT — 0.45 Regulates Protein tyrosine phosphatase, receptor type F PTPRF — 0.27 Regulates View Large
TABLE 2 Name Gene symbol Prediction of activation state2 Observed mean log 2 fold-change3 Literature findings4 Transforming growth factor, β receptor 1 TGFBR1 Activated −0.25 Down Chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand 14 CXCL14 Activated −0.26 Down Carbonic anhydrase II CA2 Activated 1.36 Up Angiopoietin-like 4 ANGPTL4 Activated 0.58 Up 3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA synthase 2 (mitochondrial) HMGCS2 Activated 0.49 Up Uncoupling protein 3 (mitochondrial, proton carrier) UCP3 Activated 0.39 Up Caveolin 1, caveolae protein, 22 kDa CAV1 Activated 0.38 Up Vascular endothelial growth factor A VEGFA Activated 0.37 Up Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ PPARG Activated 0.33 Up Solute carrier family 25 (carnitine/acylcarnitine translocase), member |
I was ever in a position to help out, I was going to. Everyone's support shows that people really care, and are really willing to make an impact in other people's lives."
Sounds to me like Manny's contagious attitude strikes again!Spurs will open talks with Athletic Bilbao over a move for striker Fernando Llorente when the Spanish club visits White Hart Lane for a friendly this weekend.
Spurs manager Harry Redknapp is reportedly keen on bringing Fernando Llorente to London (Pic: Action Images)
Manager Harry Redknapp is understood to have been in contact with Bilbao officials but will wait until the Spanish side settles in London to do business.
Spurs’ first choice target Mirko Vucinic snubbed the club by opting for Juventus earlier in the week and time is fast running out for Tottenham to secure a top-class goalscorer before the start of the season.
The north London side could face a tough fight to sign 26 year-old Llorente, however, and while he’s currently valued at £17.5million that figure could increase significantly.
Spurs showed their transfer limitations when they failed to meet the £28million asking price for Villarreal’s Giuseppe Rossi, but Redknapp may squeeze £25million out of chairman Daniel Levy should Llorente impress in the pre-season match.
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After joining Bilbao at the age of 11, Llorente is well overdue a move and the bright lights of the Premier League offer him the the perfect platform to develop his career.
The 6ft 5in forward didn’t quite get the return he was looking for last season netting 19 goals in 38 appearances, but with an adequate supply from midfield Llorente could flourish for Spurs.We can all learn from their experience
I'm incredibly excited to share this story with you. Buenos Aires, the capital and largest city in Argentina, has been reinventing itself as a much more people-friendly city recently, and its great success shows the many people-hostile cities around the world that they don't have to live like that!
The beauty is that change doesn't have to take a long time or be costly. We only need the will to do it, and take actions that matter. Buenos Aires decided that too much space was dedicated to cars, so it simply gave some of that space back to pedestrians, cyclists, and mass transit; they created a great Bus Rapid Transit system in just a few months, and now more than 650,000 use MetroBusdaily and it has cut commutes in the downtown area from almost an hour to around20 minutes!
Incentives have been realigned so that people who really need to go somewhere by driving still can, but others are encouraged to move around differently. In a short period of time, the number of pedestrians and cyclists has exploded and they aren't even done converting parts of the city to the less car-centric model, so things are bound to get even better.
Check it out for yourself:
Great, isn't it?
Gotta love those low speed limits in certain areas, no doubt making pedestrians feel a lot safer even when they have to be relatively close to cars.
SF/Screen capture SF/Screen capture
Via StreetfilmsBJP chief Amit Shah, CM Parkash Singh Badal and Home Minister Rajnath Singh at Anandpur Sahib, Friday. (Source: Express Photo by Jasbir Malhi)
The Badals miss no opportunity to attribute the state’s drug menace to its locational disadvantage — it shares a border with Pakistan. The state government also blames its neighbours, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, for “promoting” drugs and the use of opium and other narcotics in Punjab.
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The latest diatribe against the two states was launched after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh expressed concern over the drug menace at the 350th anniversary celebrations of Anandpur Sahib, birthplace of the Khalsa. While Rajasthan is blamed for not banning the sale of opium and poppy husk and for having a disproportionate number of kiosks selling these close to the Punjab border, Himachal is held responsible for the wild growth and plantation of cannabis.
Ironically, at times, the Badals also make statements about the drug problem not being as serious as it is made out to be.
The issue was brought centrestage by Rahul Gandhi during the last assembly campaign. He quoted a “study” claiming that 70 per cent of the state’s youth were drug addicts and blamed the Badal government. While the state government denied this, the Congress retaliated, stating that Gandhi’s comments were based on an affidavit that the state government had submitted to the high court.
Indeed, such an affidavit had been submitted. But it had wrongly interpreted a study undertaken by Ravinder Singh Sandhu of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Sandhu’s 2006 study only pointed out that 73.5 per cent of addicts in the state were between the age of 16 and 35.
The study was limited to about 600 drug addicts in four districts. Although the sample was small, the study had several interesting findings. It found that 79 per cent of the addicts were from low-income groups and nearly 64 per cent from families with land holdings of less than four hectares. He concluded that, among other factors, youth unemployment was a major cause for addiction. Over 60 per cent addicts were from nuclear families and there was little effort to deal with the problem using psychiatrists.
In the absence of scientific help or access to counsellors, some desperate parents take extreme measures, such as approaching the authorities to put their addict sons in jail to keep them from drugs. Another worrying trend is the rise in the number of women addicts. Even children between 4 and 10 are becoming addicts after being lured into the business as couriers.
According to Narcotics Control Bureau figures, nearly 50 per cent of the country’s drug-related cases were registered in Punjab. The BSF and Punjab Police have also made huge recoveries of narcotics. Experts say the government’s approach is flawed. Former DGP (prisons) Shashi Kant also said the government’s claim that Punjab is a route for drug smuggling was hollow and asked why smuggling was restricted to the Punjab border and not prevalent at the Gujarat, Rajasthan or J&K borders.
The fact that a majority of addicts are hooked to cheap synthetic or chemical drugs refutes the government’s claims on smuggling. Relatively few people are addicted to expensive heroin smuggled from Pakistan.
Synthetic drugs are mainly manufactured in Himachal and Rajasthan as well as in some places in Punjab. These are affordable and easily available. It is not without reason that every village in Punjab has a disproportionate number of chemists. In the absence of a scientific survey of the problem, the state government is groping in the dark, seeking to lay the blame elsewhere. A proper study is required if the government is serious about tackling the drug menace.
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The government had announced several months ago that such a study would be conducted by Guru Nanak Dev University and Punjabi University, Patiala. However, nothing has happened on the ground. Experts have repeatedly warned the government that the damage being done by the drug menace is incalculable and it is the biggest threat after the militancy that ruined Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s.
The writer is a Chandigarh-based journalist* Estimate offers support to Obama’s position on taxing rich
* Republicans say report stiffens resolve against any increases
* S&P analysts see 15 percent chance of “fiscal cliff” happening
By David Lawder and Kim Dixon
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Allowing income tax rates to rise for wealthy Americans, and maintaining rates for the less affluent, would not hurt U.S. economic growth much in 2013, the Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday, stepping into a dispute between Republicans and Democrats over how to resolve the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
The report by the authoritative non-partisan arm of Congress is expected to fuel President Barack Obama’s demand for higher taxes on the rich, part of his proposal to avoid the full impact of the expiring tax cuts and across-the-board spending reductions set to begin in early 2013 unless Congress acts.
Republicans argue that any tax increases would be devastating to the economy, particularly to small businesses, and to U.S. employment rates.
They have held firm to their position that none of the cuts, which originated during the administration of President George W. Bush, should be allowed to expire.
The CBO said the tax hikes for the wealthy would reduce job growth by around 200,000 jobs, much less than the 700,000 in job losses claimed by Republican Speaker of the House John A. Boehner.
Obama has also stuck to his position, with the White House reiterating on Thursday that the president sees his election victory on Tuesday as an endorsement by voters of his view on higher taxes for the affluent.
“One of the messages that was sent by the American people throughout this campaign is... (they) clearly chose the president’s view of making sure that the wealthiest Americans are asked to do a little bit more in the context of reducing our deficit in a balanced way,” senior White House adviser David Plouffe said.
UNCERTAINTY SCARING MARKETS
The disagreement over the tax cuts is a major roadblock to any agreement in Congress, as it is coupled with the spending issues also on the table.
The lack of progress in ending the standoff is spooking global markets, which fell again Thursday in part because of political uncertainty in Washington.
The concern was underscored by the credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, which said on Thursday it sees an increasing chance that the U.S. economy will go over the cliff next year. But it also said it expects policymakers will probably compromise in time to avoid that outcome.
Analysts at the agency see about a 15 percent chance that political brinkmanship will push the world’s largest economy over the fiscal cliff.
With only five days remaining before the U.S. Congress begins its post-election session, top political leaders in Washington provided little new assurance Thursday that they can act in time.
In an interview with ABC Television’s Diane Sawyer, Boehner repeated what he has been saying for two years: “Raising tax rates is unacceptable.... Frankly, it couldn’t even pass the House. I’m not sure it could pass the Senate,” he said, according to a transcript provided by the network.
The Democratic White House did not respond publicly to an initiative launched on Wednesday by Boehner to get talks going to avoid the cliff. The president is scheduled to make a statement on the economy Friday.
In the absence of concrete developments, the CBO report became the focus of argument Thursday. Reports by the CBO are designed to assist Congress in making difficult fiscal decisions, but they are also used by partisans to bolster their own arguments.
A statement from the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee said the CBO report “confirms that raising taxes on all taxpayers will result in fewer ‘help wanted’ signs hanging in the windows of businesses across the country. Job creators agree, and have made it clear, that raising taxes will result in a weaker economy and fewer jobs for the millions of Americans struggling to find work.”
Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said the report “underscores the need to prevent the so-called fiscal cliff from harming American families and businesses, and to instead enact a balanced, long-term deficit reduction plan.”
The term “balanced” plan is the Democratic code for tax increases.
The tax cuts were enacted during the Bush administration, but were made temporary, in part to reduce the appearance of exploding the already soaring U.S. deficit over the long term.
They were extended in 2010 for two years under an agreement between Republicans and Obama, after Republicans swept the mid-term elections that year and took control of the House.
That extension is running out, just as the trigger date arrives for automatic spending cuts Congress approved in 2011 as part of a deal to avoid a default on U.S. government debt.
VARIOUS SCENARIOS
The report from CBO laid out the economic effects of a number of options that lawmakers will consider as they deal with the fiscal cliff events.
The CBO said extending all of the tax cuts would boost U.S. gross domestic product growth next year by a little less than 1.5 percentage points.
If the tax rates were extended only for individuals earning less than $200,000 and couples earnings less than $250,000, CBO said, growth would rise by 1.25 percent.
Wall Street estimates show third-quarter GDP growth was 2.8 percent. Unemployment is currently at 7.9 percent.
Eliminating the automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs would add back 0.75 percentage points of growth, as would extending an expiring payroll tax cut and long- term unemployment benefits that are expected to end next year, the CBO said.
But the office also warned of the consequences of taking such actions without reducing deficits that have run at $1 trillion in each of the past four years.
“CBO expects that even if all of the fiscal tightening was eliminated, the economy would remain below its potential and the unemployment rate would remain higher than usual for some time,” the report said.When Obama made another TV appearance earlier this week, taking credit for the Fed's reflation of the stock market as somehow indicative of an economic "recovery" ("fiction peddlers" not allowed in the crowd), he once ignore the underlying "facts" behind said recovery: here is another way of showing the unprecedented transformation in the US labor pool: since December 2014, the US has added 455,000 waiters and bartenders, while losing 10,000 manufacturing workers.
Behold: "Obama's recovery."
... which we find curious in light of all the recent "hirings" of robots to replace minimum-wage workers who are demanding higher wages. Something tells us the BLS' goalseeking model will be in for a major shock one day when it finds just what the underlying picture behind the US "water and bartender recovery" truly is.
In any event, here is the longer-term picture, going back to the start of the crisis in December 2007: please do not "peddle fiction" upon seeing this chart.About
Here's the thing.
We all love free music. That's why the internet is so great. FREE MUSIC ALL THE TIME.
But what about the love you feel, when you hold an album in your hands? The beauty that comes with that feeling of ownership? Isn't that feeling rad?!
Well, here in San Diego, California, Sledding With Tigers and Kids want you to be able to have both. That's why, this year, we'll be releasing a Split EP, in both physical formats, AND free digital copies! So, if you don't wanna pay for some old "compact disc" that some "old person" might buy, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT! You can download it for free, the day it comes out!
BUT, if you love that feeling you get, when you hold the album cover, and read the liner notes, YOU CAN HELP US OUT!
So, we've got a presale thing going down over here at Kickstarter. If you choose to donate, we'll send you our super rad new CD! and maybe even a Cassette!
Recording has already begun, and we're hoping to have this thing in your hands by mid-November! PunxGiving!
If you've never heard our music before, check it out and download it for free HERE and HERE
We're super excited about this, and you should be too.
Love,
SWT/KIDS.Bay Area commute’s ‘awful’ ride now stretches to before 5 a.m.
Traffic slows on Interstate 80 leading to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the morning commute.
Traffic slows on Interstate 80 leading to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the morning commute. Photo: Eric Risberg, Associated Press Photo: Eric Risberg, Associated Press Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close Bay Area commute’s ‘awful’ ride now stretches to before 5 a.m. 1 / 27 Back to Gallery
It’s not your imagination, the lack of a second cup of coffee or general crankiness. The morning commute in the Bay Area is getting worse.
Not only that, but the backup is far more persistent. It begins before dawn and lasts through mid-morning, and a driver who rises early with designs on breezing to the office is no longer guaranteed safe passage.
An analysis of the number of vehicles that crossed the Bay Area’s seven state-owned bridges in October shows that traffic is up sharply when compared with the same period five years ago, and the growth is continuing.
The jump is particularly noticeable from 5 to 6 a.m. on the four backbone bridges hauling westbound commuters to San Francisco, the Peninsula and Marin County, according to the counts of toll-payers collected by the Bay Area Toll Authority.
“It’s terrible everywhere — and at rush hour, it’s just awful,” said Cherrise Lewis, 57, an Uber driver who’s a San Francisco native but now lives in Emeryville. “You used to be able to gauge the traffic, to know when you could go, but now it’s busy all the time.”
All bridges affected
On the Bay Bridge, the Bay Area’s busiest, the number of San Francisco-bound morning drivers — those traveling between 5 and 10 a.m. — has grown by 11 percent since 2010 and roughly 2 percent in the past year.
The San Mateo Bridge has experienced a 29 percent morning jump over the past five years, with a 4 percent rise in the past year alone.
Traffic on the Dumbarton Bridge is up 27 percent over five years and 3 percent in the past year. And the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge has seen a 21 percent increase since 2010 and a 2 percent rise in the past year.
The numbers reflect, in large part, commuters who are trying to beat the rush on the early side — a strategy that’s weakening with popularity.
Sal Castaneda, KTVU’s traffic reporter, has noticed the commute creeping into 5 a.m. territory. The Bay Bridge metering lights used to switch on for the morning at 5:45 a.m., but now it’s more like 5:30 a.m.
In the past, a small, quickly cleared stall or collision on the bridge at that hour wouldn’t have a lasting effect.
“Now,” he said, “the 5 o’clock hour is like the 6 o’clock hour used to be. A broken-down car at 5:30 can affect traffic until 10 a.m.”
The Bay Bridge has seen a whopping 75 percent rise in the number of bleary-eyed commuters passing through the toll plaza between 5 and 6 a.m., with an 11 percent increase over the past 12 months.
More commute west
The five-year jump during that same early hour is 81 percent on the San Mateo Bridge, 61 percent on the Dumbarton and 43 percent on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
The surging economy, with the bulk of the jobs in San Francisco and on the Peninsula, is driving the growth in traffic, said Michael Cunningham, senior vice president for public policy at the Bay Area Council, a business group.
“The traffic is all over,” he said. “But wherever you are in the Bay Area, the concentration in job growth is mostly to the west. So we see a traffic increase in the westward direction, getting worse the closer you get to San Francisco and Silicon Valley.”
The steep rise in early morning drivers is no surprise, Cunningham said, a matter of necessity rather than choice.
“The Bay Bridge can only handle a certain number of cars per hour,” he said. “During the peak hours when the metering lights are on and the bridge is full, nobody else can get on it.
“As jobs have been getting added in San Francisco or on the Peninsula,” he said, “the choice has been either to go in early while there still is some capacity on the bridge — and that time keeps getting pushed earlier and earlier — or go in later, or go in during peak and just wait in line.”
Castaneda recently asked his followers on social media if they’ve been starting their commutes earlier. An overwhelming number said yes.
“They said you’ve gotta get out there before it gets too crowded or anything happens that backs up traffic,” he said.
Evening drive heavier, too
Figures from the Carquinez and Benicia-Martinez bridges, which collect tolls from eastbound motorists, reveal increased traffic during the evening commute home — from 3 to 7 p.m.
At the Carquinez span in Crockett, the number of vehicles in October was up 8.4 percent since 2010 and 2.7 percent in the past year. The Benicia bridge saw 10.2 percent more traffic than five years ago and a 3.4 percent increase over the past year.
Continuing the trend, the biggest increases in the evening commute across those bridges were seen between 6 and 7 p.m.
“It’s starting earlier and earlier,” Cunningham said, “and ending later and later.”
Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuanThe aftermath of the Great Recession has been brutally stagnant for the middle class – and historically odd, as economic recoveries go.
It’s also been better at the middle for men than for women, and a lot better for Hispanics and whites than for blacks. Not entirely what you’d expect in Obama’s America, right?
The Census Bureau has been tracking median household income since 1967. America has endured seven recessions since then. The first five of those recessions saw a similar pattern when they ended: By the fifth year of recovery, median incomes had risen. This was true even for the recession that ended in 1980 – when the country fell back into recession a year after that recovery began. The pattern broke after the 2001 recession: Median income dipped, but still, in Year 5 of that recovery, it had climbed nearly back to where it was at recession’s end.
This time, as the economists like to say, is different.
Census numbers released Tuesday show median income has – and this is actually a hopeful statement – finally bottomed out in this recovery. It’s been stable for three straight years now, after continuing to fall in 2009 and 2010, as if the recession had never ended.
The trend looks even bleaker if you exclude non-Hispanic white men. White women, black men and black women are all still earning less at the median than they did in 2009.
You can read those charts as evidence of continued racial and gender divide in the U.S. economy. Or as a more-detailed example of how Americans at the middle still live under a recession-like gloom.
Or both.
Update: Per reader request, here’s a chart showing the changes for Hispanics and Asians by gender. The gains for Hispanics are comparatively large, and they mirror the income gains that are driving the reduction in child poverty for Hispanics.[oldembed src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d9XE8Wh5qLk" width="425" height="349" resize="1" fid="21"]
I don't think Scott Walker has really accepted the fact that most people in his state don't like or trust him. I wonder what it'll take before it sinks in:
WASHBURN — Wisconsin’s protracted family fight over the budget and public employee unions moved to this Bayfield County town Saturday evening, as embattled Gov. Scott Walker spoke at an invitation-only event and was greeted by at least 2,000 angry protesters outside.
Walker arrived in a convoy of six unmarked police cars that pulled up at 5:45 p.m. to the Steak Pit for a Republican Lincoln Day fundraiser. The large, boisterous crowd, which had been lining the streets leading to the restaurant since 4:30, quickly recognized him and erupted in boos and shouts of “Recall Walker.”
The convoy moved through quickly and without incident, and most of the protesters began to follow a circuitous route on public pathways to a spot behind the restaurant where they continued the protest within earshot of the Republican Party faithful inside.
Bayfield County Sheriff Paul Susienka said Saturday evening that he didn’t have a crowd estimate, but various people had estimated the size at between 2,000 and 5,000. So the protest probably at least doubled the size of Washburn, which has a population of 2,271.
Susienka said there had been no incidents and no arrests.
[...] People were definitely saying their piece, greeting each vehicle that arrived for the dinner with shouts of “Shame!” while waving protest signs and shaking their fists. One person videotaped the license plates of at least some of the vehicles that entered.
Protesters banged pots, shook tambourines at car windows and sounded horns. Most of the drivers and their passengers stared straight ahead. They had to navigate through a narrow tunnel formed by protesters on both sides, held back by Bayfield County sheriff’s deputies and rally organizers.
Signs included “Gov. Walker, you probably can’t remember me, but... I can recall you” and “At least my Grandma’s Walker helps her.”According to Netflix's latest ISP Speed Index, which is released monthly, the United States has the eighth-fastest Netflix speeds in the world, clocking in at 2.2 Mbps. The Netherlands have the fastest speeds, at 3.5 Mbps, followed by Sweden and Denmark at 3.1 Mbps each.
People around the world view more than 1 billion hours of Netflix content each month, and the company releases the index to show where users get the best experiences.
The popular streaming platform said its average primetime speeds over Verizon's FiOS service dropped 14% in January, though Verizon would take no blame. Then, in February, Netflix struck a deal to access Comcast's broadband network directly, sparking debate about net neutrality.
The following chart, created by Statista, breaks down the 10 countries with the fastest Netflix speeds.With under a week to go until we hear confirmation of the entry lists for the Le Mans 24 Hours, FIA WEC and ELMS news is filtering through of programmes that are coming together, and some of those that aren’t.
One team name that isn’t going to on any of those lists for the full 2017 season is that of 2011 Le Mans LMP2 winners and 2011 and 2015 ELMS Champions Greaves Motorsport, Tim Greaves confirming to DSC today that for the first time in a decade the team will not be racing in a full-season campaign.
The transition to the new for 2017 LMP2 category is at the hub of the issue as Tim explained:
“The cost of buying a new car, including all the testing is approximately €800k plus spares with an additional €1.75m in running costs for a sensible programme. Beyond that there is the question of which will be the best (chassis) manufacturer to partner with. We plan to be back when the time is right”
Both of those questions have been very much to the fore in conversations with a large proportion of the teams set to be seen on track, and others that won’t. With a four year homologation period before a performance upgrade is permitted the choice of chassis between the Dallara, Ligier (below), Oreca and Riley Multimatic options is a particularly important one both in terms of ultimate performance, and the available customer support.
The vexed question of budgets is also very much to the fore with more than one significant player offering an opinion that there may be some nasty shocks to come for some teams offering cut-price deal for the 2017 season.
Many Greaves crew members meanwhile are already working with other teams, several at Daytona with a variety of teams.
For Greaves in 2017 the race team say they will be entering some races on a race by race basis and meanwhile the company name will continue to be seen in paddocks around the world throughout the year with the sister Greaves 3D Engineering outfit continuing to expand – supplying teams in DTM, FIA WEC, ELMS, Aussie GT, top flight Formula series, Blancpain GT etc.Over last weekend, reports emerged about a US coalition airstrike in Afghanistan that killed a two-year-old boy. I read about it in the Washington Post (11/29/13), but couldn’t help but find some of the language in the report puzzling.
Right in the lead, the boy’s death was called “the latest crisis to confront American officials” who are trying to finalize a security deal with the Afghan government. The Post‘s Tim Craig went on to say that the “civilian casualties could not have come at a worse time for US diplomats,” and that the “death of the child further complicates the already strained relationship” between the US and Afghan governments.
Yes, poorly timed kid-killing really complicates things.
Much of the journalism about Afghanistan right now is about the “strain” between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the United States, expressing bafflement and irritation at Karzai’s criticism of US military attacks that kill civilians. The New York Times got into the act on December 1, when reporter Rod Nordland wrote a piece on this topic.
Under the headline “Afghans Assail Karzai’s Disparate Views on Killings,” Nordland explained that Karzai was getting outraged by US attacks on civilians, but staying mum when the attackers are the Taliban: “The attack he complained about was carried out by the American-led coalition and used a drone. The attack he ignored was by the Taliban and used a suicide bomber.”
Nordland explains that the “disparity in the Afghan president’s reaction has been rued by American officials here”–no surprise there–but that it also “has started to draw criticism among many Afghans.” Given that this is the message of the headline, you have to assume it’s the most important point of the article. Nordland writes:
In short, many Afghans have begun asking, Who exactly are our enemies here? The Americans, who underwrite our government and military but now say they will be forced to withdraw in 2015 without a security deal? Or the Taliban, who have a history of killing officials even remotely connected with the government–a policy that has apparently begun to claim the lives even of some independent relief workers?
That’s a New York Times reporter’s criticism of Karzai; which Afghans are saying this? That’s hard to say, because Nordland quotes just one person saying this: Atiqullah Baryalai, who used to work for Karzai. There are plenty of other Afghans in the piece, but they’re mostly concerned with the debate over signing the security arrangement with the United States.
It’s not unheard of for journalists to express strong opinions about how the United States should conduct its wars. ABC Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz (FAIR Blog, 6/6/11) once declared this about the US war in Afghanistan: “The airstrikes and these night raids just simply have to continue if they’re going to go after the enemy.” That’s the kind of opinion you’re allowed to express.
But sometimes reporters express their opinions by attributing them to others–New York Times reporter John Burns (Extra!, 11/08) did this when he would say things like, “In my experience, the great majority of Iraqis are…very loathe to see those American troops leave now.” Actually, surveys showed most Iraqis wanted US troops to leave their country.
It’s not clear what Afghans think about how long US troops should stay. But it seems clear that it’s more the case that a New York Times reporter–and not “many Afghans”–are mad at Karzai for being mad at US attacks on civilians. The headline “US Government, Reporters Assail Karzai’s Disparate Views on Killings” would have been more accurate.15 000 east Europe kids abandoned annually
Sofia - Fifteen thousand children are abandoned into state care every year in the former Soviet countries of eastern Europe and central Asia, the United Nations Children's Fund said on Wednesday.
"Most countries still rely heavily on institutionalisation... leaving lifelong physical and cognitive scars," Unicef regional director Marie-Pierre Poirier told a conference in Sofia.
"Every hour approximately two young children, mainly babies, are separated from their parents and sent into institutional care in central and eastern Europe and central Asia," she said.
Two decades after the end of communism, 1.3 million under-18s were growing up apart from their families in the 21 countries in the region, according to a new Unicef report presented at the conference.
"These numbers are the highest in the world," it said, describing current childcare systems as a "legacy of the Soviet state policy that... vested in the state the primary responsibility for raising children."
"What we want to do here is to confirm that the challenge remains even if some change has begun," Poirier said, calling for a "change of mentality" that would encourage parents to raise their children instead of leaving them in the hands of the state.
The Sofia conference aims to bring an end to the placement of babies under the age of three in institutions.
Handicapped children
Half of the 31 000 babies under three in state care in the region were in Russia, experts said. But Bulgaria had the highest abandonment rate - 654 babies out of every 100 000.
Poverty and the lack of alternative care, especially for handicapped children, were cited by experts as the main reasons behind abandonment.
According to the report, approximately one third of children in state care in the region have some handicap, while in Russia they make up about half of all abandoned children.
Roma minority children are another large group in homes, making up as many as 63% of all abandoned children in Romania.
Adoptive families generally refuse to take in Roma children, the report found.Observers say election antics have pushed many of the estimated 50,000-70,000 Bosnian Muslims in what is historically a swing state to register to vote
Mirhada Jasarevic was a child when she and her family became refugees during the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. She became a naturalized US citizen earlier this year, in time for her to vote in the 2016 presidential election.
“I think this is probably one of the most important elections to be a part of,” Jasarevic said. “I came here just like those Syrian refugees are coming here. The same way. With no intention of hurting anybody. Just to get a chance at life. And that’s what makes America so great, and I feel like Donald Trump doesn’t understand that.”
Bosnian Americans in Missouri are expected to turn out in record numbers this November. With recent polls showing that Hillary Clinton and Trump are virtually tied in Missouri, it could be a voting bloc that swings the election.
Trump supporters in St Louis: how'midwestern nice' became a sea of rage Read more
While never a monolith, Bosnian Americans in St Louis – which is home to an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Bosnian Muslims – have near-universally been put off by Trump’s anti-Muslim, anti-refugee rhetoric and are wary of the Republican candidate’s popularity among Serbian nationalists. If they are mobilized as a bloc to vote against Trump for these reasons, 2016 could mark the national debut of Missouri’s “Bosnian vote”, costing Trump the state’s 10 electoral votes.
“I know for a fact that a lot of people have gone out and registered to vote,” said Nedim Ramic, a Bosnian American attorney in St Louis who has twice met with Clinton during campaign stops in the city. “I think that the Bosnian community could really make a difference.”
Since religion and ethnic background are not recorded as part of the voter registration process, there is no record of how many Bosnian American voters are actually registered in St Louis. Anecdotally, community leaders estimate that voter registration in St Louis’s Bosnian community has surged by the thousands over the past two years.
“Right now I’m expecting to see a higher turnout than before,” said insurance agent Ibro Tucakovic, who came to St Louis from Sarajevo in 1998 and, in 2015, became the first Bosnian American to run for elected office in Missouri. “This election is really, really important, but especially for Bosnian Americans because we have seen what hate speech can do in a country. Some of the older ones are scared, because this is a similar thing going on back in Bosnia in the 1990s before the election.”
St Louis is home to one of the largest populations of Bosnian Muslims in the world outside Bosnia-Herzegovina itself. The community has its origins in the Balkan refugee crisis in the 1990s, when Yugoslavia was ripped apart at its seams, displacing millions. Bosnian refugees were resettled in St Louis by the thousands, and eventually the city became the anchor of the United States’ Bosnian diaspora.
Historically, Missouri has been a swing state, though is often assumed by pundits to be a Republican giveaway. In 2008, Republican John McCain won the state’s electoral votes by a margin of less than 1% – mere thousands of votes. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney won the state by 10%, but liberal Democrat Claire McCaskill also kept her seat in the US Senate by more than 15%. The state also has a Democrat governor.
I came here just like those Syrian refugees are coming here. Just to get a chance at life Mirhada Jasarevic
In recent years, Bosnian voters in St Louis have asserted themselves as a potent force in local politics, and politicians – mainly Democrats – have taken notice.
During 2014’s high-profile race for St Louis County executive following the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, Democratic candidate Steve Stenger – who visited Bosnian mosques and distributed Bosnian-language campaign literature while his Republican opponent did not – won, but by fewer than 2,000 votes. Had Bosnian voters stayed home, he probably would have lost.
Shortly after the election, Bosnians in the city of St Louis (a separate entity from St Louis County) took to the streets themselves as protests continued region-wide after the August 2014 police killing of teenager Mike Brown in Ferguson. Following the brutal murder of Zemir Begic – a Bosnian immigrant visiting St Louis to meet his future in-laws – in the heart of the city’s Bosnian neighborhood that December, hundreds of protesters shut down a main thoroughfare in the city’s south side over the span of two nights, demanding increased police patrols and a voice in local affairs.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bosnians march along Gravois Road in 2014 to protest the murder of Zemir Begic in St Louis. Photograph |
Past President of the Geological Society of Washington and the Geo2YC division of NAGT. He lives in the Fort Valley of Virginia.
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Archives Archives Select Month February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010Swap Magic is a specialized PlayStation 2 game disc used for tricking the console into reading non-retail or burned game discs, homebrew software, or games outside the console's region. The software has existed since at least mid-2003, with several different versions of the disc having been developed.
Swap Magic and its related mods, such as the Magic Switch and Swap Tool, which are used to allow the user to swap discs without the system being aware, are notable over other methods (such as a modchip) due to the fact that they do not void the PS2's warranty.
Features [ edit ]
The Swap Magic disc allows the user to boot into software which allows the system to read discs that it would normally refuse because of the lack of a burst cutting area on discs that have been burned with an ordinary DVD drive, as opposed to regular retail discs which are stamped or pressed en masse. The user then removes the disc (after installing small modifications to prevent the system from detecting the drive being opened) and replaces it with another disc which can then be started. The software also allows other homebrew software to be run from a memory card or USB flash drive.
Swap Magic and most other non-Sony-made PlayStation 2 bootable discs use a method of "growing" and "splicing" stampers from original PlayStation 2 discs, a method of growing a stamper from an original game disc and joining a new stamper with the program data on to it; in essence, the resulting discs contain a portion of an original disc.
Datel, the first company outside Sony to make a bootable PlayStation 2 disc, researched the protection and produced their own discs with protection in their on-site mastering facility.
IFPI [ edit ]
The IFPI on a DVD can be found on the inner ring on the underside (data side) of the disc, before the start of data in the mirror part of the disc's hub. Most contain text specified at the time of mastering; this usually consists of the string "IFPI" followed by a code describing the mastering system used, then followed by a text product description, and finally a bar code.
Development [ edit ]
Swap Magic v1 was released and is compatible with the v12 slim PS2. Swap Magic v2 was released after Sony had slightly changed the design of their console in the v13-15 models of the slim PS2, and Swap Magic v1 did not work with those models. Version 2 was widely criticized as it required the user to open the console and, therefore, voided the warranty. The company responded to this criticism by releasing Swap Magic v3, which did not require any opening of the console.
CODER [ edit ]
Swap Magic v3.8 (also known as CODER) was released, which adds the ability of loading Action Replay cheats into the booted game. However, some users have complained that CODER has some compatibility issues as well as known bugs. For example, some games that work on v3.6 do not work with CODER.[citation needed] Consequently, v3.6 remains the most popular version of Swap Magic.We tell ourselves time and time again that we've got to stop sitting so much. It's bad for our health for a whole slew of reasons, but there's just no way we can spend eight hours a day on the solitary TreadDesk in the office. (And we're lucky even to have one!)
So what can you do to fight obesity, diabetes, heart disease and the other risks of sitting too much? At the most simple level, stand more. A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic are set to study 30 employees of Caldrea, an eco-friendly cleaning supply company in Minneapolis, whose desks have been replaced with workstations that make it possible to sit or stand while working, according to the Star Tribune.
"Sitting is sort of the new smoking," Mayo Clinic endocrinologist James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., told the Star Tribune.
The participants will stand at their desks for half of the work day, with a monitor attached to their underwear to keep them honest, according to a local CBS affiliate. Researchers expect that the standing workers will burn more calories, reduce medical bills and have more energy than their colleagues who continue to sit full-time.
Dr. Levine led a similar study in 2007 at a financial staffing firm in Minneapolis called Salo, according to the New York Times. In that instance, the 18 employees who increased their activity during the workday lost 150 pounds collectively.
CBS reports that the results of the study won't be published until May. In the meantime, click through the slideshow below for a few more ways to stay healthy and active at your desk.
stay active at your desk SEE GALLERYBy Steve Roberts, co-founder of Fripp Design and Research, with Tom Fripp.
For the past 8 years, Fripp Design and Research have been actively involved in the development of 3D Print technology. Indeed, our co-founder, Tom Fripp’s Masters Degree was all about designing custom wound supports using 3D Printers. We also own and operate a number of 3D Printers and we own Intellectual Property in the application of 3D Print in the rapid manufacture of prostheses too.
3D Print is getting much attention in the press and media at the moment and investors are valuing 3D Print related stock very highly too. This bodes well for our industry, however we want to apply some caution to all the hype and put to bed several ‘myths’ about 3D Printing.
Myth 1 – With 3D Printing you have an infinite degree of design freedom
If only this was true. It is fair to say that 3D Printing offers many more opportunities to create complexity where traditional tooling/molding cannot compete; however infinity is a very big number! The reality is that you are still constrained by the types of material, the method used for fusing the powder (either sintered or binded) and the biggest one of them all–Gravity!
And with ‘design freedom’ comes expertise. Our design team members have spent all their adult life living and breathing the world of 3D Design. It would be unrealistic (even with some of the great software tools now available) to expect the average consumer to be able to understand, exploit and enjoy such design freedoms; especially when you factor in that a professional designer understands the inherent constraints in the materials and technologies applicable to 3D Printing.
Myth 2 – 3D Printing will replace Traditionally Manufactured Products
This is probably the most over hyped and mythical claim of all. A manufactured product is not, simply, about the making of a product; the whole process is much more complicated than this. As a design agency we know. Designing a product for manufacture involves a multitude of stages (all of which we explain on our website so we won’t repeat them here!). Add into this the need to operate within a Quality Manufacturing System, testing the products safety to extremes and the need to market, promote and distribute the product, the ‘actual’ cost of delivering a product to market is much higher than simply making it. Plus within a manufacturing process, economy of scales and the use of constant quality controlled components means consumers know that, wherever they buy the product, they know the quality will be the same.
Another major concern is the variability of operating 3D Printers. From experience, we have learnt how to ‘fine tune’ our 3D Printers to make sure the prototypes we create are of the highest consistent quality that can be achieved. This has come from the experience our design team has gained in using 3D Printers day in day out. This experience you will not find in an operating manual and would not be understood if you are not trained as a professional designer.
The other subject that is bought up is cost, the belief is it is cheaper to make a product on a 3D Printer. Clearly, if a manufacturer had to customize every product for every customer, then costs would be so high, that nobody would buy them (which is the primary reason for products being the same); so for a ‘one off’ cosmetic model, there might be a cost benefit of using a 3D Printer ( we say ‘might be’ because, don’t forget you have the capital cost of buying the printer as well as the consumables to buy too. If you only make one model, then your costs are going to be in the £100s…so ‘economy of scale is a 3d Print issue too).
Myth 3 – 3D Printing will allow you to reverse engineer spare parts
This is one that worries us most. For cosmetic spare parts, we see no issue (other than Intellectual Property infringement – see below). But for functioning spare parts, we have great concerns. A functioning spare part will have been designed to meet the rigors of the environment it is designed for. It will be stressed tested, thermal tested and shock tested to make sure it is safe for a consumer to use in the environment it was designed for. If you print a spare part, on a 3D Printer, you have no idea about the parts functional qualities in the working environment you want to use it in.
Although you could print a car spring on a SLM machine, there is no way we could recommend you actually fit and use it.
There is also the issue of design. A part designed to be injection molding uses the strength properties of the plastic being molded. As the material type you would use in a 3D Printer is very different, it often requires internal ribbings to add the necessary strength to make the part work, as a prototype.
So simply ‘copying’ the existing design will, in most cases, create a part that will look the same, but will be, functionally, weaker; but unless you are a professional designer, you will not be aware of this (but you are now!).
A similar issue is wall thicknesses; from our experience, a 3D Printed wall is always thicker than its injection molded counter part. You also need to take into account that the finish quality of the material is more often than not, rougher too. This requires post processing of the part; which adds both time and the potential for creating more structural weakness too.
Another key consideration is the legality of printing the part. It will be highly likely that the part you want to print is protected by patent. By ‘copying’ the part, you could be sued by the owner of the IP (check out this article for an example.)
Myth 4 – 3D Printing is cheap!
For those who follow us on Twitter (@frippdesign), you will see we, recently, engaged in an interesting discussion with a major vendor of full color 3D Printing on the costs of 3D Printing. The claim made was that their technology could make a part for only $5, which we accept is true. But what they are, potentially, implying is ‘look how cheap it is to 3D Print full color’. This is a piece of ‘marketing speech’ that many vendors put out about 3D Printing…if only it was true!
The very same Vendor, making this claim, eventually conceded that their 3D Printer costs $47,000, however they did state that their Total Ownership Cost (TOC) is lower than comparative technologies and, in this respect, there is some truth in what they say. However it is still a long way from being able to make a claim that it costs only $5 to 3D Print a part.
So let’s look into what the likely TOC is and the implications in buying a 3D Printer using the above as an example. The key factors to take into consideration are:
1. Depreciation–When buying capital equipment, financiers will normally depreciate the asset over a 5 year period. This represents depreciation of $9,400/annum on a piece of capital equipment costing $47,000.
2. Running Costs–As a company that operates three 3D Printers ourselves, 3D Printers do consume consumables (by this we mean things like Print Heads; not the materials used for Printing the model). It is difficult for us to assign a cost to this, but we will be generous and say the Printer consumes $200 of consumables per annum (note, for Laser based sintering machines, the ‘print head’ is a laser, replacing these runs into $1,000s but the 3D Printers do cost $100,000s to buy…and to be fair to these vendors we have not, yet, seen them claim you can 3D Print a model in metal for $5!)
3. Operating Costs–To run such a machine requires an operator. Accepting that operating a 3D Printer is not an intensive task, there is still a cost. We would assume that an operator is likely to be a 3D designer and the designer might spend 5% of their working week operating/monitoring the printer. Assuming a salary of $40,000, this represents an annual cost of $2,000. This does not include any costs incurred in fixing the 3D Print file to make it compatible with the 3D Print technology to be used, but we are assuming this would be absorbed in the 5% of designer time required to operate the printer.
4. Other Associated Costs–Although your designer would make the 3D Print file compatible with the 3D Printer, the designer will still need a PC and software to make any changes. For simplicity, we assume a cost of $1000 per annum to achieve this.
Total Cost Of Ownership–So taking the four costs together, then the annual ‘fixed’ costs of operating such a 3D Printer is in the order of $12,600.
In the Vendors claim, we have to assume that the $5 is the material cost for making the part.
So, to make 100 parts per annum, the actual cost/per part is $131 (12,600 divided by 100 plus 5)
To make 1000 parts per annum, the actual cost/per part is $17.60 (12,600 divided by 1000 plus 5)
To make 10,000 parts per annum, the actual cost/per part is $6.26 (12,600 divided by 10,000 plus 5). The reality is it would be higher as the 3D Printer will consume more consumables and might need maintenance because of the very high usage. However, for the purpose of this Blog, we will assume the machine can handle this level of use, maintenance free.
So, as with injection molding, there comes a ‘tipping point’ where an investment of $47,000 in a 3D Printer looks viable (as does the investment in tooling makes sense for injection molding)…but then you have to factor in another very important variable; the TIME it takes to make the part.
Let’s be generous that is takes an hour to print the part. At 10,000 units, this represents 10,000 hours or 417 days of continuous use (operating 24x7x365 days) i.e. making 10,000 parts per annum is very unlikely on a 3D Printer (in fact we know of no 3D Printer making $5 parts at this volume…we’d be very happy to be corrected on this though).
Even at 1000 parts, this works out at 125 working days (assuming a ‘single shift’ 8 hour day). This represents almost 6 months of a working year; again a very high utilization of the 3D Printer. From our experience, 3D Printers operate in the 100-1000 prints per annum range, so the actual cost of ownership, of making a $5 part, is in the region of $131-$17.60 per 3D Print.
Even at this level, the costs still look attractive. The investment decision, as with any investment decision, has to be “Is there market capacity to be able to make a financial return on the investment (bearing in mind a bureau will need to add a profit margin to this cost)? Can we get the utilization of the 3D Printer to justify the costs?”
Although this Blog has been written in response to recent Twitter traffic, the principle applies to any 3D Print technology you are considering investing in.
Even at the entry-level FDM 3D Printer level, you need to think about the Total Ownership Cost. We did buy an entry level FDM Printer and quickly rejected it because of the inherent low resolution and quality you get from a FDM machine costing a few $100. A great hobbyist product…but not something you would consider for making professional standard models (bear in mind you can get very high resolution FDM machines, but they cost significantly more than $47,000 to buy).
We are great advocates of 3D Print. In 2005, our co-founder, Tom Fripp, did his Masters in developing a method for manufacturing custom medical casts. But when vendors over hype their capability, it impacts on our ability to sell our services.
We operate at the sharp end of 3D Printing and it is our job to set customer expectations at the correct level. 3D Printing offers many benefits, but lets make them realistic…please?
Note: The figures quoted in this Blog are for reference purposes only. The actual TOC will vary dependent upon the circumstances you will operate your 3D Printer. The figures quoted are theoretical and are provided to contextualise this Blog.
Conclusion
This article may appear to be a little negative, but we think it is important to set the record straight about the myths. 3D Printing is very important to us, it is a key tool in our commercial offer and fulfills a vital role in delivering value to our customers. But expectations on what can be delivered, using a 3D Printer, need to be realistic. 3D Printing is still, today, primarily about making prototypes.
However we are keen to see (and support) the developments being made in the use of 3D Printers to make custom medical devices for patients. This is an area we are actively involved in where we have developed ways of rapid manufacturing cosmetic prostheses. However the world of 3D Printing is still some way from delivering custom functional medical devices (such as orthopaedic implants); but it is an area we actively support and work in.
This blog was originally published by Steve Roberts on his company website http://www.frippdesign.co.uk under the title Don’t Believe the (3D print) Hype. It is published here with permission by Mr. Roberts. Although not a designer himself, Steve has spent the past decade immersed in design and has the experience (some would say age) to understand the commercial opportunities for 3D Printing.November 30, 2012
In the 1860s, Karl Marx was living in London, where he wrote for, among other publications, Die Presse. In this article, he analyzed the Civil War that had begun in the U.S., clarifying the goal of the secessionist South. This text is republished from the Marxists Internet Archive.
"LET HIM go, he is not worth thine ire!" Again and again English statesmanship cries--recently through the mouth of Lord John Russell--to the North of the United States this advice of Leporello to Don Juan's deserted love. If the North lets the South go, it then frees itself from any admixture of slavery, from its historical original sin, and creates the basis of a new and higher development.
In reality, if North and South formed two autonomous countries, like, for example, England and Hanover, their separation would be no more difficult than was the separation of England and Hanover. "The South," however, is neither a territory closely sealed off from the North geographically, nor a moral unity. It is not a country at all, but a battle slogan.
The advice of an amicable separation presupposes that the Southern Confederacy, although it assumed the offensive in the Civil War, at least wages it for defensive purposes. It is believed that the issue for the slaveholders' party is merely one of uniting the territories it has hitherto dominated into an autonomous group of states and withdrawing them from the supreme authority of the Union. Nothing could be more false: "The South needs its entire territory. It will and must have it." With this battle-cry the secessionists fell upon Kentucky. By their "entire territory" they understand in the first place all the so-called border states-Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas. Besides, they lay claim to the entire territory south of the line that runs from the north-west corner of Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. What the slaveholders, therefore, call the South, embraces more than three-quarters of the territory hitherto comprised by the Union. A large part of the territory thus claimed is still in the possession of the Union and would first have to be conquered from it. None of the so-called border states, however, not even those in the possession of the Confederacy, were ever actual slave states. Rather, they constitute the area of the United States in which the system of slavery and the system of free labor exist side by side and contend for mastery, the actual field of battle between South and North, between slavery and freedom. The war of the Southern Confederacy is, therefore, not a war of defense, but a war of conquest, a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery.
The chain of mountains that begins in Alabama and stretches northwards to the Hudson River-the spinal column, as it were, of the United States--cuts the so-called South into three parts. The mountainous country formed by the Allegheny Mountains with their two parallel ranges, the Cumberland Range to the west and the Blue Mountains to the east, divides wedge-like the lowlands along the western coast of the Atlantic Ocean from the lowlands in the southern valleys of the Mississippi. The two lowlands separated by the mountainous country, with their vast rice swamps and far-flung cotton plantations, are the actual area of slavery. The long wedge of mountainous country driven into the heart of slavery, with its correspondingly clear atmosphere, an invigorating climate and a soil rich in coal, salt, limestone, iron ore, gold, in short, every raw material necessary for a many-sided industrial development, is already for the most part free country. In accordance with its physical constitution, the soil here can only be cultivated with success by free small farmers. Here the slave system vegetates only sporadically and has never struck root. In the largest part of the so-called border states, the dwellers of these highlands comprise the core of the free population, which sides with the Northern party if only for the sake of self-preservation.
LET US consider the contested territory in detail.
Delaware, the most northeastern of the border states, is factually and morally in the possession of the Union. All the attempts of the secessionists at forming even one faction favorable to them have since the beginning of the war suffered shipwreck on the unanimity of the population. The slave element of this state has long been in process of dying out. From 1850 to 1860 alone the number of slaves diminished by half, so that with a total population of 112,218 Delaware now numbers only 1,798 slaves. Nevertheless, Delaware is demanded by the Southern Confederacy and would in fact be militarily untenable for the North as soon as the South possessed itself of Maryland.
Series Marxist Classics In this series, SocialistWorker.org is publishing classic articles, essays and other documents from the Marxist tradition. All articles in this series
In Maryland itself the above-mentioned conflict between highlands and lowlands takes place. Out of a total population of 687,034 there are here 87,188 slaves. That the overwhelming majority of the population is on the side of the Union has again been strikingly proved by the recent general elections to the Congress in Washington. The army of 30,000 Union troops, which holds Maryland at the moment, is intended not only to serve the army on the Potomac as a reserve, but, in particular, also to hold in check the rebellious slaveowners in the interior of the country. For here we observe a phenomenon similar to what we see in other border states where the great mass of the people stands for the North and a numerically insignificant slaveholders' party for the South. What it lacks in numbers, the slaveholders' party makes up in the means of power that many years' possession of all state offices, hereditary engagement in political intrigue and concentration of great wealth in few hands have secured for it.
Virginia now forms the great cantonment where the main army of secession and the main army of the Union confront each other. In the north-west highlands of Virginia the number of slaves is 15,000, whilst the 20 times as large free population consists mostly of free farmers. The eastern lowlands of Virginia, on the other hand, count well-nigh half a million slaves. Raising Negroes and the sale of the Negroes to the Southern states form the principal source of income of these lowlands. As soon as the ringleaders of the lowlands had carried through the secession ordinance by intrigues in the state legislature at Richmond and had in all haste opened the gates of Virginia to the Southern army, north-west Virginia seceded from the secession, formed a new state, and under the banner of the Union now defends its territory arms in hand against the Southern invaders.
Tennessee, with 1,109,847 inhabitants, 275,784 of whom are slaves, finds itself in the hands of the Southern Confederacy, which has placed the whole state under martial law and under a system of proscription which recalls the days of the Roman Triumvirates. When in the winter of 1861 the slaveholders proposed a general convention of the people which was to vote for secession or non-secession, the majority of the people rejected any convention, in order to remove any pretext for the secession movement. Later, when Tennessee was already militarily over-run and subjected to a system of terror by the Southern Confederacy, more than a third of the voters at the elections still declared themselves for the Union. Here, as in most of the border states, the mountainous country, east Tennessee, forms the real centre of resistance to the slaveholders' party. On June 17, 1861, a General Convention of the people of east Tennessee assembled in Greenville, declared itself for the Union, deputed the former governor of the state, Andrew Johnson, one of the most ardent Unionists, to the Senate in Washington and published a "declaration of grievances," which lays bare all the means of deception, intrigue and terror by which Tennessee was "voted out" of the Union. Since then the secessionists have held east Tennessee in check by force of arms.
Similar relationships to those in West Virginia and east Tennessee are found in the north of Alabama, in northwest Georgia and in the north of North Carolina.
Further west, in the border state of Missouri, with 1,173,317 inhabitants and 114,965 slaves--the latter mostly concentrated in the north-west of the state-the people's convention of August 1861 decided for the Union. Jackson, the governor of the state and the tool of the slaveholders' party, rebelled against the legislature of Missouri, was outlawed and took the lead of the armed hordes that fell upon Missouri from Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, in order to bring it to its knees before the Confederacy and sever its bond with the Union by the sword. Next to Virginia, Missouri is at the present moment the main theatre of the Civil War.
New Mexico--not a state, but merely a Territory, into which 25 slaves were imported during Buchanan's presidency in order to send a slave constitution after them from Washington--had no craving for the South, as even the latter concedes. But the South has a craving for New Mexico and accordingly spewed an armed band of adventurers from Texas over the border. New Mexico has implored the protection of the Union government against these liberators.
IT WILL have been observed that we lay particular emphasis on the numerical proportion of slaves to free men in the individual border states. This proportion is in fact decisive. It is the thermometer with which the vital fire of the slave system must be measured. The soul of the whole secession movement is South Carolina. It has 402,541 slaves and 301,271 free men. Mississippi, which has given the Southern Confederacy its dictator, Jefferson Davis, comes second. It has 436,696 slaves and 354,699 free men. Alabama comes third, with 435,132 slaves and 529,164 free men.
The last of the contested border states, which we have still to mention, is Kentucky. Its recent history is particularly characteristic of the policy of the Southern Confederacy. Among its 1 |
Although many of the over 400,000 advertisers on the site would disagree, that statement to some is code for promoting and pimping prostitution -- their tagline was "You can't buy love...but the rest is negotiable." Regardless of the wording, one thing was clear about the site and its advertisers; they were selling something people were buying.
According to the complaint issued by DHS, Rentboy made over $10 million between 2010 and 2015, and during the raid of the Manhattan offices government officials seized an estimated $1.4 million in illegal assets from six different accounts.
The complaint also names CEO Jeff Davids aka Jeffrey Hurant, Micheal Sean Belman A.K.A. Van Sant, Clint Calero, Edward Lorenzo Estanol aka Eli Lewis, Shane Lukas aka Hawk Kinkaid, Diana Milagros Mattos aka Coco Lopez and Marco Soto Decker as conspiring to "use facilities in interstate commerce with the intent to promote, manage, establish, carry on and facilitate the promotion, management, establishment and carrying on of an unlawful activity," which is later identified as prostitution across state lines.
Kelly T. Currie, acting US attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn conducted the raid, which VICE points out as odd since the raid should have been under the supervision of New York's Southern District which covers Manhattan. According to VICE and the complaint, the filing by Currie was justified because some of the escorts were based in Brooklyn.
It was so odd in fact that the editorial board of the New York Times had something to say about the whole ordeal. The op-ed team explains that the "criminal complaint is so saturated with sexually explicit details, it's hard not to interpret it as an indictment of gay men as being sexually promiscuous."
The op-ed also states that Homeland Security special agent Susan Ruiz said in the claim, '"Based on my investigation...I have learned that a sling, also known as a'sex sling,' is a device that allows two people to have sex while one is suspended.' Later, she helpfully explained that 'the term 'twink' is a slang term for a young, gay man with an effeminate manner, thin build and no body or facial hair."'
The point to be taken away from a this is that, according to the NYT, the Federal Government should be allocating their resources on more serious crimes like human trafficking rather than pursuing a company that made less in ten years than the annual revenue of a small plumbing company.
However, regardless of where or why the complaint was filed, and the resources used, it is clear that Rentboy may be down permanently, and it's affecting more than just the site owners.
Now ordering coffee at a nearby Starbucks where there were witnesses in case any questions arose over our conversation, Esparanza offers to pay for my drink. I decline, more out of professionalism than anything else. "Oh don't worry, I just got paid I'll be good for about a week, and if I get another client tonight I'm set until Halloween," he says. I assure him that it is alright, and steer the conversation back to our interview by asking about when he first started escorting.
"I would say that I started right out of high school, maybe a little later, but not long after I turned 18. I think I joined because first I liked sex, and second I didn't want to work a 'normal' job that I hated."
We picked up our coffee and sat at a table in the back to avoid being overheard.
Esparanza said he identifies himself as an escort and although the line is thin, he said there is a difference between what he does and actual prostitution. "I am a very sexual person, I like to have all kinds of sex. When I meet a client I am not selling sex or my body, I am selling my time. Just like a therapist or wedding planner, people pay to spend time with me. If we end up having sex then that's that, but I certainly don't expect that to always be the case."
His plan is to work his way up in the sex scene in Los Angeles and eventually gain enough popularity to charge larger amounts and be invited to all the fun escorting events. "If you get famous enough you even get to fuck porn stars."
Despite the stars in his eyes and certainty that he will be the next big thing (he tells me that he already is in one department but that was not confirmed), not all escorts become well known enough to charge large amounts of money for their time. In fact, according to Daniel Rodriguez, some escorts used Rentboy as a means of survival.
"Each individual person [on Rentboy] sets their own rates, the market kind of also has a lot to do with it because when you first go on to back page or any listing site the first thing you are going to do as an advertiser is look to see what everyone else is doing," said Rodriguez, Interim Director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, Los Angeles chapter. "You're going to look to see what kind of pictures they have up, you're going to look to see what kind of text they have up, look to see what they are charging and you kind of go from there. So most people on Rentboy I would say were in the $150-$300 range per hour.
Rodriguez, who advertised on the site for seven years and knew the owners personally, remembers when he first started on the site. "I first heard about [Rentboy] when I was 18, at the time I met someone who was like a sugar daddy type and he told me about the site."
Even after learning about Rentboy, Rodriguez said he did not start advertising until a few years later, about which time it started to gain popularity not just because it was one of the first gay escort advertising sites, but because of the benefits of joining. Rodriguez explains; "From what I know Rentboy started about 18 years ago it was just a place guys could advertise, and for the longest time it was like -- it gained popularity off of A: street based work and B: like the original back pages of like magazines and newspapers and stuff."
When Rodriguez started escorting -- or offering companionship as he sometimes calls it -- seven years ago he did not know much about the site. "When I got to New York City about six years ago I went to a couple of the [Rentboy] events and started meeting the guys that worked in the office and that was right before Hawk came on board." At the time, Rodriguez said that the founders had a unique outlook on the escorting business and integrated that into Rentboy. "At that time they really had this really cool culture of community and getting to know each other."
It was at the New York City Black Party some years ago that Rodriguez met Van Sant and Davids, and mentioned how competitive the New York scene was. He told the owners that he was competing with 300 other guys. That is where the Rentboy philosophy came in to play.
"They were -- from that very first meeting -- they were very quick to say those guys aren't your competition they're your colleagues. Just from that very first interaction with them it was a different culture." According to Rodriguez, Davids and Van Sant didn't want advertisers to see each other as competition they wanted them to network, and to know each other. "They talked about how networking and knowing each other was one of the ways we could keep each other safe." And in the escorting and companionship business, safety is key.
Sex Workers Outreach Project, SWOP, is, according to their mission statement, "a national social justice network dedicated to the fundamental human rights of sex workers and their communities, focusing on ending violence and stigma through education and advocacy." The mission statement also explains that SWOP is a multi-sate network of sex workers and their advocates who "address locally and nationally the violence that sex workers experience because of their criminal status." Rodriguez explained that SWOP is "big into harm reduction" and advocates for the rights of sex workers. The organization also is instrumental in instructing various organizations on how to deal with issues sex workers may face.
"For example in Sacramento they have a really good chapter that has been running for a while and they have agreements with different hospitals on how to handle trafficking victims in an emergency room setting. They do these training for doctors and nurses and the techs, they do talks at different universities about different sex worker issues," said Rodriguez.
He added that SWOP does more than educate and advocate for the rights of sex workers. "[We also set] sex workers up with various harm reduction initiatives, so things like testing and legal aid for different reasons." However, Rodriguez wants to make it clear that there is nothing "in the language in SWOP that promotes prostitution but it's definitely identified as either being sex workers or trafficking victims getting them set up with different kinds of resources to meet their needs." But sometimes those needs get unmet because they are unreported.
Back at the interview, Esparanza is smoking outside while I shuffle through my notes. I can see him standing casually, looking at men as they walk by. Once or twice I see one look back at him to which he nods. He comes in and smiles, "I know that guy, the old one. He called me for dinner about a month ago, it was alright. I think he wants another taste."
And I can't help but think, but what happens if you don't?
The question is one that many people ask when it comes to the safety of sex workers. For Esparanza, there was only one time that a client went too far. "He really was a hot guy, I didn't get why he called me but hey, some dudes get off on paying. Anyway, he was into feet and dildos, I wasn't." Esparanza said that after meeting, the man brought him back to his home where he pulled out a collection of sex toys and socks. "I didn't know what to think because I wasn't sure what he wanted to do. But when he said he wanted to use them on me, I decided to call it quits." He said that when he tried to leave the man grabbed him on forced him to perform oral sex before tossing him on the bed and holding him down.
"In situations like that, I think you go in to survival mode. Some people fight, some don't. I am a small guy and he looked like a gym bunny so I was kind of helpless." Rodriguez said he was sodomized by several different sex toys, and then forced to ejaculate on the mans feet -- with a butt plug inside
of him.
"That is an expereince I will never forget. But that isn't the worst of it, when I went to Kaiser they didn't take me seriously when I said I was an escort. One nurse even said I didn't have to lie, they wouldn't report me to the police." Esparanza said that he wanted to file a claim but could not think of a legal way to go about it without exposing himself to possible charges of prostitution. That is where organizations like SWOP come in.
"There is a lot of sex positive lawyers or people that legislate around sex, especially those who work in HIV decriminalization. They are usually very open to stepping up to helping someone who may be involved in like a prostitution offense," said Rodriguez. SWOP also puts sex workers in touch with healthcare that understands the needs of the patient. "We have several clinics that are just starting to pop up around the country, the most notable being St. James Infirmary in San Francisco that is a clinic just for sex workers. There are things like that popping up in New York City." Rodriguez added that there used to be an adult medical clinic in Los Angeles, however that was shut down but the AIDS Healthcare Foundation several years ago.
"Even without a stand alone clinic, just in the harm reduction field there are always ways for people to say'so and so is a sex worker she is looking for sex worker friendly or at least a non-judgmental place to go get healthcare or get her healthcare needs met.' We can refer her to X, Y, and Z in order to give that to this person," said Rodriguez. When I told Esparanza about the different options and SWOP he said he was unaware that they existed.
"I was never approached or heard of any kind of organization that helped escorts, I figured we were on our own. Except for Rentboy, that really helped me find clients." And what now, that it is closed? Was it really just a site that connected people to companionship, or was it a sophisticated global network of prostitutes working for one pimp?
"Well of course Rentboy's main mission was to connect adults who needed companionship with the kind of people that would make themselves available for hire," said Rodriguez. But the site was also very clear that Rentboy was against the selling of sex specifically. According to Rodriguez, it seemed as if the founders knew how to keep everyone legal and away from the watchful eye of authority, including themselves.
"They were very strict about the type of language you used in your ads. You couldn't say 'blow job is twenty-bucks' it would be a 'time for money or time for companionship' kind of language they would stress you use." The site was also particular about certain pictures and graphics that could and could not be used. Rodriguez said Rentboy was never about advertising sex or a specific sex act for money, it was simply a place where two people could connect. "It is two people running a transaction, or two adults consenting to a transaction for a time, which is why we usually advertise per hour and whatever two people decide to do in that time behind closed doors -- those two people being of similar interest -- that is their business."
The interests Rodriguez alluded to are often what brings one man to seek out the company of another man, especially one who uses pictures of himself naked to start the conversation.
In one instance, this "shared interest" caused a politician to seek more than a summer intern to carry their bags through Europe.
In 2010, anti-gay Southern-Baptist Minister and Psychiatrist George Alan Rekers was caught with a young man whom he had hired from Rentboy to allegedly "carry his luggage" while on vacation in Europe. The fiasco would go on to turn the phrase into a synonym for hiring a male escort. And as for Rekers, he claimed he did not know the young man was an escort until halfway through Europe. Though, it would be hard to miss since one had to create an account to contact an escort, and even the wording in the young mans ad was suggestive. He allegedly had a "smooth, sweet, tight ass" and "perfectly built 8 inch cock" along with his photos.
Prior to this scandal, Rekers had helped to incorporate the Family Research Council as a non-profit organization. Currently the FRC, which is a lobbying group, has been officially listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. However, despite the FRC's claims that gay men are trying to remove all age of consent laws to allow for the glorification of pedophilia, there was clearly at least one person within their own organization who was allegedly engaging in his own homosexual endeavors.
However, Rekers is not the only notorious person to be caught using the site. In 2011 then New Jersey Mayor, Chris Myers, stepped in to the spotlight when an escort from Rentoboy made a website with photos of the mayor in his underwear. Of course the site has since been blocked, and the mayor claimed he was unsure of how someone got the photos. He even went so far as to suggest they had been photoshopped.
But these are just a few cases of men looking to have sex with other men who use Rentboy. In general, it was also a place to find a companion that would not care or judge you. Esperanza said that to him, Rentboy was an escape that some men needed to fulfill a side they kept hidden. "I get'straight' men all the time, it's not a big deal to me. Some have wives and families, girlfriends and some are just single dude who won't admit they like fucking other dudes." He added that although there are sites like the personals section of Craigslist and adam4adam, Rentboy allowed men to choose what they needed and wanted.
"It was kind of like a candy store, you know? Go in, find the biggest, prettiest lollipop and take it home for a good lick. Or you sit on it for all I care, I get paid by the hour."
Keith Hunter, 34, was a Rentboy in Washington D.C. in the early 2000s and has a similar sentiment on the men who use the site. "After college I moved to D.C. I ended up teaching myself art and design with this guy who happened to be a fashion design instructor before that, and in addition he was also working as an escort." Hunter said that the men he lived with, who was also his boyfriend at the time, taught him the ropes and also showed him how to work in design. When Hunter first move to D.C. he was working with an escort agency but later switched to Rentboy for clients. "I think I put an ad [on rentboy] when I first moved to Washington D.C. maybe slightly before. It would have been around 2001 or 2002...I was really actively serving clients in the early 2000s. My memory was that it was very friendly and professional, it was a pretty...they would definitely cater to us."
But what exactly did Hunter offer? An organic connection between two men. "I think that sort of the sex industry in general and Rentboy in particular both really do serve a valuable function. I think the idea that it is mostly very lonely people that are hiring escorts. That is often the case, it's not even so much that they want sexual relief but that they are lonely, they are shy, they don't know how to approach the idea of asking someone for sex. There were a lot of my clients that had never had sex with a man before some had never even admitted to anyone that they were gay themselves. I felt like it was a big responsibility in a way to somebody through that. I felt privilege and part of what I wanted to do was to give real love to somebody, someone who needs love enough that they are willing to go out and pay
for it."
Both Hunter and Esparanza agree that shutting down Rentboy is devastating to men who seek discretion when looking to "connect" with another man. "I think it serves a very necessary function to society, the whole industry. Especially something like Rentboy, it is a very safe place, and it does give a lot of power to both sides. The alternative to having sites like that or agencies -- agencies are exploitative and trying to get money, and I have not had very positive working with agencies, so against something like Rentboy did offer a degree of safety and a degree of empowerment. It kind of made the whole thing seem less sketchy. I thought it was a great website."
According to Rodriguez, the take down is also the loss of something bigger, and it may be only a matter of time before the public witnesses even more government interference towards organizations like Rentboy. "It's more the idea of this loss of an institution, and then going forward always having to wonder: Is rentmen next? Is adam4adam next? Is back page next, you know what I mean? Or is it even safe to be in this online climate? People are rethinking that, which can be dangerous because if people stop the online trade then people who do genuinely have to make survival money are going to be forced to go back into street based work if they do not feel like online advertising is any safer."
So are the escorts on Rentboy safe now that the Feds have siezed the site and filed a complaint against it's owner?
One major concern for the escorts, Rodriguez tells me, is the possibility of being taken into custody on a similar charge as the sites owners. But because there were more than 400,000 men advertising on Rentboy, Rodriguiez said it is unlikely many will face any serious danger.
"Of course, I would say a great majority of the guys on Rentboy will probably not face any immediate danger." Rodriguez added that although there is uncertainty whether or not government, state or other local agencies will prosecute individuals, a bulk of the concern remains for those actually names in the complaint. "There were like five or six different escort profiles that were named and a few of them still are active escorts. So most of the concern lies on the uncertainty whether or not the government or any of the state or local agencies will go after them for advertising."
Despite these concerns, some escorts like Esperanza said they are not afraid of the consequences and do not believe they will be taken in to custody. "You know I'm not afraid of any of that. I know I am safe, I was in the legal with how I phrased that but some of the other guys, they were raunchy," Said Esperanza. "The more explicit or risqué profiles are going to be attacked before they come after the tame ones."
But what separates the "tame" ads from the "risque" ones? "The risky things are me telling somebody my personal preferences or things about myself not in relation to any specific act that was going to be paid for," said Rodriguez. "It's one of those -- and I understand the whole thinly veiled prostitution ring kind of thing -- in that it's 'hey I'm really in to kink' or 'hey really in to bottoming,' 'I'm really in to topping I have this really great cock, if you are someone who is interested in that kind of person you can hire me for this much per hour.' It's not directly 'I am going to fuck you for $200 it's 'these are my tastes, these are my interests and I sell my time at this rate.'"
And that thinly veiled wording is what prosecutors are using to fuel their attack. According to the complaint, some of the primary interests on the ads included things like spanking and role playing. According to NYDailyNews, acting Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Kelly Currie said "Rentboy.com attempted to present a veneer of legality, when in fact this Internet brothel made millions of dollars from the promotion of illegal prostitution." However, because advertisers chose to be on the site and maintained their independence, some have argued that it is a legitimate business.
"Most of the people that went on that site were independent workers who didn't have any kind of relationship that would be considered a pimp relationship. They were just that: independent people trying to gain financial security," said Rodriguez. He went on to say that it is also key to note that the charges were not that of trafficking nor what one would normally see when an actual brothel is raided.
"So we have seen this shift with Rentboy that we haven't seen in other sites, other sites it was anti-trafficking federal agencies going in and saying, like for instance MyRedBook in San Francisco; they went in and said we think or we 'know' that there are a lot of women and children being trafficked via MyRedBook when in actuality that wasn't the case."
So what is the underlying reason for the raid? For one, it is a continued attack on the sex work industry, which has also brought the case for legal prostitution back into the spotlight. In an article published by the Wall Street Journal, "Chase Strangio, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said he shared protesters' criticism of the case, adding that it highlighted broader policy concerns about prosecuting sex work.
'There is a clear effort to crack down on different online platforms where people advertise various services related to sex,' Mr. Strangio said. 'We actually know [the platforms] create safer spaces for people to negotiate in bargaining and other safety needs.'" In addition, the article also sites Strangio as saying, "criminalizing sex work itself is something we should
be questioning."
Rodriguez said that he believes that criminalizing sex work is a labor issue. "Everyone makes their own way of making a living of having a job. Some people choose to work at Walmart some people choose to...work for waste management being a trash collector or recycle collectors. Nobody ever tries to save in anyway people that do that or criminalize them even though most of society thinks 'oh man it would really suck to be a trash-man' or 'it really sucks to work at Walmart' nobody is criminalizing those things." He added that in the case of Rentboy it is people taking control of their own bodies but being told they are in fact victims of the sex trade.
"So we have this industry where guys are taking or I should say people because women are also in the adult industry are taking agency over their own body in order to make financial security but they are being criminalized in the process and told that they can't do that because they are actually victims of the sex trade and it's illegal."
That mentality is also shared by Hunter, who wonders why if people were are offering sex through the site are being prosecuted, why are porn stars and porn studios not facing the same kind of consequences for dealing with sex work.
"I've even heard of guys who will like hire, who will advertise on craigslist or whatever for girls to like be filmed because that makes it legal. You can hire someone suck your dick while you film it that's legal, but it's not legal if you're not filming it," said Hunter. "It's kind of bizarre, the whole thing is bizarre to me. I do think both should be legal, I am definitely pro porn. I don't really see any reason for that distinction but I guess it's for [I am not sure why] -- I think both should be legal."
For Rodriguez, the concept of prosecuting sex workers who do not film their encounter is strange. "With porn it's interesting because for somebody to get paid when there is a camera involved for a sex act, that is pretty legal in most of the 50 states right? Taking out the camera but still paying the person for a sex act is illegal, so there is this weird divid between porn and escorting where the only thing different is a camera being involved and recording [the sex act]."
Sitting at Starbucks with Esparnaza, our conversation has become something more akin to game of cat and mouse. He has begun to answer my questions vaguely and is continuously looking at his phone, so I ask if something is the matter. "I just want to make sure we're not going to go much longer, I have a client to meet in a little." I assure him we are almost done, and ask how men are still contacting him if Rentboy is down. "There are other ways, men will always find a way to have sex, and escorts will find a way to sell it -- I mean sell companionship."
If what Esparanza had said was true, then perhaps these men who are looking for escorts should have nothing to worry about in finding a companion. Rodriguez said it is a little more complicated than that.
"Rentboy was probably the most recognized. They have been around forever, they are reputable. People know what -- for the most part -- people know what they're getting. However guys who hire, the hobbyists who hire, generally have other ways of looking for guys. Even right now there is a forum that was part of a website that was named in part of the complaint and on the forum they have started talking about 'where do we find guys now?' 'How do you go about screening or contacting a guy on rentmen and making sure he is legit,' 'how do you go about contacting someone on adam4adam and know he's legit,' 'what new sites or what different sites can we use.'" Rodriguez added that the "hobbyists" also have to be concerned about the take down. "[Hobbyists are asking] 'how do we make sure when we're calling people we are protecting ourselves as well' because in a lot of cases, the people who hire have just as much to lose as the guys who they are hiring."
And of course since there is an escorting site, there is also a place hobbyists can go to review the advertisers. One such site is Daddysreviews.com, which also is a news site for the gay sex industry. On the site, users can review escorts, sites and locations best for sex work and those seeking companionship. This site, Rodriguez said, can be beneficial to escorts looking to move up in the industry.
"There's this interesting dynamic with having something like daddy's review forum where people can review escorts or even just talk about them in a space online where if you charge $200 an hour and you are on Rentboy you can probably get away with that," said Rodriguez. "Some people go lower when they are starting out just so they can generate interest. If you try to go higher and you're not a well known person -- meaning you are not in porn also or going city to city all the time because you're hot and everybody knows you. Those are the kind of guys that can get away with charging $300-$400 and hour. Most, I would say 80 percent of guys on Rentboy, are in the $200 range."
Esparanza tells me that he has never heard of Daddysreviews, but after an hour and half long interview, he decides to call it quits. "I really need to go man, I have a lot of stuff to take care of today," he says as he begins to collect his small belongings. After a few minutes he heads outside to meet his Uber that will take him to
another client.
It's a hot day in Los Angeles and people continue to filter in and out of the cool coffee shop while I go over my notes. There are some gaps in Espaanza's story that need to be filled, so I text and ask if he would be free later to clarify some things, or if he would do it by email. I get a text from him later in the evening after I have returned home.
"Time is money, and if you want more of mine, you'll need to pay. Sorry, a boy's gotta eat."More than 2.5 million Europeans have given their support to a campaign against the EU-US and EU-Canada trade deals, the Stop TTIP movement said Monday.
© AFP 2018 / FREDERICK FLORIN TTIP Aims to Shrink Influence of EU's Foreign Policy – French Lawmaker
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership's (TTIP) stated goal is to ease the flow of goods and services across the Atlantic. The pact seeks to create the world's largest free trade zone, encompassing over 60 percent of global production.
The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a similar agreement between the European Union and Canada.
"New milestone: More than 2.5 million Europeans have signed our ECI [European Citizens’ Initiative] against #TTIP and #CETA," the organization said on Twitter.
Anti-TTIP activists have repeatedly pointed out that the TTIP deal has been negotiated in unusual secrecy, raising fears that the agreement could benefit multinational corporations and corporate rights-holders at the expense of sovereign nations and consumers.
In July, the Stop TTIP movement said it had planned large-scale anti-TTIP protests across Europe for October.Lincoln-based accelerator NMotion has announced seven startups for its 2015 summer program. Brian Ardinger, managing director of NMotion, …
“We like the mix of founders and ideas for our 2015 cohort and are excited about working with this group. Applications were up 55% from the previous year and included applications from all over the world, so it was tough making the final cut,” said Ardinger.
The final list includes startups from Lincoln, Omaha, Kansas City and Iowa City.
“Even though worldwide applications were higher than last year, it stands as a testament to this region that we chose so many startups from our own backyard.” said Ardinger.
This year’s batch includes the following teams:
BugEater Labs – Food products based on innovative cricket-based protein
– Food products based on innovative cricket-based protein Comp’d – Subscription service for live shows and entertainment
– Subscription service for live shows and entertainment Grabicon – Marketing tools for developers
– Marketing tools for developers Intellifarm – Intelligent machinery for agriculture
– Intelligent machinery for agriculture MyBlock – A rating system for neighborhoods
– A rating system for neighborhoods Seamster.io – Marketing platform for contextual content delivery
– Marketing platform for contextual content delivery SpectatorApp – Mobile platform for local sports statistics
NMotion startups will receive $15,000 in seed capital in exchange for a 6% equity stake. They will also receive coworking space and access to over 100 mentors, developers, and designers. The 90-day program will begin April 27 and will end with a demo day on July 28th in Lincoln.
The program is funded by Invest Nebraska, members of the Nebraska Angels, and other individual investors. It is sponsored by the University of Nebraska, NUtech Ventures, Nebraska Innovation Campus, as well as the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development, and Union Bank and Trust.
NMotion is a member of the Global Accelerator Network.
(Visited 1 times, 1 visits today)Rainier Beach High counselor indicted on drug charges
A Seattle Public Schools drug and alcohol counselor has been indicted on drug charges following allegations that he and another man conspired to distribute prescription pain killers.
Rainier Beach High School drug and alcohol intervention specialist Robert Henry Smith, 59, was arrested Thursday night along with 37-year-old Adrian Demetrius Johnson, a U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman said Friday in a statement.
A federal grand jury indicted the men Wednesday, accusing both of conspiring to distribute oxycodone. Smith is also charged with three counts of distribution of the drug; Johnson is charged with possession of oxycodone with intent to distribute.
Announcing the arrests Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle said Smith is on paid leave from Seattle Public Schools. None of the drug sales referenced in the indictment occurred on school district property and none of the alleged drug sales is believed to have been to students at the school.
Smith is on paid administrative leave from the school. He has worked in the district since 1992 and has been a drug and alcohol specialist in the district since 1998. It was not immediately clear how long he has been at Rainier Beach.
Before becoming a specialist he was an hourly employee and probably was a paraprofessional, a district spokeswoman said.
Staff at the high school are being briefed. The school district expects to inform parents about Smith later Friday through its automated telephone system.
The investigation involved a series of direct drug transactions in November and December, according to the statement.
According to court documents, Seattle police launched an investigation into Smith after a confidential informant came forward with the allegations. The informant, federal prosecutors contend, said Smith and Adrian Johnson were dealing oxycodone, sometimes sold as OxyContin and Percocet.
Officers with Seattle police and the Drug Enforcement Administration monitored four controlled buys involving the men, prosecutors allege. During two of them, prosecutors allege Smith met with Johnson to pick up the drugs before delivering them to the informant.
While the first two purchases took place at Smith's Skyway home, the third drew Smith away from Rainier Beach High to meet with the informant, prosecutors allege.
"Law enforcement observed Smith leave Rainier Beach High School during school hours, and meet the (confidential source) approximately two blocks away from the high school to conduct the drug transaction," Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisca Borlchewski said in court documents.
During the fourth buy, police stopped two men at Smith's home who told investigators they'd purchased drugs from Smith on at least 20 occasions, Borlchewski added.
According to court documents, Johnson had previously been prosecuted federally on drug trafficking charges. Court records appear to indicate that Johnson was convicted of cocaine-related charges in 1992 and sentenced to a three-year prison term.
Speaking following Friday's hearing, Seattle Police Detective Rudy Gonzales, an investigator on the case, said Johnson and Smith had been acquainted for some time.
Borlchewski said search warrants were served on Smith's home subsequent to his arrest. She and Gonzales each alleged evidence related to the case was recovered, though it was not clear whether drugs were found at the scene.
Witnesses in the case reported obtaining 10 to 60 tablets of oxycodone at a time from Smith, Borlchewski said. Though the exact per-pill price was not released, the illicit tablets usually are sold of $20 to $60 depending on the size of the dose.
Both men made their initial appearances on the indictment Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Both pleaded not guilty. They were ordered to be held in custody until detention hearings could be held next week.
The charges contained in the indictment are punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $2 million fine.The ascendancy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is the salient event in American orchestral life of the past twenty-five years. In 1992, the L.A. Phil was on no one’s list of leading ensembles; the classical-music business had it pegged as a second-tier orchestra that could never quite escape the shadow of Hollywood. In that year, though, the young Finnish composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen took over as music director, and New York-based critics increasingly found themselves booking flights west. The orchestra had already made advances under the guidance of Ernest Fleischmann, its longtime executive. A new-music series was gaining momentum; programming had diversified; Frank Gehry had drawn up plans for a futuristic concert hall. Salonen, cerebral and stylish, brought those ideas to fruition, and added many of his own. He was met with skepticism early on, as I recounted in a 2007 Profile, and yet by the time he left, in 2009, the L.A. Phil was widely regarded as not only the liveliest of American orchestras but also the most robust. When Disney Hall finally opened, in 2003, it created a psychological space in which living composers no longer came across as intruders. The orchestra presented more contemporary music than any ensemble of its size, and, at the same time, it achieved financial stability, disproving the notion that new music was box-office poison.
Deborah Borda, who has been the L.A. Phil’s president and C.E.O. since 2000, played a decisive role in its rise. Managers tend to fall into two categories: those who prize order, thereby risking an excess of caution, and those who foment creativity, thereby risking chaos and waste. Borda has the rare ability to cultivate experiments and impose discipline in equal measure. The music world, by no means crowded with leaders of this calibre, has long wondered what she might do next. She seemed likely to assume an even more expansive role, such as running Lincoln Center or Juilliard. Instead, last week, she caused a bicoastal tizzy by announcing that she would return to the New York Philharmonic, which she had led before going to Los Angeles. Back in 2000, her move west had looked like a step down. Now, in a spatial paradox worthy |
had hatched. This had turned into a fruitless endeavor. [Don’t get too cocky! Just you wait! You’ll be wiping my ass the next time we meet. I’ll teach you a lesson! Humph!] Jun Mo Xie cursed inside. But, he also thought of the Hong Jun Pagoda. He thought of an entire layer filled with the legendary treasures he had collected. This made him very happy. This trip to Tian Fa had been an enriching and profitable endeavor. In fact, the profits had far surpassed his imagination. It had been a bumper harvest! Jun Mo Xie was satisfied. He sighed, and his body suddenly got up into the air before he vanished. He had already initiated the Yin Yang Escape, and was moving unseen through the forest towards his destination — the Southern Heaven City. [Only one important ingredient is left… the Level Nine Xuan Root!] Grandpa Jun’s cultivation would be advanced to Spirit Xuan realm once the Level Nine Xuan Root had been acquired. In fact, it would go beyond the mere Spirit Xuan realm! He would be at Spirit Xuan’s second level’s peak in one enthralling step! [Grandpa’s cultivation is lacking in relation to the world at large. But, it’s one of the top ones in Tian Xiang City… perhaps even the whole of the Empire. Tian Xiang’s Emperor could think of dealing with the Jun Family despite its military prowess, but he wouldn’t think about messing with a Spirit Xuan expert without fearing of the consequences!] [No one can bear such consequences with ease. Even the Emperor of a country is no exception! A Spirit Xuan expert as an enemy can tantamount an ocean of corpses and blood!] Then, Jun Mo Xie settled his heart, and concentrated on dealing with his Third Uncle’s situation. The Silver Blizzard City… he couldn’t take out the entire Xiao Family for the time being. But, he still had to make his uncle and Han Yan Yao meet. This was the greatest worry that had plagued his uncle’s heart. This was also Han Yan Yao’s greatest hope. And, Jun Mo Xie had taken it upon himself to help the two. Jun Mo Xie returned to the Southern Heaven City the next day. But, it was already night time. In other words, he had already spent a full day and night in the forest. "Where had you gone to, you brat? What took you so long to return?" Jun Mo Xie ran into Jun Wu Yi’s question the moment he returned. His three Spirit Xuan maternal uncles were staring at him. And, one could tell from their eyes that were ready to give him a beating. The three men had their hair turn white with worry for their precious nephew since the youngster had gone missing for a day and night. Moreover, this was the Xue Hun Manor’s territory. So, Jun Wu Yi and the three Dongfang brothers would’ve rushed to either Xue Hun Manor… or the Silver Blizzard City to look for Jun Mo Xie if he hadn’t returned in some time… "Well… I had just gone for a casual stroll. And, I hadn’t gone very far." Jun Mo Xie turned his gaze from his four uncles, slipped-away into the shadows, and disappeared without a trace. [I can only tell you that I went for a stroll into the forest yesterday. What a joke! I had a very cheerful and friendly chat with seven Xuan Beast King. And, I’ve come to a mutual agreement with them. We have unanimously reached a mutually beneficial agreement to cooperate…] The four men looked at each other. [You went for a stroll? You brat, this is your first time in this city! You’re a stranger here! So, where did you go for a stroll? And, can one go for a stroll that lasts for a day and a night?] [You didn’t go far? You could’ve gone far enough to visit Tian Xiang City by now! You brat, don’t you know that we four brothers were worried to death?] However, Jun Mo Xie had returned, and didn’t wish to discuss his whereabouts. In any case, he had returned safe and sound. So, the four elder men were in no mood to inquire further. Moreover, Jun Wu Yi was aware that his nephew possessed special powers, and not only in name at that. They were presently in Southern Heaven City. But, he wouldn’t have been too worried if his nephew had gone missing for two to three days in Tian Xiang City.In the April 2010 issue of New England Journal of Medicine, William Maisel and Tadayoshi Kohno state that “medical-device manufacturers have a legal responsibility to be vigilant and responsive to security threats, although their specific responsibilities have not been well delineated.” [1]
Their assessment is clearly accurate, and it’s evident that attacks against medical devices, either direct or via collateral damage, are a current threat and will only increase in the future.
Currently, purchasers of medical devices have very few tools with which to begin approaching medical device vendors and have security concerns formally addressed. That said, some positive movement has occurred, specifically in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) creation of the “Manufacturer Disclosure Statement for Medical Device Security.” From a risk assessment perspective, the HIMSS MD2 worksheet [2] can provide a starting point for security discussion between vendor and purchaser.
However, the form is hardly a comprehensive document. For tangible action, we need significant expansion to the HIMSS "Manufacturer Disclosure Statement for Medical Device Security." Were this 4 year-old document revised to include security questions derived from open work like CWE [3], OWASP [4], and SANS Top 20 [5] would create a powerful tool that the purchasers of medical equipment can utilize to engage medical device vendors in a real security discussion.
[1] http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/362/13/1164
[2] http://www.himss.org/ASP/topics_FocusDynamic.asp?faid=99
[3] http://www.nema.org/stds/complimentary-docs/upload/MDS2%20Worksheet.xls
[4] http://cwe.mitre.org
[5] http://www.owasp.org
[6] http://www.sans.org/top-cyber-security-risks/CLOSE The Fox News CEO is being investigated after sexual harassment allegations were brought forth by Gretchen Carlson and others. Newslook
Fox News chairman Roger Ailes walks with his wife Elizabeth Tilson as they leave the News Corp building in New York City on July 19, 2016. (Photo11: Drew Angerer, Getty Images)
“Mother of mercy! Is this the end of Rico?” Edward G. Robinson famously asks in the movie Little Caesar.
Mother of mercy! Is this the end of Roger Ailes?
Yep.
The mighty Fox News panjandrum is heading for the exits in the wake of a sexual harassment suit by former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson and a steady drip-drip-drip of damaging allegations, largely delivered via New York magazine writer and Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman. Fox parent 21st Century Fox announced Thursday that Ailes was out.
Make no mistake, this is a huge deal. And what happens next will have large consequences.
Over the past two decades, the right-tilting Fox News has been the dominant force in cable news and an important player in Republican politics. It is also a mighty cultural phenomenon, as key to the identity of many of its fans as NPR is to those of a very different orientation.
And that is largely the doing of one man: Roger Ailes.
Sure, Fox News is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, and Murdoch is hardly known as a shrinking violet. But at Fox News, CEO Ailes has wielded pretty much absolute power, dictating strategy and tactics alike.
Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson has filed a lawsuit against the CEO and Chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, for sexual harassment and retaliation. (Photo11: Noam Galai, Getty Images)
And part of the reason is that, as they say, you can't argue with success. Under Ailes, Fox News has been both a ratings juggernaut and less a cash cow than an entire herd of cash cows, a formidable money machine. The network is said to bring in more than a billion dollars a year in profits. That's real money.
If Karl Rove was the architect of George W. Bush's winning campaigns, Ailes was both the architect and builder of Fox.
Murdoch's sons James and Lachlan, now running the family business with Dad, have long been uncomfortable with Ailes. But his relationship with Rupert, not to mention all those dollars, protected him. Carlson's suit, with its allegations of gross, sexist behavior by the boss — "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better" — plus reports of similar charges from, among others, Fox superstar and noted Donald Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, gave the brothers the running room they needed to turn the page.
Just weeks ago, Ailes seemed as impregnable as always. One bombshell lawsuit and, just like former NBC anchor Brian Williams after charges of fabrication, the great man suddenly was toast.
So what happens next? Is change in the offing?
The popular channel offers a mix of celebrity-powered talk programming — Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Kelly — and news. The lineup of news hosts includes respected pros such as Chris Wallace and Bret Baier, and those two and Kelly did a fine job moderating GOP debates during the recent primary. It was Kelly's rough questioning of Trump over his comments about women that provoked The Donald's largely one-sided feud with the Fox host.
But there's little doubt that the network has played a key role fanning the flames of such rightist shibboleths as Benghazi and birtherism. And Ailes long has seen himself as a GOP power player as well as a TV potentate.
Will that change under new leadership? Fox likes to promote its coverage as "fair and balanced." Is there a kinder, gentler Fox in our future?
Complicating the challenge (not to say opportunity) that lies ahead is the timing. Election years are always good for cable news, and this one, fueled by the rise of Trump and his attention-demanding antics, has been particularly good for all three networks. Of course, should Clinton win, there's likely to be a massive appetite on the right for Clinton-bashing. Even ratings-challenged, liberal-leaning MSNBC tasted success during the George W. Bush/Iraq War years.
One of the hallmarks of the Ailes era has been Fox's role as a full employment act for failed GOP presidential candidates. (Sarah Palin, anyone?) Should that tradition end, candidates need not despair. They may find work at CNN, which recently (and dubiously) snapped up ousted Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
I first heard of Ailes many years ago when my friend Joe McGinniss was working on his groundbreaking book The Selling of the President 1968. The book was the first to document the burgeoning role of Madison Avenue advertising techniques on presidential campaigns, with a focus on the campaign of one Richard M. Nixon.
His key source: Roger Ailes, who was working for Nixon.
While the two men couldn't have been more different politically — McGinniss was as liberal as Ailes is conservative — they remained lifelong friends. Shortly before McGinniss died in 2014, he was talking to me about offering his take on Gabriel Sherman's Ailes biography in USA TODAY.
How could the two be such good friends?
"Mutual candor is one aspect of our friendship," McGinniss wrote in 2011. "Roger’s terrific sense of humor is another: He is one of the funniest people I know. I don’t think I’ve spent five minutes in his company, privately, without laughing out loud at least three times at things he’s said."
The current unpleasantness is no doubt putting that vaunted sense of humor to a severe test.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rem Rieder on Twitter @remrieder
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2abwN3QThe Post and Courier, a small newspaper from Charleston, South Carolina, won journalism's biggest honor, taking home the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for service journalism for its work on violence against women.
The series, "Till Death Do Us Part," brought attention to the state's at-risk female population. The Pulitzer citation called the work "a riveting series that probed why South Carolina is among the deadliest states in the union for women and put the issue of what to do about it on the state’s agenda."
The paper's newsroom erupted in cheers as they watched the announcement.
Video of @postandcourier newsroom reacting to winning Pulitzer Prize Public Service gold medal. #tilldeath #pulitzer A video posted by Andrew Knapp (@offlede) on Apr 20, 2015 at 12:21pm PDT
The prizes this year were marked by a heavy focus on fine, detail-oriented investigations of heavy subjects, including Medicare billing and tax loopholes.
The New York Times won the most prizes, with three in total including international reporting. The Seattle TImes won for breaking news. Bloomberg, which was founded in 1990, took home its first Pulitzer, with reporter Zach Mider winning for his explanatory reporting on how corporations avoid taxes.
Bubbly in the newsroom because Bloomberg News wins first Pulitzer Prize! Congrats @zachmider! pic.twitter.com/HH8HTDlWqV — Oshrat Carmiel (@OshratCarmiel) April 20, 2015
The Houston Chronicle also won its first Pulitzer award, taking home the prize for commentary for Lisa Falkenberg's work on the abuse of grand juries that led to wrongful convictions.
Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post won the national reporting award for her coverage of the Secret Service's numerous lapses.
The local reporting award went to the tiny Daily Breeze of Torrance, California, for alleged corruption by a local school superintendent. The paper employs seven reporters and has a circulation of 63,000.
The Wall Street Journal snapped a cold streak and won its first Pulitzer in several years for non-opinion writing, with the paper's staff wining for its investigative work on "Medicare Unmasked," which delved into the inner workings of health care providers. The Journal was also a finalist with its "Deadly Medicine," series, which the judges called "a stellar reporting project that documented the significant cancer risk to women of a common surgery and prompted a change in the prescribed medical treatment."
The paper celebrated heartily.
Cheers to @WSJ for its #Pulitzer for a massive, yearslong investigation into Medicare pic.twitter.com/3r0kLg7Nuf — Allison Morrow (@alliwsj) April 20, 2015
The Journal's investigative reporting award is shared with Eric Lipton of the New York Times, who won for his work on lobbyists and their influence in politics.
The Los Angeles Times won in two categories: feature writing for Diana Marcum's series on people affected by the drought in California, and in criticism for Mary McNamara's writing on television.
Kathleen Kingsbury of the Boston Globe won for editorial writing; Adama Zyglis of the Buffalo News won for editorial cartooning. The photography staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch won for breaking news photography on the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri; and Daniel Berehulak, a freelance photographer for the New York Times, won for feature photography for his series of photographs on the Ebola epidemic in western Africa.
In the non-journalism awards, Anthony Doerr won for his acclaimed fiction title "All the Light We Cannot See," and the biography prize went to David I. Kertzer for "The Pope and Mussolini."
A complete list of the winners can be found at Pulitzer.org.
Celebrations broke out in many of the winning newsrooms.
Congrats to L.A. Times staffers @DianaMarcum, @MaryMacTV for their Pulitzer wins in criticism, feature writing! pic.twitter.com/yMSomLDzvs — Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 20, 2015
First Pulitzer ever for the Houston Chronicle! @ChronFalkenberg for commentary. pic.twitter.com/lgJdhlb58o — Lisa Gray (@LisaGray_HouTX) April 20, 2015
The Pulitzer committee also revealed its finalists, which included the late David Carr of the New York Times for his column on media and Reuters for an expansive series about the hoarding of influence by a small group of Supreme Court lawyers.Credit: Nick Roche/Chris O’Halloran (Marvel Comics)
Credit: Nick Roche/Chris O’Halloran (Marvel Comics)
Press Release
Today, Marvel Entertainment and comiXology, Amazon’s premier digital comic shopping & reading service, announced the next exclusive comiXology Originals digital comic series with the debut of Avengers: Back to Basics, a 6-issue bi-weekly series written by Peter David with art by art by Brian Level on issues #1-2 and #5-6, Juanan Ramirez on issues #3-4, and covers by Nick Roche and Chris O’Halloran.
Avengers: Back to Basics arrives March 7, 2018 for $2.99 on comiXology and Kindle as part of the comiXology Originals line of exclusive digital content and will be available to current subscribers of the popular comiXology Unlimited service. New subscribers to comiXology Unlimited can also enjoy it for free as part of their 30-day free trial. Avengers: Back to Basics joins Black Panther: Long Live The King, The Immortal Iron Fists and Thor Vs. Hulk: Champions of the Universe, with more exclusive Marvel series to be announced.
A perfect entry point for new fans and longtime readers alike, Avengers: Back to Basics features a terrifying tale of Ragnarok as told by legendary writer Peter David! A solar eclipse is about to hit North America – but this is no scientific phenomenon. The Avengers uncover that a new Darkness is coming, and with it, a terrible and ancient danger. Can Earth’s Mightiest Heroes avert Ragnarok, or will its servants of death prove triumphant?
“With buzz over the Avengers reaching a fever pitch, we’re thrilled to help bring fans – new and old – a brand new Avengers story featuring Thor, The Hulk, Iron Man and other favorites sure to capture the imagination of all readers,” said Chip Mosher, comiXology’s Head of Content & Senior Director of Communications. “And remember: each issue of Avengers: Back to Basics – just as with all other comiXology Originals series from Marvel – are free to read as part of the comiXology Unlimited subscription service!”
Fans across the globe have been attracted to Marvel’s amazing characters through top-grossing movies, critically-acclaimed TV series, and ground-breaking new publishing series that have driven titles like Guardians of the Galaxy, Daredevil, and Black Panther to new heights, alongside perennial favorites like Amazing Spider-Man and Avengers.
This past spring, Marvel Comics joined comiXology Unlimited, giving fans the ability to read over 10,000 titles including thousands of Marvel Comics single issues and collections as part of their comiXology Unlimited membership, featuring Super Heroes like The Avengers, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Black Panther, Iron Fist, Guardians of the Galaxy and more.[WATCH!] Maxine Waters Literally RUNS AWAY When Questioned About Her Ties To Russia
Maxine Waters was asked about her newly discovered financial ties to Russia and she literally runs down the street away from the camera.
Maxine Waters decided to show her face in public this week during an Anti-Trump protest in LA. But she got a little more than she bargained for.
While posing for a photo with her, YouTuber Auston with the “Fleccas Talks” channel asked her a question related to recently available House financial disclosure documents, she held $200,000 in Russia-linked retirement accounts…
“THAT’S A LIE!” she yells before running off.
Here is what happened:
Well, Maxine, It is NOT a lie!
Maxine Waters has repeatedly called for President Trump to be impeached. Waters has done so on a regular basis for his supposed ties to Russia.
Comey finally put that dog to rest yesterday. It seems that Waters DOES have financial and OTHER ties to Russia!
It turns out that Maxine Waters has plenty of her own money invested in Russia.
According to Waters’ most recently available House financial disclosure documents, she held $200,000 in Russia-linked retirement accounts.
But in the immortal words of the late Billy Mays, “That’s Not All!”
As Heat Street has recently discovered, Waters has some other quiet ties of her own to Russia. She has a close relationship with the pro-Russian, anti-American communist group known as the Workers World Party.
The Workers World Party is a militant left-wing group that sympathizes with many enemies of the U.S. That would be including North Korea, Iran, and Cuba! It also supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and is a fan of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
The Workers World party’s stances are often carried by Russia’s state news organization, Russia Today.
Heat Street has identified several instances where Waters had not only worked alongside the Workers World Party, but had been given an honorary position during their proceedings.
From Heat Street:
Heat Street has identified at least three instances in which Waters directly or indirectly participated in the Workers World Party’s activities. Back in 2004, the congresswoman participated in a rally organized by the International Action Center, an offshoot organization of the Workers World Party that opposes any use of military force by the United States. The event’s leaflet inviting people to attend the rally lists Rep. Waters as the top guest. In 2005, Rep. Waters sent her aide April Lawrence to the party’s “Peace Conference” where Lawrence addressed the participants on the topic of social justice. More recently, in 2009, the Congresswoman was a speaker at an event organized by the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights, a group whose board of members includes Abayomi Azikiwe, an organizer for the Workers World Party. Azikiwe also chaired the event.
That makes Maxine Waters a YUUUUGE hypocrite!
Waters’ affiliation to the Workers World Party should come as no surprise, as her economic values align with the group.
In 2009, Waters told the CEO of Shell Oil that she wanted the government to take over and run their companies. Waters told Hofmeister that she wanted to “socialize” before catching herself. After taking a moment to rethink her statement she stated, “basically taking over, and the government running all of your companies.”
Maxine Waters is a moron!When I heard that someone had decided to ‘rework’ THE WIZARD OF OZ, I was abhorred. The classic tale of the lost farm girl in a magic land has been around for 75 years, and has still held up. But, it was inevitable that eventually, someone would take a pen or a piano and put their magic touch on this fantastic established work.
Written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jeremy Sams, this THE WIZARD OF OZ may have “Over the Rainbow” and “We’re off to see the Wizard”, but you’re not going to see the classic film brought to life on stage. You’re going to see something that isn’t quite right— something that’ll leave you feeling uncomfortable instead of enchanted.
The Acting:
Danielle Wade, who won the role of Dorothy through a reality TV competition, is deserving of the ruby slippers. This girl has a stunning voice. While there are elements of Garland’s Dorothy, Wade makes the part her own and is probably the best actress I have seen as Dorothy. When ‘Over the Rainbow’ finally arrives, time slows, and you are reminded why you came to see this show.
Jamie McKnight is the Scarecrow. He’s likeable and has new material to work with. His singing is great and he’s limber. The only thing is with the new material, Jamie decided to yell a few lines as to appear childish. I didn’t much care for the yelling.
Mike Jackson is one of the best Tin Men I’ve seen. He nails the compassion down pat and is an excellent tap dancer. I never really liked the Tin Man much. But during this show, I was almost always finding myself enjoying his acting out of the three friends.
Lee MacDougall is a fine actor and does the part of the Cowardly Lion justice, but there are issues here that I’ll discuss later.
Jacquelyn Piro Donovan is a funny witch, making us laugh with some good one liners and has a pretty good cackle.
Robin Evan Willis is a fantastic Glinda and has an angelic voice.
The show follows the same basic plot of the classic film. But, some songs are emitted, new ones are added, and all the dialogue is new. You’ll hear the classic, “I’ll get you my pretty” and “There’s no place like home,” but, for the most part, you’re going to see a slightly more spunky Dorothy, an extremely stupid Scarecrow and a very unwelcome characterization of The Lion.
Let’s talk about the new songs first.
The Songs:
The first new song is ‘Nobody Understands Me”, a catchy tune Dorothy sings. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry just don’t understand Toto is in danger, and in my opinion, is the best new song. While not particularly needed, it is catchy and reiterates Dorothy’s feeling of not being heard.
The second new song is ‘Wonders of the World’, sung by Professor Marvel. The song is meant to give The Wizard something to sing and reenforce the idea that there is something better than Kansas. But, the song has the same idea as “Over the Rainbow” and that song is superior. But, perhaps just a fault no person can escape, the scene itself is something you NEED, but it’s never entertaining. I will say the new script brings more humor along with The Wizard, so it’s not as boring as it has been in other productions.
After ‘Wonders’, we hear what we are familiar with… “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”, “If I only Had…” “The Merry Land of Oz” and so on. But, when the Wizard demands to be brought the Witch’s broomstick, we have a song… “Bring me the Broomstick.” This is the one addition that absolutely needs to be thrown in the trash. It’s not a fun song and it slows the story down to a halt.
Next, right before Dorothy is captured by the Wicked Witch, The Witch sings ‘Red Shoe Blues’, a drab, lounge-ish tune about how the slippers will make her powers stronger. The song is okay. But it’s nothing special. Some shows have had the Witch sing ‘The Jitterbug’, a song cut from the original film for time, which is a nice fit and frankly, a much better song.
The last song that is added is “Already Home” sung by Glinda, just before Dorothy clicks her heels. This song is actually pretty good. The melody is magical and the lyrics are quite clever.
Home is a place in your heart/ Every Journey takes you back to where you start.
All in all, the trouble here is you just can’t top the original. Music or songs. The original music is classic and no song will ever top ‘Over the Rainbow.’ These new songs can stand on their own, but don’t match the creativity of the work done by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg
The Script (Called the Book for stage shows) :
The new book is where the real problem is. Some editions are welcomed:
Dorothy isn’t entirely a ‘damsel in distress’ and has some spunk, the Wizard is really funny, and there is some nice banter between The Witch and Glinda.
You’ll also see that the Scarecrow is extremely stupid here. He can never remember what it is he wants from the Wizard. This was different, but it leads to a lot of comedy from the actor playing the Scarecrow, and he had me laughing.
But, there is one characterization brought on by new lines that is absolutely tasteless. In this production, the Cowardly Lion is gay.
He never directly states it, but ‘jokes’ are said to humor us:
“I’m a proud friend of Dorothy’s”
“The Lion Sleeps tonight”
“I’m a Lion in Winter!”
You could argue there was some “hint” in the original the Lion might in fact have been gay. The word “Sissy” is in his song, and he does get a perm at the Emerald City… Those two things are from the original. But here, the entire character of the Lion is built around his purposed homosexuality, even being told by an Emerald City Guard, “My wife runs the spa! You’ll love it!”
During “If I only Had the Nerve” when the Lion Sings, ‘I’m just a Dandy Lion”, he leans on the Tin Man’s shoulder and the Tin man slowly backs away.
In a time when gays are struggling to earn the right to marry and face constant discrimination, why must we play up the stereotype? Why does the Tin Man have to be “freaked out” by the Lion? And in THE WIZARD OF OZ, no less. Judy Garland was a gay icon, (hence, ‘friend of Dorothy’s) and many gays identify with her journey. The fact that Webber and Sams felt the need to write the Lion this way is beyond me. Sure, maybe it gets a laugh. But it’s deplorable. This is the major problem with the production and I strongly suggest a re-write.
The book also has a completely messed up change. When Dorothy is saying good bye to her three friends, just before she returns home, she says to the scarecrow, “I think I’ll miss you most of all.” It’s a tender moment. But, NOT HERE.
“Hey, we were with you too” says the Tin Man.
“Yeah, Thanks a lot!” pipes the Lion.
The couple sitting in front of me looked at each other at this moment, and the woman made an expression like, “What the hell was that?”
Again, this was an attempt at humor, but it falls flat. It makes the Tin Man and Lion look like assholes, and in THE WIZARD OF OZ, the only person you want to hate is the Wicked Witch.
Speaking of the Witch— In Kansas, when Miss Gulch arrives, you’ll soon realize she doesn’t have a basket on her bike. She threatens Dorothy that she wants the dog destroyed and she’ll “be back in one hour” with the order from the sheriff. But, after she rides off, Dorothy runs away immediately.
The fact that Toto is never torn away from Dorothy’s arms changes the narrative completely. Having Miss Gulch threatening her just isn’t enough. Having Toto placed in the basket and seeing Dorothy cry is the strongest element in Kansas. But here, Toto is never taken from Dorothy. It’s something that needs to be there.
Another thing about Toto, which I’m not sure is written in the book or some kind of animal trainer decision—
Where’s Toto?
Toto is absent from the stage. A LOT. Now, I’ve seen productions with stuffed animals and I’ve seen productions with real animals on a leash. The dog playing Toto was extremely well trained. He’d sit on a stool for a few minutes or he’d run away, right on cue. When he wasn’t sitting or running he was on a leash. But, the strange thing was, Toto was often taken off stage and absent for long periods of time.
In Munchkinland, The Wicked Witch arrives— and little Toto is MIA. This is usually where Dorothy scoops Toto up and hugs him for dear life… and we all know the Witch will get Dorothy and “her little dog too”. Well, Toto magically ran on stage about 15 seconds before the Witch was to threaten to get the little dog.
I feel there was something more here, because, at Emerald City, Dorothy is told “No dogs allowed!” when she tries to go to the Wizard’s throne room. Toto was then taken off stage and absent until midway of the Haunted Forest scene.
If you want to give the animal a break, I have no problem with that. But, when you give the animal a break needs to be decided carefully. Toto has GOT to be with Dorothy during the Munchkinland sequence… he can’t just run on before the Witch is suddenly to mention him. The amount of breaks ‘Toto’ had made it seem like Dorothy didn’t care about her little dog at all. I mean, it just didn’t make sense.
This show has promise. But, in its current state, it comes off like a work-shopped musical. It needs a major overhaul.
Final Verdict: The production looks nice: beautiful sets, costumes and some CGI effects for the Tornado. But, while the production is visually appealing, its book has got some serious diarrhea.
AdvertisementsAn Opportunity To Define ‘Analytic Processes’
Yesterday the NCAA delivered media gold with another controversial college football playoff selection slate. The noon announcement, which of course came much later in the hour, attracted plenty of viewers and set off waves of phone alerts, twitter feeds, and facebook discussions. Since college sports is truly all about showmanship — perhaps they succeeded?
From the point of view of most fans, the results were far more mixed. Some of the pre-announcement analysis anticipated this quite well. Most fans had a point of view. They had a team (or teams) they believed were worthy of a berth. They then engaged in gratuitous acts of confirmation bias, knocking down the performance of the teams they deemed unworthy. Subjectively speaking, there was no way this was going to end well.
Objectively… This Wasn’t
Years ago, there was no college football playoff. CONTINUEPhysicists are working on a new theory to detect dark matter. They believe that dark matter particles annihilate into “dark radiation” when they collide and that they should be able to detect the signals from this radiation.
The majority of the mass in the Universe remains unknown. Despite knowing very little about this dark matter, its overall abundance is precisely measured. In other words: Physicists know it is out there, but they have not yet detected it.
It is definitely worth looking for, argues Ian Shoemaker, former postdoctoral researcher at Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology (CP3), Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Southern Denmark, now at Penn State, USA.
“There is no way of predicting what we can do with dark matter, if we detect it. But it might revolutionize our world. When scientists discovered quantum mechanics, it was considered a curiosity. Today quantum mechanics plays an important role in computers”, he says.
Ever since dark matter was first theorized there have been many attempts to look for it, and now Ian Shoemaker and fellow scientists, Associate Professor Mads Toudal Frandsen, CP3, and John F. Cherry, postdoctoral researcher from Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA, suggest a new approach. They present their work in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Look in underground caves
On Earth several detectors are placed in underground cavities, where disturbing noise is minimized. The hope is that one of these detectors will one day catch a dark matter particle passing through Earth.
According to Ian Shoemaker, it is possible that this might happen, but given how little we know about dark matter we should keep an open mind and explore all paths that could lead to its detection.
One reason for this is that dark matter is not very dense in our part of the universe.
“If we add another way of looking for dark matter – the way, we suggest – then we will increase our chances of detecting dark matter in our underground cavities”, says Shoemaker.
He and his colleagues now suggest looking for the signs of dark matter activity rather than the dark matter particles themselves.
The researchers believe that when two dark matter particles meet, they will behave just like ordinary particles; that they will annihilate and create radiation in the process. In this case the radiation is called dark radiation, and it may be detected by the existing underground detectors.
“Underground detection experiments may be able to detect the signals created by dark radiation”, Shoemaker says.
The researchers have found that the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is in fact already sensitive to this signal and can with future data confirm or exclude their hypothesis for dark matter’s origin.
Don’t forget to look in the Milky Way, too
The attempt to catch signals from dark radiation is not a new idea – it is currently being performed several places in space with satellite-based experiments. These places include the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the Sun may also be such an area.
“It makes sense to look for dark radiation in certain places in space, where we expect it to be very dense – a lot denser than on Earth”, explains Shoemaker, adding:
“If there is an abundance of dark matter in these areas, then we would expect it to annihilate and create radiation.”
None of the satellite-based experiments however have yet detected dark radiation.
According to Shoemaker, Frandsen and Cherry, this could be because the experiments look for the wrong signals.
“The traditional satellite-based experiments search for photons, because they expect dark matter to annihilate into photons. But if dark matter annihilates into dark radiation then these satellite-based experiments are hopeless.”
In the early days of the universe, when all matter was still extremely dense, dark matter may have collided and annihilated into radiation all the time. This happened to ordinary matter as well, so it is not unlikely that dark matter behaves the same way, the researchers argue.
Publication: John F. Cherry, et al., “Direct Detection Phenomenology in Models Where the Products of Dark Matter Annihilation Interact with Nuclei,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 231303, 12 June 2015; doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.231303BOSTON, MA – Boston Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli announced today that the club has acquired forward Chris Bourque from the Washington Capitals for center Zach Hamill.
Bourque appeared in 73 regular season games this year for the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League (AHL), compiling 27-66=93 totals with 42 penalty minutes. In five playoff games, he tallied one goal and three assists. Bourque’s best statistical season came in 2009-10 with the Bears, when he posted 22-48=70 totals with 26 penalty minutes in 49 games.
In 2010-11, the 26-year-old native of Boston, Massachusetts signed with Mytishchi Atlant of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), where he scored one goal in eight games. |
good possibility he will be here and possibly visit Werowocomoco [near the north bank of the York River in what is now Gloucester County]."
So how did this all come about so quickly? Kirkpatrick says that Aguilar held a masterclass at last year’s French Film Festival to discuss how American Indian actors are treated on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Some of the chiefs turned out for it,” Kirkpatrick says. “We had a meeting with Andy Edmunds from the Film Office and did a Skype meeting with Georgina Lightning and Chris Eyre, about whether there would be interest [in a future festival]. So it really grew from that Skype meeting.”
Edmunds, director of the Virginia Film Office, said his organization was excited to support and promote this unique film festival that shares a point of view about a culture that is "compelling but often misunderstood."
"Filmmaking is all about point of view," Edmunds said by e-mail. "Bringing different cultures together through the celebration of cinema is always a good thing."
There are 11 recognized Virginia tribes, Kirkpatrick says, and eight have attended meetings about the festival. Style has reached out to other participants and will update this story as we hear back.NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have announced a new partnership for human exploration of the moon and deep space. Both agencies signed a joint statement on the collaborative effort. It all stems from NASA’s “deep-space gateway” concept, a mission architecture designed to send astronauts into lunar orbit by 2020 (the statement sets a mid-2020s goal for beginning the project.)
“This plan challenges our current capabilities in human spaceflight and will benefit from engagement by multiple countries and U.S. industry,” NASA officials said in a statement.
“While the deep space gateway is still in concept formulation, NASA is pleased to see growing international interest in moving into cislunar space as the next step for advancing human space exploration,” Robert Lightfoot, NASA’s acting administrator, said in a statement.
“Statements such as this one signed with Roscosmos show the gateway concept as an enabler to the kind of exploration architecture that is affordable and sustainable,” Lightfoot added.
In a separate statement, Roscosmos officials said the new partnership would “develop international technical standards for the establishment of the station in the near-moon orbit.”
The idea was first reported in January by The Atlantic before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The publication wrote that Trump was “eyeing building a moon base.” It’s a long-standing goal by Newt Gingrich, one of Trump’s advisers.
This comes as the recently resurrected U.S. National Space Council (NSC) plans its first meeting for October 5th.
The meeting, titled “Leading the Next Frontier: An Event with the National Space Council,” will be held at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.
“At President Trump’s direction, the kick-off meeting of the National Space Council will bring together all aspects and sectors of the national space enterprise for the first time in a quarter-century,” Pence said in a statement. “This meeting will provide an opportunity for the Administration to lay out its vision for space exploration. As President Trump said, ‘We’re a nation of pioneers, and the next great American frontier is space.'”
At @POTUS‘ direction, the Nat’l Space Council will hold first meeting with all aspects of space enterprise for 1st time in a quarter century pic.twitter.com/3YBiNUTV6l — Vice President Pence (@VP) September 26, 2017
Trump resurrected the National Space Council by signing an executive order on June 30th in order to steer the future of American space policy. The council was last active in the early 1990s during President George H.W. Bush’s administration. Pence chairs the reinstated council, with aerospace veteran Scott Pace serving as executive secretary to the committee.
In June, Congress voted under the defense authorization 2018 bill on forming a “new” sixth branch of the military called “Space Corps” which would take over Air Force Space Command Operations and likely Naval Space Operations.
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While the plans are allegedly “new,” in the 1950s the Army drafted up plans for what was known as Project Horizon.
Project Horizon was the need to establish a stationary Army control base on the moon by 1966. That operation was allegedly shut down and canceled, and the idea never materialized. It’s also not the only advanced space technology project that was canceled, as this article will document. A concept picture of the base is below.
Ironically, one year prior in 1965, the Russian Probe ZOND-3 captured suggestive pics of the moon showing what looks like a dome and a large tower.[FB-Discuss] Project status
Hi all, TL;DR: I'm really sorry to say, but FindBugs project in its current form is dead. Longer explanation follows. Current project setup is: 1) On the plus side, we have two committers with push rights to the github repo, however one from this two (Tagir) is not active anymore for the project and second one (me) has no free time to work on the project. That's however all about the good things... 2) Only the project leader Bill Pugh has admin rights for the project web page and the github project group and page. We cannot deploy any website update, we can't add new project members, we can't manage code access rights, we can't publish releases to the well known update sites without his help. Without him, we have no admin rights to anything, we can only push to the repository. 3) It looks like Bill Pugh is not interested in the FindBugs project anymore, and we can't reach them. I say "it looks like" because we requested his help for the project many times (via direct mails, postings to the list and to the github issues) but haven't received any sign of life from him since a year. We know that he is active elsewhere (https://twitter.com/wpugh). A week ago I've sent another mail to Bill (and CC to the findbugs-core at lists.sourceforge.net mailing list) asking him about the current project state - with no answer so far. You can read my mail in the attachment. IMHO no answer to this mail was the answer enough. Either Bill has completely lost access to his old mail account (which is possible too) or he is ignoring me or the project (which is more likely). If someone has a possibility to contact him in some way (twitter/mail/phone/whatever) and point him to the discussion on this list - please do so! Without Bill Pugh FindBugs project is headless and effectively *finally* dead. It is not the *only* reason for the project to be dead, but a bigger one, and the last one. The other major reasons for the FindBugs current bad state: 1) The code is very complex, has "organically grown" over a decade, is not documented and has poor public interfaces. Most of the code consists of the very low level bytecode related stuff, tightly coupled with the ancient BCEL library, which doesn't scale and is not multi-thread safe. No one enjoys maintaining this code, at least not me. I see no future for FindBugs with the BCEL approach, and see no way to get rid of it without investing lot of effort, and without breaking every detector and possibly many 3rd party tools. This is the biggest issue we have with FindBugs today, and most likely the root cause for all the evil. This code can't be fixed, it must be rewritten. 2) Because the code is as it is, there are not so many people willing to contribute. We see some pull requests on github, but most of them are smaller fixes or enhancements (many thanks to you guys, and sorry I have no time to review and test all of them!). Those who were willing and able to contribute leaved the project one by one. At last, we had Tagir contributed lot of things (many thanks!), but since he left us for his own project (https://github.com/amaembo/huntbugs) we saw no major code contributions anymore. BTW the fact that he left the project is also a sign that the project is in a very bad shape - it was easier for him to write the code from scratch as to continue supporting FindBugs. Currently I'm the last committer left on the project, and I'm not really active because lack of the free time. We clearly failed to build a contributors community. 3) We have *zero* support from organizations. There are no companies investing into the project in any way (neither via code patches or testing, nor via spending developers time for the project), although I know there are companies using FindBugs in their commercial products, for example SonarSource and Coverity, and of course there are many companies and projects just using FindBugs in their build processes. Add to this the project leader ignoring all communication with the project and you will agree with me that FindBugs today is a headless "zombie" project without future. However, FindBugs is still useful, even in its current state, and it will be sad to throw it away just because it can't evolve as we all would like. So what do we need to keep it alive? 1) We must be able to update the project site and to point all links to github. This is needed because many people still use old sourceforge tracker to report bugs or enhancements, and github made contributions and communication much easier for everyone. 2) We must be able to shut down the old sourceforge bug tracker and forums and point all links to github. 3) We must be able to grant access rights to the github project for those who can and will contribute. 4) We must be able to publish the new releases to the well known download sites or at least point the project webpage to the github releases page (https://github.com/findbugsproject/findbugs/releases). 5) We should configure automated build and test (for example via TravisCI as suggested via https://github.com/findbugsproject/findbugs/pull/48). Without this it is hard to review pull requests, because manual build and test requires lot of time. 6) We need more people contributing, testing and reviewing patches. We have currently 15 open pull requests, and it would be nice if they were reviewed and tested. What can we do, and which alternatives do we have: 1) As one can see, we can't do points 1-5 without Bill. If someone somehow manages to contact Bill (twiter/mail/phone/whatever) - please do that and get a clear statement from him what he as a project leader plans to do to solve the points above. As far as I can understand it (looking on Bill public activities), he has no will to spend any time on project problems because they don't really hurt him. A possible solution here would be to find some person to whom Bill have give the admin rights, so that we can solve points 1-5 without requesting time from Bill. Unfortunately, from my personal experience so far (after many years on the project) I believe that Bill still doesn't trust me (because I'm from Russia and Russia is evil), so it is very unlikely that he will give me admin rights. This is sad, but this is something I can't influence in any way. At least I'm happy to know that Eclipse projects I'm contributing to *do* trust me (JGit, EGit, Platform UI). 2) If someone wants to fork FindBugs, this could be a way to go, but this should be the last resort from my point of view. A fork is the worst thing we can do, but probably better as the dead project anyway. My personal advice would be - don't do it, but start your own project, without legacy code, or join Tagir on his HuntBugs project: https://github.com/amaembo/huntbugs, or join any other project in the universe suitable to analyze Java code. 3) Without active committers and without changes in the code base FindBugs will become more and more irrelevant. FindBugs will not support lambda's, type annotations and any new Java 8+ language features without major changes in the project state. No serious code contribution is possible with the current setup, because I'm alone and definitely can't spend so much time for the project. I will keep the FindBugs and Eclipse plugin running until there will be a better (open source) alternative with Ant and Eclipse support. I will be happy to name you a comparable alternative today, but I don't see any yet. I hope HuntBugs could be such alternative, but it is not yet there. That's basically all what I wanted to say for a long time about the FindBugs project state, and sorry for the long mail. -- Kind regards, Andrey Loskutov http://google.com/+AndreyLoskutov Am 01.11.2016 um 21:53 schrieb Juan Martín Sotuyo Dodero: > Hi everyone, > > Over the last week I've been talking with several members of the > FindBugs community and so far we all share the same worries. FindBugs is > stagnant due to the prolonged absence of Bill Pugh. > > It's hard to imagine a future for FindBugs where no one can update the > SourceForge pages, make a release on SourceForge, enable a CI server > such as Travis, add members to the GitHub organization or even publish > to Maven Central. > > Currently only Andrey Loskutov sees to be active. I've seen him trying > to get Bill to perform many of these tasks over the past, and retrying > recently, but time keeps passing. It's been 9 months since he requested > to update the site > <https://github.com/findbugsproject/findbugs/issues/80> and 13 > since people requested to enable Travis > <https://github.com/findbugsproject/findbugs/pull/48>. > > I would like to know if anyone has any knowledge of Bill's current > status. His github page <https://github.com/billpugh> shows he has been > working sporadically over the last year, but always on other projects. > > I strongly believe the team needs to get reorganized, but I fear without > Bill to grant accesses, this is next to impossible. Myself and those > I've contacted dread this horrible idea, but fear that the only way > forward as things stand is forking FindBugs. This is clearly a last > resource, and under no circumstance our first choice; but as months keep > passing, it seems ever more appealing. > > Is there any way the current situation can be reverted? Can we help in > any way? > > Shall there not be, we are most likely to start a new organization and > adopt a different name (FindBugs is trademarked), but would probably > commit to keeping binary compatibility (public APIs) to minimize > transition cost for anyone moving with us. Everyone willing to > contribute would be more than welcomed. > > Once again, we would rather not have to take this course. I hope it can > be avoided for the sake of FindBugs. > > Thanks for your time > > > _______________________________________________ > Findbugs-discuss mailing list > Findbugs-discuss at cs.umd.edu > https://mailman.cs.umd.edu/mailman/listinfo/findbugs-discuss > -- Kind regards, Andrey Loskutov http://google.com/+AndreyLoskutov -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Andrey Loskutov <loskutov at gmx.de> Subject: FindBugs state Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 09:17:16 +0200 Size: 1675 URL: <https://mailman.cs.umd.edu/pipermail/findbugs-discuss/attachments/20161102/ce01b48c/attachment.mht>Orioles reliever Pedro Strop turned 27 earlier this month, but he's already overcome a career's worth of obstacles.
There were plenty of nights filled with uncertainty — and tears — along the way. There were times when he wondered whether his childhood dream would ever become reality, whether those times rehabbing and reinventing would ever pay off.
"A lot of tough times," Strop said, sitting at his locker in the corner of the Orioles' clubhouse on Sunday. "God was the only one who knew what was going to happen. I kept my mind strong. I was positive every time. I knew I would be healthy and I would find a team and I'd get to the big leagues. I cried a lot. I'd see my mom cry sometimes and I'd try to be tough, but when I was by myself, it was tough for me."
Now, the hard-throwing right hander is all smiles. He has finally found a home in the Orioles' bullpen. He's emerged to take over the club's eighth-inning set-up role. He is one of the big reasons why the Orioles have the best bullpen ERA in baseball.
"Honestly, he should be on the All-Star team," said Orioles closer Jim Johnson. "People talk about the success I've had, but obviously he's a big part of it. He's a big part of everything."
This season, Strop's 1.32 ERA is fifth among AL relievers with at least 28 appearances. He has held right-handed batters to a.131 average (8-for-61). He's sixth in the American League with 12 holds, and he's allowed just two earned runs in his last 24 appearances.
But when his Orioles teammates talk about Strop, they don't talk about the numbers. Instead, his composure always comes up first.
"Even when he doesn't have his best command and the first couple guys get on, he's really able to lock it in and shut down the inning," catcher Matt Wieters said. "The think with him is when his stuff's there, he's going to be lights out and he's going to go smooth through the inning. But when a couple guys get on, he's able to focus and throw up a zero."
It wasn't always like that for Strop. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, he signed with a Rockies scout five months before his 17th birthday to play shortstop. But a.208 career batting average after three seasons left him with little hope of breaking out of Class-A ball.
"When you're a shortstop and they start moving you all around, to second and third," Strop said with a smirk, "you know it's not good."
He wanted to try pitching and, in 2006, got that chance. He worked his way up from the bottom of the Rockies' system to Double-A in two years.
His 2008 season was cut short because of a stress fracture in his throwing elbow, an old injury that kept getting worse with each throw. Season-ending surgery followed. An inch-long screw was placed in his elbow.
"All of that made me tougher," Strop said. "That's the way I see it. I'm tougher now that I've gone through all those things. God wanted me to go through all that to make me the man I am right now. That's the way I see it."
Before he could return, the Rockies designated Strop for assignment. He was immediately picked up by the Rangers. But his delivery — he would crook his arm behind him before throwing — became a YouTube case study for future injuries. He's since modified his delivery to a more over-the-top arm angle and remained healthy. The next season, he had his first taste of the big leagues. But for most of the next three seasons, he was shuffled between Arlington and Triple-A.
"Every time out I'd be worried that I'd get sent down if I didn't do well," Strop said. "It was in my head. That's one of the reasons I really like it here. My teammates have shown confidence in me. [Orioles manager] Buck [Showalter] told me he has confidence in me. That helps a lot."
The Orioles acquired Strop last September as part of the trade that sent reliever Michael Gonzalez to Texas, and he immediately impressed his new teammates.
"I remember his arm when he was in Texas and you think, 'Wow, he's got a great arm,'" Wieters said. "But you never quite know what you're going to have command-wise and mentality-wise. When I caught him last year, I thought the same thing. He's got an arm you don't come across much, especially a guy who is as calm and collected as he is. It's an arm you hope to find through the draft and through free agency and we got him for I don't remember what."
This off season, Strop knew this might be his best — and maybe last — chance to find a home in the big leagues. He knew he'd enter spring training out of minor league options. For the first time, he didn't pitch winter ball in the Dominican, instead choosing to focus on the weight room.
He came to camp showing off a high 90s four-seam fastball and a biting mid-80s slider. But it was his ability to hone a 97-98 mph two-seam sinking fastball that made him stand out.
He said he toyed with the two-seamer before, but struggled controlling it because of the movement it gets. He's still working on controlling the sinker — Strop has walked 18 batters in 34 innings (but allowed just 20 hits and has 29 strikeouts) — but it has contributed to a 69.8 ground-ball percentage (the league average is 44), giving him the ability to pitch out of any jam.
"We talk a lot about baseball and things," Johnson said. "He knows he can't just sit there and blow it by guys. He knows he's got to think. He can locate. When we got him, I really felt like we stole him from Texas. He has great composure. He's still learning a couple things, but stuff-wise he's got some of the best stuff in the game."
Strop finally feels confident and comfortable. He is always wearing a smile — and a cut-off Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt — around the Orioles clubhouse. He also wears Ninja Turtle boxer shorts under his game pants every day. "They've just always been my favorite," he said of the cartoon characters.
But make no mistake, there is still that hunger from the tough days toiling in the minors that keeps Strop going.
"He doesn't seem to get comfortable in it," Showalter said. "You can tell there's a lot of drive in him and he'll have an outing where he doesn't give up a run but you can tell he's not happy with the stress it may have involved. He obviously has a really good arm.
"And if you look at some of the physical issues he's had — I mean this guy's got a pin in his elbow — he's got some things he's overcome to get to this point."
eduardo.encina@baltsun.com
twitter.com/EddieInTheYardDONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Fighting raged in eastern Ukraine for the second straight day on Tuesday as the army rolled out an offensive against pro-Russia separatists holding the city of Slaviansk, with dead and wounded on both sides.
Damaged buildings are seen at a Ukrainian border guard camp, after what local residents say was an attack by pro-Russian separatists, on the outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk June 3, 2014. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
Rebels in the town, a strategically located and fiercely separatist stronghold where a military helicopter was shot down last week killing 14 servicemen, said they had brought down an Su-25 attack aircraft and a helicopter. Ukrainian authorities denied the report.
Twelve hours after Kiev’s forces launched an overnight military operation in and around Slaviansk, Vladyslav Seleznyov, a spokesman for the Ukrainians, said: “Today we have had two killed and 42 wounded.”
He put the number of dead and wounded on the separatist side at about 300, a figure that could not be independently verified.
“Fighting is continuing”, he told Reuters on Tuesday evening.
A spokeswoman for the rebels, Stella Khorosheva, said the death toll in the town “was rising continuously.” She could not say how many casualties there were but said Ukrainian forces had carried out air strikes on villages skirting the town.
As the fighting got worse, many women and children fled the town in recent days. One woman described how artillery fire began at dawn.
“I didn’t know what that was before, but I do now. We counted the number of fires and impacts,” Daria, 27, a resident who said she was trying to leave with her daughter, said by telephone.
“War planes were flying overhead... We stayed in the basement as much as we could.”
President-elect Petro Poroshenko, who scored a resounding victory in the May 25 election, called for a resumption of military operations by government forces to quell rebellions by pro-Russian militia across the Russian-speaking east.
The Kiev government says the fighting is fomented by Moscow, which opposes its pro-Western course. Kiev also accuses Russia of letting volunteer fighters cross into Ukraine to fight alongside the rebels. Moscow denies this and is urging Ukraine to end military operations and open dialogue with the separatists.
Related Coverage Fog of war falls heavy after violence in eastern Ukraine region
LOSS OF LIFE
Ukraine announced on Tuesday that 181 people, including 59 servicemen, had been killed “by terrorist activity” since hostilities broke out in April.
Since government forces resumed their push against the rebels, there have been clashes in and around the main industrial hub of Donetsk and near the border town of Luhansk, with loss of life on both sides.
But it is unclear whether the Ukrainian military, backed up by attack aircraft, is making real progress against the rebels, who are occupying strategic points in densely populated cities.
With violence continuing in Ukraine’s east and tension high between Ukraine and Russia, the crisis is certain to dominate diplomatic exchanges when the newly elected Poroshenko meets world leaders this week ahead of his inauguration next Saturday.
He is expected to meet U.S. President Barack Obama and European leaders in Warsaw on Wednesday and both he and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will attend World War Two D-day celebrations in France on Friday, although no formal talks are planned.
The fighting in Slaviansk followed a daylong firefight on Monday in Luhansk, a town further to the east on the Russian border, after an attack by separatists on a border guard camp.
At least two people were killed in the city center of Luhansk, which like Slaviansk is under separatist control. Rebels said the blast was caused by a Ukrainian air strike but Ukrainians said it was a heat-seeking missile that misfired after it was launched by the rebels.
“At the present time the active phase of the ‘anti-terrorist operation’ is going on near Slaviansk. The (separatist) fighters are being blocked. If they refuse to lay down their arms they will be destroyed,” said Seleznyov, a spokesman for the military operation. “Our job is to establish peace in the region and this we will do.”
Fleeing the fighting in Slaviansk, Anya Kholodnaya and her three children were among some 40 other women and children who found refuge in a dormitory in Ilovaisk, a village near the regional capital of Donetsk.
“We left without knowing where we were going, without money. When we were sitting in the basement, shaking because of the shelling, that’s when I decided to leave,” said the 34-year-old kindergarten teacher, unbundling blankets, toys and clothes gifted by local residents as her brood settled into a crowded run-down dormitory room.
Slideshow (7 Images)
The women’s mood has hardened against the government in Kiev.
“I don’t want any part of this government, of a president who calls us all terrorists,” said Anya Savchenko, 37, who left the besieged town with her 9-month-old baby.New images of the Vision figure prototype have surfaced in a new web article! Cnet.com has released a new article detailing the long and tricky road involved in creating our favorite iconic characters.
The article, which is a great read, has several galleries showing off the 3D printing and assembly of prototype figures. Dispersed amongst the images of Yoda and Darth Maul are a few peeks at Vision (unpainted and rough around the edges).
Check out the images below and let us know what you think of this exciting new figure coming out with the new Marvel Battlegrounds Playset in early 2016!
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Information Minister: Authorities in Syria investigating source of gunfire that claimed lives of Turkish woman and her children
DAMASCUS– Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said on Wednesday that the relevant authorities in Syria are investigating the source of the gunfire that claimed the lives of a Turkish woman and her children, offering sincerest condolences on behalf of the Syrian government to the family of the deceased and the Turkish people.
"In case of border incidents that occur between any two neighboring countries, countries and governments must act wisely, rationally and responsibly, particularly since there's a special condition on the Syrian-Turkish borders in terms of the presence of undisciplined terrorist groups spread across the borders who have varying agendas and identities," the Minister told the Syrian TV, affirming that these groups constitute a threat to Syria's security and regional security.
Minister al-Zoubi stressed that the Syrian-Turkish borders are long and are being used to smuggle weapons, equipment and terrorists into Syria where they committed massacres, the latest such massacre being the one committed by Al Qaeda in Aleppo.
He said that Syria bases its conduct with neighboring countries on good neighborly relations and respecting the sovereignty of countries, and that Syria asks in return that its sovereignty be respected.
Thursday 04-10-2012Ashin is an In this Burmese name is an honorific, not a surname
Wirathu (Burmese: ဝီရသူ; born 10 July 1968 in Kyaukse, Mandalay Division, Burma) is a Burmese Buddhist monk, and the communal leader of the anti-Muslim movement in Myanmar.[1] He has been accused of conspiring to persecute Muslims in Myanmar through his speeches, although he claims to be a peaceful preacher and not to have advocated violence—which is disputed by others.[2] Facebook also banned his page on the charge of spreading religious hatred towards other communities, after repeated warnings to not post religiously inflammatory content.[3]
Background [ edit ]
Wirathu was born in 1968 near Mandalay. He left school at the age 14 to become a monk. In 2001, he became involved in the 969 Movement.[4] Two years later, in 2003, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his sermons,[5] but was released in 2012 along with many other political prisoners.[6] Since the government reforms of 2011, he has been especially active on YouTube and other forms of social media.[7] Facebook banned his page on the charge of spreading religious hatred towards other communities, after repeated warnings to not post religiously inflammatory content.[3]
Political engagement [ edit ]
Wirathu led a rally of monks in Mandalay in September 2012 to promote President Thein Sein's controversial plan to send Burmese Rohingya Muslims to a third country.[8] One month later, more violence broke out in Rakhine state.[8] Wirathu claims the violence in Rakhine was the spark for the most recent violence in Myanmar's central city of Meiktila, where a dispute in a gold shop quickly spiraled into a looting-and-arson spree. More than 14 people were killed, after monasteries, shops and houses were burned down across the city.[9][10] At least two people, including a Burmese Buddhist monk, Shin Thawbita, and a Muslim man were reportedly assaulted and tortured by mobs in Meikhtilar on 5 March.[11]
Wirathu is mentioned on the cover story of Time magazine as "The Face of Buddhist Terror" on 20 June 2013.[12] "You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog," Wirathu said, referring to Muslims. "If we are weak," he said, "our land will become Muslim." [2] Referring to Muslim violence and domination in neighbouring nations and the example of the spread of Islam in Indonesia,[13] Wirathu worries about a similar fate for Myanmar.[14] Wirathu claims that his Muslim opponents labelled him the "Burmese Bin Laden" after the Time article incorrectly reported he described himself in this manner.[15] He said he "abhorred violence" and "opposes terrorism".[15] Wirathu has also expressed admiration for, and a desire to follow the example of, the English Defence League by "protecting the public."[16]
Thein Sein accused Time of slandering the Buddhist religion and harming the national reconciliation process by accusing the outspoken cleric of stoking anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar. Describing him as a "son of Buddha", the president defended Wirathu as a "noble person" committed to peace. "The article in Time Magazine can cause misunderstanding about the Buddhist religion, which has existed for millennia and is followed by the majority of Burmese citizens," Thein Sein said.[17] In an interview with DVB, Wirathu accused Time of committing a "serious human rights violation" by refusing to present his views in a verbatim question and answer format. "Before I had heard [rumours] of the Arab world dominating the global media," he said, "but this time, I've seen it for myself."[17] Wirathu openly blamed Muslims for instigating the recent violence. Wirathu claimed that Myanmar's Muslims are being financed by Middle Eastern forces, saying, "The local Muslims are crude and savage because the extremists are pulling the strings, providing them with financial, military and technical power".[18]
On 21 July 2013, he was the apparent target of a bomb explosion, but he remained unscathed. Five people were slightly injured in the blast, including a novice monk. Wirathu claimed that the bombing was an attempt by Muslim extremists to silence his voice.[19][20][21]
He has called for restrictions on marriages between Buddhists and Muslims,[22] and for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses.[7]
However, not everyone from within his own faith agrees with his teachings. Abbot Arriya Wuttha Bewuntha of Mandalay's Myawaddy Sayadaw monastery denounced him, saying, "He sides a little towards hate [and this was] not the way Buddha taught. What the Buddha taught is that hatred is not good, because Buddha sees everyone as an equal being. The Buddha doesn't see people through religion."[8] Critics also explain what they see as his extremism as little more than due to ignorance, although his views do have influence in Myanmar where many businesses are "run successfully by Muslims".[8]
Burmese pro-democracy activist Maung Zarni also denounced Wirathu's 969 Movement for spreading hate speech [8] and argued that EU countries should take the matter seriously as Myanmar is a "major EU-aid recipient country".[8]
In September 2014, Wirathu attended a "Great Sangha Conference" in Colombo organised by Bodu Bala Sena. Wirathu said that his 969 Movement would work with the Bodu Bala Sena.[23]
In January 2015, Wirathu publicly called United Nations envoy Yanghee Lee a "bitch" and a "whore"[24][25] and invited her to "offer your arse to the kalars" (a derogatory term for Muslims).[26][27]
Wirathu led a prayer and protest at the Mahamuni Buddha Temple in Mandalay on 23 February 2017, to condemn the Thai government's raid on the Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Bangkok.[28]
Ayeyarwady Region's government banned Wirathu from preaching in the region on 10 March 2017.[29]
See also [ edit ]April 7, 2015
It's been a long road, but Space Beast Terror Fright is now live on Steam Early Access.
Here's what's been happening the past few months:
When we launched our Greenlight campaign, we honestly didn't expect much of a response. All the feedback we had been getting from our friends who had playtested the game were lukewarm at best. Most people simply wrote off the game as being too hard, and as a result we had good reason to believe that the game might just be too niche and strange for people to wrap their heads around.
We still felt proud of what we had accomplished, and the S.B.T.F. demo really was a significantly milestone for nornware as a company, but our plan was to push it out to Greenlight and then move on to another project; we wanted to give our intern Johan a shot at working on a radically different genre.
What actually happened was that we started getting reviews and emails before we even made a single move to market our work. We were totally taken off guard, and it pretty soon became apparent that there was quite a bit of interest in the game after all. Soon after (just 2 weeks) the game was Greenlit.
After a bit of a mad scramble we set up our office space, hired our intern, and started working on the actual retail version of the game. Given the opportunity, we had always wanted to use the Steam Early Access model to continue development of our games in conjunction with the community, but we still felt that the retail version of the game needed to have something that pushed it above and beyond what was in the demo.
So now here we are a few months later with our first version out on Steam. We managed to put together 3 new levels styles (Mad has developed mad skills when it comes to material creation in a very short time), implemented full XBox 360 controller support in preparation for our major retail version feature |
Follow him on Twitter @BrentSnavely. USA Today Reporter Nathan Bomey and Free Press reporter Todd Spangler contributed to this report.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2fhNeMzA cleansing bout of craziness in 2012 could be just what the GOP needs.
I’m talking about a nominee so far to the right that conservative populists get their fondest wish—and the Republican Party is forced to learn from the result. Namely, that there is such a thing as too extreme.
The dangerous groupthink delusion being pushed in conservative circles over the last few years is that ideological purity and electability are one and the same. It is an idea more rooted in faith than reason.
If Mitt Romney does finally wrestle the nomination to the ground, and then loses to Obama, conservatives will blame the loss on his alleged moderation. The right wing take-away will be to try to nominate a true ideologue in 2016.
But if someone like Rick Santorum gets the nomination in an upset, the party faithful will get to experience the adrenaline rush of going off a cliff together, like Thelma and Louise—elation followed by an electoral thud.
This could be educational. After all, sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you recognize your problems.
Giving a self-identified “full-spectrum conservative” theo-con like Santorum the nomination would mean we’d really have a “choice, not an echo” election in November. Republicans would be forced to confront the fact that talk about Satan attacking America, negative obsessions with homosexuality, contraception and opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest alienates far more people than they attract.
Our politics are looking more and more like a cult because of unprecedented polarization—any issue where there is deviation from accepted orthodoxy leads to an attempted purge. It is absurd that clownish conservative caricatures like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain were briefly elevated to the top of the polls while more sober-minded presidential candidates with executive experience like Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman Jr. failed to gain any traction. The result is the weakest Republican field in living memory.
That the conservative favorite from 2008 is now derided as a RINO says more about the rightward lurch of the Republican Party than it does about Romney. You reap what you sow.
The Tea Party driven win of 2010 seems to have taught some in the GOP that firing up the base with extreme anti-Obama rhetoric leads to victories, and so candidates like Gingrich happily comply with talk about “Kenyan anti-colonial” mindsets and “secular socialist machines.” The obvious fact that this works better in comparatively low-turnout, high-intensity midterm elections than in the broader, more representative turnout of presidential years has been ignored, willfully or otherwise.
Likewise, it’s been scrubbed from many conservative’s memories that the Tea Party in 2010 used libertarian appeals to attract independents—avoiding more polarizing social issues and instead keeping a tight focus on fiscal ones like reducing the deficit and debt.
But in the wake of 2010, we’ve seen the social-conservative agenda reemerge with a vengeance, because Republican legislators in statehouses and Congress made it a priority. Not surprisingly, this has alienated independents, women, and young voters outside the conservative tribe.
But in a tribal time, ideological apparatchiks have outsize influence. They come to debates armed with their own facts. In their Kool-Aid-laden retelling of recent political history, unsuccessful GOP nominees like John McCain lost because of his independent center-right profile (rather than a backlash against the excesses of the Bush administration or the nomination of Sarah Palin). Barry Goldwater’s 44-state loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964 is recast as a triumph because it allegedly led to Reagan’s landslide... 16 years later. Nixon’s 49-state win in 1972 is stripped from the history books as winning candidates with shades of gray in their resume—Ike’s successful center-right two terms, George H.W. Bush’s country-club conservatism, or even W’s 2000 call for “compassionate conservatism”—are ignored as ideologically inconvenient.
Goldwater would be attacked as a RINO today for his rejection of the religious right, his wife’s cofounding of Planned Parenthood in Arizona, or his early support of gays serving in the military. Some conservative activists turned on Reagan during his White House years (the editor of the Conservative Digest memorably wrote in the early '80s, “Sometimes I wonder how much of a Reaganite Reagan really is”). Almost by definition, absolutists oversimplify, turning everything into a fight between angels and devils.
Giving conservative activists everything they want in a presidential nominee would ultimately be clarifying for the Republican Party. It would break the fever that has afflicted American politics turning fellow citizens against one another. It would restore a sense of balance, recognizing that it is unwise to systemically ignore the 40 percent of American voters who identify themselves as independent or the 35 percent who are centrist. After all, a successful political party requires both wings to fly.
There’s nothing like losing 40 states to refocus the mind.What’s new in 1.2.0?
Transfers now support multiple target addresses
This represents our favorite feature of this release. It’s now possible to define multiple outputs for a transaction, with support for both multisignature and default wallets.
Here are the signatures of the command:
smidgen transfer <amount> <address> [<amount> <address>...]
smidgen multisig transfer <amount> <address> [<amount> <address>...] <id> <wallet>
Which means that means with:
smidgen transfer 1 QTC.. 2 FTE.. 3 TTE..
We send 1i to the address beginning with QTC, 2i to the address FTE and 3i to address TTE — All within one bundle!
Configuration files are now supported via.smidgenrc
smidgen relies on a full node provider for a number of tasks. In the past, changing the provider address was always done via the --provider command line argument. With this update, smidgen will additionally make use of a configuration file called.smidgenrc. If this does not exist, smidgen creates it in your home directory. In the.smidgenrc you can overwrite the defaults for all configuration flags and set them to a new default. This means that if you define a new provder in your.smidgenrc, you can omit passing the --provide flag in the future. Example: {"provider": "http://fullnode.example.com"}. In case you temporarily need another setting, you can still overwrite config values via the command line arguments.
- - no-validation flag for multisig wallet creation without internet connection
smidgen enhances the security surrounding multisignature wallet creation. In doing so, smidgen aims to find out if a seed has already been used with a single-signature wallet, done via getKeyIndex, allowing it to check if a seed has been used in another transaction. When a node is offline, if you have no WiFi or you don't want the additional safety net, you can disable these checks with --no-validation.
Fix crashes if a light node has connection issues
In previous versions, smidgen would crash when a node was temporarily overloaded. By means of this update, smidgen now shows an error notice with the suggestion to retry or to use another node via --provider.
iota.lib.js update to 0.4.5
smidgen is built upon the IOTA core library, maintained by the IOTA Foundation. With this release, a number of improvements and fixes have made its way to smidgen.The United Kingdom is known for birthing a few world-renowned spitters, namely Dizzee Rascal and M.I.A. But who outside the borders of North America has the potential to follow in their hit-making footsteps? For our latest New New column, we take a trip overseas to Europe to find out who is bubbling up and rockin’ the mic right on the European continent.
XXL searched the streets of London, Sweden, Germany and France to find out more about some of the up-and-coming spitters lighting Europe on fire. Click through our guide to the hip-hop newbies from across the pond who you need to know now. This is the New New. — Joseph ‘JP’ Patterson, Laura ‘Hyperfrank’ Brosnan, James Walsh and Tobi Oke
Previously: The New New — Atlanta, Boston, Female, New York, SeattleThe questions started after the Minneapolis School District awarded the Minneapolis Urban League as much as $800,000 a year for a program that never lived up to its promise of graduating the city’s most troubled high school students.
Then Minnesota legislators agreed to give the Urban League $300,000 a year for nearly identical work, paying some of the same staff to work with many of the same students the school district already was paying to help.
Now top state officials and Minneapolis school leaders are investigating whether the Urban League is getting paid twice for similar work.
“It’s alarming,” said Michael Goar, the Minneapolis School District’s interim superintendent. “When there is an issue that they are getting paid both [from the district and the state], then we have to look into it.”
The Urban League’s programs, the 13th Grade and Urban League Academy, originally were designed with very similar missions — to help teens and young adults graduate from high school, then find jobs or go to college. The organization used school district money to help students struggling to get diplomas from Minneapolis high schools. State records show that, since 2013, the Urban League put many of the same students in both programs and graduated only a tiny fraction. State officials say they have no other details about the program they fund and no proof the effort has been successful.
State Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius said she never supported the state grant for the Urban League’s 13th Grade initiative. She said the state law was written in such a way that she has no authority over Urban League spending.
“I had concerns right at the beginning because it was not really clear what they were set out to do,” Cassellius said.
The head of the Urban League said the organization has done nothing wrong.
“There is nothing [in the contracts] that says that a 13th Grade kid can’t participate in the Urban League Academy or vice-versa,” said Scott Gray, the Urban League’s CEO.
The accusations of double billing come at a crucial time for the Urban League, one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the Twin Cities.
Gray, who has led the Urban League for six years and recently won a Bush Foundation fellowship, announced last week that he is resigning in early May. On Tuesday, Minneapolis school officials will weigh whether to cut Urban League funding or extend the contract another year. Officials say the program has consistently failed to meet even basic goals.
At the State Capitol, the two legislators who pushed the 13th Grade measure hardest in 2013, Sens. Jeff Hayden and Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, are seeking to triple funding for the program to $1.8 million over the next two years.
The senators defend the Urban League’s work as essential to closing the city’s achievement gap between white and minority students, which is among the worst in the country.
“Unfortunately, the Minneapolis Public Schools are not graduating kids of color at the level they should,” Hayden said. “We want to get those kids from where they are now … so they can take care of themselves.”
Gray also is harshly critical of state and school leaders who, he said, have failed to make a serious commitment to providing resources necessary to help these troubled teenagers.
“They say they want to do better, but there has to be some real intentional strategy, vs. liptalk,” he said. “Our kids need real resources.”
Nighttime deals
The Urban League has a budget of about $3.5 million a year, the bulk of it coming from state and local grants. Its influential and politically connected board includes Peter Hayden, who served as board treasurer until recently stepping aside. He is the father of the senator who initially sought the state funding for the 13th Grade.
As it was conceived, the 13th Grade was designed to help students between 16 and 24 who are on the streets, according to Urban League board Chairman Clinton Collins Jr. The goal is to help individuals who had not completed high school get their diploma or a high school equivalency and help place them in college or careers. For those who have a diploma, the program is designed to help them get a job or go to college.
Hayden and Champion took up the cause at the Capitol. The proposal initially laid out expectations and goals of the program, like enrolling 50 young adults, and gave the education commissioner the ability to develop a plan with the Urban League.
The bill received two hearings at the Capitol but never was included in either the House or Senate’s final budgets.
At some point in the closing hours of the legislative session, $600,000 was added into the budget for the Urban League. But the measure stripped all accountability measures and left Cassellius without any authority over the 13th Grade.
“It was built so that the money just went straight through as a grant, in that we were not responsible or put into the mix at all,” Cassellius said. “It was strategically built that way, I believe, because of my concerns.”
Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, who helped craft the education budget in 2013, said the way the organization got the money was inappropriate. “How does something show up without any accountability and nobody cares?” asked Torres Ray, DFL-Minneapolis.
Both Hayden and Champion said Cassellius never raised concerns with them.
“I’ve never had a conversation that says that she didn’t support this,” Hayden said.
The measure was lumped into a much larger budget bill that passed the DFL-controlled House and Senate and was signed by Gov. Mark Dayton.
Gray said the 13th Grade and the school-funded program, called the Urban League Academy, initially had similarities, but the organization retooled the 13th Grade program when school officials refused to participate. Without the district, the program was unable to offer high school diplomas or another high school equivalency.
In the program’s first year, nearly 40 percent of the students enrolled in the 13th Grade were also billed to the district as Academy students, according to state records. Gray said there is less crossover this school year.
Both senators and Urban League officials point to the 13th Grade’s reported success of placing 97 percent of this year’s participants into full-time or part-time jobs.
Hayden’s effort to give state tax dollars to an organization where his father served on the board has sparked criticism from legislators. Hayden remains at the center of a GOP-led Senate ethics inquiry over his role steering money to Community Standards Initiative, which also had ties to his father.
Hayden has denied any wrongdoing, and said his father did not benefit financially from his ties to the Urban League or CSI. The senator said his father “was just serving his community.”
Other state legislators aren’t so sure.
“To me, it’s a problem when you look at government as a way to give money to my friends or my associates,” said Senate Minority Leader David Hann, R-Eden Prairie.
Scrutiny continues
The Urban League Academy’s standing with the school district has been shaky for at least two years.
In March 2014, district officials told the school board not to renew the district’s contract with the Urban League, saying it was failing to meet the needs of students. Since 2013, graduation and achievement on state exams have remained far below district expectations.
Many board members, including Peter Hayden, and board Chairman Al McFarlane, who runs community newspaper Insight News, lobbied the superintendent and the board to extend the contract for at least two years.
Ultimately, the contract was renewed for one year.
On Tuesday, the Minneapolis school board will decide whether to extend the contract once more. Some district officials argue the Urban League should get another chance because the district had not given the organization its full support.
The measure to increase funding for the 13th Grade remains in play at the Legislature.SAINT JOHN– Forestry giant JD Irving, Ltd. issued a sharply worded statement today attacking CBC New Brunswick over a story on the use of the herbicide glyphosate and an unexplained leave of absence by the province’s chief medical officer, who was said to be studying the herbicide.
JDI alleges that the CBC, “released a sensational story insinuating a connection between the sudden leave of absence of Dr. Eilish Cleary (New Brunswick’s chief medical officer of health), a study of glyphosate, and two companies in New Brunswick. CBC presented an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory as fact.”
“CBC’s conduct is completely unprofessional and inappropriate,” said the company, one of two in the province to use the herbicide that the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of of the World Health Organization, classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in March of this year.
JDI is demanding that, “the CBC immediately remove the story from their website, publish a full retraction, and apologize for their appalling behavior.”
But the CBC isn’t backing down.
In a series of tweets with JDI spokesperson Mary Keith, the CBC’s Jacques Poitras said that,”…JDI was not an issue in the story. There was no allegation about JDI.”
His story quoted Bass River resident Ann Pohl, who exchanged correspondence on the glyphosate issue with Dr. Cleary. “I’m concerned there might be some corporate or political pressure put on [Cleary] for her to stand aside,” she told the CBC.
In a tweet to Keith, Poitras wrote that, “Ms. Pohl made no allegation or innuendo regarding your company that I could discern.”
After JDI released its statement, Poitras tweeted, “We stand by our story.”Sadly, the interactive timeline won't display without Javascript enabled. Try this version instead for just the article on its own. It'll be a much easier read :)
Cheese talks to himself
(about Star Wars games)
Late last year, I attended a PAX Australia panel titled X-wings and TIE-ins[1], which advertised itself as "A brief history of very bad (and some not so bad) Star Wars games." The panel was enjoyable and seemed well pitched toward its audience, but it didn't dive as deeply into the chronology of Star Wars titles as I had hoped.
The original trilogy of Star Wars films, and a number of Star Wars games have been formative for me, and have not only sown some of the initial seeds of my own tastes, but also helped me to understand and have perspective on those tastes.
This article is available in two versions. In addition to the usual "Cheese Talks" article, I have put together another, cooler version styled loosely after a 90s Star Wars fan page, complete with yellow headings, and white text on a starfield background (obviously, this one is recommend!).
The themed version features an interactive timeline which attempts to provide a comprehensive[2] chronology of licenced Star Wars games from 1982's The Empire Strikes back for the Atari 2600 through to 2017's Star Wars: Force Arena. Details on how to navigate and explore its data can be found in the Reading the Release Timeline section below.
In this article, I will be reflecting on my impressions from the Star Wars games I've personally played, looking at correlations of "good" and "bad" traits across the entire catalogue of Star Wars games, considering interpretations suggested by the timeline, and speculating on what a hypothetical Ideal Star Wars Game might look like.
What Makes Star Wars Interesting?
To consider what makes a Star Wars game interesting, it's worth considering what makes Star Wars itself interesting. What does Star Wars have beyond an archetypal generic science-fantasy setting that makes it enduring and compelling? In this section, I will primarily focus on the original trilogy (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi), as the success of these three films is the foundation that everything that has come since has built upon.
My earliest memories of Star Wars are of The Empire Strikes Back. Those memories are vague and non-distinct, but interesting in that they are not tied to any conscious awareness of Star Wars itself. I was born too late to catch Star Wars (retroactively subtitled "A New Hope") when it originally aired, and possibly too late to see Empire (I'll be using short-hand names for films!) until around the time of the VHS re-release. My father was a fan though, and clearly, Star Wars had presence in my household enough to leave an impression on a growing Cheese.
It wasn't until much later in my life that I was able to match my involuntary responses (predominantly in the form of undefinable appreciation for snowscapes and humid jungles, of excitement and fascination for robots and space ships, and of an understanding that the notions of "good" and "evil" are often intertwined) and early memories to the Star Wars franchise itself, but as someone who continued to grow up with the original trilogy and had become a fan, it was a welcome connection to make.
Star Wars' reception by and reflection of mainstream western culture is fascinatingly resonant. George Lucas borrowed and iterated on elements, motifs and even whole sequences from existing films, creating a pastiche work that expresses a homoginised amalgam of contemporary cinematography. Lucas also took inspiration from folklore, fairytales and mythology, leading Star Wars to resemble the monomyth from early drafts.
All of this builds up toward one of Star Wars' primary goals - the juxtaposition of newness and familiarity.
"I'm trying to make props that don't stand out. I'm trying to make everything look very natural, a casual almost I've-seen-this-before look. You see it in the paintings we've had done, especially the one that Ralph McQuarrie did of the banthas. You look at that painting of the Tusken Raiders and the banthas and you say, 'Oh yeah, Bedouins...' Then you look at it some more and say 'Wait a minute, that's not right. Those aren't Bedouins, and what are those creatures back there?' Like the X-wing and TIE fighter battle, you say 'I've seen that, it's World War II - but wait a minute - that isn't any kind of jet I've ever seen before.' I want the whole film to have that quality! It's a very hard thing to come by, because it should look very famliar but at the same time not be familiar at all." - Geoge Lucas, The Making of Star Wars - J.W. Rinzler
The most prominent and often cited aspect of familiarty that Star Wars carries is that of the monomyth, a pattern of storytelling that was originally used to compare and analyse mythology and historic storytelling, but in the 70s became popular among western literary and screenwriting circles. It serves as a definition for a narrative structure that, broadly, sees a hero called to adventure, confronted by crisis, exhalted through victory, and returned home transformed by their journey.
To see the impact of the monomyth on modern western storytelling, the character roles and events within Star Wars can more or less be interchanged without the narrative itself being fundamentally changed. Whether it's Neo's fear of following Morpheus' directions to climb along the outside of his office building instead of Luke's initial reluctance to respond to Leia's plea for help, or whether it's Merlin who sees to young Arthur's education instead of Obi-Wan introducing Luke to the Force, or whether it's Gandalf sacrificing himself to the Balrog so that the fellowship may continue instead of Obi-Wan sacrificing himself to Vader so that Luke, Han and Leia can escape, or whether it is Simba facing Scar on Pride Rock or Luke facing the Death Star trench, these characters and situations all play similar roles within their relevant stories.
The validity of the monomyth as a key to understanding historic storytelling is definitely debatable, but it is undeniable that it has been employed as a writing tool strongly and frequently in contemporary culture. The common narrative patterns and character archetypes create a kind of cultural resonance that allows stories which can fit within the pattern to become accessible through familiarity, matching audiences' expectations of pacing and structure.
Then there's the Force. In the original trilogy, it's presented in a less-is-more fashion that allows it to be interpreted as and imagined to be more than any explanation could encompass. It's described to be both internal and external, a spiritual view and philosophy of interconnectedness as well as a power to be drawn upon to perform inhuman feats.
Throughout the films, those on the "light side" typically "use" the Force to achieve inner peace, to enhance perception or to move small objects (although it seems that no Jedi is above performing the occasional mind trick or unscrupulously manipulating dice), while those on the "dark side" use the Force to choke people, hurl objects at their foes, and shoot lightning bolts from their fingers (pew pew). The resulting implication is that the Force represents both light and dark, good and evil, yin and yang, and that it is up to the essence of a Force user to determine whether that power will be used constructively or destructively.
Across the original trilogy, the Force is "used" sparingly. Ignoring sensing "disturbances" and "presences", characters make use of the Force about four or five times to overcome minor hurdles in the first film. With less definition, the capabilities and limitations of the Force are left to audiences' imaginations, where it can be the subject of fantasy.
Lucas has described the Force as being created to represent "the essence of all religions". The philosophies vaguely hinted at in the original trilogy feel familiar because they're assembled from common elements between cultures and institutions from across the globe. The Force resonates with audiences through existing cultural ideals surrounding good, evil and connectedness to the universe around us.
We also see the familiar in Star Wars' dirty, lived-in worlds and weathered characters. The quality that this gives Star Wars above so much science-fiction/fantasy/futurism that preceded it: believability. Star Wars has certainly since been surpassed in terms of grunge and grittiness, but at the time, it showed a vision that contrasted dramatically against the sterile, white cleanliness that then dominated the visual language associated with science-fiction and futurism.
70s optimism put humanity on a trajectory away from poverty and the perceived association with dirtiness/lack of order/harsh edges. This sounds nice, but is harder to empathise with/doesn't reflect the world we live in and the experiences we have as humans. It also carries the potentially menacing overtones of sterility, impotency, and uniformity/removal of identity.
In its props, costumes, and sets, Star Wars thoughtfully exudes believability. Scratches, scuffs, dents, and tears add character and imply backstory to almost all of the film's assorted robots, vehicles and ships. Switches and levers feature more prominently than touch sensitive surfaces, adding a greater sense of tangibility to the world (and more useful props for actors to work with). The Millennium Falcon stalls, C-3PO has an oil bath, malfunctioning escape pods are common enough to be ignored, Jawas offer reclaimed droids for sale that are of questionable repair - the Star Wars universe is shown to be a place where things degrade and the majority of people struggle or at least work hard to find a comfortable life.
Even in the Empire's trappings, which to a degree mirror those traditional motifs of sterility, still show some grime and maintenance hatches and work crews and so on. My favourite example is the Stormtrooper helmet, which has visible componentry suggesting respirators, microphones, cooling vents and so forth, which implies protection and separation from external reality, but most importantly, it has seams. The Stormtrooper helmet from the original trilogy carries with it a sense that it is field serviceable - an essential trait of any piece of military equipment, and one that helps make Stormtroopers feel that bit more real.
Lucas' directing style also tends to linger on world detail, starting shots early to give some impression of normal life before actors enter a scene, or letting the camera fall onto background characters as actors leave. There is much of Star Wars' cinematographic direction and production design that maps well against the ideals of environmental storytelling in games - using background or ambient environment to tell small stories as part of world building without popping out to a discrete vignette.
Star Wars gives us worlds where everything is familiar, but at the same time not familiar at all. Star Wars shows us a universe that has enough familiarity to relate to, but different enough to give us a taste of one of the most powerful feelings we can know: discovery.
So, to recap, Star Wars tells accessible stories, amplifies social ideals surrounding good and evil, and presents a detailed, believable universe.
Reading the Release Timeline
On the left of this article (or on this page if you're reading the standalone version) is an interactive timeline that visualises the release history of Star Wars titles along with screenshots and some additional data points that may be relevant when trying to compare and understand these games' relationships with Star Wars.
Using the Timeline
By default, the timeline will scale to take up the available space to the left of the divider, which can be resized by dragging, or by clicking on the icons at the top of the divider. In the bottom left corner of the timeline are buttons providing additional control over timeline scaling.
The round "Cheese Talks" stamp icon on the top right of certain games within the timeline indicate that the article covers this game specifically, and act as links to the relevant section.
Hovering over a screenshot will expand to display a larger version. Hovering over the question mark icon above a screenshot will display information on the screenshot's origin.
Hovering over any of the six icons at the bottom of each game will display further information on the meaning of that icon.
The controls on the top left of the timeline allow for customisation of horizontal sorting/organisation, highlighting different relationships between the listed titles. From top to bottom, they are:
The developers who worked on the title
The publisher(s) who supported the title's development
The kind of relationship the title has with Lucasfilm produced films or TV shows (adaptation, intersects or independent)
Whether or not the title overtly contradicts Star Wars canon as established in Lucasfilm produced films or TV shows at the time of its creation
Whether or not the title includes depictions of characters from Lucasfilm produced films or TV shows
Whether or not the title features playable Jedi or other Force users
Whether the game is single player, multiplayer, single player and multiplayer, or an MMO
The in-fiction time period the title is set within
There are a number of assumptions/concessions made for the presentation of this data that are worth being aware of when reading:
Where a developer or publisher has changed its name, the last/current name is displayed
Games with platform specific publishers typically include only the publisher(s) for primary development platforms
Screenshots have been drawn from a number of locations, gathered by myself and others. Mouse over the question mark icon above a screenshots for more details
When a game has had multiple releases (including additional platform releases and re-releases), the earliest public release date is used
Release dates don't include time zone information. Assume accuracy of +/- one day.
For the sake of readability, short names for some developers and publishers are used. For example, "Sculptured Software" has been truncated to "Sculptured"
When sorted by in-fiction period, the "All" category includes titles that both do and do not contain Old Republic era content. Titles set across an entire film trilogy are included in the category for that trilogy's first film
Eras in Star Wars Game History
Star Wars is typically accepted to be the domain of LucasArts, originally founded as Lucasfilm Games in 1982 (coincidentally the release date of the first Star Wars computer game, Parker Brothers' Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for Atari and Intellivision platforms) as the game development arm of Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm had licenced out the Star Wars IP to other game development companies, preventing Lucasfilm Games from exploring that until the early 90s.
The pre-LucasArts era of Star Wars games were a mix of platfomers, arcade space combat, scrolling shooters, and other oddities, landing primarily on PC and arcade platforms, but also on early consoles.
From 1992 onwards, LucasArts (as it had been renamed) was involved in the publishing of every Star Wars game (excluding Hasbro's Star Wars Monopoly and Star Wars: Millennium Falcon CD-ROM Playset) until 1998 when education oriented spin-off company Lucas Learning was formed. This early period, which ran between Sculptured Software's 1992 The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith saw LucasArts making use of both internal and external developers, working with the likes of Software Toolworks, TotallyGames and SEGA to make titles alongside offering from their own already mature internal development teams.
Games developed during this time primarily targeted PC platforms and consoles, and included platformers, arcade space combat, space flight sims, cinematic rail shooters, first person shooters, and first/third person action games. Several successful series have their origins in this era, including X-Wing, Dark Forces/Jedi Knight, and Rebel Assault. Many of these games pushed the boundaries of both the current technology and craft, though not all were well received. Of particular note, Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi, a 3D fighting game in the style of Soulcalibur released for the Playstation regularly finds its way onto lists of "the worst Star Wars games."
Lucas Learning's first title was Star Wars: Droidworks, which made use of the Sith engine created for Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight (title names in the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series get a little convoluted!), and the company had a comparatively short life, releasing nine titles before closing its doors in 2001. Primarily, their titles were puzzle oriented and centred around Phantom Menace tie-ins.
After a long and celebrated period of primarily creating new independent IP, LucasArts' focus shifted almost entirely toward Star Wars, with nineteen of their twenty two titles released between 1998 and 2001 being Star Wars themed.
During this period, Factor 5, TotallyGames, Big Ape Productions, Ronin Entertainment, and Luxoflux also worked on Star Wars titles, all of which were published by LucasArts. PC platforms were still dominant across the board, with several titles supporting consoles and/or handheld devices.
This era also coincided with the film release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, the first installment of the prequel trilogy and the first Star Wars film since 1985's Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (which never received a game tie-in). Excluding one arcade title and Sculptured Softwares' four platfomers, no titles since LucasArts' early era began in 1992 had been straight film adaptations. After nineteen titles that told new stories (which typically intersected with the events of the original trilogy), Big Ape Studios released the game adaptation Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999.
Until the prequel trilogy ended with Revenge of the Sith in 2005, Star Wars game releases were mostly focused on the prequel trilogy era, supporting film releases with adaptations and intersecting stories. Beyond these, the Jedi Knight and Rogue Squadron series received new installments, and both Knights of the Old Republic titles were released.
Star Wars got its first MMO with Sony Online Entertainment's Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, initially set between the original Star Wars film and The Empire Strikes Back, it also received film tie-in content in the Rage of the Wookiees and Trials of Obi-Wan expansions. In 2005, the first LEGO Star Wars game was released, adapting the entire prequel trilogy into a humorous brick based adventure. The first licenced browser based games also began to appear on StarWars.com, starting with 2003's Force Flight.
Though LucasArts was still publishing the majority of Star Wars titles, the number of individual developers working on Star Wars titles continued to grow to its peak, with releases from Ensemble Studios, Factor 5, Rainbow Studios, Raven Software, David A. Palmer Productions, Helixe, Pandemic, Sony Online Entertainment, BioWare, Pocket Studio, Ubisoft, Obsidian Entertainment, TT Fusion (TT Games in the timeline), The Collective, Universomo, Magellan Interactive, Amplified Games. Additionally, Tiger Games and Jakks Pacific released TV games, and StarWars.com and CartoonNetwork.com published several browser based titles.
Console support increased dramatically during this period while handheld and mobile titles were still comparatively rare, began to expand as well, with THQ Wireless taking over publishing of mobile titles produced by third party developers.
In October 2012, Lucasfilm and all of its holdings were acquired by Disney. The period leading up to this generally continued trends established in the years before. A few new publishers entered the fray, but LucasArts still published the majority of Star Wars titles. Consoles and handheld/mobile platforms continued to grow, while support for PC platforms declined significantly. Browser based games of varying scale increased dramatically, with StarWars.com, CartoonNetwork, Winning Moves and LEGO releasing multiple titles.
THQ Wireless continued to publish mobile Star Wars titles until 2010 shortly before it was sold to 24MAS as part of THQ's restructuring efforts. The number of publishers involved with Star Wars games increased again, with titles released during this period being published by LucasArts, EA, LEGO, Ubisoft, THQ Wireless.
In addition to in-house titles developed at LucasArts, external studios including Petroglyph, Traveller's Tales (TT Games in the timeline), Magellan Interactive, Ubisoft, Flashlabs Entertainment, Rebellion Developments, G5 Entertainment, Krome Studios, Powerful Robot, Three Melons, Infrared5, Sony Online Entertainment, Vertigore Games, BioWare, Terminal Reality, 4T2 Multimedia (Amuzo in the timeline), Fuel, Soap, and Rovio Entertainment worked on Star Wars titles between 2006 and 2012.
During this period, LEGO produced a number of browser based games as well as mobile, console and PC titles. The Star Wars: The Force Unleashed series launched and gained a sequel, and the infamous Kinect Star Wars received praise and criticism for its approaches toward adapting the Star Wars universe for motion control. Following LEGO's lead, Rovio Entertainment developed two Star Wars themed titles, loosely retelling the Star Wars saga in Angry Birds' style.
Star Wars received its second and third MMOs in Sony Online Entertainment's 2010 Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures and BioWare's 2011 Star Wars: The Old Republic. Eight and a half years after its initial release and shortly before The Old Republic launched, Star Wars Galaxies was retired |
even less hops. ABV: 5.3%
This was an okay wheat beer. A little bland relative to some of the really good ones but it was very drinkable.Advertisement Rogue scientists revive lost moon photos inside abandoned McDonald's Share Shares Copy Link Copy
A group of rebellious scientists achieved what NASA thought was impossible inside, of all places, an abandoned McDonald's. Cobbling together decades-old spy technology and extinct videotape, the scientists of "McMoon" breathed new life into photos that were once hailed as the "pictures of the century." Below is the in-depth tale of how the enlightened rogues inside "McMoon" figured it all out. WHAT WAS SO ASTOUNDING? Before NASA could put a man on the moon, scientists had to know what it really looked like. Some theorized that the lunar orbiter would sink into sand, suffocating and killing the astronauts. Another theory posited that the moon was so brittle it might break apart at the landing site and kill the astronauts. So NASA hired Boeing and used spy technology to create Lunar Orbiter -- a satellite reconnaissance mission so technologically advanced that NASA wouldn't see its true nature for decades. What it found was set aside and nearly lost forever. In 2007, rogue scientists picked up where NASA left off. They collected all the modulated images, recorded on 1,470 huge two-inch videotapes. Even though the technology to play them back didn't exist anymore, the scientists were able to resurrect pristine images of the moon from the tape. The pictures are so clear that they rival images taken by a multi-billion dollar satellite currently orbiting the moon. SEE THE AMAZING PHOTOS WHAT WAS THE LUNAR ORBITER? Remember the old instant cameras? Where the picture was developed before your eyes? Here's an ad from that same era, just to remind you. That technology was actually created for spy satellites in the 1950s. The Lunar Orbiter used that same technology. It just made negatives, not full photos. But those negatives were on 70mm film, which is the same size as IMAX movies. The satellite had a light beam installed to "scan" the negatives and then they would beam them back to the earth from space, one little strip at a time. It took 98 of those strips for a high-resolution image; 29 of them for medium resolution. The image was scrambled, or modulated, and beamed to one of three places: the US, Australia or Spain, depending on which country was facing the moon at the time. The modulated data was recorded on huge two-inch videotapes. But NASA couldn't tap into that raw data. They could unscramble it, put it on a monitor, then take a picture of the monitor. Then they'd put all those little strips together, take another picture. Print that one, piece them together on the floor, then make another picture, blowing it up so they can see the surface better. It's how they figured out where to land Apollo 11. Before Lunar Orbiter, they had no idea what might happen. Once America did get a man on the moon, Lunar Orbiter was all but forgotten. WHY WERE THE IMAGES SET ASIDE? When America finally put a man on the moon, the astronauts had their own cameras. Equipped with 70mm color film cameras, NASA started using lunar landing photos and quit looking at the Lunar Orbiter photos. The tapes were cast aside. Since they had to essentially make a copy of a copy of a copy, they were grainy, somewhat blurry, and not near as clean or clear as the fresh negatives taken on the moon's surface. They simply had no way to print the photos from Lunar Orbiter like a regular photo. Eventually the tapes were all stored in a big room at the National Archives. The room is similar to the one at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," according to McMoon's lead scientist Dennis Wingo. The machines were set aside, too. To this day, few if any of those two-inch tape machines exist and very few of the engineers who designed and built them are alive to recreate the technology. Once they die, the technology effectively dies with them. WHY USE A McDONALD'S Dennis Wingo studied Lunar Orbiter in college. He heard that in the 1980s all 1,470 of those two-inch tapes were saved by a NASA employee. They were stored in Southern California at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Those machines, though, didn't exist anymore. Nobody had used that kind of tape for years. But that same employee who saved the tapes had saved the machines. They were in her barn in Southern California. Wingo knew someone at NASA Ames who was intrigued with the idea of tapping into the tapes. JPL wasn't convinced. Scientists there told NASA not to let the rogue group do anything. There were no tape machines and to build technology that they said would cost $6 million. Wingo got NASA approval to try at a budget of $120,000. He needed a building to re-solder the machines and start processing. The McDonald's was free and had vent hoods to vent out the heat and the solder fumes. Plus, being in Silicon Valley, all the retired engineers from AMPEX, the company who made the machines, volunteered to help rebuild them. The de-scrambling technology, known as "modulating" the information, didn't exist. It was spy technology. Nobody had ever written it down, so there were no schematics. Yet Wingo found an old mathematical formula for the "modulator" signal. The AMPEX engineers used that and hand-built a card. When they fired up the machines inside "McMoon," they heard the voices of the listening stations from 50 years ago come through. WHAT’S WITH THE PIRATE FLAG? Believe it or not, any "pseudo-sanctioned" or unsanctioned NASA project is stamped with a pirate flag. It seemed particularly appropriate that McMoon have the flag. Their six-figure budget was far lower than JPL's proposed budget, which was near $6 million. WHAT MADE THIS SO AMAZING? These were the very first images, from up close, of the moon itself, taken from space. Even telescopes in 1966 couldn't see the full surface features of the moon. It was also the first time humanity saw the earth from space. When the first photos of the earth, Time and Life magazines each dubbed them the "pictures of the century." WHY DO THIS? Beyond the historical value of the photographs themselves, there is also value to studying many of the photographs taken by Lunar Orbiters I-V. Shots of the Earth’s geological features can aid studies in climate change and drought. Views of the moon can also help planetary scientists track its evolution over the past 50 years. On top of that, these photos, which caused a gigantic stir, are creating new interest and discussion of lunar missions, Martian missions and discussions of NASA, science and technology.Getty Images
Packers tight end Jermichael Finley had plenty to say during a visit with PFT Live from Radio Row on Friday.
For starters, Finley said he’ll soon be cleared for contact, after a neck injury that required fusion surgery last year.
Finley will be a free agent on March 11. He wants to stay with the Packers. But he’s willing to leave, if need be.
“I said it once before, I want to be a Packer for life,” Finley said. “But we all know this is a business and the Packers are going to take it as a business but at the same time, I was playing at a high level when I got injured. But at the end of the day, I can go give any team what they need and take them to the promised land, I can guarantee you that.”
Finley said he’s eyeballing a team that already is on the verge of getting to the promised land.
“I mean there’s a couple of teams I would love and would be on the first flight out to play with but like I said the Packers are going to come at me with something and I’m going to go to them first and see what they’ve got and if it’s not I would love to be on the first flight out to good old Seattle,” Finley said.
Whether the Seahawks land Finley or not, the notion that the Seahawks have become a magnet for free agents is very good news for a team that could remain a contender for years to come.
For the full Finley interview, click the button below.The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) officially opens tomorrow.
Canada’s largest fair, with about 1.5 million visitors last year, is more affectionately known as ‘The Ex’ as in, short for Exhibition.
The All-Canadian Red Hot Burger is a nod to Canada’s 150th birthday. © CBC
But when I was a child, growing up in Toronto, the start of the Ex was second only to Christmas as a source of joy and enthusiasm.
It did mean that ‘going back to school’ was not far off, generally it’s the day after the CNE closes, on Labour Day, the national holiday that occurs on the first Monday in September.
But it was the rides, the thrills and fun to be had on the midway, that was the big draw. Those, and the great food, from samples in the ‘Food Building’ to sumptuous treats you can’t find anywhere else.
A server at ‘Eative’ shows off their feature this year: the Dragon’s Breath Crepe © CBC
While I don’t think I can take a roller-coaster now, I’m still game for a spin on a Ferris-wheel or even a merry-go-round.
And the cotton candy no longer has much of an appeal but the little stand that served the ice cream sandwiches, brings back lots of great memories. They were the best: a thick slice of vanilla ice cream between two warm waffly square slices.
For families now, who have a lot of options around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) such as Canada’s Wonderland to the north, and Marineland at Niagara Falls, the Ex is still a draw.
Perhaps it’s the location, on the shore of Lake Ontario, or the tradition, after 139 years the event has managed to evolve and draw crowds still.
The Quilt of Belonging, on display for the first time since 2008. © CNE
The concerts at the Bandshell might be better than ever: this year.
Acts like the Sam Roberts Band, The Sheepdogs and John Kay & Steppenwolf, of ‘Born to Be Wild’ fame are just some of the acts in an amazing line-up.
And on the last day, Desi Sub Culture opens for the First Nations sensation, A Tribe Called Red.
There are events and exhibits galore at the International Pavillion, And The Quilt of Belonging is back again.
The magnificent installation is the largest collaborative work of textile art to be created on a national scale. It’s back at the CNE for the first time since 2008. It’s 263 squares represent 71 indigenous groups and 192 immigrant nationalities found in Canada.
The Quilt is a lasting testimony to Canada’s multicultural heritage and identity.Many Caps fans watching television have known just one man as the voice of the team: Joe Beninati. Over the past decade, Beninati has won countless Emmys for his play-by-play of hockey games. On Friday, he received an even higher honor. Beninati was named D.C. Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.
Joe Beninati, @CSNMA's #Caps announcer, has been named D.C. Sportscaster of the Year by @NSSASportsMedia. #CapitalsTalk — Brian Potter (@BrPott) January 9, 2015
“I was notified of winning the D.C. Sportscaster of the Year Award last week, and I felt truly honored,” Beninati said in an email to RMNB. “I am a co-recipient with Bob Carpenter, whose baseball broadcasts are always first-class.”
“I am very flattered by this award,” Beninati continued. “The selection is made through a vote of our broadcasting peers. It is especially rewarding for me to be shown that type of respect. I like to think that, right now, I am heading into the best broadcasting years of my career, and locally that means great times are ahead with the Capitals on Comcast SportsNet.”
This is the first time Beninati has won the award. Sportscaster of the Year is not typically an honor that a play-by-play man receives. Past winners include sports anchor greats like Warner Wolf, Glenn Brenner, and Frank Herzog.
More recent winners also include CSN sports journalist Chick Hernandez and former NBC 4 anchor Lindsay Czarniak who now works for ESPN.
The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association has a full list of D.C. award winners.
For years, Beninati was the nation’s number-two guy for hockey, calling games on Versus throughout the regular season and all the way through the Conference Finals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Following a reshuffling at NBC Sports in early 2011, we’ve had Beninati all to ourselves, and we’re acutely aware how lucky we are to have him. Beninati is a world-class talent.
“I obviously want to be back at the national level in this sport,” Beninati said recently to Sport Business Daily’s John Ourand. “It was a personal disappointment. Hockey is one of the great loves of my life. To have had the opportunity for six years there to do it at the national level, to be slotted right behind Mike Emrick, I was tremendously proud of that and I only wanted to get better with it. That opportunity wasn’t given to me, and I will try my darndest to get back into the mix, but we’ll see how that turns out. I’m grateful for the time that I had and I sure hope that I get [another opportunity].”
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PinterestThe word in New England on Tuesday was “Tebow.”
The next day it was all about “spirituality.”
Coincidence? Not at all.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft said Wednesday that Tim Tebow’s faith-based makeup was a factor in deciding to bring the quarterback into the fold.
“He’s a winner, and the fact that spirituality is so important to him is very appealing to me,” Kraft said, according to CBS Boston.
The report included two more quotes with the word “spirituality.” Kraft was speaking from a charity event in honor of his late wife, Myra:
— “For me personally, having Tim Tebow on this team, he’s someone who believes in spirituality, he’s very competitive, works hard and has a great attitude.”
— “You can’t have enough good people around you, and (Tebow) has the added dimension of spirituality being so important to him, and that personally appeals to me a lot.”
KEIDEL: TIM’S GONE, SO GET A GRIP
Tebow was cut by the Jets in April after one disappointing season in New York. Many wondered whether he was through in the NFL — until the Patriots swooped in and signed him to a non-guaranteed two-year deal.
New England coach Bill Belichick has been mum on Tebow’s role, though with future Hall of Famer Tom Brady under center you can be sure there will be no QB controversy this time around.
LANTERN: BRILLIANT BILL DID JETS A SOLID
“Watching Tebow throw yesterday, to me, he looked pretty good,” said Kraft. “It’s fun having him here. It’s nice to have three quarterbacks who can throw it really well.”
Kraft also channeled his inner Woody Johnson, the Jets owner who made headlines last year for saying “you can never have enough Tim Tebow.” Except Johnson was presumably talking about the football player. Kraft was speaking of the man.
“You can’t get enough people like him,” Kraft said, according to USA Today. “Life is about collecting good people around you. You can’t have enough good people.”
PALLADINO: TEBOWMANIA IS DEAD
You May Also Be Interested In These StoriesSimply disturbing the surface of water creates something beautiful; just imagine what it must be like if you could add some color to this sight. Don’t think about the paints you had to dilute with water in order to be able to paint on paper that you used when you were young.
This form of painting is also called Ebru or paper marbling and it involves putting paint on an aqueous surface in order to create different designs. You simply put the paint on water and then use a straw to manipulate the paint, just like drawing on a latte.
Photo credits here
The pictures provide just five examples of the many types of Ebru. However, paper marbling can also represent more intricate designs. But maybe you want to see for yourselves…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay-tD7x6dK8
While I was watching the videos, I was expecting them to be a perishable form of art: you add the paint, draw the design and then simply, get a new “sheet of water”. So I was quite surprised to see that the artist used paper as well to immortalize their creations.
Many of these modern ways of painting may only create a “wow” effect, striking a chord in the viewer with their sole aesthetic purpose, but some of them can also be used in marketing. Among these marketing strategies there are those that employ art to convey a message. Sometimes, water painting isn’t all about the colors on water, but it can be the other way around. A very good example of using a different kind of water painting was preferred when raising awareness regarding drinkable water.
So if you want to take up any form of Ebru, you might want to know what materials it requires. So who’s trying it at home?Newcomers at Rosa's Fresh Pizza might think the store's owner has an odd obsession with sticky notes. But the plethora of pinks, blues and yellows spanning the restaurant's walls have nothing to do with interior aesthetics and everything to do with uniting a community in caring for its poorest residents.
Mason Wartman, who owns the Philadelphia pizza parlor, is gaining national attention for his unique business model of giving back, NBC 10 News reported. Customers at Rosa's, where a piece of pizza is $1, can choose to buy a slice for a homeless person for just another buck. They're then able to write a heartfelt message on a sticky note and add it to the wall, where those in need who've benefited from the pay it forward pizza have also written responses of gratitude.
"A slice of pizza is a big deal to me," one homeless person at Rosa's said. "Because of Mason, I'm assured of at least one slice of pizza every day."
NPR reported that customers have bought about 8,400 slices of pizza for the homeless over the past nine months.
"This is a super-easy way, a super-efficient way and a super-transparent way to help the homeless," Wartman told the outlet. "Sometimes homeless people buy [slices] for other homeless people."
Wartman's post-its were originally intended to keep track of how many slices were available for hungry customers. But after the number of free slices grew to about 500, his post-it strategy could no longer could keep up with the demand to give back. Wartman now uses the store's register to stay on top of how many slices have been paid for ahead of time by kind customers.
Ellen DeGeneres praised Wartman's good deeds on Tuesday when he stopped in for a segment on her talk show. During his visit, DeGeneres encouraged viewers to visit Rosa's and gave Wartman a check for $10,000 to help run his business.
"A lot of people... they ask homeless people for directions in my shop," Wartman said on the talk show. "They don't even know that they're communicating and interacting with them as equals. It's really cool to build the community like that."A mouthy London cop feels disgruntled when he must learn to work with a new partner, a female detective with her own approach to solving crime.
1. Episode 1 57m DI Jack Armstrong is paired with a new partner, straitlaced Georgina Dixon, when a car salesman is found murdered on the showroom floor.
2. Episode 2 58m After spending the day navigating gender politics while investigating a murder on a university campus, Georgina and Jack pursue romantic interests.
3. Episode 3 57m Working in missing persons, the partners investigate a local gym, where Jack is bitten by the self-improvement bug and Georgina develops a crush.
4. Episode 4 59m Georgina gets too wrapped up in her role as an undercover contestant on a TV chef competition show. Meanwhile, Jack tries to win a woman with food.
5. Episode 5 58m Jack and Georgina make short work of the case of a murdered headmaster, but begin to doubt themselves when reviewing the facts.I saw this blog post: Uncommon Sense: Advice 4 women how to not get a "deserved" raping by Aaron P. Taylor and the contradictions were too much to not highlight.
You see, no woman “deserves” to get raped. Any woman who has unwanted sex forced upon her by another does not deserve the actions and subsequent psychological and physical pain she will receive as a result of having a man sexually place himself on and in her without her consent. With that said: some women out there are doing things that, based on their actions, practically SCREAMS: “Please rape me - I don’t mind at all, really!”
The first quoted paragraph is nothing more than a hollow disclaimer. The body of his post shows his true opinion about the rightness or wrongness of rape.
The reality is that the woman's actions Taylor describes in this post don't practically scream anything. She asked him to dance multiple times and he agreed to dance multiple times. If he got turned on during the dancing that isn't her responsibility. However, if her dancing somehow committed her to more than dancing then his agreement to dance committed him to more than dancing as well.
If this "practically SCREAMS" logic were valid then his actions which he describes also practically SCREAMS (to all women): "Please stalk me and force yourself on me - I don't mind at all, really!"
After all, we've all heard the stories that sexually active men will never say no to a willing woman. So since Taylor showed his sexual willingness toward one woman then he has -- by his own logic -- shown his sexual willingness toward all women. And now he's announced it publicly that he's being unfairly denied sex. That's a more obvious advertisement for sex than he claims women project.
He's practically SCREAMING, "Oh, all you women of the Internet come find me and have sex with me."
Yet when his so-called logic is flipped back on him, Taylor isn't likely to have any trouble rejecting the "practically SCREAMS" logic he's so fond of.
It is not the victims' actions which cause crimes to be committed against them, it is the thinking of the criminals and those whose thinking aligns with those criminals which causes crimes to be committed. It is the projection (unconfirmed illusion) of what another person's actions scream which cause others to justify committing crimes or blaming the victims for luring the non-violent into acts of violence.
If this projection is valid in one scenario then it must be just as valid in all other scenarios.
A man who drunkenly promises his buddies an all-expense paid trip to Mexico once he gets a promotion and who then says, "Forget it," after that promotion then practically SCREAMS for those buddies to forge his signature on credit card cash advance checks until they have enough money for the trip of a lifetime.
Now, for you girls out there that may not be aware, when you dance with a guy over and over again, and get more and more suggestive in your intentions via dancing, a few things happen in the male psyche: 1. His brain sends blood from his head to his “little head” and gives him a boner 2. He starts to think: “I know we’re just dancing… but DANG, she must REALLY want me to give it to her right!” And so it was: the next time we danced, our faces were touching again. Me, being the guy I am, decided to go in for a light kiss. I puckered up my lips, tilted my head to the side, and BOOM! She turned her face and I got the cheek!
In item 2 Taylor admits that they were just dancing but his conscious projections (not all that blood went south as claimed) turn just dancing suggestively into something he clearly knows it isn't. Once the dancing started to get suggestive all he had to do to clarify her intent was to ask her if she was interesting in more than dancing. Then based on her answer he could decide whether to dance with her again.
But no, she's to blame for his own failure to ask and for his wrong assumption.
So, why do I tell you this story? Simple: had I been a less-than-understanding guy (i.e., a forceful-type of guy who always “gets what he wants by any means necessary”), I could have just as easily forced a kiss on her, or worse - waited until after the club let out to follow her to her car, then followed her to her house. And, when she got out her car, I could have been right there ready to pounce on her, saying: “I think you owe me something, lady!!”
That's called a rapist and sexual predator not a "less-than-understanding guy."
The described actions are clearly crimes of anger and resentment not passion. Taylor agreed to dance multiple times with a woman and she didn't agree to more than dancing and for that "crime" against him she "deserves" to be raped?
That is seriously disturbed thinking.
Sound far-fetched? Seeing as girls get raped everyday around the world, it’s not an implausible story.
Taylor is giving us rationalizations for not only the rape of women like the one who spurned his kiss, he is making victims' actions responsible for all rapes. It is this ability of so many people to rationalize rape through victim blaming which is responsible for sexual assault in the US estimated at a rate of 1 every 2 minutes.
Women agreeing to dance and not agreeing to do more than dance is not the cause of rape. If that were the true cause of rape then children under the age of 12 wouldn't be 15% of the number of people sexually assaulted.
If Taylor were genuinely interested in preventing the type of rape he highlights, he'd be focusing his ire on men who would use this woman's actions to justify stalking her and raping her. But he doesn't waste a sentence trying to convince potential rapists not to rape.
He feels free to allow his ire toward women to spill out into public by framing his resentments as rape prevention advice despite the fact that his argument about "deserved" rape contributes to the very thing he claims to be against.
Now, had I gone through with the second example, I’d be called a “monster” who “preyed upon this girl for no reason,” and would be looked down upon for doing such a thing. And, like I said before, given the actions that were taken in the second example, that title would have been deserved. But, what about the girl? What about HER part in the scenario?
Again we get a logical contradiction. If Taylor agrees that if he had followed that woman and raped her that he would have, "preyed upon this girl for no reason," then he cannot turn around and demand that a rape victim take responsibility for the actions of a rapist.
But this isn't about logic, it is about anger and displacing responsibility for a man's rageful actions onto women.
It’s okay, for example, if a girl decides to wear a shirt on a date that shows a little cleavage. However, it’s another thing for a girl to go on a date wearing a top that shows just about everything but her nipples, then have a 30-minute conversation with a guy about how voluptuous and sensitive her breasts are, then spend half the night stroking her hand against the outer-lining of said breasts… …and then get mad at the guy for trying to touch them towards the end of the date!!! You see what I mean?? It’s called “FALSE ADVERTISING,” and that crap is very frustrating to a guy!
He positions himself as a powerless victim to this cleavage-bearing woman and others like her, but he (or the guy) made choices which included the choice to act on assumptions that he could have quickly verified or ruled out.
Taylor fails to consider that the cause of the rejection in this scenario could easily be "the guy."
His description dehumanizes her. She is nothing more than a product and her actions are advertisements. With a belief set like that motivating the man's actions what could go wrong so that a willing woman ends up so mad at him that her willingness turns to disgust?
The answer is everything.
But it is easier to label women as cruel teases and to label men who rape to be little more than hapless victims of those mean women.
So, when a girl comes along who is actively (read: not from a distance, not while sitting somewhere by herself, unaware that guy is looking at her, but actively) performing certain actions or saying certain things that signal sexual interest… WHAT ELSE IS A GUY SUPPOSED TO THINK, other than: “This girl want to give me sex!” In short, ladies: if you don’t want a guy to rape you, don’t do stuff intentionally that you know will make him want to jump your bones. You may think doing these sorts of things is “cute” and “just being a girl,” but it’s dangerous, and can get you hurt. Teasing a guy with soft whispers, body groping, or any other type of enticing maneuver is wrong if you don’t plan on following through.
So much for being against rape.
I suggest to Taylor that he drop, "This girl want to give me sex!" and add, "This is a good time to ask." Then he needs to ditch the seething resentment and anger.
His non-sex crime analogy about a promised retail sale undermines his logic that making men want to jump a woman's bones causes rape. His analogy shows that the criminal responses he understands come from revenge-filled rage not from any masculine biological response.
When he expects something from you then you'd better give it to him... or else.
Technorati tags: rape crime politics sexual violence sexual assault feminism
Labels: Violence Against WomenIn the pantheon of sports history, there has perhaps never been a more daunting reclamation project. This storied franchise touted a rabid but increasingly disenchanted fan base. A franchise with pride and historical consequence, but fraught with bloated contracts, cheap owners and draft-day disasters. What was the summation of the discord? A championship drought that was unfathomable in the days of yesteryear.
I am referencing the Chicago Blackhawks, of course.
***
A few miles north of The House Michael Built, a similar story was unfolding. A franchise so beleaguered by a century of heartbreak and front-office mismanagement, the regrettable suffix “losers” is inextricably attached and accepted as simply part of the experience.
In June, the Blackhawks lifted Lord Stanley’s cup for the third time in six years. In the salary cup era, it has become irrefutable that we are witnessing a dynasty at work.
The Cubs just celebrated the clinching of their first postseason berth in seven years. It’s hardly three world championships in six years, but it’s a notable achievement nonetheless considering recent history.
Lacking the benefit of foresight, paralleling rebuilds is a futile task. It is only with hindsight that we will accurately reconstruct the puzzles that were assembled and the accomplishments those puzzles earned. Nevertheless, let’s compare what is for the Blackhawks, and what could be for the Cubs.
How Bad Did It Get?
Bill “Dollar Bill” Wirtz was widely regarded as one of the cheapest owners in sports. After his passing in 2007, Wirtz was so reviled by the fan base that they booed during his tribute proceedings. Legends such as Bobby Hull and Tony Esposito had been ostracized and had no public role with the team. The team had not had a winning season since 2002, and had failed to win a playoff series since 1996. The Chicago Tribune did not send a beat writer on the road. Home games were not on television. For the ‘Hawks, nearly a half-century of futility was punctuated by ESPN naming them the “worst franchise in sports” in 2004.
“We used to have business cards with a website address and we’d tell people, ‘Go there and you’d get two free tickets.’ People wouldn’t even take the cards!”
– Patrick Sharp
***
On the north side, the picture wasn’t much brighter. The promise of the years following 2003 never materialized mostly due to the fickle nature of the anatomy of the right arm. General Manager Jim Hendry made some savvy moves, including trading for Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee, but playoff disappointments in 2007 and 2008 left the team with bloated contracts, aging veterans and a murky future. Wrigley Field—a historical landmark—was falling apart. Owner Sam Zell was actively shopping the team to the highest bidder. The dreaded century-mark of championship futility had passed. It was the longest drought in professional sports, and the Chicago Cubs were for sale.
The Dawn of Promise
It may be dark to suggest the passing of a father, brother and son was the dawn of a new beginning; but the story is the story. Bill Wirtz’ passing signaled a new era was about to begin, one led by his son, Rocky Wirtz. The younger Wirtz immediately set out to prove that sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree. His first move bears shades of irony, as he hired John McDonough away from the Cubs to run the franchise. McDonough and Wirtz wasted no time:
“When Rocky hired me, we spent probably five or six hours together one afternoon, and our philosophies lined up. We had a lot of things we saw the same way, and then there was an incredible sense of urgency on both of our parts. This wasn’t going to be a two-year, let me assess what’s here and I’ll get back to you. We had to get after this right away, so I think that was the approach we took. At the same time, putting a real premium on hiring the right people, drafting, developing and, in some instances, making really tough decisions.”
– John McDonough to ESPN
McDonough understood what the Blackhawks meant to Chicago. He understood that the fan base stopped going to games not simply out of apathy for the team, but as a protest borne out of anger towards ownership. But even McDonough underestimated the gravity of the situation at the time of his hiring:
“It might have been a two o’clock start,” McDonough said. “My sons, Michael and Ryan, we got here probably around 1:30. I actually thought when we got here that it had advertised the wrong game start and that it was six o’clock. The building was empty. Ultimately, I think there were 5,000 to 6,000 people in the building. “I wanted my sons to really see what I saw—the energy, the passion, the enthusiasm that I saw when I younger. And it was a little disappointing because they really didn’t have the feel for it. They couldn’t.”
– John McDonough to ESPN
***
As bidding transpired for the Cubs, leading candidates emerged. One possibility was polarizing Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, another was the Ricketts’ family of TD Ameritrade wealth, led by Tom Ricketts. The fan base wanted drastic, sweeping change. In short, they wanted Cuban. Zell had other ideas, advising prospective bidders that he would sell the team under intricate financing provisions to limit his exposure to capital gains taxation. Cuban bowed out upon learning of the proposed hand-tying contract structure, leaving the Ricketts’ as Zell’s preferred choice. Tom Ricketts touted himself as fan first, business owner second, even revealing he’d met his wife in the sacred left field bleachers of Wrigley Field. He immediately began speaking a welcome language to the desperate fan base:
“It is a dream situation, a dream job. It’s the best franchise in sports…Everyone needs to know we are here for the long term and we are here to win.”
– Tom Ricketts to USA Today
In similar fashion to McDonough, Ricketts understood the goal, but clearly underestimated the height of the hurdles to attain it:
“I’ll be honest. I think we have a team that can do it next year, the fact is, there is enough talent coming back to this team next season.”
– Tom Ricketts to USA Today in 2009
These words would quickly resemble something a fan would proclaim more than a realistic owner. Much as Wirtz had discovered two years previously, Ricketts would come to understand he needed a new plan. He needed a general to guide the franchise. A man who was unconcerned with appearances and the scars that would be required to start over. He needed Theo Epstein.
In Boston, Epstein had played the part of hero in the renaissance of the Boston Red Sox. In the span four short years, he toppled the other curse and brought the city two long-awaited World Series titles. You would think such an accomplishment would have awarded him deity status in Boston, but a late-season collapse and clubhouse discord marred the 2011 season and created a fissure that would eventually lead to Epstein picking up Ricketts’ call.
On October 12, 2011, Ricketts landed his general.
Burn It to the Ground
McDonough acutely saw that the deepest problem the organization faced was one of culture. His message to the existing staff:
““I want all of you to succeed.” But I could tell from day one that there were a pretty high percentage of people who were not going to be on board because it was going to be a different pace. I remember calling him after my first day and I said, “Rocky, it appears there’s going to be a lot of changes soon.” He said, “Do what you have to do.””
“I think the one thing I would say: We’re not entitled to any of this. The mindset around here is very humble. We’re not entitled to one more fan coming into this arena, we’re not entitled to one more viewer, one more listener, one more win. We’re not entitled to any of that.”
– John McDonough to the Chicago Tribune
McDonough’s overhaul did not merely |
on Google+ and Facebook. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher and Spreaker. We record the show live every Wednesday at 4:30pm Pacific, goto ootinicast.com/live to find out how to join in!By signing up, you agree to AIA.org's terms of use and privacy policy.
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In HomeLight’s on-going Top Agent Insights Survey, they answered us.
In an effort to tap into the expertise of the best agents out there, we run the Top Agent Insights Survey. We use our proprietary algorithm to compare real estate agents on their historical transaction data to find the top performing real estate agents across the United States, then we interview them.
Once we had our list of top real estate agents, we gave over 100 of them a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 as “negative impact,” 5 as “no impact,” and 10 as “positive impact.” Real estate agents were able to select a number from 1-10 that answered these two questions:
“How do you feel a Hillary Clinton presidency would impact the US housing market?”
“How do you feel a Donald Trump presidency would impact the US housing market?”
We labeled all responses under five as the percent of top agents who think the candidate will have a negative effect, and all responses over five as the percent of top agents who think the candidate will have a positive effect. All responses at five are top real estate agents who think the candidate will have no impact.
47% of top real estate agents believe Trump’s effect on the housing market will be positive, while only 25% of agents believe Clinton will be positive. In comparison, 25% of agents think Trump will be negative for the housing market, while 41% of agents think Clinton will have a negative impact.
Some of the best real estate agents in the country suggest that Donald Trump would be better for the housing market than Hillary Clinton if he were elected President of the United States.
What do you think?
Tweet us. @HomeLightAppBuy Photo The Michigan Capitol is seen at the end of Michigan Avenue in this LSJ file photo. (Photo: Justin A. Hinkley/The Lansing State Journal)Buy Photo
LANSING – Critics say a bill giving new police powers to certain state workers would create “welfare police” to punish the poor, but supporters say it’s a stride toward efficiency and protecting taxpayer dollars.
State Sen. Peter MacGregor’s Senate Bill 384 would give arrest powers to employees of the Department of Health & Human Service’s Office of Inspector General. That agency investigates welfare fraud, such as when food stamps are sold for cash or used for ineligible items such as cigarettes.
Under the bill, which passed the state Senate 27-11 in September and is awaiting a committee vote in the House, OIG agents could arrest people for trafficking food stamps or other benefits or if the agents have “probable cause” to believe a person committed a felony.
A companion bill from state Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, would exempt those agents from certain firearm restrictions.
DHHS spokesman Bob Wheaton said in an email there are 240 employees in the OIG, but the department plans to have fewer than 10 inspectors with the new police powers.
Wheaton said DHHS supports the bill because its agents can currently only take action against the benefits recipients for violations, but must rely on U.S. Department of Agriculture agents to handle the retailers who participate in fraud. There are only five federal agents across Michigan, he said, and “our Office of Inspector General receives daily tips on retailer trafficking.”
“This is just another tool to help maintain the integrity of these programs we have in the state,” MacGregor, R-Rockford, said last week.
But the bill has both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.
Speaking against the bill on the Senate floor in September, Democratic state Sen. Coleman Young II said the bill “seeks to criminalize the very act of being a member of the working poor.
“This bill would allow the Department of Health & Human Services to create its own police force,” Young said. “That’s right, welfare police. Literally, the welfare police. This is insane; it’s crazy.”
“We’re not going after recipients, it’s more on the retail side,” MacGregor told the State Journal. “Obviously, it takes two to tango; it’s buyers and sellers … (But) these people are going after organized crime.”
Republican state Sen. Patrick Colbeck said on the floor that he opposed the bill because DHHS typically implements federal policy, including the Affordable Care Act, and the bill would lead to “the camel’s nose under the tent giving more and more credence to the concern of the federal government’s overreach into areas where they have no authority.”
“The powers are very limited,” MacGregor answered. “This is just another tool to allow us to stop this fraud that is happening.”
A 2013 report from the federal Agriculture Department estimated $858 million in food stamp benefits were trafficked every year and 10.5% of authorized food stamp stores engaged in trafficking.
In Michigan, the OIG found $2.4 million in fraud from trafficking last year, according the office's annual report. The office claims every dollar invested in enforcement yields $26 in taxpayer savings.
“The sky will not fall if this becomes a public act,” MacGregor said. “In fact, I think this will help out the folks who really need the help of these programs.”
Last week, Dearborn attorney John Payne wrote to the state House Criminal Justice Committee now considering the bill to warn the legislation “will result in the arrest of many well-meaning, but mistaken welfare applicants and recipients.” Payne is chair of the Elder Law & Disability Rights Section of the state bar, which voted to oppose the bill.
According the House Fiscal Agency, DHHS would spend about $300,000 to arm and train eight agents in a tailored Michigan State Police training program.
MacGregor said the OIG agents would have to meet state police licensing standards. He said many of the OIG agents are former police officers with law enforcement training.
“A lot of people think we’re going to give social workers guns,” MacGregor said, “and that is not what’s happening.”
Contact Justin A. Hinkley at (517) 377-1195 or jhinkley@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/1NEhDQ4Petrino's back in Louisville; Penn State eyes Franklin
New Louisville NCAA college head football coach Bobby Petrino address reporters following the announcement of his hiring Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014 at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
(Timothy D. Easley)
Louisville's quarterback situation remains unclear to start the first game week of the season and Bobby Petrino may not provide much clarity for Auburn or anyone else on the outside by the time Saturday arrives.
Louisville will release its depth chart on Tuesday, as will Auburn, and Petrino says to expect lots of "ORs" on the two deep, including at quarterback where Will Gardner, Reggie Bonnafon, Kyle Bolin and Lamar Jackson are vying for the starting job and everything remains on the table.
"There's a possibility that we might play more than one," Petrino said during his press conference Monday. "But you'd anticipate having one ready to go, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't play more than one."
Auburn defensive coordinator Will Muschamp has been preparing for the "unknown" given the differing styles of the dual-threat Bonnafon, who threw for 864 yards with five touchdowns and had 164 yards and five rushing scores last season, and pocket passer Gardner, who had 1,669 passing yards with 12 touchdowns.
RELATED: Auburn faces challenge of preparing for all of Louisville's QBs
The running threat is what Muschamp most has to account for because not much in Louisville's passing attack will differ between the quarterbacks.
"You got to have a quarterback that's very competitive and that will make the players around him better," Petrino said. "You got to have one that's reliable, that we can trust, that's not unpredictable so that we come out there and we know if we see certain things, he's going to do what he's been coached to do. Then he's got to be accurate. That's the biggest thing; guys aren't going to be wide open so you're going to have to be accurate with the ball."
Bonnafon opened the month as the favorite, but if things changed over the last four weeks only Petrino knows for sure.
Petrino indicated he has a starter in mind.
"I've probably got a pretty good idea," he said. "Our players will know before Saturday."Ghoul Patrol is an overhead action video game produced by LucasArts for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994. It serves as a sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors. It was re-released digitally on the Wii Virtual Console in 2010. A Genesis version was under development, but was not released.
The game stars Zeke and Julie, the characters from Zombies Ate My Neighbors, who must travel through five worlds to save their town from a horror exhibit come to life.
According to Toshiyasu Morita, a programmer and technology manager at LucasArts during the mid-1990s, this sequel was made by a third party that licensed the use of the Zombies Ate My Neighbors engine for this purpose.[2]
Reception [ edit ]
GamePro commented that "Ghoul Patrol is the closest you can get to the acclaimed Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and it's a worthy successor." They particularly praised the "outrageous 360-degree shoot-em-up action" and detailed, cartoony graphics.[3] Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it a 7.8 out of 10, calling it "A worthy sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors" and "A great salute to old, late-night horror movies."[4]
References [ edit ]Do you think the “T” in LGBT should be dropped? Do you think it belongs? These are questions that have been on the forefront of society lately. The “T” has been included in this group for well over 20 years so why would we drop it now when we continue to add more to the spectrum. The rationale behind the people who want the “T” dropped is that the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual (LGB) represent sexual orientation and “T” stands for gender. Yes this may be true, but how does that automatically seclude us from being represented in this portion of society. Just because we are transgender doesn’t mean we don’t also identify as LGB. Many trans individuals are also LGB as well as identified in the LGB spectrum prior to transitioning.
Transgender people represent so much more than just Female to Male (FTM) and Male to Female (MTF). It also represents genderqueer, gender non-conforming, agender, non-binary, and so many more people. You can’t simply just wipe a vast amount of people out of a group because it doesn’t fit in with some people’s ideology. Trans is something that is more on the forefront in today’s society which is a good thing, but some people feel that it is taking away from the LGB movement. The problem is its not just a “T” movement or an LGB movement its an LGBT all inclusive movement. Just because people are recognizing trans people now doesn’t mean the LGB’s are being left behind. If anything us being recognized will now push the whole LGBT agenda forward.
As a transgender person that prior to starting my transition identified as a lesbian can tell you first hand that the LGB community isn’t as welcoming to me as they used to be. I ask myself is it because they think I deserted my identity or that I am no longer that woman they thought I was. For me I still identify as queer so I feel like I am still represented on the LGB spectrum whether I was trans or not. Just because I identify as a man doesn’t mean I am any less a part of this group than I was prior to me transitioning. By detaching one of our own aren’t we being as bad as the people who hate on us and don’t think we should be included in normal society?
As society progresses forward we need to stand together as a united LGBT group and stand for human rights because in reality that is what we are fighting for. So that we are all treated equal no matter our gender or sexual orientation. Lets not put people down instead lets stand up to the people who hate on us and fight them. They are the people we should be fighting against not against our own. I’m proud to be trans and I was just as proud to be a lesbian. I don’t take my identity for granted, nor do I walk around with a chip on my shoulder expecting everything from everyone just because I am not a straight white man. Be true to yourself through this journey in life and cherish what you have.
AdvertisementsAnimal Classification
Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris)
Description
Sea otters are members of the weasel or mustelid family. Like other members of this family, they have very thick fur. In fact, at 850,000 to one million hairs per square inch, they have the thickest fur of any mammal. Their fur actually consists of two layers, an undercoat and longer guard hairs. This system traps a layer of air next to their skin so their skin does not get wet. Sea otters are usually dark brown, often with lighter guard hairs. Alaskan sea otters tend to have lighter fur on their heads. Sea otters are the smallest marine mammal. In California adult females weigh 35-60 pounds (16-27 kg); males reach up to 90 pounds (40 kg). Alaskan sea otters are bigger with males weighing up to 100 pounds (45 kg).
Range/Habitat
Sea otters once ranged from Mexico to Alaska and even to Japan. Currently, the California population numbers around 3,300 and is found from Half Moon Bay to Point Conception. There is a much larger population in Alaska, and sea otters are still found in Russia. Sea otters inhabit shallow coastal areas and prefer places with kelp. The kelp acts as an anchor that the sea otters use to wrap themselves in when they are resting.
Mating/Breeding
Females give birth to one pup and usually have their first pup at the age of four or five. Their pregnancies last four to five months. Pups can be born any time of year, but in California most are born between January and March, and in Alaska most are born in the summer. When born, the pups weigh from three to five pounds.
Behavior
Sea otters are social animals, with females and pups spending time together in one group and males in another. Pups stay with their mothers for the first eight months of their life. The pups' fur traps so much air that they actually cannot dive under water. When mothers leave the pups wrapped in kelp to hunt, pups bob on the surface of the ocean like a cork. Mothers spend much time grooming pups and often carry them on their chests. Pups begin to learn to swim at around four weeks of age. Sea otters are one of the few animals to use tools. They eat animals with shells, like clams and abalone, and use a stone to break open the shells. When sea otters are under water searching for food, they store what they have found in the loose skin folds at their armpits. Adult sea otters can eat 25%-30% of their body weight in one day!
Status
Sea otters in California are a threatened species due to past over hunting for their beautiful fur. Although sea otters are protected now, they remain vulnerable, especially to oil spills. Unlike other marine mammals, sea otters do not have a blubber layer. Therefore, they rely on their fur to keep warm. If their fur is oiled, it loses its insulating qualities and the sea otters soon chill. Otters are also affected by the oil fumes or poisoned by eating food exposed to oil. Most sea otters quickly die in an oil spill. Several thousand sea otters died in the 1989 Exxon oil spill in Valdez, Alaska. Other threats to sea otters include infectious diseases, parasites, boat strikes, entanglements, and toxins.
At The Marine Mammal Center
The Marine Mammal Center began rescuing and rehabilitating southern sea otters in 1995. Since that time, we have responded to more than 350 sea otters. In 2017, we retrofitted two pool areas to provide life-saving care to juvenile and adult sea otters, effectively increasing rehabilitation capacity for this threatened species. Not only is the Center able to provide second chances to otters in need of help, but we are also expanding our knowledge of the threats that sea otters face, such as domoic acid toxicosis and toxoplasmosis.
What Do they Sound Like?
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Teach your kids about wildlife with this adorable Sea Otter Puppet. Makes a great learning toy for ages 3 and up.
When you Adopt Repo the Sea Otter, he comes with an adoption certificate, a photo, and a plush toy.
Stay warm in a pair of Sea Otter Socks. Featuring prints of reclining otters, they come in sizes for kids and adults.
Want to learn more about marine mammals?
Sign up for the monthly E-Newsletter from The Marine Mammal Center.
Be Sea Otter Savvy
Download this helpful PDF document and learn how to look out for sea otters! Get tips on safe sea otter viewing, whether you are on land or in a boat.Lamar Hunt Jr. is finalizing plans to bring a top-level amateur hockey team to Overland Park.
Hunt, the owner of the Missouri Mavericks and president of Loretto Sports Ventures, has secured the rights for a United States Hockey League expansion club, and he recently placed a deposit for the team to start play in 2017.
On Tuesday, he told The Star that the team plans to play at the proposed 6,000-seat sports arena in the BluHawk development, which on Monday received approval from the Overland Park Planning Commission. It will move on to the city council, which meets June 6.
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"This will complete the picture that we started when we bought the Mavericks," Hunt said. "We wanted the affiliation with an NHL team. We wanted to make the playoffs with the Mavericks. We wanted to unify youth hockey in Kansas City. And now this is the top level of junior hockey in the United States. It fits very well along the growth path of hockey in Kansas City."
The USHL is regarded as the top junior league in the U.S. It currently has 17 teams, whose rosters consist of amateur players 20 years and younger.
The plan is for the arena to be funded via a public-private partnership, Hunt said. If approved, the arena would be scheduled for completion in 2018, he added, and it would be the home for the USHL team and other community events. The USHL franchise would play its inaugural 2017 elsewhere, though that location has not yet been determined.
Hunt said there are no plans to move the Missouri Mavericks to the Overland Park location. The Mavericks, an ECHL club that serves as an affiliate of the New York Islanders, have three years remaining on their lease with the Silverstein Eye Centers Arena in Independence.As winter draws nearer, the temperature is rising in Marpole.
It was just two weeks ago that The City of Vancouver announced modular housing units for the homeless would be constructed on a plot of land at the northeast corner of West 59th Avenue and Heather Street.
It's one of several sites where modular homes will be built, thanks to $66 million provided by the provincial government, as the city hopes to house 600 people in the temporary buildings by the end of this winter.
The two Marpole units will have care workers on site 24/7, and all residents will have access to health and support services. There were no public incidents at the city's pilot project for modular housing at Main and Terminal.
But the modular homes would be across the street from two schools, one for elementary students. And Marpole is an area where new developments have been infrequent in recent decades.
You can see where this is headed.
About 400 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/marpole?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#marpole</a> residents at Vancouver City Hall to protest new homeless modular housing. They say it's too close to schools. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/vanpoli?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#vanpoli</a> <a href="https://t.co/43vNznwSsy">pic.twitter.com/43vNznwSsy</a> —@MaryseZeidler
"It's a good idea to settle them. But you have to have consultation. You have to ask people, 'Would you accept in this location or not?'" said Long Trak, during a protest outside City Hall last week attended by around 400 people.
"Please don't misunderstand," said Craig White at the same protest, one of several last week.
"We care about helping people, but we also want to make sure that the most vulnerable demographic, our children, are properly considered."
The modular housing units are slated to go on a plot of land owned by Onni at 59th Avenue and Heather Street. (Google Streetview)
Homeless population growing through the province
While this is the first major controversy this year in Vancouver over housing the homeless, it isn't the first in B.C.
In Maple Ridge, the mayor's efforts to find a solution to a homeless camp has embroiled the city. In Victoria, citizens against the government's current homeless strategy are mobilizing for next year's municipal elections.
Even in a mid-sized city further afield like Vernon, a growing homeless camp has put the issue on the political frontburner for the first time in recent memory.
"We're seeing homelessness at record highs. People are noticing homelessness in places they've never noticed it before. People are on the edge who have never been there before," says Jeremy Hunka, a spokesperson for the Union Gospel Mission.
"It's at such a high level, people are seeing it, people's passions or feelings about it are being heightened. It's rising as the issue itself is rising."
Being proactive
The question is, can anything be done to lower the temperature?
Andy Yan is director of Simon Fraser University's City Program, and has been speaking about the benefits of the Marpole proposal. He believes the city should have announced projects in less residential areas of the city first.
Without anything for Marpole residents to compare the consultation process to, it allowed opposition to ferment, since the city wasn't proactive in explaining the benefits of modular homes.
"That's really part of this — doing it in a way that people feel respected. And making them feel there's a sense of fairness in this discussion, instead of you're 'picking on my neighbourhood,'" said Yan, who added he's more generally worried by a "increasing mistrust" between citizens and government.
Hunka also stresses a proactive approach.
He says when the UGM doubled the size of their shelter in 2011, they spoke with protesters, agreed to open washrooms at the shelter 24/7, and now regularly clean the surrounding streets and alleyways.
"We know the legitimate concerns people have can be addressed, and it can be better for everyone," he said.
"Plans to house the homeless will make things better for everybody, including the protesters... There will be a more effective use of their tax dollars, and they may likely see a reduction in the problems they fear."
For now though, he feels mostly dismay about the conversations happening.
"It's difficult to watch. It's really hard to almost put into words, because it's just such a life and death issue, and we don't like to see things at a fever pitch that have such a massive impact on so many people's lives," he said.
"We all want the same thing, which is less homelessness in the community, and I think [that's] being drowned out in the intensity of the conversation."[FOSDEM] Distributions Developer Devroom: Call for Participation
Once again, FOSDEM will have a cross-distribution miniconference on 1 & 2 February 2014. We'd like to invite submissions of talks, Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, or round-table discussions from any interested representatives of Linux distributions or individuals who have a topic of interest related to Linux distributions. Proposals should be submitted through the FOSDEM proposal system (Pentabarf) here: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM14 You'll add your session title, speaker bio, and abstract for the talk. If you've presented or submitted at FOSDEM previously, you should have an account in Pentabarf. If you haven't created an account, but have presented at FOSDEM previously *please* contact me before creating an account - the odds are you have an account that was created previously by the FOSDEM organizers. Deadline for submissions is 22 December 2013. Since we're on a tight timeline, this is unlikely to be extended. In addition to speakers, we also need one moderator for each day, and a video volunteer for each day. The moderator will introduce the speaker, keep time, and pass the microphone around for questions. The video volunteer will handle recording of sessions with provided equipment. (Don't worry, we'll also provide training as well.) The call for participation is going out a bit late, so please do speak up quickly if you're interested in participating! Also, please do help spread the word so we can ensure the best possible program for this year's FOSDEM. Best, jzbNow you can customize and pilot your own Starfighter in space PvP combat in the Star Wars™ Universe – for Free
AUSTIN, Texas – Feb. 4, 2014 – Today, BioWare™ a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA), and LucasArts announced the new Free-to-Play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Digital Expansion, Galactic Starfighter, is now available to all gamers. Early access was previously granted to Subscribers and Preferred Status Players, but starting now, everyone can jump right into the intense 12v12 Player-vs-Player (PvP) dogfighting combat. With no character level requirement, new players can jump into Galactic Starfighter and into battle quickly. Personalize your Starfighter to suit your play-style with a variety of unique customization options and join others in intense Star Wars space battles.
To celebrate the official launch of the new Digital Expansion, all players will be able to access Galactic Starfighter along with new gameplay being added today, including:
New Gameplay Mode: Team Deathmatch – The goal is to destroy the most enemy players and acquire power-up items to turn the tide of battle.
New Starfighter Role: The Bomber – Decimate enemies playing as the Bomber, featuring the strongest hull of any Starfighter, and launch proximity mines and automated drones to defend your team.
New Tactical Flashpoint: Kuat Drive Yards – Join your friends to fight through a highly contested orbital shipyard with one of the most prolific warship manufacturing facilities in the galaxy. Available to players Level 15+, this new ‘Tactical Flashpoint’ is balanced for any type of group, comprised of any combination of the four class roles, ensuring you can get into the action quickly. Combat scenarios can change with each play-through and players can earn valuable rewards like the "KDY Orbital Lifter" mount, unique Starfighter Paint Jobs and more!
Plus, players who join Star Wars: The Old Republic will receive two Pilot Suits to customize their character further.
“Space combat is an iconic Star Wars experience that adds another level of excitement and immersion within The Old Republic universe,” said Jeff Hickman, Vice President, General Manager of BioWare Austin. “Galactic Starfighter shows that BioWare is committed to giving fans, new and old, the high quality Free-to-Play Star Wars experience.”
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a Free-to-Play, award-winning MMO set thousands of years before the classic Star Wars movies. Players team up with friends online to fight in heroic battles between the Republic and Empire, exploring a galaxy of vibrant planets and experiencing visceral Star Wars combat. Now players can experience the complete storylines of the eight iconic Star Wars classes, all the way to Level 50 without having to pay a monthly fee. The Free-to-Play option complements the existing subscription offering, providing greater flexibility in how to experience Star Wars: The Old Republic.
For more information on the Galactic Starfighter Digital Expansion, please visit www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com/galactic-starfighter. Join the conversation by visiting the official Community Blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch pages. For additional press assets, please visit http://info.ea.com.How to migrate an application from AngularJS to React and Redux
Vinicius Dacal Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 20, 2017
Starting this year, I was hired by BEN Group, with the main goal of helping them migrate a legacy application from AngularJS to React and Redux. Since then, we have been creating solutions inside the project, that is working greatly so far.
In this post, I intend to show the main approaches we followed and share some solutions we created, to allow us migrate the project gradually and without loose our sanity.
Disclaimer: Our focus here, is not refactoring legacy code, but remove it as soon as possible. We avoid solutions that takes too much time or focus in changing the legacy code in order to let it “prettier”. That said, we prime to write new code with great quality.
Move the build to webpack.
This step, I consider the most import from the whole process, once with Webpack, you can start using the instruction import to get your dependencies and modules and you can start getting rid of Angular’s Dependency Injection(DI). This is also necessary to start writing React code in the application.
If you use Angular’s template cache, Pug(Jade) or any other thing that influences the build, don’t worry, Webpack will have a loader for each one of them. Don’t forget to let your Webpack configured to transpile ES2015 and JSX.
This step doesn’t focus on moving all the DI to imports, but instead, make your build work with Webpack. It’s important to keep that in mind, to avoid staying in this task for weeks and cause conflicts in dozens of files.
In AngularJS, normally, the build process gets all the dependencies you need from node_modules and insert them in the bundle. We need to keep that behavior in the new build as well.
You need to consider the legacy code as an enemy to be defeated. We need to act with caution and we need to be strategic. This also means, that in certain moments, we need to do things that aren’t pleasant.
To solve that matter, we created a file vendor.js, and imported all the dependencies inside it:
Most of the dependencies registered themselves globally in the window object, when they are imported. So, we only need to import them as the above example. Although, some of them doesn’t do that and we need to do it manually. Bellow we have an example of what we had to do with moment and jQuery:
This practice could be weird, however, you need to consider that most of the dependencies are relying on window.$, others on window.jQuery and others even on window.jquery.
After creating the vendors file, import it in the entry point of your application and this way, all your dependencies will be in the bundle:
require('./vendors');
Another step, is to ensure that all your application’s files are in the bundle. The ideal, is having each module with an index file, importing controllers, factories, views, etc.. Having that, you only need to import those indexes in the application’s entry point, same way you did with vendors, as the following example:
If you don’t have the indexes, you can try to follow a solution a little dare, not much advised though. That would be find a regex to match all your files and import them using require.context, as the below example:
The above code, will force Webpack to include in the bundle, all.js and.jsx files that are inside /app folder and its subfolders. If you decide to follow this way, don’t forget that you may have.test.js,.spec.js and even.stories.js files, and you will have to exclude them in the regex.
Also, remember that in some cases, Angular is counting on the ordering that your files are loaded, so, this solution could end up not working at all.
When you finally get your build working, hurry up to create a pull request targeting your master branch. Apart React, moving the build to Webpack is already a gain for your application. The Angular’s DI makes the application to be strongly coupled and Webpack is our ally against that
Render React components inside AngularJS
The second most important step, because without that is not possible to migrate gradually. The idea here, is that you could use React components inside Angular, as they were directives. To achieve that, we are currently using ngReact in our project.
The ngReact repo is advising to use the lib react2Angular. However, we are using Angular 1.5.8 in our app, and we end up getting some problems trying to use the other lib. I already used react2Angular in another project, that were using a more recent Angular’s version and I didn’t have any issue. That said, ngReact even not being updated anymore, has all the feature we need to transform our components into directives. My advise is: choose the lib that works for you and go ahead, both are very similar
To integrate ngReact in the project, you can install it from npm:
$ npm i --save ngreact
And then import it in your vendors:
require('ngreact');
You also need to install react and react-dom in your project:
npm i --save react react-dom
And then, register react module into Angular:
angular.module('app', ['react']);
With that done, we can create a Button component, as we would create in a regular React application:
And then, we define a directive that works as a wrapper for Button:
In the directive’s file, we must define the name of all the props whose are used by Button, in order to ngReact understands what it should pass down to the component.
Directive defined, we need to register it in Angular:
The Angular’s modules that you gonna use to register it doesn’t matter, just make sure it was registered in the application.
Once registered, we can now use the directive in any angular’s view, as the follow example:
<div>
<react-button class-name="btn"></react-button>
</div>
Notice that here, instead of CamelCase, we use dash to split the words. In this case, reactButton becomes react-button and className, becomes class-name. It’s important to keep that in mind, given this is a common mistake and could take hours to debug.
It’s common to use ngReact to render small components inside AngularJS applications, but not much productive though.
Angular UI Router, allows us to pass a parameter template in the route config. Exploring that, it’s possible to create a wrapper component for each application’s screen and then use those wrappers as the following example:
In the above example, we define a login route and pass it to a component, which is the whole Login screen. This way, we can migrate a whole screen per time, instead of migrating component by component.
My gold advise here, is to install Storybook in the project, to create and test the small components. That way is easier to build solid components and then put them together into the screens.
Screens: Also known as pages, they are the root component of each route.
Share dependencies
Define an entire screen is amazing. However, when we come to this point, we also need to share some Angular dependencies with React.
In the case of BEN, the dependencies we need, was only ready after the Angular’s initialization, after it have executed its providers, config, etc... Given that, it wasn’t possible to export them using the export keyword. To go around that, we created an object and a helper function to inject the dependencies. To implement that solution, we only need to create a file named ngDeps.js with the following code:
We call injectNgDeps inside an Angular’s run process as the below example:
We do that because we want to have access to the dependencies as soon as possible and run is one of the first processes executed in the initialization. The injectNgDeps accepts an object as argument, and merge it with the ngDeps object.
When you need any dependency inside a React component, you only need to do as the following:
Notice that the first thing we do, is to import ngDeps. If you try to access ngDeps.$state right after the import, the result will be undefined, because the run process didn’t ran yet. For that reason, we access the value inside the component’s contructor method, because the components will be instantiated only after Angular has initialized.
We extract the dependencies from ngDeps and we assigned them to the object this, because this way we can access this.$state inside any class’s method
This way it’s possible to share any Angular’s dependency with React components. However, use ngDeps with parsimony. Keep always in mind: Can I export this dependency using export? If the answer is yes, you always chose to use export, otherwise you use ngDeps.
Another thing to highlight, is that it is important to keep the access to ng |
. Such reflections echo many of the questions we considered in compiling our recent edited collection, Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970. Our book argues that love has a history, but that its history is not quite what we thought it was. A closer look at changes in love, relationships and affection between 1918 and 1970 raises questions as to whether love ever had a golden age.
In 1918 Marie Stopes, then a pioneering female palaeobotanist, published a book that would transform her life and many others. Married Love was a popular marriage guide and sex manual that advocated for marriages grounded in mutual affection, and expressed in mutual sexual pleasure; it aimed to combat sexual ignorance in marrying couples. In particular, it propounded theories about female sexual desire – women’s ‘primitive sex tides’ – which Stopes argued couples needed to understand in order to achieve ‘union with another soul, and the perfecting of oneself which such union brings’.
The book was a runaway success, being continually reprinted, and launching Stopes’ new career as a sexologist and birth control advocate. Thousands of women and men wrote to Stopes after its publication asking for advice. As Hera Cook argues, it is difficult to overestimate the innovativeness and the importance of Stopes’ work in starting and shaping the discourse on heterosexual marriage, sex and love in 1920s Britain. It was explicit (for its time), popular and spoke to ordinary people’s anxieties about love, sex and marriage. It was also intensely romantic. In its emphasis on mutuality, it was self-consciously both feminist and modern.
Fifty years later, another sex manual was published, which reflected an equally seismic shift in sexual and affective culture. British gerontologist Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking (1972) was also written to combat ‘the mischief caused by guilt, misinformation and lack of information.’ Unlike Stopes’ frank, but demur text, Comfort’s book was graphically illustrated. It celebrated sexual pleasure as an end in itself, just like eating. Modelled on the best-selling Joy of Cooking, it set out a comprehensive sexual menu for lovers to explore, including everything from masturbation to sadomasochism.
For Comfort, sex and love could be separated. Sex need no longer be contained within the bounds of ‘lifelong monogamy’; it could simply be a ‘rewarding form of play’. Published at the same time as women’s liberation was emerging, his message was received by a public prepared for permissiveness by recent access to the contraceptive pill (1963), the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality (1967) and the liberalisation of divorce (1969). The Joy of Sex sold over 12 million copies worldwide. Its place on family bookshelves and under coffee tables both marked and contributed to the popularisation of the sexual revolution.
For many, the sexual revolution also marked the end of ‘modern love’. Marcus Collins argues that it ‘at once realized and rendered obsolete mutualist dreams of sexual harmony’, while Dora Russell observed that the sixties had spawned ‘a very great deal more sex … [but a] decrease in the volume of love’.
Our recent book revisits this period between Modern Love and The Joy of Sex – love’s apparent ‘golden age’. It provides a critique of the often taken for granted chronologies of emotional modernity, interrogating a historiography climaxing in an emotional and moral interlude in the 1960s. Rather than privileging the 1960s as an apex and turning point, our book fleshes out a gradual, non-linear narrative that reveals the significance of longer-term ideological and cultural trends, as well as the impact of cataclysmic events such as the First and Second World Wars or the abdication crisis.
The five decades between the First World War and women’s liberation saw profound changes in understandings, expectations and usages of love and romance. In 1918 Marie Stopes prophesied the dawning of a new era of mutual love, in which heterosexual couples would be awakened to ‘a new and unprecedented creation … the super-physical entity created by the perfect union in love of man and woman’. Her vision of modern Married Love became widely idealized in novels, psychology, the state-sponsored (and Catholic) marriage guidance movement and even in the Church of England’s marriage service.
As the contributors to our book show, however, this distinctive nexus of sex, love and romance had always only been an ideal. Although romance leading to love expressed in mutual companionate marriage may have become the collective emotional standard for much of British society by the 1950s, it was clearly not universally adopted by all of Britain’s emotional communities. The gradual distancing of love, sex and marriage in popular expectation from the 1960s, a dislocation emblematized by Alex Comfort’s Joy of Sex, was thus not the end of a golden age in which Stopes’ vision had materialized. It was a collective recognition that the emotional ideals of the previous two generations had rarely been realized.
Alana Harris is a historian of gender, religion and migration and teaches at King’s College London. She is currently working on a new book that examines English Catholics’ shifting discourses and experiences of love, marriage, sexual knowledge and contraceptive practices, especially the pivotal debates about the Humanae Vitae encyclical (1968). She tweets @DrAlanaGHarris
Timothy Willem Jones is a cultural historian of sexuality and religion. He is lecturer in history at the University of South Wales and ARC DECRA research fellow at La Trobe University. His recent work includes Sexual Politics in the Church of England, 1857-1957 (Oxford, 2013), Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) edited with Alana Harris and Material Religion in Modern Britain: The Spirit of Things (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) edited with Lucinda Matthews-Jones.
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NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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For permission to publish any NOTCHES post in whole or in part please contact the editors at NotchesBlog@gmail.comThis still from a SpaceX mission concept video shows a Dragon space capsule landing on the surface of Mars. SpaceX's Dragon is a privately built space capsule to carry unmanned payloads, and eventually astronauts, into space.
NASA dominated American human spaceflight for more than 50 years, but in the 21st century private spaceflight companies are building new space taxis to launch more people into orbit. SPACE.com looks at the major players in the commercial spaceflight race in our week-long series: The Private Space Taxi Race. This is Part 1 in that series.
SpaceX plans to launch a historic demonstration mission to the International Space Station in early May, but the company's ambitions extend far beyond low-Earth orbit.
If all goes according to plan, SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule will blast into space in about two weeks, lifting off the pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Once aloft, Dragon will berth with the orbiting lab — a first for a private spaceship — offload supplies and take some different items on for the trip back to Earth.
The mission — originally slated for April 30 but now likely pushed back to May 7, SpaceX officials announced today (April 23) — is a test to see if the Falcon 9/Dragon combo are ready to start making contracted cargo runs to the station for NASA. A successful flight would be a big step forward for private spaceflight, and it would set SpaceX more firmly on a path toward its ultimate goal: helping save humanity from extinction.
"I think it's important that humanity become a multiplanet species," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an interview that aired on CBS' "60 Minutes" last month. "I think most people would agree that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. That's really why I started SpaceX." [Gallery: Dragon, SpaceX's Private Spacecraft]
A cargo craft
When NASA retired its venerable space shuttle fleet last July, the United States became completely dependent on Russian, European and Japanese spaceships to carry cargo and crew into space.
But the space agency isn't content with this state of affairs. It's encouraging the development of private American spaceships, in the hopes that they can transport both supplies and astronauts to the space station in the near future.
The California-based firm SpaceX — short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — is one of the companies that NASA is counting on. SpaceX, which Musk started in 2002, holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to make 12 robotic supply runs to the space station using the Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9. (Another company, Orbital Sciences Corp., signed a $1.9 billion deal to fly eight cargo missions for NASA.)
The Dragon/Falcon 9 pair already has one space success under its belt. In December 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to send a spacecraft into orbit and retrieve it safe and sound; it fished Dragon out of the Pacific Ocean after the capsule made two loops around our planet.
If the upcoming demonstration flight goes well, the first of SpaceX's 12 cargo missions could launch later this year, company officials have said. But even if it doesn't go well, the firm has no plans to give up.
"There should be no doubt about our resolve," Musk told reporters last week. "We will get to the space station, whether it's on this mission or on a future one."
SpaceX plans to launch Dragon two more times in 2012, he added, perhaps once in the summer and once toward the end of the year. Those missions could be bona fide cargo runs or further test flights, depending on how Dragon and the Falcon 9 do next week.
Dragon’s solar array panels being installed on Dragon’s trunk at the SpaceX hangar in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Image: © SpaceX)
An astronaut taxi, too
Dragon is not just a cargo ship, however. SpaceX has always envisioned that it would carry astronauts someday, and the company's engineers are working to make that happen. [How SpaceX's Dragon Capsule Works (Infographic)]
Last year, NASA gave SpaceX $75 million to support the development of a launch-abort system for Dragon, a key requirement for a crew-carrying craft. Over the past two years, the agency has also given money to three other private spaceship builders — Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada and Boeing — in the hopes that at least two different commercial spacecraft can start ferrying astronauts to and from the space station by 2017.
According to Musk, SpaceX should be able to meet that deadline.
"There's a lot of variables between here and there," Musk said. But in a "perfect world" timeline, he added, "it's probably like three years — maybe a little less than three years."
Shooting for Mars
SpaceX is not content just to carry astronauts back and forth to low-Earth orbit. Musk wants Dragon to send humans to much more far-flung destinations, such as Mars, to help us become a multiplanet species.
"Ultimately, the thing that is super-important in the grand scale of history is, are we on a path to becoming a multiplanet species or not?" Musk said at a conference last year. "If we're not, well, that's not a very bright future. We'll simply be hanging out on Earth until some eventual calamity claims us."
To help get us farther afield, SpaceX is developing a huge rocket called the Falcon Heavy, which it hopes to launch for the first time in the next year or two. The vehicle will boast 4 million pounds of thrust, making it twice as powerful as any rocket in existence — and about half as powerful as the Saturn 5 rockets that carried astronauts to the moon during NASA's Apollo program, Musk said.
"So in principle, with two launches of Falcon Heavy and with some in-orbit docking, you could actually send people back to the surface of the moon, which is pretty exciting," Musk told SPACE.com in an interview earlier this month.
But SpaceX is dreaming even bigger than the Falcon Heavy. Last autumn, Musk announced that the company hopes to develop a fully reusable rocket, which would dramatically reduce the cost of lofting humans and cargo into space.
A completely reusable spaceflight system — in contrast to the expendable rockets in widespread use today — is the key to opening up the final frontier, making the exploration and colonization of other worlds much more feasible, Musk has said.
"In order to revolutionize space, we absolutely must have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket," he told SPACE.com. "This is basically the holy grail of rocket technology. A lot of people don't think it's possible, I should point out, which is why I call it the holy grail."
Musk thinks it is possible, though he acknowledges the difficulty of the task.
"But if we’re able to do that, then the cost of space transport can drop by a factor of 100," he said, then put the concept in terms that most people can appreciate firsthand. "Imagine if you had to buy a new car for every trip; you'd need two cars for a round-trip. You wouldn't be taking cars very much."
You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.Building a product is no easy task. It’ll take months of planning, design and engineering work, but with dedication, hard work and the right professionals by your side, it can be accomplished. However, how can you know if you’re building the right product? Dedication and hard work alone won’t be enough. There’s another factor to consider on the equation: if it solves a real problem for real people. Many startups often decide to go straight to the building phase and end up missing some important steps of the product development process, such as validating their business idea with potential customers and analysing the market. Let’s go over some things to take into account when setting a product strategy.
Connecting with customers
Finding a pain point
Every business starts with an idea. Someone sees an opportunity and decides to do something about it. Good opportunities are usually inspired by an actual problem: a scenario that can be improved, something that is currently done manually and can be automated, or a process that’s poorly done and can be more efficient, for instance. Situations like these indicate that a pain exists and that it can be solved, changing someone’s life and habits. A good question to ask is: what is someone going to stop doing when they start using your product? If you find the answer to that, you’re on the right track. Still, that’s only an assumption. To validate this assumption, it’s paramount to talk with those that experience that problem directly, a.k.a. potential customers.
Talking to potential customers
With a problem and a proposed solution on your hands, the next step is to validate that hypothesis. Is it an actual problem? Is the solution something that people are willing to adopt on their day-to-day routine? Good ways to discover that are by interviewing potential customers and learning more about their habits and behavior.
There are a handful of techniques for performing research: ethnographic studies, online surveys and face-to-face interviews, to name a few. Ethnographic research, for instance, is the observation of customers in their most common context, where they face the problem previously mapped. It works really well to get insights on behavior, which might confirm or refute assumptions without influencing the results – since it relies on observation and analysis.
Influencing results is something to be aware of when performing face-to-face interviews, though. When performing an interview, try not to induce customers to answer what you expect to hear. Not so effective questions are usually too direct, like: “Would you be willing to use a product that does X for you?” or “Do you face problem Y?”. These can generate false positives, as people tend to answer them positively just to please the interviewer. Better interview questions are more broad: “Please, tell me more about your day-to-day work.” or “Please, explain how you perform this specific task on your routine.”. The answers to your hypothesis will emerge naturally from the conversation, as people talk about their needs and motivations.
Studying the market
Mapping out the competition
Roughly saying, hundreds of new products are launched worldwide every day, so the chance of a similar product already existing out there is high. With that in mind, it’s important to look for other competitors that might already be on the market solving a similar problem. Start by searching keywords on Google, App Store and Google Play – depending on the kind of product you’re planning to build – and mapping it out on a spreadsheet by listing names, market size, features, strengths, weaknesses and any other information can be relevant. That way, you’ll be more prepared and able to detect opportunities and strategies to make your solution unique.
Even if a problem seems similar, the approach to the solution can be very different – either due to simplicity (easier to use), innovation (something that hasn’t been done before) or niche (focusing on a specific set of customers). Use that on your advantage. Also, the answer for differentiation might not necessarily lie on the product itself, but on external factors – such as expertise on the business area, networking etc.
Product idea validation
Now that you’re confident about which way to go, it’s time to start thinking about solutions – what might be the best approaches to solve the customer problem. At this point, it’s important to generate a lot of hypothesis, test and iterate quickly over them.
Deep dive and Design Sprint
Deep dive – created by IDEO – was one of the first rapid and iterative product development approaches created. It relies on generating a lot of hypothesis based on the information gathered on the research, prototyping and validating them to learn as quickly as possible before jumping into the build phase. You might have also heard of the Design Sprint, a more recent approach created by Google Ventures with a similar idea. Both methods are a really valuable way of generating ideas, learning and uncovering possible usability flaws.
The process is structured in five steps: Focusing on a problem, Sketching solutions, Choosing the best, Prototyping and Testing with customers. These steps can be done in a very short time. The Design Sprint, for instance, proposes a five-day sprint, one for each step. By the end of the week, you’ll certainly have learned more about your customers and if the solution you’re willing to build makes sense or not. If it doesn’t, go back to step three and try out different solutions to get more feedback. When you (and your customers) are happy with the outcome, time to move further on the design process and begin building a full prototype with visual design in place!
Final thoughts
With these insights in place, planning and building a product becomes a much more accurate process. Bear in mind that these tips don’t necessarily guarantee the success of a product, but will certainly reduce the chances of failure, since customers – the heart and soul of any business – are taking part on the process from day one. And it shouldn’t stop here: validation is a continuous and iterative flow, serving as a base for product development decisions and business growth. For further studying on the matter, I’d recommend The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.Many of his clients have similar stories.
Tina Swift, a former nurse, showed up at the opening in her wheelchair and said using marijuana has enabled her to cut back on much stronger narcotics prescribed for her pain management.
"I was so anti-weed (before), you wouldn't believe it," the 56-year-old said with a smile as she sat surrounded by cannabis consumers. "I still don't like getting stoned."
Melanson puts his money where his heart is — this is his third attempt to build a family business on meeting the needs of marijuana users in Hamilton. The first ended when the landlady refused to renew the lease on his Fennell Avenue storefront. The second came to a crashing conclusion with a police raid and a slew of charges ("15 of them," offers Melanson) for trafficking, possession and proceeds of crime arising from the dispensary and bakery he and his wife ran on King Street last year. Those charges are still before the courts.
Given that history, you would think Melanson would be hesitant, at least when it came to going public again.
Not so. He says he's learned from his mistakes and those of others, and while he fully expects the police to come calling eventually, he feels he's doing what's right.
"I'm risking my freedom for everyone in here," he says, his hand sweeping out to encompass the entire room and the 40 or so pot lovers smoking, "vaping" and chatting in the mid-afternoon sun streaming in from a large peaked skylight. "But I do have a lot of people behind me.
"There's no cannabis being sold here … the police can come in here every single day, if they want to."
Requests to interview the Hamilton Police Service about the legality of MelanHeadz and the police response to apparent violations of the Criminal Code were declined and a reporter was referred to the city's bylaw office.
Melanson says the business has a licence from the city as a private club and, indeed, everyone is braced at the front door for a membership card or fee as they enter.
Rules posted throughout the club (which served as blues bar and a nightclub in earlier incarnations) prohibit, not just selling marijuana, but "mooching" it, or "lending" it; basically it's smoke it if you've got it, but get it yourself.
They don't make money by selling pot, but by facilitating its enjoyment and medical use, he explained.
The MelanHeadz Hamilton Vape team has ambitious plans to make that happen.
"We're in the process of applying for a multi-licence," Melanson said, which would allow them to open the kitchen and prepare and serve food on the premises.
In the meantime they're focusing on programming — running music, comedy and open mic nights, offering live podcasts recorded in the club and covering everything from cannabis culture to comedy.
They will not be seeking a liquor licence.
The last concerted effort to cater to the cannabis community, especially in such an open and transparent way, was the 2003 opening of the Up In Smoke café on King Street downtown. The club's controversial owner, Chris Goodwin, deliberately challenged police and the city's establishment, vowing before he opened that he'd be selling pot to customers from the store.
The approach ensured maximum media coverage and careful — and repeated — scrutiny from Hamilton police, ending two years later in a series of criminal charges against Goodwin that saw him sentenced to $3,000 in fines and six months in jail.
What many Hamiltonians may not know is that on his release, Goodwin moved to Toronto and, while still on probation, opened Vapor Central there. Eight years later he's not just open, but flourishing.
Goodwin said he opened quietly and rode out about six months of heat from the Toronto police.
"Since then I've had no trouble," he said Wednesday as he stood inside Melanson's lounge, offering his help and advice on opening day.
Melanson is a friend, and in some ways a pupil, of Goodwin's and while "I don't agree with him 100 per cent," Melanson says he has learned a lot.
Goodwin advised Melanson to be transparent and honest about the lounge and what would or wouldn't be allowed inside — and stressed the importance of sticking to those rules.
"Nothing under the counter, ever," he said.
The rest of the advice sounded like the checklist for a successful franchise: be scrupulous about cleaning — the tables and floors and washrooms — and make sure your customers get a consistent, dependable experience.
Melanson said he's aiming to do just that.
But he's hoping for more. He wants society to change its laws — to regulate and control, but not ban or prohibit cannabis.
He's not anxious to face any more charges and says he really didn't like the experience of being arrested and jailed while awaiting bail last year.
"I did a week in Barton and I hated it. I missed my wife and my kids. I wanted to wake up in my bed with my wife and my kid jumping on me saying 'Daddy I love you.'"
bdunphy@thespec.com
905-526-3262 | @BillAtTheSpecState police are seeking authorization to use an aerial drone across Michigan to photograph vehicle crash scenes and give a bird’s-eye view of other emergency situations. (Photo: Greg DeRuiter/Lansing State Journal)
State police are seeking authorization to use an aerial drone across Michigan to photograph vehicle crash scenes and give a bird’s-eye view of other emergency situations.
The Detroit News reports the agency hopes to get permission next month from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly a small, $158,000 remote-controlled helicopter that state police pilots have been training to use for more than a year.
State police say the drone would reduce the time required to survey and reconstruct major crash scenes, such as this month’s 193-vehicle pileup that killed one man and closed a stretch of Interstate 94 between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek for two days.
The newspaper says the FAA has granted licenses to fly unmanned aerial vehicles to a handful of municipal police agencies across the country.
Read or Share this story: http://bcene.ws/1JVXHCcNorth Korean space officials are hard at work on a five-year plan to put more advanced satellites into orbit by 2020, and don't intend to stop there: They're also aiming for the moon, and beyond.
In an interview with The Associated Press, a senior official at the North's version of NASA said international sanctions won't stop Pyongyang from launching more satellites by 2020, and that he hopes to see the North Korean flag on the moon within the next 10 years.
"Even though the U.S. and its allies try to block our space development, our aerospace scientists will conquer space and definitely plant the flag of the DPRK on the moon," said Hyon Kwang Il, director of the scientific research department of North Korea's National Aerospace Development Administration. The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
An unmanned, no-frills North Korean moon mission in the not-too-distant future isn't as far-fetched as it might seem. Outside experts say it's ambitious, but conceivable.
While the U.S. is the only country to have conducted manned lunar missions, other nations have sent unmanned spacecraft there and have in that sense planted their flags.
Not impossible
"It would be a significant increase in technology, not one that is beyond them, but you have to debug each bit," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who maintains an exhaustive blog on international satellites and satellite launches, said in an email to the AP.
No matter what anyone thinks, our country will launch more satellites. - Hyon Kwang Il, North Korea National Aerospace Development Administration
Hyon said the current five-year plan, at the order of leader Kim Jong-un, focuses on launching more Earth observation satellites and what would be its first geostationary communications satellite — which, technologically, would be a major step forward. He said universities are also expanding programs to train rocket scientists.
"We are planning to develop the earth observation satellites and to solve communications problems by developing geostationary satellites. All of this work will be the basis for the flight to the moon," Hyon said July 28, adding that he personally would like to see that happen "within 10 years' time."
North Korea has marked a number of successes in its space program — and, of course, in its development of ever-more-sophisticated long-range missiles for military use. On Wednesday, it test-fired what was believed to be a medium-range ballistic missile into the seas off Japan, the fourth reported weapons launch the North has carried out in about two weeks.
It launched its latest satellite — the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Brilliant Star 4 — into orbit on Feb. 7, just one month after conducting what it claims was its first H-bomb test.
This Feb. 7, 2016, image shows a rocket lifting off, said to be carrying North Korea's Earth observation satellite Kwangmyongsong-4, at the Sohae launch pad in Tongchang-ri, North Korea. North Korean space officials are hard at work on a five-year plan that they say will put more satellites into orbit and lay the groundwork for a shot to the moon. ((Korean Central News Agency via Associated Press)
That brought new sanctions because nuclear tests and rocket launches, which can have military applications, are banned under United Nations resolutions.
Hyon said the sanctions are "ridiculous."
"Our country has started to accomplish our plan and we have started to gain a lot of successes," he said. "No matter what anyone thinks, our country will launch more satellites."
He said Pyongyang's long-term target is to use its satellites to provide data for crop and forestry assessments and improved communications. The North also intends "to do manned spaceflight and scientific experiments in space, make a flight to the moon and moon exploration and also exploration to other planets."
'It is the U.S. that militarized space'
The U.S. made its first lunar flyby in 1959, only six months after its first satellite, Explorer 1, though it took eight more years and several failed attempts to succeed with a lunar orbiter. The USSR made its first moon shot after only three successful Sputnik satellites. Their probe — just a year and a half after Sputnik 1 — reached the moon, but missed its orbit.
"So it's not ridiculous to attempt a moon mission early in your space program," McDowell said.
"Given their low flight rate of one mission every few years, I think it is hard to see them succeeding in this in the next five years, but possible to see them attempting it," he said.
The North currently has two satellites in orbit, KMS-3-2 and KMS-4. It put its first satellite in orbit in 2012, a feat few other countries have ever achieved. Rival South Korea, for example, has yet to do so.
A visitor at a flower festival walks past a model of North Korea's newest satellite Kwangmyongsong 4 during the 74th birthday anniversary, of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. (Wong Maye-E/Associated Press)
Hyon said that as of July 27, KMS-4 had completed 2,513 orbits, and that within one day after its launch it transmitted 700 photographic images back to Earth. He said it is still working properly and sending data whenever it passes over North Korea, which is four times a day.
My personal guess, however, is that they might try but they will fail, and we will not see a successful North Korea lunar orbiter for at least two decades, if ever. - Markus Schiller, German analyst
Foreign experts have yet to confirm any communications from the satellite.
German analyst Markus Schiller, one of the world's foremost experts on North Korea's missiles and rockets, said a geostationary satellite might be a more ambitious goal for Pyongyang than a lunar flyby or crash-landing.
"Judging from what I have seen so far with their space program, it will take North Korea about a decade or more to get to lunar orbit at best — if they really pursue this mission," he said. "My personal guess, however, is that they might try but they will fail, and we will not see a successful North Korea lunar orbiter for at least two decades, if ever."
Hyon said claims that the North's space plan is a military program in disguise are hypocritical, considering the history of space exploration. The U.S., Russia and China all built their space programs out of military technology. Many of the rockets they use today were initially developed as ICBMs.
"It is the U.S. that militarized space," he said.Pete Rose filed a federal defamation lawsuit today against John Dowd, who oversaw the investigation that led to Rose's ban from baseball, for claims Dowd made last summer that Rose had underage girls delivered to him at spring training and that he committed statutory rape.
The complaint was filed today in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania. It cites a radio interview last summer with a station in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in which Dowd said, "Michael Bertolini, you know, told us that he not only ran bets but ran young girls down at spring training, ages 12 to 14. Isn't that lovely? So that's statutory rape every time you do that."
Bertolini was a memorabilia merchant whose taped conversations and other information about Rose's gambling were central to Rose receiving a permanent ban in 1989.
Pete Rose has filed a federal defamation lawsuit against John Dowd, the man who presided over the investigation that led to Rose's ban from baseball. Ethan Miller/Getty Images
The lawsuit also cites an interview with CBS Radio in which Dowd said, "He has Bertolini running young women down in Florida for his satisfaction, so you know he's just not worthy of consideration or to be part of the game. This is not what we want to be in the game of baseball."
Rose denied Dowd's accusations. Bertolini has said he never made such claims. Former commissioner Fay Vincent, who was deputy commissioner at the time of Rose's ban, has said that he did not remember such allegations.
The suit also disputes Dowd's claim that Rose bet against the Reds, for whom he played and managed. It notes that while the Dowd Report expressly states that "no evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Cincinnati Reds," Dowd told the New York Post in 2002 that he had reliable evidence that Rose did bet against his team. According to the filing, these "direct contradictions by Dowd on the very same subject matter are evidence that Dowd would lie when his personal animus toward Rose overcame him. Dowd's statement that he had reliable evidence that Rose bet against the Reds was maliciously false and reckless and intended to harm Rose."
At the time of the interviews last summer, commissioner Rob Manfred was considering Rose's request for reinstatement. Dowd had appeared on the shows to discuss that topic, and to talk about whether Rose should be eligible for the Hall of Fame. Manfred ultimately denied Rose's request.
According to the suit, "Ever since Dowd investigated Rose in 1989 and Rose was placed on the Ineligible List, Dowd actively sought to prevent Rose from ever being reinstated by MLB or elected to the Hall of Fame, and he ultimately made maliciously false and reckless claims against Rose."
Dowd, 75, who was a longtime partner in the Washington law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, had "no comment" when contacted by ESPN.
Rose is represented by noted First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus, who has represented Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Lenny Bruce and Don Imus, among others.
The suit does not specify damages except to say that the amount exceeds the jurisdictional minimum of $75,000. It maintains that Rose lost at least two commercial endorsements because of the claims.by |
Today’s special episode of the Culture Creature podcast features stories told by Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Cameron Crowe. These interviews were conducted by author Joe Hagan for his new book Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, which is available now. You’ll also hear our interview with Hagan about his book. Listen to the podcast via the player above or in your podcast provider of choice.
Jann Wenner granted author Joe Hagan hours of interviews as well as complete access to his personal and professional archives. The result is an unflinching account of Rolling Stone history that doubles as an analysis of fifty years of American culture. The book is not without its own controversy: Wenner was not happy after reading Hagan’s final product, calling it “deeply flawed and tawdry.” In Joe Hagan’s interview with Culture Creature, the author tells his side of the story. You’ll also hear Paul McCartney discuss John Lennon’s incendiary 1971 Rolling Stone interview, Elton John on David Bowie, and much more.
Listen to the Culture Creature podcast now: | | |
Photos from Sticky Fingers:
Main photo credits: Paul McCartney (Shutterstock), Jann Wenner (Jean Pigozzi), Mick Jagger (Georges Biard)Google is on a mission to clean up the mobile Web and make it comport to its vision of the world. In April, the search engine tweaked its search algorithm to favor sites it deemed “mobile-friendly” — a shift the industry dubbed “mobilegeddon.”
Now Google is adding another metric for mobile friendliness: The absence of ads that take over a screen and push an app. Starting today, those ads will be included in the mobile test Google gives publishers. Then, starting Nov. 1, sites that carry those ads will be punished in search rankings.
Daniel Bathgate, a Google search engineer, explained the rationale in a post: “Our analysis shows that it is not a good search experience and can be frustrating for users because they are expecting to see the content of the Web page.”
For Google, the changes are geared specifically at search results, part of its ongoing effort to make querying on mobile better.
The changes will only affect sites pushing app-install ads in search results, so they don’t restrict the ads within apps. Also, the tweak won’t hit full-screen blasts that promote other publisher treats, like email newsletters or the ‘Like us on Facebook’ pages that digital publications such as Vice and Fusion use. Thus far, there’s some evidence that Google’s attempt to improve the quality of mobile websites has improved its ability to make money from them.
Google signaled this shift last month. It showcased an internal study that suggested app-install ads were less effective (and more distasteful to users) than banner ads. A few other companies think otherwise. Their concern is that Google is, at best, unilaterally policing the user experience or, worse, trying to wrest users away from apps. Or, even worse: Yelp’s CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has dropped the “monopoly” word about Google’s app-install positions.
He and others, including Mike Dudas, co-founder of deep-linking company Button, point out that Google’s maneuver also rings of a double standard.
https://twitter.com/mdudas/status/638792939842469893
A Google spokesperson pointed to recent examples of the company embracing app installs and discovery — through app indexing on Android, in April, then iOS, this summer — and sent along this statement: |
for citizens without access to free firewood, I know campfires can also be expensive. It started when I needed a small, tabletop vessel for small wood fires. A crucial element in my Chinese tea ceremonies is high-quality hot water. When I was not too lazy to use the stove or electric water kettle, I needed a convenient fireplace suitable for my iron kettle.
I’ve explored ceramic pots, indoor planters, rolls of metal, even a vessel made of mud – but the best solution I’ve found has been a stainless steel pet water bowl. Whether you’re looking to have s’mores more easily and more often, need a lightweight bushcraft stove on a budget, or simply want to say, “I’m going to go light a fire in Fido’s water-bowl,” this is a fun project.
This water bowl cost me $30, which felt a bit steep at first; however, after working with it, the stainless steel they source for their product is quite durable and worth every dollar. My initial thought was that the iron water kettle would sit atop the dome portion (where the plastic water jug would be inverted and screwed into the base) and I could tend to the fire through the open end of the bowl. However, the fire needed air flow across its surface.
To resolve the air intake issue, I cut three holes in the side of the bowl opposite the existing entrance. I needed cobalt drill bits and a Greenlee hole cutter. Be sure to oil the drill bit if you want them to last through the ordeal of cutting through stainless steel.
You experienced fire-tenders can use all manner of twigs, leaves, and small branches to build your fire. For my first attempt, I used seasoned pine, paper, and natural charcoal. With the help of a hammer and chisel, I split firewood into small, manageable sticks. After breaking the charcoal into smaller pieces and wrapping them in paper, I was set.
The fire burned evenly and relatively hot; I helped it along with a small fan. The rubber feet on the bottom of the bowl were impossible to remove, so I burned them off and kept foil underneath so as to not damage the concrete. It took me fifteen minutes to boil 500ml of water. Had I been more experienced, I think could have done the same in ten minutes or less. Cleanup is quite easy and the whole apparatus can be moved with one hand, no oven-mitts required.
For my second test, I used it as a smoker to dry some arugula. After processing the leaves like green tea I wanted to infuse them with a smoky flavor and stop oxidization. I nestled the leaves in foil and tented them on the end of the bowl opposite the fire. A small, unglazed ceramic pot base fits perfectly into the opening in the dome, which reduces heat and directs the smoke to the leaves.
It worked perfectly. The leaves were heavily smoked (I added orange and grapefruit rind to the fire to further perfume the leaves) and dry. If I was smoking in a bushcraft/survival situation, I would probably cordon off the fire with a few small stones and lay the food-to-be-smoked opposite on the floor of the bowl, and cover the opening with whatever was available.
The bowl has become a worthy and, in my opinion, attractive addition to my teaware; however, I had the most fun finding the best solution to my issue and altering the bowl to suit the job. I hope this sparks some ideas and helps you look at hardware store objects in a new way. If anyone has done this or something similar, then please share (especially if s’mores are involved).
Best,
BroderickWASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s executive order on health care (all times local):
12 p.m.
President Donald Trump predicts “millions and millions of people” will benefit from his action to unwind the health care law.
He’s signed an executive order to make lower-premium plans more widely available.
But the changes Trump hopes to bring about could take months or even longer. That’s according to administration officials who outlined the order for reporters Thursday morning. The proposals may not be finalized in time to affect coverage for 2019, let alone next year.
White House domestic policy director Andrew Bremberg said that Trump still believes Congress needs to repeal and replace the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. The White House described the order as first steps.
Trump signed the order in the White House’s Roosevelt Room surrounded by Vice President Mike Pence, members of his Cabinet and Congress.
___
11:55 a.m.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that aims to make lower-premium health care plans available to more Americans.
The president says the order will provide what he calls “Obamacare relief” for millions of Americans.
Trump is relying on the executive order because the Republican-controlled Congress has been unable to pass a plan to repeal and replace the Obama-era health care law.
Trump says the health care system “will get better” with his action, and the action will cost the federal government nothing.
The president says he still wants Congress repeal and replace the Obama health care law. But his says his order will give people more competition, more choices and lower premiums.
___
3:38 a.m.
President Donald Trump has made no secret he’s frustrated with the failure of Congress to repeal and replace “Obamacare.”
Now Trump will try to put his own stamp on health care with an executive order that aims to make lower-premium insurance plans available to more consumers. He will unveil his plan Thursday.
Administration officials say it will let groups and associations sponsor coverage that can be marketed across the land, reflecting Trump’s longstanding belief that interstate competition will lead to lower premiums.
Trump’s move is likely to encounter opposition from medical associations, consumer groups and even insurers — the same coalition that has blocked congressional Republicans. They say it would raise costs for the sick, while the lower-premium coverage for healthy people would come with significant gaps.I want to bring something up to my followers right quick before I log off for the night.
These are some messages that showed up in a dear friend of mine’s inbox. They are in reference to a post about cisphobia specifically.
When you talk about cisphobia, and heterophobia, and claim it doesn’t exist and that majority members aren’t burdened with problems, I want you to remember this post.
These are messages sent specifically for her, to try and trigger her. Now, this particular friend of mine has survived more abuse and hardship than I care to recount, but needless to say, is one of the strongest people I know.
And over one single post, that wasn’t even on her blog to begin with, triggered this nonsense.
Take a good hard look at these. All of them degrade her for being cisgendered. Two of them claim she couldn’t possibly know anything about “struggling.” One is a rather graphic death threat. All over an immutable trait she cannot possibly have helped.
If the situation were reversed and her inbox were filled with “tranny scum fucktard” do you think I would even be having to post this? No. It would have blown up, nobody would have thought twice about it.
But you claim that this is “venting.” That being oppressed somehow grants you the right to be a special breed of hateful. That your struggle grants you the right to tell a self-harm recoverer that she ought to slit her throat, that her struggle is irrelevant.
This is what your movement has become. Take a good, hard look at your brand of “equality.” You should be ashamed of yourselves.All Over Press
Maailma muuttuu
Markkinatalouden toimintaa on totuttu kuvaamaan eläinmaailmasta otetuilla vertauskuvilla. Sen pyörittäjinä on perinteisesti mainittu niin kiireiset majavat, ahkerat muurahaiset kuin touhukkaat mehiläisetkin.
Mutta tämä oli ennen – finanssikapitalismia!
Hitaista majavista, muurahaisista tai edes mehiläisistä ei ole finanssikapitalismin sankareiksi, joiden on silmänräpäyksessä tai oveluuttaan pystyttävä nappaamaan saalinsa.
Julkiset velat ovat paisuneet aivan samassa tahdissa kuin pankkien ja muiden rahalaitosten varannot kasvaneet.
Kuten hämähäkkien!
Finanssikapitalismin hämähäkkien näkökulmasta markkinat ovat verkko, jolla voidaan pyydystää saalis. Kyse on vallantahdosta ja se on hämähäkki-ajattelun mukaan ihmisen koko totuus. Nietzsche oli siinä väärässä, että tarantella kannattaisi tasa-arvoa. Hämähäkkien mielestä näin tekevät torakat.
Taloustieteilijät siis rakastavat eläimellisiä ilmauksia. Pankkiiri Björn Wahlroos on puhunut torakka-ajattelusta kirjoittaessaan talouden kymmenestä tuhoisimmasta ajatuksesta. Hän tuntuu pitävän torakka-ajatteluna kaikenlaista arvostelua finanssikapitalismia ja siinä menestyvien menetelmiä kohtaan. Hänen mukaansa torakka-ajattelu ajaa tasa-arvoa ja haluaa kasvattaa julkisia menoja velaksi laman oloissa.
ILMOITUS
On aika nurinkurista, että Wahlroos on lainannut ilmauksen nobelisti Paul Krugmanilta, joka viittasi sillä yhä uudelleen toistettuihin talouden tosiasiat ohittaviin harhaanjohdatuksiin. Krugman nimittäin pitää torakka-ajatteluna oikeiston suosimaa eriarvoisuutta ihannoivaa ja julkisten menojen leikkaamista myös laman oloissa tarjoilevaa päättelyä. Wahlroosin ja Krugmanin riidassa onkin kysymys talouden perusasioista. Kysymys on siitä kuinka eri lailla nämä talouden perusasiat voidaan ja on voitu ymmärtää. Tämä on vanha juttu.
Mieleeni tuleekin kreikkalaisen Arkhilokhoksen mietelmä: ”Kettu tietää monia asioita. Siili tietää yhden ison asian.” Siili tietenkin tietää kuinka kääriytyä piikkipalloksi ketun juonia vastaan, mutta se ei ole tässä tärkeintä. Tärkeintä on muistaa ne perusolettamukset eli ne isot asiat, joiden varassa tulkintamme talouden toiminnasta kulloinkin seisoo.
Yksi iso asia koskee tasa-arvoa. Nykyisen tietämyksemme valossa tasa-arvoiset yhteiskunnat ovat menestyneet parhaiten myös taloudellisesti. Hämähäkki-ajattelu kieltää tämän. Tasa-arvohan on poliittisen toiminnan tulosta. Hämähäkki-ajattelun mukaisesti markkinat kertovat totuuden ihmisten maailman menosta ja jo siitä syystä niiden pitää saada toimia vapaasti. Mutta eiväthän ne toimi finanssikapitalismissa vapaasti. Tähän ovat syyllisiä hämähäkit itse. Ne ovat monin tavoin verkottuneet keskenään sisäpiireiksi. Näin ne voivat tehokkaimmin saalistaa.
Hämähäkkien mielestä tuottavuus on yksinkertaisesti rahan ansaitsemista. Niinpä raha on saatava kiertämään ja tuottamaan. Parhaiten se kasvattaa arvoaan kasvamalla korkoa koron päälle ja sijoittamalla ja sijoittumalla aina ensimmäiseksi saatavien sarjaan. Silloin Musta Pekka jää muiden käsiin, lähinnä majavien, muurahaisten ja mehiläisten.
Näinhän on Euroopassa tapahtunut, kun julkiset velat ovat paisuneet aivan samassa tahdissa kuin pankkien ja muiden rahalaitosten varannot kasvaneet. Tässä on kyse rahan tekemisestä ja kiertokulusta, mitä ei pidä sekoittaa arvonmuodostukseen. Tuotannolliset investoinnit jäävät tässä kiertokulussa kesannolle ja julkisen vallan tehtäväksi näyttää jäävän tämän varainsiirron loppuun saattaminen, mikäli pidetään kiinni hämähäkki-ajattelusta.
Ei voida sanoa, että hämähäkki-ajattelu olisi yksin hallinnut Suomea. Parina viime vuosikymmenenä sen ote on silti todella vahvistunut. Tämä näkyy nimenomaan eriarvoisuuden kasvuna ja varsinkin rikkaimmista rikkaimpien rikastumisena. Jos hämähäkki-ajattelu määrää tulevan suunnan, niin tämän tien päässä ei ole ainoastaan hyvinvointivaltion alasajo vaan paljon sitä rajumpi ja rujompi lopputulos.
Tällä tiellä voitaisiin erottaa kuusi kerta kerralta selvemmin erottuvaa vaihetta. Nyt ollaan astumassa sen kolmanteen vaiheeseen, jos suunta ei muutu.
Ensimmäisen vaiheen tunnusmerkkinä voitaisiin pitää Suomessa toteutettuja, vuosikymmeniä kasatun kansallisen omaisuuden alennusmyyntejä.
Toista vaihetta luonnehtii paine yksityistää julkista palvelutuotantoa tavalla, joka ajaa myös pienet kotimaiset yritykset suurten syliin, mikä näkyy nyt sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollossa.
Kolmannessa vaiheessa tavoitteena on edistää prekarisaatiota luomalla matalapalkkaiset työmarkkinat maahanmuuttajien avulla ja kustannuksella.
Neljännessä vaiheessa työeläkerahastot ovat vaarassa joutua julkisen velan pantiksi, jonka yksityiset rahalaitokset ottavat haltuunsa.
Viidennessä vaiheessa Suomi on ajettu tilanteeseen, jossa ihmisten yhteinen ja arvokkain luonnonvarallisuus kuten vesivarat ovat vaarassa joutua yksityistämisen ja myynnin kohteeksi.
Kuudennessa vaiheessa viimeisetkin hämähäkit ovat muuttaneet kokemastaan ja tekemästään autiomaasta.
Miten olisi Raid?
Kirjoittaja on politiikan tutkija.Originally published at LewRockwell.com on December 31, 2004
The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing.
This huge shift has not been noticed among mainstream punditry, and hence there have been few attempts to explain it – much less have libertarians thought much about what it implies. My own take is this: the Republican takeover of the presidency combined with an unrelenting state of war, has supplied all the levers necessary to convert a burgeoning libertarian movement into a statist one.
The remaining ideological justification was left to, and accomplished by, Washington’s kept think tanks, who have approved the turn at every crucial step. What this implies for libertarians is a crying need to draw a clear separation between what we believe and what conservatives believe. It also requires that we face the reality of the current threat forthrightly by extending more rhetorical tolerance leftward and less rightward.
Let us start from 1994 and work forward. In a stunningly prescient memo, Murray N. Rothbard described the 1994 revolution against the Democrats as follows:
a massive and unprecedented public repudiation of President Clinton, his person, his personnel, his ideologies and programs, and all of his works; plus a repudiation of Clinton’s Democrat Party; and, most fundamentally, a rejection of the designs, current and proposed, of the Leviathan he heads…. what is being rejected is big government in general (its taxing, mandating, regulating, gun grabbing, and even its spending) and, in particular, its arrogant ambition to control the entire society from the political center. Voters and taxpayers are no longer persuaded of a supposed rationale for American-style central planning…. On the positive side, the public is vigorously and fervently affirming its desire to re-limit and de-centralize government; to increase individual and community liberty; to reduce taxes, mandates, and government intrusion; to return to the cultural and social mores of pre-1960s America, and perhaps much earlier than that.
This memo also cautioned against unrelieved optimism, because, Rothbard said, two errors rear their head in most every revolution. First, the reformers do not move fast enough; instead they often experience a crisis of faith and become overwhelmed by demands that they govern “responsibly” rather than tear down the established order. Second, the reformers leave too much in place that can be used by their successors to rebuild the state they worked so hard to dismantle. This permits gains to be reversed as soon as another party takes control.
Rothbard urged dramatic cuts in spending, taxing, and regulation, and not just in the domestic area but also in the military and in foreign policy. He saw that this was crucial to any small-government program. He also urged a dismantling of the federal judiciary on grounds that it represents a clear and present danger to American liberty. He urged the young radicals who were just elected to reject gimmicks like the balanced-budget amendment and the line-item veto, in favor of genuine change. None of this happened of course. In fact, the Republican leadership and pundit class began to warn against “kamikaze missions” and speak not of bringing liberty, but rather of governing better than others.
Foreshadowing what was to come, Rothbard pointed out: “Unfortunately, the conservative public is all too often taken in by mere rhetoric and fails to weigh the actual deeds of their political icons. So the danger is that Gingrich will succeed not only in betraying, but in conning the revolutionary public into thinking that they have already won and can shut up shop and go home.” The only way to prevent this, he wrote, was to educate the public, businessmen, students, academics, journalists, and politicians about the true nature of what is going on, and about the vicious nature of the bi-partisan ruling elites.
The 1994 revolution failed of course, in part because the anti-government opposition was intimidated into silence by the Oklahoma City bombing of April 1995. The establishment somehow managed to pin the violent act of an ex-military man on the right-wing libertarianism of the American bourgeoisie. It was said by every important public official at that time that to be anti-government was to give aid and support to militias, secessionists, and other domestic terrorists. It was a classic intimidation campaign but, combined with a GOP leadership that never had any intention to change DC, it worked to shut down the opposition.
In the last years of the 1990s, the GOP-voting middle class refocused its anger away from government and leviathan and toward the person of Bill Clinton. It was said that he represented some kind of unique moral evil despoiling the White House. That ridiculous Monica scandal culminated in a pathetic and pretentious campaign to impeach Clinton. Impeaching presidents is a great idea, but impeaching them for fibbing about personal peccadilloes is probably the least justifiable ground. It’s almost as if that entire campaign was designed to discredit the great institution of impeachment.
In any case, this event crystallized the partisanship of the bourgeoisie, driving home the message that the real problem was Clinton and not government; the immorality of the chief executive, not his power; the libertinism of the left-liberals and not their views toward government. The much heralded “leave us alone” coalition had been thoroughly transformed in a pure anti-Clinton movement. The right in this country began to define itself not as pro-freedom, as it had in 1994, but simply as anti-leftist, as it does today.
There are many good reasons to be anti-leftist, but let us revisit what Mises said in 1956 concerning the anti-socialists of his day. He pointed out that many of these people had a purely negative agenda, to crush the leftists and their bohemian ways and their intellectual pretension. He warned that this is not a program for freedom. It was a program of hatred that can only degenerate into statism.
The moral corruption, the licentiousness and the intellectual sterility of a class of lewd would-be authors and artists is the ransom mankind must pay lest the creative pioneers be prevented from accomplishing their work. Freedom must be granted to all, even to base people, lest the few who can use it for the benefit of mankind be hindered. The license which the shabby characters of the quartier Latin enjoyed was one of the conditions that made possible the ascendance of a few great writers, painters and sculptors. The first thing a genius needs is to breathe free air.
He goes on to urge that anti-leftists work to educate themselves about economics, so that they can have a positive agenda to displace their purely negative one. A positive agenda of liberty is the only way we might have been spared the blizzard of government controls that were fastened on this country after Bush used the events of 9-11 to increase central planning, invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and otherwise bring a form of statism to America that makes Clinton look laissez-faire by comparison. The Bush administration has not only faced no resistance from the bourgeoisie. it has received cheers. And they are not only cheering Bush’s reelection; they have embraced tyrannical control of society as a means toward accomplishing their anti-leftist ends.
After September 11, even those whose ostensible purpose in life is to advocate less government changed their minds. Even after it was clear that 9-11 would be used as the biggest pretense for the expansion of government since the stock market crash of 1929, the Cato Institute said that libertarianism had to change its entire focus: “Libertarians usually enter public debates to call for restrictions on government activity. In the wake of September 11, we have all been reminded of the real purpose of government: to protect our life, liberty, and property from violence. This would be a good time for the federal government to do its job with vigor and determination.”
The vigor and determination of the Bush administration has brought about a profound cultural change, so that the very people who once proclaimed hatred of government now advocate its use against dissidents of all sorts, especially against those who would dare call for curbs in the totalitarian bureaucracy of the military, or suggest that Bush is something less than infallible in his foreign-policy decisions. The lesson here is that it is always a mistake to advocate government action, for there is no way you can fully anticipate how government will be used. Nor can you ever count on a slice of the population to be moral in its advocacy of the uses of the police power.
Editor & Publisher, for example, posted a small note the other day about a column written by Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today, in which he mildly suggested that the troops be brought home from Iraq “sooner rather than later.” The editor of E&P was just blown away by the letters that poured in, filled with venom and hate and calling for Neuharth to be tried and locked away as a traitor. The letters compared him with pro-Hitler journalists, and suggested that he was objectively pro-terrorist, choosing to support the Muslim jihad over the US military. Other letters called for Neuharth to get the death penalty for daring to take issue with the Christian leaders of this great Christian nation.
I’m actually not surprised at this. It has been building for some time. If you follow hate-filled sites such as Free Republic, you know that the populist right in this country has been advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now. The militarism and nationalism dwarfs anything I saw at any point during the Cold War. It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth – not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself.
Along with this goes a kind of worship of the presidency, and a celebration of all things public sector, including egregious law like the Patriot Act, egregious bureaucracies like the Department of Homeland Security, and egregious centrally imposed regimentation like the No Child Left Behind Act. It longs for the state to throw its weight behind institutions like the two-parent heterosexual family, the Christian charity, the homogeneous community of native-born patriots.
In 1994, the central state was seen by the bourgeoisie as the main threat to the family; in 2004 it is seen as the main tool for keeping the family together and ensuring its ascendancy. In 1994, the state was seen as the enemy of education; today, the same people view the state as the means of raising standards and purging education of its left-wing influences. In 1994, Christians widely saw that Leviathan was the main enemy of the faith; today, they see Leviathan as the tool by which they will guarantee that their faith will have an impact on the country and the world.
Paul Craig Roberts is right: “In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.” Again: “Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy.”
In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn’t sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about.
The American right today has managed to be solidly anti-leftist while adopting an ideology – even without knowing it or being entirely conscious of the change – that is also frighteningly anti-liberty. This reality turns out to be very difficult for libertarians to understand or accept. For a long time, we’ve tended to see the primary threat to liberty as coming from the left, from the socialists who sought to control the economy from the center. But we must also remember that the sweep of history shows that there are two main dangers to liberty, one that comes from the left and the other that comes from the right. Europe and Latin America have long faced the latter threat, but its reality is only now hitting us fully.
What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left. If anything, the left has been solid on civil liberties and has been crucial in drawing attention to the lies and abuses of the Bush administration. No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world.
There is no need to advance the view that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. However, it is time to recognize that the left today does represent a counterweight to the right, just as it did in the 1950s when the right began to adopt anti-communist militarism as its credo. In a time when the term patriotism means supporting the nation’s wars and statism, a libertarian patriotism has more in common with that advanced by The Nation magazine:
The other company of patriots does not march to military time. It prefers the gentle strains of ‘America the Beautiful’ to the strident cadences of ‘Hail to the Chief’ and ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ This patriotism is rooted in the love of one’s own land and people, love too of the best ideals of one’s own culture and tradition. This company of patriots finds no glory in puffing their country up by pulling others’ down. This patriotism is profoundly municipal, even domestic. Its pleasures are quiet, its services steady and unpretentious. This patriotism too has deep roots and long continuity in our history.
Ten years ago, these were “right wing” sentiments; today the right regards them as treasonous. What should this teach us? It shows that those who saw the interests of liberty as being well served by the politicized proxies of free enterprise alone, family alone, Christianity alone, law and order alone, were profoundly mistaken. There is no proxy for liberty, no cause that serves as a viable substitute, and no movement by any name whose success can yield freedom in our time other than the movement of freedom itself. We need to embrace liberty and liberty only, and not be fooled by groups or parties or movements that only desire a temporary liberty to advance their pet interests.
As Rothbard said in 1965:
The doctrine of liberty contains elements corresponding with both contemporary left and right. This means in no sense that we are middle-of-the-roaders, eclectically trying to combine, or step between, both poles; but rather that a consistent view of liberty includes concepts that have also become part of the rhetoric or program of right and of left. Hence a creative approach to liberty must transcend the confines of contemporary political shibboleths.
There has never in my lifetime been a more urgent need for the party of liberty to completely secede from conventional thought and established institutions, especially those associated with all aspects of government, and undertake radical intellectual action on behalf of a third way that rejects the socialism of the left and the fascism of the right.
Indeed, the current times can be seen as a training period for all true friends of liberty. We need to learn to recognize the many different guises in which tyranny appears. Power is protean because it must suppress that impulse toward liberty that exists in the hearts of all people. The impulse is there, tacitly waiting for the consciousness to dawn. When it does, power doesn’t stand a chance.CLOSE The Obama Administration has announced new actions as part of an effort to more quickly deport the unaccompanied children from Central America flowing into the United States.
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, speaks about immigration reform on June 30, 2014, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington. (Photo: Associated Press)
WASHINGTON — The Obama Administration has announced new actions as part of an effort to more quickly deport the unaccompanied children from Central America flowing into the United States.
The children are crossing the Southwest border in droves partly because their families know they will be able to remain with relatives in the U.S. for years before facing a deportation hearing, analysts said Monday.
OUR VIEW: GOP, stop Obama! Pass immigration reform
RELATED: First peek: Immigrant children flood detention center
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President Barack Obama is asking Congress for the authority to expedite the deportation process — a request that is already drawing fire from immigrant rights groups. Obama also announced Monday that he is asking Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to redirect federal law enforcement efforts on immigration from interior enforcement to the Southwest border.
More than 50 percent of the unaccompanied children who cross the U.S. border say they have parents or other relatives living in the United States, said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank.
Under a U.S. law passed in 2008, those children must be placed with family members or with foster families while waiting for deportation hearings that can take two or three years to occur, Rosenblum said. He called the recent influx of Central American children "an unintended consequence" of that law.
"It probably is encouraging these children to come," Rosenblum said. He spoke during a conference call of immigration experts organized by The Wilson Center, a non-partisan research group.
About 52,000 unaccompanied minors primarily from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have entered the United States illegally through the Rio Grande Valley of Texas since Oct. 1, federal officials say. That's up from 10,000 Central American children who came in fiscal 2012.
Poverty and high murder rates tied to gangs and drug trafficking are pushing families to send their children to the United States, Obama administration officials have said.
The word is spreading through social media that children who enter the United States alone will be able to stay for quite some time, said an expert on El Salvador.
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"Salvadorans know that kids who make it to the U.S. can stick around for awhile with their families," said Nick Phillips, who is based in El Salvador and serves a consultant for the Latin American Program at The Wilson Center. "It doesn't matter what (Vice President) Joe Biden or (Homeland Security Secretary) Jeh Johnson say. It's what the families say that matters."
On Monday, Obama sent a letter to congressional leaders saying his administration is eager to work with Congress to ensure that federal officials have the legal authority they need to expedite removal of the children from the United States.
"Initially, we believe this may include providing the DHS secretary additional authority to exercise discretion in processing the return and removal of unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; and increasing penalties for those who smuggle vulnerable migrants, like children," the president wrote.
In addition, Obama wrote, the administration will seek congressional action on an emergency spending bill to pay for "an aggressive deterrence strategy focused on the removal and repatriation of recent border crossers." Part of the estimated $2 billion in funding would pay for more immigration judges to handle deportation cases. There is currently a backlog of more than 360,000 cases.
Obama wrote that he will submit a detailed request to Congress when lawmakers return from their Fourth of July recess.
The administration is currently operating under the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a law passed by Congress in 2008 and signed by former President George W. Bush to try to prevent the trafficking of children into forced prostitution and slave labor.
The law provides increased protection to undocumented immigrants under 18 who cross the border illegally. It requires that minors "be promptly placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child."
Johnson testified before a House panel last week that the law requires DHS to turn the children over to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours to be housed before being released to family members in the United States or placed into foster homes. DHS barely has time to begin the process of setting up a deportation hearing before turning the children over to HHS, Johnson said.
He said the law prohibits U.S. officials from simply busing children back to countries that aren't adjacent to the United States. The requirements are different for children from Mexico or Canada, who can be returned across the border within days and released to an official in their home countries.
Immigrant rights groups on Monday condemned the Obama administration's efforts to change the law to allow quicker deportations of children from Central America.
"The president is mishandling a humanitarian crisis by proposing an inadequate speedy removal process that only further jeopardizes vulnerable children fleeing violence and persecution in Central America," said Laura Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It is imperative that these children receive a fair process to ensure that they are not being returned to life-threatening situations."
Obama, in a speech from the White House Rose Garden Monday, said the current border crisis underscores the need for the House to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill such as the one approved by the |
ed disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar criminal conduct” (28 U.S.C. sec. 991(b)). Supporters of sentencing reform argued that judicial discretion was at the root of sentencing disparities (for a discussion of the arguments made at the time, see Stith and Cabranes [1998, pp. 38–77 and accompanying notes]). The sentencing guidelines promulgated by the sentencing commission greatly restrict the sentencing discretion traditionally vested in federal judges. The “recommended” range is determined by the offense level and criminal history category. A district judge, with the aid of the probation officer, uses the sentencing commission’s regulations to calculate the defendant’s numeric “offense level.” The crime of conviction sets the base offense level, with points being added for the use of a gun, mitigating or aggravating role, amount of drugs involved, use of sophisticated means in a fraud, whether a financial institution was affected, and so on. The defendant’s criminal history category is calculated on the basis of the prior offenses. These two factors yield a sentencing range expressed in months. All of these determinations are subject to appellate review. The 2001 Sentencing Table is reproduced in Table 1. Provided that the offense level and criminal history have not been miscalculated, a punishment within the specified range cannot be appealed (18 U.S.C. sec. 3742). If a judge departs from the guidelines range, he must justify the departure by making a statement in open court or in a written opinion. The United States can appeal a downward departure, and the defendant can appeal an upward departure (18 U.S.C. sec. 3742). As can be seen from Table 1, the sentencing range is roughly 25 percent of the minimum sentence. Offense Level I
(0, 1) II
(2, 3) III
(4, 5, 6) IV
(7, 8, 9) V
(10, 11, 12) VI
(13 or more) Zone A 1 0–6 0–6 0–6 0–6 0–6 0–6 2 0–6 0–6 0–6 0–6 0–6 1–7 3 0–6 0–6 0–6 0–6 2–8 3–9 4 0–6 0–6 0–6 2–8 4–10 6–12 5 0–6 0–6 1–7 4–10 6–12 9–15 6 0–6 1–7 2–8 6–12 9–15 12–18 7 0–6 2–8 4–10 8–14 12–18 15–21 8 0–6 4–10 6–12 10–16 15–21 18–24 Zone B 9 4–10 6–12 8–14 12–18 18–24 21–27 10 6–12 8–14 10–16 15–21 21–27 24–30 Zone C 11 8–14 10–16 12–18 18–24 24–30 27–33 12 10–16 12–18 15–21 21–27 27–33 30–37 Zone D 13 12–18 15–21 18–24 24–30 30–37 33–41 14 15–21 18–24 21–27 27–33 33–41 37–46 15 18–24 21–27 24–30 30–37 37–46 41–51 16 21–27 24–30 27–33 33–41 41–51 46–57 17 24–30 27–33 30–37 37–46 46–57 51–63 18 27–33 30–37 33–41 41–51 51–63 57–71 19 30–37 33–41 37–46 46–57 57–71 63–78 20 33–41 37–46 41–51 51–63 63–78 70–87 21 37–46 41–51 46–57 57–71 70–87 77–96 22 41–51 46–57 51–63 63–78 77–96 84–105 23 46–57 51–63 57–71 70–87 84–105 92–115 24 51–63 57–71 63–78 77–96 92–115 100–125 25 57–71 63–78 70–87 84–105 100–125 110–137 26 63–78 70–87 78–97 92–115 110–137 120–150 27 70–87 78–97 87–108 100–125 120–150 130–162 28 78–97 87–108 97–121 110–137 130–162 140–175 29 87–108 97–121 108–135 121–151 140–175 151–188 30 97–121 108–135 121–151 135–168 151–188 168–210 31 108–135 121–151 135–168 151–188 168–210 188–235 32 121–151 135–168 151–188 168–210 188–235 210–262 33 135–168 151–188 168–210 188–235 210–262 235–293 34 151–188 168–210 188–235 210–262 235–293 262–327 35 168–210 188–235 210–262 235–293 262–327 292–365 36 188–235 210–262 235–293 262–327 292–365 324–405 37 210–262 235–293 262–327 292–365 324–405 360–life 38 235–293 262–327 292–365 324–405 360–life 360–life 39 262–327 292–365 324–405 360–life 360–life 360–life 40 292–365 324–405 360–life 360–life 360–life 360–life 41 324–405 360–life 360–life 360–life 360–life 360–life 42 360–life 360–life 360–life 360–life 360–life 360–life ≥43 Life Life Life Life Life Life 3.1. Racial and Sex Disparities under the Sentencing Guidelines The goal of sentencing reform was the reduction of sentencing disparities, but the literature on variation in sentencing is divided as to whether between‐judge variation in sentences decreased significantly after the guidelines.2 Other studies have looked closely at disparities on the basis of offender characteristics. The guidelines prohibit the consideration of race, sex, and national origin in sentencing decisions (U.S.S.G. sec. 4H1.10). However, studies of sentencing disparities consistently find unexplained racial and sex disparities disfavoring men, blacks, and Hispanics. The most comprehensive study is by David Mustard (2001). Mustard found significant racial and sex disparities in length of prison sentence even after accounting for position on the guidelines sentencing grid (explained in greater detail below) and offender demographics. While Mustard found that the majority of the racial disparity was due to departures from the guidelines, blacks sentenced within the specified guidelines range still had average prison sentences more than 2 months longer than those of whites.3 Mustard also considered the probability that any prison time was imposed and the probability that a judge departed from the guidelines. Again, he found unexplained race and sex disparities favoring whites and women. Women fared better than men in all specifications, and the sex disparity was usually larger than the estimated racial disparities. Steffensmeier and Demuth (2000), Albonetti (1997), and McDonald and Carlson (1993) also found racial or sex disparities under the guidelines. Preguidelines studies on state and federal sentencing practices have found similar evidence of racial and sex disparities (Spohn, Welch, and Gruhl 1985; Steffensmeier, Kramer, and Streifel 1993). Finally, there is evidence that the race, sex, and age of the victim play a role in sentencing. Glaeser and Sacerdote (2003) found that punishments are harsher when victims are white or female. Because the victims of minorities are disproportionately minorities, these effects would actually bias any estimate of the racial disparity downward. 3.2. Competing Explanations for the Existence of Racial and Sex Disparities There are several observationally equivalent reasons why the race and sex dummy variables in sentencing regressions are significant and disfavor men and minorities. An obvious explanation is that judges are biased for or against certain classes of defendants. It is also possible that judges are engaged in “rational discrimination” against minorities and men because they perceive men and minorities to be more dangerous and more likely to recidivate. An explanation based on rational discrimination, while perhaps justifiable under an optimal deterrence model, remains objectionable in a system that adheres to principles of blind justice and equitable sentencing and is clearly contrary to the goals of the sentencing guidelines. Discrimination is not the only explanation. There are several sources of unobserved variable bias in studies of sentencing. For example, there is reason to doubt the reliability of the income data that were collected by the sentencing commission (which collected income data for only 3 years of my sample time frame). The majority of defendants report little or no income, possibly to avoid paying restitution or fines. Assets are not observed at all. Both income and assets are determinants of quality of legal counsel and hence will play a role in sentencing, offense level determination, and probability of a downward departure. These unobserved (or poorly observed) variables are undoubtedly correlated with race. In addition, characteristics of a crime potentially justify disparate sentencing within the guidelines. The guidelines recognize this and continue to leave some discretion to judges within the sentencing range and also permit departures provided the judge explains his or her reasoning in open court. The heinousness and other unique characteristics of an offense are not fully observed. Even when offense type and offense level are controlled for, it is possible that a judge observes aspects of the crime that the econometrician does not. If the severity of the crime or individual blameworthiness is not fully controlled for and is correlated with race and sex, a disparity would be observed. Some scholars have interpreted the existence of a sex disparity that favors women as evidence that a paternalistic or chivalrous bias exists among judges (Belknap 2001; Edwards 1989). Others, however, have argued that the available evidence points toward the blameworthiness of the defendant and motherhood status as driving sex disparities (Steffensmeier, Kramer, and Streifel 1993; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, and Kramer 1998). Another potential unobservable is accomplice status. If women are often accomplices in crimes, and if they are accomplices in a manner that the guidelines do not fully account for, it is possible that the unexplained disparity is not motivated by bias. (On why judges may frequently view women as accomplices, see Steffensmeier, Kramer, and Streifel [1993, pp. 434–35].)
4. Estimation Strategy Go to Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Judicial Characteristi... 3. The Sentencing Guideli... 4. Estimation Strategy 5. The Data 6. Results 7. Conclusion References Notes
The basic model I estimate is as follows: where i indexes individual offenders, j indexes district, and t indexes guidelines term. The dependant variable is length of prison sentence in months. Probits using the same independent variables are also estimated for whether or not the defendant was incarcerated or granted a downward departure. Minority is divided into four categories initially: Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Other, with White being the excluded group. The term X represents a vector of individual offender characteristics such as age (entered as a quadratic), educational attainment (entered as dummy variables for high school, college, and advanced degree completion), citizenship status, and number of dependents (entered as dummies for zero, one, or two dependents). Income, while certainly relevant, is not included because it was collected for only 3 years, and my identification strategy relies heavily on variation in the district courts over time. As mentioned, the guidelines prohibit the consideration of race, sex, and citizenship status in sentencing (U.S.S.G. sec. 5H1.10). Although the sentencing guidelines permit the consideration of the other individual variables in sentencing, the commission has cautioned that they are “not ordinarily relevant” to determining the guidelines range or departures (U.S.S.G. secs. 5H1.1–1.12). Despite being discouraged or prohibited from consideration, these offender demographic variables are typically significant factors in sentencing regressions and are therefore included as controls. In addition, they are likely correlated with race and sex and therefore should be controlled for to the extent we are seeking to isolate race and sex effects. I control for offense characteristics in two ways. First, I include a set of dummy variables for the primary offense of conviction (murder, arson, drug trafficking, fraud, and so on). Second, following the methodology of Mustard (2001), I include a dummy variable for each zone of the sentencing grid on the basis of the final calculated offense level/criminal history combination. The offense level of 14 and criminal history level of 2 are the excluded categories. Thus, each offense/criminal history combination has its own dummy variable. Although the final offense level is a good indicator of the severity of the offense, judges have some influence over the calculation of the offense level, which may therefore be endogenous to the imprisonment decision. I check the robustness of the results by including a specification that controls for the base offense level, which is set by the crime of conviction and is less amenable to judicial influence. In addition, some guidelines recommendations are trumped by statutory mandatory minimums, so I include the mandatory minimum sentence as a control variable as well. I also control for whether the trial was by jury or by bench, with pleas being the excluded category. Because I cannot match individual offenders to sentencing judges, I consider judicial characteristics at the district level. Given that the average district has only 7.5 judges, the addition or subtraction of a single judge can substantially alter the probability that an offender is sentenced by a Democrat, female, or minority. The BenchDemog variables are average age of the district’s judges, proportion of Democratic appointees, proportion of female judges, proportion of black judges, and proportion of Hispanic judges. If cases are assigned randomly within a district, the district demographics represent the probability of an offender's being sentenced by a judge of that group. Under this assumption, the coefficient on the BenchDemog variable, ω, represents the impact on sentencing of making the bench of entirely one group. The reported coefficients must be interpreted cautiously because they are out‐of‐sample predictions, except in the case of the Democratic judge variable. The Black, Hispanic, and Female offender dummies are interacted with the BenchDemog variables except for the Judge Age variable. As discussed, the age of the judge has not been shown to be an important factor that influences judicial decision making. I continue to include it as a control variable, but its interactions with the offender characteristics were generally not significant. For ease of reporting, I do not include this variable in the set of interactions. Because Asian and Other are such small categories, racial interactions are included only for Black and Hispanic. If the assumption of random assignment within a district holds, the interaction coefficients ψ and α are the effect on the unexplained disparity resulting from making a district bench entirely of the indicated group. Because the variables of interest are district‐level variables interacted with an individual characteristic, I report Huber‐White robust standard errors adjusted for clustering by district. The key variables of interest are the “own‐effects” of judge and offender demographics (for example, the coefficient on the interaction between the female dummy and the proportion of female judges). However, a number of interesting cross effects were detected, so the full set of interactions is always included. In addition, many minority and female judges were appointed by President Clinton, so the demographics of a district will be correlated with its political composition. It is therefore important to include a full set of interaction terms for political composition and the race and sex of the offender to disentangle these effects. District dummies are included in every regression and should capture any district‐specific effects. In addition, the inclusion of district dummies means that the identifying variation in the political, racial, and sex composition of the district bench comes from intradistrict variation. Thus, concerns about nonrandom assignment (for example, Democrats or minorities being appointed to more high‐crime districts) are lessened. In any event, changes in bench composition are largely determined by retirements and replacements, which Yoon (2005) has shown to be basically random (that is, influenced almost entirely by pension vesting).4 To capture any time‐specific effects, I include dummies for the guidelines term. It is possible that judges are not randomly assigned within a district. For example, as Ashenfelter, Eisenberg, and Schwab (1995) point out, some judges in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania do not hear cases tried in Philadelphia. They demonstrated that not accounting for this would lead to an erroneous rejection of the random‐assignment hypothesis. I present evidence below that indicates that minority judges are more likely to be in districts that have a greater proportion of minority defendants. If these results carry over within a district, the probability that a defendant is sentenced by a minority judge is actually greater than proportion of minority judges within a district. Thus, the coefficient on the race and BenchDemog interactions may be overstated and must be interpreted with this caveat. In addition, introducing minority or female judges to a district could affect the attitude of their white male colleagues toward minority and female defendants. My estimation strategy cannot distinguish between judge‐specific effects and the possibility that having female and minority judges on the bench may change the attitudes of other groups. There is an additional problem. The general impact of offense types is captured by the offense‐type dummy variables. However, the dummies do not account for the possibility that Democratic, female, or minority judges may view certain crimes as more or less heinous than Republicans, men, or whites. For example, if Democratic appointees regard drug penalties as too harsh, they may mete out lighter sentences for drug crimes. However, because minorities commit a disproportionate number of drug crimes, under the specification above the results could misleadingly suggest that Democrats are more lenient (and Republicans more harsh) toward minorities. To check for this possibility, some specifications below interact the judicial demographic variables with the offense‐type dummies.
5. The Data Go to Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Judicial Characteristi... 3. The Sentencing Guideli... 4. Estimation Strategy 5. The Data 6. Results 7. Conclusion References Notes
The data come from two sources. The data on offenders sentenced under the guidelines was collected by the United States Sentencing Commission, which collects information on every individual sentenced under the federal sentencing guidelines.5 The data on district‐level judicial demographics come from the Federal Judicial Center biographical data on federal judges.6 The sentencing data record important offense characteristics such as the offender’s criminal history, offense level, and the primary offense of sentencing. The sentencing data also include a number of important offender characteristics, such as age, race, educational attainment, number of dependents, and citizenship status. The source for this biographical information is the pre‐sentence report prepared by the probation officer, which the judge relies on in sentencing. Variable All Crimes Serious Crimes Less Serious Crimes Coefficient S.D. Coefficient S.D. Coefficient S.D. Total prison sentence 48.2 (68.2) 64.7 (75.1) 11.4 (21.1) Jail time given.81 (.39).92 (.26).56 (.49) Downward departure.33 (.49).37 (.48).24 (.42) Substantial assistance.19 (.39).22 (.41).14 (.34) Judge initiated.13 (.33).15 (.33).10 (.28) Upward departure.008 (.09).008 (.10).009 (.09) Age 34.6 (10.9) 32.3 (9.8) 38. (12.0) Male.85 (.35).90 (.30).63 (.37) Female.15 (.35).10 (.30).27 (.44) White.37 (.48).26 (.44).54 (.49) Black.30 (.46).31 (.46).28 (.45) Hispanic.30 (.46).39 (.49).11 (.31) Asian.022 (.15).014 (.12).040 (.19) Other.018 (.13).02 (.14).013 (.11) Citizen.74 (.44).68 (.48).88 (.32) Jury trial.07 (.25).07 (.26).055 (.22) Bench trial.001 (.03).001 (.02).001 (.03) Education: Less than high school.52 (.50).62 (.49).29 (.45) High school.41 (.49).35 (.47).55 (.49) College.054 (.23).025 (.15).11 (.31) Advanced degree.018 (.13).006 (.08).045 (.21) Dependents: None.38 (.48).38 (.48).38 (.48) One.19 (.39).18 (.38).21 (.41) Two.18 (.38).18 (.38).18 (.38) Three or more.25 (.42).27 (.46).23 (.49) N 369,423 255,488 108,277 Table 2 presents the means and proportions of variables of interest. I use sentencing data between the 1992/93 guidelines term and the 2000/01 guidelines term (inclusive). 7 This yields a sentenced population of 437,649. Because a number of key offender variables are missing for many individuals, the sample used was reduced to 371,602 and further reduced to 369,432 when life sentences were excluded. 8 Some differences were apparent on the basis of the type of offense committed. For example, having more black judges on the bench did not affect the estimated black offender disparity for serious crimes such as murder and drug trafficking but did affect the disparity for less serious crimes such as fraud. Therefore, I divide the crimes into two categories: “serious” and “less serious.” Serious crimes are defined as murder, kidnapping, sexual abuse, assault, bank and other robbery, extortion, arson, any drug crime, any firearm crime, burglary, auto theft, racketeering, immigration offenses, pornography offenses, offenses committed in prison, and “other violent offenses.” Serious offenses make up the vast majority of sentenced offenders under the guidelines. With the exception of drug possession, each of the crimes labeled “serious” received jail sentences 85 percent of the time or more. Incarceration was ordered in over 93 percent of serious crimes. In the case of drug‐trafficking convictions, jail time was ordered 95 percent of the time. The average length of prison sentence for serious crimes was 64.7 months. The guidelines abolished parole, and only minimal time off is granted for good behavior. Thus, the prison sentences imposed will closely reflect actual time served. The maximum nonlife prison sentence was 990 months, and life sentences were excluded from the analysis.9 The inclusion or exclusion of life sentences (imputed from age of the defendant or top coded) mattered very little to the final results, and they accounted for less than.5 percent of all sentences.10 Less serious crimes are defined as larceny, fraud, embezzlement, forgery, bribery, tax offenses, money laundering, gambling offenses, administration of justice offenses (obstruction), environmental offenses, and property offenses. With the possible exception of gambling offenses, these offenses are basically white‐collar crimes. Offenders received jail time in just over 55 percent of these cases. The average sentence for less serious crimes was 11.4 months. Offenses counted in neither category are civil rights, national defense, antitrust, traffic, “other environmental,” food and drug, and miscellaneous offenses. These offenses are few in number and defied easy categorization. (I include these categories in the full‐sample regressions.) Together, blacks and Hispanics account for over 60 percent of all those sentenced under the guidelines in this period and almost 71 percent of serious offenders. The racial categories sum to more than one because 4.2 percent of Hispanics are also identified as black. I code these individuals as members of both racial categories in the estimation, but their exclusion or inclusion had little effect on the results. Men make up the vast majority of those sentenced under the guidelines. Men account for 90 percent of offenders sentenced for serious crimes and 63 percent of offenders sentenced for nonserious crimes. Offenders who commit serious crimes are poorly educated, with 97 percent having a high school education or less. Not surprisingly, those who commit less serious offenses are better educated and older. Apart from total prison sentence, other measures of punishment are also of interest. First, there is the incarceration decision, already discussed. Second, a judge may depart from the guidelines. Downward departures are of two types. Substantial‐assistance downward departures are the result of defendant cooperation and must be initiated by the prosecution. Other downward departures may be granted over the objections of the prosecution. These include downward departures for family ties, overstatement of criminal history, and acceptance of responsibility. A judge who makes a non‐substantial‐assistance departure must justify the decision, which may be scrutinized by an appellate court. Downward departures occurred in 33 percent of all sentences (37 percent of serious crimes and 24 percent of nonserious crimes). The majority of downward departures were granted for substantial assistance (on the motion of the prosecution).11 Offenders in federal courts commit different crimes from those in state courts, where most offenders are tried. Not surprisingly, federal offenders' crimes are primarily those that have interstate characteristics. In the time frame of my sample, 42 percent of those sentenced under the federal guidelines were sentenced for drug trafficking, over 13 percent were sentenced for fraud, and over 9.5 percent for immigration offenses. Given the nature of the data, there are potential sources of disparity that this study does not capture. First, prosecutors and law enforcement agents have discretion over whom to prosecute, what charges to bring, and how vigorously to prosecute. Second, the data cover only those sentenced under the guidelines, which means those who were convicted or pleaded guilty under the guidelines. While the vast majority of criminal indictments lead to plea bargains or convictions, I do not observe acquittals. Therefore, all results are conditional on being convicted or agreeing to a plea bargain. Unfortunately, the data do not identify the sentencing judge, and the sentencing commission will not release this information. Thus, I rely on district‐level variation in the racial and sex composition of the federal courts to identify the effects of judges' characteristics on the sentencing disparity. I consider the composition of the district courts by active judges alone.12 1 3 In order for district‐level judicial demographics to have identifying power, substantial variation in the composition of the district courts has to occur over the time frame of the observations. Figuresdemonstrate substantial variation between 1990 and 2002 in the political, racial, and sex composition of the district courts. Recall that the sentencing data are from the 1992/93 to 2000/01 guidelines terms. The later and earlier dates are included in the graphs for comparison purposes. With 91 district courts, there are 819 district‐year observations. 13 Over the time frame of the sample, Democratic appointees moved from being a minority of federal district judges, 23 percent in 1992, to a bare majority in 2000 and 2001 (see Figure 1). The total number and relative percentage of female judges also substantially increased in this period, from roughly 12 percent of the federal bench in 1992 to nearly 20 percent by 2001 (see Figure 2). The same is true of black judges in this period, increasing from just over 6 percent of district court judges in 1992 to over 11 percent in 2001. Figure 3 demonstrates the turnover of judges in a given term. There is clearly a substantial amount of churning in the district courts over the sample time frame. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be sentenced in districts with a greater proportion of black and Hispanic judges.14 Tests for random distribution of judges and offenders by race all strongly rejected the hypothesis—districts with more black and Hispanic defendants have a greater proportion of black and Hispanic judges. (One heavily Hispanic district, Puerto Rico, had an entirely Hispanic bench during some judicial terms.) Female offenders are slightly less likely to be sentenced in districts with a greater proportion of female judges. This difference was also statistically significant.I thank you in advance for your support, for going with me down this new road.
I think sometimes of the times of Amadeus and the prince or cardinal whose wealth supported him and his work. I’m so much luckier. I have you.
I have been going through boxes that have lain unpacked for decades, and found some treasures. They are treasures to me personally, things I want to share with my fans because I want them to be with people and not in some storage unit.
There are some instruments that we will be adding to the campaign as it goes along ; you can have a great piece of my history and a great guitar. They are all vintage, all played by me, and they all need new homes.
I have two LPs that were test pressings made for me to check EQ, times between songs, so on. These are rare one-of-a-kind things.
There are three dresses made for me for the Flying Cowboys tour. One was worn on the “Flying Cowboys” video. They have been wrapped in tissue for many years. Another was in the lovely program made for the tour. I am selling the dress that I wore in Dr. John’s “Makin Whoopee” video. That dress, my hairstyle, which was a derivative of the Pirates rag wraps, all that stuff we made up and created that went on to become part of the culture. Girls do ringlets now and the “Makin’ Whoopee” thing shows up in a movie or two, and the video was a big success for Dr. John. We won Grammys for Best Jazz Duet. In fact, most of the clothes I am selling can be seen in some media. I’m also offering the beautiful purple velvet hat on the cover of my music publishing book, that was from a live club date during the Flying Cowboys tour.
I love to draw, and have drawn all my life. My work is on the cover of Girl at Her Volcano, my second “half” record on Warner Brothers records. I did one of my backdrops – a full Bible torn and pasted with the pages of some of my books, this was for the Ghostyhead tour (Jon Pareles described it in his review of the show for the New York Times). I have art for sale, posters, drawings, large and small. I am also offering Christmas cards, a package of 12. I’ve always made my own cards.
Of course there are some big-ticket items. Songwriters and performers, I will talk with you, give you some assignments, help young or not so young, with what I know works for me. I am also available for private concerts. You can request the show you want. Why not?!Looks like Sony caught wind of Microsoft’s VR news; the company has just announced a new bundle for its PlayStation VR (PSVR) headset.
When PSVR launched back in October 2016 its base model didn’t include the PlayStation Camera that was required to actually track the headset. Limited bundles offered the device with the camera but, otherwise, you had to buy it separately unless you already had it. From September 1st, though, you can buy the headset and the camera bundled together for the standalone’s original price of $399. Unofficial bundles with free cameras have been offered for a while now but this is the first official packaging.
It is, in effect, sort of a price cut for PSVR, without being directly labeled as one. A pre-existing bundle at included PlayStation VR Worlds and two Move controllers, meanwhile, has had an official price cut to $449. The deal has only been announced for the US and Canada.
This is perhaps a response to the official price cuts that PSVR’s biggest rivals recently put in place. The Oculus Rift is currently on sale for the same price at the PSVR camera bundle, and will soon be set at the official price tag of $499, while the HTC Vive has dropped to $599. Sony’s main draw, though, is only requiring the affordable PS4 to get you up and running with VR, instead of a more expensive gaming PC, though this comes at some sacrifice to quality.
Will you be picking up this new bundle?CLOSE The Los Angeles Lakers have announced that Magic Johnson has rejoined the organization to assist team executive Jeanie Buss.
Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers battles for position against Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics during a game in 1984 at The Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California. (Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein, NBAE/Getty Images)
Ah, the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry. Twelve Finals meetings. At least five of the 10 greatest players of all time. A half-century of history.
There was the 1960s — when the rivalry was formed. Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Sam and K.C. Jones, et al, willed the Celtics to nine championships, six of which came at the expense of a Lakers team headlined by Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and, at the tail end of the era, Wilt Chamberlain. The Celtics' dominant decade was capped off in 1969 when, despite the 5,000 championship balloons ready to fall from The Forum's rafters, Don Nelson hit a late-game jumper to give the Celtics another title.
And the 1980s — when the rivalry was reborn. The Showtime Lakers, featuring Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Byron Scott and A.C. Green, met the likes of Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge in the Finals on three separate occasions. The Lakers won two of the showdowns (1985 and '87), putting an end to the Celtics' hex, and by the time it was all said and done, another decade was ruled by these two franchises.
GALLERY: A LOOK AT THE NBA'S MOST STORIED RIVALRY
"When you think back to the '80s, there wasn't anything like that for that decade," Green, who won three championships with the Lakers and holds the NBA record for consecutive games played (1,192), told USA TODAY Sports. "It brought fans to the sport of basketball worldwide. It was great to see and be a part of something like that — when you have great coaches, great players, great ownership, and then obviously great history."
And of course, most recently, the 2000s — when the rivalry was rekindled. In the 2008 and 2010 Finals, Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol's Lakers met Boston's modern era Big Three of Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett. The Celtics won the first Finals series in six games — a 39-point rout at TD Garden, while the Lakers won the second — a down-to-the-wire, four-point victory at the Staples Center.
So on Friday night, when the red-hot Celtics (31-18) host the struggling Lakers (17-35) at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN, we can't help but remember the good ol' days, when the most storied rivalry in NBA history was alive and well.
"Our rivalry with the Celtics defines, epitomizes, what a rivalry really is," Green said. "You've got to have teams that are successful, both love to win, which obviously quantifies being successful, but then there's a fierce, competitive nature that is just instilled in the fiber of the teams. I think we epitomize that, as far as the history."
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But even though this matchup is far from marquee — the Celtics are looking to chip away at the 2 1/2 game lead the Cleveland Cavaliers have at the top of the East, while the Lakers are looking for just their sixth win of 2017 — there's still some history riding on the result.
Both franchises have accumulated an NBA-record 3,252 regular season wins throughout their decades of dominance, so the team that comes out on top Friday night will become the winningest team in NBA history.
How fitting.
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. When patients do find treatment they think will work best for them, insurance may not cover it. Providers typically have low reimbursement rates for addiction specialists, so patients must go out of network to find help. That means they must choose between spending, say, $300 on an office visit or $20 to get high. “If it’s cheaper to buy heroin than it is to go to the doctor,” says Dr. Kolodny, “you’re going to keep using.” Jass Rini’s story is harrowing—and telling. A 40-year-old mother from Ocean County, New Jersey, she’s a year into recovery after a seven-year-long battle with heroin addiction. Rini first took painkillers that were prescribed for her fibromyalgia but quickly became addicted, and eventually began living out of her van while her two youngest kids stayed with her husband. When the family’s dog died, her husband asked if she could come home to break the news to their daughter. “Instead, I got high,” says Rini. Ashamed at letting her little girl down, Rini made a decision: She would shoot 11 bags of fentanyl. If she lived, she would get sober. “I woke up 12 hours later with the -needle still in my arm,” she says. “I went to the E.R. and told them I’d just tried to kill myself—that’s when I was admitted.” Her insurer paid for two weeks in the hospital. But a follow-up inpatient stay would require a $2,000 deductible plus copay, and Rini didn’t have the money. Six months later, after another relapse and another suicide attempt, she eventually got into an intensive outpatient program she felt was the right fit—fortunately, a good one—which her provider paid for in full. “I had top-notch insurance,” she says, “but when I couldn’t afford the deductible and copay, it was as if I didn’t have insurance at all.” Finally, the whole field of addiction medicine is stigmatized. If you’re wondering why addiction treatment seems so antiquated, it’s partly because of a law that’s over 100 years old: In 1914 the Harrison Narcotics Act made it illegal for doctors to prescribe to patients they recognized as drug abusers, which segregated addiction treatment from the rest of medicine. “In many ways addiction is still viewed not as a medical issue but a moral failure,” says Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. As a result, methadone clinics are set up separately from hospitals, and less than 15 percent of U.S. medical schools have even a single course in addiction, according to A. Thomas McLellan, Ph.D., founder of the Treatment Research Institute, a not-for-profit devoted to finding answers for substance abuse. There’s such a shortage of specialists, he says: “We’re now paying the price.” Will Yakowicz is a journalist in Queens, New York. We Can't Let Patients Fall Through the Cracks By Liz Brody One bright spot in this epidemic has been the drug Narcan (naloxone). It’s an absolute game changer because it can stop an overdose as it’s happening—saving thousands of lives. The drug is increasingly available over the counter, but pharmacies often run out of it, and prices are steep (often more than $100 for a dose). “Even my daughter, who’s 10, could save a life with this drug,” says UCSF’s Ciccarone. “It needs to be affordable, over the counter, and on police belts, on paramedics’ belts, in schools, in family medicine cabinets.” Drug czar Baum agrees: “It should be everywhere.” Pinterest But that’s just step one; you need a step two. As Narcan clears the body of opioids, it also sends an addict into withdrawal. And rarely does she wake up after an overdose with the epiphany, Wow, I’ve got to get sober. “You’re angry as hell because you’re in withdrawal,” says Nicole Bell, 36, who overdosed three times on heroin. “You should be grateful to be alive, but you’re already thinking about how you’re going to get more.” After being Narcanned, most patients are brought to the E.R., monitored for a few hours, and sent home. But that misses a golden moment for intervention—one that Yale’s Dr. Fiellin is determined to seize. In a clinical trial, he gave patients buprenorphine in the E.R., along with a few doses to take at home, and an appointment to see a physician to follow through with the MAT treatment. Doing that instead of just handing a patient a list of rehab centers doubles the chance someone would be in treatment a month later. “Here’s somebody who almost died, and you’re just going to leave it up to fate and hope that they make it?” Dr. Fiellin says. “We don’t treat heart attacks that way.” Walking out with a solid plan is key. Pinterest PHOTO: Courtesy of Subject For Catherine Goedicke, 23, her brother was the plan. After she overdosed on heroin during one of her many attempts to get sober, she was Narcanned and rushed to the E.R. He got there as fast as he could. “Do you want to try this again and get well?” he asked. “Absolutely not,” she told him. She wanted to keep using till the wheels fell off. “All right,” he replied. “We’re doing it anyway.” Mike Goedicke, 27, now says he didn’t think it through—“it was a desperate brother thing.” A former user himself, he’d been sober for three years. (As a teen, Catherine had snitched his Suboxone, the drug that eventually led her to heroin.) So he took her home to his apartment. Catherine slept on his gray leather couch for about five months as Mike and her sponsor coached her through the 12 steps every day. Today they all work at Brook Retreat, two recovery houses Mike cofounded, and Catherine hasn’t used drugs in three years. “I came to that apartment with the most horrible attitude,” she says. “And I’m just really lucky, because if I’d gone anywhere else, I never would have lasted.”
Every One of Us Can Help Someone Beat This Thing Every One of Us Can Help Someone Beat This Thing Sometimes something as simple as a few kind words makes the difference. By Liz Brody Because it’s so rare to kick an opioid addiction in one try, there are many opportunities to help. Almost every former user I spoke with told me that, at the lowest of the lows, when quitting seemed impossible, it was someone rooting for them that made the difference. Sara Kaiser, the nurse who shot up with beer, says a handwritten letter from her childhood friend, Beth Salonia, stayed with her. They both remember it reading like this: “You grew up across the street from me. You have amazing parents. It’s time you wake up and stop acting like this is OK. I’ll always be your friend, and when you’re ready, I’ll be there for you.” When Sara read it, she says, “I felt so shitty. But it also meant she cared about me.” Chayce, the young woman I’ve been following for four months now, has that kind of support on her side. Her mom, Tracie, Tracie’s boyfriend, Kirk, Chayce’s dad, Chris, and her stepmom, Monique, all understand she’s struggling with a disease and have tried to form a safety net for her as best they can. But she’s not in any kind of recovery program, or on medication, or going to meetings, nor has she surrounded herself with others trying to stay sober. So her loved ones have no illusions. “When I saw her in rehab, she sounded like my baby girl again,” says Chris, “but she’s not following the program. I just hope she can stay strong and pull this off.” When I checked in with Chayce last, she still had cravings. It’s a place most recovering addicts know well. “After rehab,” she says, “I was in such a different mind-set. I was so amazed with how happy I was from not being on drugs, and I felt so loved. Now reality has set in. The pink cloud’s gone, and the anxiety is back: Uh, hello. I don’t know—I think I can stay sober. I just have to try a little harder.” I tally up the unsober things she’s shared with me over the past three months—the prescription cough syrup she drank with Sprite, the Xanax, the Norcos, methadone, and a fentanyl pill. And weed. And vodka. “I could have said I’ve been sober this whole time, but I haven’t been,” she says, with a nervous laugh. We talk about honesty being a good step toward recovery. She also points out it took guts to survive heroin, and that same spirit will help put it behind her. “I do think I’m smarter and stronger from going through all this,” she says. The stakes are high, but I want to believe Chayce will end up beating this. After that conversation, she texts me a Tumblr post she’d found. It reads: “You see a dope fiend. I see a future success story.” What I see is a fighter. Pinterest
The Dilemma Doctors Face The Dilemma Doctors Face Chronic pain is real. It can ruin people’s lives. But the anvil of addiction and death can’t be ignored. By Danielle Ofri, M.D. Pinterest PHOTO: Getty Images The car accident was more than a decade ago. The leg fracture has long since healed. The visible bruises and scars are all gone. But the patient in my office tells me that her pain is still there, and this is something we discuss at every visit. As a physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, I can diagnose diabetes from a blood sugar test and pneumonia from a chest X-ray. I can quantify a fever with a thermometer, and liver damage from an ultrasound. But there is no way to objectively measure pain. In primary care medicine, most diagnoses are based on what a patient says. The patient’s story is the primary data, and as a rule I take her words as fact. Pain stands nearly alone as a medical condition that not only can’t be measured but that patients might also have an ulterior motive to lie about. This, unfortunately, adds an uncomfortable element of suspicion into an interaction that is supposed to be based on trust. I never wonder if a patient is lying when she says she is constipated or has a vaginal itch. But the reality is that there’s not much street value for Metamucil, and there aren’t any rehabs filled with recovering Monistat addicts. My patient tells me she’s “tried everything” over the years, and the only thing that relieves her pain is OxyContin. She’s borrowed a few tabs from her sister (who had them left over from an earlier surgery), and they really work. I don’t doubt this; the drug is extremely effective in relieving pain, but it has a high potential for addiction, not to mention a hefty street value. I can’t know if she might be asking for the drugs to feed an addiction or sell for money. I feel sullied when these thoughts enter my mind. I don’t want to harbor suspicions about my patient. If she says she’s in pain, then she’s in pain, and my job is to help relieve that pain. But like almost every doctor, I have been lied to in the past. I’ve had my prescription pad stolen. I’ve been called by the Drug Enforcement Agency about prescriptions of mine that have been sold on the street. As the patient in my office speaks, I can’t help but remember another patient in a wheelchair with an amputated leg who, to get an opioid prescription, flat-out lied to me that his pain clinic had closed down. Then there was the patient whom I found had filled narcotic prescriptions from eight different doctors at eight different pharmacies. These shattering instances are enough to give me pause. I’m also aware of the rising tide of opioid addiction and overdose. Do I want to expose my patient to those risks? I know too that there are other factors that have put my patient and me into this difficult situation. I’d love to send her for physical therapy, but her insurance company—like most—offers scant coverage for alternative pain treatments like PT, acupuncture, massage, and chiropractic therapy. She already used up her PT benefit, and it will be another year until she can be eligible for more. I could try to call the insurance company and argue on her behalf, but that could take hours— tear-out-your-hair kind of hours that would likely be fruitless anyway. I can’t deny that it’s so much easier just to write a prescription. Pinterest It’s also no secret that drug makers have pushed these narcotics heavily on doctors. I have one gastric ulcer dedicated solely to Purdue, who assured us that our patients faced little risk of addiction to OxyContin while sanctimoniously reminding us of our ethical duty to treat pain. And so we doctors and patients are in a pickle. Chronic pain is real. It can ruin people’s lives. But the anvil of addiction and death can’t be ignored. Sitting with my patient as she tells me how pain dogs her life, sapping energy and joy from her waking hours, I drag out the well-worn trope that there is no easy solution. I frame it as a chronic condition like diabetes and explain why I think OxyContin won’t be the magic bullet. We set modest goals that relate less to the pain per se but to her overall functioning. We discuss the role of a healthy diet and the importance of exercise, even if just a little. We talk about engaging in activities that have meaning for her. In the end, I don’t prescribe the painkiller. The short-term benefits don’t seem worth the long-term risks. My patient and I part ways with a handshake and an understanding that this is only the beginning. It will be a long haul, but we will keep at it, bit by incremental bit. Danielle Ofri, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Her latest book is What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear.
Sex for Heroin Sex for Heroin Once hooked, women often will do anything for a fix—and enter into a whole new nightmare of danger and trauma. By Liz Brody Pinterest PHOTO: Courtesy of Subject May 16, 2012, was somewhat of a typical day for one heroin user in Worcester, Massachusetts: Nicole “Nikki” Bell was arrested for prostitution, this time as part of a sting. “For seven years I was in and out of incarceration, in and out of treatment facilities, sleeping in doorways, prostituting, raped at gunpoint, jumping out of moving cars,” says Nikki, now 36. “I was arrested—God, over 20 times—and never once did anybody say, ‘Do you need help?’” No picture of the opioid crisis is complete without stories like Nikki’s. Several of the women I spoke to for this report admitted they’d traded sex for drugs. “The percentage is very high with opioids,” says Athena Haddon, who ran a recovery center in Massachusetts for nearly a decade. How high? And what does it mean? “There are no numbers,” says Meredith Dank, Ph.D., an expert on human trafficking at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, who has been trying to get funding to study how commercial sexual exploitation impacts the opioid crisis and vice versa. “It’s frustrating. You’d think that the people shaping a nationwide strategic plan to address this epidemic would want data to ensure the money is going to the right places. Are opioids pushing people into commercial sex? Are traffickers getting them addicted?” And: What does it take to save these women? Without research, we don’t have those answers. Pinterest The most obvious way opioids become part of the sex economy is when women are so gripped by addiction they resort to using their body to get their fix. Other women turn to the drugs to dull the pain of being exploited. Pinterest Traffickers take advantage of all this, circling methadone clinics and treatment centers and offering dope to women trying to get sober, as they hunt for easy recruits. Or pimps deliberately get women hooked on opioids as a means to keep them under their control. Andrew Fields, in Lutz, Florida, was sentenced to more than 33 years in prison in 2013 for addicting his girls to oxycodone, Dilaudid, and morphine, and using their fear of withdrawal to coerce them to perform acts of prostitution. One victim testified that Fields would watch her in withdrawal and in agony, saying, “I’ll give you one pill. I’m not going to give you another until you get up and go to work. And you know you need another.” In 2015 a Sheboygan, Wisconsin, trafficker, Jason Guidry, received a 25-year sentence for a similar M.O. with heroin. “I remember one woman who was in treatment for her heroin addiction,” says Hanni Stoklosa, M.D., M.P.H., 36, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, who cofounded HEAL Trafficking, to combat sexual exploitation from a public health perspective. “She was approached by a female recruiter who was like, ‘Hey, I know how to get you your drugs.’ That woman introduced my patient to her trafficker. They transported her across state lines from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, and then she was locked in a motel room. She finally got a hold of somebody’s smartphone and called her mom, who brought her to our emergency department.” Dr. Stoklosa still doesn’t know what happened to the woman after that: “It breaks my heart. She needed to be connected to drug treatment resources, but she also needed help for the horrible PTSD that I can only imagine she’s experienced. I didn’t have those places to send her to. There are so few of facilities that do both.” Pinterest Nikki Bell’s story began in the chaos of growing up with a single mother who was in and out of the hospital with multiple illnesses and an amputated leg. “I was afraid to go to school because I didn’t know what I’d come home to,” says Nikki. Once, she found her mother in a coma. Sometimes other adults were there to take care of Nikki, but by high school she was often fending for herself. Pinterest At 17 Nikki started dating an older guy she’d met through an after-school job. “Pretty soon he was taking me to hotels in Boston and having me sleep with his friends,” she says. “Sometimes he gave me Percs or OxyContin so I would do what he wanted. Now I can look back and say those weren’t his friends; they were men who wanted to purchase a little girl. But at the time I really thought he was my boyfriend and that he loved me.” When she was 18, Nikki found her mother dead at home; not long after that, she got pregnant and decided to give the child up for adoption. “I still remember standing on the sidewalk, watching this couple drive away with my daughter,” she says, “and knowing that if I took a handful of the Vicodin the doctor had just given me, I would feel better.” Once she did, her dive into addiction was swift. By age 25 she had switched to heroin and was living in a Worcester homeless shelter. “I walked in and I was fresh meat. Before I knew it I had this guy, and now I’m prostituting and using drugs again, first with him, and then on my own,” Nikki says. During the next several years, when she had no phone and was out of touch with her family, Katie, her younger sister in Charlotte, North Carolina, would google for news of her arrest. “One day, I saw she was in prison and went to see her,” says Katie, now 35. “And I burst into tears. I mean she was so skinny. You hear about how [heroin users] think they’re alone and no one loves them and that pushes them to keep doing drugs. So I tried to convey that I cared and was there for her, and told her, ‘Maybe when you get out, you won’t put a needle in your arm—and you’ll call me instead.’ It hurt a lot when she went right back to her life.” Pinterest One reason women like Nikki are so much more difficult to treat is that they may be suffering neurological affects from prolonged intimate sexual violence, which one researcher told Glamour was akin to being at war. Pinterest PHOTO: Stocksy Traffickers use all kinds of terror tactics and mind games to establish control over women. And even without a pimp, the sheer brutality of commercial sex mixed with heroin is a recipe for PTSD. “You’re constantly hypervigilant, and you literally can’t find a safe place in your own mind,” says Marti MacGibbon, an addiction specialist and speaker who described her own experience being trafficked in Never Give In to Fear. In that mental state a treatment program can feel more threatening than the terror a woman is used to, and not always a place to disclose her trauma. Sometimes it’s for good reason. “Go into a mixed-gender setting and say you’re coming off of prostitution, and you could have 10 guys taking you out for coffee, hoping to get a blow job,” says the Massachusetts addiction specialist Haddon. Because many recovery groups and centers aren’t regulated “the sexual exploitation is ridiculous—really, it’s dangerous. And nobody talks about it.” Rather than going straight into residential treatment, MacGibbon and Haddon have seen that women who are trying to recover from addiction and trafficking find some success when they start out at drop-in centers—places that offer coffee with no pressure and connections to services when a woman is ready. “It lets them have control, even if for a short time, which is crucial for someone who is coming out of being dominated by traffickers and drug dealers,” says MacGibbon. Dr. Stoklosa tries to make her E.R. one of these welcoming spaces, and wishes other emergency physicians would too. But she knows that, like addiction training, sex trafficking is not part of most medical school curricula. She always asks women coming in with opioid-related problems whether they’ve used sex to get their drugs and tells them about the National Human Trafficking Hotline. “Sometimes they spit in my face,” she says, “but they know they can come back and get compassionate, caring help.” The goal, says MacGibbon, is “going beyond accepting your past to seeing it as an asset. It’s full healing when someone can say: ‘I’m not ashamed anymore.’” Pinterest It was about eight years ago when Nikki first walked into Haddon’s drop in center, Everyday Miracles. “Her teeth were jagged, rotted out of her mouth, and she was really in bad shape,” says Haddon. “But every time she came in, she had a book. I had never seen anybody who read as much. And I just knew that, wow, she’s—there was something different about her.” Pinterest Nikki felt the same way about Haddon. “She was the first person who looked at me as a human being and not like a worthless prostitute,” she says. “I would go there all beat up from an assault on the street, and she would coach me through whatever awful thing I had going on. And she just loved me, until I was ready.” Now a wife and mother of a one-year-old son, Nikki works with the city of Worcester on antitrafficking efforts but spends most of her energy on the nonprofit she and Haddon founded two years ago—a drop-in center they call Living in Freedom Together (LIFT), which offers everything from hot coffee to STI testing. “We’re building relationships and giving these women a place they can walk in off the street and trust, and when they’re ready, we can mobilize services for them,” says Nikki. “And that happens multiple times a week.” She’s still working on her own healing. “I’ll probably be recovering from the prostitution and exploitation for the rest of my life,” she says, explaining that she still has nightmares and struggles with healthy sexual relationships. But she’s discovered that what helps is talking to women. One of them is Katie, who visited again recently. “She’s amazing,” says Nikki. “She hadn’t seen me in, like, five years and just started showing up at the prison, saying, ‘I’ve been so worried about you.’ I mean, she’s been incredible to me.”
The ‘Trusted Angel’ Secretly Saving Lives The ‘Trusted Angel’ Secretly Saving Lives After nearly a decade on the streets, Tracey Helton Mitchell found recovery. With a little ingenuity (and Reddit), she has stopped more than 250 people from fatally overdosing. By Liz Brody Pinterest PHOTO: Courtesy of Subject Anyone in the world can see Tracey Helton Mitchell getting high, pulling down her pants and shooting up, her matter-of-factness as jarring as the needle going into her thigh. It’s one of the first scenes in the 1999 HBO documentary Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street, which follows five “strung out” users in the alleys of San Francisco. At 25 Tracey already shuffles like a bag lady. She gets off heroin for six months, but only because she’s thrown in jail. Within eight hours of her release, she’s fixing to get high again, and even goes on to become a full-time drug dealer. “It looks like I’ve been f-ckin’ dropped in a dumpster…and just been picked at by rats,” she says at one point, displaying the bruises up and down her legs from injecting there. And she can’t seem to find a way out: “It seems like getting there should be so easy,” she says. “But then what am I going to do, what am I really going to do?…. Even if wasn’t doing heroin, I don’t know what the f-ck I would want to do with my life.” The film has no happy endings. But in real life there is a happy ending. The self-described junkie and convicted felon found exactly what she wanted to do: Today, at 47, Tracey is a mother of three with a master’s degree who works for the City and County of San Francisco, managing mental health counseling programs. And thousands call her “our trusted angel.” After nearly a decade on the streets, Helton Mitchell finally began recovery, which she describes in her 2016 book, The Big Fix. Giving advice and encouragement on social media, she stayed connected to those still in the grips of the drug she left behind. And that led her to the sub-Reddit r/opiates, which has more than 40,000 members, most of them using pills or heroin and wanting to do so more safely. She noticed many of them asking one another how to get naloxone, the drug that can reverse an opioid overdose (Narcan being the best-known brand). They wanted to have it on hand in case they, or a friend, needed it. “Access was very limited back then,” says Helton Mitchell, who joined as traceyh415 and decided to exchange private messages with some of them. “So I started sending people vials of naloxone.” Pinterest That was four years ago. Since then, using her own money and random donations from strangers, she has been sending 10 to 20 care packages a week and seeing chains like: “Tracey has saved another life praise you” —54883.
“How many people would be dead were it not for her care packages?”—rhymes_with_tar.
“She really is a godsend.” —ohioraw.
“Thank you, Tracey! You are our angel.” —jessika_anne. Today naloxone is much easier to get than when she started: Although it’s a prescription drug, in most states (including California), you can buy it in a pharmacy without seeing a doctor. “Many people who contact me now just can’t afford it,” says Helton Mitchell. “So I first try to match them to a local program where they can get it free and learn how to use it. And when there’s no nearby program, I’ll send the naloxone.” (Mailing the drug is not necessarily 100 percent legal— laws regarding naloxone access, mailing prescription drugs, and sharing prescription drugs vary from state to state—though experts Glamour spoke to didn’t know of any cases of someone being arrested for mailing it.) From the beginning, she says, “I thought, This is something I can do with my mom schedule that could have an impact.” And it has: Based on the grateful responses Helton Mitchell has gotten, she estimates she’s saved nearly 270 lives. “There was one guy I sent it to who lived in such a remote area the paramedics couldn’t make it to his house for 45 minutes,” she says. “And another IV drug user told the story of how his mom had a glass of wine and took her pain medicine and had an overdose. He ended up using the naloxone to save her.” And those are just the ones she hears about. Helton Mitchell’s harm-reduction care packages often include clean needles because when users can’t get sterile ones, the reality is, they share, which can lead to more serious problems, like HIV and hepatitis C. Giving users the tools to do drugs may seem counterintuitive, but supplying new needles keeps them alive and healthy until they’re ready to try recovery, and studies show such programs don’t encourage more drug use and can lead people to treatment, which is why many cities are embracing this approach. Pinterest Helton Mitchell says you don’t ever have to go near a needle or send supplies to help someone struggling—although she strongly suggests that everyone learn how to administer naloxone and carry it with them. Even easier, “if you know somebody who’s using heroin, just talk to them,” she says. “This drug makes people so isolated. You can say something like, ‘You know, I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I’m here for you.’ Or ‘Why don’t we go out to the movies?’ Or just ‘What’s going on with you?’ It means that someone cares.” Her questions and interest are why she’s so beloved by all those users on Reddit who are trying to stay alive. When Helton Mitchell recently announced to the group that she was looking to partner with a nonprofit to turn her care package operation into an above-board program, commenters piled on for the applause. “I love you, Tracey!” wrote UsamaBinNoddin. “You saved my life twice. Thank you again for everything you do!” “If I was a religious man, I’d say you were doing the Lord’s work,” chimed in another member, waiting_with_lou. “It continues to amaze me how much of your own time and effort [goes] into helping degenerates like us (kidding).” Cal_throwaway told the group, “Tracey has been an invaluable asset to this community for so long, and her list of lives saved is in the triple digits.” And then: “Tracey, you’re the guardian angel we need!” Pinterest PHOTO: Getty Images
Why Is Nobody Talking About Mental Health? Why Is Nobody Talking About Mental Health? Depression and despair often prompt people to try opioids. It's time we address that pain head on. By Liz Brody Read the latest news stories on opioids, and you’ll hear a lot about how chemically powerful they are and how they reprogram the brain and cause lasting changes. It’s all true, it’s fascinating, but it’s not the full story. Ask anyone hooked on these drugs and they’ll share how they fell in love at first hit; they’ll detail everything they did to keep getting their fix. And if you keep talking, they will also reveal their depression, anxiety, or struggles with trauma. Among the 20 I've spoken to, those feelings come up pretty much always. I get that “Depression: #1 Cause of Opioid Abuse” (a headline I have not once read, ever, after six months of research) isn’t as grabby as, say, “ The Heroin Crisis Is So Bad It’s ‘Raining Needles.’” But by not talking about the emotional pain that often prompts people to try Oxy or Percs or even heroin, we’re snipping at the weeds of this epidemic instead of pulling at the roots. Pinterest “Something terrible is happening in this country, and it’s not just about drugs,” says Hilary Connery, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “It’s also about depression, mental health, and despair.” Studying trends in women, she’s seen a strikingly similar pattern in the rise of suicides and depression and drug overdose deaths. “I think they are related,” she says, “and if we’re not going to look at that, we’re going to miss a lot of the national prevention and response that we need.” Dr. Connery points out that many women turn to opioids to self-medicate conditions they don’t know they have or are afraid to tell anyone about—like depression, anxiety, or PTSD. (Americans have never been good at discussing these things.) Misusing painkillers or heroin can also make mental health issues worse. “OxyContin was the first thing that really appeased my anxiety,” says Casey, 29, a health care professional in Connecticut. After four years of abusing pills, she switched to heroin, which had a boomerang effect: “By the time I got sober, I was riddled with anxiety. Toward the end, it was almost as if the drugs magnified it.” Other ex–heroin users told me they sank to a place of such worthlessness and despair that, even though they knew they risked dying to get high, it didn’t much matter. Some intentionally courted death. “When I was chronically homeless, trying to detox, unable to stay clean,” says Keriann, 32, who now runs a recovery house near Boston, “I was so sick of myself I always wanted to die.” Nicole Bell, 36, actively tried to kill herself. “Once,” she told me, “I called my sister from a pay phone and said goodbye, then took every pill I had. And I just sat in a train station. I didn’t think there was a solution. All I remember is a woman on top of me, doing CPR, and lights above me, and them cutting my sweatshirt off. I ended up on life support.” After that, Nicole cycled in and out of jail, charged with prostitution for heroin, and overdosed three times. Often when she got high on the streets, she admits, “I was praying that I wouldn’t wake up.” Any mental health expert will tell you: “I want to die” or “I wish I were dead” are blazing red flags that should warrant immediate intervention, but that’s not the approach we take with drug users. Pinterest But recognizing these mental health issues can lead to solutions, Dr. Connery says, both in preventing and treating addiction. She argues that doctors, before prescribing a single painkiller, should screen every patient for depression, anxiety, past trauma, and suicidal thoughts, since those conditions can make you more vulnerable to getting hooked. For people trying to get sober, she stresses that treatment must include mental health care: “If you detox from your substance use disorder but not for your pneumonia, you’re going to stay sick with the pneumonia,” and those symptoms will drive you back to your old drugs to try to feel better, says Dr. Connery. “It’s the same with trauma or panic disorder or depression. If you’re really depressed and in pain and you can’t bear it, you’re likely to pick up the substance that you used to find relief.” The women I spoke to know that firsthand. Bell, who started an antitrafficking organization in Worcester, Massachusetts, didn’t get sober until she underwent counseling that addressed her childhood trauma, including trying to care for her severely ill single mom. Casey’s recovery included medication for her anxiety. Sara Kaiser, 32, a nurse in Connecticut who cut herself as a teen, needed hospitalization for mental health issues as well as antidepressants before she could stop relapsing. Now she’s seven years sober—and has stayed that way even when a close friend died and her depression came roaring back. “I didn’t want to get high,” she says. “I had other tools in place.” Every person who struggles with opioid addiction deserves to have those tools. They’ll never have them if we continue to pretend that mental health isn’t part of this tragedy.By NEIL HOWE
Kiplinger recently reported that December’s poor job growth will be offset as the economy slowly starts to recover in the months ahead. And the newest Labor Department report shows that the unemployment rate, now at 6.7%, has dropped steadily since peaking three years ago. But be warned: these numbers don’t tell the whole story.
What the media fail to emphasize is the steep drop in the labor force participation rate during this time. From October 2010, when our official jobless numbers peaked, to January 2014, the participation rank sank from 64.4% to 62.8%. Over the same period, the share of all Americans ages 16 and over who are employed has hardly budged, moving from 56.5% to only 56.6%. While bulls tout a jobs “acceleration,” the sad fact is that total U.S. jobs have shrunk by 2 million and full-time jobs by 5 million since just before the Great Recession, even while our population has grown by 14 million.
Explaining The Steep Decline In Labor Force
To explain this steep decline in labor force participation, analysts in the national media blame population aging. But aging can’t be the culprit since Boomers are now enlarging the ranks of the only age bracket (age 55 and older) in which participation is actually rising and jobs have continued to grow. By delaying their retirement, Boomers are the countertrend in this story of declining labor force attachment—which is being driven almost entirely by Americans under age 55.
Let me suggest another explanation: the emergence of a new social mood, an enduring “New Frugality” that has Americans of prime working age, mainly 25 to 55, spending less, working less, and buying cheaper. Yes, the Great Recession incited tighter wallets and fewer working hours, and the continued economic stagnation has certainly sustained it. But something deeper is also driving this behavior: a Generation X-led shift in Americans’ attitudes towards time and money. This massive generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, now dominating the ranks of prime-age householders, helps explain Deloitte’s recent finding that a full 94% of consumers plan to keep spending at current levels even if the economy improves.
The Generation X Mentality
Why this generation? Individualistic, undersocialized |
the lemons/lemonade analogy correctly)—it's still highly entertaining and packed with actual weirdo quotes from these women. There's so much to read and look at, that fans of the franchise could find themselves cracking up at just a little corner of the table of contents.
The behind-the-scenes tidbits are really interesting. For example, the show started—with Orange County—because Executive Producer Scott Dunlop was a "disenchanted" Coto de Caza resident. His neighbor was Jeana Keough. He decided to put together a "semi-improvised sitcom" called Behind the Gates with Jeana and a few other women. He pitched it to Bravo, which they retooled into The Real Housewives.
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Slade and Jo were cast on the show because they were attending a fund raising party in the neighborhood and Dunlop offered anyone who would donate enough money a cameo on the show. Slade immediately cut a check for $2500.
Producers say that Ramona Singer's "shooting ratio" is very high because "as long as she's in front of the camera, there's almost a guarantee that the scene is going to make it on the air."
DeShawn Snow left after the first season of Atlanta to attend divinity school.
Producers put together the cast of New Jersey after finding Jacqueline Laurita at her salon—Chateau the Art of Beauty—and she recommended all the other cast members.
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Teresa Giudice doesn't like Bruce Springsteen or Bon Jovi.
But the best part is definitely the exclusive interviews with the women, with some of them opening up even more about their personal lives, while others just talk shit on the other cast members. Here are some highlights:
Orange County
Tamra on Gretchen
She tattooed that guy Jay's name on her finger. There was a Band Aid over her finger at the reunion show which said Jay underneath it and her engagement ring was over that. I've seen the tattoo. Now it's a tattoo over a tattoo—she tattooed Jeff's name over Jay's name after everybody found out, and now it's one big blob of ink.
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Tamra on Jeana
I think that she appeals to Middle America because she's not the skinniest girl on the show; she's not the most beautiful girl on the show…She's a bitch!
Jeana
I did five ZZ Top videos. I'm the lead female. I drive the red car. I'm the brunette and the rest of them are blondes. Every video the blondes were replaced but I was consistent.
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Alexis
I'm edgy. I love staying with the latest trends. My husband would rather I just dressed a little more traditionally. The worst part is when I bring something home—like leggings—and I'm excited about them and he says, 'I hate those. Don't wear those around me.'
New York
Bethenny on Kelly
She is caught up in her own myth. She's trying to portray this really cool, bouncing, cartwheel-doing, Birkenstock-wearing, pickup truck-driving person, yet living in a $13 million house. She uses words like 'foil' and 'inappropriate' to act like she's intelligent…I think that she is so caught up in trying to portray something that she doesn't even know who she really is.
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Kelly
I have psoriasis so I have to keep my skin tanned because that's the only thing that really helps it…My dad always said that I have amazing legs. I think my best features are my legs, my hair, my smile—a very genuine smile." If you could describe me in one word it would be'synthesizer.' I'm a synthesizer of information. I think that's why I was a good editor for Elle Accessories because I'm really good at synthesizing information, categorizing and making lemons into lemonade.
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LuAnn
I'm an old indian spirit living vicariously through all the Indians that once roamed the planet.
I just think it's awful when people use their phones in elevators.
Atlanta
NeNe on Dwight
There's nothing I wouldn't do with him. Except have sex.
Kim
I play hundred-dollar slot machines [to unwind].
I got kicked out of Catholic school for smoking. Then my parents put me in another school and I got kicked out for smoking again.
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New Jersey
Teresa on Danielle
She came to my shore house and acted inappropriately. Her boyfriend Steve's lying on the recliner…she goes and lies right on top of him and sticks her tongue in his mouth. My older daughter and Danielle's two daughters were sitting right there on the couch staring at her…And then she had sex with him that whole night and told me all about it the next day. She leaves my house and then doesn't even take the sheets off the bed. She's a pig.
Caroline on Danielle
What Danielle said about giving out a phone number on Andy's show was bullshit. She's a disgusting human being. She's full of shit. It's not that simple…For me to get to that point, it's more than a phone number. No comment.
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Danielle on what she did to make Caroline cryMOSUL, IRAQ - AUGUST 26: August 25, 2014 dated pictures show Peshmerga forces' ongoing progression to fight against army forces led by Islamic State (IS) and seize to regain areas in Mosul. Peshmerga forces patrol the area in Al-Bakir neighborhood of Mosul, Iraq on August 25, 2014. (Photo by Ensar Ozdemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
However, unlike over a decade ago, before the roadside bombs and everything else our soldiers had to endure in Iraq, my hatred for ISIS is now tempered by certain costly and hard-learned lessons. Two counterinsurgency wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan have caused immense hardship upon our Armed Forces, a suicide epidemic, a VA crisis, and countless number of night terrors, PTSD cases, and many other repercussions from fighting too long in foreign lands. While we have a population of over 310 million citizens, 2.5 million Americans protected the third most populous nation in the world. The least we owe these brave men and women is a strategy that doesn't end in further involvement within a known quagmire.
I've never served in the military, but I have the good sense to know that our soldiers deserve better than to relive the nightmares of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, Iraq is crumbling, but further involvement by America won't ensure its survival; only the Iraqi's themselves can ensure the viability of their state. To believe that we must reenter a war we just ended is similar to the gambler in Vegas who maxes out his ATM in order to play one more losing hand at poker.
The nature of war in Iraq today, and for most of the past decade, is the reality of irregular warfare where winning the battle entails occupying territory and dealing with ambushes, roadside bombs, snipers, and every other tactic aimed at weakening a great power. Our soldiers don't deserve another ground war in Iraq and we should never again wage a counterinsurgency war anywhere in the world. ISIS wants this suicidal showdown, they want to lure the U.S. into a ground war, and they need the legitimacy acquired by Al-Qaeda and Bin-Laden when both lured our country into two colossal mistakes in the Middle East.
Our society, sadly, is seemingly quick to forget the lessons learned only several years ago. Why? Because never-ending media images of militants with black beards and uniforms doing donuts in tanks and vehicles, relishing their victories and slaughtering groups of unarmed men, have garnered exactly the type of attention desired by ISIS. In order to defeat ISIS, we'll have to wage war on our terms; not the terms of a terrorist group who's raison detre, like Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and every other terror organization, is to weaken a far greaterer power though asymmetric warfare. There are a number of reasons why ISIS desperately wants the U.S. to send tens of thousands of ground troops back to Iraq and this article highlights why we shouldn't fall into their trap.
1. The U.S. should leave the ground war to Shia, Kurdish and other Iraqi forces. According to a Salon.com article in 2006, the Battle of Fallujah is an example of why Iraqis, not U.S troops, must vanquish ISIS:
During the battle for Fallujah, the military spent weeks warning civilians to leave the city -- and then gave Marines clear, deadly rules of engagement. "Our ROEs were kill anything that moves," said Crossan, who fought alongside Kaufman during the battle. "We went for 10 days of straight-on fighting. Most of it was at close quarters." In places like Fallujah in 2004 and Haditha last year, American armed forces in Iraq face ambiguous situations that confound the rules of engagement and blur the distinction between ordinary Iraqis and the insurgents. At Fallujah, Kaufman described how Marines had to make excruciating, split-second decisions about how to handle Iraqi civilians who would not leave their homes. "We would kick in doors and there would be a 90-year-old man standing there," Kaufman recounted. "He is saying, 'This is my house. I'm not leaving my house.'" In that frenzied situation, Kaufman realized that he could have shot the old man. But as he put it, "I just couldn't do it. You get to a point where you get tired of the killing."
Fallujah is just one of countless examples of how ISIS could lure American soldiers into deadly ambushes, sniper fire, and especially the morally ambiguous reality of differentiating between civilian and enemy. Providing Kurdish, Shia, and the Sunni forces that view ISIS as enemies with armament and aid will protect our ground troops from further Fallujah's, and further guerrilla warfare aimed at weakening our country.
2. The U.S. must remember what makes ISIS dangerous, as well as their advantages on the battlefield. ISIS can use tribal allegiances and fears against American soldiers, as well as create an atmosphere of further chaos, even after losing every military battle.
David Galula, the French Army Lieutenant Colonel who penned one of the quintessential works on war titled, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, explains the difference between conventional and counterinsurgency wars:
"All wars are cruel, the revolutionary war perhaps most of all because every citizen, whatever his wish, is or will be directly and actively involved in it by the insurgent who needs him and cannot afford to let him remain neutral. The cruelty of the revolutionary war is not a mass, anonymous cruelty but a highly personalized, individual one."
If ISIS lures America into another ground war, our soldiers will be faced with civilian allies during the day who fire at them at night, just like in previous Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Why? The answer lies in Galula's assessment of the war ISIS wants; a personalized conflict where civilians can be intimidated, factions can be exploited, and U.S. troops are caught in the middle of competing allegiances. We've already experienced this scenario only several years ago and to forget these lessons would be madness.
3. A ground war with the U.S. will boost terrorist recruitment from around the world, even if ISIS loses initial military battles. John Horgan, a psychologist at UMass-Lowell who specializes in terrorism, has explained how ISIS recruits:
People who join these groups are trying to find a path, to answer a call to something, which would basically mean that they're doing something meaningful with their lives. That is a common denominator across the board.... in the eyes of potential recruits, this is fantasy made reality. It's everything that a would-be jihadist could have hoped for.... Al Hayat, ISIS's media department, are nothing if not effective amateur psychologists. They're also adept marketers. These are great "Jihadi infomercials" -- they're presenting a limited-time offer, and encouraging potential recruits to act now.
The idea that ISIS could be defeated by U.S. ground troops ignores the fact that Al-Qaeda simply morphed into ISIS, once Al-Qaeda was defeated. Recruiting for any terror group relies on the perception that it is on the same playing field as great powers, and once the great power obliges, recruits from around the world will be attracted to the prospect of fighting and dying against America. It's happened before and it will happen again if we ignore the lessons of Iraq. Let's not forget also that we are still fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.Patrick Hertzog, AFP | The audience room of the European Court for Human Rights, in Strasbourg, eastern France. Picture taken on April 23, 2015.
Europe’s top rights court ruled Tuesday in favour of a Romanian man fired by his employer over private messages sent at work, overturning a previous decision with wide ramifications for privacy in the workplace.
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The apex body of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) backed 38-year-old Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu who said his privacy was violated when he was sacked in 2007 for sending private messages over the Yahoo messaging system.
The decision on Tuesday by the 17 most senior judges at the Strasbourg-based court in France modifies a ruling in January last year when the court found that employers were justified in snooping on their employees.
The judges said that Barbulescu’s bosses and Romanian courts had “not adequately protected (his) right to respect for his private life and correspondence.”
In a judgement published on the court’s website, it said that it was unclear whether Barbulescu had been warned about the monitoring, or whether he was aware of the extent of the intrusion into his private life.
It also said that Romanian courts had failed to determine why the monitoring measures were justified and whether there were other ways of checking on him “entailing less intrusion” into his private life.
Private messages
The case revolves around messages sent by Barbulescu over the Yahoo messenging platform, which the software engineer was required to use to liaise with clients.
He was sacked after being found to have also chatted with his fiancee and brother on the system.
He argued that his employer invaded his right to privacy by spying on messages which included details about his health and sex life.
In an initial decision in January last year, the ECHR ruled that it was not “unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours.”
But the Grand Chamber of the court, the apex body comprising the 17 judges, agreed to reexamine the case at Barbulescu’s request.
The judges held a hearing on November 30 last year, at which it heard arguments from experts and the European Trade Union Confederation.
The union group criticised the initial ruling last year, judging it to be too harsh.
It recommended that a verbal warning should be the first stage of any disciplinary process with dismissal only possible for repeat offenders or serious misconduct.
Experts also say that companies should also have a clear policy governing the use of professional software and the internet during work hours.
(AFP)The dispute at Tulare must be viewed in the context of this larger struggle. As hospital managers make decisions based on business, not clinical, imperatives, both patients and their care providers are getting squeezed. For example, doctors are being pressed to discharge patients quickly — sometimes too quickly — to maintain “throughput.” There is a focus on increasing the rates of profitable procedures, such as orthopedic and heart surgeries, at the expense of relatively poorly remunerated general medical care. Administrators are even exerting control over traditionally medical domains, such as the credentialing of new physicians with hospital privileges. If a hospital board can dismiss elected medical officers with impunity, as at Tulare, it will indicate to many doctors the increasingly tenuous nature of the position they currently hold.
The very best hospitals in America are still run by physician chief executives — Toby Cosgrove at the Cleveland Clinic, for example, and John Noseworthy at the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic says that it is physician-led because “this helps ensure a continued focus on our primary value” — namely, that “the needs of the patient come first.” Indeed, a study in 2011 found “a strong positive association between the ranked quality of a hospital and whether the C.E.O. is a physician.” Overall hospital quality scores were about 25 percent higher when physicians, not business managers, were in charge.
Of course, correlation does not prove causation; it is certainly possible that better hospitals choose physicians as their leaders. But when day-to-day decision making is done by people with clinical training, it appears that patients do benefit.
There are many factions to blame for the corporate takeover at America’s hospitals. Doctors need to accept some of the responsibility, too. If we had taken better care of our institutions, perhaps there would not have been a need for others to manage them for us.
How the court rules in the Tulare case, once it resumes, will have profound consequences for whether medical staffs can do their work independently of nonclinical administrators. And it will also provide an answer to the more important question of who should be in charge of hospital care.~John’s “Canadian” Style Caprese Pizza~
“OH CANADA”
We love your pizza so……..
I was having a good old case of the blues the other day. So John, being the perfectly fine tuned boyfriend he is, took it upon himself to create something yummy to get me out of my slump. Whilst laying on the couch in lala land, I could hear the sound of not so small feet, tap dancing around in the kitchen, in and out of the garden like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter.
John was clearly thinking “outside of the box” with this recipe. This pizza features the basics of fresh tomatoes, and mozza. The difference is that he barbecued the crust first, and added fresh pesto, and the trump card ” Canadian Back Bacon”. Genius!
~John’s “Canadian” Style Caprese Pizza~
Ingredients
4 oz (120 grams) Canadian Back Bacon cut into bite size pieces and fried up in a cast iron pan
4 oz(120 grams) or a little more of good quality mozzarella or bocconcini cheese cut into 1/4 inch (.635 cm ) pieces
1 lb(450 grams) Pizza Dough
2 tbsp(30 mL) olive oil
1/2 cup(125mL) Basil Pesto
1 Tomato, thinly sliced
Preparation
First you can make a batch of your favorite pizza dough. We make a whole wheat one in the bread machine. While the dough is proofing, take this time to make the pesto I have posted on the site here.
After you roll out the dough evenly on a large piece of parchment paper, brush one side with olive oil. Place, oiled side down, directly on greased grill over medium heat. Grill, uncovered and watching carefully to avoid burning, until there are nice grill marks on the bottom, around 5 min. Slide a large spatula under the pizza to flip and put it on a pizza pan turned upside down, close lid, lower the heat to low and finish cooking about 1 minute.
Spread a nice fairly thick layer of pesto over pizza, then add tomatoes, Canadian Back Bacon, and cheese.
Place the pizza back onto grill. Close lid and grill until bubbly and underside is browned, about 5 min. Sprinkle with basil.
Remove from barbecue, get out the pizza wheel, or you can do it the high tech way, cutting the pizza with scissors.
Good Day EH!
Copyright ©2012What the developers have to say:
Why Early Access? “Our ambition for Live In Color is to create a compelling game for kids (and kids at heart) deeply rooted in creativity and fun. We want to provide a VR experience that takes us all into that magical, creative play we feel (and felt!) as kids.
You enter a magic world where you bring objects to life with your wand - revealing their true beauty and releasing magical powers around you. As you progress through the game you explore your magical world after escaping the cave - from the castle feast to crossing the lake to the very top of the magic tower. Players can take their time rearranging their world and finding all the interactions around them or race in speed runs - the intent is playfulness and fun.
We have confidence in our ability to add new (and ever more beautiful) worlds to the game. But we want to work with the community to ensure that we develop the core game play to become addictive. Designing VR for kids is relatively new and we want to work hand in hand to develop something special that is compelling to kids (and the kids at heart)..
We feel that the best way to do this is to get Live In Color out there and to get feedback to make it a great game. In short, to help us design, build, launch (and kill as necessary) new features. Moreover we want you and your family to play while we build!!” Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access? “To be honest - we don't know, it depends on feedback and how development is shaped. We intend to create a compelling user experience with the community - if that takes 1 month or 12 months we are committed to making it happen.” How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version? “The full version will include more (and even more stunning) magical lands. But more than that we want to expand game play interactions which could include such things as: puzzles & quests, storytelling, customizable/drawing objects, completing objects with own palette choices, time runs and leader boards, teleportation back and forth...
We have ideas a plenty! But we want to work with the community to ensure that Live In Color develops with features of value to players.” What is the current state of the Early Access version? “The current game includes a complete intro level 1 experience. A player must complete objects around them using their wand in order to progress to each next location. The wand reveals the beauty of objects reduced to 3D wireframes as the player works to complete them and bring them to life.
In addition a number of 'easter egg' interactions are included which allow for enhanced gameplay but which are not required to progress from location to location. Controller interaction is deliberately simple (designed for kids and new-to-VR-users) - simply move and grab.” Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access? “Yes, we intend to increase the price upon transitioning out of Early Access.” How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? “The forum is the first port of call for feedback - we will be listening! Moreover, we will seek opportunities for additional outreach as we truly want to work with the community to shape the development of Live In Color.”BEREA, Ohio -- Wild rumors are flying around about the Cleveland Browns' plans in next week's NFL draft.
"There's a lot of mis-stories out there that I like right now, and I want to keep a lot of them where they're at," Browns general manager Tom Heckert said Thursday.
As he prepares for a critical draft that could finally push Cleveland's franchise out of its depressed state, Heckert tried not to tip his hand, which is stacked with 13 picks, including the Nos. 4, 22 and 37 selections.
Heckert acknowledged the Browns would like to keep the No. 4 pick and that the team has narrowed that choice to two unidentified players. He added there's agreement between himself, president Mike Holmgren and coach Pat Shurmur over the pick.
"We're all on the same page," Heckert said. "We know we're getting a really good player, no matter what happens at No. 3. We know we're getting one of two guys, we just don't know who is going to go at three (to the Minnesota Vikings)."
Alabama running back Trent Richardson and Oklahoma State wide receiver Justin Blackmon are expected to be available, and both would make an immediate impact on a Cleveland offense that's desperate for playmakers, having scored a mere 218 points last season.
Although the trend in recent years has been for teams to pick running backs later in the draft, Heckert said he wouldn't hesitate to take one at No. 4. Richardson, who rushed for 1,679 yards and 21 touchdowns last year, is the highest-rated back in this year's class and would fill a major need after the Browns decided not to re-sign Peyton Hillis as a free agent.
Heckert downplayed a report that he favors Blackmon over other possibilities at No. 4.
"Everything you've heard is complete nonsense," he said. "It's that time of year, and I understand that. Everybody is on the same page here with who we are considering."
Copyright 2012 by The Associated PressOpinion: It seems like such a uniquely New Zealand problem: You find yourself stuck behind a car that is crawling along as the road twists and turns its way through the countryside, only to have them speed up once you reach the passing lanes. Why does this happen?
One way to explain this phenomenon is to assume that the driver in the slower car is acting deliberately; that he or she is somehow trying to stop you overtaking them by accelerating ahead. And, in the process, that the other driver is consciously attempting to prevent you from reaching your destination in a timely manner. This view of other drivers sees the road as a place of contest and malice. A Darwinian struggle, red in tooth and claw, just to get to your destination. Explained like this, is it any wonder that people experience road rage?
Fortunately, there are better explanations we can draw on. As any good social scientist will point out, Hanlon's Law tells us that we should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by human frailty. The "frailty" in this case is one of perception, and in particular how our brains perceive speed. Simply put, narrower roads increase the perception of speed, and wider roads decrease that perception.
Which may seem obvious, but how does it explain why people actually speed up when the road widens? To do that, we need to refer to what is known as "risk homeostasis". This is the idea that all of us have a certain amount of perceived risk that we think is acceptable. When the perceived risk is below that particular level (or goes above it), we change our behaviour to adjust how much risk we feel. When a narrow road becomes wider (such as with the addition of a passing lane), the risk sensation decreases and our behaviour changes to reflect that.
Homeostasis works just like the thermostat in your heat pump at home, turning up the heat or cooling down the room to keep the desired temperature. You can see it in action in passing lanes as people speed up as the road widens and slow down as the passing lane ends and the road narrows. It may look like they are playing cat-and-mouse with you, but they're not (at least not most of the time).
Research from Europe demonstrates just how much impact road width can have on driving behaviour. Increasing the width of a road lane from 6m to 8m sees average speeds increase from 80kmh to between 90 and 100kmh. Moreover, adding to the number of lanes on a road (such as with passing lanes) produces faster speeds even where the width of individual lanes remains constant.
What is interesting about the link between road width and the perception of speed is that road designers clearly know this. They often use what are called "gateway treatments" to make roads appear narrower as they enter populated areas. These 'gateways' can be physical or they can simply be visual (such as different road markings).
Yet this understanding of how width affects the perception of speed seems strangely out of sync with the posters and signs that often get erected to remind drivers to be considerate, to pull over, and let others pass. That is, the built environment sends drivers one set of signals while the signs and posters attempt to send the opposite signal. In many ways that is like sitting down to the degustation menu at your favourite restaurant while surrounded by posters warning about the dangers of obesity.
Researchers also know that perceptions of speed are strongly influenced by peripheral vision and noise. The evidence is clear that peripheral vision deteriorates with age (with the size of our visual field decreasing by about three degree per decade). Researchers from the University of Chicago have argued that this leads to older drivers having lower risk thresholds (and hence driving slower) to compensate for this lack of vision.
Similarly, we all use noise to help estimate our speed. This means that better sealed roads (such as in passing lanes) will also lead to lower perceived speeds. Equally, it means that people in older cars may well think they are travelling faster than they are.
So why do people speed up in passing lanes? Because we have created the perfect environment to encourage them to do so. With the best will in the world, we have created a passing infrastructure that makes it difficult to pass.
This may seem like a cosmic joke but it is an example of what social scientists call "the law of unintended consequences". This warns us that interventions in complex systems tend to have unanticipated and often perverse outcomes. Which might point to the real insight contained in Hanlon's Law: that in the absence of proper understanding, human frailty often appears indistinguishable from malice.
Carl Davidson is the Head of Insight at Research First Ltd
- Comments are now closed.Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, which grooms future diplomats, has confirmed to The Lede that it did send an e-mail to students this week warning them to avoid posting comments online about the leaked diplomatic cables, if they ever hope to work for the State Department.
Issandr El Amrani posted a copy of the e-mail on his blog, The Arabist, on Thursday. It contained a warning from an unnamed former student of the school who is now working at the State Department. The warning note read:
From: “Office of Career Services” Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST: Hi students, We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance. The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government. Regards,
Office of Career Services
The release of the cables has, of course, been a subject of great interest to the prospective and retired members of the foreign service gathered at the school as students and professors.
The same day that the school sent out its warning to students to avoid traceable online chatter about the leaked cables, a member of the faculty, Gary Sick, who served on the National Security Council during the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, posted some thoughts on his blog that his students are now presumably advised not to link to on their blogs or Twitter or Facebook accounts. Mr. Sick wrote:Former Broncos player Montee Ball was arrested Friday morning in Wisconsin for allegedly battering his girlfriend, police said.
Madison police responded around 3:45 a.m. to Hampton Inn & Suites at 440 W. Johnson St., where a 20-year-old woman said her boyfriend, Ball, had thrown her, said Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain.
The woman, who has not been identified, said her leg hit the corner of a table during the incident, causing a cut that required stitches, DeSpain said.
When officers confronted Ball, he said he pushed her.
“He was cooperative,” DeSpain said.
Ball, who played at the University of Wisconsin, was arrested on suspicion of substantial battery and was taken to Dane County Jail.
Ball was the Broncos’ second-round draft pick in 2013, but he never was able to grab the starting running back position.
In 2014, his last season with the Broncos, he lost the job to C.J. Anderson and then slid behind Ronnie Hillman on the depth chart.
In 2014, he rushed for 172 yards on 55 carries. But Ball was cut from the team in September after his slide placed him as the fourth-team running back.
Ball was a star at Wisconsin, where he nearly rushed for 2,000 yards in his junior and senior seasons. He was a finalist for the 2011 Heisman Trophy as a junior.
Elizabeth Hernandez: 303-954-1223, ehernandez@denverpost.com or @ehernandezOn March 7, 1914, George Herman Ruth Jr. hit his first home run as a professional baseball player and gained the nickname “Babe” in Fayetteville.
Ruth began playing baseball in his native Baltimore. At age 19, Jack Dunn, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, recognized his talent and signed him to his first professional contract. A few weeks later, the team headed to Fayetteville en route to Florida for spring training.
While in Fayetteville, the players learned that Dunn had legally adopted Ruth to keep him with the Orioles. That, combined with Ruth’s playing on the elevators at the Lafayette Hotel, resulted in the older players teasing him as “Dunn’s baby,” later shortened to “Baby” and “Babe.”
In the last inning of the exhibition game at the Cape Fear Fair Ground, Ruth hit a long home run. He described it saying, “I hit it as I hit all the others, by taking a good gander at the pitch as it came up to the plate, twisting my body into a backswing and then hitting it as hard I as I could swing.” Ruth later commented, “I got to some bigger places than Fayetteville after that, but darn few as exciting.”
For more about North Carolina’s history, arts and culture, visit Cultural Resources online. To receive these updates automatically each day, subscribe by email using the box on the right and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.Smarter Parameter Sweeps (or Why Grid Search Is Plain Stupid)
Ahmed El Deeb Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 22, 2015
Anyone that ever had to train a machine learning model had to go through some parameter sweeping (a.k.a. hyper-parameter optimization) to find a sweet spot for algorithm parameters. For random forests the parameters in need of optimization could be the number of trees in the model and the number of features considered at each split, for a neural network, there is the learning rate, the number of hidden layers, the number of hidden units in each layer, and several other parameters.
Hyper-parameter optimization requires the use (and maybe the abuse) of a validation set on which you can’t trust your performance metrics anymore. In this sense it is like a second phase of learning, or an extension to the learning algorithm itself. The performance metric (or the objective function) can be visualized as a heat-map in the n-dimensional parameter-space or as a surface in an n+1-dimensional space (the dimension n+1 being the value of that objective function). The bumpier this surface is (the more local minima and saddle points it has), the harder it becomes to optimize these parameters. Here are a couple of illustrations for two such surfaces defined by two parameters, the first one is mostly well behaved:
While the second one is more bumpy and riddled with several local minima:
The most common method at selecting algorithm parameters is by far the ubiquitous grid-search. In fact, the word “parameter sweep” actually refers to performing a grid search but has also become synonymous with performing parameter optimization. Grid-search is performed by simply picking a list of values for each parameter, and trying out all possible combinations of these values. This might look methodical and exhaustive. But in truth even a random search of the parameter space can be MUCH more effective than a grid search!
This amazing paper by Bergstra et al. claims that a random search of the parameter space is guaranteed to be more effective than grid search (and quite competitive in comparison with more sophisticated techniques).
Surprising, ha? Why should random search be better than the much more robust-looking grid-search? Here is why:
The idea is that in most cases the bumpy surface of the objective function is not as bumpy in all dimensions. Some parameters have much less effect on the cost function than others, if the importance of each parameter is known, this can be encoded in the number of values picked for each parameter in the grid-search. But that’s not typically the case, and anyway, just using random search allows the exploration of more values for each parameter, given the same amount of trials:
(The beautiful illustration is taken from the same paper referenced above)
More elaborate ways of optimizing algorithm hyper-parameters exist, in fact whole start-ups have been built around the idea (one of them recently acquired by twitter). A couple of libraries and several research papers tackle the problem, but for me, random sweeps are good enough for now.A selection of experts answer a new question from Judy Dempsey on the foreign and security policy challenges shaping Europe’s role in the world.
Rosa Balfour and Corinna Horst Senior fellow in the Europe Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States; deputy director of the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States
Respect of personal freedoms is compatible with integration; dictating what others should wear is not. The summer debate about the burkini, triggered by a few French males, is on the verge of hysterical nonsense. It wasn’t that long ago that European men used to wear similar garments on the beach—those stripy outfits of the 1920s. And why single out Muslim women? What about nuns? Orthodox Jews? Sheikhs? The current debate obscures and damages harder issues about integration, cultural diversity, and the free choice of women to determine their preferences. Distinctions are lost between the variety of veils many Muslim women wear, some out of choice, some out of imposition. The burka, the head-to-toe coverage that includes the face, makes an individual nonexistent. And it is seen by many to undermine the need to expose one’s face in some public spaces for reasons of security. Here, it can be legitimate to request that women show their faces if needed. What Europe should strive for is mutual integration and understanding on the basis of a few fundamentals that have been fought for: personal liberties. For women who believe in female empowerment and work against female oppression, it is challenging to accept clothing that hides other women. But post-bikini women cannot lead burkini women; the latter need to find their own revolution. Both writers are members of Women in International Security.
Federiga Bindi Senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and director of the Foreign Policy Initiative at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research
No, it is not. The Western world led a lengthy, costly, and still-unfinished war in Afghanistan partly in the name of liberating women from the |
educating your customers and I encourage you to do so.
You can educate them on the benefits they will get from your product, the thought that went into your product (as I did by educating readers on the research principles behind the training program I was marketing), and you should even educate them on what it’s like to have your product.
Leading the reader through the experience of owning your product is a great way to educate them on its benefits. Here is another section of copy to show you how I talked about the actual experience of the training program I was marketing:
“Now, onto the day of the event!
At TRAINING COMPANY, we strive to lead high energy sessions that leave a lasting impact on your team members. Expect EVERYBODY to have at least one ‘AHA!’ moment by the end!
When your team arrives at your TRAINING event, it’ll start off with a cocktail hour! (See — better than your boring old corporate snooze fests already!)
We find that giving all of your team members time to get comfortable, and say ‘Hey!’ to their friends really gets the energy flowing. Breaking down people’s barriers, and getting them into an open-minded state is a key part of teaching them!
Getting everyone laughing and having a blast is a killer way to start the session.
Then we move on to the kickoff. You want to get your team settled down, and to get everyone on the same page about expectations. What learning outcomes do you have for them? Do any of your team members have learning outcomes for themselves?
The comedian and facilitator will then take it from here! You just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
Next, you’ll move into your event’s shared exercise. When you’re coordinating these events with TRAINING COMPANY, you’ll have the ability to consult with your facilitator and create a truly custom experience for your company.
Your facilitator will come prepared with a game or group activity that 1. Is directly related to the skills being taught and 2. Was uniquely selected for your event.
This exercise will introduce your team members to the skill being taught and get them curious about it.
At the end of the activity, the facilitator will encourage your team members to share their personal takeaways from the exercise. The discussion is fun and light hearted, and designed to get everybody on your team on board.
It’s such a fun way to get everybody’s wheels turning about the topic of the day! You will definitely see your team’s faces light up!”
Finally, The Ask…
After getting your reader to join your tribe, dishing out some A+ advice, and educating them about the ways your solution is designed to best solve their problem, and each of your emails only asks for them to do one thing you’re ready to ask the reader for your “keystone action”.
We’ve talked in the past about using stories to sell in emails, and I say that’s the route you need to go down with The Ask for your “keystone action” as well.
Here is probably the simplest formula for writing an ask email that anyone can follow:
Tell your founding story
How did you arrive at your “mission”?
Roll into the benefits of the product
Ask
Instead of giving you more general advice, I’m going to chop up some copy from an automation sequence I wrote and organize it so it fits this format a little bit more closely. Then you can use this as an example to try to write your “Ask” email!
Tell your founding story…
“I started helping my mom with our family business, a spicery. At the spicery I was developing new flavors, creating custom blends for our customers, and managing our supplier relationships + seeking out new ones.
I was meeting lots of private chefs working at the spicery, and I was sucked right into the food world. I met a lot of private chefs and caterers. For 3 years I had 2 jobs — working full time at our family spicery, and running catering gigs of 80+ by myself.
One day my mom and I were visiting one of the chefs we knew, Chef Michael, for a ciabatta bread recipe.
While he was teaching us to make this bread, I started to feel a little guilty. We were messing up the “flow” of the baking for the rest of his day, afterall. So I started lining up pans, greasing them, readying ingredients, and setting up some of the prep stations. I didn’t think anything of it… But apparently Chef Michael did.
I will NEVER forget when he pulled my mom aside and said to her
“I haven’t had someone come into this kitchen, and be able to be that consistent so fast. I want her to work for me.”
So I started my training as a pastry chef with Chef Michael. He’s a 40 year pastry chef from the military who has won many gold medals in military baking competitions, and consulted with all the biggest hotel chains.
Soon Chef Michael put me on our corporate accounts because of my speed and accuracy. I was pumping out between 2,500–5,000 pieces of pastry by hand every single day…”
How did you arrive at your “mission”?
“While I was working in the industry, my main source of annoyance and frustration was shopping. I have scoured every William Sonoma, grocery store, and high end mall near my house and I have just never been able to find spices that impress me.
It’s impossible to find truly fresh spices anywhere.
My drive to solve that problem put me on the path to creating Food Crate. Now I am lucky enough to do what I’m passionate about single day — helping cooks make more mouthwatering meals!”
Roll into benefits of the product…
“Every seasoning in your Food Crate is ruthlessly hand selected by me. And I promise you — McCormick does not have higher standards than I do.
You get a featured spice (which changes monthly), a hand crafted seasoning blend, and a delicately infused herbal sea salt in every Food Crate. Each bag is filled by hand so month to month quantities are variable, but you’ll get 3–5 ounces of amazingly fresh spices in each Food Crate.
Your health is directly impacted by the food you eat, so it’s my mission to keep all of Food Crate’s seasonings filler free, coloring free, and 100% NO added chemicals.
These are unadulterated spices, people!
I really do pride myself on the attention to detail to every single piece of Food Crate. I am personally involved in every step of the process, from creating new formulas to packaging and shipping.”
Ask
“But don’t just take my word for it, I want you to taste the difference.
I want there to be 0 risk for you. I’ve been able to put together a special deal, but it’s only for new members. Believe me, if I gave such high grade seasonings away like this every day I would go out of business!
I will send you 3+ ounces of the-best-damned-dinner-you’ve-ever-had at no cost to you. If you cover the cost of shipping, I’ll send 1 Food Crate straight to your home ASAP…”BEIRUT - Nearly 1,400 people have been killed in Syria since clashes between rebel forces and the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham erupted this month, a monitor said Thursday.
"The number of people killed in fighting between the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and Islamist and rebel forces since January 3 has risen to 1,395," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Observatory said the figure included 760 moderate and Islamist rebels, 426 ISIS fighters, 190 civilians and 19 others whose identities have not been established.
Clashes between rebels and jihadists from ISIS erupted early in January after months of rising tensions.
While opposition fighters initially welcomed foreign jihadists to the battle, ISIS has been accused of a string of abuses against civilians and rival rebel groups.
Among the abuses that sparked the fierce clashes was the kidnap, torture and execution by the group of a doctor from a powerful Islamist rebel brigade.
The all-out fight has seen ISIS lose territory in Idlib and Aleppo provinces, but it has consolidated its hold over Raqqa city, the only provincial capital to fall from regime control.Medications with codeine should be prescription-only, TGA says in interim report recommendation
Updated
Patients using codeine-based painkillers or cough suppressants will soon need a prescription from their doctor, if the recommendations of an interim report are put in place.
The Federal Government's medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), has been considering whether to reclassify drugs such as Neurofen Plus or Panadine Extra because of the risk of harm, addiction or overdose.
The interim report from its Advisory Committee on Medicines Scheduling recommends making codeine-based products prescription only from June next year.
The report lists the risk of a severe adverse reaction, misuse or abuse, and the "relative lack of efficacy compared to safer products".
Key points: Interim TGA report recommends making medication with codeine available only to patients with a prescription
The risk of abuse, misuse or severe reaction are among the reasons the TGA gives
Pharmacy guild says those kinds of medicines come in handy for patients
"There is also a lack of evidence of any benefit of codeine over placebo in the relief of cough, making the risk/benefit profile for this indication unfavourable," the report said.
The Australian Medical Association said it backed the TGA to make an appropriate decision.
"The evidence is the key to making the decision here — it's not about anyone's interests other than the patient," AMA vice-president Dr Stephen Parnis told the ABC's AM program.
He said patients suffering from chronic pain needed a treatment plan that was much more comprehensive than just over-the-counter medicines.
"One of the issue about the use of codeine is that it should only be used, if over-the-counter, for short-term pain relief, and yet it appears from the evidence that it's used for longer term relief," he said.
"The other issue is that there might be more suitable alternatives to be used, such as anti inflammatories combined with paracetamol, which don't carry that risk of harm," Dr Parnis said.
Codeine products 'come in handy' for patients
But the Pharmacy Guild of Australia said codeine products did make a difference, and making them prescription-only would increase the workload for doctors and force up Medicare costs.
"The majority of people do use these quite safely and wisely," guild president George Tambassis told AM.
"They do look after the pain of a lot of people out there that perhaps paracetamol and aspirin and maybe the anti-inflammatories that we've also got to choose [from] in terms of our recommendations do not.
"So I can't agree with some of the data that they may have access to because at the pharmacy level we do find these products do come in handy for a lot of patients out there."
The guild has been calling for a real-time monitoring system to help pharmacists make sure patients are using the drugs correctly.
A similar system is already in place to keep track of the drug pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make illicit drugs.
"If we pick up on these people that are either using these products too much or it's obvious that they're addicted to them, we'll deal with that if we have the data in front of us," Mr Tambassis said.
'No evidence to date of any abuse'
The industry body representing manufacturers of over-the-counter medicines says it strongly supports such a monitoring system.
The Australian Self Medication Industry (ASMI) said the recommendation in the interim report to reschedule codeine-based cough suppressants was particularly baffling.
"Because there's been really no evidence to date of any abuse of those medicines, so that was really a surprise decision," ASMI CEO Deon Schoombie told AM.
"Scheduling we believe is a very blunt instrument and also there's absolutely no guarantee, by moving it into prescription-only medicine, that that will address the risk [of addiction or misuse]."
He said it was "totally unrealistic" for the industry to make the proposed changes by the suggested deadline of June next year.
"The plans for the 2016 cough/cold season are already underway in terms of product orders, printing of labels, etc, so the logistics around that is quite complex and complicated," Mr Schoombie said.
The TGA will accept submissions about the interim report until October 15, before it makes a final decision in late November.
Topics: pain, drug-use, doctors-and-medical-professionals, health-policy, australia
First posted'Chi O got NO n******!!!!' Outrage as University of Alabama sorority sisters post racist Snapchat
A photo of smiling sorority sisters from the University of Alabama included a caption bragging that the chapter had no black girls
Chi Omega Fraternity's national organization condemned the photo and said 'The woman who took the photo is no longer a member of the chapter'
Meanwhile, others have claimed the photo caption may have been an accident, or possibly a Photoshopped hoax
A racial row has gripped an Alabama college campus where a sorority sister on Saturday posted a photo on Snapchat with a racist message bragging that their chapter had no black women.
'Chi O go no n*****!!!!!' reads the caption from a sister at the University of Alabama's Chi Omega sorority in Tuscaloosa.
The responsible sister has since been kicked out of the chapter, which just that day had pledged two African American women.
Scandal: This photo showing women from Chi Omega's chapter at the University of Alabama purportedly included a caption with the racial epithet
A message appeared on the national Chi Omega Fraternity Facebook condemning the message on Monday.
'What was expressed is absolutely reprehensible and completely inconsistent with Chi Omega's values and policies,' said the organization's post. 'Chi Omega took swift disciplinary action in accordance with the organization's policies and procedures.'
It also said that 'The Chi Omega chapter at the University of Alabama pledged a diverse group of young women, which included several new members who self-identified as minorities, including two African-American women.'
That information was supported by university newspaper The Crimson White, which tweeted '[...] All 16 Panhellenic sororities participating in recruitment offered bids to African American women.'
Sisterhood: Two African-Americans reportedly pledged Chi Omega at the University of Alabama. The sorority members from a previous year are seen here The woman responsible and the other sisters in the photo had yet to come forward as of Tuesday, but someone took the time to anonymously email Sorority humor blog Total Sorority Move with denials that the poster meant to use the racist epithet at all.
'The snap was, apparently, an auto correct from the word "ninjas" to “n*****,"' one tipster told the website.
'These so-called "ninjas" are, after how alabama rush works, a sorority gets stuck with girl that weren’t their top picks. The reason these dumb, non proofreading chi o’s were so happy was that they got a "perfect pledge class" this rush season. Now, don’t get me wrong, being a part of the alabama greek system there is a tradition of racism, but it stems from alumni in sororities not usually the actives.'
Last September, The Crimson White reported that black women had been systematically blocked from receiving bids from sororities at the university, calling it 'an almost impenetrable color barrier.'
Another user told Total Sorority Move the offending image had been Photoshopped.
'Whoever edited the image took the "g" from "got" and moved it into the "nj" in "ninjas" (the story update actually makes perfect sense),' the user said. 'If you zoom in and check the kerning of the letters then you can see that the first ‘g’ in "n*****" was stretched the make up for the wide empty space where the "n" used to be and that the second "g" was kept at the original dimensions.'
That user also wrote 'I sympathize with the girl because it seems someone saw an opportunity to be malicious and acted upon it.'TokyoGirls'Update
“Sun Sun Summer Time” on Winter!? Momoiro Clover Z Announces the Details of Their Annual Christmas Concert
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Momoiro Clover Z, who succeeded in their largest 2-days summer live “Tohjinsai Festivity 2016 Onigashima” on August 13th and 14th with more than 110,000 Mononofu (Momoclo’s fans) at Nissan Stadium in Yokohama, revealed the first information about their annual Christmas Live!
As usual, the information was announced by Japanese TV personality Shigeru Matsuzaki during their concert. He sang the title and the venue of the next Christmas Live “Momoiro Christmas 2016 Mafuyu no Sun Sun Summer Time” along with his hit song “Ai no Melody”. The concert will be held on December 23rd and 24th 2016 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba!
“Sun Sun Summer Time!” is a part of lyric from their summer song “Koko Natsu”. Does it mean the live concert could be so hot in doors live, compared to their last year’s Christmas live on ski area with freezing air? Why don’t you experience that exciting live this year!
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Momoiro Clover Z Official Site : http://www.momoclo.net/
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Author nori nori: is a fan of Ayaka Sasaki (A-rin) of Momoiro Clover Z since the first glance of her IDOL performance on YouTube in 2011. Hoping to be of some help them in becoming world-famous group, and world-famous "A-rin"!
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DisqusKayla Newman started her Vine account to record herself commenting on the minutia and mundanity of high school life. This was nearly two years ago, when she was 16. For her handle, Newman chose a nickname made up during an annual visit to her grandmother in Georgia: “Peaches Monroee.” She added the extra “e” because it looked playful, she explained over email.
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Like a diary, Newman began filming herself daily, though she has since slowed down to meet the stresses of senior year. When she’s riffing as Peaches, Newman takes videos of herself from the passenger seat of her mom’s car in her neighborhood of South Chicago. She and her mom dance at a stoplight in one early Vine; she offers an impromptu speech on self-confidence in another. In the video everyone knows, uploaded on June 21st, 2014, Kayla admires her precisely arched eyebrows: “We in this bitch. Finna get crunk. Eyebrows on fleek. Da fuq.”
I know the line by heart. Such is the nature of internet virality. As of this writing, Kayla’s original “On Fleek” Vine has generated over 36 million “loops,” or replays. That’s where any sensible person stops the tabulation. A month after Newman’s upload, someone named Kevin Gadsden reposts her Vine to YouTube, where it acquires around 3 million views. The expression “on fleek” passes through the clutches of Ariana Grande, who vines herself singing it in August 2014 for another 9 million loops, and then through those of seemingly every other social media-literate celebrity outfit that fall; corporate entities like IHOP and its rivals employ the phrase in an effort to feign cultural relevance; talk show host Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper exchange vaguely unpleasant jabs about its meaning. “On fleek” ascends to near-officialized language.Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
Enlarge Image RWWBlog/YouTube; screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
Politicians sometimes have interesting views.
As we're seeing in the current presidential campaign, on occasion they even express them.
It's heartening, therefore, to hear what Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, a Republican, thinks about space.
Speaking in the House of Representatives, Gohmert offered some perspective on life and the universe.
He explained that God made people male and female. There were no "question marks." Gohmert said that throughout history trans people have been thought of as merely "perverse."
This led him, in a slightly meandering manner, to the notion of humanity's ending. It was quite a meandering:
I really wonder how many people in [the House], who have the ultimate power to decide whether humanity would go forward or not -- whether it was an asteroid coming, something that would end humanity on Earth as dinosaurs were ended at one time -- we've got a spaceship that can go, as Matt Damon did in the movie, plant a colony somewhere. We can have humans survive this terrible disaster about to befall. If you could decide what 40 people you put on the spacecraft that would save humanity, how many of those would be same-sex couples?
Yes, he wanted those listening to put themselves in the place of a "modern-day Noah."
He conceded that some animals are actually gay, but simultaneously suggested it wasn't worth taking gay animals into space either to save our species and the wildlife kingdom.
The United States, he said, was founded by "the grace of God." God created it "as an instrument to bless the world."
"This nation -- even for those that have not recognized the exceptional nature of the United States, it's still a fact," he said.
Some might wish to remind Gohmert that the notion of American exceptionalism was created by, well, Joseph Stalin.
And facts have always been tricky things. This is something that even Gohmert's own presidential nominee admits.
I prefer to focus, though, on the idea that our Earth will soon be too rotten to inhabit. Stephen Hawking, among others, believes that we will indeed have to escape before too long.
This means we'll all have to escape. We'll be leaping on rockets mass-produced by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and heading for the Planet Zog.
And by the time we get there, I fancy, science will have made all sorts of progress.
We'll have found all sorts of interesting ways to reproduce, ones that intellectuals such as Louie Gohmert couldn't conceive of.
We'll also hopefully have found a way to do without politics at all.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[2] Podesta and the Clinton campaign have declined to authenticate the emails.[3] Cybersecurity experts interviewed by PolitiFact believe the majority of emails are probably unaltered, while stating it is possible that the hackers inserted at least some doctored or fabricated emails into the collection.[4] Some or all of the Podesta emails were subsequently obtained by WikiLeaks, which published over 20,000 pages of emails, allegedly from Podesta, in October and November 2016.Podesta and the Clinton campaign have declined to authenticate the emails.Cybersecurity experts interviewed bybelieve the majority of emails are probably unaltered, while stating it is possible that the hackers inserted at least some doctored or fabricated emails into the collection.
Data theft [ edit ]
[7]—which used [1][6][8][9] SecureWorks concluded Fancy Bear had sent Podesta an email on 19 March 2016 that had the appearance of a Google security alert, but actually contained a misleading link—a strategy known as spear-phishing. (This tactic has also been used by hackers to break into the accounts of other notable persons, such as Colin Powell ). The link—which used Bitly, a URL shortening service—brought Podesta to a fake log-in page where he entered his Gmail credentials.
[6] However, as the New York Times reported: "The hackers made a critical error by leaving some of their Bitly accounts public, making it possible for SecureWorks to trace 9,000 of their links to nearly 4,000 Gmail accounts targeted between October 2015 and May 2016 with fake Google login pages and security alerts designed to trick users into turning over their passwords."[6] Of this list of targeted accounts, more than one hundred were policy advisors to Clinton, or members of her presidential campaign, and by June, twenty staff members had clicked on the phishing links.[6] SecureWorks had tracked the activities of Fancy Bear for more than a year before the cyberattack, and in June 2016 had reported the group made use of malicious Bitly links and fake Google login pages to trick targets into divulging their passwords.However, as thereported: "The hackers made a critical error by leaving some of their Bitly accounts public, making it possible for SecureWorks to trace 9,000 of their links to nearly 4,000 Gmail accounts targeted between October 2015 and May 2016 with fake Google login pages and security alerts designed to trick users into turning over their passwords."Of this list of targeted accounts, more than one hundred were policy advisors to Clinton, or members of her presidential campaign, and by June, twenty staff members had clicked on the phishing links.
Authenticity [ edit ]
PolitiFact believe that while most of the emails are probably unaltered, it is possible the hackers inserted some doctored or fabricated material into the collection.[4] Cybersecurity experts interviewed bybelieve that while most of the emails are probably unaltered, it is possible the hackers inserted some doctored or fabricated material into the collection.
[4] Jamie Winterton of the [4] Jeffrey Carr, CEO of the cybersecurity company Taia Global, stated: "I've looked at a lot of document dumps provided by hacker groups over the years, and in almost every case you can find a few altered or entirely falsified documents. But only a few. The vast majority were genuine. I believe that's the case with the Podesta emails, as well."Jamie Winterton of the Arizona State University Global Security Initiative stated, "I would be shocked if the emails weren't altered," noting the longstanding Russian practice of promoting disinformation
[14] However, not all of the emails have DKIM keys in their signature, and thus cannot be verified with this method.[4] Security bloggers have authenticated the contents of some of the emails by using the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) contained in these emails' signatures.However, not all of the emails have DKIM keys in their signature, and thus cannot be verified with this method.
Publication [ edit ]
[2] Throughout October, WikiLeaks released installments of the Podesta emails on a daily basis.[15] During the 18 December 2016 edition of Meet the Press, John Podesta stated that the FBI had contacted him about the leaked emails on 9 October 2016, but had not contacted him since.[16] On 7 October 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of emails that it alleged were from Podesta's Gmail account.Throughout October, WikiLeaks released installments of the Podesta emails on a daily basis.During the 18 December 2016 edition of, John Podesta stated that the FBI had contacted him about the leaked emails on 9 October 2016, but had not contacted him since.
[17] The Ecuadorian government stated that it had "temporarily" severed Assange's internet connection because of WikiLeaks' release of documents "impacting on the U.S. election campaign," although it also stated this was not meant to prevent WikiLeaks from operating.[18] WikiLeaks continued releasing installments of the Podesta emails during this time.[17] On 17 October 2016 the government of Ecuador severed the internet connection of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.The Ecuadorian government stated that it had "temporarily" severed Assange's internet connection because of WikiLeaks' release of documents "impacting on the U.S. election campaign," although it also stated this was not meant to prevent WikiLeaks from operating.WikiLeaks continued releasing installments of the Podesta emails during this time.
Contents [ edit ]
[19][20] For example, the emails show a discussion among campaign manager [3] Other emails reveal insights about the internal conflicts of the [21] Some of the emails provide some insight into the inner workings of the Clinton campaign.For example, the emails show a discussion among campaign manager Robby Mook and top aides about possible campaign themes and slogans.Other emails reveal insights about the internal conflicts of the Clinton Foundation
[22][23] Some were emails that [24] One of the emails released on 12 October 2016 included Podesta's iCloud account password. His iCloud account was reportedly hacked, and his Twitter account was briefly compromised.Some were emails that Barack Obama and Podesta exchanged in 2008.
Clinton's Wall Street speeches [ edit ]
[25][26] According to The Intercept, in a 2013 speech, Clinton expressed opposition to a no-fly zone in Syria because maintaining it would require destroying Syria's air defense systems, which would result in civilian deaths; during the 2016 campaign, she supported the imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria.[27] Another leaked document included eighty pages of Clinton's Wall Street speeches.[28] One of the emails contained 25 excerpts from Clinton's paid Wall Street speeches that a staffer had flagged as politically problematic.According to, in a 2013 speech, Clinton expressed opposition to a no-fly zone in Syria because maintaining it would require destroying Syria's air defense systems, which would result in civilian deaths; during the 2016 campaign, she supported the imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria.Another leaked document included eighty pages of Clinton's Wall Street speeches.
Abraham Lincoln. It was a master class watching president Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th amendment, it was principled and strategic. I was making the point that it is hard sometimes to get the Congress to do what you want to do."[29] In the third presidential debate, the moderator [30][31] The excerpts came up in two of the presidential debates between Clinton and Trump. In one of the debates, the moderator Lester Holt quoted an excerpt saying that politicians "need both a public and a private position" and asked Clinton if it was okay for politicians to be "two-faced." Clinton replied, "As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie. It was a master class watching president Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th amendment, it was principled and strategic. I was making the point that it is hard sometimes to get the Congress to do what you want to do."In the third presidential debate, the moderator Chris Wallace quoted a speech excerpt where Clinton says, "My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders," and asked if she was for open borders. Clinton replied, "If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy. We trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. And I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders."
Catholic religious activities [ edit ]
[32] “For someone to come and say, 'I have a political organization to change your church to complete my political agenda or advance my agenda', I don't know how anybody could embrace that.”[32] Professor [35] Professor [36] Raymond Arroyo responded; “It makes it seem like you're creating organizations to change the core beliefs of the church”, he said.“For someone to come and say, 'I have a political organization to change your church to complete my political agenda or advance my agenda', I don't know how anybody could embrace that.”Professor Anne Hendershott drew attention to the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United, which she called “fake catholic groups”.Professor Robert P. George added that “these groups are political operations constructed to masquerade as organizations devoted to the Catholic faith”.
[37] Halpin verified that he had written the email; though he contested claims that the it was "anti-Catholic" and stated it was taken out of context. He explained that he sent the email to his Catholic colleagues "to make a fleeting point about perceived hypocrisy and the flaunting of one's faith by prominent conservative leaders."[38] Supporters and members of Donald Trump's campaign called the email exchange evidence of anti-Catholic sentiment in the Democratic Party.Halpin verified that he had written the email; though he contested claims that the it was "anti-Catholic" and stated it was taken out of context. He explained that he sent the email to his Catholic colleagues "to make a fleeting point about perceived hypocrisy and the flaunting of one's faith by prominent conservative leaders."
Debate questions shared by Donna Brazile [ edit ]
[39] The following day Clinton received a similar question from the Townhall host, Roland Martin.[40] Brazile denied coordinating with the Clinton campaign and a CNN spokesperson said "CNN did not share any questions with Donna Brazile, or anyone else for that matter, prior to the town hall" and that "we have never, ever given a town hall question to anyone beforehand". According to [41] In another leaked email, Brazile wrote: "One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash. Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of [42] CNN severed ties with Brazile on 14 October 2016.[43][44] Brazile later said that CNN did not give her "the ability to defend myself" after the email release and referred to WikiLeaks as "WikiLies".[45] Brazile stated repeatedly that she did not receive the question on death penalty in advance from CNN and has claimed that the documents released by WikiLeaks were "altered".[46] She later commented: "If I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity."[47] On 11 October 2016, WikiLeaks released an email that Donna Brazile sent on 12 March 2016 to Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri with the subject header "From time to time I get questions in advance." The email included a question about the death penalty.The following day Clinton received a similar question from the Townhall host, Roland Martin.Brazile denied coordinating with the Clinton campaign and a CNN spokesperson said "CNN did not share any questions with Donna Brazile, or anyone else for that matter, prior to the town hall" and that "we have never, ever given a town hall question to anyone beforehand". According to CNNMoney, the debate moderator Roland Martin did not deny that he shared questions with Brazile.In another leaked email, Brazile wrote: "One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash. Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint." At a debate in Flint the following day, a woman whose "son had developed a rash from the contaminated water " asked Clinton: "If elected president, what course will you take to regain my trust in government?" In a third email, Brazile added: "I'll send a few more."CNN severed ties with Brazile on 14 October 2016.Brazile later said that CNN did not give her "the ability to defend myself" after the email release and referred to WikiLeaks as "WikiLies".Brazile stated repeatedly that she did not receive the question on death penalty in advance from CNN and has claimed that the documents released by WikiLeaks were "altered".She later commented: "If I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity."
Saudi Arabia and Qatar [ edit ]
[48] It is unclear if Clinton personally authored the memo.[49] A memo sent from Clinton to Podesta in 2014 states that the United States should place pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia to stop funding ISIS and other radical groups in the region.It is unclear if Clinton personally authored the memo.
Reaction [ edit ]
[50] Glen Caplin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said, "By dribbling these out every day WikiLeaks is proving they are nothing but a propaganda arm of the Kremlin with a political agenda doing [Vladimir] Putin's dirty work to help elect Donald Trump."[28] When asked, president Vladimir Putin replied that Russia was being falsely accused. He said, "The hysteria is merely caused by the fact that somebody needs to divert the attention of the American people from the essence of what was exposed by the hackers."[51][52] Zeynep Tufekci criticized how WikiLeaks handled the release of these emails. Regarding this, Tufekci wrote that, "Taking one campaign manager's email account and releasing it with zero curation in the last month of an election needs to be treated as what it is: political sabotage, not whistle-blowing."Glen Caplin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said, "By dribbling these out every day WikiLeaks is proving they are nothing but a propaganda arm of the Kremlin with a political agenda doing [Vladimir] Putin's dirty work to help elect Donald Trump."When asked, president Vladimir Putin replied that Russia was being falsely accused. He said, "The hysteria is merely caused by the fact that somebody needs to divert the attention of the American people from the essence of what was exposed by the hackers."
FiveThirtyEight, the activities of WikiLeaks was "among the factors that might have contributed to [Clinton's] loss."[53] The American public's interest in WikiLeaks in October roughly coincided with a tightening presidential race between Trump and Hillary. The release of the emails did not seem to have an effect on opinion polling for Clinton's trustworthiness. According to Harry Enten of, the activities of WikiLeaks was "among the factors that might have contributed to [Clinton's] loss."
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]News Release 07-143
Getting Light to Bend Backwards
Uniquely sandwiched materials coax light to defy nature and skirt the laws of refraction
An artist's rendition of the new light-bending metamaterial.
October 16, 2007
This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.
While developing new lenses for next-generation sensors, researchers have crafted a layered material that causes light to refract, or bend, in a manner nature never intended.
Refraction always bends light one way, as one can see in the illusion of a "bent" drinking straw when observed through the side of a glass. A new metamaterial crafted from alternating layers of semiconductors (indium-gallium-arsenic and aluminum-indium-arsenic) acts as a single lens that refracts light in the opposite direction.
Refraction is the reason that lenses have to be curved, a trait that limits image resolution. With the new metamaterial, flat lenses are possible, theoretically allowing microscopes to capture images of objects as small as a strand of DNA. The current metamaterial lens works with infrared light, but the researchers hope the technology will expand to other wavelengths in the future.
Earlier efforts have crafted metamaterials that bend light in a similar way, but this is the first to do so using |
double-check that the plans did not encroach on national competencies, such as wage setting. Together they represented more than a third of national parliaments in the EU.
EU employment commissioner Marianne Thyssen on Wednesday overturned the appeal, saying that a legal analysis had shown that posting of workers was a cross-border issue that was best regulated at EU level.
Poland, however, remains convinced that the review of the posted workers directive is political.
”Where did this project come from?”, a Polish diplomat in Brussels told EUobserver. ”Where is the proof that posted workers ruin the labour market?”.
”This isn’t grounded in facts but in a will to please certain member states,” he said.
Posted workers account for just 0.7 percent of the labour force in Europe but cause great political controversy.
The richer countries, which tend to host them, say that they contribute to social dumpling - competition through the lowering of labour standards.
Western member states have urged the EU executive to sharpen the rules.
France’s prime minister Manuel Valls at one point threatened to unilaterally cancel existing laws for posted workers - a statement that triggered fury in central and eastern countries.
But the UK - despite Szydlo's remarks - also backed the EU proposal and sent the commission a letter of support.
Poland accounts for almost a fourth of all EU posted workers. The government fears that the proposal will add to bureaucracy and dissuade employers from sending out their staff.
Employment commissioner Marianne Thyssen expressed gratitude to national parliaments for their active involvement and said the commission will continue the political dialogue throughout the legislative process.
An EU source, speaking to EUobserver on the condition of anonymity, wondered whether communications efforts so far had been sufficient.
"We showed the commission stands by its promises, was it wise to do it this way? Shouldn’t commissioner Thyssen should have talked more to the member states beforehand to ensure smooth landing? Do we need this clash all the time? How do we explain this to citizens," the source told EUobserver.
Joint Visegrad position
The four Visegrad leaders said in Warsaw they will work together to give the commission a lesser say in the future.
"We want the Council to set the tone of discussion,” said Czechia’s Bohuslav Sobotka.
The quartet vowed to make a joint contribution to the informal summit on 16 September in Bratislava, where 27 EU leaders - without the UK - will discuss a long-term vision for the EU after Brexit.This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use
At its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Apple has announced the immediate arrival of iOS 6 beta, the imminent release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and a refresh of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. But that’s not all! Apple surprised us all by announcing a brand new laptop: a next-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro, with a Retina display. At two hours long, this was possibly Apple’s juiciest keynote ever — there’s a lot to cover!
Hardware
Updated @ June 16: Read our detailed analysis of the MacBook Pro with Retina display.
The “next-generation” MacBook Pro is 0.71-inches (1.8cm) thick, weighs 4.46 pounds (2kg) — and has a 220 PPI, 2880×1800 15-inch Retina display. The display, apparently, is a wonder to behold, with better contrast, deeper blacks, and a big reduction in glossy glare. Internally, there’s an Ivy Bridge processor (up to 2.7GHz/3.7GHz Turbo), support for 16GB of RAM, and a Kepler-based Nvidia GPU. It can be equipped with flash SSD storage up to 768GB, and there’s SD, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, and HDMI (an Apple first) for expansion. Apparently, though I struggle to believe it, the new MBP will still have a battery life of 7 hours.
The starting configuration of the new MBP will cost $2200, have a 2.3GHz Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, the GeForce GT 650M, 256GB of SSD storage. It ships today (if there is any stock left by the time you read this story). We’ll no doubt have a lot more to say about the MBP’s Retina display, but just so you’re aware: 220 PPI at 15 inches perfectly jives with our recent story about high-resolution displays. Whether other OEMs — which lack the huge margins and supply chain that Apple commands — will be able to follow suit remains to be seen.
For more information on the MacBook Pro with Retina display, visit the official Apple site.
Coming back down to earth… the 15-inch MacBook Air has been updated to Ivy Bridge, with support for Core i7 processors up to 2GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.2GHz) and 8GB of RAM. It looks like the 13-inch MBA is limited to Core i5, and 4GB of RAM. The new MacBook Airs will be equipped with a pair of USB 3.0 ports, and the internal SSD will be available in sizes up to 512GB. With Ivy Bridge, the integrated GPU gets bumped up to the Intel HD 4000, which should boost graphics performance of the new MBP by 50% or so.
The old, non-Retina MacBook Pro has received a similar refresh: Ivy Bridge (up to 2.7GHz), up to 8GB of 1600MHz memory, USB 3.0, and Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 1GB (on the 15-inch model; 13-inch is stuck with the Intel HD 4000). It sounds like we’re stuck with two distinctly different MacBook Pros, but they both have the same name; kind of like the iPad 2, and “the new iPad” (3).
iOS
Moving onto the smartphone and tablet side of things: Despite the rather insane amount of press coverage it has received, the biggest new feature in iOS 6 isn’t Apple’s home-grown Maps app (which replaces Google’s offering) — it’s Facebook integration. Photos, Safari, and Maps now have native Facebook integration, just like Twitter. There is a public API that iOS app developers can use. The iTunes Store will have “Like” buttons. Birthdays and contact details will automatically hop over from Facebook to your phone (and presumably to your Mac, via iCloud). Siri can post to Facebook.
As expected, Siri has been updated. She can now handle sports-related queries (baseball and basketball were demoed), Yelp and OpenTable, and movies. Siri can now also launch apps. The image below apparently shows all of Siri’s capabilities. The “Eyes free” feature refers to Apple working with car manufacturers to add a Siri button to the steering wheel — much like volume or infotainment controls.
iOS 6 also debuts a new phone dialer app, which lets you decline calls with an SMS — and lets you set up a reminder, so you call the person back later. Apparently you can set up a “geo-fence,” which presumably reminds you to call someone as you’re leaving the office/house, or something along those lines.
After two years of being WiFi-only, iOS 6 will finally allow FaceTime video calls to operate over cellular networks. It seems like Apple will also allow you to merge your phone number and Apple ID, so if someone calls your phone, you can pick it up on your iPad or Mac.
Photo Stream, which provides instant syncing of your images to other devices via iCloud, can now be shared with other people. There’s a commenting platform built in, too. It’s probably easier to just use Facebook, though.
There’s a new app, called Passbook, which allows companies to send passes (Starbucks vouchers, United Airlines boarding passes, Amtrak tickets) to your phone. When you need to use a pass, just open the app, click the right tab, and a QR code appears. Changes can be pushed to Passbook; if your gate or boarding time changes, the virtual pass updates.
And finally, we have the new Maps app. Apple is apparently doing all of the cartography itself, starting from scratch. 100 million local points of interest/listings have already been added. There’s Yelp integration, traffic updates (from real-time, crowdsourced data), and turn-by-turn navigation. Siri is integrated, of course.
Apple’s Maps app also includes Flyover, which allows you to… fly over… cities all over the world. Even with Google’s recent Maps updates, Apple’s offering still sounds very compelling — not bad, for a first effort.
The developer beta of iOS 6 will be immediately available to download, with the final release coming in the fall (probably coinciding with the iPhone 5). The iPhone 3GS/4/4S, iPad 2/3, and iPod touch (4th gen and later) will be eligible for the upgrade. iPad 1 owners will unfortunately be left out (though I’m not sure why; it’s newer than the 3GS).
For more information, see Apple’s official iOS 6 site.
Mountain Lion
There are over 200 new features in Mountain Lion, apparently, with a lot of these (unsurprisingly) revolving around further iCloud integration. One of the coolest features seems to be instant syncing of Pages between OS X and iOS. Reminders, a new app, supports multi-touch gestures. Messages are now synced between desktop and mobile.
Mountain Lion also now has dictation — presumably powered by Siri and requiring an internet connection (though Apple didn’t provide many details). Safari has been updated with a faster JavaScript engine, an address box that looks a lot like the Chrome omnibox, and iCloud-syncing tabs. Rather than run you through the entire keynote, though, it’s probably easier if you just read our detailed preview, or hit up the Mountain Lion website.
Mountain Lion, which was first seeded to developers in February, will be released in the next month or so, and cost $20.
Other news
In other news, here’s some other interesting tidbits that emerged from Tim Cook’s keynote: There are now over 400 million App Store accounts (the largest number of credit card numbers on file, anywhere on the internet); There are now 650,000 apps (225,000 specifically for the iPad); and 30 billion App Store downloads to date (with $5 billion paid to developers). OS X is now up to 60 million users (a huge growth spurt over a few years ago).
Through the end of March, Apple had sold 365 million iOS devices, and 80% of Apple’s mobile users are running the latest version (iOS 5). Only 7% of Android devices run Ice Cream Sandwich, which was released around the same time as iOS 5. 1 billion iMessages are sent every day — and 10 billion tweets are sent per day from iOS 5 devices, apparently.
[Image credit: Gdgt]"Pools are coming in the next [Sims 4] update," longtime franchise producer Ryan Vaughan tells me as I settle into a comfortable seat in the swanky hotel where EA is holding their annual NYC event, "And yes, you can make your Sim drown in them."
Breaking Down The Seeded Start At The Beginning Of Civilization: Beyond Earth
The statement was a bit surprising and seemed to come out of nowhere. I hadn't fostered any ill feelings towards the Sim on screen- had barely gotten to know him at all, really. In fact, I had just been admiring his stylish look, Darth Vader wearing sandals, costume provided by the new free Star Wars content added to the game.
But he had to die.
The Sims 4 Glitches Create Terrifying Demon Babies [VIDEO]
Pools are new to The Sims 4, and they're coming next month as a free update. The game didn't launch with pools and there was a bit of an outcry over it, although the official explanation was that they were trying to get the game fully working before adding additional features. They're nearly here.
During the event they demoed a new build of the game with the pool update installed. We were shown the easy new customization system, which allows you to create characters just by tugging at various body parts of theirs, as well as the new Star Wars outfits. They're quite proud of these, which allowed the three characters to don Darth Vader, Leia and Yoda outfits, the kid looking pretty cute with her little Yoda mask and giant green feet.
We were shown a nice house on a beautiful sunny day, a happy day without a hint of murder in the air. They were about to get a new addition to their home, however.
The pools are just as easy to create as the buildings. You pick a shape and drop it into the world, and you can expand it to whatever design you want, even changing the depth of the pool from “pretty deep” to “I hope there aren't any sea creatures living in here” as you please.
Vaughan started us out with a rectangular pool and added an octagonal piece to the end to spice up the look. He sent his Sims family into the pool, where they waded and splashed happily in their new swimsuits, a new (and, as with everything else, completely customizable) addition to the game. We were shown how the Sims could sit on the edge of the pool- a series first- and even pee into the pool if they so chose. All signs pointed to a wonderful time, but nefarious plans were afoot.
Vaughan carved out a little square pool a little bit away and put our Vader cosplayer in there before building four walls around him. He was trapped. Now- the wait. He would take a while to get exhausted and drown but thankfully a quick tweak of the developer’s mode and our poor hapless Sim was struggling to stay above the water, and soon he was no more. A little urn with ashes appeared near the walled-off pool, and his family members were sent to cry and grieve over it and lament hiring H.H. Holmes as their designer.
When I mentioned how nice it was to add the possibility of drowning to appeal to the more sadistic gamers, Vaughan laughed. It’s not their intention to tell gamers how to play, just to provide options for every single way you could ever want to. Even if that includes wet, cold-blooded murder.
That also includes the supernatural, something that’s always been a part of the series. Playable ghosts are new to Sims 4, however. You can summon them and they’ll appear and be able to interact with the characters and environment, letting you reenact all your favorite Poltergeist moments. Sims that die in a fire will return burnt to a crisp and can set fires in the house when they get angry, and Sims that are electrocuted can jump into electrical appliances, much like the Electric Gremlin. Our poor Darth Vader wannabe dripped water all over the place and made a puddle on the floor as he talked to his own widow.
But all of this is just the beginning. The Sims 4 will get pools next month but there's much more content on the way, including a free update that will give you more career options for your characters in December.
Just remember to practice pool safety, kids.DT News: Does the ministry have any plans to benefit from or recycle the excavated rainwater?
Eng. Khalaf: The storm water is usually discharged in the sea and other areas. We had attempted to inject it in the under- ground water in a couple of sites across the Kingdom. But recycling also is only done if strict rules are followed. The Supreme Council for the Environment had some environ- mental reservations in regards to this process as they had some concerns over water pollution suspicions, hence the processes were stopped and further discussions are in progress. But, we utilise it in irrigation purposes.
We have more work and effort to be implemented in the field of rainwater drainage and recycling. Yet, we have managed to considerably reduce the negative effects of this issue on the public by taking the necessary precautionary measures and procedures ahead of the rainy season.
The ministry has offered more tenders to provide tanks and containers to excavate the excessive water from roads and public areas. We have also upgraded the vacuum tankers and provided them with additional pumps to accelerate the process of excavating the water, that’s in addition to installing pumps at vital areas and roads to move the water to open areas and ensure that the daily life isn’t affected.
DT News: What are the main challenges the ministry is facing in tackling the rainwater flooding issue?
Eng. Khalaf: One of the biggest challenges we face during the rainy seasons is the uncivil behaviour of some people who remove the covers of sewage manholes and allow the rainwa- ter to enter and mix with the sewerage network.
This is a grave matter as such behaviour disrupts and dam- ages the networks. The rainwater, with all its sediments, damages the pumps and other equipment of the sewerage network. This results in the rebound of the sewerage inside homes and other facilities. Such cases were reported recently, as the pumps were damaged and unable to move the sewer- age to the treatment plant. We repeatedly warn the public
of the dangerous effects of such behaviours by raising more awareness on the matter through different platforms.
It’s noteworthy that we have also fulfilled all the requests that were received by municipal councils from citizens this year to install rainwater roof coatings to prevent any leakages inside homes, especially those belonging to the limited and medium income citizens.The Verge Shuts Down News Comments To Help 'Build Relationships'
from the ill-communication dept
"What we've found lately is that the tone of our comments (and some of our commenters) is getting a little too aggressive and negative — a change that feels like it started with GamerGate and has steadily gotten worse ever since. It's hard for us to do our best work in that environment, and it's even harder for our staff to hang out with our audience and build the relationships that led to us having a great community in the first place."
Oh, the poor, lowly comments section. These days, you can't turn a corner without the comment section being blamed for the death of civility, falling gold prices, and the general, entropic heat malaise of the universe. If you haven't noticed, there's a bit of a trend in the news industry afoot wherein you kill off the comment section, mindlessly shove your community over to Facebook if they want to comment, then proudly proclaim you're doing this not because you're too lazy or cheap to moderate, but because you're. It's kind of a thing The Verge seems to be the latest news outlet to join the trend, co-founder Nilay Patel informing readers this week that the website will be shutting down the site's comment section because the Internet has just gotten. Like other comment section killers, The Verge rather proudly proclaims that this move is part of an effort to build better relationships:Nothing quite says "building relationships" like removing the ability for your readers to publicly speak to you. Meanwhile, if you can't do your "best work" because a few obnoxious trolls can't stop pooping in your comment section, maybe don't read the comments until you're done working? As we noted when Reuters, ReCode, Vox and everybody else killed comments in the noble pursuit of high planes of communication, by closing comments down you're sending a clear message to your community and lifeblood that their input doesn't matter.And as some (whoa, the irony) Verge commenters point out, killing comments (as is done at Verge sister site Vox.com) doesn't do much for the local flora and fauna, either:To The Verge's credit they'll still allow forum posts and indicate the comments will return, but the pretense that we'reby putting a collective bag over said community's head never seems to get tired. As numerous sites have illustrated, it doesn't take much work to create a more civil, less-batshit comment section. Some do it with minimal moderation. Others, like us at Techdirt, try to create better incentives for good comments and encourage a strong and vocal community, rather than seeing comments as some sort of "task" to be "dealt" with. Hopefully The Verge's comment vacation is a step toward that direction, and not toward a permanent community comment vacation.
Filed Under: comments, community, openness, relationships, the verge
Companies: voxVGWriteReview: VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
I recently finished VA-11 HALL-A and I have a lot to say about it. As a perfect, comfy world filled with mystery and a sense that everything is a little familiar, VA-11 HALL-A's cyberpunk future gives me the sense that the game had a lot of love poured into it, and in this article, I intend to go over what exactly makes it so special to me.
The Writing
Let's start off strong: since VA-11 HALL-A is a technically a visual novel, the writing is very important. VA-11 HALL-A is written better than your average visual novel, and much MUCH better than your worst visual novel. With Fernando Damas (@IronicLark on Twitter) behind the wheel as the writer/programmer, the game benefits from a perspective set deep in real internet culture and a strong relationship with the game's aesthetics.
Writing: 9/10
The Art
VA-11 HALL-A is pixel art, technically. That aside, it has a lot of care and love put into each and every frame. Each character has talk-sprites with many more frames than your average visual novel. On top of that, the cutscenes and in-between scenes are spot-on in the way that they use their art and aesthetic to express emotion. That being said, this is a writing blog and not an art blog so I will reserve the right to claim this section as being opinionated.
Art: 7.8/10
The Gameplay
It's a visual novel, so the gameplay isn't exactly Dark Souls. It consists of searching for recipes (which is very easy once you get used to it and you begin to memorize recipes) and mixing 5 different ingredients before serving them to guests. Pretty simple, no? Like I said, you're not going to get a whole lot of high-level gameplay out of a visual novel, but VA-11 HALL-A has more than your average VN.
Gameplay: 7/10 (Not enough data to determine a conclusive score)
Conclusion
VA-11 HALL-A strikes through the boring stagnation of typical visual novels to create a new, however experimental and short, experience that knocks it out of the park. It's a cheap, fun, easy experience that, while lacking gameplay like a lot of visual novels do, makes you feel good.TV Reviews All of our TV reviews in one convenient place.
At this point, I think it's no secret that I have more of a love-hate relationship with Dexter than many of you do. Indeed, in comments a couple of weeks ago, some of you suggested I stop being so hard on the show. And yet, it's episodes like tonight that make it so easy to turn on the show at a moment's notice. For every nicely done moment, for every point where it felt like the show was moving toward some sort of catharsis, there was something else that was largely terrible, just an excuse for the show to move a bunch of plot elements out of the way in time for the finale. And for a season that's been haphazardly plotted at best, having a haphazardly plotted penultimate episode is … an issue, particularly for a show where the airtight plotting has always been the chief selling point. (Even in my least favorite season prior to this one, season three, the plotting was generally very tight.)
Let's start with the biggest bust: Through a fairly clever callback (Dexter can see the video feed monitoring him and Lumen on his baby monitor), Dexter becomes aware that someone is spying on him. As the episode goes on, he becomes convinced it has something to do with Quinn, then spends his time staking out his neighborhood to figure out just which van or RV or abandoned apartment the video feed could be emanating from. So far, so good. He finally narrows it down to the van Liddy is using (a rental), then stalks over there to take out who he believes to be Quinn. Instead, Liddy gets the drop on him and tosses him into the back of the van, taking him out to an abandoned beach parking lot to get a full confession from Dexter. He's not entirely sure what he's got, but Liddy knows enough to know he's got a very big fish, though he'll need a confession for any of his evidence to stick. The bait he dangles in Dexter's face? Lumen gets to go free.
After nicely teasing out the Lumen and Dexter relationship for the better part of a season, the show needs it to have gotten very serious, very quickly, the better to push Dexter off his game. This isn't such a bad conceit. I can buy that for Dexter, it's amazing to have someone who bonds with him on such a fundamental level. I'm not sure I needed constant reminders of how much in love the two were, since every scene showed them kissing tenderly or holding hands or something, but the show has never lacked for constant reminders of the characters' situations. So Dexter's tempted by this offer, and when Liddy turns on the camera to get the confession … Dexter kicks him in the face. There's a brief struggle, and Dexter manages to plunge the knife into Liddy's heart just as Quinn walks up to meet with Liddy about the big bust Liddy was going to make. Everything works out just fine at the last possible moment, though some of Liddy's blood drips on Quinn's shoe.
All in all, this takes about 10 minutes.
If Dexter were a better show, if it really were giving us a sense that all of the plots that have happened this season were coming down around the characters' ears all at once, I might be inclined to go with tossing this little short story into the midst of everything else and giving it a hectic pace all its own. But the overwhelming sense the storyline gives off is that all involved just wanted to take care of the Liddy storyline as quickly as possible, to get back to the Jordan Chase stuff. There's no real sense of menace. Once Liddy gets Dexter in the van, you know that Dexter's going to dispatch Liddy with a minimum of hand-wringing (after all, Harry's code provides for self-preservation). So the scene takes on an oddly perfunctory quality, as if the show were simply washing its hands of a plotline it put a lot of time and development into. Sure, Quinn knows a few suspicious things now, and this gave us at least one nice little scene between Deb and Dexter (though I'm less and less enamored of her psychic crime-fighting skills), but the whole thing feels like a waste of time and Peter Weller. It's introduced, only to be gotten rid of.
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I'm sure some of you will argue that Dexter killing Liddy will show how far he's strayed from Harry's code or something like that, and I might buy that if we ever got the sense that anything on this show is cumulative, that moments in the past have an effect on the future. There have been moments this season, namely a couple of callbacks back when Dexter was under suspicion of Rita's murder, where it felt like the show might finally start to pull all of its sundry plot points from over the years together, but those moments ended up being just another stall. Dexter has killed innocent men before. He's killed people who were on his trail before. I know from watching this show that he'll maybe think about it for a scene or two and then get on with things. I'm not the first person to make this comparison, but with the way that nothing on Dexter feels like it adds up to anything more than the season it's contained in, the show has the feel of something like 24, where every season is its own plotline and there's very little crossover between seasons.
What's shocking to me is just how much "Hop A Freighter" feels like a placeholder episode, especially this late in the game. There are certainly nice moments and nice scenes throughout, and I think that Dexter trying to track down Jordan and Lumen is a pretty great idea for the finale. But the overall sense was of the show marking time before it really had to get into the nitty gritty of wrapping all of this up. Deb and the crew at homicide close in on Jordan Chase and the link between him and the many men who've been mysteriously disappearing. (There's a funny scene in this storyline where Quinn unintentionally makes a grieving woman's pain all the worse by telling her her husband wasn't gay but … was a rapist. Nice going, Quinn.) Deb's vigilante theory gets more credence thanks to something Masuka finds. Deb and LaGuerta have it out. Jordan kills Emily. Dexter tracks Lumen and Jordan using his blood spatter analysis skills (a scene that's pretty nifty, honestly).
But the episode wastes a lot of tension that's been building all season long by dispatching of Liddy in such a perfunctory way. I get that Liddy's body is still floating around out there, just waiting for someone to discover it and tie everything to Dexter. I get that Quinn now knows enough to start pasting together pieces in his lunkheaded brain. And I get that the many threats on all sides are making Dexter sloppy. But this would all be a little more tense if I thought it would have any bearing on the show's future whatsoever. Without a firm end date, there's essentially nowhere for this show to GO. There's just Dexter hanging out and doing his thing and then the fate of whatever guest star happens to drop in for that season. Put another way, the Dexter and Lumen relationship has been the most fascinating thing in the show this season, but now that the two are in love, there's a definite sapping of tension out of the relationship. We've always known Lumen would need to leave one way or another; the question has stopped being who Dexter would be to her when she left and has boiled down to something far less interesting: How will she leave?
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Stray observations:
Toward the end, Dexter is following the blood trail and asks whether everything he loves must end in blood. Honestly, I expected him to rip open his shirt and start howling at the fucking moon.
Dexter is headed up to Orlando soon for Harrison's birthday party. Lumen invites herself along, which means she's probably gonna die. (Though, honestly, given the zig-zaggy nature of the season, I'd guess she just hops on a plane and goes elsewhere for the duration of the show's run.)
Dexter was renewed for a sixth season, so we'll have the show to kick around for at least another year. This season has been the highest rated yet, so I'm sure we'll have the show for at least another two years, if not three, actually. It's far too valuable to Showtime, and Showtime doesn't have even an ounce of artistic credibility at this point. (Exhibit B: Weeds, which apparently had a good season but is STILL ON?)Chefs’ Picks tracks down what the pros are eating and cooking from coast to coast.
In addition to movie stars, sunshine and traffic, Los Angeles also offers burgers aplenty. While they never claimed to have invented it, the residents of Southern California have been cultivating a cultish obsession with their burgers for the better part of a century now. As a result, many an Angeleno chef will go aglow when asked to name his or her personal favorite. In this city of millions, it’s fitting that there be nearly as many opinions on the subject as there are chefs. Read on to find out where the pros go to score their perfect patty.
Layers of Flavor
Among the burger cognoscenti in this town, one man who commands exalted status is Umami Burger’s creator, Adam Fleischman. Though he’s now moved on to non-burger projects — namely the fast-casual Japanese restaurant Ramen Roll, slated to open in Culver City, Calif., later this year — Fleischman has been a hugely influential force in LA’s gourmet burger landscape. That’s why it comes as something of a surprise that his go-to entry doesn’t involve ground beef.
When he has a burger craving, Fleischman opts for a grilled spiced lamb patty at Badmaash in downtown Los Angeles. “Badmaash is an Indian gastropub, and like any good pub, they must serve a burger,” he explains. “The meat is ground and spiced in-house, thus preserving the freshness and flavor. A spiced mayo seals the deal. The Indian flavors work very well with a burger, probably the only one I have seen at an Indian spot.” Fleischman brings along a crowd to share in this culinary experience, with the burger serving as the starter for a sumptuous meal. “There are so many good dishes here. I like to go with a group, open a good Riesling, and get the burger as a starter to cut up and share, along with a bunch of other dishes, breads, rice and samosas.”Transcript for Is US Money Funding Terror in Afghanistan?
U.S. Government contracts awarded to companies with alleged ties to terror groups, some of those terror groups targeting american forces. Abc's chief investigative correspondent brian ross on the trial. Reporter: With americans still being attacked every week in afghanistan, the u.S. Government has worked hard to find out who has helped pay for the continued and deadly insurveillance jent strikes only to discover that among those connected to the terrorists were working for the u.S. Government. According to these two lists produced by the military and the congress department. U.S. Officials say the companies already have received about $150 million in u.S. Taxpayer money over the years. It's like the united states government subsidizing the taliban al qaeda network, those groups that are trying to shoot and kill our soldiers. Reporter: Among them a road construction company that the u.S. Says is partly owned by a leader of that brutal network, blamed for an attack on the u.S. Became that killed 16 people. The company denies ties to terrorists but documents obtained by abc news claimed the profits, approximately 1 to $2 million a month flowed to the network to finance his activities. I'm an old time prosecutor and my hair stood on end. Reporter: An abc news investigation found that despite pleas from commanders in the field along with congress and the inspector general, pentagon lawyers have refused to formally block those companies from receiving u.S. Contracts. The reason they have given us is that it's not fair to these contractors that the evidence that we presented -- and this is the evidence collected by the united states government is classified. Reporter: The pentagon cancelled a scheduled interview with us on the subject so we went to the military office that deals with the issue where a top official said it was a question of due process, with classified information that the contractors cannot see. There are certain regulations that have to be followed, due process regulations. Even with groups that are connected to terrorism? Well, that gets into documents I cannot discuss. In fact, I'm not allowed to talk to you unless I have to end to interview at this time. In a statement to abc news the army said it has extensive vetting procedures and most of the companies on the terror connected list were not award contracts. Most they say, diane, does not mean all. Brian ross investigating again tonight. Thank you, brian.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.Below are some news & notes on Filppula:
The Philadelphia Flyers announced that they have acquired forward Valtteri Filppula, Tampa Bay's 4th round selection in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft and a conditional 7th round selection in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft from Tampa Bay in exchange for defenseman, Mark Streit.
- In 59 games with the Lightning, Filppula has seven goals and 27 assists for 34 points, while averaging 17:30 of ice time this season, his fourth with Tampa Bay.
- As a member of the Lightning, he has recorded 171 points (52g-119a) in 292 regular season games, while adding in five goals and 17 assists for 23 points 47 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
- Over parts of 12 seasons in the NHL with the Lightning and Detroit Red Wings, Filppula has recorded 152 goals and 270 assists for 422 points in 775 regular season games, as well as owning an all-time plus-minus record of +29.
- He has also added 79 points (24g-55a) in 152 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
- Filppula was a member of the Red Wings Stanley Cup Championship team in 2008, where he recorded 11 points (5g-6a) in 22 playoff games.
- Has appeared in three Stanley Cup Finals (DET: 2008 & 2009, TBL: 2015) and has never missed playoffs in 10 seasons his team has qualified (DET: 7, TBL: 3)
- Internationally, he has skated for Finland at 2016 World Cup of Hockey, 2012 World Championships, 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver and the 2003 World Junior Championship.
MARK STREIT
- Streit departs the Flyers after spending parts of four seasons with the club, including the last three as an alternate captain… He has recorded 30 goals and 110 assists for 140 points in 274 games as a Flyer.
- This season, Streit has recorded 21 points (5g-16a) in 49 games while averaging 19:23 of ice time.
- In 2014-15, Streit was awarded the Barry Ashbee Trophy as the Flyers Best Defensemen after recorded 52 points (9g-43a) in 81 games… His 52 points led all Flyers defensemen and finished third on the team in scoring.
More to come…A 19-year-old Lower Allen Twp. man who authorities said died Friday while filling his car with gas fell victim to a freak accident that has resulted in only one other known fatality nationwide, according to a fuel expert.
L. David Byers, 19, was filling up his Toyota Yaris at a BP station in Lower Allen at 2:45 a.m. when vapor fumes caught fire. He was killed after inhaling superheated gases from the flash fire, Cumberland County Coroner Todd Eckenrode said. A static electric discharge sparked the flames, a state police fire marshal said.
Byers’ youth might have been a factor — many times younger people get |
further exemplify Carol’s progressing madness, that grows deeper over the aching passage of time. Potatoes sprout in the kitchen and rabbit meat rots on a plate and eventually collects flies. As Carol’s sanity decays, so do the little things that make up her life. Carol is segregated from the outside world — she cuts the telephone wire in one scene — but time does not stand still. One is reminded of later films such as Rosemary’s Baby. Paranoid women holed up in large apartments is what Polanski does best and he has often been described as voyeur rather than a filmmaker. Carol’s eyes and Polanski’s camera lens seem to become interchangeable. Therefore, Repulsion, a film that gives form to its conceptual ideas about the fragility of the human mind through inventive and imaginative cinematic effects, is not only Polanski’s voyeuristic window into the private apartment of a secluded woman, but a voyeuristic tour through the workings of a person’s mind.
Film #2: Possession (1981)
Here is another film that bridges the gap between the supernatural and the real. It is a film that attempts to defy explanation, and its meanings can be debated forever. Loaded with intense imagery, the film gets so far under your skin that even a young Sam Neill maniacally rotating a chair drives you briefly insane. But it is Isabelle Adjani’s performance as Anna (and of course her doppelgänger Helen) that steals the show. The role earned Adjani ‘The Best Actress’ award at the Cannes Film Festival yet she claims she is never going to play a similar role again. Director Żuławski even claims that Adjani would never watch back the dailies despite his insistence. Perhaps even she was scared of the darkness that they had created in the character.
Go to the FAQ for Possession on IMDb and you will find that there is only one: “What did I just see?” It explains that the film is allegory for a divorce. Like Polanski’s Repulsion, the milk, blood, and slime that Anna writhes around in, in easily the most famous scene in the film and a very iconic scene in all of cinema, is Żuławski’s attempt to give material form to the conceptual ideas that the film hopes to convey. However, rather than being about a societal outsider’s descent into madness, we see a wife’s descent, and the effects that it has on her husband, and her marriage as a whole.
Żuławski’s own messy divorce served as inspiration for the film. The divorce almost drove him to suicide, and the same can be said of the film’s central characters. Anna’s mysterious doppelgänger, Helen, claims she comes
“from a place where evil seems easier to pinpoint because you can see it in the flesh”.
Helen, and Mark’s doppelgängers are Żuławski’s fleshy formation of a divorce. Anna’s and Mark’s desires have physically manifested themselves as replications of the real and they are material representations of the idealised wife and husband.
The film’s imagery is both intense and excessive. Anna moves into a dilapidated apartment that harbours a blood- and sex-starved monster, whom at one point she makes love to, tentacles and all. Such imagery, as well as the film’s performances, often seem at risk of descending into hyperbole, but Żuławski finds the perfect blend between the mundanity of Berlin life and supernatural horror so that the film does alienate itself. Through its horror, the film portrays the emotional excess of divorce, and the apparent evil that can arise from a marriage in process of falling apart. Żuławski is clearly a passionate explorer of what’s most self-destructive about us. Despite its grotesque depictions of the body, and its unsparing portrayal of insanity manifested in frenzied wailing and galvanised body-jerks, it is a film that uses surreal and puzzling imagery, that at times seems impossible to truly comprehend, in a hope to explore the harsh reality of something that everyone knows: family.The Great Heck rail crash, also called the Selby rail crash,[1] was a high-speed train accident that occurred at Great Heck near Selby, North Yorkshire, England on the morning of 28 February 2001. An InterCity 225 passenger train operated by GNER collided with a Land Rover Defender which had crashed down a motorway embankment onto the railway line; it was subsequently derailed into the path of an oncoming freight train at an estimated closing speed of 142 mph (229 km/h). Ten people died in the resultant collision, including the drivers of both trains involved, and 82 others suffered serious injuries. It remains the worst rail disaster of the 21st century in the United Kingdom.
Events [ edit ]
The crash occurred at approximately 06:13 (GMT), when a Land Rover Defender towing a loaded trailer (carrying a Renault Savanna estate car) left the carriageway of the westbound M62 motorway just before a bridge over the East Coast Main Line. The vehicle ran 30 yards (27 m) down an embankment and onto the southbound railway track. The Land Rover's driver, Gary Neil Hart, tried to reverse it off the track, but he could not. While he was using a mobile telephone to call the emergency services after exiting the vehicle, the Land Rover was hit by a southbound GNER InterCity 225 heading from Newcastle to London King's Cross.
The InterCity 225 was propelled by a Class 91 locomotive (No.91023) and led by Driving Van Trailer (DVT) No. 82221. After striking the Land Rover, the leading bogie of the DVT derailed but the train stayed upright. Points to nearby sidings then deflected it into the path of an oncoming Freightliner freight train carrying coal[5] and travelling from Immingham to Ferrybridge, hauled by a Class 66 locomotive (No.66521).[6] The freight train hit the wreckage approximately 2,106 feet (642 m) from the passenger train's impact with the Land Rover. The impact resulted in the near destruction of the lightweight DVT and severe to moderate damage to all nine of the InterCity 225's coaches, which mostly overturned and came to rest down an embankment to the east side of the track, in a field adjacent to the railway line just south of overbridge ECM 2/7. The trailing locomotive remained upright and suffered minor damage, although it was derailed. The Class 66 lost its bogies after impact, with debris of the DVT jammed underneath rupturing its fuel tank. The freight locomotive then overturned onto its left side coming to rest in the garden of a residence adjacent to the line to the north of the same bridge. The locomotive sustained major damage to its cab area and right side. The first nine wagons following it were also derailed and damaged to varying extents.
Immediately before the impact of the two trains, the speed of the InterCity 225 was estimated as 88 mph (142 km/h) and that of the freight train as 54 mph (87 km/h). With an estimated closing speed of 142 mph (229 km/h), the collision between the trains was the highest-speed railway incident that had occurred in the UK since the Ladbroke Grove crash.[10]
Outcome [ edit ]
Both train drivers, two additional train crew on board the InterCity 225, and six passengers died. Those who died were all killed as a result of the second collision.[11] Survivors of the accident included a train-driving instructor (Andrew Hill), who was travelling in the cab of 66521 and teaching a new route to the driver of the Class 66, a driver with 24 years of experience.
Among those killed were:[12]
John Weddle, from Throckley - GNER driver
Stephen (George) Dunn, from Brayton - Freightliner driver
Raymond Robson, from Whitley Bay - GNER train guard
Paul Taylor, from Newcastle - GNER chef
The coaches of the InterCity 225 were carrying 99 passengers and train staff. The early morning 04:45 time departure from Newcastle resulted in reduced passenger numbers. As it was, 45 of the 52 seriously injured passengers, and all eight fatalities (excluding the two locomotive drivers) were travelling in the first five coaches, which included a restaurant car and two first class coaches with less densely packed seating than standard coaches. In total 82 survivors were taken to hospital. The official incident report praised the crashworthiness of the InterCity 225's Mark 4 coaches.
An unusual aspect of the emergency response was the need to carry out disinfecting procedures at the scene because of the 2001 UK foot and mouth crisis in the United Kingdom.
Aftermath [ edit ]
A memorial to the Great Heck rail disaster
Hart escaped the incident unscathed and was later tried on ten counts of causing death by dangerous driving.[17]
Locomotive No. 66526 has since been named "Driver Steve Dunn (George)", in memory of the Freightliner driver killed in the accident. It carries a plaque commemorating the accident: "In remembrance of a dedicated engineman Driver Steve (George) Dunn was tragically killed in the accident at Great Heck on 28th February 2001".[18] Dunn's son James, who was nine at the time of the crash, later became a train driver.[19]
John Weddle, the GNER driver killed in the accident, was also honoured by way of a new driver-training school in his home city of Newcastle, which was named after him. In a ceremony attended by members of his family, his 16-year-old daughter Stephanie unveiled a plaque dedicating the school to his memory.[20]
Barry Needham, also a railway employee, was also commemorated by the naming of 60087 after him, the plates later being transferred to 60091. This locomotive also carries an explanatory plaque.[21]
Coincidentally, 91023 was also involved in the Hatfield rail crash four months earlier. The locomotive escaped with only slight damage on both occasions. Following technical upgrade of the Class 91 fleet, which led to all locomotives having 100 added to the number (91001 became 91101, etc.), 91023 was renumbered 91132, not 91123.[23]
Legal proceedings [ edit ]
Hart denied the charges, claiming that his car had suffered a mechanical fault, or had collided with an object on the road.[24] An investigation, including reconstruction of the Land Rover to demonstrate that it was not mechanically defective, concluded that Hart had been driving in a sleep-deprived condition, and had not applied the brakes as it went down the embankment. It later transpired that Hart had stayed up the previous night talking on the telephone to a woman he had met through an internet dating agency.[25] Hart later stated that although he had witnessed the impact between the InterCity 225 and his Land Rover, he had not been aware of the more serious collision with the freight train until informed by police several hours later.[26] He was found guilty on 13 December 2001, and was jailed for five years. He was released after serving half of his sentence in prison.[27]
Campaigners drew attention to what they claimed was the inadequate length of the crash barriers alongside the motorway.[28] According to the Health and Safety Executive's final report, the Land Rover had left the road 30 yards before the barrier started and had easily broken through the simple wooden fence that lined the track. A 2003 Highways Agency review of crash barriers on bridges over railways concluded that only three bridges nationwide were in need of upgrading. The bridge at Great Heck was not one of them. By October 2003 Hart's insurers had paid out over £22 million.[30] Gary Hart's insurers, through Hart's name, sued the Department for Transport for a contribution to the damages paid to GNER and the victims, alleging a degree of causation on the grounds that the safety barrier was inadequate (contributory negligence).[31] The High Court judge ruled the loss was too remote from any perceived shortcoming with standard national infrastructure, noting the jury's verdict and previous findings of fact.[32]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]RISE Vision incorporates in blockchain friendly Gibraltar
RISE Team Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 24, 2017
RISE Vision has officially signed documents to incorporate as a business in Gibraltar as of December 2017. Cormac Lucking, CEO, under guidance of legal advisors, The Castle Trust Group, registered the business in Gibraltar to provide a foundation for long term sustainable growth. Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory off the south coast of Spain, has positioned itself as the first jurisdiction in the world to licence businesses using blockchain in a bid to ensure both regulation and technological innovation can thrive together.
Cormac Lucking, CEO, incorporating RISE Vision in Gibraltar. December 2017.
This is a strategic milestone for RISE Vision following Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) introducing the regulation for individuals and businesses operating blockchain or distributed ledger technology, effective from 1st January 2018. The GFSC has been in consultation with both industry and government for three years to understand the risks and opportunities for innovative blockchain technology under a rigorous regulatory framework. Nicky Gomez, Head of Risk and Innovation at GFSC, told Reuters: “This is the first instance of a purpose-built legislative framework for businesses that use blockchain or distributed ledger technology. Many firms have been craving for a jurisdiction to regulate them”.
Gibraltar is an ideal home for RISE Vision and there are many advantages to being one of the first businesses to operate under the new Distributed Ledger Technology regulation. These advantages include:
A strong corporate governance framework to ensure integrity, transparency for KYC and additional consumer protection.
Increased operational efficiencies through access to financial and non-financial business resources.
Operating under a supportive government that embraces technological innovation.
Mitigating the risk of pending and future government regulations that have not yet been introduced and may be enforced in other countries.
RISE Vision Certificate of Incorporation in Gibraltar. December 2017.
RISE Vision offers a platform for decentralised distributed applications, smart contracts and token asset creation, powered by a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) blockchain. To find out more visit: https://rise.vision/Pentagon seeks protective bubble for Ebola patients
Health care workers with protective suits transport an Ebola patient in Guinea. (Photo11: Kenzo Tribouillard, AFP/Getty Images)
To avoid problems caused by faulty biohazard suits used in tropical climates, the Pentagon is rushing to develop by January a portable "Care Cube" that would envelope patients infected with the Ebola virus while allowing caregivers to work without wearing the bulky suits, according to a newly released military document.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to spur the development of the cube, which it calls a "long-term version of the present bubble isolation devices used to transport patients in airplanes to the west."
"Unlike current devices, the Care Cube is meant to provide for a patient's needs for up to 10 days, including the gelling, disinfection and containment of all waste," said the DARPA document, which was filed to justify the hiring of San Francisco-based Otherlab, the Care Cube's developer, without going through an official bidding process.
The cube, DARPA says, "contains low-cost isolation gloves to allow family and caregivers to assist and even hug the patient. It provides for ventilation with a negative pressure environment, keeping disinfected family members in homes or quarantine areas of medical care facilities safe."
So far, at least 15,000 people have contracted Ebola in West Africa this year and about 5,400 have died. "There have been more cases and deaths in this outbreak than all others combined," DARPA says.
Otherlab, DARPA says, "has developed unique expertise in inflatable structures as a contractor in the DARPA Maximum Mobility and Manipulation Program," which is designing inflatable robotic technologies for use in "orthotics, medical device and protective clothing industries." The contract, issued last week, will pay Otherlab $493,000 for a prototype that DARPA wants to field in December and have test and evaluation results for in January.
Henrik Bennetsen, Otherlab's chief operations officer, declined to comment on the company's contract with DARPA.
Baymax is an inflatable robot in the Disney movie Big Hero 6. (Photo11: Disney)
The character Baymax in the new Disney movie Big Hero 6 is adapted from an inflatable robot designed by Otherlab and other participants in the Maximum Mobile and Manipulation Program, DARPA says.
The military plans to have 3,000 troops in Liberia to fight the spread of Ebola, which has long been the focus of military health research efforts. U.S. troops are building or supporting up to 17 new treatment centers, training health care workers to staff them and test blood samples more rapidly for diagnoses.
DARPA and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency have had the treatment of Ebola and other highly infectious diseases on their agenda for years since U.S. troops often have to go to tropical environments that foster infectious diseases. The agencies helped foster the development of ZMapp, whose active ingredients are derived from the tobacco plant.
Follow @rlocker12 on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1th17r2Again it came down to one game, one goal, and again the Rangers escaped by the skin of their teeth. When Derek Stepan slotted home a traffic-stopped puck that landed right at his feet, the Rangers had won their sixth consecutive Game 7, all in the last four seasons, tying an NHL record
What does it mean that the Rangers have had such success in Game 7s? Nothing supernatural. It means they’re a team well-balanced on offense and defense, and tend to play close games, (all 12 of their games this postseason have been decided by a single goal), and those balance out to close series. It means they’re generally, but not significantly, better than the Eastern Conference’s unspectacular recent crop.
“You saw two very good teams go nose-to-nose, with just inches, an inch here, an inch there,” Capitals coach Barry Trotz said. “I think everybody here probably predicted seven games, and you got it.”
And it means New York has Henrik Lundqvist, probably the most steadily great goaltender since either of the last two lockouts. When things get tight in the playoffs, and goals are already at a premium, Lundqvist becomes a deciding factor. When the Rangers’ season comes down to a single game, they never have to worry about their backstopper.
It’s a coincidence of calendar, but it’s also a chronicle of consistency. I wrote about the existence of “clutch” yesterday and came to the conclusion that it’s more about having a mindset that doesn’t allow the pressure of the situation to lessen your quality of play. The Rangers never have to worry about that from their goalie. It’s a luxury, and it’s the single biggest reason New York is in its third Conference Final in four seasons.
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The Capitals, who surrendered a 3-1 series lead, have reasons to be optimistic. In Braden Holtby they finally have the solid goaltender that’s eluded them in their run of postseason mediocrity. In Evgeny Kuznetsov and Andre Burakovsky they may have a pair of future stars. The Caps went into the handshake line with their heads held high—and Lundqvist shared a moment with Alex Ovechkin, who started the series off with a good-natured taunt and ended it with his team’s only goal after guaranteeing a win.
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Rangers-Capitals isn’t quite the rivalry it feels like it ought to be, given the geography and the recent postseason meetings and the fact that they’re in the same division now. Maybe there’s just not enough bad blood; these teams seem to genuinely respect one another.
As the two teams saluted each other’s efforts in the handshake line, a few Capitals gave the Rangers the utmost compliment a competitor can give any foe. Take it all the way, said one Caps player. Get it done, said another.
Maybe they will—though Chicago still feels like the favorite. A Tampa-New York ECF has the potential to be a ton of fun, and just about evenly matched. The Rangers are a veteran team compared to the Lightning’s youth movement; Tampa’s four leading scorers are all homegrown, compared to just one of New York’s top four. Ben Bishop is capable of owning a game just as easily as Lundqvist, though perhaps not so often. The Lightning are unexpectedly missing Ryan Callahan, while the Rangers may not get back Mats Zuccarello; call that a wash.
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It’s going to be close. The Rangers don’t know how to do it any other way.Ugh. Customers. The little brats. You give them the chance to pay extra for unlimited data so they can use their smartphones as designed, and then when you take it away, they complain! AT&T's #1 regrets the whole damn thing.
In retrospect, you see, it would've been better to use tiered, capped data, like AT&T does now, because it allows AT&T to make more money, the company's CEO told the NYT:
"My only regret was how we introduced pricing in the beginning, because how did we introduce pricing? Thirty dollars and you get all you can eat," he said in the on-stage interview at the Milken Institute's Global Conference on Wednesday. "And it's a variable cost model. Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to invest capital."
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On the one hand, this is a rare moment of corporate honesty—the executive baldly admits the obvious, that the only point of any business is to make money for that business and its shareholders, even at the expense of the customer. On the other hand, the executive baldly admitted the obvious, that the point of his business is to make money for his business and its shareholders, even at the expense of the customer. That's us. [NYT]Like some of you, I am having a feeling that the Orioles are teetering on the brink a bit right now.
You have to wonder if the club hasn’t hit a bump in the road that might turn into a longer tailspin now that the starting pitching has started to struggle and the team has had to make so many recent roster moves. Some of that just has to be catching up with this club.
In the last nine games, the Orioles have just two quality starts and a starting pitcher ERA of 7.25 in that stretch. Yet we should keep in mind that their two best starters on the season - Wei-Yin Chen and Jason Hammel - started just two of the nine games.
Also, those nine games have come against Boston, Texas, Tampa Bay and New York. Still, they are 4-5 in the nine games.
We should also remember that tonight the Orioles end a 15-game stretch against the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers and Rays and they are 8-6 thus far. They will end this grueling run of every night top-notch competition with a winning record against some of the toughest teams in the American League.
The team has defensive issues, injuries and the starters have begun to struggle, yet they are 22-14 for a win percentage of.611 and are tied for first with Tampa Bay.
Going into this stretch of 15 games, I didn’t forsee this team winning more games than they lose. Then again, I also didn’t forsee a roster that included Bill Hall, Steve Tolleson, Dana Eveland, Luis Exposito and Xavier Avery.
No knock on any of those guys, and they have all helped in some way during the last two weeks, but I don’t think Buck Showalter figured this would be his exact roster right now.
Yes, the Orioles have hit a rough patch and they’ve given up 17 runs in back-to-back games. Yet they are in first place, are eight games over.500 and will post a winning record during what will likely be the toughest stretch of the 2012 season.
I saw some comments on Twitter last night just ripping this team. Fans there, some of them anyway, were clearly jumping off the bandwagon pretty fast.
That didn’t take long. Overreact much?
I know some readers who have been very quiet for most of this season are dying to say, “This is it, the bottom is falling out and I knew it all the time.”
But is it?
What is your take?: Are the Orioles headed for a longer tailspin? Can they overcome some recent long and tough games and injuries to weather this stretch?As I mentioned last month, a Pew Survey found that Buddhists in the US are around 16% Republican (or leaning), 69% Democrat, and 16% Independent or other. That is from a 2014 Religious Landscape Study. So we sought to update that here at American Buddhist Perspectives, creating a simple poll that drew in over 350 responses.
The data gathered (also here and here) and discussions following went even further, leading to the plan of regular (monthly) polls. This gives us opportunities to measure -however imprecisely- shifts in voter attitudes as well as to offer new questions. One new question this month seeks to differentiate between “cradle”, “convert”, and “sympathizer” Buddhists. As Wakoh Shannon Hickey wrote in 2010 (.pdf):
If we want to consider questions of religious identity, categories suggested by Thomas Tweed are useful. Cradle Buddhists are people born into Buddhist families, regardless of their race or national origin, so this group includes both immigrants and the children of converts. Converts include both immigrants and people born in the United States who were not raised Buddhist, but who later identify themselves with Buddhism and formally affiliate with it in some way. Some converts may also have multiple affiliations. Sympathizers are people who identify primarily with other religions, or with no religion, but are influenced by Buddhist thought and may engage in Buddhist practices (Tweed, 2002).
We’ll keep the open-ended ethnic/racial identification question in there, but this additional question acknowledges the fact that some white Buddhists today are “cradle” Buddhists while some Asian Buddhists are “converts.” I do not know of any focused study of Black, Latin@, or other ethnic/racial group Buddhists in the U.S. In last month’s poll, 2 out of 269 respondents identified as Black, 5 as Latin@ or Hispanic, 2 as Native American, and 7 as Mixed or Other ethnicity/race.
Interestingly, many respondents entered a nationality in the “ethnicity/race” spot, leaving it to me to assign a more general category. For instance, if a respondent put “Polish” I put them in the “white” category. As race and ethnicity are somewhat fluid categories, both socially and personally, I am not sure of a better way to gather and report on this question. Comments or discussions on how to better clarify that are welcome.
On to the poll itself (please complete as fully as possible and spread the word):
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Still not seeing the survey? Try here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JMvQBtXMO4_vgE_XOKUmp6ee4SBrSG5NUeswh5EbzAQ/
On Latin@ / Hispanic:
Stay in touch with American Buddhist Perspectives on Facebook:Randy Moss is scheduled to fly to San Francisco on Sunday for a Monday workout for the 49ers, according to a league source.
The trip is a return to the Bay Area, where Moss played two seasons for the Oakland Raiders before he was traded to the New England Patriots.
The wide receiver already worked out last week for the New Orleans Saints, and was said to be impressive.
The 49ers are seeking to improve at receiver after the team's wideouts managed just one catch for 3 yards in a 20-17 loss to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship Game. Joshua Morgan, who broke a bone in his leg in October, and Ted Ginn Jr. are scheduled to be free agents. The 49ers released Braylon Edwards in December after signing him to a one-year deal last summer.
The 6-foot-4 Moss last played in the NFL in 2010, a turbulent season for him in which he bounced from New England to the Minnesota Vikings and then to the Tennessee Titans.Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) released this ad August 4, vowing to "stand up" to presidential candidate Donald Trump. (Mike Coffman)
You've probably never heard of Mike Coffman. You almost certainly have that in common with Donald Trump.
Coffman is a low-profile, fourth-term Republican member of Congress from Colorado. He happens to represent one of the most competitive House districts in the country. And he wants to make sure everyone is his district knows that he is no fan of his party's presidential nominee.
"People ask me, 'What do you think about Trump,'" Coffman says to the camera in a new ad. "Honestly, I don't care for him much. And I certainly don't trust Hillary."
Coffman's ad marks the first time in the 2016 election a Republican candidate has used a TV commercial to actively distance themselves from Trump. But it sure as heck won't be the last — especially if Trump's polling slide continues.
This is a survival move by Coffman. Polling suggest that Trump is running behind past Republican nominees in Colorado — thanks in part to his extremely poor showing among Hispanics and in part to his struggles with suburban women. (Coffman's 6th District is anchored in the western suburbs of Denver.)
Coffman has almost certainly polled the district and found that Trump's image is in disastrous shape there. Coffman's only option — considering the swing nature of his district — is to get as far away as possible from Trump or run the risk of being dragged down with him.
Polling out in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire over the past 24 hours suggests that Coffman won't be the last Republican to try to distance himself from Trump. Sens. Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) trail their Democratic challengers by eight and 10 points, respectively. If it looks as if they will sink with Trump, they will try to cut him loose — without a second thought.
The bigger question is whether Coffman's strategy will work. Past history suggests that it probably won't.
In the 2010 election, lots of Democrats in Republican-leaning districts or states tried to run away from President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. One of the most memorable was Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), who ran this ad to make his case.
"I'm not Nancy Pelosi. I'm not Barack Obama," Pomeroy says in the commercial. "I'm Earl Pomeroy."
It didn't work. Pomeroy lost by almost 10 points.
The simple fact is that the top of the ticket matters a TON in down-ballot races. If Trump loses Coffman's district by eight or 10 points in the fall, it's going to be very hard for Coffman to win — no matter what he says about The Donald in his ads.Rep. Mo Brooks, Alabama Republican, said Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida led efforts to “open the floodgates” on immigration because of their support for a comprehensive 2013 bill that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for most of the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.
Mr. Brooks said that, coupled with the number of illegal immigrants that could be granted legalization through the bill and the increase in the number of lawful immigrants, “over a 10-year period of time, the number of foreigners who would be either legalized because they’re already here or would be allowed to come into the United States of America would be anywhere in the neighborhood of 44 to 57 million.”
“Now, I’m from the state of Alabama - that’s the equivalent of nine to 11 state of Alabama populations brought into America or legalized in America over a short, 10-year period of time - that’s a huge change,” Mr. Brooks said on Tim Constantine’s Capitol Hill Show on The Washington Times radio.
“But it was Republicans like Marco Rubio in the United States Senate who led the effort to open the floodgates,” he said. “And he wasn’t alone, if my memory serves me correctly - there were roughly a dozen United States senators, Republicans, who joined with Marco Rubio in that effort.”
Mr. Rubio was an original member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” group that wrote the bill that passed the Senate on a bipartisan 68-32 vote in 2013, but later backed away from the legislation and has advocated a piecemeal approach to the issue.
“What I’m saying to people is, we can’t do it in a massive piece of legislation,” Mr. Rubio said this week on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And I know because I tried.”
AUDIO: Mo Brooks rips into House leadership
Mr. Rubio said if he were president, he would ask Congress to pass a specific bill on the E-Verify program to prevent visa overstays and improve border security, then work on modernizing the country’s legal immigration system, and then deal with the approximately 11 million people in the country illegally, with people here longer than a decade able to get a work permit if they pass a background check, learn English, pay taxes, and pay a fine.
“And after a substantial period of time in that status, assuming they haven’t violated any of the conditions of that status, they would be allowed to apply for legal residency, just like anybody else would, not a special process. And after you’re a legal resident, after a number of years, by law, you’re allowed to apply for citizenship,” Mr. Rubio said.
“It’s a long process. It’s a reasonable process. It’s a fair process. But it has to happen in that order. And it begins with serious enforcement measures,” he said.
But many conservatives have been upset with Mr. Rubio’s handling of the issue, and Mr. Brooks said the GOP has to make sure they elect the right people on the issue.
“So we in the Republican party first have to make sure that we elect Republicans who believe in border security, who believe in the sanctity of the borders of the United States of America, and who understand that this huge influx of both illegal alien labor coupled with lawful immigration is doing great damage to American families who are having a hard time finding jobs,” Mr. Brooks said.
Mr. Brooks also said he was disappointed in House and Senate leadership on the issue. A federal judge in Texas has halted President Obama’s executive actions on immigration that the president issued in November in the wake of a suit brought forth by Texas and 25 other states.
“We could have been on the leading edge of this instead of hoping that the states would do our jobs, and right now the House and Senate leadership have decided that in order to placate the United States Chamber of Commerce, they’re going to let the states do our job - the job of the United States Congress - and that’s embarrassing and that’s shameful,” Mr. Brooks said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Thailand's Government Savings Bank (GSB) president admitted that clients withdrew 30bn Baht (around $1bn) in a single-day last week and Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) and Krungthai Bank (KTB), although of a much smaller magnitude, have also seen withdrawal spikes of similar magnitude according to The Bangkok Post. The 'bank run' comes after speculation that cash at the state-run banks are being used by the government (which is in turmoil) to fund farmers (who have not received their 'promised' rice subsidies of over 130 bn Baht). Withdrawal requests are met with banks warning that there were insufficient funds at the time due to many depositors withdrawing cash. One depositor, rather ironically summed it up, "I started to feel concerned that my money may become only paper."
Via The Bangkok Post,
The deposit flight from the Government Savings Bank (GSB) is not out of fear for its financial stability but rather is a response to speculation the state-run bank is involved in lending to the troubled rice subsidy of the Yingluck Shinawatra government. Spikes in money withdrawal have also been seen at the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) and Krungthai Bank (KTB), although of a much smaller magnitude.
The bank run comes after the Thai government's "rice-pledging" scheme - which
The rice pledging scheme, a key plank of the Pheu Thai Party’s winning platform in 2011, is proving to be the Achilles heel of Yingluck Shinawatra’s caretaker government. Problems with the scheme, which offered farmers a price 40-50% higher than market prices, loomed shortly after it began in October 2011. The Yingluck government hoarded a large supply in state warehouses, wagering that global rice prices would rise. The attempt to manipulate the market backfired as rice flooded the global market. The bad bet has left Thailand with a record stockpile, and the country has relinquished its crown as top rice exporter to India and Vietnam. Thailand’s rice shipments in 2012 and 2013 totalled less than 7 million tonnes, down from 9-10 million tonnes in the past. The scheme is tarnishing the caretaker government, and things worsened when the National Anti-Corruption Commission last month announced a probe of Ms Yingluck’s role in the scheme after bringing formal corruption charges against two of her cabinet ministers.... With the huge stockpile and the government’s vow to buy every single grain, the rice subsidy is estimated to have caused losses north of 400 billion baht for the first two harvest seasons, quickly exhausting its 500-billion-baht outstanding budget. In response, the government sought 180 billion baht from the BAAC to make advance payments to farmers.
And the current bank run was sparked when...
Due to the cash crunch, the Yingluck government delayed paying 130 billion baht to 1.4 million farmers — a core constituency of Pheu Thai. Ms Yingluck’s decision to dissolve the House last Dec 9 has obstructed the caretaker government’s ability to borrow more to pay farmers, as such borrowing could be ruled unconstitutional and leave banks open to charges of wrongdoing.... GSB president Worawit Chailimpamontri insisted during urgent press conferences yesterday and Sunday that the GSB has extended 5 billion baht to the BAAC as part of its existing 20-billion-baht credit line to the BAAC in the interbank market, and that the funds were not meant to fund the rice pledging scheme....
Even so, the lending has spurred rumours that it would be used to pay the government’s overdue debt to rice farmers.
Interbank borrowing is a channel that allows |
between them has probably sucked up more energy than any other project they have ever done on the operational side of the business.David adds that this is a case where the cloud helps, because it is easier to distribute things. AWS can do some very clever things with failure migration.Even though it's funny we say that because a few weeks ago AWS had failures in the East Coast. Nothing is 100%.At this point, Basecamp is at 99.997% uptime which is something they are very proud of, but it doesn't come without blood, sweat, and tears. That level of reliability is absolutely not necessary in the beginning. When they first started with Basecamp, they had 99% uptime. While this sounds high, if you calculate that over the course of a year it is not that high.99% uptime means 361.35 days out of 365. Almost 4 days down.99.997% uptime means 364.99 days out of 365.Big difference, but not that important when you are just starting out (unless your service is something critical, of course).Instead, David says, spend more time figuring out your business model and your market. Over time, you can become more sophisticated.29:34Basecamp 3 is, in many ways, a continuation of the same techniques used in Basecamp 2.One of these important optimizations is called Russian Doll caching As you can see, it had a pretty big performance impact on Basecamp.What is it, and how does it work?Each segment of the page is cached individually, and then you build larger and larger caches from there.For example, say you have 99 comments and one of those comments gets edited. Instead of re-fetching all 99 of those comments, you only have to invalidate one. That's huge, especially when you do it to entire pages.This does, however, pose some important restrictions on the way you design templates and the UI.Obviously, the more people use the same cache, the better off you are. You can't do things that are user-specific, so you have to create placeholders and fill in the gaps with JavaScript. This is expensive to calculate from scratch. Some of the pages they have on Basecamp 3, for example, could take even hundreds of SQL queries to generate. Caching makes a huge difference."One of the traps a lot of web developers fall into is that they tend to care about the things that are easiest to measure."The things that are easiest to measure are things going on in the backend. How fast the server responds with a reply, for example. David says that as long as your server is responding in 200-300ms, then how much more can you really squeeze out? If it takes longer than a second, what is causing the 800ms? If your server takes longer than 300ms to respond, then yeah, definitely look into what's causing it (Maybe you need more caching?).Otherwise you need to look at all the other parts that are going into serving a page:You might be loading tons of assets, or images are being served in the wrong size and without the proper compression.Then look at how your CSS is structured:Are you using slow selectors? What about your JavaScript? Are you deferring the evaluation of your JS until the last possible moment? What are you doing to display things as soon as the browser starts parsing the HTML. These are all the different pieces you have to think about.Look at the overall time it takes for your page to load, not necessarily just individual pieces. This is one of the areas that they really focused on with Basecamp 3, especially since they are being more ambitious on the mobile side of things. They are using webviews which is loading parts of the real application inside of a native mobile application. That has to feel really fast, so a lot of effort went into that. Here's what they did:They cut down their JavaScript code by half. From 500kb compressed to 250kb.It made a very measurable difference in the perceived performance of pages. A lot of that cutting down came from getting rid of unnecessary jQuery code from plugins.David does say that jQuery plugins get a lot of hate, but he doesn't think it's appropriate. The thing with plugins is that they try to solve a lot of problems. When you take something like jQuery UI, which is a beast, and you just use it to do some drag & drop actions and a few other things, it's like taking a huge machine and using it for a tiny job. That's probably not going to be the fastest thing. They solved this problem by plucking out unused code.35:20Very late in the game. As late as you possibly can."I love plugins [...] they quickly let you test out an idea."This is a problem a lot of developers run into...they start working on a feature and optimize the crap out of it, only to find out that their team wants to scrap it. "What?!? I just spent 3 days on it!"That's a quick way of falling in love with code. By spending so much time optimizing it, you become defensive of it and your application suffers because of it. So the later you can optimize with this sort of thing, the better.David does clarify that there are certain times when this isn't the case. You could fall in a deep hole that makes it difficult to get out of. His advice? Keep an eye on this kind of optimization, but don't focus too much on it. This is mostly something you learn with experience and time after getting burned a few times.Another way you can work around this issue is by setting a path you could follow to optimize whatever it is you are coding. Structure it in such a way that allows you to optimize down the road without breaking everything. Even if the app is a little slow to begin with, as long as you have a path to making it fast and you keep it in mind, you'll be OK.37:38Something that's made Basecamp 3 seem so fast is the use of websockets. The previous versions used a variety of polling mechanisms and AJAX updates, etc.. that weren't using websockets. Websockets are really fast.The reason that it is so fast is, in part, because it is a persistent connection. A lot of the overhead is not necessarily from the work that it has to do, but instead from the fact that it has to create a new SSL connection every time. Because sometimes you get to reuse that connection and sometimes you don't. "It's a very opaque machine to look into."They have certain operations where establishing SSL connections is where the majority of time is spent, especially when they are further away from the data center. You can spend 500ms getting the handshake done, and then 100ms getting the update that you need. It's not proportionate, and it's not cool.With websockets, you make that connection once. You pay for the handshake one time, and then all the data going back and forth between the wire is already encrypted. It makes a big difference. Rails 5 is going to ship with an entire framework dedicated to websockets called Action Cable.They're using Action Cable in a bunch of the UI elements of how to load things dynamically and how to get updates. That has been a really nice benefit.Another thing worth mentioning is TurboLinks. This is a framework that they have evolved from the early stages of pjax and other techniques. Basically what it does is try to setup that persistent connection again. Just like websockets deal with the SSL handshake once, TurboLinks sets up a single process that deals with the evaluation of JavaScript and styles. It's kind of like a persistent process.David likes to think that when you're not using TurboLinks, it's kind of like using CGI. You essentially build up the entire "machine" that needs to reply with a response, one time, then you throw the whole thing away. That's a very inefficient way of doing things. That's part of the reason why single page JavaScript applications have been so fast in comparison to traditional web apps that weren't using this technique. They set up this persistent process.There was CGI and then there was Fast-CGI. Fast-CGI and any other persistent process basically compiles the system once, and then it keeps that instance around to respond to multiple requests. TurboLinks does the same thing on the client side.It sets up a persistent process once where it evaluates the JavaScript and CSS one time, and then any subsequent update from there can happen within that persistent process. Even an app as tightly optimized as Basecamp, where they only have 250kb of JS and 300kb of CSS, if you have to evaluate that every single page load, it's going to feel slow. It just is. TurboLinks takes care of that problem. This is actually even more important than the websocket work they've done.43:25"People think that this is a clash of civilizations. That there can only be one idea that prevails. And that's just bullshit."David says that generating HTML and any kind of view response on the server side is not only completely legitimate, it is his preferred way of creating web applications -- including brand new ones that are being created today.Now that doesn't mean that doing client side MVC is a bad thing. They also use some client side MVC principals. For example, they built something called Trix, which is a brand new WYSIWYG editor. It is completely client side JavaScript which works really well for this. It wouldn't make sense to hit the server if you're trying to italicize the font or something.It's a spectrum, and David says he likes to use the part of that spectrum that gives him the most torque and the most productivity. What he found was that doing everything as a client side JS app, when you talk about applications that are like Basecamp, Shopify or like GitHub, those apps don't win by moving all the logic to the client side. "They become, in my opinion, more fragile and worse off."On the flip side, it doesn't mean there aren't good use cases for it. But David goes on to say that the types of applications that he sees & uses on the web (and that most people are interested in building) are better off creating HTML on the server side and sprinkling dynamic elements into it with JS.People who really believe in client side JS, David says, see JS sprinkles as a negative, but he sees it as something wonderful.So what they'll do at Basecamp is sprinkle JS over server side generated HTML and it works great. They do SJR too which caused a bit of debate on Hacker News To illustrate with an example, say you are making an ajax call from the client side. Like 'delete this comment'. You click the delete link, what should the server side do?Well, the server side could just respond with an HTTP status code, and then on the client side you can have logic to make it disappear.Or, you can put that logic on a JavaScript response from the server that says "make this comment disappear".David says the latter becomes preferable when you're not just responding to remove a DOM ID from the tree. It's super powerful when it comes to add a bit of HTML to the DOM using the same template that was used to generate the page in the first place.For example: you are rendering a page that has a bunch of comments and you are rendering those comments on the server side. Now if you want to add a new comment to the page -- you could do that client side which would mean re-implementing the template that displays that comment again (if you were doing it where you still had HTML on the server side) and now you would have two templates -- or you would set it up as a fully client side application where what you are getting from the server is just a JSON dump and you have to generate everything on the client side. "I've not found that to be a good time either."Rails 5 is building what's called the dash-dash (--) API mode, which gives you the option to choose. If you don't want to generate HTML on the server side, you don't have to.Rails is a "big tent". It's a very large framework that's trying to solve a lot of things. We don't have to have everyone use all elements of the app. So Rails 5 is building in a specific mode which can be used when you generate a new application by typing '--API'. This is going to give you a structure that's targeted at generating just JSON on the server side. No view logic at all. No Asset Pipeline You're building a distributed system from the get-go, where the server is simply responsible for checking integrity, access control, and all that other logic you have to deal with in the model (which in a lot of apps is a big part of the logic).It's an API server, it just returns JSON. You build the view component separately as a client side JavaScript app. You can build other apps, and even native applications that are consumers of this app.All this just means you won't use a small part of the Rails framework. People do this all the time already. Think back to the jQuery plugins we talked about earlier...David wraps up by saying: "We don't all have to agree on all things, all the time, to make progress together."52:50It sucks. Bad.A DDoS of a sizable magnitude is pretty hard to completely shield yourself against. There is hardware you can buy that tries to mitigate these attacks, but the only real mitigation that works on a general level is having more bandwidth than your attackers do.If you have 40mbs of bandwidth and you are getting attacked by 200mbs, it's going to be pretty tough. What makes it a little bit easier is if you have good relationships with your upstream providers. David has heard horror stories from people who couldn't get any help from upstream providers. They're just stuck and they are being bombarded without the ability to defend themselves.After Basecamp was attacked, they started a DDoS survivors group with the Ops teams of other companies that have been attacked and they heard heart breaking stories of people (especially at smaller companies) who didn't have any power to get help at all. They were just down for a week. Basecamp was down for just under 2 hours.54:26They got a letter telling them to wire a certain amount of Bitcoins to a certain account.But, a lot of times, these attacks are against sites who are hosting something on behalf of someone else, and those people clearly don't want that to be there. If you're a GitHub or a publishing platform and somebody uses your systems to put up some code or writings that someone else doesn't like, they can attack you.That's why David believes Basecamp has been shielded from this for such a long time. They don't have any public data.55:43"I look for great software writers. [...] How do you actually figure that out?"There are a bunch of indicators that you could use.You could look at whether they attended an Ivy League school, or whether they worked at a prestigious firm, but David hasn't found these indicators to be helpful at all. "Not only do they produce duds, they also produce a ton of false negatives."Many of the best programmers in the world have learned programming themselves and not through any accredited school. They just figured it out. How do you get those people?For Basecamp, it's been a lot about looking at the code. David adds that a lot of programmers self-select themselves out of the pool.What?For example they might get anywhere between 100 and 150 applications. "I'd say that at least 80% of those are rejected outright because people just spam them with a resume that lists places they've worked and the year they graduated.""How is this actionable information? What am I going to use that for?" "I think resumes in the general sense are pretty worthless when they come to assessing the capabilities of a programmer."On top of this, people also usually write cover letters that are pretty generic. They don't show an interest in the company itself.So 80% of people fail these first two tests. That leaves 20%.For the 20%, he looks at their code. He's found that he can quickly make an opinion about skill after seeing a substantial amount of work from someone. Things like how much the person cares about the presentation of their code...not so much about spelling mistakes or omitting commas... "I make spelling mistakes all day long."However, there is a tipping point where it establishes a pattern, David goes on to say. "This person is just not diligent enough with the quality of their code, that this is not something that fits what we're looking for." "A lot of people fail that test.""A lot of the code is poorly indented, poorly named, poorly scoped."David goes on to say that they see files submitted to them with lines of code commented out! "They submit a piece of code without cleaning it up. It's kind of like inviting your prospective employer over to your house and you didn't fucking even clean up. You had some people over last night and there's all sorts of crap all over the floor."Doesn't mean you're a bad person, but c'mon!Beyond that, there can be clean code, but it's just not that great. That's the unfortunate thing where a lot of people wonder, "what do you mean by bad code?" "Can you tell me exactly what you mean?"It's kind of like sending someone a short story and you don't really like the story, so the author asks you to point to the line or paragraph you don't like. It doesn't usually work like that. You can't really teach someone how to write an interesting story over an email. You can't teach someone how to be a good programmer in a reply to a job application.It sucks to just reply back to a job application with "your code just isn't that good" because it's not actionable.So what kinds of things has David run into that look like 'bad code'?It's a lot of basic level stuff, like:1) Having methods that are 15 lines long and they do 5 different things.2) Tons of global variables.To avoid falling into these traps, David recommends a book called Smalltak Best Practice Patterns. It's kind of like a book that teaches you to write well. It goes into all the elements of proper naming and proper composition, for example.Finally, if you pass all of these tests, they make you write code for them. The only way to get around that is if you already have a large body of work in the open source community. They've hired a number of people straight from the Rails core group of contributors.With that being said, you don't have to contribute to any open source code to qualify at Basecamp.Anyway, they'll pay you to work on a side project so they can judge your skillset. Once you go through that process with a number of candidates, it's very clear who you need to hire. You get to see how they work, how they think, and how they solve problems.1:03:38"Yeah that is the worst thing ever.""Artificial coding sessions at the whiteboard are the devil, and companies that follow them deserve what they get.""If you pulled me out and made me write Bubble sort or something on the whiteboard, I'd probably fail that miserably.""I would fail the majority of these whiteboard tests."Can Brave's Webtorrent Integration Boost Bitcoin Adoption?
While Netflix and other video streaming services rose to prominence, Bittorrent lost a major chunk of its user base, as viewers found Netflix more convenient than downloading large files. Bitcoin-native Brave browser has recently integrated Webtorrent which could pull many consumers back to torrenting and potentially increase Bitcoin adoption.
Also read: Brave Browser Finally Unleashes Bitcoin Micropayments
The Rise of Netflix
In 2008, Bittorrent traffic accounted for roughly one-third of the Internet’s bandwidth. By February 2013, it fell to a low of 3.35% worldwide. Meanwhile, video streaming operations like Netflix took its place. As of 2015, the behemoth video service accounted for 36.5% of all downstream North American Internet bandwidth during peak hours.
Last year, DSLReports researchers noted that “the sharp climb in Netflix usage continues to coincide, rather un-coincidentally, with a notable drop in Bittorrent traffic”.
The reason Netflix has gained Bittorrent’s market share is because “It’s convenient, it’s not that expensive, and the selection is just good enough”, reported Slate. A former Bittorrent user told the publication: “I’m happy to pay $8 a month for not-terrible selection and amazing convenience”.
New Technology, New Opportunities
Webtorrent is a powerful new technology that allows web pages to stream Bittorrent content directly to the browser. Clicking on a torrent magnet link could open up an audio or video player and start streaming it right in the same window, just as if they had paid to watch a Netflix program.
Brave CEO Brendan Eich first tweeted that he was “Excited about #webtorrent coming into Brave” in November. By the 18th, the new feature was added as a default extension but there was no official announcement about it.
At first, there were a few bugs to sort out. However, today Webtorrent works well in Brave and can handle high-definition movies through the browser flawlessly, as tested by Bitcoin.com. Now, anyone with the latest version of Brave who clicks on a Bittorrent magnet link can now either download the file in question, or view/listen to it in their browser window.
Since convenience is reportedly one of the main factors that drove users from their Bittorrent clients to Netflix, the convenience of using the Brave Browser to torrent could also draw many consumers back to torrenting.
Potential New Bitcoin Users
Recently, Brave has been working on adding Chrome extensions to its platform. Soon they will be available, thereby removing one of the largest barriers to users switching from their existing browser over to Brave.
The company has made no secret that they promote Bitcoin, and have even developed their own bitcoin micropayments system to help pay publishers and users alike, growing the bitcoin economy from both sides.
Would you switch from Netflix to Brave with Webtorrenting? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Brave, Google, and Netflix
Bitcoin.com is a unique online destination in the bitcoin universe. Buying bitcoin? Do it here. Want to speak your mind to other bitcoin users? Our forum is always open and censorship-free. Like to gamble? We even have a casino.You may have read my recent article "Easy Samba Setup," which illustrated just how easy it can be to set up the Samba file and print server. Yes, that task can be easy, but the method I outlined does require you to take advantage of the command line. There are a lot of users who shy away from the command line as if it were the plague. For those users there are options. One of those options is the Samba tool from the Gadmin suite of tools.
The Webmin administration tool is a very powerful suite of web-based admin tools (for the Linux operating system) that have been around for some time. Webmin includes numerous modules covering nearly every aspect of Linux administration. Such tools include:
DHCPD
Bind
Apache
CVS
Procmail
SSH
Samba
and hundreds of others.
In this article I will show you how to install Webmin and use it to configure your Samba server.
Installation
Everyone who despises the command line will be happy to know that installing Webmin is fairly simple to install...for the most part. There are dependencies that must be met, which will be determined by your system. And, if you choose to ignore the command line, there is a small glitch that must be resolved - fear not, it's simple. I want to focus this tutorial on the new user - one who does not want to have to deal with the command line. To that end, let's get around the issue of dependencies with the help of Synaptic. I want to show you this method because there can be an issue when installing Webmin from the binary package found on the site. Let's use Ubuntu as an example. Follow these simple steps:
Hit the F2 key combination. Enter sudo synaptic and hit the Enter key. Search for "perl" (no quotes) and mark it for installation. Search for "libnet-ssleay-perl" and mark it for installation. Click Apply to install.
Now that you have the dependencies out of the way, this is where it gets somewhat tricky. You can take the time and install using the source code of Webmin. During that installation there will be numerous questions asked. It's really not difficult. If you want to go that route, here are the steps:
Download the tar from the Webmin site. Open up a terminal window and change to the directory the Webmin tar file was saved. Unpack the tar with the command tar xvfz webmin-XXX.tar.gz Where XXX is the release number. Change into the newly created directory with the command cd webmin-XXX Where XXX is the release number. Issue the command sudo sh setup.sh Answer the questions asked.
You see, that's not really all that difficult. If, however, you want to go an easier route follow these steps:
Download the.deb package from the download site. Open up a terminal window and change to the directory housing the.deb file. Issue the command sudo dpkg -i webmin-XXX.deb Where XXX is the release number. If you managed to install all the dependencies, Webmin will install. If not, fear not. If you did get an unmet dependency, open up Synaptic. Synaptic will inform you there are broken packages. Click Edit > Fix Broken Packages. Click Apply. If you had to fix broken packages, go back and re-run the dpkg command to re-install Webmin.
You should now be ready to fire up the tool.
Using Webmin to Configure Samba
Now it's time to set up Samba. At the end of the Webmin installation, you will be given instructions on how to reach the tool. Most likely that will be https://localhost:10000. Give that url a try in your favorite browser. That url should bring up the Webmin main page.
From this main page click on the Servers link in the left navigation. When you click the Servers link it will expand to show you the various modules you have installed. Of those modules, Samba will be one. Click on the Samba entry to open up the Samba configuration page.
Now I am going to walk you through the steps in order to quickly create a Samba share on your machine. I am going to assume a rather simple route - that you want to share out the /home directory to all users on the system and you want to give both read and write access to users. Here are the steps:
1. Click on the Create a New File Share from the top section (see Figure 2).
2. In the new window you will need to enter the following information:
a) Share name: Give your share a name.
b) Directory to share: Choose the directory you want to share.
c) Comment: Add a comment if you need.
d) Leave the rest as default (we will change some of this next).
e) Click Save.
You will now find yourself back at the Share listing. You want to click on your newly created share so you can make some more advanced configurations. When your share opens up you will now find a few more options available:
Security and Access control
File Permissions
File Naming
Miscellaneous Options
The first thing you want to do is click on Security and Access control. In this window (see Figure 3) you will want to take care of the following:
Make sure the share is writable.
If you want to allow guest access make sure it is checked.
If you want to change host access do so in hosts to allow and hosts to deny.
If you want to add valid users enter the users in the Valid users listing.
Once you have configured this section, click Save and you will be back at your share setup page.
The File Permissions is the next section. In this window there are four options you need to check:
New Unix File mode
New Unix directory mode
Force Unix file mode
Force Unix directory mode
If you want your users to have both read and write access to the share, you need to see all of these to 755. Once you have done that click Save. Of course within these configurations, you can really get granular with your Share set up. I am only showing you how to create the easiest Share with the most access.
Once you have your Share complete there is but one step left: add users to Samba.
User Configuration
Go back to the Samba module page on your Webmin installation and scroll down a bit. You will see the section for Samba Users. Click on the Convert UNIX Users to Samba Users link. On this new page (see Figure 4) click the Convert Users button and all of your existing users will be added to the Samba system. Now any user will be able to access your Samba shares.
Finally, go back to the main screen and click the Restart Samba Servers button. Your users should now be able to access the shares on that system.
A Few Tips
There are a few things you should remember.
1) If you add a new user to the system, don't forget to convert that user to a Samba user.
2) If you need to add a new user to share access, don't forget to do so through the Security and Access window of the share.
3) If you have Windows users that need to access shares, make sure they have an account on the Samba server that matches (both username and password) on the Windows machine. NOTE: This is only necessary when using SECURITY = USER.
Final Thoughts
Samba used to be an incredibly difficult system to configure. This is no longer the case. Whether configured from the command line, from the GNOME desktop, or from Webmin, just about anyone can get a Samba share shared out to users. Please note: This setup I have outlined does not create the most secure system. If security is a concern, you will want to make sure you go through this process again with a closer eye on security and sharing issues unique to your environment.Media playback is not supported on this device Chapecoense survivor saw crash in dream
Sirli Freitas took one, final phone call from her husband Cleberson Silva before he had to switch off his phone.
"There was so much background noise," she said. "So much laughter and fun.
"I said, 'are you really on a plane, or in a bar?'"
Journalist Silva was on a plane that went down in the Andes on 29 November. He was one of 71 people who died along with almost the entire Chapecoense football team.
The players were en route to the biggest match in the club's 43-year history, the final of the Copa Sudamericana against Colombia's Atletico Nacional.
On Saturday, Chapecoense will play their first match since the crash - a friendly against defending Brazilian league champions Palmeiras.
The people of Chapeco will, once-again, fill the small Arena Conda to see some of the 22 new players who make up the squad.
Three of the six survivors were players, including central defender Neto, who was one of the team's leaders.
He lay for six hours, trapped beneath the fuselage and trees, before being the last to be pulled out.
Remarkably, he's already started walking without crutches.
Sirli Freitas' husband died in the Andes plane crash
"I remember the lights went out suddenly, then I started praying, asking God to help us," he said. "But a lot of people thought the plane was just landing, because it was not an abrupt fall.
"I remember the moment that I couldn't hear the plane engine anymore. It was just the wind, and then an alarm.
"But no-one got desperate, there was a lot of people praying. These are the last memories I have."
When Neto woke up in hospital, he was told he had been injured in the match because nobody knew quite how to break the news to him.
But the truth dawned on him when there were no video clips of the match or evidence of his injury.
Chapeco is a quiet, unassuming city with an air of settled contentment. Its population of about 209,553 is only slightly higher than the number of people who crammed into the Maracana Stadium to watch the 1950 World Cup final between Uruguay and Brazil.
But they form a tight-knit community, and a major part of that is the Chapecoense football team.
Club flags and signs adorn shops and bars all over the city.
The relationship between citizens and club is one of mutual and humble respect and affection, according to 41-year-old Karina Dini.
"It was a strong bond, we were all a family," she said, sitting in the office of the language school she runs with her husband.
"There weren't any players who were going to parties or anything. Most of them were very committed. We could meet them in restaurants or the supermarket.
"It was amazing because players from the first division don't get that contact with people. They have big cars, they can't talk to people."
Like Karina, whose husband's uncle died in the crash, most people here know someone who was on the plane, or someone, like Sirli Freitas, who's been affected directly.
"My eight-year-old son understands [what happened], but his sister, who's three, still asks for her dad even though she knows he's not here any more," she said, through tears.
"If you ask her about him, she says that he was on the plane that crashed, but but at other times she'll say, 'let's call daddy'."
Outside the Arena Conda, there's a message to the world: "We were looking for a word to say thanks for all the love we've received, and we found several."
Around the stadium, the streets have been painted green and white, in the club's colours.
There has been a steady procession of press conferences, introducing some of the 22 new players. Rui Costa was brought in from Brazilian club Gremio and made director of football a week after the tragedy.
Media playback is not supported on this device Chapecoense: The day football wept
Costa is adamant that Saturday's match is far more than a friendly.
"When I got here we had four players and a devastated dressing room. It was all about sadness and silence," he said.
"A dressing room should never be silent and here, it was. So we have accomplished our first goal - you can see a football team training here."
"We had a list with 90 names that we were interested in," he said, as he explained how he assembled the squad in less than two months.
"We were choosing based on technical characteristics, then behaviour, then salary.
"We were working almost 24 hours a day because we knew it was not about just putting them on the pitch to play together.
"We had to respect the culture of the club. That's what they hired me for."
The last time the people of Chapeco went to the Arena Conda, it was on a day of torrential rain, to receive the bodies of their players, directors and journalists.
On Saturday, they will return, to honour the city's fallen, and to meet their new family.Infiniti has revealed to the world a car set to compete in the 2015 British Touring Car Championship. Yeah, us neither.
Surprising most of the racing world in one fell swoop, the luxury arm of Nissan announced this morning that it would back the non-profit ‘Support Our Paras’ team. ‘Support Our Paras’ is the official charity of The Parachute Regiment.
Team principal Derek Palmer will oversee the squad, which will include a number of injured paratroopers who will work on the car throughout the season.
The team’s driver line up consists of Richard Hawken - triple club championship winner - and Derek Palmer Jr. And, as you can see in the pictures above, they’ll be driving a pair of very, very angry NGTC Infiniti Q50s.
No word on spec has been released, but using the BTCC ‘Next Generation Touring Car’ guidelines, we know that both cars will run modified 2.0-litre turbocharged engines with over 300bhp, a six-speed sequential gearbox and rear-wheel-drive.
There’ll also be an assortment of body paraphernalia that instantly transforms the humdrum Q50 from curious saloon to something verging more towards the cooler side of the wall. Looks good, doesn’t it?
Not only that, but the team has honourable aims, too, raising funds for the “welfare and benevolence” of injured Paras and their families. All profits generated by the team will be donated to the SOP charity.
BTCC director Alan Gow said: “It’s fantastic to welcome a new manufacturer to the BTCC and particularly a premium brand such as Infiniti.”
Let the paint-swapping commence…0 Three human skulls donated to thrift store
SEATTLE - Quick Facts:
3 skulls donated to Bellevue Goodwill
2 used in clinic or for teaching
3rd skull is that of Native American child
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office is asking for the public’s help to find who donated three human skulls to a Bellevue thrift store.
Related Headlines PHOTOS: Clues in mystery skull donation
There is no information about who donated the skulls to the Bellevue Goodwill or how they came to be in the donor’s possession.
The KCME said two of the skulls of from adults and were clearly used in a medical clinic or teaching setting.
The third skull appears to be the fragile remains of a Native American child. Forensic anthropologist Kathy Taylor said the skull is that of a 5 or 6-year-old and is at least 100 years old.
According to state law, the Native American skull must be returned to its tribe of origin, but the ME needs more information to identify the correct tribe.
The office is asking that the person who donated the skulls come forward, without penalty, to provide more details about where the skull came from.
The skulls were donated in June to the Goodwill at 14515 NE 20th Street in Bellevue. Employees there realized the skulls were human remains and contacted the Medical Examiner’s Office and police.
The ME provided photos of a scarf, box and the two medical skulls included in the donation. See the photos here.
A photo of the child's skull was not provided out of respect.
The KCME said if you are given or inherit clinical or archaeological remains, you can turn them in without penalty to the Medical Examiner’s Office. If you inadvertently discover human remains, such as buried or in a public place, you must notify law enforcement.
Anyone with information about the three donated skulls, or who has other human skeletal remains, should contact the King County Medical Examiner’s Office at 206-731-3232, ext.1.
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including one titled “FCC to Free Internet from Obama’s ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules.” The story claimed opposition to the plan was pushed primarily by “(liberal billionaire George) Soros’ pro-censorship coalition.”
“Since these 2015 regulations passed, Internet giant portals like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have moved to become the judge, jury, and executioner of the contact we read on the Internet, under the guise of eliminating ‘fake news,’” InfoWars writer Jerome Corsi wrote.
But Karr said the new bill would make telecoms like Comcast actual juries of content, forcing users to pay more for speedier access to some website.
“It’s largely a mystery how this has become a bipartisan issue,” said Karr. “Anyone who sees the internet as a tool to organize and get their message beyond the mainstream media, protecting an open internet is vital.”
Internet consumer advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have lobbied against the changes for years, saying the changes would create a caste system on the web that allows people with more money to access some parts of the web faster than other users.
Opposition came in the form of lobbying money from companies like Verizon and Comcast, which used social media to launch a months-long ad campaign in favor of stripping Obama-era net neutrality protections.
“Usually when we see that sort of saber-rattling activism on the far right, there is some money behind it,” said Karr. “The phone and cable lobby very actively funds some of the net neutrality activism.”
Earlier this year, 27 Americans filed a complaint to the FCC when their identities were stolen and attached to public comments to the FCC, asking for the end of Net Neutrality.
Polls by real Republicans show that they support Net Neutrality protections. A GOP polling firm found that 75 percent of Republicans said that internet service providers should be “prohibited from slowing or blocking websites or video services like Netflix” in July.
“It imposes the gatekeeper media model on the internet by giving power to prioritize content to phone and cable companies,” said Karr. “There are economic incentives for them to prioritize, but also political incentives for these companies to want these rules.”
In other words, the new net neutrality rules would re-fill the mainstream media swamp that a lot of the fringe websites claim they’re trying to drain.Photo: NASA
How do you feel about the economy these days? How about the environment?Do you think we’re sitting in a better spot than we were 10, 20, or 30 years ago?
It’s hard to find folks who are satisfied with either economic or environmental conditions.
In the first place, the way we run the economy is producing appalling results.
We have a mix of financial fiascos, unacceptable unemployment, and a dismal disparity between the haves and the have-nots.
And if you’re not soiling yourself (or at least somewhat concerned) about what’s happening on land, sea and air, then you’re not paying much attention to the omnipresent signs of environmental breakdown.
Each day it becomes more apparent that we are on a misguided mission. Pursuit of perpetual economic growth is not a winning proposition for a lasting prosperity.
Building a bigger economy can make sense in some circumstances, but always aiming to build a bigger economy means taking an ever-bigger chunk out of the earth’s ecosystems and the life-support services they provide.
Why, then, do so many people believe in the fantasy of infinite growth on a finite planet? Is it because we can’t come up with a better idea? Is it because the rich and powerful have trapped the rest of us in their web of conspiracy? Is it because people are hopelessly greedy and materialistic?
At various times and places we might answer these questions affirmatively, but we can more commonly answer, “No, no, and no.” Putting aside conspiracy theories for the moment, there are three honest (but bogus) reasons why we pursue economic growth past the point of effectiveness and reason.
Bogus Reason #1: We think we have to have economic growth to create jobs.
People, and especially politicians, want jobs. We’ve used the blunt tool of economic growth to create jobs for decades, but do we really need economic growth to have good jobs? It’s true that there are typically more job openings in a growing economy, but there are other, less costly ways to make sure jobs are available. Growth, however, gives corporate elites an easy out. They can point to economic growth as the job creator while doing what they want without considering the impacts of their decisions on jobs.
If jobs are really the priority, then we wouldn’t replace people with machinery. And we wouldn’t eliminate service jobs to shift more and more burden onto people to serve themselves. My friend Chris works as a gas station attendant and provides a valuable service pumping gas for customers. He wouldn’t have a job, however, if he lived elsewhere. He happens to live in Oregon where the law says that only professional attendants can pump gas. In most states, gas station attendants have been replaced by customer labour and credit card readers. This sort of substitution has become commonplace in the name of efficiency — policy makers find it easier (or at least they’ve found it easier in the past) to avoid considering jobs explicitly. Just grow the economy and let Chris find a job elsewhere — that’s just the way it goes if his job is eliminated and the customer is forced to pick up the slack.
The truth is that we can have good jobs without producing and consuming evermore stuff. For starters, we can institute policies to make job-sharing an attainable reality. Many people would gladly trade some salary for more time. We can also stop the process of eliminating jobs through outsourcing and machinery-for-people swaps. Of course stopping this process would require a change in corporate incentives…
Bogus Reason #2: Screwy corporate incentives require growth.
Shareholder corporations are severely flawed. In my household, let’s say my overriding goal is to maximise my earnings. What would I do? I would take the highest paying job I could get. I certainly wouldn’t be involved in public policy or a not-for-profit enterprise. I wouldn’t spend much time with my wife or daughter — that would be time away from my career, and it could eat into my earnings (cue the Cat’s in the Cradle). If the goal is so single-focused, the results aren’t surprising. Profit maximization, whether it occurs in my household or in a corporation, produces perverse outcomes.
We know this about shareholder corporations. We know there are better ways to set up productive enterprises that have more worthy goals, but we don’t make the change. The reason is that we are addicted to two things corporations do well. First, we’re addicted to consumer novelty. We’ve gotta have the latest and greatest. People chase after I-phones, I-pods, I-pads, and plenty of other I-wants. Second, we’re addicted to receiving unearned income from investments in stocks or mutual funds. People who can afford it are invested in corporations. Their personal wealth is tied to the ability of corporations to grow. We’ve become accustomed to the idea of passive investment — we put extra money into an account and do absolutely nothing but watch the size of the account get bigger. Are we really entitled to get something for nothing?
Bogus Reason #3: We refuse to pay attention to the downsides of economic growth.
Few people are studying ecology and understanding how economic growth is degrading environmental resources. In fact, a whopping 21% per cent of college students are business majors. And as Dr. Seuss noted in his classic book, The Lorax, “Business is business, and business must grow!” While we continue to tempt fate by disrupting and dismantling natural systems that we only partially understand, our attention is locked on the results of reality TV shows, Tiger Woods’s sex life, Jennifer Anniston’s and Justin Bieber’s haircuts, fairytale weddings of figurehead monarchs, and other matters of critical importance.
While we’re failing to pay attention, those who benefit most from growth — the corporate elites — will keep on doing what they do, and they’ll keep on selling it to the rest of us. If we don’t start asking, “why?” real soon, our kids will one day be asking “How did we let this happen?”
This post originally appeared on Casse.
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Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.Image caption Rosie Winterton (right) becomes one of John Bercow's three deputies
Former Labour chief whip Dame Rosie Winterton has been elected as a deputy speaker of the House of Commons.
The Doncaster Central MP was one of three members to be chosen in a secret ballot, succeeding Natascha Engel who lost her seat at the election.
Labour's Lindsay Hoyle topped the ballot and was re-elected as chairman of ways and means. In that role, he will preside over Budget debates.
Tory Eleanor Laing was also re-elected as another deputy to John Bercow.
The Commons Speaker, who has held the role since 2009, was himself re-elected without a formal vote two weeks ago.
As he first stood for the Commons as a Conservative MP, Mr Bercow's deputies must be comprised of one Conservative and two opposition MPs to ensure balance.
Labour's Roberta Blackman-Woods was the only other candidate who stood in the election. Details of the number of votes each candidate got will be published later.
As no other Conservative candidate put their name forward, Mrs Laing was automatically chosen as first deputy chair of ways and means.
Deputy speakers, who stand in for Mr Bercow in the main Commons chamber and have a range of other duties, were elected for the first time in 2010.The Phase-I Mohali saanjh kendra is among the “busiest”. ( Express Photo by Jasbir Malhi)
It’s chilly, windy and rainy. On top of such weather, Phool Bibi’s son Mirza Talib has just lost his wallet and all the valuables in it — his money, his Aadhaar card, his vehicle’s registration certificate and his driving licence. Adjusting her half-wet salwar-kameez and folding her umbrella, the 50-year-old admits she was dreading the prospect of going to a police station to file an FIR for theft.
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“Thankfully, they sent me here,” says Bibi, walking into a centre that looks nothing like a regular police station — no yellow building and no red-and-blue boards. The “saanjh kendra” or “Police Station Outreach Centre” where Bibi has arrived to register her complaint is a swanky, steel building with neat, well-marked-out counters and an LCD TV inside.
At first, Bibi, who calls herself “not too worldly wise”, is slightly intimidated at this stark change from a police station. Then the receptionist directs her to two counters — at one is a woman constable and at the other, her male counterpart. Both are dressed in crisp white shirts, brown blazers, and brown ties. The only khaki element they retain are their trousers.
It is noon and there is no queue. The woman constable, Karamveer Kaur, smiles at Bibi and gives her a Daily Diary Report (DDR) form to fill. Bibi sits on one of the plastic chairs arranged in a row, and fills out the details — name, age, complaint, address, etc. She submits it to Kaur, who copies the information onto a computer and sends it to the central server of the Punjab Police, from where it can be accessed by the police station in whose jurisdiction the loss/theft took place. She gives Bibi a receipt of the DDR and informs her that she would have to approach the police station for follow-ups on her complaint.
Soon, more people have walked in. Simranjit Kaur, a BDS student, has come to register a complaint for her mother’s lost/stolen ATM card, while Lakhwinder Singh and Amarjeet Singh are here to report the loss of their cellphones. Kaur repeats the procedure with each.
This saanjh kendra in Phase-1 Mohali handles, on an average, 50 walk-ins every day. Set up in 2012 by the Punjab government, the 363 saanjh kendras across the state deal with registration of foreigners, investigation of cases of missing passports, complaints of fraud by travel agents, NRI complaints, tenant verification, registration and investigation of servants, passport verification, police clearance certificate at time of foreign immigration, apart from other minor clearances.
Only heinous crimes such as murder, rape, abduction or drug trafficking are left to be handled by police stations. “Besides reducing the workload of police stations, we also spare people inconvenience,” says sub-inspector Narinder Singh who is in charge of the Phase-1 saanjh kendra. Each centre is headed by a sub-inspector and has at least two constables, one of them a woman, along with a receptionist. “The minimum educational requirement for the constable is senior secondary education. We train them in computers and communication skills for two weeks,” says Singh.
The centres are self-sustaining, with operating costs, including staff salaries, phone/electricity bills and computer maintenance, compensated by the collection of fees — complainants are charged between Rs 5 and Rs 200 for services offered.
Having uploaded some 25 complaints by 2 pm, Kaur takes a lunch break. “I joined the police department three years ago but for the last two years, I am with this centre. I was trained for 15 days in public dealing as well as computers before I was assigned here,” she says. Though she feels that this work is “less challenging” than being deployed at a police station”, Kaur prefers the saanjh kendra. “It’s a 9-5 job, and suits me because I have two little children.”
The Phase-1 centre is among the “busiest” saanjh kendras. But the numbers don’t really suggest a hectic schedule. “Between September 17, 2012, and May 1, 2014,” says Singh, “the centre issued 9,469 DDRs, carried out 6,779 tenant verifications, 322 service verifications, 547 character verifications, 5,440 passport verifications and offered services to 23,285 people”.
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Perhaps, it’s because the centres only help a person with the first step in dealing with the police. The next visit has to be to the police station.News two of Beijing’s most vocal newspapers have been taken over by govt officials intensifies crackdown fears.
Two of Beijing’s most popular and outspoken newspapers have been taken over by the Chinese Communist Party in a move that is inevitably going to be seen as part of a broader crackdown on dissent.
According to a report on the government-operated Qianlong website quoted by AFP, The Beijing News and the Beijing Times, both known for regularly running stories ‘critical of local governments around China, as well as articles that defy edicts issued by the party’s propaganda bureau ordering media to show Chinese society in a positive light,’ have now been taken over by CCP media authorities.
According to Qianlong, the move has in part been motivated by a desire to rein in an advertising war between the two publications. However, the decision has already been met with criticism from bloggers who see it as part and parcel of the Chinese government’s crackdown on critical voices in the country.
The South China Post, meanwhile, notes that ‘despite being positioned as city dailies, both papers used to be overseen by the state-level Central Publicity Department, which made them free from reporting directives issued by the Beijing city authorities.’
It says that the decision was announced at an internal meeting held at The Beijing News offices by a group of seven or eight officials headed by Lu Wei, who is deputy chief of the municipal publicity department.
Officials in the South China Post report were keen to stress that the move was aimed at making The Beijing News more competitive. But it comes in the same week that international media reported that China is mulling changes to its residential surveillance laws that would effectively allow the detention of dissidents in secret locations. Indeed, according to Kelley Currie, a senior fellow and China specialist at the Project 2049 Institute, such ‘changes,’ although technically a tightening of the rules, are ‘actually just window dressing for something that already goes on.’
‘They already do this, even though the law doesn't really allow it,’ she told me. ‘So this would just have the effect of bringing this essentially lawless behaviour, that is contrary to basic universal human rights standards, under Chinese law and creating a legal framework for repression.’
The takeover of the newspapers appears to be yet another step in what has been an intensifying crackdown on dissent in China, a crackdown that has included the roundup of activists and lawyers, as well as heavy security presences at potential flashpoints.Image copyright Newscast Online
People in England who have had mental health problems are five times as likely to be admitted to hospital as an emergency as those who have not, a study shows.
But the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation think tanks found most admissions were for physical ailments.
Researchers said the findings suggested the NHS was too often treating mental health conditions in isolation.
Overall, just 20% of admissions were explicitly linked to mental health.
Instead, mental health patients were more likely to be admitted as an emergency for what are usually routine problems like hip replacements.
The think tanks looked at more than 100 million hospital records between 2009-10 and 2013-14 for people with mental health problems and those without.
'Essential care needs'
In the final year, for every 1,000 people with mental health problems there were 628 emergency admissions, compared with 129 among those without - five times the rate.
Visits to A&E units were also three times higher, with more than 1,300 attendances for every 1,000 patients with mental health problems.
The researchers said many of these could have been prevented with better care.
Report author Holly Dorning said: "It is striking that people with mental ill health use so much more emergency care than those without and that so much of this isn't directly related to their mental health needs.
"This raises serious questions about how well their other health concerns are being managed.
"It is clear that if we continue to treat mental health in isolation, we will miss essential care needs for these patients."Story highlights Planned Parenthood says their website has been hacked by "extremists"
The group has been under fire recently thanks to several highly edited, undercover videos
Washington (CNN) Planned Parenthood's website went down Wednesday afternoon in what the nonprofit health services organization called "an attack by extremists."
The hack comes in the wake of the publication of several undercover videos by anti-abortion activists seemingly showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissue and organs for medical research. Selling fetal organs for a profit is a felony, but the footage is highly edited and it is not clear that is what the officials are discussing.
It also comes a day after a judge on Wednesday barred the same anti-abortion group from releasing any covert footage of top officials at a California-based company involved in fetal tissue research.
The website was downed using a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, a tactic used by hackers to flood a site with traffic and keep users from accessing the site, said Dawn Laguens, Planned Parenthood's executive vice president, in a statement issued Wednesday evening.
Read MoreProjects funded through the trust fund include investment in the Detroit riverfront, purchase of the scenic outlook in the Upper Peninsula known as Brockway Mountain, and purchase of lakefront acreage at Saugatuck Dunes.
Here’s how it worked for decades: Municipalities around the state submit applications for grants to purchase land for public use or develop public land for recreational purposes The staff of the Department of Natural Resources score those applications based on a set of criteria. Those scored applications are passed along to the five-member board, which generally recommends projects that score the highest.
Here’s this year’s list of project applications along with their scores.
The board passes along those recommendations to the Legislature, which approves them. Though funding for the projects comes from the trust fund with no money coming from state coffers, the Legislature still must formally appropriate the money.
Last week, Booher changed that routine. He took a Senate bill that approved funding for $87.7 million in projects recommended by the trust fund board and tacked on another $7.7 million from the fund’s reserves to pay for 43 other projects the trust fund had considered but rejected.
Booher’s actions were “unprecedented,” said Steve DeBrabander, manager of the grants management section of the Department of Natural Resources. “I don’t think this has ever happened before – adding projects (to the trust fund board’s recommendations).”
Booher’s amendment was approved by the Senate Joint Capital Outlay subcommittee on March 23, and the bill will now be considered by the Senate Appropriations committee.
Brad Garmon, director of conservation and emerging issues at the Michigan Environmental Council, the nonprofit advocacy arm of about 70 environmental groups, admits the amendment puts environmental groups in the odd position of complaining about too much funding for too many recreational projects.
But Garmon and others worry about the setting a dangerous precedent that allows a partisan Legislature to determine recreational project priorities rather than a board that, while appointed by the governor, has guarded its independence.
“We have a 40-year history of this board being above the fray and making decisions that were legitimate and being free of political wrangling, all things you might lose if you have the legislature involved,” Garmon said.
Booher’s actions may not be constitutional. In 1983, Michigan voters passed a ballot measure which guaranteed constitutional protection for the trust fund to prevent legislators from raiding the fund balance. While environmentalists view Booher’s action as taking money from the fund, Booher disagrees, arguing that he’s merely appropriating funds for additional recreation projects.
“It’s quite ironic that people who want to talk about the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution want to turn a blind eye to the words of the Michigan Constitution,” said Bill Rustem, a fund board member and the former director of strategy for Gov. Rick Snyder.
“The people have spoken on how these dollars should be spent – and that’s to be determined by the Natural Resources Trust Fund board, not the legislature,” Rustem said. “The board is trying to preserve the buying power of the trust fund over time, and some legislators don’t like that… It’s a separation of powers question.”
According to DeBrabander, the trust fund had about $600 million in the bank ($500 million in royalty money plus investment earnings) leading into this round of grants. Because no new money from oil and mineral leases is coming into the trust, its only revenue is from earnings on investments. Thinking about long-term viability of the fund, the board made a decision to not spend all of the investment earnings for the year, DeBrabander said.
“The trust fund board could have chosen to fund every project they received, but they chose to strike a balance,” DeBrabander said.
That’s not the balance Booher would like to strike. The senator, whose district in Northern Michigan ranges almost from Lake Michigan almost to Lake Huron, said he believes the trust should fund more projects from its earnings. Even funding all of the additional projects, the fund balance would still be $300,000 higher than at the end of grant making last year, Booher said.
“You may not be able to do it every year, but this year you can,” Booher said. “Those 43 (additional) projects, almost every legislator has a project on the list.”
That’s the problem, Jameson of the League for Conservation Voters said. “There’s a reason we set up a board to administer the decisions around grant funding, to take it out of the hands of the Legislature,” Jameson said. “There’s an underlying conflict of interest (for legislators) that you’ll want to fund projects in your district.”
Jameson and Garmon of the Michigan Environmental Council both said they don’t believe Booher is attempting to undermine the trust fund board. But they said they worry about the next legislative intervention, and the one after that.
“The idea of funding all these projects is not bad, but if it gets to be a regular (event) it could undermine funding in the future,” Jameson said.Of all the consoles you'd expect to see Castlevania ported to, the Atari 2600 is not one of them. Enthusiastic homebrew developers, however, have managed the impossible and brought Simon Belmont's painstakingly tough adventure to Atari's flagship system.
This re-imagining of the 1986 title is in fact a ROM hack of Konami's earlier arcade classic, Roc 'N Rope, which was ported to the Atari 2600 in 1983. In Roc 'N Rope you make the most of a whip wielding adventurer who scales a cliff-face in true Indiana Jones style.
While it might not be a perfect copy of the Nintendo NES classic we all know and love, it's great seeing such dedication in homebrew development to gift the Atari 2600 its very own take on the whip cracking epic. This feat, however, is nothing new as last year also saw the arrival of Super Mario Bros on the Atari 2600, or at least a stripped down version of it.
Link: Download Castlevania for the Atari 2600
Source: Mo5West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck is the most likely candidate to replace DeLoss Dodds as Texas’ athletic director, according to a report by Orangebloods.com.
He could interview with a seven-member advisory committee as early as this week and be named the new athletic director as early as November, according to the report.
Luck declined comment to FOX Sports Southwest via telephone on Monday afternoon when asked if he had been in contact with Texas or anyone representing Texas.
A contract could be finalized by Nov. 13 or 14, according to the report, when regents will hold a previously scheduled meeting.
Dodds announced earlier this month that he would be stepping down on Aug. 31, 2014, ending his 32-year tenure.
Luck is a graduate of West Virginia, but played five seasons for the Houston Oilers. His son, Andrew Luck, went to Stanford and is the quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts.
Luck has been the athletic director at WVU since 2008 and previously served as the president and CEO of NFL Europe. From 2005 to 2008, he was the president and general manager of the Houston Dynamo of the MLS. The Dynamo won MLS titles in 2006 and 2007.
In his time at West Virginia, Luck hired coach Dana Holgorsen and instituted beer sales at Milan Puskar Stadium. He also is credited with helping guide West Virginia from the Big East to the Big 12 and earlier this month, was named to the inaugural 13-person selection committee for the College Football Playoff.Trump has certainly been a catalyst for increased voter registration among Hispanics. A national poll of Hispanic voters indicates that Latino voter participation in November is going to break all records and that, overwhelmingly, it's because of animus towards Trump and the Republican Party. What Pete Wilson did for the California Republican Party in 1994 with his viciously anti-Hispanic Prop 187-- which basically made the GOP uncompetitive in most of California-- is what Trump is doing in congressional districts coast to coast. There are 30 congressional districts currently held by Republicans where between 25% and 76% of the citizens are Hispanic. We'll come back to that in a moment-- but don't get too excited; the startling incompetence of the DCCC will save most of those seats for the Republicans. But first let's look at more of the implications of the LatinoDecisions.com polling:
In 2012, Latinos voted in record numbers and were pivotal in helping President Obama win the presidency. In our 2016 tracking poll respondents were asked, “Thinking ahead to the November 2016 presidential election, would you say that you are more enthusiastic about voting in 2016, or that you were more enthusiastic about voting back in 2012?” Nearly half (48%) said they were more enthusiastic about the 2016 election. In a follow up question with respondents who said they were more enthusiastic about the 2016 election, we asked, “What is different about 2016 that makes you more enthusiastic to vote this time?” A plurality of respondents (41%), essentially noted that it was to stop Trump
The survey also finds that Trump’s campaign has severely damaged the Republican Party brand among Latino voters. Nearly three out of four Latino voters believe the GOP has shunned Latino voters, with 42 percent agreeing that the party “doesn’t care too much about Latinos” and 31 percent agreeing the party is “sometimes hostile toward Latinos.” While Trump may fall short of securing the nomination, the damaging effect of his campaign on Latino voters is unlikely to be repaired before November.
Florida Hispanics, historically the most Republican-leaning Hispanics in the country, Miami Herald last week, CNN en Español host, Andres Oppenheimer points out that Trump's 87% disapproval rating among American's of Hispanic descent will sink his general election chances. EvenHispanics, historically the most Republican-leaning Hispanics in the country, loathe Trump. Hispanics account for 14% of Florida general election voters and only 10% of them view Trump favorably. The GOP brand is in the toilet among Florida Hispanics and if the election were held today, Hillary trounce either Trump or Cruz in Florida. Writing for thelast week, CNN en Español host, Andres Oppenheimer points out that Trump's 87% disapproval rating among American's of Hispanic descent will sink his general election chances.
Despite having been told a thousand times that his narrative about an avalanche of undocumented Mexicans coming to the United States is inaccurate-- in fact, U.S. Census figures show the flow of Mexicans is significantly down from 2008-- Trump is repeating his fear-mongering tale in almost every speech.
He calls for the mass deportation of more than 11 million undocumented migrants, proposes to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and wants to slap a 35 percent import tax on Mexican products. So far, his audiences love it.
But, remember, he has been talking to a limited audience of right-wing Republican primary voters. In a general election, he may come to regret his Mexico-bashing and anti-immigrant tirades.
The Latino vote will be critical in the November election. The percentage of Latino voters nationwide is projected to skyrocket from 3.9 percent in 1992 to nearly 10 percent in 2016, according to a recent study by City University of New York and CNN en Español.
More importantly, Latinos are concentrated in 10 states that have the largest number of votes in the electoral college. They will exceed 10 percent of voters in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York and Texas.
And Clinton is doing much better than Trump among Hispanics: 61 percent of those polled nationwide say they have a favorable opinion of Clinton, while only 9 percent have a favorable opinion of Trump, the Latino Decision survey shows.
...Trump’s xenophobia-- if not racism-- is likely to mobilize Latino voters like never before, because they will feel threatened by him. Hispanics will vote in record numbers in November. And, rather than being a threat to America, they will save America from Trump.
Washington Post column, Greg Sargent noted that Republican elected officials are Today, in hiscolumn, Greg Sargent noted that Republican elected officials are making matters even worse with Latinos, this time over Puerto Rico rather than Mexican and Central American immigrants. Paul Ryan failed to line up enough Republican votes to restructure Puerto Rico's debt. Puerto Ricans have been moving to Florida in droves-- endangering Republicans there (like Daniel Webster, who fled his newly Puerto Rican voter-heavy district), not to mention statewide races. There are a million Puerto Rican voters in Florida now, overwhelmingly Democrats. And if the GOP can't win Florida, they can't win the presidency. Puerto Rico, basically went bankrupt today. Despite Ryan's efforts the hard right who still controls "his" conference refers to the attempts to allieve the situation, as their wealthy campaign donors demand, as a "bailout."
“My party is bad at math right now,” GOP pollster Glen Bolger tells me. “We can’t win a national election with 59 percent of the white vote, which is what Romney got, so we need to improve elsewhere. Florida is a perfect example. It, along with Ohio, is ground zero for the presidential campaign. Republicans have to understand that sticking a finger in the eye of Latino voters is a way to guarantee electoral losses.”
These are the GOP-held congressional with a quarter or more Hispanics:
• FL-27- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen- 76%-- DCCC willfully failed to recruit an opponent
• CA-21- David Valadao- 74%
• FL-25 Mario Diaz-Balart- 71%-- DCCC is ignoring a grassroots progressive, Alina Valdes
• FL-26- Carlos Curbelo- 69%
• TX-23- Will Hurd- 68%-- DCCC recruited a corrupt, right-wing Blue Dog already rejected by the district in 2014, Pete Gallego
• NM-02- Stevan Pearce- 53%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• TX-27- Blake Farenthold- 52%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• CA-22- Devin Nunes- 47%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• CA-10- Jeff Denham- 42%
• CA-08- Paul Cook- 39%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• CA-23- Kevin McCarthy- 38%-- DCCC is hostile to the grassroots candidate, Wendy Reed
• CA-25- Steve Knight- 38%-- DCCC has recruited an outsider & sabotaged the local grassroots candidate, Lou Vince
• WA-04- Dan Newhouse- 38%-- DCCC is ignoring the district; no Democrat is running
• CA-42 Ken Calvert- 37%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• TX-11- Mike Conaway- 37%-- DCCC is ignoring the district; no Democrat is running
• CA-39- Ed Royce- 34% + 29% Asian-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• CA-50- Duncan Hunter- 31%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• TX-07- John Culberson- 31% + 13% Black + 11% Asian-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• TX-02- Ted Poe- 31%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• TX-21- Lamar Smith- 30%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• NV-04- Hardy Cresent- 29% + 14% Black
• TX-05- Jeb Hensarling- 28%-- DCCC is ignoring the district; no Democrat is running
• TX-10- Michael McCaul- 28%-- DCCC is ignoring the district
• AZ-02- Martha McSally- 28%
• TX-32 Pete Sessions- 26% + 12% Black + 8% Asian-- DCCC is ignoring the district; no Democrat is running
• TX-19- Randy Neugebauer- 26%-- DCCC is ignoring the district; no Democrat is running
• TX-13- Mac Thornberry- 26%-- DCCC is ignoring the district; no Democrat is running
• TX-17- Bill Flores- 25% + 13% Black + 5% Asian- DCCC is ignoring the district
• CO-03- Scott Tipton- 25%
• CA-49- Darrell Issa- 25%--DCCC is ignoring the district
So, of the 30 districts with a Latino population of 25% or more currently held by Republicans, the DCCC goes into the cycle having written off at least 22 of them. Get your head around that. Ten Trumps could be running but as long as Nancy Pelosi insists on putting her corrupt, incompetent cronies in as DCCC chairs, the Democrats will never take back the House. The Democrats were handed a gift in the form of Trump... and they already blew it. The incumbents they arel most likely to defeat are David Valadao, Carlos Curbelo, Jeff Denham, Hardy Cresent and possibly-- if Lou Vince manages to overcome their sabotage-- Steve Knight. And that's far from even half of the seats they should win back just based on the Hispanic demographic upsurge in registration.
If you'd like to help Democrats take advantage of the upsurge in Hispanic registered voters and enthusiasm to punish the GOP, please consider contributing to Lou Vince and Wendy Reed in California and Lucy Flores in Nevada, all on this page for progressives who have endorsed Bernie and are running on his package of issues:Rusty Staub, pinch hitting for the New York Mets, watches his sixth inning hit to right field against the Chicago Cubs at Shea Stadium, Tuesday, May 1, 1984. Staub had a heart attack on an overseas flight. (Photo: Ron Frehm, AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Mets say former star Rusty Staub is recovering in a hospital in Ireland after a heart attack on an overseas flight.
The Mets said Saturday the 71-year-old Staub is "resting comfortably."
The team said Staub was on a flight from Ireland to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York this week when he had a medical emergency. The team said the plane was diverted back to Ireland, where Staub was treated.
Staub played nine seasons for the Mets over two stints in the 1970s and 1980s. An outfielder, first baseman and pinch-hitter, he is a member of the Mets Hall of Fame and was a six-time All-Star in a 23-year career.
Staub was recently at Citi Field and has remained popular with Mets fans. His foundation raises money for the families of New York police officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University and a CNN political analyst, is the author of " The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." He's co-host of the "Politics & Polls" podcast. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.
Following his stunning failure with the first announced plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, shot down by both moderates and conservatives in the Republican Party, McConnell is coming back to the table to give this one more try. He is postponing the August recess so that Republicans have more time to work on the bill, the full text of which was released on Thursday, and to avoid the raucous town hall meetings |
ing around 200 pounds. Gradually, he began to enjoy the rituals of the gym and the community there. He says powerlifters don’t take themselves too seriously because they aren’t competing with each other, just with themselves. Chaffer joined a discussion group on Reddit (called a subreddit) filled with self-deprecating lifters who made him feel more lighthearted about his “crappy bench presses.” (Full disclosure: My boyfriend is a member of said subreddit.) “The majority of people do it for fun. With bicycle racing, people take it insanely seriously, they’ll buy $10,000 bikes for a low-level race. The proportion of people in powerlifting who [take it to those extremes] are way less.”
Still, he was afraid to sign up for the crowning event of powerlifting: a competition.
“It was partly because I didn’t want to get embarrassed, and I wasn’t sure about myself as a lifter, I guess. My disability played into that a lot. The only thing I was good at, and it’s still true, is squatting.” When he squatted 500 pounds for the first time, he thought, “Eh, whatever, maybe I’ll like it.” Deutsch encouraged him to go the whole way.
“Everyone was really supportive,” he says. “That was a year and a half ago, and I still find people who say ‘Oh, I remember you from that meet last year!’ I wish I’d done it earlier because I learned how to enjoy the experience and not be worried about what people will think and if I can fit in.”
Then, Chaffer was tested to his core, physically and emotionally. He flew to the American Open in Boston, determined to hit more personal records (PRs). After preparing for months, he squatted 540 pounds, a PR by 22 pounds.
“That was awesome, and as soon as bench started, everything went downhill. I got the first bench, and then my body didn’t do what I wanted it to do. Deadlifting went as poorly as it could have gone … and I got a little disillusioned after that.”
For months, he had been in constant pain. “I was trying to force my body to do stuff that it wasn’t made to do,” he says. “That’s where I figured out: OK, I can’t bench like other people or deadlift like other people, and I need to reassess. I took a few weeks off, and went back in with a different approach. I decided to listen to my body more.
“I had to stop and relearn from the ground up. It took forever, and it was terrible.”
Chaffer was grappling with the cognitive dissonance of his invisible disability. Most people didn’t notice it, so he was often attempting movements to be as similar to the standard as possible. “If you talk to people who don’t do sports, they would say, ‘You’re normal.’ That’s not true, but that’s how people see others with invisible disabilities.”
Chaffer was grappling with the cognitive dissonance of his invisible disability.
After hearing about the organization I Am Adaptive, Chaffer began to view his body in a more holistic way. Through months of trial and error, he learned stances that would make his bench press and deadlift feel better. “It’s about constant adaptation,” Chaffer says. “Because you can’t function like a—quote—‘normal’ person, you keep adapting and changing.”
In the end, that’s why Chaffer connected with powerlifting more than any other sport.
“It’s empowering,” he says. “I can go to the gym and learn how my body works or interacts with the world around it. With the constant of the three lifts, I can go in and tweak small things and take that micromanaging control of something and try to analyze it and solve the riddle. When I started thinking of things more like I could work on and adapt to them, and that I could use it as a personal challenge, it started to feel really good.”
In May, Chaffer did a local meet “for shits and giggles” and set a state record for the knee-wrap division by squatting 590 pounds without wrapped knees. He shares his lifting videos online and has grown a following on Instagram (@ineffective_platemath), and he’s vocal about his struggles with Erb’s Palsy.
“When I share and have a big audience, people say, ‘That’s awesome you’re able to do this, I have the same condition, can you share something that will help me?’ People seeing me as a success has helped them see they can have success and keep trying.”
His next goal? Squatting 700 pounds. Instead of contributing to his pain, powerlifting is the first sport that has most improved the symptoms of Chaffer’s injury. “Now that I’ve been lifting for a couple of years, I don’t get the kind of back pain or shoulder pain that I used to get because I got the parts of my body that are screwed up, stronger. So it’s been good for my general existence. My body is better able to support itself.”
Despite all his personal success, Chaffer knows whom to thank: He continues to follow in the footsteps of his powerlifting girlfriend. They’ve moved in together in a Baltimore suburb near Catonsville. When the brawny couple isn’t at the gym, they coddle their 20-pound miniature pinscher, Diesel (“very anxious and excitable—does not like being left alone”). Chaffer says, “Everyone has weak a overhead press, except for my girlfriend who overhead presses more than I do. … No matter how discouraged she got, she just kept doing it. She would get knocked off and start again, and that really inspires me. That’s what I find awesome: hitting adversity and having things not work out the way you want, and keeping on going with whatever it is you’re working on.”Lab Zero recently announced on the official Skullgirls Twitter that the beta version of the game’s PC port should be available mid-June, with a full release coming later in July. The release of the PC version is supposedly going to coincide with the release of the game’s first DLC character, Squigly.
Only donators to the Indiegogo campaign will get beta keys for the game, which will allow them to test out Squiggly as well as the game’s new balance changes and network capabilities before it officially releases. However, if you missed the IGG campaign, you aren’t totally out of luck. Lab Zero has opened up a page in partnership with Humble Bundle that allows you to donate late as a slacker backer. Though the reward tiers are limited, any donation over $36 gets you a Skullgirls beta key.
The team also announced that the second DLC character has been chosen, though the big reveal will take place at Salty Cupcakes tonight. They also briefly mentioned that they are hoping by the time they implement all 5 new characters, Autumn Games will have gotten past their legal troubles and will allow them to begin work on a Skullgirls 2.
Source: Skullgirls TwitterFrank goes solo
With each new update for Dead Rising 4, my enthusiasm diminishes. In what is sure to be the final nail in the coffin for most, Frank West's new adventure won't feature campaign co-op. In a special stream on the ExpertZone_Community Twitch channel, Capcom Vancouver played a demo with some employees answering questions about the upcoming zombie action game.
David McAnerin (who was surprisingly hard to find on Google) gave a definitive response on whether or not the story mode would feature co-op of any form. The short, sad answer is no. The longer answer can be read in this transcript (or in the video at the 18:10 time stamp);
Fan Question: Is this game going to be four player co-op and if so, what’s the type of mode is it? Capcom (David McAnerin, Producer): Yeah, we have an online four player mode. So, in the story mode, it’s a single player story mode, you’re going to play just as Frank…The four player co-op is our multiplayer mode. It’s a little bit inspired by the original Infinity mode for the old school fans. It’s four player co-op. It takes place in the mall. You play as four survivors who are also featured in the story as well. You get a little more backstory on them, as well. You go into the mall and take part in crazy missions, trying to survive. The structure is, the four of you start the game together, you start in a safe house; you get a load up, get some weapons, get yourself ready to go; we unlock the doors, it’s killing, mayhem, madness lots of interesting missions that take advantage of our systems…You have to get to the safe house to survive the end of the day.
To me, that sounds more like Left 4 Dead or some lame throwaway bonus mode. The true joy of Dead Rising 2 was experiencing everything with a friend. While I've certainly enjoyed the series on my own, I had a transformative experience with both 2 and Off The Record when playing with friends, so to lose that just hurts.
I'm not sure I can even muster up the energy to care about this title anymore. With T.J. Rotolo being replaced and the time limit getting cut, what is left in Dead Rising 4 to even tie it back to the main series? No two games in a series should be the same, but this seems to be catering to a mainstream audience.
I'm really tired of reading about companies turning their backs on the fans that made them famous. Dead Rising was successful because it offered something new and hilarious during a period where the Xbox 360 was still making a name for itself. Fans liked all of the crazy opportunities present along with the rigid and unforgiving structure of the title.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upThis is what I’m thinking:
Jack is Back and so are the viewers for Buffalo Sabres games.
The return of Buffalo Sabres star Jack Eichel, who had a goal and an assist in a 5-4 victory over the Ottawa Senators Tuesday night, led to a season-high 9.8 rating on MSG.
That is well above the 5.5 rating the Sabres have averaged to this point in the season.
To put the rating in further perspective, the rating for the Sabres game beat the popular NBC entertainment program “This is Us” (8.4) on Channel 2 and the annual favorite “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (8.1) on Channel 4.
NBCSN’s plans to highlight the game between Toronto rookie Auston Matthews and Edmonton star Connor McDavid took a hit Tuesday when the game before it between Boston and Philadelphia went to an extended shootout. The shootout, won by Philadelphia, didn’t end until there was 3 minutes and 37 seconds left in the second period of the following game won by the Maple Leafs, 4-2.
Needless to say, the delay in joining the Matthews-McDavid game in progress didn’t help ratings. The game between the superstars averaged a 0.4 rating from 10:45 p.m. to midnight in Buffalo, hitting a peak of 0.6 in arguably the best TV market for hockey in America.
I wish people would quit picking on Thanksgiving football.
On Monday, radio sports talk host Colin Cowherd, now heard on 1270 The Fan, joined the chorus of people saying that the NFL has become overexposed on television by adding Thursday Night Football and Sunday morning games from foreign countries.
But let's not include the three Thanksgiving games as a problem. After all, two games have been played in the afternoon on the holiday for decades. And it is hard to see anything wrong with adding a prime time game after the turkey and the apple and pumpkin pies were eaten.
It sure beats shopping on Thanksgiving night.
The football ratings in Buffalo prove the popularity of three Thanksgiving games.
Detroit’s 16-13 win over Minnesota in the early afternoon game had a 17.7 local rating on WIVB-TV, the local CBS affiliate.
Dallas’ 31-26 victory over Washington in the late afternoon game carried on WUTV, the local Fox affiliate, had a 15.4 local rating.
And Pittsburgh’s 28-7 victory over Indianapolis in the night game carried on WGRZ-TV, the NBC affiliate, had a 16.5 rating.
In other words, the interest in all three games was pretty close.
To put those ratings in further perspective, the top-rated prime time entertainment program in Western New York this season, “The Big Bang Theory,” averages a 17.4 rating and that’s for only 30 minutes.
On the other hand, the league should consider dropping Thursday Night Football games for multiples reasons, including player safety.
Western New York loves to hate New England quarterback Tom Brady. The Patriots’ 22-17 victory over the New York Jets Sunday had a higher rating than all of the Thanksgiving games. It had a 21.6 rating on Channel 4 after the Bills victory served as its lead-in.
email: apergament@buffnews.comPresident Trump on Friday sought to diminish the importance of the campaign foreign policy meeting where former adviser George Papadopoulos tried to broker connections between Russians and the Trump campaign, with the president claiming that he did not remember what was said.
The meeting, which took place in Washington on March 31, 2016, included a team of foreign policy advisers as well as Trump and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is now the attorney general. The session has become a key focus of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's wide-ranging investigation of Russia's interference in the election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
Mueller's office revealed this week in court documents that Papadopoulos pleaded guilty on Oct. 5 to lying to the FBI about trying to meet with Russians offering “dirt” on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton based on stolen Democratic emails.
Trump, who recently boasted of having “one of the great memories of all time,” told reporters Friday morning as he departed the White House for his 12-day trip to Asia, “I don't remember much about that meeting.”
“It was a very unimportant meeting,” Trump said. “It took place a long time ago. Don't remember much about it.”
In the meeting, according to court documents, Papadopoulos touted his connections to Russia in front of Trump and Sessions and offered to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
J.D. Gordon, a Trump adviser who attended the meeting, recalled in an interview with The Washington Post that after Papadopoulos said he could introduce Trump to Putin, Sessions “shut him down.”
“It was a bad idea and the senator didn't want people to speak about it again,” Gordon said.
The meeting is a growing complication for Sessions, who is now under pressure from Senate Democrats to explain why he did not disclose details about it previously, considering he was asked multiple times under oath on Capitol Hill whether he or anyone on the campaign ever discussed meeting with Russians.
[Democrats demand that Sessions explain his meeting with Papadopoulos]
In February, a few weeks after being sworn in as president, Trump was asked at a news conference whether anybody who advised his campaign had any contacts with Russia. The president responded, “No. Nobody that I know of.”
Trump and his aides have sought to diminish Papadopoulos's standing on the campaign. Trump cited him as a foreign policy adviser in March, during a meeting with The Post's editorial board. But he, as well as White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have said this week that Papadopoulos played an insignificant role on the campaign.
Trump tweeted Tuesday, “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George.”Madonna Buder, S.F.C.C. (born Marie Dorothy Buder; July 24, 1930), also known as the Iron Nun,[1] is a Roman Catholic religious sister and Senior Olympian triathlete. Buder has the current world record for the oldest woman to ever finish an Ironman Triathlon, which she obtained at age 82 by finishing the Subaru Ironman Canada on August 26, 2012.[2]
Early life and religious ministry [ edit ]
Marie Dorothy Buder was born in St. Louis, Missouri on July 24, 1930. She was educated at Visitation Academy of St. Louis, an all-girl Roman Catholic school run by the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary.[3] She went on to attend Washington University in St. Louis and was a member of the Alpha Iota chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta.[4][5] She entered a convent of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd at age 23.[6] In 1970, she left the congregation to join 38 other Sisters from different and varying backgrounds to establish a new and non-traditional community of Religious Sisters.[3] As a member of the non-canonical Sisters for Christian Community, a contemporary religious order inspired by the teachings of the Second Vatican Council that is independent of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, Buder has had the freedom to choose her own ministry and lifestyle.[3]
Triathlon career [ edit ]
Buder began training at age 48 at the behest of Father John who told her it was a way of tweaking, "mind, body, and spirit" and for the relaxation and calmness it can bring an individual. She completed her first triathlon at age 52 and first Ironman event at age 55 and has continued ever since.[1]
Buder is well known in the Triathlon community for her achievements in age group races. She has completed over 325 triathlons including 45 Ironman Distances.[citation needed] At the 2005 Hawaii Ironman, at age 75, the Iron Nun became the oldest woman ever to complete the race, finishing 1 hour before the 17-hour midnight cut-off time. At the 2006 Hawaii Ironman, at age 76, she again became the oldest woman ever to complete the race, finishing with a time of 16:59:03.
During her sporting career, Buder has worked hard at also raising money for various charities. She is quoted as saying, "I train religiously."[citation needed]
On August 24, 2008, Buder participated in the Ironman race held in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada. She was unable to finish the race by a factor of seconds as she was unable to reach the finish line within the 17 hours cut-off limit. However, 371 days later, on August 30, 2009, Buder completed Ironman Canada (Penticton, British Columbia) in a time of 16:54:30. This accomplishment broke her own record of being the oldest female to complete the Ironman distance at 79 years old. In fact, the Ironman organization has had to add new age brackets as the sister gets older.[1] Unfortunately, although Buder started the 2010 Ironman Canada competition at the age of 80, she was unable to complete the course, due to a wetsuit issue.[7] She competed in the 2011 Ironman Canada competition but missed the bike cut-off by 2 minutes.
She was willing to compete in an Ironman triathlon again in 2012 as she wanted to open up an 80+ age category and be the oldest person, male or female, to finish an Ironman triathlon.[8] Buder thus became the overall Ironman world record holder in age at age 82 by finishing the Subaru Ironman Canada on August 26, 2012. She beat the record previously held by 81-year-old Lew Hollander who finished the Ironman Kona World Championship in 2011. Buder finished her race in 16:32:00 minutes beating Hollander's time of 16:45:55 although they competed on different courses.[2] Hollander, Buder, and Bob Scott were 82 when they competed in the 2012 Ironman World Championship in Kona on October 13, 2012, but Buder and Scott did not finish the race.[9][10]
Buder attended the Challenge Family inaugural year in Penticton BC, Canada on August 25, 2013 during the bike portion in a relay team finishing her portion of the Challenge in 7:38:45. At the Volunteer/Athlete Banquet held the next evening on August 26, 2013, Felix Walchshofer, CEO of Challenge Family Penticton, invited Buder to compete in Challenge Roth next year as a single Triathlete.
In 2014, Buder was inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame.[11]
Other [ edit ]
Buder is also a senior Olympian.[1] She holds several records in various distances.[7]
On October 5, 2010, Buder released her autobiography, The Grace to Race: The Wisdom and Inspiration of the 80-Year-Old World Champion Triathlete Known as the Iron Nun.[12]
In 2016, Buder was featured in an ad for Nike, Inc that was aired during the Summer Olympic Games.[13]I have been living in Philadelphia for 9 years now, and while I can tell a Philly accent when I hear one, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to do it myself. Something about the vowel system gets me all tripped up, and I end up sounding like cockney Tony Soprano.
Part of the problem is that there aren’t any well-known popular culture characters to imitate. You know, if you want to do Minnesota, you channel Fargo. To do Boston, you put on a little Good Will Hunting. But who do you imitate to “do” Philadelphia? The accent rarely shows up in movies or TV, even when they are explicitly set in Philadelphia, as this New York Times article points out.
I’ve gotten a little better at the accent, or at least at understanding why Philadelphians sound the way they do, from watching Sean Monahan’s PhillyTawk YouTube videos. They’re fun and entertaining, but they also break down the linguistic concepts behind the accent in an accessible way. Here’s the explanation of the split short-A system. It helped me realize that to pass for a Philly native I will need to work on mastering the sentence “halve the hoagie, then have half.”
And while I knew about that old shibboleth where the Eagles become the “Iggles,” I never thought about how a Philadelphian would say “Craig’s essay about the effect of the Black Plague on the medieval Hague was pretty vague.”
If you’ve been mystified by the Philly (or South Jersey, or Baltimore) accent, all the PhillyTawk videos will help. We’ve all got to do what we can to keep up appreciation for this distinctive American dialect, at least until natives Bradley Cooper (at 1:15) or Tina Fey (at 3:40) bring it to the big screen.Dennis Pronunciation Gender Male Language(s) English, Danish, Swedish Name day Sweden: August 7 Origin Meaning Dionysus Region of origin Greece Other names Alternative spelling Denis, Dennys Variant form(s) Denise (Female) Nickname(s) Denny Related names Denis
Dennis or Denis is a first or last name from the Greco-Roman name Dionysius, via one of the Christian saints named Dionysius.
The name came from Dionysus, the Greek god of ecstatic states, particularly those produced by wine, which is sometimes said to be derived from the Greek Dios (Διός, "of Zeus") and Nysos or Nysa (Νῦσα), where the young god was raised. Dionysus (or Dionysos; also known as Bacchus in Roman mythology and associated with the Italic Liber), the Thracian god of wine, represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficent influences. He is viewed as the promoter of civilization, a lawgiver, and lover of peace — as well as the patron deity of both agriculture and the theater.
Dionysus is a god of mystery religious rites, such as those practiced in honor of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis near Athens. In the Thracian mysteries, he wears the "bassaris" or fox-skin, symbolizing new life. (See also Maenads.)
A mediaeval Latinised form of the Anglo-Norman surname Le Denys was Dacus, which correctly meant Dacian, but when the Vikings were about was often used to mean "Danish" or "The Dane". The name became modernised as Denys, then later as Dennis.
Alternative forms and spellings of the name include Denis, Denys, Denish, Deon, Deonne, Deonte, and Dion, Dionice. Diminutive forms include Den, Dennoh, Deno, Denny, Deny and Deen.
The name Sydenie (alternate spellings: Sydney or Sidney) may derive from a village in Normandy called Saint-Denis.[citation needed]
A medieval diminutive was Dye, from which the names Dyson and Tyson are derived.[citation needed]
Dennis is a very popular English, Irish and Danish name, common throughout the English-speaking world.
Denis is a very popular French name, common throughout the Francophone world, but is also a common English, Irish, German, Italian, Dutch, Croatian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian, Brazilian, Bosnian, and Albanian name.
Dionizy is the Polish version of the name.
Deniz is the Turkish version of the name. The Turkish language word for "sea" is "deniz", e.g. Kara Deniz means the Black Sea.
The Irish name Donnchadh may be anglicised as Denis, but has a different origin. Dionigi or Dionisio are Italian versions of the name, although Denis is quite common in Italy.
Feminine versions of the name include: Denise, Denisa, Deni, Denice, Deniece, Dione, and Dionne.
Variants [ edit ]
Dennis Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish
Dénes, Dienes, Gyenes Hungarian
Denis Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovene
Deniss Latvian
Denny English
Dionizy or Dionizjusz (archaic) Polish
Дзянiс or Dzianis (łacinka) Belarusian
Денис Ukrainian, Russian, Macedonian
Dionisie Romanian
Dionísio or Dinis (archaic) Portuguese
Dionisio Italian, Spanish
Dionigi Italian
Διονύσιος (Dionysios) Greek
Дионисије (Dionisije) Serbian
Dionýs Slovak
Donnchadh Irish
Tõnis Estonian
Denisu (デニス) Japanese
Dānnísī (丹尼斯) Chinese
People with the given name Dennis [ edit ]
Fictional [ edit ]
People with the surname Dennis [ edit ][This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource GamesPress.]
Leicester, UK, 14th November, 2014 – Love your retro games? Then we have a treat for you! Today sees the global digital launch of Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991; a facinating collection of 13 of the most highly regarded and successful classic games from legendary game developer Cinemaware. Relive that awesome ‘golden-era of videogames’ feeling: rescue a princess in medieval England, become the boss of Chicago's Mafia, wipe out terrorizing killer-ants or fight against enemy invaders with your jetpack and raygun in the 1940s! Choose to play the original Amiga version or the PC-MSDOS version (where available). All games will run on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991 also contains special bonus content. Every game will come with its original manual (in digital format) and its complete soundtrack in mp3 format. This is the definitive Cinemaware collection for those looking for a great retro-experience! Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991 includes the following titles: Defender of the Crown™
SDI ™
The King of Chicago™
Sindbad and the Throne of the Falcon™
Lords of the Rising Sun™ *
Rocket Ranger™
It Came From the Desert™
It Came From the Desert II: Antheads™ *
Wings!™ *
TV Sports: Football™
TV Sports: Basketball™
TV Sports: Baseball™
TV Sports: Boxing™ *Amiga only Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991 is available now for PC via digital distrubtion for £7.99/€9.99/$9.99 with a boxed retail version scheduled for a 2015 launch. -ENDS- For more information please contact: Mark Allen Head of Marketing and PR, Kalypso Media UK E: [email protected] Gareth Bagg Marketing and PR Assistant, Kalypso Media UK E: [email protected] Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter @KalypsoMediaUK About The Kalypso Media Group Founded in 2006 in Germany by industry veterans Simon Hellwig and Stefan Marcinek, Kalypso Media is a global, independent developer, marketer and publisher of interactive entertainment software with over 120 employees worldwide. Along with Headquarters in Worms, Germany, the company has offices in the United Kingdom and the United States. Kalypso Media also enjoys very strong global digital distribution through its Kalypso Media Digital Ltd. subsidiary, owns three development studios – Realmforge Studios GmbH, Gaming Minds Studios GmbH and Skilltree Studios GmbH – and works with multiple leading independent developers. Kalypso Media‘s titles include the critically acclaimed Tropico 3, Tropico 4, Sins of a Solar Empire (Europe and Asia), and Dungeons. Upcoming titles include Tropico 5 (PS4), Crookz (PC, Mac, SteamOS), Dungeons 2 (PC, Mac, SteamOS) and Grand Ages: Medieval (PC). Further information about Kalypso Media is available at http://www.kalypsomedia.com © 1986-2014 Cinemaware. Cinemaware and all related product trademarks are trademarks of Cinemaware. All rights reserved.Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald has been criticized for continuing to give out bonuses at the troubled agency (Photo11: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP)
WASHINGTON —Despite the controversies still swirling around the Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly 189,000 employees received more than $177 million in bonuses for fiscal 2015, according to data obtained by USA TODAY.
More than 300 senior executives of the troubled agency received $3.3 million in bonuses, for an average payment of about $10,000 each. The non-executives received about $900 on average.
Among those receiving bonuses was the former top VA official in Ohio who retired the same day he received a notice he was going to be fired. Another was the former chief of staff at the Phoenix VA Medical Center who received a bonus four months before he was fired.
More than half the agency’s employees received a bonus, again raising concerns about the performance review process used to evaluate workers. Plus, the number of employees receiving bonuses jumped by more than 20 percent from 2014 and the total amount paid out increased by 24 percent.
“Whether it’s shuffling problem employees from one location to another instead of disciplining them or repeatedly paying out bonuses with reckless abandon, VA’s habit of coddling those who can’t or won’t do their jobs is as well documented as it is disgraceful,” said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
He said the fact that the bonuses have continued throughout a period of major scandals, including one involving veterans facing long waits to receive treatment, shows that the agency “cannot be trusted to fix this problem on its own.”
"VA is in the midst of a massive transformation effort to improve Veterans’ experiences with VA care and services," said agency spokesman Randal Noller. "Performance management systems and performance-related awards afford leaders an effective means of recognizing superior employees, rewarding strong customer service, and building an exceptionally effective and successful workforce. Employee rewards and recognition not only build employee engagement and morale, but also motivate stronger performance and better service for veterans".
Among those receiving bonuses were:
• Dr. Darren Deering, who was fired as chief of staff of the Phoenix VA Health Care System in June 2016 for what the VA said was "negligent performance of duties and failure to provide effective oversight." Deering was paid a $5,000 bonus in February 2016.
• Jack Hetrick, formerly the top Veterans Affairs official in Ohio, who retired after receiving a notice of pending removal in February 2016. He had received a $12,705 bonus on Jan. 10. An investigation by a Cincinnati TV station gathered evidence that Barbara Temeck, acting chief of staff at the Cincinnati VA Medical Center, was prescribing medication to Hetrick’s wife without a proper license. Also, employees claimed to the TV station that cost-cutting measures hurt quality of care. Hetrick was suspended during the probe of oversight of the Cincinnati VA. The VA said its review did not substantiate impropriety related to quality of care. It did find misconduct in Temeck providing prescriptions and other medical care to members of Hetrick’s family. Temeck was paid a $5,000 bonus in January 2016
• Stella S. Fiotes has been executive director of VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management since January 2013. She is responsible for planning, design and construction of major construction projects – those more than $10 million. This includes the replacement VA facility in Denver that was hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. In September, a bipartisan group of lawmakers asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Fiotes and other VA executives lied to conceal the massive cost overruns. She received a bonus of $9,120 in January 2016. She received a bonus of $8,985 in January 2015.
Miller called on the Senate to pass legislation approved by the House in September which would ban bonuses for VA executives for five years and would give the VA secretary the authority to recoup bonuses already rewarded. A similar Senate bill has been introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
Caps on the total amount the VA could give out for bonuses over the next eight years were inserted into unrelated legislation signed into law this summer. The law states that limits should not disproportionately effect lower-wage employees.
Data compiled by the Government Accountability Office shows that 99.7 percent of non-executive VA employees received a rating of at least “fully successful” in the evaluations or their work in 2013.
The five-level scale includes: “Unacceptable,” “Minimally Successfully, “Fully Successful,”, “Exceeds Fully Successful” and “Outstanding.”
About 70 percent of VA employees were rated outstanding or excellent.
Also in 2013, all 470 senior executives at the VA were scored as fully successful or higher, according to testimony at a 2014 House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing. Seventy-eight percent were in the top two categories. In fact, going back four years, no executive had been scored in the lower two categories.
At that hearing, Miller described referred to an “outlandish bonus culture” at the VA.
“Instead of using bonuses as an award for outstanding work on behalf of our veterans, cash awards are seen as an entitlement and have become irrelevant to quality work product,” Miller said then.
J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the non-executive VA employees, said “bonuses for frontline health care providers and other rank-and-file employees are vital for retaining employees who might otherwise leave due to uncompetitive salaries."
He said the VA has been “disproportionately reducing bonuses paid out to low-wage workers” — in defiance of lawmakers’ wishes.
“Neglecting to reward or recognize the modestly paid workers who do the necessary work of caring for veterans in order to finance big bonuses for top executives is wrong. Every worker deserves recognition for a job well done, not just the highest paid bosses," Cox said.
VA spokesman Noller said the "preponderance of awards are given to front-line workers at facilities across the country, in every congressional district, who have the closest interactions with veterans." He said nearly 97 percent of all A performance awards go to employees working in the field. Nurses, with an average award of $952, received the largest percentage of the total awards,
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2eEaO5VOn Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015
"The people asking the questions — those are the racists," Donald Trump reportedly said of the media. | Getty Report: Trump orders surrogates to attack media as 'racists'
Donald Trump is well known for attacking the media, calling out individual journalists as "sleazy" and barring or physically removing others from his campaign events.
On Monday, Trump told high-profile supporters in a conference call to start attacking the media for asking questions about the Trump University lawsuit, Bloomberg Politics reports. Trump has said the judge in the case, an Indiana-born man of Mexican heritage, can't be impartial in the case because Trump wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico.
"The people asking the questions — those are the racists," Trump reportedly said. "I would go at 'em."
In particular, Trump told his surrogates to go after television reporters, whom he called "hypocrites," according to Bloomberg.
Trump has faced tough television interviews in recent days, with CNN's Jake Tapper and CBS News' John Dickerson grilling him over his comments about the judge. Tapper made 23 attempts to get Trump to answer whether his comments were racist, while Dickerson asked Trump whether he would also consider a Muslim judge to be biased against him.
Trump's reply? “It’s possible, yes. Yeah. That would be possible, absolutely."What would happen if the GOP dumped Donald Trump?
Top party officials are reportedly exploring options on how to replace the Republican nominee should he exit the race. But suppose, on top of his Gold Star-family insulting, almost-treason encouraging, and baby expelling, Trump were to really cross some line, whatever that might be, and GOP leaders decide they can’t support him anymore. Nor do they just want to disown the Republican nominee; suppose they |
the most powerful political analysis I’ve seen in years, it is too thoroughly supported and deeply reasoned to excerpt. Please read in full. It’s a call to form a new Left, revitalized by return to its long-standing precepts but with new policies and coalitions.
His conclusion…
The crucial tasks for a committed left in the United States now are to admit that no politically effective force exists and to begin trying to create one. This is a long-term effort, and one that requires grounding in a vibrant labor movement. Labor may be weak or in decline, but that means aiding in its rebuilding is the most serious task for the American left. Pretending some other option exists is worse than useless. There are no magical interventions, shortcuts, or technical fixes. We need to reject the fantasy that some spark will ignite the People to move as a mass. We must create a constituency for a left program — and that cannot occur via MSNBC or blog posts or the New York Times. It requires painstaking organization and building relationships with people outside the Beltway and comfortable leftist groves. Finally, admitting our absolute impotence can be politically liberating; acknowledging that as a left we have no influence on who gets nominated or elected, or what they do in office, should reduce the frenzied self-delusion that rivets attention to the quadrennial, biennial, and now seemingly permanent horse races. It is long past time for us to begin again to approach leftist critique and strategy by determining what our social and governmental priorities should be and focusing our attention on building the kind of popular movement capable of realizing that vision. Obama and his top aides punctuated that fact by making brutally apparent during the 2008 campaign that no criticism from the left would have a place in this regime of Hope and Change. The message could not be clearer.
(4) Conclusions (same as yesterday’s)
In 1964 Goldwater started the long revitalization of conservatism, breaking the New Deal coalition which had ruled for three decades. Five decades later these new coalitions have in turn grown decrepit. Both Left and Right are alienated from their leaders, who advocate policies that do little for them.
The stress has accumulated for a generation. Now comes the reckoning. The Right has snapped first, with resurgence of long-suppressed populism. The Sanders’ insurgency failed because it relied on now-exhausted traditional progressive policies and coalitions. The next to try might do better.
Unfortunately probably neither populist nor progressive movements have the strength to win by themselves (the 1% has grown too powerful during the past generation). But their combination built the New Deal. We can do it again, with new policies suited for the challenges of the 21st century. That requires the Right to accept the Left as other than enemies of America, and the Left to accept workers as more than ignorant proles requiring their leadership.
Or we can let the 1% continue to gain power and wealth, and accept whatever they give us.
A political party will harness this rage? Obama had the opportunity in 2008 & failed.
(5) Other posts about the Left, Trump & the new populism
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For ideas about what you can do see Reforming America: steps to new politics. To understand the coming reformation of American politics I suggest starting with Thomas Frank’s books: What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004), and Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (2016).Tomorrow (June 17), the Red Hot Chili Peppers will deliver their 11th album, called The Getaway. One of its songs, "Sick Love," features Sir Elton John playing piano, and at a release party, the band explained how he came to record on it.
“The song that he plays on was a song that we were working on for awhile before we started recording it," guitarist Josh Klinghoffer told iHeartRadio in the video above, "and it just sounded like Elton was involved somehow, someway, So we thought we should just invite him down and see if he likes it and wants to play on it.”
The melody to "Sick Love" is very similar to John's 1973 hit, "Bennie and the Jets." John and lyricist Bernie Taupin were given co-writing credit on "Sick Love."
And while you would think that somebody with a career that's been as long and proflic as John's would treat a recording studio like his second home, drummer Chad Smith remarked that it was quite the opposite. “He was kind of nervous, it was actually really kind of cute. When he came in, he looked for somewhere to sit really quick, and he sat down.”
Smith also spoke about the reasons why they got Danger Mouse to produce The Getaway after having worked exclusively with Rick Rubin since 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik. "He's smart, handsome, powerful and has excellent taste in music."
The Getaway, which was mixed by Radiohead engineer Nigel Godrich, is the Chili Peppers' first album since 2011's I'm With You. They have previewed three songs to date, “ Dark Necessities,” " We Turn Red " and the title track.Killing and Killers Anyone who has looked at the news lately knows that the human species seems to have an inordinate propensity for killing things. Similarly, anyone looking at this list of 85 terms relating to killing will quickly realize that humans also have an inordinate propensity for making up words about killing things. All of these words end in 'cide', from Latin caedere, to kill. However, some of them refer exclusively to the act of killing a specific thing (e.g. herbicide) while others can refer alternately to the act itself or to the person performing the act (e.g. homicide). Of all of these, though, perhaps the greatest crime of all is verbicide, the brutal slaughter of our language by incompetents and ignoramuses. Will the atrocities never end? Also check out my list of fighting words - those ending in "machy".
Word Definition aborticide killing of a fetus; abortion acaricide killer of mites and ticks algicide killer of algae amicicide murder of a friend aphicide killer of aphids aphidicide killer of aphids avicide killing of birds bacillicide killer of bacteria bactericide killer of bacteria biocide killing living material bovicide slaughter of cattle; one who kills cattle ceticide killing of whales and other cetaceans cimicide substance used to kill bed-bugs deicide destruction or killing of a god ecocide destruction of the environment episcopicide killing of bishops famicide one who destroys another's reputation; slanderer felicide killing of a cat femicide killing of a woman feticide killing of a fetus filicide killing of one's own child floricide killing or killer of flowers foeticide killing a fetus formicide substance that kills ants fratricide killing of one's brother fungicide killing of fungus genocide killing of a race or ethnic group germicide substance that kills germs giganticide killing of a giant gynaecide killing of women herbicide killing of plants hereticide killing of heretics homicide killing of a human being infanticide killing of an infant insecticide killing of insects larvicide killing of larvae liberticide destruction of liberty lupicide killing of a wolf mariticide killing or killer of one's husband matricide killing of one's mother menticide reduction of mind by psychological pressure microbicide killing or killer of microbes miticide agent which kills mites molluscicide killing of mollusks muscicide substance for killing flies neonaticide killing or killer of a newborn infant ovicide killing insect eggs ovicide sheep-killing parasiticide killing of parasites parasuicide harmful act appearing to be an attempt at suicide parenticide killing or killer of one's parents parricide killing of parents or a parent-like close relative patricide killing of one's father perdricide killer of partridges pesticide killing of pests prolicide killing of offspring; killing of the human race pulicide flea-killer raticide substance or person who kills rats regicide killing of a monarch rodenticide killing of rodents senicide killing of old men serpenticide killing or killer of a snake siblicide killing or killer of a sibling silvicide substance that kills trees sororicide killing of one's own sister speciocide destruction of an entire species spermicide killing of sperm sporicide killing of spores suicide killing of oneself taeniacide killing of tapeworms tauricide killing or killer of a bull trypanocide killing of trypanosomes tyrannicide killing or killer of a tyrant urbicide destruction of a city ursicide killing or killer of a bear utricide one who stabs an inflated skin vessel instead of killing someone uxoricide killing of one's own wife vaticide killing or killer of a prophet verbicide destroying the meaning of a word vermicide killing of worms vespacide substance or person who kills wasps viricide killing of viruses; killing of men or of husbands virucide killing of viruses vulpicide killing of a fox weedicide something that kills weeds
I hope you have found this site to be useful. If you have any corrections, additions, or comments, please contact me. Please note that I am not able to respond to all requests. Please consult a major dictionary before e-mailing your query. All material on this page © 1996-2014 Stephen Chrisomalis. Links to this page may be made without permission. Top of page
Return to the Phrontistery“They’re going to redefine, and we are going to remind. That’s what this is about,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They were swept in on a Tea Party tsunami. The wave has receded, and they are left high and dry with their voting records.”
With less than two months until Election Day, some House races may turn on whether the incumbent Republicans can shake the Tea Party label that Democrats are eager to press to them like flypaper.
Representative Nan Hayworth, a Republican freshman from New York, has taken to pointing out that she has voted for bills supported by Mr. Obama “a third of the time.” As she zoomed through the Rotunda the other day in her signature spike heels, on her way to visit with Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president, Ms. Hayworth was asked if she was shifting to the center.
“Nope,” she said, never breaking stride. “I’ve been doing that from the start.”
Ms. Hayworth has a point: the conservative Club for Growth ranked her as the 172nd most conservative House Republican, about in the middle of the pack. But House Majority PAC, a Democratic political action committee, started an advertising campaign on Wednesday explicitly tying her to the Tea Party.
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“Some tea parties are nice,” the advertisement’s narrator says. “But Nan Hayworth’s Washington Tea Party would roll back decades of progress for women.”
On election night in 2010, as Tea Party conservatives were being swept into office, Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland, a 10-term Republican, declared: “The Tea Party came to where I was. I’ve always been there.”
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But then came Maryland’s redistricting and an influx of Democratic voters to Mr. Bartlett’s once-reliable Republican corner of the state. Now much of his advertising emphasizes his support for higher education, including contributions to college funds out of his own pocket.
“Roscoe has never been afraid to buck his own party,” a radio ad intones. “Roscoe Bartlett, an independent voice for Maryland.”
Mr. Mourdock, who defeated the longtime Senator Richard G. Lugar in the Republican primary in Indiana, in part by casting Mr. Lugar’s willingness to reach across the aisle as a personality flaw, is now working overtime to soften that position. In one of his campaign’s advertisements, the Indiana lieutenant governor, Becky Skillman, says Mr. Mourdock will “work with Republicans and Democrats.”
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This message “has great appeal among independent voters,” said Brose McVey, Mr. Mourdock’s deputy campaign manager.
“Hoosier voters aren’t buying what Mr. Mourdock is selling,” said Representative Joe Donnelly, his opponent. “In fact, when asked this week, he could not name one Democrat he would work with if elected to the U.S. Senate.”
For Republicans in particularly tough races, compromise is their central campaign theme. Representative Robert Dold of Illinois has made three ads that emphasize his independence. “I took on my own party to support funding for Metra,” he says in one, referring to a commuter rail system.
At least four Republicans have drafted their mothers to help smooth their rough edges. Representative Rick Berg of North Dakota, for instance, looks as if he has just finished a pancake breakfast prepared by his mother in one soft-spoken testament by her.
“I’m Rick Berg.” “And Rick’s mom.” “And we approve this message.”
Some of the moderation has extended to legislation. Several Republican lawmakers, like Representative Kristi Noem of South Dakota, made the unusual choice of signing a petition sponsored by Democrats to force a vote on the House Agriculture Committee’s farm bill.
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Last week, Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia voted against a short-term budget agreement, not because it cut too little, as some Republicans argued, but because it did not provide money for work in his district on two aircraft carriers.
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Even the most ardent conservatives appear to be trying to tone down their image. Last week, the Republican Study Committee, a group of right-leaning House members who often vote against their leadership’s spending measures as being too expansive, held a “poverty summit” meeting with black and Hispanic pastors to hear ideas about easing poverty — not the kind of policy initiative the group is known for.
Representative Steve Southerland II of Florida, a Tea Party freshman, introduced himself there as “an individual whose heart hurts because individuals do not have the opportunity to improve their plight.” (The group’s proposed budget seeks to cut over $2 trillion from programs for the poor over six years.)
Some Democrats in Republican-leaning states are playing the same game. In one ad, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, a Democrat running for the Senate, is standing in a farm field saying she is not the candidate for voters looking for a partisan on either side. She also trumpets her support for the proposed Keystone pipeline expansion, which many Democrats oppose.
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri has her own new advertisement in which she boasts about her rating as the senator considered dead center in the divided Senate, 50th out of 100.
For candidates with long political histories, the record can be inconvenient. During a recent debate, George Allen, the Republican nominee for a Senate seat from Virginia, talked about working with Hillary Rodham Clinton when he was previously in the Senate. His opponent, Tim Kaine, pointed out that Mr. Allen was then fond of saying, “I’d rather be drinking beer with George Bush than nibbling cheese and drinking wine with Hillary Clinton at her mansion.”
For every moment of conciliation that Mr. Allen seeks to highlight, there are remarks like those he made during the 1994 Virginia Republican Convention, when he said of Democrats, “Let’s enjoy knocking their soft teeth down their whining throats.”Operation Liberation (#Opliberation) has been going for some time now, exposing boarding schools that treat children badly, to say the least. Over the time there has been a fair few hits from many different hackers and teams in the name of this operation and one of the latest is the well known player Oak Creek Ranch School https://ocrs.com/. The schools website has been hacked and left with a message on the front page for its administration that reads:
Dear Oak Creek Ranch School, You make your money off the naive, the lazy and the misguided parents leading them to believe that you are helping their sons and daughters to be healed, educated and treated. Putting in place point systems to buy necessities as well as privileges and providing punishment and abuse to those who wander stray of them. In reality this doesn't treat or help them but instead lowers self-esteem. Simply expelling students that you can't control while keeping the hard earned money given by the parents. Parents reading this DO NOT send your child to any of these "treatment schools" nearly all are not certified(including this one), do not have qualified staff for treating or educating teens and do not get visited regularly by the safety advisors. Research and find out yourself, think before you act. https://www.heal-online.org/oakcreek.htm #OpLiberation We are anonymous We are legion We do not forgive We do not forget Your should have expected us
The attack appears to come from anonymous hacktivist using the twitter handle @AnonAntidote and was announced about 10hrs ago and still currently defaced with the message. Also floating around twitter is a breif message that #GSEC, Grey Security have a list of over 100 targets in their sights. Earlier in the day strugglingteens.com, discoveryacademy.com and boardingschoolsforgirls.com were also attacked, being taken offline for a short amount of time from ddos attacks.The Culture Gabfest has moved! Find new episodes here.
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 215 with David Haglund, Stephen Metcalf, Jody Rosen, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:
And join the lively conversation on the Culturefest Facebook page here:
The sponsors of today’s show are Stamps.com and the Emmy-winning PBS series Independent Lens, the weekly series that showcases the best in documentary film every Monday night at 10 p.m. on PBS. Go to Stamps.com and use the promo code “CULTUREFEST” for your no-risk free trial and bonus offer.
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Culturefest is on the radio! Gabfest Radio combines Slate’s Culture and Political Gabfests in one show. Listen on Saturdays at 7 a.m. and Sundays at 6 p.m. on WNYC’s AM820 or on New Jersey Public Radio.
On this week’s Culturefest, our critics are joined by Slate music critic Jody Rosen to discuss Twitter as both hyperlocal newswire and social media rumor mill during Hurricane Sandy. The Gabfesters then consider the new ABC drama Nashville and whether its music offers a realistic and compelling portrait of the country music scene. Finally, Slate Brow Beat editor David Haglund joins the conversation to talk about the scholar D. Michael Quinn and the controversy over the study of history within the Mormon church.
Here are some links to the things we discussed this week:
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Endorsements:
Julia’s pick: The movie Broadcast News, which offers a refreshing dramatization of a woman’s commitment to her career.
David’s pick: The Welsh singer-songwriter Katell Keineg. If you like Jeff Buckley and Joni Mitchell, start with her album Jet.
Stephen’s pick: Donald Hall’s essay on the history of poetry readings, including his own anecdotes from a lifetime of reading his poetry for audiences.
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Outro: “Leonor” by Katell Keineg
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Dan Pashman. Our intern is Sally Tamarkin.KARACHI: Arjumand Azhar Hussain — the man who reportedly filmed the video of politicians allegedly responsible for the delay of a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight on September 16 — was fired from his job at Gerry's Group.
Speculation was rife on Tuesday that Hussain’s sacking was linked to the video clip he filmed that showed irate airline passengers barring Senator Rehman Malik and Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) Member of National Assembly Dr Ramesh Kumar Wakwani from boarding the PIA aircraft after facing what they said was a delay of two and a half hours.
Know more: Passengers offload Rehman Malik, PML-N MNA from flight over delay
Gerry's Group, which was Hussain's former employer took to their Facebook page to respond to rumours that the sacking was due to political influence, saying their decision was “purely based on merit”.
Explore: PIA suspends staff over delay in take-off
Rehman Malik and Ramesh Kumar Wakwani were accused of holding the plane back while other passengers waited for hours.
Malik denied that the delay had to do with him, and said that take-off was delayed due to a technical fault. PIA confirmed that the delay was due to a technical fault, but later said that there was a "further unnecessary delay" that resulted in action against PIA staff. Two employees of PIA were subsequently suspended.
Watch a part of the original video clip below.Reader request: Ruffled peplum skirt tutorial!
Cut out the skirt front and backs, making it your preferred shorter length (ModCloth tells us that the skirt is 18"-19" long). Also cut a waistband, 1.5" longer than your waist (1/2" seam allowances, plus 1/2" wearing ease). Make the piece 3"-4" wide, depending on the width you want.
Assemble the skirt as per the pattern instructions, zipper and all, except instead of the facing or lining or whatever you'll add your waistband. INSTEAD of making darts in the skirt, turn them into pleats. Use the lines where the pattern marks for darts, just pleat them and don't sew them down instead.
OK, great. Now, for cutting out the peplum belt...
You'll need another waistband, this time one with a front and back rather than a fold-in-half, and you'll need a top ruffle and a bottom ruffle. Here's my top ruffle (the 3" wide one) and my bottom ruffle (the 4-6" wide pieces)
Here's how I cut them out--you'll want them about 1 1/2" times the circumference of your waist, so they gather the right amount. Here's my approximately 40" long pieces... and, yes, just cut the bottom ruffle, the one that gets wider at the back, by eyeballing it.
Also cut out a waistband! Cut two pieces, again 1 1/2" longer than your waist is around.
Hem the top of your top ruffle and the bottom of your bottom ruffle.
Sew a row of looong gathering stitches on the unhemmed sides of your ruffles.
Right sides together, sew your ruffled onto one piece of waistband. Then, sew the lining/underside of the waistband right side to wrong side of ruffle to cover the raw edges.
Uh oh... here's where the pictures stop. Sorry. Now you should have a closed tube of a waistband, with your ruffles inside. Turn it right side out and press as best as you can.
Top-stitch 1/4" or less from the top and bottom edges of the waistband piece, keeping your seam allowance in place.
Close the short ends of the waistband by pressing and turning, and top-stitching them as well.
Chose a closure, and install it. The ModCloth version has a button and buttonhole, but I didn't have any big buttons so I did hooks and eyes.
Wear together or apart!
So fun! Add another belt if you like!
I may make another one of a nicer fabric... maybe a variation on the belt, like a pleated peplum?? So cute, so many ideas! What do you think?
And, what could I pair with it to make it more office-ey and professional?
A while ago a reader wrote to me and asked if I could do a tutorial on how to make a skirt like this one, the "Full of Pep-lum" skirt from ModCloth.It is darling! It's actually a skirt with a detachable ruffled peplum belt.It is a lot of fun! I gave it some thought for a few days... and then I also saw it in a wardrobe board from the great blog What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear? So, I went to JoAnn and bought some cheap and sort of icky polyester suiting. I wanted to try it out without wasting too much money just in case... but here's how it went, and here's a little tutorial (not as many pictures as usual, since I was learning as I went!)To do this, I recommend you use a simple pencil skirt pattern. I used the pencil skirt part of this pattern, Butterick B5147:“I was always strange,” begins fashion aesthete Stephanie LaCava’s new memoir, An Extraordinary Theory of Objects. The statement affirms itself. Broadcasting one’s private idiosyncrasies in the couture world–a demnese of curated surfaces and affected perfection–seems especially outlandish. Or rather, particularly brave.
More boldly still, LaCava enhances her HENRY reading by incarnating her childhood self. She channels the voice and tics of an overwrought girl who yearns for womanhood, but whose fantasies chafe against the real anxieties of adolescence. Young LaCava salved this friction with whimsy, imbuing trinkets–from preserved beetles to antique cameras–with talismanic power.
Many of these artifacts ornament LaCava’s loft, where we filmed her lying prone in the classic position of juvenile play. Once jujus, the curios are purely decorative now. LaCava need not rely upon them for a verve she draws from within with abundance.
Click for LaCava’s AmazonThis week the Swedish Pirate Party and one of its bandwidth suppliers were told that they must stop servicing The Pirate Bay or face legal action. It now appears similar threats were extended to Portlane, another Internet provider even further up the connectivity supply chain. TorrentFreak has learned that in a move designed to protect Portlane, The Pirate Bay is no longer utilizing bandwidth from this provider. This shows that even if Portlane had complied, the site would have remained online.
In 2010 after Hollywood studios obtained injunctions against the site’s former hosting providers, The Pirate Bay turned to the Swedish Pirate Party for support.
The party, which has long stood for the same free sharing of information ideals as The Pirate Bay, agreed to begin supplying bandwidth to the site. For three years the arrangement went along just fine, but now there is a serious challenge to the status quo.
This Tuesday the Pirate Party announced that they had received legal threats from the Swedish Rights Alliance. Stop serving TPB with Internet connectivity, they ordered, or face legal action in a week. But can the party be held liable as a traditional host might?
Yesterday, in an attempt to illustrate the relationship the party has with the site, former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde described the technical setup and how it differs from a regular hosting arrangement.
“There is no question of the Pirate Party being a final destination for The Pirate Bay, but rather a stretch of road. [The party’s systems] store no data, there is no data in them. Everything is in cables only temporarily,” he wrote.
But despite the technical differences between hosting and simply pushing data around, the threats from Rights Alliance persist.
Serious Tubes, the company that sells bandwidth to the Pirate Party, also received similar threats from Rights Alliance. They were ordered to stop providing bandwidth to the Pirate Party and must now consider their position and reveal their intentions by next Tuesday, February 26.
But not content with moving at least two steps up the bandwidth chain with legal threats, new information has revealed that Rights Alliance have taken things even further by threatening to sue Portlane, the Swedish Internet provider that supplies Serious Tubes with bandwidth.
To underline just how detached this situation has become, picture this. The Pirate Bay (hosted who-knows-where) is connected directly (or maybe indirectly) to the Pirate Party. In turn the party are connected to Serious Tubes, who in turn are connected to Portlane. So what we have here is the supplier of the supplier of the supplier of bandwidth to The Pirate Bay coming under legal threat. That’s quite a chain.
Nevertheless, indications are that the long chain of intermediaries, all of which act as “mere conduits” as far as Internet connectivity is concerned, are taking the threats fairly seriously.
A little while ago Cluez, a member of the Pirate Party’s admin group, told TorrentFreak via party founder Rick Falkvinge that Portlane are no longer involved in the supply chain to Pirate Bay.
“Serious Tubes routed past Portlane on their own initiative, because of a threat against Portlane, as to not put Portlane in unnecessary trouble,” he confirmed.
But before readers begin frantically opening new tabs to check that The Pirate Bay is still alive, rest assured that panic is not required. Measures are already in place to safeguard the site’s uptime.
“Obviously, Serious Tubes (and Pirate Party) are now getting their bandwidth from elsewhere,” comments Rasmus Fleischer, one of the founders of Piratbyrån, the group that founded The Pirate Bay.
“No one should think that TPB will stand or fall solely with the Pirate Party supply.”
It’s clear that The Pirate Bay are well prepared for these kinds of attacks on their infrastructure, as the lack of downtime shows. Furthermore, when their entire site can be squeezed onto the smallest of USB sticks, reappearance in new locations is possible in a matter of minutes.
TorrentFreak contacted Portlane for an official comment but we are yet to receive a response.Jared Sexton is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where he also holds an affiliation with the Center for Law, Culture, and Society. He is the author of Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). In these books, as well as in his numerous articles and essays, Sexton addresses themes of contemporary political and popular culture, or more broadly the cultural politics of the post-civil rights era United States, focusing on questions of race and sexuality, policing and prisons, multiracial coalition, and contemporary film.
The range of themes addressed in Sexton’s work is motivated by a central commitment to the field of black studies. Importantly, black studies is here understood not as one field among many, such that it would become identifiable through its division from others. Black studies—as “an internally differentiated project”—concerns what Sexton describes as “an unlimited field,” one that ramifies upon, because it is implicated in, all fields of study.
This interview attends to and foregrounds Sexton’s theorization of the meaning, stakes, and implications of the unlimited field of black studies. While such theorization is bound to matters that entail a sociological specificity, the questions that thereby emerge likewise entail the opening up of “a whole series of ontological matters.” Such double entailment follows from Sexton’s focus on the singular “sociopolitical status” of blackness in the modern world: if blackness “opens the space for articulating what is unthought,” this is because blackness is “that which relates to the undoing or unraveling of every social bond” and so inhabits them, negatively, from within.
…sometimes theory is lifeline sometimes i hurt too / much to think… – Sean D. Henry-Smith, “the murder encircles or, a whiff of every spider”
Daniel Barber: In “The Social Life of Social Death,” you speak of “a procedure for reading, for study, for black study or, in the spirit of the multiple, for black studies … wherever they may lead. And, contrary to the popular misconception, they do lead everywhere. And they do lead everywhere, even and especially in their dehiscence.” This is a lesson that I am constantly learning from the reading of your work. You characterize such black study as “an exemplary transmission: emulation of a process of learning through the posing of a question, rather than imitation of a form of being,” and it is inarguable that your writing has been at the vanguard of such exemplification.
Many of your recent essays have explicitly pressed the stakes of a dehiscent “everywhere.” The incommensurateness of the position of blackness with discourses of the universal—which, as you demonstrated in Amalgamation Schemes, remains the case even in a purportedly pluralized, expansive discourse such as multiracialism—marks an opening up all over, according to the unthought recesses of what Dionne Brand has called “a tear in the world.” I can imagine this everywhere coming to be interpreted as “more” universal than universality, and I wonder how you would think about this? Dehiscence—or, along similar lines, the ungrounding entailed by deracination—certainly exceeds the universal, but such excess would seem to refuse its being related in terms of universality.
Jared Sexton: First, let me thank you again for your rich and generative questions here, and for the careful and sustained reading required to formulate them. I say that especially because I am aware of the ways that, for all of the moments of real critical engagement I’ve enjoyed since entering academia, aspects of my writing, as one instance in a much larger collective project, have been fairly consistently distorted and, at times, caricatured for some time now. Some of that has to do of course with very broad developments in intellectual life in the United States—academic celebrity culture, social media “hot takes,” “me too” research protocols, the denigration of the arts and humanities, etc.—and some of it has to do with an understandable, if disagreeable, anxiety about conserving radical thought under reactionary conditions. But then too I think much of it reflects the type of paralogical affect, or animus, that Frantz Fanon explored so provocatively in his time and that I have, again among many others, tried for a while now to understand better. It strikes me as a ressentiment not of the slave, but rather about and against the slave, and those thought to be slavish.
I add that last qualification—about the slavish—in response to some fellow members of the black professoriate, who have on occasion made the supposedly knock-out criticism against the discourse of afro-pessimism that attempting to think, as I’ve suggested, from the vantage or position of the slave is tantamount to assuming the professionally self-serving, theoretically self-aggrandizing pretense of speaking as a slave or for the enslaved in the historic instance. (Keep to one side that, for all the longstanding and necessary concerns about “who can speak” [Roof and Wiegman, 1995], ascribing this method of purported advancement is not unrelated to the old conservative epithet about “race hustlers” or “poverty pimps.” There are far better avenues for the professionally ambitious!) As if this were a kind of ethnographic appropriation convertible to capital gains; as if this were not about a kind of attack on the ethnographic imagination altogether; as if none of us have read anything about the dangers of speaking for others or using risky figures of speech or generalizing from the specific or abstracting from the concrete. “You are not a slave,” we are told, “you are a gainfully employed university professor, a member of the black middle class (or, if you prefer, the lumpen bourgeoisie noire), and don’t you forget it!” What they are also declaring is, of course, for themselves: “Do not confuse me for a slave; I am, like my non-black peers, a professor and, moreover, a full-fledged human being, a citizen of the world. I am somebody!” Needless to say, this is based on a common misunderstanding of slavery as economic condition or even legal standing, rather than sociopolitical (and I would add psychosexual) status, which is always, and by definition, relative. Well.
Angela Davis contributed an essay to a 1999 anthology called Black Genius, edited by Walter Mosley, Manthia Diawara, Clyde Taylor, and Regina Austin, that outlined the devastating impact of policing and mass incarceration on contemporary black communities in the US post-civil rights. In “Prison Abolition,” Davis connects this pressing political problem in complex ways to long-term and large-scale historical confluences of racial domination, capitalist patriarchy, and the regulation and exploitation of sexuality. Along the way, though, she speaks particularly of “our historical tendency toward willed forgetfulness regarding slavery” as a principal obstacle to a more adequate collective understanding of the struggle for freedom, justice, and equality in the present tense. (This piece would have been written right at the time that Davis was co-founding the national prison abolition group Critical Resistance.) She continues: “We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it” (198). What could this possibly mean? What happens to us if we are, so to speak, consumed by slavery? Do we lose the ability to differentiate ourselves from or to imagine ourselves as other than slaves? Do we find ourselves, despite hemispheric proclamations of emancipation and overseas declarations of independence, asking not when but whether slavery has ended? Would we be vexed by the suspicion that it lives on in our age in ways big and small?
Black studies as a field is, or black studies as iterations of an internally differentiated project are, involved in an ongoing attempt to think about things not only unthought, but also perhaps unthinkable. What is a world made and unmade by slavery? What is a world torn asunder by its emergence and evolution, and what is it to inhabit such a world? When Dionne Brand (2001: 4) writes about “a tear in the world” in her brilliant text A Map to the Door of No Return (a text I was thankfully introduced to by Christina Sharpe, who has since published a very powerful book, In the Wake [2016], on related themes of being and blackness), that tear is not simply a figure for the enslaved, not only for the devastation propelling the African Diaspora alone, not only for those, as Fanon puts it, that have had “their customs and the agencies to which they refer … abolished because they were in contradiction with a new civilization that imposed its own” (Fanon, 2008b: 90). It is also a statement, an offering or gift, really, for thinking differently about space, time, being, existence and so on—a whole series of ontological matters—through an inextricable and inescapable nexus of sociopolitical problems giving rise to divergent ethical dilemmas. How one takes up one ethical dilemma or another as their occupation, or preoccupation, speaks to their positioning on |
Our Reconditioned IBCs all come with a reconditioned bottle and cage. All refurbished IBCs come with a steel pallet (plastic & wood also available). Available sizes are 275 or 330 gallons, with the option of a 2″ NPT male ball valve or 2″ male cam-lock ball valve. The units shown below are UN Certified. Contact us for more details.Rebottled – Rebottled IBC Totes come with a reconditioned cage and a brand new FDA approved inner tank. All rebottled IBCs have a steel pallet (plastic & wood also available). Available sizes are 275 or 330 gallons, with the option of a 2″ NPT male ball valve or 2″ male cam-lock ball valve. The units shown below are UN Certified. Contact us for more details.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US President Obama and presumptive Republic nominee Donald Trump had differing reactions to the Orlando nightclub attack
The Muslim ban proposed by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is "not the America we want", President Barack Obama has said.
Treating Muslim-Americans differently will only make the country less safe by increasing division between the West and the Muslim world, he said.
On Monday Mr Trump extended his ban plan to people from all countries with a terror history against the US.
He said the deadly Orlando nightclub shootings justified such action.
Forty-nine people were killed when Omar Mateen, a US national with Afghan parents, opened fire in a gay club early on Sunday.
Mr Trump said his proposal could be implemented through unilateral executive action, given the president's power to "suspend entry into the country of any class of persons that the president deems detrimental to the interests or security of the United States".
But on Tuesday at the US Treasury in Washington, a visibly angry Mr Obama launched his strongest assault yet on the man who is expected to be confirmed as the Republican nominee next month.
Obama v Trump: The gloves are off
Analysis - Nick Bryant, BBC News, Washington
President Obama is often criticised for being emotionally aloof, for being too calm, deliberative. But today, after convening his national security council, his anger came to the fore as he delivered this presidential rebuttal, a general at his side, to Donald Trump and his demand for a ban on Muslims entering America.
Tellingly, he avoided uttering Donald Trump's name, but the billionaire's demand after the Orlando massacre that he should resign as president for refusing to use the term "radical Islam" has clearly enraged him.
Mr Trump's tough-worded response questioned the president's patriotism. While delighting many of his rusted-on supporters, who see Mr Obama as a weak commander-in-chief who has not done anywhere near enough to combat so-called Islamic State, it may lead more moderate Republicans to again question his temperament and judgment.
In modern-day America, traumatic events like the massacre in Orlando tend to expose the country's divisions as much as bringing it together. And that's especially so in this angry election season.
Image copyright AP Image caption Orlando is in shock over the worst shooting in modern US history
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Orlando survivor Angel Colon: "I was thinking I'm next, I'm dead"
The president said the US had been founded on freedom of religion and having a "religious test" would be against the US Constitution.
He also noted that recent terror attacks in the US had been carried out by people born in the US.
Mateen was born in the same New York neighbourhood as Mr Trump.
The president also urged the US to reinstate the ban on assault weapons.
And he dismissed Mr Trump's suggestion that he resign because he refuses to use the word "radical Islamic terrorism".
"If we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush and imply that we are at war with an entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists' work for them," he said.
Mr Obama will visit the scene of the carnage in Orlando on Thursday.
More on Trump's policy platform
28 things that Donald Trump believes
Donald Trump's foreign policy assessed
50 Trump supporters explain whyMoscow’s calls for the evacuation of children from eastern Ukraine are not being answered, Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said. He stated that over 1,200 orphans have been abandoned in the region, which is under continuous shelling from Kiev troops.
4 killed, 18 injured as hospital, residential area shelled in Donetsk, E. Ukraine (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
Ukrainian security forces are “methodically shelling residential neighborhoods” and infrastructure, Churkin said at the UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting in New York on Friday.
The UN diplomats assembled to discuss a UN report on human rights in Ukraine.
UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Šimonović stated that according to Kiev, 300 children remain in several orphanages in areas not controlled by Ukrainian troops. He stressed that the children are particularly vulnerable and that “allegations of abductions or attempted abductions continue to persist.”
Churkin blasted the document while conveying that children have had to remain in Donetsk after Kiev’s forces intervened into the region. According to Moscow, there are 1,223 orphans in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
“It seems that UN philanthropists believe that children rather thrive under fire,” Churkin stated.
A bus carrying a group of 16 orphans seeking shelter was stopped at a Russian checkpoint in June. Due to the ongoing fighting in the region, they were transferred to a Donetsk refugee camp, where they spent the night and were sent back to Ukraine on Kiev’s request. According to local authorities, an act stating that both sides had no objections was signed at the time.
Russia’s requests regarding the evacuation of children have not received any response from Kiev, Churkin said. Meanwhile, the UN human rights report classifies attempts to save the children as “attempted abductions.”
“What do the UN human rights defenders think about this? Don’t children deserve safety?” Churkin said.
Kiev’s punitive operation in the southeast has intensified since May, with the Ukrainian army beginning to heavily shell civilian districts. Many cities in the east have lost power and were cut off from the water supply. As of Tuesday, there have been over 1,300 civilian deaths, more than 4,000 others wounded, and at least 100,000 people forcibly displaced, according to the UN.
Hate speech, discrimination, abductions
The human rights report also mentions the city of Severodonetsk, where there have been “worrying trends of hate speech, particularly in social media” since the city fell under Kiev's control.
It goes on to speak of abductions in the region.
“A disturbing discovery of a mass grave has been made, where 14 people have been buried, including two who have been identified as abducted members of the local evangelist church,” Šimonović said. Local residents said that four people were abducted by unidentified armed men on June 8.
The report also says that the life in the city of Slavaynsk – which has been retaken from the local militia by the Ukrainian army – has “returned to normal,” while power, water, and gas have been restored to 95 percent.
Meanwhile, the UN pointed out that “harassment and discrimination has intensified” against Ukrainian nationals, Crimean Tatars, representatives of religious minorities, and activists who oppose the March 16 referendum in Crimea.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 15,200 have left Crimea, while tens of thousands continue to flee fighting in the east.
Churkin urged the Council to focus on solving eastern Ukraine's humanitarian crisis, and not to question Crimea's status, adding that it is now Russia's territory.
According to Russian and UN estimates, 740,000 refugees have arrived in Russia since the beginning of the year.
Russia offers humanitarian aid, UN rejects offer
Russia offered to send a convoy of aid across the border for displaced civilians at the UNSC meeting on Friday.
"We would like to send a convoy with Russian humanitarian assistance...with the accompaniment of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross)," Churkin said. "We stand ready to act with optimal transparency, let the international community monitor the convoys, transport routes and distribution of aid."
However, the offer was rejected by the UN and was especially criticized by the United States.
"Given that Ukraine has allowed international humanitarian groups to deliver aid within its territory, there is no logical reason why Russia should seek to deliver it," US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told the meeting.
"Therefore, any further unilateral intervention by Russia into Ukrainian territory, including one under the guise of providing humanitarian aid, would be completely unacceptable and deeply alarming. And it would be viewed as an invasion of Ukraine," Power said.
Moscow also called for an immediate end to the fighting in Ukraine, and for an effective resolution of the humanitarian crisis.
At the end of July, the Russian Red Cross described the situation in eastern Ukraine as a humanitarian catastrophe, and urged the rapid evacuation of children from the war zone.Besides the fact, that Redmi devices are known as those budget-friendly, Xiaomi sometimes surprises us with the devices presented there. This time, company want to shows, that budget device can also have nice specification and presents special version of Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, which will be called “Exclusive Version”.
New version will feature more RAM and internal memory. Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 Exclusive is teased as a device with 4GB of RAM memory and 64GB of internal memory. It is quite a lot for Redmi model. I must remind you, that this is the first model (apart of Redmi Pro), that feature such amount of RAM. What is more, this is the same amount as we can find in Mi flaghsip devices.
What is more, the Exclusive Version of Redmi Note 4 will cost only 200 yuan (~$30 in China) more, than standard edition (with 3GB/32GB).
Specification of Xiaomi Redmi Note 4
The rest of the specification won’t change. Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 Exclusive Version will still feature 5.5-inch, FullHD (1080p) display. It has Helio X20 deca core processor at 2.1 GHz, 5MP front camera and 13MP main one. It is powered by battery with capacity of 4100 mAh and supports DualSIM.
New version of the device will be released on 14th March at 10:00 for price of 1399 yuan (~$200 in China) on Xiaomi official webiste, JD, Xiaomi Mall and Lynx. There will be only two colors availabe – faint blue and bright black.
As for now there are no information about international version of the device, but I am sure, that resellers will have this device within a few weeks.A tell-all book written by two former aides to Donald Trump's election campaign reveals some of its salacious details.
The book, 'Let Trump Be Trump' was written by Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie and has been seen by The Washington Post in advance of its Tuesday release.
It apparently details how Elton John music would be played so loudly on Trump's campaign plane that staffers had trouble thinking.
Corey Lewandowski (left) and David Bossie (right) have written a book about Donald Trump's presidential campaign called 'Let Trump Be Trump'
One detail revealed in the book is that Hope Hicks, the current White House Communications Director, would steam Trump's suits and pants while he was wearing them
The book also details Trump's penchant for fast food and how timing his fast-food orders, generally from McDonald's, was a complex process.
An excerpt reads: 'On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke.'
Also on board Trump's campaign plane were stockpiles of Vienna Fingers, potato chips, pretzels and Oreos.
The authors state that for dinner, Trump often had 'two big Macs, two fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted'.
Trump would also apparently play Elton John music loudly on his campaign's plane (pictured having arrived at Dubuque, Iowa in January 2016)
Trump's love of fast food also receives ample space in the book. The authors write: 'On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke.' Pictured is a Big Mac from McDonald's
Another bizarre detail from the book describes how Hope Hicks, now the White House Communications Director, was tasked with steaming Trump's suit and pants - while he was wearing them.
The book will be released on Tuesday and was seen by the Washington Post in advance
Apparently, she once forgot her steaming machine, which prompted Trump to berate her.
'G*dammit, Hope! How the hell could you forget the machine?'
Other fascinating passages detail Trump's other expletive-filled tirades against subordinates who have displeased him.
One, Lewandowski recalls, was directed at Paul Manafort after the former campaign manager said that Trump should not appear on television anymore.
Trump apparently called Manafort from a helicopter to scream: 'I’ll go on TV anytime I G*damn f***ing want and you won’t say another f***ing word about me.'
Trump apparently added: 'I’m a pro at life. I’ve been around a time or two. I know guys like you, with your hair and skin.'
The book chronicles Trump's entire campaign cycle and will be released on Tuesday.Nowadays they can come from any religion or none, but some say health service money is misspent on the 900-strong force
The NHS spends millions each year on employing more than 900 hospital chaplains to provide religious and spiritual care to patients even though the proportion of the population defining itself as non-religious is growing.
There were 916 NHS chaplaincy posts in 2015, according to new data from the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The number has fallen almost 20% in the past five years, down from 1,107 in 2010.
The cost to the health service is estimated to be upwards of £25m, covering full-time and part-time positions – the equivalent of more than 1,000 junior nurses.
Reflecting the rapidly changing nature of faith and belief in the UK, NHS chaplains are becoming more religiously diverse and even non-religious, with the first humanist chaplain to take a paid post beginning work this month. In the 2011 census, about a quarter of the population said they had no religion.
As hospital chaplains we support staff as well as patients Read more
The vast majority of chaplains are Anglicans, but others are Catholics, members of Free churches, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists. Staff chaplains are supported by thousands of volunteers.
Official guidelines issued by the NHS last spring defined chaplaincy as “focused on ensuring that all people, be they religious or not, have the opportunity to access pastoral, spiritual or religious support when they need it”.
Chaplains respond to “calls of increasing complexity” owing to the changing nature of communities and increasing diversity of religions, beliefs and cultures, say the guidelines.
In addition to meeting religious needs, chaplaincy managers “must consider how best to determine and deliver spiritual care to those whose beliefs are not religious in nature”.
Chaplaincy posts have traditionally been only open to individuals authorised by faith institutions. But the appointment of Jane Flint as part-time humanist chaplain in Leicester – a post funded by Leicester Hospitals Charity – may herald radical changes to the basis of NHS chaplaincy in the future.
Chris Swift, the head of chaplaincy services at Leeds teaching hospitals, foresees – and supports – an increase in humanist chaplains in the years ahead, while emphasising a “staggering” pace of change at present.
“If you look at the sweep of history, there has been phenomenal change in the past 20 years after chaplaincy being virtually static for about four centuries,” he said.
When Swift, an Anglican, started work as an NHS chaplain 20 years ago, his colleagues were almost exclusively Christian. Now his team of full- and part-time chaplains includes two members of the Church of England, two Roman Catholics, one Methodist, one Free church member, two Muslims and one Jew; plus Sikh, Buddhist and humanist honorary chaplains.
There were no typical days for NHS chaplains, said Swift, but time was mostly devoted to one-to-one sessions with patients. Chaplains only see patients who have asked to be visited, or have been referred by a relative, a faith leader or ward staff.
“We always confirm with the patient that he or she wants to see a chaplain. When I train chaplains, I say, ‘You are the guest of the patient,’” said Swift. Chaplains never touted for business, he added.
Members of his team were often paged outside regular working hours with urgent requests usually relating to end-of-life care.
“Being admitted to hospital often gives people an intimation of their own mortality, a reminder that things can and do change,” said Swift. “This does present for some people a need for a conversation partner, someone who isn’t going to be fazed or frightened by talking about death. People want someone who has the time to listen intelligently.
“It’s challenging work. Often you know very little about a person or a family, and you have five or 10 minutes to work out what they need at an extraordinarily painful moment.”
His team also conducted two or three “contract funerals” each week, of NHS patients without relatives or financial support.
Leeds’s honorary humanist chaplain had been in place for about a year. “We felt there was a need for someone coming from a perspective that wasn’t religious.” Demand for humanist chaplaincy was “developing”, Swift said.
Although the proportion of the general population who identified themselves as non-religious was increasing, the hospital population was older and therefore more likely to regard themselves as religious, he said. “There’s about a 10-year lag between the hospital population and the picture given to us by the [2011] census.”
The Secular Medical Forum is opposed to ringfencing NHS posts for people authorised by religious institutions, saying the money spent on chaplains would be better used to employ more healthcare professionals and to train existing staff in pastoral care for patients regardless of belief.
“Our concerns are really about the conflation of religion and spirituality,” said its chair, Antony Lempert. “As society has become more secular and diverse, there are key questions about how chaplains should be funded, appointed and what they should be doing.”
Representatives of particular faiths wishing to minister to NHS patients should be paid for by their religious institutions, he said.
The National Secular Society echoed those views. “We’re not trying to banish chaplains from hospitals, but we think there should be a separation between religious care and emotional support for patients,” said its campaigns manager, Stephen Evans.
“The latter is perfectly reasonable, and is already provided by health professionals. Religious care should be provided by religious groups if there’s demand. There’s no need to organise [emotional] care around religious identities, particularly in a country characterised by widespread indifference to religion.”
Brendan McCarthy, the Church of England’s adviser on medical ethics, said both spiritual and religious care were important components of the health and wellbeing of patients.
“As stated in its constitution, it is the responsibility of the NHS to provide comprehensive holistic care for all patients, and for some patients that includes religious care,” he said. Chaplains were also trained to give more generic spiritual care, he added.Capcom And Treasure Working Together Again On Gaist Crusher God
By Spencer. April 3, 2014. 11:00pm
Gaist Crusher is a mixed media series from Capcom and Sin & Punishment developer Treasure. The Nintendo 3DS game launched last year and we think it may have had a hard time at retail since it didn’t chart the week it launched. Dengeki reported that the previous game sold a mere 8,053 units, so we’re pretty surprised that it’s getting a follow up.
Gaist Crusher God is slated for release this fall. The Nintendo 3DS game with have new Gaists like God Hino Kaguchi.
Capcom also showed silhouettes for God Chronos, God Baldur, God Atum, and God Brahma.
Perhaps, the ongoing manga and anime series will raise Gaist Crusher’s popularity before the game launches.The world is getting smaller, but never the less challenging, and these challenges are which many delight to relish. These are the explorers, the adventurists, the survivalists. Perhaps this is you?
If so, sir, then read on:
“Whoso Pulleth Out This Shovel of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of Exploration, Adventure and Survival.“
If worthy to wield this Shovel, take hand and test your rightfulness, because only you, the true intrepid could find promise in its use and the power of its versatility…..it’s the right man for the right challenge; it’s the right tools for the right jobs….and what we have to offer is, ONE tool for MANY jobs.
Spied by The Coolector and worth our, and indeed your attention, is the AceCamp – Survivor Multitool Shovel. Make no mistake; this is no tool shed fodder! Check it out for yourself below:
He who pulleth the Shovel from the stone’s clasp – hold high and feast upon a brilliant shining light of versatility – you will be treated to the following tools:
Shovel, Hatchet, Saw, Hammer, Wrench, Nail puller, Bottle opener, Compass
Not too shabby, right? Well, there’s more. Inside the handle of your AceCamp Multi-Tool Shovel you’ll find:
Emergency knife, Fishing line and hook, Matches
Coming in with its compact dimensions 11.8 x 4.5 in. 4 in [27.43 x 11.43cm x 10.16cm] and weighing 11.4 oz [0.3232kg], its size/weight to usefulness ratio is grossly biased in usefulness favour. Attachable to your person or carrier by its scabbard (protective cover to you and I)….you’ll not know it’s there, until when you need it most.
Produced by a brut player in their territory, AceCamp, founded in 2000, globally supplies an impressive library of outdoor and emergency equipment, and certainly their experience and genius in this dauntless wild kingdom of the outdoors, shows.
Take a look at all AceCamp products at their website.It is the strongest El Nino on record, but we've not really seen an obvious El Nino weather pattern develop in the Eastern Pacific to date. Surfers who have been following our writing on the topic will be aware that consistent El Nino swells are more likely as we move later into the season and that the giants of 1998 arrived at the end of January. So it's fitting that 2016 starts with a large El Nino swell and a weather pattern to please those who like the real world to match their textbook understanding.
A solid swell with both size and period, comfortably confirmed by satellite scan. © 2019 - MSW
This storm is pretty solid – driven by a strong west/east jet-stream on a path that has developed in size and power – and its direction puts a huge amount of coastline in range. Satellite observations confirm the forecast and (while they don't quite track the peak of the swell) do put numbers in the 40ft range. The storm was well predicted by forecast models, we've had good agreement for days. The kicker has been the wind.
Timings are good for paddle at Jaws, a solid swell in the sort of range seen for the Pe'ahi Challenge with those ENE trades making it hard work as ever. But on the mainland things are more complicated. As El Nino gives, it can also take away. That southerly jet-stream track that can build west swell power also brings those same storms directly over the coast. Good news if you have an aquifer in need of replenishment, less good if you're a big wave surfer with a travel budget and a swell to hit at peak with offshore winds.
We've gone back and forth on the numbers from Todos Santos in the south, via Mavericks to Nelscott in Oregon and everywhere in between and there will be windows of great surf – but the challenge of maximising the long period power of that first pulse remains: local winds are really not playing ball.
As always check your local MSW forecast for the very latest numbers on swell and wind.
The latest jet-stream chart looking much as a 'typical' El Nino pattern should. With low pressure to the North and a southerly jet-stream bringing swell, wind and rain to California. © 2019 - MSW
The opposite pattern, from only a couple of weeks ago, with the jet-stream still running north above a large area of coastal high pressure. © 2019 - MSW
If you don't score on this swell (and with a little imagination you should) then you can take solace in the arrival of some much needed rain. © 2019 - NOAA
Any questions give me a shout below or on twitter or instagram @ben_freeston.Enjoy.
Upon waking yesterday morning, I grabbed myself a cup of coffee and my trusted dream dictionary. I wanted to get to the bottom of a very disturbing dream I'd had the previous night, and was eager to begin analyzing the symbolism found therein.I looked up several symbols (basic objects, places/spaces, colors/numbers, and any creatures) that had appeared within this dream, while also checking in with my intuition on them, knowing that all dream symbols are in the main deeper aspects of Self. Just as I was beginning to formulate an interpretation of what the dream had meant and was reflecting back to me, I was struck by a most curious question.Looking up from my journal, I looked at my bookcase and thought,So out of sheer curiosity, I began to do just that.Suddenly, the bookcase in front of me was no longer just a bookcase - symbolically it reflected back to me my love of being surrounded by wisdom and the value I feel in continuously striving to accumulate it. Our shelf of video games in turn, became a symbolic reflection of my need to incorporate play and honor my child-like nature. My laptop became a symbol of deep communication, friendship, social/global awareness, and wisdom.On and on I went around the room analyzing all the objects it contained. Then I analyzed the room itself. What I learned by looking anew at my external life and reality in this way is that external reality is a mere reflection and material manifestation of my most basic values, beliefs, intentions, passions and unique soul/spirit essence expressing - as many of these things represented aspects/qualities that are core to me. I urge you to try this yourself as it is quite an enlightening experience!This demonstrated to me in no uncertain terms that indeed what we experience as everyday reality is constructed by us - out of our values, beliefs, and intentions - not just simply human preference. There were even some things that have to now go because what they represent to me is fear, lack and/or other inner shadow elements. As a result, this experiment also demonstrated to me the need to be very conscious and aware of what one is manifesting and/or calling into their lives and their environments.Sure I already knew all this to be true in more of a philosophical belief sense, but I had notit yet before in such an immediately profound, dramatic, and mind-altering way. This will come to be a periodic practice for me I think, in order to check in and see what I'm sending out there and attracting into my experience. I hope you find it helpful as well.In closing, I'd like to leave you with a short 5 minute clip from philosopher Alan Watts, where he also asks the question, "Is life but a dream?" And as always, Alan's response doesn't disappoint.Hospitals offered a record number of residency positions and more doctors than ever will start their medical careers this summer, according to data released Friday.
The new figures from the National Resident Matching Program arrive on Match Day, when thousands of medical students in the United States and around the world learn where they’ve “matched” for a residency program, after finding out on Monday whether they matched at all.
One figure of note: There was a small decline in the number of people, US citizen or otherwise, who graduated from medical school abroad and tried to match. The number of international medical graduates who are not US citizens and who applied dropped from 7,460 in 2016 to 7,284 this year.
The report does not explain why there was a decline and does not go into country-by-country detail. But this year’s match process came as President Trump tried to temporarily block the arrival of people from some majority-Muslim countries and has imposed restrictions on visas sometimes used in residencies.
Although federal judges have blocked Trump’s executive orders, experts said hospitals would not want to take the risk of ranking students from the listed countries in case they ran into trouble getting visas and joining the residency programs. People involved in the match process also raised the idea that people from those countries might be discouraged from applying because of the proposals.
Still, 52.4 percent of non-US citizens from schools abroad matched into a position, which was the highest rate for that group in over a decade.
Read more: Match Day is coming up. Here’s how medical students game the residency system
More highlights from the report:
Overall, the number of residency positions offered hit a record high of 31,757, up more than a thousand from 2016. Almost 36,000 people submitted applications.
The number of first-year residency positions — 28,849 — was also a new record. Of those, 27,688 were filled.
Almost 80 percent of matched residents landed a spot in one of their top three ranked choices.
From 2013 to 2017, the number of first-year residency spots in a handful of fields grew by more than 10 percent, including anesthesiology, emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology, and plastic surgery. Only diagnostic radiology saw the number of spots offered drop by more than 10 percent over that time.
Those who didn’t match entered a scramble this week to find an unfilled spot. Programs with open residency positions can interview unmatched students throughout the week and extend offers through the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program, or SOAP.
This year, 1,177 spots were up for grabs during SOAP. The number filled was not immediately available.
Republished with permission from STAT. This article originally appeared on March 17, 2017Most leagues in the world schedule around built-in international windows, dates reserved for World Cup qualifiers and continental championships. Major League Soccer, in large part because of its unorthodox spring-through-fall season, does not.
The captain of the United States men’s national soccer team hustled through the lobby of the Olive 8 hotel in downtown Seattle looking for a television and the score.
Peru edged in front of the U.S. early at D.C.’s RFK Stadium, netting the opener while Michael Bradley and his Toronto FC teammates were still stuck on the team bus en route from practice. Bradley found a TV showing the game and scooted a chair closer to the screen.
The most complete midfielder in the USMNT player pool watched helplessly as the Yanks struggled to keep possession. Bradley was antsy, checking Twitter and Instagram between anxious glances up at the screen.
“Get there, Jozy,” he muttered under his breath as his club-and-country running mate Jozy Altidore sprinted on goal but lost a scoring chance to a too-heavy touch.
“I never want to miss anything for anyone,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the halftime show. “The most frustrating part of MLS at the moment is that we still, in a lot of places, play through FIFA dates.”
Most leagues in the world schedule around built-in international windows, dates reserved for World Cup qualifiers, continental championships and tuneup friendlies. Major League Soccer, in large part but not only because of its unorthodox spring-through-fall season, does not.
So though the United States is gearing up for its winner-take-all Confederations Cup playoff with Mexico next month, it plays on without regular starters such as Bradley and Clint Dempsey.
The Sounders and Toronto FC both have plenty on the line ahead of Saturday night’s MLS showdown at CenturyLink Field. Yet Seattle will be without international call-ups Marco Pappa and Roman Torres, while TFC is missing its starting front line in Altidore and MVP front-runner Sebastian Giovinco.
“It’s a lose-lose for players,” Bradley said. “As a player, you hope at some point the league will make the decision to stop playing through the international dates.”
The constant tug-of-war between club and country obligations — the invisible hand ticking off a pros-and-cons list in the background — compounds the frustration. Dempsey’s lingering hamstring injury helps explain why his national-team call-up was delayed until the midweek match against Brazil.
It’s less clear why Bradley was left behind while Altidore temporarily filled in as USMNT captain.
“People have to understand that nothing is ever my decision,” Bradley said. “These things get discussed and decided at the highest level between the ownership at Toronto FC, the league office and U.S. Soccer. It puts players in awkward positions, because people think we’re the ones making decisions – I’m going to go to this one; I’m not going to go to that one.
“It’s not like that. … At the end, I go where they tell me.”
Half of MLS’ 20 teams are on bye this weekend to help alleviate some of this attrition. That’s of little consolation to Seattle, which enters Saturday tied on points with San Jose for the final Western Conference playoff spot, and Toronto, in fourth in the East and seeking to sew up the first postseason berth in club history.
“If it’s an injury or in the natural scope of the season, you live with it,” Toronto coach Greg Vanney said. “When a calendar is set ahead of time for the international dates, those things can be matched up. We can at least take one more factor away from the occasion as to why we’re missing guys.”
A drastic shift to a fall-through-spring campaign is highly unlikely – good luck selling tickets in Foxborough, Mass., in mid-February – but more midweek games would help free up bye weekends. More teams owning and controlling their own stadiums means more schedule flexibility.
In the meantime, clubs are left to cross their fingers, put all their chips on black and hope national-team duty and league scheduling breaks their way.
“For me, it’s very simple,” Bradley said. “As the league grows and as the league continues to attract better and better, you owe it to everybody – the players, the fans – to have the best product on the field every week. There’s got to be a solution.”RLJE/Image Entertainment is getting Infected on VOD and DVD June 9, 2015.
Bloody Disgusting has ane excluisve set of stills from Andrew Gilbert’s indie starring Luke Hobson, Nicky Paul Barton, Roger Fowler, Samuel Hogarth, and David Wayman.
“An average day in a quiet suburb becomes ground zero for the end of the world that we knew. When a fast-spreading global pandemic turns ordinary people into flesh-eating monsters, a handful of terrified survivors and the remnants of an army squad find refuge in an elementary school turned emergency shelter. With the hordes of walking dead trying to get in, scarce weapons and a dwindling food supply, the embattled refugees begin to turn on each other. As they slowly perish, they desperately attempt to escape and determine if they are the last uninfected humans left on Earth.“You can now add bees to the rarefied list of tool-using animals, which already includes primates, crows, octopods, otters, porpoises, and more. A fascinating set of experiments has revealed that bees can be taught to use tools, even though they don't use them in the wild.
Queen Mary University of London biologist Olli J. Loukola and his colleagues wanted to find out more about how bee intelligence works. Previous experiments with the insects have shown that they can count, communicate with each other using "waggle dances" that reveal the direction of food, and pull strings to get access to food. Loukola's new tool use test showed that not only are bees good with tools, but they can also extemporize to use them more effectively.
Loukola wanted to test bees' intelligence with a scenario that they would never encounter in nature. So he decided to teach the bees to move a tiny ball into the center of a platform to get a sugary reward. First, he showed them how it was done by using a plastic bee on the end of a stick. After about five days of training, the bees started to drag the ball to the center of the platform on their own. Then, Loukola allowed the trained bees to show other bees how to unlock the sweet reward. He and his colleagues also trained bees using a "ghost bee," or a magnet under the platform that moved the ball to the center. Bees learned best from other bees (and the plastic bee), but many were able to learn from the ghost bee, too. Bees without training were not able to figure out how to get sugar water in the test.
But were the bees just blindly imitating what they saw other insects do? To answer that question, Loukola put the trained bees in new kinds of situations. When offered a choice between three balls, the bees always chose to move the one that was closest to the center—even though they'd been trained in a situation where the two closest balls were glued down, and only the farthest ball could be moved. They also chose to use black balls, despite being trained on yellow ones. "The bees did not simply copy the behavior of the demonstrator but rather improved on the observed behavior by using a more optimal route," Loukola and his colleagues wrote in a recent paper in Science.
What this ultimately reveals is that bee behavior is even more flexible and adaptable than we realized. Though they don't use tools in their everyday lives foraging for food, they can learn quickly to use them when tasty sugar water is at stake.
Science, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/science.aag2360After the existence of changelings was revealed, Twilight Sparkle made it her business to learn more about them. One of the first things that she found out was not only that there is more than one changeling hive in Equestria, but also that they exhibit a lot of variety. Each hive population has a distinctive coloration and build, and also a dominant field in which they interact with the pony population. This collage shows representatives from each of the |
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RAW Paste Data
Unity Player [version: Unity 4.5.2f1_9abb1b59b47c] KSP.exe caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005) in module KSP.exe at 0023:012860bf. Error occurred at 2014-10-29_182752. D:\Games\Steam\SteamApps\common\Kerbal Space Program\KSP.exe, run by Viktor. 53% memory in use. 0 MB physical memory [0 MB free]. 0 MB paging file [0 MB free]. 0 MB user address space [127 MB free]. Write to location 00000008 caused an access violation. Context: EDI: 0x00000008 ESI: 0xfbaad5f4 EAX: 0x00000008 EBX: 0xfbaad6ec ECX: 0xfbaad5f4 EDX: 0xffffffff EIP: 0x012860bf EBP: 0x002cf030 SegCs: 0x00000023 EFlags: 0x00010202 ESP: 0x002cf030 SegSs: 0x0000002b Bytes at CS:EIP: 89 10 8b 49 04 89 48 04 5d c3 cc cc cc cc cc cc Stack: 0x002cf030: 002cf05c 013fbc1b 00000008 fbaad5f4 \.,...?......... 0x002cf040: 00000000 002cf0dc 00400000 002cf040......,...@.@.,. 0x002cf050: 002cfe88 01ac9ba0 ffffffff 002cf080..,...........,. 0x002cf060: 01287a06 fbaad5f4 fbaad6ec 00000008.z(............. 0x002cf070: 00080000 002cf0dc 03230dc4 00080000......,...#..... 0x002cf080: 002cf0a8 0128801c 00080000 00080000..,...(......... 0x002cf090: 03230dc4 002cf0dc 00000000 fbb94914..#...,......I.. 0x002cf0a0: 0000002c 00000000 002cf0c0 012885af,.........,...(. 0x002cf0b0: 03230dc4 00080000 00033a76 03230dc4..#.....v:....#. 0x002cf0c0: 002cf110 012890b9 03230dc4 00080000..,...(...#..... 0x002cf0d0: 03230dc4 fbb9487c fbb06a98 00000000..#.|H...j...... 0x002cf0e0: 00000000 01310101 fffffffe 00000000......1......... 0x002cf0f0: ffffffff 00000000 fbaad5ec 00000020............... 0x002cf100: 00000000 00000006 00000010 00000000................ 0x002cf110: 002cf140 01289529 00000001 00000000 @.,.).(......... 0x002cf120: 002cf218 00000000 00000000 002cf184..,...........,. 0x002cf130: 00000000 000001a0 ff905bf4 fbb9487c.........[..|H.. 0x002cf140: 002cf184 013d49a3 fbb9487c 8000003c..,..I=.|H..<... 0x002cf150: fbb06a98 00000000 41300000 0000027f.j........0A.... 0x002cf160: 00001fb7 013d4046 00000000 404b8000....F@=.......K@ 0x002cf170: 002cf184 013d4181 425c0000 8000003c..,..A=...\B<... 0x002cf180: fbb06a98 002cf3bc 013d3aab fbb06a98.j....,..:=..j.. 0x002cf190: 00020001 00020000 00000003 00060005................ 0x002cf1a0: 00060004 00040007 000a0009 000a0008................ 0x002cf1b0: 0008000b 000e000d 000e000c 000c000f................ 0x002cf1c0: 00120011 00120010 00100013 00160015................ 0x002cf1d0: 00160014 00140017 001a0019 001a0018................ 0x002cf1e0: 0018001b 001e001d 001e001c 001c001f................ 0x002cf1f0: 00220021 00220020 00200023 00260025!."..".#..%.&. 0x002cf200: 00260024 00240027 013d39f5 e1fdd7b4 $.&.'.$..9=..... 0x002cf210: 0329bb7c fbb06a98 00000000 00000000 |.)..j.......... 0x002cf220: 00000000 3f800000 002cf190 00000039.......?..,.9... 0x002cf230: 0000003c 8000003c 00000000 00000039 <...<.......9... 0x002cf240: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000039............9... 0x002cf250: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000039............9... 0x002cf260: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000039............9... 0x002cf270: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000039............9... 0x002cf280: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000039............9... 0x002cf290: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000039............9... 0x002cf2a0: 00000000 00000000 002cf3ac 0329bb7c..........,.|.). 0x002cf2b0: 0000000b fbaa7b6c 0000000a 016b9d01....l{........k. 0x002cf2c0: 00000002 425c0000 7f7fffff 00000101......\B........ 0x002cf2d0: 00000000 00000010 3f800000 3f800000...........?...? 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has thoroughly documented them, providing registration numbers and dates for each instance. The result, according to Adobe, is "willful, intentional, and malicious copyright infringement," and they're asking the court to issue an injunction and compensate the companies for lost revenue, court costs, and additional damages. Adobe moved towards cloud-based versions of Photoshop and other software in 2013, and many responded to the shift by seeking out pirated versions of the software. In response, Adobe has actively encouraged employees to turn in employers using unauthorized versions of the software.NEW YORK (Reuters) - Electricity company Dayton Power & Light said on Monday it would shut down two coal-fired power plants in southern Ohio next year for economic reasons, a setback for the ailing coal industry but a victory for environmental activists.
Republican President Donald Trump promised in his election campaign to restore U.S. coal jobs that he said had been destroyed by environmental regulations put into effect by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.
Dayton Power & Light, a subsidiary of The AES Corporation, said in an emailed statement that it planned to close the J.M. Stuart and Killen plants by June 2018 because they would not be “economically viable beyond mid-2018.”
Coal demand has flagged in recent years due to competition from cheap and plentiful natural gas.
The plants along the Ohio River in Adams County employ some 490 people and generate about 3,000 megawatts of power for coal.
The closure follows negotiations between Dayton Power & Light, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and stakeholders like the environmental group the Sierra Club over whether the company should be allowed to raise electricity prices to pay for upgrades to keep the plants open.
“They are by far our largest employer and it will absolutely be devastating to our community here in Ohio,” Michael Pell, president of First State Bank in Winchester, Ohio, said in a telephone interview. Pell, one of several local community leaders who have lobbied to keep the plants going, has become a spokesman for Adams County on the issue.
He said that as the industry moves away from coal, state and federal authorities should help the county create other jobs and clean up environmental damage from the plants.
The Sierra Club, which has been advocating coal plant closures for years to help combat pollution, argued that they were a bad investment. The group’s “Beyond Coal” campaign director, Bruce Nilles, said the planned closures would bring the total number of U.S. coal plants due to be retired to 250.
“This milestone is a testament to the commitment Americans have to cleaner air and water - and the power of grassroots action to create healthier communities,” Nilles said in an email.
The plants sit at the heart of a region Trump vowed to revitalize with more jobs and greater economic security during his 2016 campaign. As part of his pledge to reinvigorate the area, Trump also said he would “bring back coal.”
A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dan Sawmiller, the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” representative involved in the negotiations on the plants, said in a phone interview he would stay in contact with local authorities to try to minimize the impact on jobs in the area.
“We like to see the pollution coming offline, but we really are keenly focused on the impact to the community,” he said.
Cheap natural gas from record shale production over the past several years has kept power prices low, making it uneconomical for generators to upgrade older coal plants to meet increasingly strict environmental rules.
U.S. power companies retired or converted over 14,000 MW of coal-fired plants in 2016 after shutting a record of over 17,000 MW in 2015, according to Thomson Reuters data.
In 2015, coal used to produce electricity fell to its lowest level since 1984, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission data showed. That year, coal-fired generators produced 33 percent of the nation’s total generation, down from over 50 percent in 2003.You’re not supposed to care anymore.
Since January 26, the Canucks have been the worst team in the league. And all season long, they’ve been unbearable to watch.
They rarely scored first, they rarely had or held leads. All opposing teams had to do was show up for half periods if that, score a couple of goals, grab the lead and get back to coasting.
Yet you’re still here watching the games until the bitter end and reading about them afterward.
That doesn’t exactly fit with the “Canucks fans can’t handle a rebuild” narrative.
Are fans paying big bucks for tickets? No.
Are seasons ticket holders busting down the doors at Rogers Arena to renew? Definitely not.
Was the entire city ready for this torturous hockey season to come to an end? Uh, yeah.
That’s more about the boring product on the ice and lack of confidence in the team’s direction than the city being full of bandwagon fans, though.
Really, Canucks fans are as engaged as they could possibly be considering their team just finished second last out of 30 NHL teams.
The biggest concern for most fans going into game 82 was Vancouver would somehow find a way to screw this up. Had they won, they’d finish above both Arizona and New Jersey (and Colorado), and they’d get the fifth best odds in the draft lottery with Vegas coming into the league next year.
With a loss, they’d stay at 29th and have the second best odds.
Benning and Linden did say they wanted the team to be playing meaningful hockey in March and April. Well, considering those numbers, the last game could not have been bigger.
Don’t think that’s what they meant, though.
Anyway, the Canucks did it. They lost 5-2 in their final game, and with Connor McDavid needing two points to reach 100, they gave those up too.
When you outtank a team who won 3 games out of their final 24 #Canucks pic.twitter.com/tsyvQYVu7g — Ken (@KenLinVanC) April 10, 2017
It really was a remarkably terrible season, so to do it justice we’ll have an extended version of the SixPack.
Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to read it with the long off-season.
See also
1. Time travel back to October
Remember that 65-point projection from USA Today back at the start of the season?
Of course you do – it gets talked about once a week.
What you might not remember is Trevor Linden’s response.
These are the quotes from the iMac’s article:
“Sometimes there’s a shock factor to it,” Canuck president Trevor Linden said hopefully. “You get more attention when you make predictions like that. I expect us to be better than last year. “I expect us to be hard to play against and to compete every night. And at the end of the day, we’re going to be in the fight (for a playoff spot). We do expect to be better this year.”
Now, I don’t need to tell you, the person who’s still reading about the Canucks after game 82, that they weren’t better than last year.
At the end of the day they finished with 69 points – a nice, round number – and 6 fewer than last season’s 75.
At the end of the day, the Canucks weren’t in the fight for a playoff spot.
And because of that, at the end of the day, you have to wonder who will be making proclamations and promises like these for the team next season.
2. How they almost blew it
Honestly, they were never close to blowing it. Still, with the Canucks’ luck over the years, fans were worried they might somehow tie or even win this game.
Early in the first, Boucher had a breakaway that had fans jumping out of their seats (in morbid fear) when he hit the post.
Then Bachman had them worrying he was going Dominik Hasek with a bunch of saves on Edmonton’s snipers, including this one on McDavid.
Luckily Edler was playing – he who many have annointed second-in-command to the OG Tank Commander, Willie.
Edler took a slashing penalty late in the first, just 10 seconds after Tryamkin’s, giving Edmonton a two-man advantage.
This was the result.
Now, let’s take a moment to recognize the efforts of one Luca Sbisa, who not only tipped in Eberle’s first goal that got the scoring started for Edmonton, but who has been one of the strongest supporters of the tank efforts in the past two seasons.
That’s legit probably a career peak for Sbisa love in Vancouver right now. — Wyatt Arndt (@TheStanchion) April 10, 2017
(He was also one of the biggest reasons the Canucks lost to the Flames in the playoffs two years ago, so it’s the least he could do.)
The Canucks weren’t done scaring their fans, though, as Goldobin scored early in the second to make it 1-1.
It really was a beautiful goal, as Goldy knocked it out of the air and showed what the Sedins might’ve been able to do had they been playing with finishers all year instead of Megna, Sutter and whatever other stone-handed linemates Willie threw with them.
Too bad fans weren’t in the mood to celebrate it.
Eberle scored again shortly after, giving them a 2-1 lead, and a few minutes later this happened.
That’s Slepyshev scoring, giving the Oilers a 3-1 lead, but just as Canucks fans thought they could finally rest, Willie challenged the goal as being offside.
You thought he was a stealth tanker? Thought he called that timeout near the end of the Arizona game to give the Coyotes a rest on purpose? Nope – Willie was always in it to win. He just wasn’t very good at it.
He won the challenge, returning the game to 2-1.
Thing is, the Oilers have skill for days and they scored their 3-1 goal before the second period was over.
They never looked back from there – McDavid got his 100th point, Eberle got his hat trick, and the Canucks, well they got their biggest win of the season with that massive loss.
3. Hutton should not be trade bait
If Canucks management had their way, they’d have probably traded Ben Hutton earlier this season for a winger.
Several times Benning said he’d look to move a player from his “deep” defence to get a scorer, and Bob McKenzie speculated it could be Hutton going the other way. Realize when McKenzie speculates he doesn’t do it without doing a ton of background work first.
Anyway, here’s Hutton with the instant response after Chaput was laid out.
That was Hutton’s first fight in the NHL, so the response shouldn’t be taken lightly either.
And considering how little pushback the entire Canucks roster has had over the past two months, stuff like this really should be appreciated. They’ll need it with the rebuild coming.
4. How I’ll remember Willie
Willie, in (likely) his last game as Canucks’ coach.
@omarcanuck This is basically him in his last game as coach pic.twitter.com/aJoviOqAdn — ️ (@BringerOfRains) April 10, 2017
Willie, when handed players with offensive upside and ability by those above him.
5. Hopes vs. Expectations
With the season over, I asked Canucks fans two questions: what are they hoping to see and what are they expecting from the team in terms of major decisions over the next few days.
Hoping to see:
Expecting to see:
Hoping to see:
@omarcanuck get ppl who are progressive forward thinkers… I’m frankly tired of the “old school” approach — thewaffleirons (@ngsa) April 10, 2017
Expecting to see:
@omarcanuck Lots of excuses about injuries. — Chris (@CLDanielle) April 10, 2017
Hoping to see:
@omarcanuck Anything that presents a clear goal/vision for the organization – want to feel like they know what they are doing! — Andrew Cunningham (@oldNoakes) April 10, 2017
Expecting to see:
@omarcanuck Excuses, more of the same that we have already seen and likely throwing Willie under the bus — Andrew Cunningham (@oldNoakes) April 10, 2017
Some fans were even submitting their own wish lists to Linden and the Aquilinis.
1. Lawrence Gilman
2. Not Jim Benning
3. Not John Weisbrod I’ll just put my wish list for GM here. @fr_aquilini @trevor_linden #canucks — Jewster (@J_Switz) April 10, 2017
6. Most savage takes
This was harsh.
The 2016/17 Canucks – A team that wasn’t very good, with a coach that somehow managed to make them worse. — somebody (@Steve_May) April 10, 2017
This was a show stopper.
BONUS: Caption this
What was Tryamkin saying to Edler in the penalty box here?
Lolz:
@omarcanuck Get over it, Willie is never going to let you play in goal. — S K (@vansk24) April 10, 2017
LOLZ:
@omarcanuck “Why you no pass to Beck Broeser?” — Chris Conte (@ChrisConte79) April 10, 2017
Savage lolz:
And the winner of the lolz:
@omarcanuck Why you stick break so lots!!! — dirt (@mmmmdirt) April 10, 2017
(BTW, don’t @ me with what Tryamkin actually said. I know the real answer and I don’t care).
DOUBLE BONUS: Stay spiteful Canucks fans
Hey, if Canucks fans can’t have playoffs, why should their biggest rivals have any more than necessary?
SMH at Canucks “fans” hoping for a Battle of Alberta. You should be hoping for both teams to lose in the 1st round. — Sir Earl (@Sir_Earl) April 10, 2017
TRIPLE BONUS: Bad move, Francesco
Considering the Canucks finished the season as the second-worst team in the league, and most fans are not happy about the team’s muddled lack of direction, it probably wasn’t the best time for this.
Thank you #Canucks season ticket members and fans everywhere for your amazing support this year. We couldn’t do it without you. — Francesco Aquilini (@fr_aquilini) April 10, 2017
The immediate question: do what?
Spend to the Cap three years straight with nothing to show for it? True, you need fans to buy tickets to support those costs I suppose.
Really, the tweet was an invitation for a bunch of responses similar to these.
@fr_aquilini @patersonjeff “Wow what a day”. Couldn’t do what exactly? Put together such a laughing stock of a team? I’m sure any random off the street could do it. — lindsey mason (@fishdancer) April 10, 2017
@fr_aquilini clean the house. Trevor, Jim and Willie All got to go — Eric (@freeWillieNucks) April 10, 2017
Nope, not the best idea, sending that tweet minutes after one of the worst seasons in the team’s history ended.
He followed up that first tweet with a second.
It was a challenging season. We remain committed to building the next great young team. It will take patience, but it will be worth it. — Francesco Aquilini (@fr_aquilini) April 10, 2017
The worst idea? Attaching yourself to the blunders of your management group.
Linden, Benning and Willie were taking the heat. There was no need to step in the way of those bullets.
QUADRUPLE BONUS: Thanks for reading
And with that, it’s over. It’s finally over.
As crappy as it was analyzing all those losses, I think I speak for Wyatt, myself, and the SixPack third and fourth stringers, when I say it was incredibly fun writing about them.
Honestly, it’s fun interacting with you guys and talking about hockey every day.
Three more thank you’s:
1. To Ryan Biech for his constant help with most of the gifs I used in the SixPacks this season.
2. To Willie, Benning, and Linden for giving us enough material to write about day after day, through the long, 82-game season.
Whatever happens to them, the hockey writers in this city have to appreciate that effort.
3. To all of you for reading and caring enough to support us or rip us. Without you, it’d all be pointless.Outside religion and politics, few things elicit as much of an emotional reaction as sports. Regardless of which part of the world you are in, and what your favorite sport is, there is a scarily high chance that your Friday, Saturday, Sunday or sometimes even Monday nights are devoted to watching your favorite teams in action. It has been conveyed to us that the advantage of sport unlike the former two is the much lower risk of such passion degenerating into protracted conflict between supporters of the two teams. In other words we have been trained to enjoy a competitive, war-like, environment in a passive manner. Subtle mind control techniques like these are used frequently to pacify us. Yes, there are the occasional clashes between supporters of opposing teams, but even then you will rarely see any such confrontation involving guns and bombs – we cannot say the same about political and religious differences.
Sports is powerful – globally-significant events such as the inauguration of the US President can only pale in comparison to the audience size of major sports events. Nielsen estimated that Barrack Obama’s inauguration was perhaps the most viewed US President inauguration in the country’s history drawing more than 37 million viewers. Compare that with the Super Bowl where the audience in 2012 stood at more than 110 million US viewers. The 2011 UEFA Champions League Final attracted over 175 million viewers. Statistics for the Soccer/Football World Cup Final are even more staggering – more than 700 million. Not to mention the mass of people performing “pilgrimage” to the holy arena where these rituals takes place.
NFL on the day of the Sabbath – a very “different” kind of spirituality
The NFL Super Bowl is renowned for it’s corporatism. Mega corporations use this satanic ritual, displayed in front of sellout crowds, as a platform to parade their ads.
“John Bogusz, executive vice president for sports sales and marketing for CBS, confirmed that some advertisers are paying more than $2.6 million for a 30-second commercial. He added that most of the commercial spots for the first half of the game are sold out but that CBS is still looking to sell inventory, mainly during the fourth quarter.” – Source
The giant corporations of America do not care that the NFL goes against every spiritual teaching in any religion or belief system (except for the satanic belief systems they espouse). Here are some examples of how they go against Christianity, the largest faith in America, the land of the NFL. Please remember that Sunday is also a special day for NFL fans.
“Oh my God, I’m so nervous, you have no idea,” says Madonna. “First of all, it’s the Super Bowl, I mean the Super Bowl is kind of like the holy of holies in America right? So here I am, I’m going to come into the halfway between the church experience, and I’m going to have to deliver a sermon, that’s going to have to be very impactful.” She continues, “Right? I have to put on the greatest show on earth, in the middle of the greatest show on earth. I have eight minutes to set it up and seven minutes to take it down and twelve minutes to put on the greatest show on earth. That’s a lot of pressure.” – Source
Non NFL-Sports following the trend
Yes. It is at international sporting events such as the World Cup, Champions League and Olympics that even warring nations and sharply divided faiths temporarily put aside their differences and relish the excitement of friendly competition against one another.
All this sounds fine and dandy.
But is it?
As with anything in the world of media, not everything is always as it seems. On the surface, sports may seem like a powerful force for good. If nothing else, the temporary reprieve it provides is welcome. I mean, who would not mind seeing erstwhile foes who would not hesitate blowing each other to smithereens momentarily bury the hatchet? But look a little deeper and you will discover that sport is one of the most effective tools for the Illuminati to drive their agenda for global domination. And this is achieved in a number of ways:
Speed up the rat race! You work hard the entire week and in between setting aside time for your family, you are probably attending evening classes to advance your career. You hardly have time to sit down and reflect on life. And even when you do seem to have that weekend or evening free to reevaluate your life’s direction and progress, your time is incredibly limited. Now throw in some beer and that must watch match involving your favorite NFL team and your days are pretty much packed (or wasted). What is all this driving at? You hardly have time to assess your own life. Sure, you could always skip watching the match and thus stop swimming in the depravity around it – but that will make you the odd one out and a laughing stock back at the office or in your circle of friends the following day. Ever wondered why there is so much media hype around even some of the most mundane of matches? This posturing of matches almost as a matter of life and death develops a mass hysteria that makes anyone not joining in the fun look like a killjoy.
An epidemic of ignorance – As long as the Illuminati can keep the masses overly occupied with other things, they can deflect any attention their coordinated actions in the national and international stage would otherwise attract. It is often said that the American population is on average the single-most ignorant nation in the developed world (i.e. on matters pertaining to countries outside the US). This is often said in a humorous fashion but the repercussions are far more serious.
Sadly, it is in the US that you would come across a substantial number of educated adults who have no clue on basic facts such who is the current Prime Minister of Great Britain, whether the official UK currency is the Sterling Pound or Euro or whether Africa is a single country or group of distinct nations. To be fair, such dumbing down of society is no longer unique to the US. Have you ever wondered why that is so? It is because there is a direct correlation between the level of consumerism (the US is the world’s number one consumerist nation and with a massive sports fan base spanning the NFL, NHL and NBA) and the level of ignorance of international affairs. Who cares about politics, my favorite team’s star player is the gossip section…that’s more important!
Note that this same exact technique of dumbing down the masses is not necessarily used in every country. The Illuminati are sophisticated enough apply the appropriate strategy for the appropriate cultures, knowing which ones will work best for which country. For the US, sports help keep a large part of the country ignorant. For other developed and developing nations, using a combination of sports, celebrity gossip, political drama and endless local crises are bound to keep the masses from catching wind of the designs of the one world cabal.
Weaken society’s cultural and religious beliefs – For thousands of years, mankind has tried to use religious and political beliefs to chart a common path that’s acceptable to all. As we all know, this has failed miserably. Now here comes sport, a force that can draw people of faiths and persuasions into celebrating a common, and rather pointless, goal. Humans are being raised, and essentially thoroughbred, to become future sporting athletes. Is it any wonder certain locations have a larger percentage of successful athletes? This state of affairs is slowly persuading the masses subconscious into believing that it is possible for persons of different backgrounds to come together behind a cause and pursue a common destiny. That despite the many political and religious conflicts in the world today, sports gives us hope that global cohesion, camaraderie and near-unanimity are all possible. This makes it a far more successful attempt by the Illuminati to subconsciously allow the world to accept the eventual one world government, the NWO.
Now what would represent be the biggest barrier to the achievement of a one world government? Religion and sovereignty represent the two potentially biggest hurdles for the Illuminati to climb. Sport is playing its part in slowly breaking down the public’s religious pillars. In many western countries, organizing sporting events on Sunday mornings was unheard of and taboo a couple of centuries ago. Today, Sundays are the preferred date for major sporting events. Most NFL matches takes place on Sundays, a day considered sacred by Christians.
The English Premier League which has a massive following outside the UK also sees most of its games played on Saturday and Sunday. Even then it is interesting that the big matches (e.g. those where the traditional big 4 clubs – Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea face each other) are almost always scheduled for Sundays. Think about every major marathon in the world – New York, Boston, Chicago, London, Berlin and Tokyo – they are all slotted for Sunday mornings. This blatant anti-Christian behavior can be labeled as nothing less than satanic. Christians who have a soft spot for sports are in a near permanent state of distraction throughout the year.
And then there are the utterances of top athletes – statements that would pass for blasphemy in many major faiths. Take the case of the World Wrestling Entertainment (yes, there is a lot of playacting but athletes must exert considerable effort and injuries are not uncommon which is why I would still view this as a sport). You just have to watch the first 15 minutes of Monday Night Raw and your senses will be assaulted by direct and indirect blasphemy – from wrestlers referring to themselves as greater than God to satanic symbolism as portrayed by some of the more popular wrestlers such as The Undertaker. WWE is also important because the scripted nature of this spectacle is another way the Elite/Illuminati conditions the population. By allowing them to watch a sport that is scripted, they get them accustomed to the scripted nature of global politics.? The Kansas House advanced two bills Monday that would limit the authority of local governments to enact certain kinds of housing laws, including one that could affect the city of Lawrence’s rental inspection program.
House Bill 2665 would prohibit cities or counties from enacting residential property licensing laws that require periodic interior inspections unless the owner or occupant consents.
Rep. J.R. Claeys, R-Salina, said the bill is intended to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of property owners and tenants to be free from unwarranted searches by government officials.
“This bill is quite simple, and it simply allows a tenant or owner who is occupying a property to say no to a search without a warrant,” he said.
Opponents of the bill called it an attempt to take away control from local units of government, and they said it would deal a setback to successful rental housing programs that some cities have had in place for years.
Rep. Boog Highberger, D-Lawrence, said the city of Lawrence spent considerable time crafting a policy that balances property rights and privacy rights of landlords and tenants with the public health and safety needs of the community.
“If you pass this bill, it’s got the potential to throw out a lot of hard work by a lot of people in my community,” he said. “I think we took a lot of time to craft a solution that respects everyone’s rights and addresses our community needs.”
Under Lawrence’s program, however, Highberger noted that the city cannot conduct an inspection without the tenant’s consent, unless the city obtains an administrative search warrant from a municipal judge.
In Kansas City, Kan., though, a mandatory inspection program has been in place for more than 20 years, and lawmakers from there said it has been critical to protecting the health and safety of people who live in rental housing.
“This works very well for us,” said Rep. Kathy Wolfe Moore, D-Kansas City. “This was the only way we’ve been able to get a handle on some of the unscrupulous absentee landlords.”
Rep. Stan Frownfelter, another Kansas City Democrat, tried unsuccessfully to offer an amendment that would allow cities to require inspections when a landlord first obtains a license, and whenever a rental property changes tenants. He also offered amendments to give Wyandotte County that authority, but all of his proposed amendments were rejected.
The House gave first-round approval to the bill on a 67-55 vote. Final action is expected Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the House also advanced a bill that takes direct aim at one type of affordable housing program that has been discussed in Lawrence. It would prohibit cities from enacting what are called “inclusionary zoning” laws that set aside a certain percentage of housing units within a development for affordable housing.
Senate Bill 366 would prohibit cities from enacting any kind of price controls on the sale or purchase of residential property. The state already has a statute preventing cities from enacting rent control laws.
Highberger, however, added an amendment that would lessen the impact of the law. It adds language that says property owners or developers may enter into voluntary agreements with a city government to set aside units for affordable housing in exchange for grants or other incentives offered by the city.
Still, Highberger said, he objected to the overall bill.
“We are in the unfortunate situation of having higher than average home prices and rentals at the same time as we have below-average income levels,” he said of conditions in Lawrence. “And so our community is very concerned about the ability of people who live in our community to continue to live there and that we have a real mix of incomes and socio-economic backgrounds that makes a community healthy.”
That bill advanced to final action on a voice vote. If approved, it will go back to the Senate to either agree with the House’s amendment or request a conference committee.vs. No. 6/6 Baylor (16-1, 4-1) vs. nr/nr Texas (7-10, 1-4)
Jan. 17, 2017 | 6:01 p.m. CT
Waco, Texas | Ferrell Center (10,284)
WATCH: ESPN2 and WatchESPN
LISTEN: Sirius 84, XM 84, Internet 84
Watch | | Listen Online| Tickets
Baylor Notes | Texas Notes
MEDIA INFORMATION Date Tuesday, Jan. 17 | 6:01 p.m. CT Location Waco, Texas | Ferrell Center (10,284) Tickets Purchase Tickets Online TV ESPN2 and WatchESPN TV Talent Jon Sciambi (pxp), Miles Simon (color)
Satellite Radio XM 84, Sirius 84, Internet 84
BU Radio Listen Online BU Talent John Morris (pxp), Nick Joos (color) (pxp), Nick Joos (color) Stats Game Notes Baylor | Texas
Social Media
@BaylorMBB | #SicUT | #ImmortalTen BAYLOR BEARS
Record 16-1, 4-1 Ranking 1st (AP), 1st (Coaches)
Head Coach Scott Drew
Career: 286-184 (15th season)
BU Record: 266-173 (14th season)
TEXAS LONGHORNS
Record 7-10, 1-4
Ranking NR (AP), NR (Coaches)
Head Coach Shaka Smart
Career: 190-79 (8th season)
UT Record: 27-23 (2nd season)
STORY LINES
- No. 6 Baylor hosts Texas in the 90th-anniversary Immortal Ten game at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
- Baylor climbed to No. 1 in last week's AP Top 25, marking the first No. 1 ranking in program history.
- BU's climb from unranked in week 1 to No. 1 in week 9 was the fastest by any team in AP Top 20/25 history.
- BU is one of four teams to reach the No. 1 spot after being unranked in the AP preseason top 20/25.
- A win vs. Texas would tie the best record through 18 games in program history (17-1 in 2011-12). It would also tie the best record through 6 Big 12 games in program history (5-1 in 1998, 2013 and 2016).
- Tuesday is the 249th series meeting - the most-played rivalry in Baylor history dating back to 1905-06.
- The teams have met at least twice per year in every season since 1928.
- BU trails 86-162 in the all-time series, including a 49-66 mark in games played in Waco.
- The Bears are 11-7 vs. Texas since snapping a 24-game series losing streak in 2009.
- Baylor has faced a second-half deficit and come back to win in 8 games this season.
- Baylor's defense this season has been its best of the Drew era - BU ranks 5th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, and Drew's previous best defense was ranked No. 23 nationally in 2014-15.
- Baylor is 1 of 3 teams ranked in the nation's top-20 in offensive and defensive field goal percentage. The Bears (17th O, 11th D) join Gonzaga (5th O, 6th D) and Virginia (13th O, 9th D).
- Baylor also ranks in the nation's top-30 in scoring defense (10th, 60.6), scoring margin (17th, +15.9), rebound margin (10th, +8.5), blocked shots (21st, 5.5) and fewest fouls (29th, 16.4).
- BU opponents average 18.6 seconds per possession, 8th-longest nationally according to KenPom.com.
- BU is 1 of 7 teams ranked in KenPom's top-20 in adjusted offensive (20th) and defensive (5th) efficiency.
- BU is 5-1 when trailing at half and averages a +10.8 scoring margin in 2nd halves of those games.
- BU was picked 5th in the Big 12 preseason coaches poll, behind Kansas, WVU, Texas and Iowa State.
- Baylor has won 11 straight home games, tying the 5th-longest winning streak in Ferrell Center history.
- Baylor is 1 of 4 schools with both MBB and WBB undefeated at home this season (Duke, TTU, UCLA).
- Baylor is 87-72 in Big 12 play since 2008 after going 45-131 in the league's first 11 seasons.
- Baylor has 17 wins over ranked teams in the last two-plus seasons (17-15 since 2014-15).
- BU is 36-55 against ranked teams since 2007-08 after going 0-27 in Drew's first four rebuilding seasons.
- BU received 55 first-place votes in last week's poll and has notched 86 first-place votes this season.
- Prior to this season, the Bears had only received one first-place vote since the first AP poll in 1949.
- Johnathan Motley was named to the Wooden Award Midseason Top 25 on Thursday. He was one of four players on the list who weren't included on the Preseason Top 50.
- Baylor's 16-1 start is the 2nd-best record through 17 games in program history (17-0 in 2011-12).
- Baylor's 15-game winning streak to start the season was the 2nd-longest in program history.
- Baylor is 5-1 vs. AP Top 25-ranked teams and 3-1 vs. AP Top 10 teams this season (wins vs. No. 4 Oregon, No. 24 Michigan State, No. 10 Louisville, No. 7 Xavier and at No. 25 Kansas State).
- The Bears have defeated three top-10 teams in a season for the first time in program history.
QUICK HITS
- Head coach Scott Drew is in his 14th season at Baylor and is the school's all-time wins leader (266).
- Drew is 232-104 since 2007-08, the first year he had a full allotment of scholarships.
- Baylor is 141-57 since 2011-12, the 2nd-most wins in the Big 12 behind Kansas (164-38) in that span.
- BU is 38-4 since the start of 2015-16 when it takes the lead at any point in the 2nd half of a game.
- Baylor is one of 13 teams to be nationally ranked in each of the last 10 seasons.
- Baylor is 44-25 in games decided by 5 or fewer points and 12-2 in overtime games since 2008-09.
- Baylor has won 90% of its games when leading at the half since 2011-12 (111-13).
- BU has won 41% of games in which its been tied or trailing at the half since 2011-12, going 30-44 in those.
- Baylor won the 2016 Battle 4 Atlantis with wins over VCU, No. 24 Michigan State and No. 10 Louisville. Johnathan Motley was named tournament MVP after averaging 20.0 points per game.
- Baylor came from behind at half to win all 3 Battle 4 Atlantis games. BU trailed by 8 to VCU, by 3 to Michigan State and by 15 to Louisville. The Bears out-scored all 3 by at least 16 points in 2nd halves.
- Baylor has had a nation-leading four players selected in the NBA Draft since 2010 who weren't ranked in the ESPN100 out of high school -- Quincy Acy, Ekpe Udoh, Pierre Jackson and Taurean Prince.
- Six of BU's seven starting point guards during the Drew era have earned All-Big 12 recognition.
- Baylor has the Big 12's 2nd-longest active streak with at least one 3-point FG made in 816 straight games.
- BU did not receive any preseason poll votes for the first time since 2009-10.
IMMORTAL TEN GAME
- BU will honor the 90th anniversary of the 1927 Immortal Ten team. That season was canceled after the team bus was hit by a train while traveling to Austin, killing 10 of 22 players, coaches and fans in the Baylor travel party.
SECOND-BEST START IN PROGRAM HISTORY
- Baylor's 16-1 start is the second-best 17-game record in the program's 111-season history |
anything about putting the brakes on Islamic extremism, and in light of what happened last night in Orlando, suddenly that is the only issue that really matters when it comes to the health, well-being and safety of the queer community."
Here's the most poignant passage of the piece:
I also now realize, with brutal clarity, that in the progressive hierarchy of identity groups, Muslims are above gays. Every pundit and politician -- and that includes President Obama and Hillary Clinton and half the talking heads on TV -- who today have said "We don't know what the shooter's motivation could possibly be!" have revealed to me their true priorities: appeasing Muslims is more important than defending the lives of gay people. Every progressive who runs interference for Islamic murderers is complicit in those murders, and I can no longer be a part of that team.
The gay activist concludes by calling on those who want to protect the LGBT community to realize that Trump is their only option.
Read the full article here.For a music fan, few experiences rival listening to a new artist and recognizing their potential for greatness — or, in some special cases, witnessing someone capture that magic completely the first time around. We at Stereogum aim to be ahead of the curve — it’s our job! — and every fall we highlight the new artists we’re most excited about in our Best New Bands list. This list acts as both recognition for musicians that have thrived in the past 12 months and as an investment in them for the future. We expect that the 40 artists below will continue to provide us with great new music for a long time to come.
“New” is a tricky term, especially as the internet has allowed artists to develop and thrive in niches before they make their way across our headphones. Some of the acts below have been around for a little while — a few are even on their sophomore albums — but we collectively agreed that everyone included has reached new heights as of late. And “band” is undoubtedly an antiquated term, as you’ll see from some of the selections below, but we’ve stuck with the longtime designation out of stubbornness and a love of alliteration. Plus, you will find that many of the artists we’ve picked are bands in the traditional sense, and that just speaks to how exciting fresh rock talent has been over the last couple of years.
Many of these names will be familiar to regular Stereogum readers. Between our Band To Watch series and our daily music posts, we try to track an artist’s development as comprehensively as we can. And, in our humble opinion, we have a pretty good track record with picking artists that go on to be the next big thing. Revisit our lists from 2016, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010 if you want some proof of that. Get acquainted with Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2017, presented in alphabetical order, below. You can also listen to a playlist of our picks on Spotify. Enjoy! –James Rettig
Alex Lahey
CREDIT: Giulia McGauran
LOCATION: Melbourne, Australia
From the jump, Alex Lahey was going to draw comparisons to Courtney Barnett. She’s a young singer-songwriter from Melbourne who, initially and somewhat incorrectly, comes across like a witty slacker-rocker similar to Barnett. Lahey’s recent debut I Love You Like A Brother boldly underscored the fact that she’s onto something very different. Songs like “Lotto In Reverse” and “I Haven’t Been Taking Care Of Myself” burst into huge, cathartic choruses more akin to ‘90s and ‘00s alt-rock than anything in today’s indie sphere. Lahey’s got a way of capturing the particular anxieties and frustrations of the listless years of post-college life. And while her songs convey all that, those giant hooks tell a different story: the triumphant and defiant part where you kick the door down to life’s next phase. –Ryan Leas
Amber Mark
LOCATION: New York, NY
“I’ve got a lot to express,” Amber Mark sings at the beginning of her song “Can You Hear Me?” It’s true. And she’s got a lot of different ways to express what she’s got to express. The young New York singer has a rich, supple voice, and while it’s been scarcely more than a year since she started posting music on SoundCloud, she’s already shown that she can handle spacious, architectural futuristic R&B and warm, jazzy, traditional soul. But she might be at her best when she’s howling over state-of-the-art dance tracks like DJDS’s “Trees On Fire” or her own “Heatwave.” Lots of singers can express heartbreak or euphoria; Mark is the rare one who can do both at the same time. –Tom Breihan
Aminé
LOCATION: Portland, OR
“Caroline,” Aminé’s big breakout hit, had horny sex talk, exuberant energy, and goofiness to spare. And with Good For You, the 23-year-old Portland rapper has managed to keep that endearing underdog charm going for the length of a full album. There are some contemplative blues mixed in with all that cheerful yellow, but Aminé’s #blackboyjoy is as irrepressible as it is infectious. He invites everyone from Offset to Girlpool to join his sunny pop-rap party, and you’ll want to be right there with him, sipping Stellas with his fellas. –Peter Helman
Bedouine
CREDIT: Polly Antonia Barrowman
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
Bedouine is the moniker of Azniv Korkejian, a Hollywood music editor turned recording artist who released her self-titled debut this year. Bedouine was made with the help of Spacebomb session musicians, and though it’s primarily a folk album, this collection of songs shapeshifts and collects new influences along the way. These are plainspoken songs written for quiet moments alone and long walks home, and though the entanglements Korkejian sings about don’t lead to huge, mind-bending revelations, they do leave you feeling a bit more grounded. –Gabriela Tully Claymore
Bedouine by Bedouine
Brockhampton
CREDIT: Ashlan Grey
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA / San Marcos, TX
Brockhampton have been at it for awhile, but they truly broke 2017. The rap pack out of LA bring energy, excitement, and unbridled joy to a world that gets darker by the day. By the end of this year, Brockhampton will have released three albums, and they show no sign of slowing down anytime soon. On their standout single “Junky,” group ringleader Kevin Abstract defines himself as an out, queer rapper and his wordplay is so sickeningly clever that you’ll have to rewind the track two, three, four times in order to appreciate its poetry. “You know like closet niggas, masc-type/ Why don’t you take that mask off?/ That’s the thought I had last night.” Lines like that sting, and there are so many of them on Saturation I and II. Abstract is the group’s crown jewel, no doubt, but Brockhampton’s music is a testimony to the fact that sometimes, collaboration gets you farther than going it alone, and it’s nothing short of a pleasure to watch a bunch of friends bring out the best in each other. –Gabriela
Saturation 2 by BROCKHAMPTON
Cardi B
CREDIT: Raven Varona
LOCATION: The Bronx, NY
Cardi B got her start as a social media personality, a funny woman who preached self-acceptance and made backhanded jokes about shitty men. She was a stripper, then a contestant on Love & Hip Hop, and now she’s on top of the world. Against all odds, “Bodak Yellow” made it to #1, and in turn, Cardi B became a beacon of hope, the embodiment of this elusive idea that sometimes shit goes the way you want it to and sometimes the person who deserves the crown gets it. Long may she reign. –Gabriela
Carla Dal Forno
LOCATION: London, UK / Melbourne, Australia
Before she started putting out music under her own name, Carla Dal Forno cut her teeth on scratchy lo-fi punk and murky experimental soundscapes. On her debut full-length, You Know What It’s Like, and its follow-up EP, The Garden, she plays with a fusion of the two, marrying pointed urgency with an atmospheric foreboding. Her music is characterized by a pervasive haunting, unfurling in smoke wisps and snaking base lines. Songs like the creeping “What You Gonna Do Now?” and the bruised “Make Up Talk” explore not the unsettling unknown but the sort of everyday monsters that surround us, those whose demons we know all too well. –James
Club Night
CREDIT: Joanna Samuel
LOCATION: Oakland, CA
The collectivist spirit is alive and well in Club Night. The band’s members are spread out across the Oakland music scene, but on their debut Hell Ya EP, they come through like a gale-force storm. They sound like 10 different bands mashed up into one, but there’s a practiced exactitude that keeps their improvisational looseness from careening off the rails into disrepair. Their two most tightly-constructed songs are “Well” and “Rally”; both feel like the crackling of fireworks, the guttural utterances of a massive snake coiled and ready to bite. Club Night’s frenetic ping-ponging across genres feels like the work of a band with many distinctive voices, all shouting over each other. That they’re able to harness that discordant energy into songs as eminently listenable and likable as the ones on Hell Ya is a testament to their strength. –James
Common Holly
CREDIT: Sean Mundy
LOCATION: Montréal, Quebec
New album Playing House may only hint at the full scope of Brigitte Naggar’s talents. The Montréal musician known as Common Holly counts few common threads from song to song besides her mesmerizing voice and distinct sensibility. Album closer “New Bed” amounts to little more than that (and that’s all it needs), while on opener “If After All,” acoustic guitar and orchestral accompaniment give way to booming drums and gnarly alt-rock power chords. Her array of cinematic ballads make diverse use of minimal arrangements, venturing into chamber-pop, country, post-rock, and other styles in service of compelling narration about a romantic relationship falling apart. (From the title track: “I’ll play mama, you’ll play daddy, and we’ll ruin us beyond repair.”) Ultimately it’s a singer-songwriter album that plays with an auteur’s vision, one that suggests Naggar’s horizons are broad. –Chris DeVille
Playing House by Common Holly
G Perico
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
In the hands of a truly great rapper, throwback sounds won’t sound like throwback sounds. And G Perico is a truly great rapper. The young up-and-comer, from South Central Los Angeles, has a slick-but-deranged nasal chirp of a voice that recalls prime DJ Quik, and he prefers funky, melodic, synth-heavy beats that call back to early-’90s G-funk. He even has one of the best perms that music has seen since dudes stopped wearing perms. But his music has an urgency that keeps it from sounding like revivalism or nostalgia. Perico’s debut album All Blue is hard, vivid rider music, and when you’re playing it loud enough on a half-decent sound system, it exists out of time. –Tom
Girl Ray
CREDIT: Neil Thomson
LOCATION: London, UK
The three members of this London band were in their teens when they released Earl Grey, their excellent debut album, but you couldn’t tell. The album comes steeped in history from its ’90s twee aesthetics to the cinematic ’70s ways that it uses strings to the Nico/Young Marble Giants deadpan blankness in frontwoman Poppy Hankin’s voice. And Earl Grey does more than artfully hodgepodge the styles from the past. It’s also a triumph of songwriting, a warm and bittersweet and melodically rich piece of music. And again: This is the work of teenagers. Imagine what they’ll be able to do after they’ve been around a little longer. –Tom
Earl Grey by Girl Ray
Great Grandpa
CREDIT: Nick Dinatale
LOCATION: Seattle, WA
This ain’t your great grandpa’s Great Grandpa. Despite the name, Great Grandpa are planted firmly in their 20s, with all of the attendant disaffection, indecision, and general ennui that that entails. But, like a few other famous musicians from Seattle, they’ve turned the gray fog of youth into searing, lopsided guitar music, with the capacious depths of Alex Menne’s voice sounding just at home over the fiery squalls of “No Hair” as it does on the tender balladry of “All Things Must Behave.” Oh, and also, there are zombies. –Peter
Harmony Woods
CREDIT: Emily Dubin
LOCATION: Philadelphia, PA
Sofia Verbilla adopted the Harmony Woods moniker when she began releasing music last year, allowing for a deflective distance from her vulnerable and big-hearted songs. Her debut full-length, Nothing Special, is demarcated by a series of numbered vignettes that split up the songs “proper,” but really all of her songs are vignettes of a sort, snapshots of worry and distance and ache. Verbilla’s smoky and powerful voice belies the insecurities she lays bare in her writing as she confronts the unstable ground that life is built on. It’s a contrast that works wonders, and Nothing Special’s title even begs you to contradict it, to assert that, of course, she’s certainly doing something very special indeed. –James
Nothing Special by Harmony Woods
Hater
CREDIT: Ludvig Hedlund
LOCATION: Malmö, Sweden
The guitars chime; the vocals soar; the rhythm section surges with the weary heaviness of an elongated sigh. It’s all so gorgeously melancholy, Hater’s version of hard-charging indie-pop — like a mirage just visceral enough that it must be real life. On this year’s impressive full-length debut You Tried, the quartet sounded something like reigning genre champions Alvvays tilting ever so slightly into classic rock. The upcoming Red Blinders EP further expands on that sound, exploring trip-hop beats and borrowing tics from ‘90s sophisticates like Stereolab and Yo La Tengo. All the while Caroline Landahl exults and laments with a trace of friction in her voice, a weathered quality that lends these Swedish dream-pop songs some extra rock’ n’ roll kick. –Chris
Jay Som
CREDIT: Ebru Yildiz
LOCATION: Oakland, CA
Jay Som takes time to figure it out. And with Everybody Works, she’s figured out that bedroom-pop doesn’t have to sound like it was recorded in a bedroom. Melina Duterte constructs songs with a painterly eye, augmenting her homespun indie with splashes of horns and piano and accordion. Over the course of the LP, billed as her official debut following last year’s Bandcamp release Turn Into, she moves from candy-coated fuzz-pop and slinky funk to subtle synth-pop and experimental soundscapes. And all of it, like everybody, works. –Peter
Everybody Works by Jay Som
Julia Michaels
CREDIT: Catie Laffoon
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
Julia Michaels was inoculated into the major label songwriting camp system at an early age, and before she could legally drink she had racked up credits on songs for Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Fifth Harmony. At the beginning of this year, Michaels made her solo debut with “Issues,” a song that spins magic out of syncopated rhythm, negative space, and an undeniable hook. It proves a worthy blueprint for the other six songs on her debut EP, Nervous System, which lands like a breath of fresh air. These songs have staying power not only because of their intense catchiness but because of Michaels’ adept grasp of the messy relationship dynamics that make a song … well, dynamic. She eschews big break-up anthems or cutesy first date butterflies for something that feels more real, exploring the tiny seesaws that actually make a relationship tick, and that’s refreshing as hell in pop music. –James
Katie Ellen
CREDIT: Jessica Flynn
LOCATION: Philadelphia, PA
Teenage Retirement, the first and last album from magnificent Brooklyn pop-punks Chumped, proved Anika Pyle was a songwriter with much to say and an electrifying way of saying it. She’s extremely good at writing about her personal life in a way that feels vital and universal. Fortunately, although Chumped are dearly departed, Pyle and former Chumped drummer Dan Frelly have relocated to Philadelphia and reemerged as Katie Ellen, a new project for a new phase of life. On their debut album Cowgirl Blues, her old charged-up tales of quarter-life romantic longing and disillusionment give way to more measured tempos and an overall more bleary disposition, Pyle literally slowing down and taking stock of what it means to be a woman in our 21st century hellscape. Despite the darker shading, her songs remain remarkably catchy and alive — perhaps painfully so, depending on who’s listening. –Chris
Cowgirl Blues by katie ellen
Kelly Lee Owens
CREDIT: Kim Hiorthøy
LOCATION: London, UK / Wales, UK
Initially, the music on Kelly Lee Owens’ self-titled debut comes across a certain way. Owens has already proven herself adept at chilly, claustrophobic electronic arrangements that nevertheless still move. But her record is a deeper and more paradoxical work than first impressions might suggest. Her background includes both childhood choirs and young adulthood stints in the indie-rock world, and you can hear the lingering influence of both in the music she makes now: choir vocals in the ghostly or cooing way she sings and produces vocals, a songwriter’s eye applied to the limitless boundaries of dance music. Kelly Lee Owens feels removed and hypnotizing as much as it feels intimate and emotive, a personal work abstracted and reconstructed to the point where listeners can find their own way in no matter which direction they’re coming from. –Ryan
Khalid
CREDIT: Kacie Tomita
LOCATION: El Paso, TX
Khalid’s 2017 release, American Teen, documents the trials and tribulations of adolescence, and this 19-year-old sings with the kind of deadpan honesty that is hard to laugh at even if you’re of an older generation that might be inclined to. Songs with titles like “Another Sad Love Song,” “8TEEN,” and “Young Dumb & Broke” all allude to that particular brand of sad-kid malaise that is timeless no matter how of-the-moment the references get. It’s no wonder Lorde’s a fan. –Gabriela
Lily And Horn Horse
LOCATION: New York, NY
Lily And Horn Horse is the collaboration between Lily Konigsberg (of the New York deconstructionists Palberta) and Matt Norman (who makes experimental music as Horn Horse), and together they make alluring and delirious sound collages. On the two releases they’ve put out this year — spring’s Lily On Horn Horse and fall’s more polished Next To Me — their ideas are largely confined to minute-long bursts of inspiration that allow them to get weird but stay accessible. They make syrupy auteurist pop nuggets that feel inviting despite their unconventional structures. Right now their calling card is “Next To Me,” a glitchy proto-R&B jam that is endlessly repeatable. You get the sense that there’s even more ingenuity like that up their sleeves. –James
Lomelda
CREDIT: Laura Lee Blackburn
LOCATION: Silsbee, TX
Silsbee, Texas is a two-hour drive from Houston, a four-hour drive from Austin, and a four-hour drive from Waco. Hannah Read is keenly aware of that distance, and on Thx, her latest album as Lomelda, she turns years of solitary late-night drives into 34 minutes of solitary late-night music. Roads connect us, and so does music, and while the dusty folk-rock behind her twinkles like a distant star, Read uses her searching voice as an instrument to collapse the space in between, forging a connection as intimate as a whisper in your ear. –Peter
Madeline Kenney
CREDIT: Cara Robbins
LOCATION: Oakland, CA
When we first heard of Madeline Kenney, there was always a preface summarizing her curious range of expertise aside from music — modern dance, baking, neuroscience. Then more new music kept arriving, and though those biographical facts remain curious trivia, the songs overshadow everything else. Produced by Toro Y Moi, Kenney’s full-length debut Night Night At The First Landing arrived at the end of the summer. True to its nocturnal name and cover, it’s an album for solitary, meandering nights, flitting between painterly dreamscapes and ‘90s alt-rock catharses. Songs like “Rita” and “Always” are big distorted guitar monuments that drown rather than pummel (in the best way) and the album as a whole is frequently gorgeous. It’s a promising beginning: Kenney’s built her early career on taking well-worn touchstones and managing to wring something new out of them, making them her own in the process. –Ryan
Miya Folick
CREDIT: Maya Fuhr
LOCATION: Santa Ana, CA
There are many echoes of rock’s greatest women in Miya Folick’s new Give It To Me EP. “Trouble Adjusting” is basically a Hole song. “Woodstock” is literally a Joni Mitchell song. Folick can smolder like Sharon Van Etten and wail with the startling fury of Corin Tucker. Yet once you’ve beheld the LA musician’s latest recordings you won’t mistake them for anyone else. The EP leaves a profound impression even before you read the fascinating tidbits in her bio (raised Buddhist, reluctant former basketball player, met her band on Tinder). An in-your-face intensity animates these songs — a sense of deeper passion and higher stakes. Folick has grown from an enjoyable singer-songwriter with adventurous tendencies into an artist whose every disparate creation seems to be summoning elemental forces. When she screams, “Give it to me!” you feel compelled to comply, whatever “it” may be. –Chris
Moor Mother
CREDIT: Bob Sweeney
LOCATION: Philadelphia, PA
The experimental music Camae Ayewa makes as Moor Mother is designed to be confrontational. Often loud and hellish, the songs on Fetish Bones confront white hegemony, the police state, familial trauma, and the legacy of slavery with unabashed forwardness. Ayewa is a poet, and her prose cuts through the sonic chaos like tiny daggers made to punish you into thinking a little bit harder. Her work is visceral when you listen to it through your headphones, and her live show will leave you quaking. –Gabriela
Fetish Bones by Moor Mother
Nation Of Language
CREDIT: Marina Labarthe del Solar
LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
Ian Devaney had been through this already. His previous band, the punk-leaning alt-rock outfit the Static Jacks, had made it out of New Jersey and seemed to be on course, touring and releasing albums. Then, somewhere along the line, things simply ran out of steam. He found himself back home, regrouping, riding in the car with his father, who put on “Electricity” by OMD, sparking an epiphany for Devaney: He wanted to make synth-pop. A few years and a move to Brooklyn later, Devaney has already amassed an enviable collection of complete earworms under his new moniker Nation Of Language. And, yes, it sounds like the early ’80s, but what makes Nation Of Language so special is that you might recognize the aesthetic, but you can’t reduce them to obvious forebears: Devaney’s harvesting the past, writing bulletproof songs, and staking his territory in a decades-deep lineage of alternative music. –Ryan
I've Thought About Chicago by Nation of Language
Nervous Dater
LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
In Rachel Lightner, Nervous Dater boast one of the finest emerging lyricists in indie rock, one whose every neurotic couplet could be a self-contained story. Consider the chorus from “Bad Spanish,” the anthemic opener from debut album Don’t Be A Stranger: “It’s hard to ask for help if you don’t really want it/ Passed out on the train in your own vomit.” Or the many layers in this line on “Fun Dumpster,” the subsequent track: “I wore a dress for you/ ‘Cause you’re nicer when I do.” Or the breathlessly vulgar “Stockton Syndrome” climax: “Jackie’s got the drugs, and holy fuck he’s gonna take ‘em!” Lightner deploys these turns of phrase with a wide-eyed gusto that amplifies Nervous Dater’s prevailing feeling of barreling ahead while barely keeping it together, elevating their tremendous guitar-powered songwriting to ridiculous heights. Take the album title’s advice and get to know this band. –Chris
Omni
CREDIT: Sebastian Weiss
LOCATION: Atlanta, GA
Omni might be a trio of indie-rock survivors from the likes of Deerhunter and Warehouse, but they come across like a post-punk band straight out of the early ’80s, from their wiry, jumpy rhythms to the technical appearance of their new album Multi-task’s cover art. That corner of classic alternative music is not mined too often these days, at least not to this extent, and Omni go all in on it — their songs are infectious, bright series of sharp guitar licks and sing-speak vocals. It’s not quite reinventing anything, but if you’re the kind of person who has proclivities for the less brooding strains of post-punk, Omni are new masters of it. –Ryan
Partner
CREDIT: Colin Medley
LOCATION: Windsor, Ontario
Listening to Partner is like hanging out with your best friends, assuming your best friends are queer Canadian stoners with hooks for days. For Josée Caron and Lucy Niles, that’s actually true, and their easy chemistry is evident on the excellent In Search Of Lost Time, both on the album’s 12 songs and in the goofy skits threaded throughout. What’s even more evident is their musical chops, the kind of righteous riffage that can turn anything from wandering around a grocery store high to discovering your roommate’s sex toy into a slyly subversive guitar-rock anthem. –Peter
In Search Of Lost Time by Partner
Phoebe Bridgers
CREDIT: Frank Ockenfels
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
Phoebe Bridgers has already picked up some noteworthy fans and collaborators like Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, and Ryan Adams in the short time that she’s been around. And it makes sense that they would be interested because her full-length debut, Stranger In The Alps is nothing short of a revelation. Its understated, subtly orchestrated rootsiness suggests something like the monumental grandeur of its titular mountains, but the feelings contained within these songs are all devastatingly human-sized, vulnerable and sad and, yes, beautiful. –Peter
Primal Rite
CREDIT: Angela Owens
LOCATION: San Francisco, CA
Primal Rite came together after the members of the unsung Bay Area hardcore band Scalped fractured apart, and there’s plenty of DIY-hardcore intensity in what Primal Rite do. But with all the juddering hardcore riffs and breakdowns that Primal Rite bring, they’ve also absorbed the speed and flash and virtuosity of ‘80s thrash and death metal. And in Lucy Xavier, they’ve got a frontwoman capable of raw face-punch fury. Together, all those elements make for an enormously satisfying rush of aggression. After a couple of stellar EPs, Primal Rite’s debut album is coming early next year. Look the hell out. –Tom
Antivenom by PRIMAL RITE
Rata Negra
LOCATION: Madrid, Spain
Rata Negra make post-punk that communicates a sense of urgency without getting overly complicated. Their lyrics, sung in Spanish, often border on simple descriptions of day-to-day life pressed up against a realization or affirmation. Their new album, Oído absoluto, is a marathon of tightly-knit and catchy melodies. Songs like “El autómata” and “Dientes sobre el metal” confront the doldrums of daily existence with an exuberance that could brighten the shittiest day. Rata Negra give you that same burst of energy you got way back when you heard a punk rock song for the very first time. –Gabriela
Oído absoluto by Rata Negra
Slaughter Beach, Dog
CREDIT: Jessica Flynn
LOCATION: Philadelphia, PA
As Modern Baseball headed towards an extended hiatus, Jake Ewald — one of the band’s primary two primary songwriters — was investing more energy into his Slaughter Beach, Dog side project. He started it a couple years ago to release a handful of demos but picked it up in earnest last fall with Welcome, a charmingly low-stakes concept album about a fictional town called Slaughter Beach inhabited by characters that shared Ewald’s familiar sense of suburban disillusion. The project’s freedom from pressure and more freeform aspirations blossomed with the Motorcycle.jpg EP and Birdie LP this year. His newer tracks take cues from folk standards and confessional diaries, and they rival the great work he did with his main band, solidifying him as one of this generation’s most talented and adaptable young songwriters. –James
Birdie by Slaughter Beach, Dog
Snail Mail
CREDIT: Bryan Regan
LOCATION: Baltimore, MD
At age 18, Brooklyn-based Baltimore kid Lindsey Jordan has already been through a whirlwind word-of-mouth rise through the underground, a round of breathless media exaltation, a SXSW star tour, and a label bidding war that landed her band Snail Mail on historical indie-rock pillar Matador Records. So what does everybody see in her? Debut EP Habit is pretty much all we have to go on so far, but it presents Jordan as a natural, a songwriter capable of spinning magic from a few guitar chords and howled phrases. Her lo-fi guitar ballads glimmer in their grime, wringing uncommon beauty from indie rock’s basic toolkit. Imagine Waxahatchee under the influence of both Sonic Youth and actual youth, and you’ll begin to understand what all the fuss is about. –Chris
Habit by Snail Mail
Superorganism
CREDIT: Steph Wilson
LOCATION: London, UK
Superorganism are a group born on the internet, and they sound like it. The international collective started through messages between a string of friends who are now mostly based out of a single house in London. The handful of singles they’ve released so far blend warm plunderphonics that feel like a dozen tabs open at once with the captivating presence of lead vocalist Orono, who speaks in wordy circulars that border on emo confessional. “Something for Your M.I.N.D.,” their debut single, is a sparkling pop gem that lesser bands have built entire careers out of, but luckily Superorganism’s follow-ups have all been just about as dynamic and lovely as their first, downcast but not downtrodden songs that suggest that they’re no one-hit-wonder. –James
Thunder Dreamer
CREDIT: Morgan Martinez
LOCATION: Evansville, IN
One of the first things you need to know about Thunder Dreamer is that they are from Evansville, Indiana, of all places. That’s not a town with any current or past music scene; that is a town that, like small towns across the country, stands on the remnants of once-robust industry. It’s right there in the name of Thunder Dreamer: filling your head with big ideas, visions of life elsewhere. Their music comes from that perspective, expansive songs built to both conjure and fill wide-open spaces, loud and rambling enough to echo through the countryside. In terms of 2017 releases, Thunder Dreamer’s new album Capture is an outlier: It’s an indie-rock record of a classic breed, jangly and autumnal. But there’s also a ragged classic rock charm underpinning songs like “Living Like The Rest,” an urgency that speaks to ambitions too big for a humble hometown. –Ryan
Capture by Thunder Dreamer
Trophy Dad
LOCATION: Madison, WI
Trophy Dad are a band based around dichotomies: between their dual lead vocalists who entangle with ease, between the jammy deconstructions and warm harmonies they dole out in equal measure, through the messy and complex power relationships they explore in their lyrics. This year’s great Dogman EP features five songs that highlight the dynamism of this young band in full force, from the theatrical swings of “Addison” to “Louis Sachar”‘s blown-out approachability. The energy and inventiveness they display are infectious, and the strength of their songwriting structure suggests they’ve only got room to grow. –James
Dogman by Trophy Dad
UV-TV
LOCATION: Gainesville, FL
There’s not really a word for what kind of music the Gainesville, Florida band UV-TV play. It’s fast and feverish, like punk. It’s raw and rickety and hooky, like garage rock. It has a sense of beauty and playfulness and immediacy, like pop music. And its focus on jangly sha-la-la melodies connects it to ‘60s folk-rock, as well as to a half-dozen ‘90s DIY indie scenes that drew on all those things. But it doesn’t really matter if UV-TV don’t have a genre. Their debut album Glass is a joyous, shattering hookfest, and it moves so fast that you don’t have time to worry about meaningless distinctions anyway. –Tom
GLASS by UV-TV
Vagabon
CREDIT: Daniel Dorsa
LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
Lætitia Tamko’s first album as Vagabon is called Infinite Worlds, and it does a great job demonstrating the multitudes she contains. That’s true of the music’s stylistic makeup, a genre mishmash that includes electrifying roughshod indie-rock, warmly skittering electronic pop, and piercing singer-songwriter balladry — sometimes all at once, as on “Fear & Force.” And it’s perhaps even truer of Tamko’s passionate trembling and wailing, which embodies the broad scope of her richly diverse life experience. Tamko has lived on multiple continents, mastered the disparate disciplines of music and computer engineering, and thrived as a black woman in a predominantly white, male space. Our own Gabriela Tully Claymore called Infinite Worlds “an affirmation that you can always be everything at once,” and frankly so is Tamko’s life. We look forward to hearing how that multiplicity manifests itself next. –Chris
Wild Pink
CREDIT: Andrew Dominguez
LOCATION: New York, NY
Wild Pink have been kicking around for a few years — they first popped up on our radar in 2015 with their Good Life EP. Back then, they crafted scuzzy and rousing indie anthems, with frontman John Ross’ voice working as a scratchy vehicle for conversational expressiveness. Two years and an additional EP later, the band arrived with their self-titled debut LP. In the interim, they had established another part of their identity: Wild Pink are as adept at rough-around-the-edges rockers as they are at dreamy, sighing folk atmospherics. Their debut finds them sliding between the polarities, the consistency between it all being the sharp attention to craft this young band’s already displayed and their ability to make small interactions and emotions feel momentous. –Ryan
Yaeji
CREDIT: Jake Naviasky
LOCATION: New York, NY
The singer and producer Yaeji is based in New York but spent a good part of her childhood in Seoul, and she sings in Korean as much as she does in English, but there’s nothing K-pop about what she does. Instead, Yaeji taps into an old, instinctive strain of deep-house burble, her deadpan voice floating above the oceanic bass tones and precise drum skitters. There’s feeling in what she does, and her lyrics are more politically pointed than they’re given credit for being. But the blank, breezy swoon of that voice over those beats is what sticks with you. –TomJohn Kenneth Galbraith wrote that all financial crises are the result of “debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale.” The recent financial crisis was no exception, with everyone—homeowners, private-equity investors, our biggest banks—taking on enormous amounts of debt. If it’s frustrating that the government is footing the bill to clean up the mess, it’s even worse that the government helped pay for the debt binge that created the mess in the first place, thanks to a tax system that actually subsidizes borrowing. Debt didn’t get dangerously out of scale because the system was broken. It got out of scale, in part, because the system worked.
The government doesn’t make people go into debt, of course. It just nudges them in that direction. Individuals are able to write off all their mortgage interest, up to a million dollars, and companies can write off all the interest on their debt, but not things like dividend payments. This gives the system what economists call a “debt bias.” It encourages people to make smaller down payments and to borrow more money than they otherwise would, and to tie up more of their wealth in housing than in other investments. Likewise, the system skews the decisions that companies make about how to fund themselves. Companies can raise money by reinvesting profits, raising equity (selling shares), or borrowing. But only when they borrow do they get the benefit of a “tax shield.” Jason Furman, of the National Economic Council, has estimated that tax breaks make corporate debt as much as forty-two per cent cheaper than corporate equity. So it’s not surprising that many companies prefer to pile on the leverage.
There are a couple of peculiar things about these tax breaks—which have been around as long as the federal income tax. The first is that they’re unnecessary. Few people, after all, can save enough to buy a home with cash, so home buyers naturally gravitate toward mortgages. And businesses |
modern convention is that Parliament votes before troops are committed to operations. While the manpower situation looks set to stabilise, although at a level which some analysts say leaves too many "capability gaps", appetite for intervention following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is limited.
The UK Strategic Defence and Security Review, to be published later this year, will give more detail of future thinking.
Reporting by Justin Parkinson, Vanessa Barford and Tom Heyden.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.The four candidates aiming to lead the federal NDP made their final pitches to party members on Sunday during a showcase event where they laid out their visions for the party and made their cases for why they are best to lead it.
It was the last chance for Charlie Angus, Niki Ashton, Guy Caron and Jagmeet Singh to make their pitches to New Democrats before voting begins Monday.
They each had 22 minutes for their presentations at the Hamilton Convention Centre in an event that capped off months of campaigning, fundraising, debating, soliciting endorsements and selling memberships.
Caron, a Quebec MP elected in 2011, spent a portion of his speech talking about the need for the NDP to regain its strength in his home province, saying that it is key to success in the next election. He called himself the right leader to build that support.
Caron's strategy to win Quebec
"When we win in Quebec, we win seats all across the country because then, we become a real progressive alternative everywhere in Canada," said Caron.
He also addressed the comments made by one of those supporters, Pierre Nantel, who on Saturday said he didn't think Singh, a Sikh, could connect effectively with Quebec voters because he wears a turban. Nantel suggested that Quebecers don't like leaders who wear religious symbols.
Caron, who has Nantel's support in the race, rejected that notion. "Jagmeet, you have a place in our party and you have a place in my Quebec," he said.
Guy Caron's leadership showcase speech 7:22
Caron said to win the 2019 election the NDP needs to focus on Quebec and offer Canadians a detailed and progressive agenda. The party also needs to provide a clear contrast to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
"Substance over flashy socks and authenticity over empty slogans," said Caron.
He said Trudeau broke his promise to Canadians on electoral reform and Caron promised a NDP government would make that its number one priority.
Angus's plan to reconnect with grassroots
Next up was northern Ontario MP Charlie Angus. He's emphasized throughout his campaign that the party needs to reconnect with its grassroots and that he's the leader to do it.
In his showcase, he portrayed himself as a fighter who will take on Trudeau in the House of Commons. "People need a leader in Ottawa who will fight for them but who will build with them," said Angus.
He promised to be a partner and ally for Indigenous communities and fight for their issues in Parliament. "Reconciliation, it's not a hashtag," he said. "It has to be made real for this generation of children right now."
Charlie Angus's leadership showcase speech 10:42
He also promised to advocate for students and seniors to help make life more affordable. Angus's speech struck an inspirational tone, aimed at energizing the party's base and beyond.
"Leadership isn't about the leader. It's about giving people a reason to believe that they truly do have the power to make change," said Angus, who was elected as an MP in 2004. "This is the work I have done my whole life."
Ashton defends progressive politics
When Ashton took to the stage she laid out some of her policy proposals, including a national child-care system, tuition-free post-secondary education and she made it clear she is opposed to pipelines.
In a video presentation and in her speech the Manitoba MP talked of building a movement, one for economic, social and environmental justice.
"Bold progressive politics is smart politics," said Ashton, who is running for leader for the second time. She also ran in 2012.
Ashton, 35, said people in her generation will be the largest voting group in 2019 and that millennials are "one of the most progressive generations in history." She said Trudeau promised young voters real change and that he hasn't delivered.
Niki Ashton's leadership showcase speech 10:21
"He lied," she stated, adding he's broken one promise after another. She took sharp aim at Trudeau.
"Enjoy being prime minister while it lasts," she told Trudeau. "In the next election I know you are going to try and recycle your promises, you may even take a few more selfies. But Canadians know that only the NDP will bring real change."
Singh talks values, addresses racial profiling
Singh, an outsider to the federal NDP scene, surrounded himself on stage with a large crowd of supporters after several MPs said why they are endorsing him.
He shared personal details of his upbringing and his family's financial struggles and also discrimination he's faced.
"Growing up with brown skin, long hair and a funny sounding name meant I faced some challenges," the Ontario MPP said, adding he's been stopped by police simply because of the colour of his skin. He promised if he was prime minister that he would implement a federal ban on racial profiling.
Singh, a lawyer before entering politics, said his personal experiences with racial injustice and economic challenges drive him to work to end all forms of injustice.
Jagmeet Singh's leadership showcase speech 14:32
He addressed the video that went viral of him being confronted by an angry anti-Muslim protester at a recent rally. He said his campaign has been about "championing the politics of love to fight the growing politics of hate."
He also made reference to Nantel's comments, saying he's not trying to convince people to accept his turban and beard but rather to convince voters that he shares their values as a progressive social democrat. He said in French he wants to assure people that his spiritual beliefs do not conflict with those values.
Singh led the way in fundraising and in his speech he touted the thousands of new members he signed up during the race. He pointed to that as evidence for why he is best positioned to broaden the party's support and lead it in 2019.
"Think about what we've been able to do done in a few short months. Now imagine what we can build together in two years," he said.
He outlined four priority policy areas he'd like the party to tackle: inequality, climate change, electoral reform and reconciliation. He pointed to his proposals on basic income guarantees and measures to protect workers as examples of how he would address those issues
Singh has said that if he wins, he won't seek a seat in the House of Commons right away and instead will travel around Canada. Ashton and Angus have been critical of that position, saying the party needs a leader in Ottawa.
Results revealed in 2 weeks
The candidates, and NDP members, are anxious for this long leadership race to replace Tom Mulcair to be over. They say they've been in a holding pattern and are eager to get a new leader in place to take on Trudeau and new Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.
They will have to wait two more weeks to find out the results of the first and maybe only round of voting, which begins Monday. Members can mail in their ballots or vote online, ranking the candidates by preference.
The ranked ballot means candidates, if not someone's first choice, are aiming to be their second. The results will be revealed Oct.1 and if no one gets a majority of votes further rounds will be held. About 124,600 members are eligible to vote.
Watch the full showcase:
Read our live blog:
You can also view the live blog here.THE joint investigation team analysing the MH17 disaster — mostly comprising the Netherlands, Ukraine, Australia, Malaysia and Belgium — has agreed to extend the investigation for a further nine months to August 2015.
The Australian Federal Police has about 35 people working in Ukraine and The Hague as part of the investigation, Justice Minister Michael Keenan said, although the political situation is too “unstable” to return to the MH17 crash site.
“Australia continues to encourage the international community to remain focused on finding, prosecuting and punishing the perpetrators of this cowardly attack,” Mr Keenan said.
Read Next
“We owe this to the innocent victims of the MH17 tragedy and their families.”
The Malaysia Airlines disaster has sparked weeks of tension between Vladimir Putin and Tony Abbott, including the Prime Minister’s vow to “shirt-front” the Russian leader over the shooting down of flight MH17, which killed 38 Australians.
Mr Putin told Mr Abbott this week that Moscow had made public all the information it has on the MH17 disaster.
The claim was made during a 15-minute bilateral meeting on the edge of the APEC leaders’ meeting outside Beijing.
Mr Abbott urged Mr Putin to apologise and make restitution over the disaster.
He told the Russian President that Australia had information that suggested MH17 was destroyed by a missile from a launcher that had come from Russia, was fired from inside eastern Ukraine, and then returned to Russia. He said that, if this was true, it would be “a very serious matter’’.
Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Mr Abbott had not delivered on his “shirt-front” threat. “It appears that he did not try,” Mr Peskov told the state news agency RIA Novosti, AFP reported.A lawsuit filed by a group of young people in Oregon claiming the American government is negligent in its actions, and lack of action, on climate change has moved forward. The plaintiffs accuse the government of "violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, and their right to essential public trust resources, by permitting, encouraging, and otherwise enabling continued exploitation, production, and combustion of fossil fuels." Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ruled against an attempt to dismiss the case.
This is only the first step on what will be a very long road through the court system, though. Prospects for the case succeeding remain doubtful, but if it is eventually upheld the implications are enormous.
The nonprofit Our Children's Trust has organized a challenge against the lack of action on human-induced global warming, which will have a negative impact on future generations. The plaintiffs are 21 people aged 8 to 19 and leading climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen. Although the original case was filed in Oregon, where Our Children's Trust is based, and Coffin ruled there, matching cases have been filed around the country, with those in five states pending.
The plaintiffs allege the federal government has a constitutional obligation under the fifth and ninth amendments to take action on matters that threaten their long-term future. Noting that the government has been aware of the dangers of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses for fifty years, they argue the current response represents a dereliction of this duty, and are seeking court orders for tougher action.
The case follows one in the Netherlands that resulted in a court order for a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The Dutch government had previously been working to a 14 to 17 percent target. The success of that court case has prompted activists worldwide to consider similar actions, but differences in national constitutions, and the make-up of courts, mean prospects vary widely.
“The future of our generation is at stake,” said plaintiff Victoria Barrett, 16, in a statement. “People label our generation as dreamers, but hope is not the only tool we have... I want to do what I love and live a life full of opportunities. I want the generation that follows to have the same chance.”
The importance of the case is one thing all parties agree on. Fossil fuel industry associations were granted defendant status in the case and called it a “direct, substantial threat to our businesses.” Coffin described the case as “unprecedented.”
Coffin ruled the case should proceed because “the debate about climate change and its impact has been before various political bodies for some time now.”
This was one of Coffin's last rulings, as he is retiring this year. The case will next be reviewed by Judge Ann Aiken.
[H/T: Think Progress]Back in June of 2015, the US men's national team were plowing through friendlies en route to a date at that summer's Gold Cup. They cycled through lineups and formations, backline pairings and fullbacks. They downplayed results good and bad, and went into the tournament – which they hosted – with high expectations.
The last friendly in prep for last year's tournament was against Guatemala, the 93rd-ranked team by FIFA at the time. The US wiped them out, 4-0.
Then came the Gold Cup itself, in which the US were wiped out. They were consistently outshot and out-played by the likes of Honduras and Haiti, and eventually lost in the semifinals to Jamaica. Then they lost again in the third place game to Panama, which wrapped up the most miserable US showing in the continental competition this century.
On Saturday night the US faced 79th-ranked Bolivia in the final tune-up friendly before this summer's Copa America. Once again it was a wipeout, with the US pummeling a weak foe by the score of 4-0, and once again it came with a new formation, a new lineup... and high expectations. Jurgen Klinsmann isn't expecting to win, but he wants a semifinal showing (I think that's a fair place to set the bar).
Like last year, there are red flags that suggest this result was some kind of false positive. Like last year, there is a combination of young and veteran talent that seems to fit well together. Like last year, there is every reason to suspect that Klinsmann will undercut his roster's strengths by playing certain players out of position and others through injuries.
Unlike last year, however, I think there is real reason to be positive about this group. For the last 135 minutes – against admittedly weak competition – the US have figured out the shape of their midfield and used it to good effect. That is a vast departure from previous iterations of Klinsmann's national team.
Here's a look at the midfield, the forwards and the (still worrisome) defense:
Bradley Where He Belongs
The big difference between the two teams – this year's US and last year's – is the presence of Michael Bradley as the defensive midfielder. No offense to Kyle Beckerman or any of the other options, but Bradley's a cut-and-a-half above thanks partially to his speed and mostly to his range of passing with either foot.
Here he is picking up a secondary assist:
Watch @gyasinho's second goal of the night thanks to an impressive assist from Bobby Wood. #USAvBOL, 3-0, 67'https://t.co/kleUYmo8Jl — U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) May 29, 2016
That is where Bradley operates best, sitting deep with multiple options ahead of him (remember the Julian Green goal at the World Cup?). More importantly, by playing as a true defensive midfielder tasked with shielding the backline and spreading the ball around, he's not asked to take turns swapping spots with Jermaine Jones.
Klinsmann has put Bradley into a box with a specific role, and it is glorious. At the same time, putting Bradley in that box has allowed Jones to seek and destroy and link play all over the pitch. Jones is the team's id, and Bradley its superego. The third leg of the midfield tripod in this one was Alejandro Bedoya – always smart, always in the right position, always perfectly suited to be the sidekick in any piece of play, the ego that connects the id and superego.
Add in the likes of Beckerman and Darlington Nagbe off the bench, and this is the deepest and most balanced US midfield at least since 2002, and quite probably ever.
I mean, Nagbe off the bench:
No previous US coach has ever had a game-changer like that to call upon. The pieces are all there, and they all fit.
And Klinsmann has finally showed signs he understands how to deploy them.
The Unusual Three
With the midfield sorted, the front three in this team's 4-3-3 has become more functional and effective, though I still have plenty of reservations. Bobby Wood (a forward) and Gyasi Zardes (a forward) started on the flanks, while Clint Dempsey (a second striker) started at center forward.
The US's bread and butter has become the type of interchange we saw on the game's opener, the first of two Zardes scored on the evening. Dempsey is naturally inclined to drop back toward the ball, changing the 4-3-3 to more of a diamond midfield with him as a back-to-goal No. 10. When the ball is being possessed on the right side of the field, that is Zardes's signal to dive inside and make a forward's run instead of a winger's run:
Gyasi Zardes scores his 4th career international goal to put the #USMNT 1-0 up on Bolivia. #USAvBOL https://t.co/3oXd2H9Q8v — FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) May 29, 2016
Dempsey tries to get into that spot early, and force the defenders either to A) step with him, or B) hold back and let him receive the ball, then turn. Most MLS teams realize it's best to let Dempsey do the latter, but Bolivia obviously weren't watching a ton of Sounders games ahead of this one.
While Zardes has taken to this role with aplomb – not surprising given his surfeit of attacking roles with the Galaxy – Wood has struggled to leave an imprint. He doesn't instinctively curve his runs, instead preferring to go direct to goal.
And – this is important – neither guy is a chance creator. They don't really link play and often struggle to present themselves to the midfield in build-up:
That's a network passing graph made using Opta data. The circles represent the aggregate position of each player's every touch, while the thickness of the lines connecting players represents the number of passes exchanged between each.
If Wood and Zardes are on the wings, whoever is playing center forward (whether it's Dempsey or someone else) shouldn't expect a ton of traditional interplay with those guys.
That, of course, puts the onus on the fullbacks to overlap...
Lost In Space
If Bradley as a No. 6 is the single best thing to take out of these friendlies, then Klinsmann's apparently settling upon a No. 1 pairing in central defense is a close second. Geoff Cameron is an English Premier League veteran and John Brooks is a Bundesliga veteran, and one's right footed and one's left footed, and both start for their clubs, and both are World Cup veterans, and... I mean it's really that easy, right?
As @StrongMLS said, this is 2nd time Brooks & Cameron are starting together at CB.
Other: Brooks' #USMNT debut, Aug. 2013 at Bosnia-Herz. — Paul Carr (@PCarrESPN) May 29, 2016
OK, well. Maybe it's that easy now. Hopefully.
Fullback is a different discussion, even though Klinsmann is mostly spoiled for choice. He started a pair of center backs out wide in this one, with Matt Besler on the left and Michael Orozco on the right. They predictably failed to leave much of an imprint pushing forward:
Besler is #5, and Orozco #14. Green lines are completed passes, and red incomplete. Both were OK at supporting the team in possession, but there were several bad turnovers that a better team would have punished, and it was pretty clear that both guys weren't playing their natural spots.
It looks like DeAndre Yedlin – another Premier League starter – and Fabian Johnson will be the starters when the US face Colombia next week (9:30 pm ET, FS1). Yedlin is obviously the right choice; Johnson, who starts on the wing in the Bundesliga, is still a liability at fullback.
Thanks to Ben Jata for clipping the following sequence for me:
With play occurring down the right side, why is Johnson pushed up so high on the left? He's wildly out of position in case of a turnover, and even if said turnover happens just one time in 10... well, against a team like Colombia, Costa Rica or even Paraguay (who are dire), that type of space is deadly to concede.
The beauty of the back four is its flexibility. When one fullback overlaps, the other stays back and slides central in order to help the central defenders and make certain the team keeps defensive shape. If both fullbacks overlap on the same play... I mean, that's the equivalent of putting the pedal all the way down on your brand new sports car. It's got to be thrilling, but it's a deadly risk.
And at the same time: Johnson is a winger! He's a playmaker and a creator and a guy who can provide the type of linking among the front three that Zardes and Wood didn't/don't/haven't. Pushing him up into his natural spot would give the US both more creativity and a more solid backline.
Is this progress?
Sort of. The US are playing their best soccer in two years and have a deeper roster than any previous coach has had to call upon (I haven't even mentioned Christian Pulisic yet, right?). Their best player is finally in his best spot, the midfield is finally balanced, and the central defense finally has a go-to pair.
Of course beating Bolivia isn't a reason to celebrate:
Any celebration should come after a quality, front-foot performance in the group stage and a win the quarters. From 1994 through 2010 the US beat the likes of Colombia, Argentina, Germany, Portugal, Spain and – of course – Mexico in games that really mattered. Since 2011, however, results like that are nowhere to be found.
The fans have a right to ask for a return to those days. And the coach, if he looks at his roster and (finally) makes the right choices, has the goods to deliver it to them.How to hack together a quick Demo Video for your App
Eduard Metzger Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 30, 2016
I have created a short demo video of NotePlan, a daily planning tool I’m working on as side project. I have used Quicktime to record it, iMovie for editing and Sketch to create annotation (could be any other graphics app, the annotation is not very complicated). Here is what came out:
I have created a uniform wallpaper and set the background of my desktop to this wallpaper, which fits to the branding colours of NotePlan and used the screen recording feature of Quicktime. There I selected an area cutting out menubar and dock, so it looks cleaner.
The annotations are PNG files I made inside Sketch. Just create a text and maybe add an icon or whatever graphics you like to add, export it and drag it into iMovie. There you can drag it onto your video and make two small adjustments, so you can position it properly:
Select “Picture in Picture”:
2. Select “Fit” in the crop menu:
This way of making a demo video is not limited to desktop apps. You can also connect your iPad or iPhone and hit File -> New Movie Recording. Once you pressed ‘Trust’ on your mobile iDevice, you can select it as source:
Recording my iPad
The iPads battery is automatically displayed as ‘100%’ and the time is set to ‘9:41 AM’ like in the Apple ads, so you don’t have to worry about charging or recording in the middle of the night and having an odd time in the video:
Recording such a demo video takes just a couple of hours at max and is mostly free (if you take a free graphics app). But it comes very handy, when you try to pitch your app someone or you just want to show it off quickly without needing to download it.Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump used late-night TV appearances this week to hype a potential debate between them. So with the event now dead, it was only fitting that Sanders would return to late night on Friday to knock Trump for backing out.
Groaning and shaking his fists in frustration, the senator from Vermont told HBO’s Bill Maher he “would have loved to” debate the presumptive Republican presidential nominee before the California primary on June 7.
“First he said he would do it,” Sanders said. “Then he said he wouldn’t do it. Then he said he would do it. Then he said he wouldn’t do it. So I would hope that if he changed his mind four times in two days, [he’d] change it a fifth time. You know, Trump claims to be a real tough guy, pushes people around. Hey, Donald, come on up. Let’s have a debate about the future of America.”
[Trump says he’s no longer open to debating Bernie Sanders]
As recently as Thursday, Trump said he would be willing to face off against Sanders if either the Democratic underdog’s campaign or a network sponsor would pony up between $10 million and $15 million to benefit what he vaguely described as “women’s health issues.” That was after telling ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday that he’d be game for a debate. Sanders told Kimmel the same thing.
But on Friday, before Sanders’s interview with Maher, Trump reversed course.
“Based on the fact that the Democratic nominating process is totally rigged and crooked, Hillary Clinton and Deborah Wasserman Schultz will not allow Bernie Sanders to win, and now that I am the presumptive Republican nominee, it seems inappropriate that I would debate the second-place finisher,” he said in a statement.
Maher, a Sanders supporter, piled on.
“Mr. Macho chickened out,” he declared.
Sanders and Maher discussed other subjects, too, including a report this week by the State Department inspector general that criticized Clinton for her private email use as secretary of state. Sanders has consistently declined to hammer the likely Democratic nominee for a practice that even Clinton acknowledged was a “mistake.” Maher seemed to wonder whether Sanders would go on the attack, now that “the story has moved a little bit.”
[Clinton’s inexcusable, willful disregard for the rules]
Sanders still refused to attack.
“There is enormous frustration on the part of the American people with the way we do politics in this country,” he said. “And what most politicians do is say, ‘I’m great; you’re terrible. Vote for me; the other guys are scum of the earth. Blah, blah, blah, blah.’ But, you know what? People are hurting in this country. Our middle class is disappearing. We’ve got a lot of poverty. We don’t have health care for all people. People want us to talk about their lives and their issues and not just spend our whole lives attacking our opponents.”The team went unbeaten in their three games away from home
Valencia CF finished 2014 strongly under Nuno Espírito Santo, and the VCF boss has been named Manager of the Month for December by the Liga BBVA. This is the second time that he wins the prize this season -first time was in September. The Commercial Director of the BBVA Territorial Branch Jose Pedro Garceran Cortijo handed over the award to the Valencia CF coach.
Thanks to victories over Rayo Vallecano and Eibar, plus a draw against Granada, the team were able to conclude the calendar year in fourth place –occupying one of the Champions League spots. This is Nuno’s second Manager of the Month award, after he won the prize for the first time back in September of 2014.Welcome to the first instalment of Fundamentals – a bi-weekly deep dive into the story of the ingredients behind our favourite beers. Writing about why we like a particular beer is fun, but here we’re taking an opportunity to go beyond that and hopefully learn something new about our favourite tasty beverages.
The fundamentals of beer are anything that makes up the sum of a beer’s parts. Water, barley, wheat, oats, sugars, yeast, bacteria and even adjuncts such as fruit or maize are all fundamental parts of what make up our favourite beers and I’m looking forward to discovering more about them and how they contribute towards what we actually taste.
Our first beer in this series is from Redchurch Brewery’s all-new Urban Farmhouse project and the talented brewer behind it, James Rylance. James first revealed the plans to transform the Bethnal Green brewery’s original facility into a sour production brewery when we spoke on the Good Beer Hunting podcast late last year. That project is now beginning to bear fruit and On Skins: Plums in the perfect example of the innovative beers that Rylance and his team will be producing.
The plums used in this tart and spritely sour beer were sourced from the National Orchard Collection in Brogdale, Kent. Rylance picked the heritage variety used in this beer from a choice of more than 700 due to the higher acidity and tannins, giving the beer more flavour post fermentation. Before adding them to the beer, Rylance macerated the plums entirely by foot, just as a winemaker would do in France.
“The techniques of foot maceration I learnt from my time making wine in Burgundy with Andrew Nielsen of Le Grappin,” Rylance says. “After pressing the fruit we put the skins, flesh, stones, stems, the whole lot into the fermenter and let the must begin to ferment.”
The beer was then soured with the Urban Farmhouse’s house strain of Lactobacillus – a lactic acid producing bacteria, which introduces a lemon juice tinged acidity to the beer. It was then aged for four months before finally being released.
On Skins: Plums pours a sparkling shade of mauve with the relatively high acidity killing the beer's head pretty quickly. The first sip is intensely acidic, but as the palate adjusts to this the tannic, stone fruit notes from the plums come to the fore.
There’s something comforting about this beer for me, a reminder of picking still warm, sweet plums straight from the tree in the late summer months. It’s a beer I’d go back to often. And if this is a sign of things to come from Redchurch in the future, then we’ve a great deal to look forward to.
You can read more from beer writer Matthew Curtis at his excellent beer blog, Total Ales, Good Beer Hunting and on Twitter @totalcurtis. Make sure you get the chance to try Redchurch's On Skins: Plums while strictly limited stocks last. You can find it in store at HB&B or head online to get it delivered to your door.This week #SundaySupper has an awesome theme: Middle Eastern Cuisine. I love Middle Eastern cuisine! However, when thinking more and more about it I rarely have dessert. I have some greek desserts which I don’t consider true Middle Eastern so I went on a hunt.
I found a recipe for shortbread cookies but of course they were full of ghee. A substitution of margarine and a few more ingredients later I got a really cool twist on a classic ghraybeh cookie.
Ghraybeh are Lebanese and so tasty. Orange flower water is something I had to go buy but the subtle taste was well worth it. Sometimes they are covered with powdered sugar and sometimes they are plain. Let’s be honest, everything is better with powdered sugar!
Vegan Ghraybeh (Middle Eastern Shortbread Cookies) Ingredients 1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup semolina flour
1 cup powdered sugar, plus more for dusting
1 cup margarine, softened
2 teaspoons orange flower water
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 cup (approximately) shelled pistachios
Extra powdered sugar for dusting Instructions Preheat oven to 300ºF. Mix together the margarine, sugar, and orange flower water until light and creamy. Sift together flours and cardamom and stir into margarine mixture until well combined. Chill dough for 30 minutes. Form dough into grape-sized balls, then shape balls into wreaths. Place a pistachio on each cookie. Arrange cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake 18-20 minutes, until cookies are dry to the touch and just starting to change color. Transfer cookies to a rack and immediately dust heavily with powdered sugar. Makes about 3 dozen cookies. 3.1 http://www.killerbunniesinc.com/2013/11/vegan-ghraybeh-middle-eastern-shortbread-cookies-recipe-sundaysupper/
Mezze {Appetizers}
Salata {Salads and Sides}
Main
Halwa {Desserts}What's the sensor size of your camera? Please select… Large Format Film 8x10 Large Format Film 5x7 Large Format Film 4x5 Medium Format Film 6x7 Medium Format Film 6x6 Medium Format Film 6x4.5 Phase One P 65+, IQ160, IQ180 Medium Format (Hasselblad H5D-60) Kodak KAF 39000 CCD Pentax 645D, Hasselblad X1D-50c, CFV-50c, Fuji GFX 50S Leica S Full Frame APS-H (Canon) APS-C (Nikon, Sony, Pentax, Fuji…), Sigma Foveon APS-C (Canon) Original Sigma Foveon X3 Four Thirds, Micro Four Thirds (Olympus, Panasonic) 1" (Sony, Nikon, Samsung) 2/3" (Nokia Lumia 1020, Fujifilm X-S1, X20, XF1) 1/1.7" (Pentax Q7, Canon G10, G15) 1/2.5" 1/3" (iPhone 5s, 6, 7)
If you want the equivalent of a Full Frame mm, you should get a??mm lens.
A lens with the focal length of mm will behave like a??mm in Full Frame.Billionaire 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 leads the crowded 2016 Republican presidential field in California, according to a poll released Sunday morning.
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The USC Dornsife/LA Times Poll found that 24 percent of Republicans said they would support Trump.
Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson Benjamin (Ben) Solomon CarsonPuerto Rico governor, White House clash over meeting Puerto Rico governor says Trump won't meet to discuss hurricane relief The Hill's Morning Report - Can Bernie recapture 2016 magic? MORE is in second place with 18 percent.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. 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 (Texas) each received 6 percent support.
Pollsters found that Carson would beat Trump in a head-to-head matchup, however, 43 percent to 32 percent.
"More than half of the Republican primary voters who have chosen a candidate are supporting someone who has never held elected office," Dan Schnur, director of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll and director of the Unruh Institute of Politics of USC, said.
"Sheer anger toward Washington is handily defeating ideology in the Republican primary," he added.
Pollsters also found former Secretary of State 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 atop the Democratic field, with 42 percent support.
Twenty six percent said they would back 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.).
Vice President Joe Biden Joseph (Joe) Robinette BidenBannon: 'Zero' doubt Trump will run for reelection Bernie is back with a bang — but can he hold on to his supporters? Klobuchar backs legalizing marijuana MORE grabbed support from 11 percent of respondents when his name was added to the field.
"Clinton is holding up pretty well," said Drew Lieberman, vice president of Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which helped conduct the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll. "What you see going on here is that she has very solid coalition of moderate-type Democrats plus non-white voters that someone like Sanders or anybody from her left flank would have to overcome in order to cut into her vote share."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mr Strauss-Kahn denies the allegations against him
A court in New York has remanded IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in custody on charges of sexual assault.
The judge said Mr Strauss-Kahn, 62, is a flight risk. He was arrested on Saturday after boarding a plane, and accused of trying to rape a hotel maid.
Mr Strauss-Kahn, who had been seen as a front-runner in France's presidential election in 2012, denies the charges.
His lawyer expressed disappointment at bail being denied, but said his client would be exonerated.
"This battle has just begun," defence lawyer Benjamin Brafman told the court.
Prosecutors told the court it was not the first time Mr Strauss-Kahn had been involved in such an incident and argued he had been arrested attempting to flee the country.
Defence lawyer Benjamin Brafman contested this, saying the defendant had not tried to flee the scene and was actually rushing for a lunch appointment.
He added that Mr Strauss-Kahn later called the hotel to say he was at the airport and had left a mobile phone in his room.
'Concerns'
However Judge Melissa Jackson denied the defence's offer to post $1m (£617,000) bail and agree to stay with his daughter in New York until the next hearing on Friday.
"When I hear your client was at JFK airport about to board a flight, that raises some concerns," Ms Jackson said.
The charges relate to an alleged assault at the Times Square Sofitel hotel in New York.
According to the New York Police Department, a 32-year-old maid told officers that when she entered his suite on Saturday afternoon, Mr Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her and sexually assaulted her.
The woman was able to break free and alert the authorities, a NYPD spokesman added.
At the scene On |
texted. Those missives have been saved. During a search of one of the three vehicles parked at Tanya Harley’s residence police located a temporary protective order. According to Mudd, in the protective order Tanya Harley wrote that James Harley “had threatened to put her in a coffin.”
James Harley is tentatively scheduled to be tried in front of a jury in early November. The defendant is being represented by attorney Brendan Callahan.
Contact Marty Madden at marty.madden@thebaynet.com
UPDATE June 22, 2017 4:35 p.m.
Prince Frederick, MD - A Calvert County grand jury has indicted James W. Harley Jr. in connection with the late April murder of his estranged wife. In addition to murder, the three-count indictment charges Harley with firearm use in a felony/violent crime and second-degree assault. The indictment was handed down Thursday, June 22.
The victim, Tanya Harley, was found dead in her home in the Chesapeake Ranch Estates subdivision of Lusby Friday evening, April 28.
Harley remains jailed on a no bond status. An arraignment date in Circuit Court had not been determined as this story was being filed.
Update May 24
Prince Frederick, MD - A St. Mary’s County man charged with the shooting death of his estranged wife at her Calvert County residence last month went before a District Court judge Wednesday, May 24. James Walter Harley Jr. 38 of Mechanicsville surrendered to police in Leonardtown April 29, less than 24 hours after the victim, Tanya Harley, was found dead. Harley’s attorney, Brendan M. Callahan, sought to have the charges his client is facing dropped. In addition to murder, James Harley is charged with second-degree assault and firearm use in a felony violent crime. Callahan told Judge Robert B. Riddle that the state failed to prove its argument of probable cause.
The only witness called during the preliminary hearing was Cpl. Richard Wilson, who was the first officer to respond to the house in Lusby where Tanya Harley’s body was discovered. The discovery was the result of Tanya Harley’s neighbors’ discovery of the couple’s son roaming the area saying he couldn’t find his parents. Wilson said he learned “the relationship was strained [between James and Tanya]. They were in the process of divorce. We found Mr. Harley was very depressed.” Additionally, the officer said the accused had threatened to kill his wife and himself and had stalked the victim. Deputies located a protective order in one of the vehicles parked outside the home. Wilson also revealed that someone who spoke by phone with Tanya Harley prior to her death told police he could hear James Harley shouting at his estranged wife during the phone conversation. During questioning by Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Morton, Wilson stated police used a cell phone tracking device in an attempt to locate James Harley. The intense manhunt in Southern Calvert failed to yield the suspect.
During cross-examination by Callahan, the officer confirmed that police have not located the murder weapon and did not test James Harley for gunshot residue. Wilson confirmed that investigators have yet to speak to anyone who heard the gunshots from the house on the night of Tanya Harley’s death.
Callahan noted that his client “made himself known” to the Maryland State Police in St. Mary’s County the day after his wife’s murder. The defense attorney told the court there was “absolutely no evidence linking him [James Harley] to this,” and asked that the charges be dismissed.
Riddle did not concur that there was no probable cause and indicated the case would be remanded to Calvert’s Circuit Court. The judge ordered that James Harley remain in custody. Morton then requested that the court order the defendant have no contact with his two children. Callahan told the court that “Social Services has called him [Harley] with his daughter on the phone.”
Harley’s next court appearance has not been determined.
Contact Marty Madden at marty.madden@thebaynet.com
Update: May 2
Lusby, MD - Documents on file in Calvert County District Court reveal a marriage on the rocks for James and Tanya Harley of Lusby. The strained relationship reached a tragic end Friday evening, April 28. Tanya Harley, 34, was found dead in the couple’s home on Rawhide Road. According to Detective Michael Mudd of the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office, Tanya Harley had been shot twice—in the upper torso and head. A manhunt for her husband ensued. Mudd reported James Walter Harley Jr., 38, turned himself in to the Maryland State Police in St. Mary’s County the following afternoon.
Friday evening’s events began when a neighbor contacted police after he, along with the couple’s son, entered the house and discovered Tanya Harley “lying in the threshold in between the master bedroom and master bathroom.” Mudd stated three.40 caliber cartridges were located at the scene. Tanya Harley was found “with a purse wrapped around her right arm.”
In the application for statement of charges, Mudd indicates that the couple allegedly had extramarital affairs and that James Harley had threatened to kill his wife and had previously attempted suicide. “James had made statements to several family members that he was going to jump off a bridge and once was found at his mother’s grave where he made threats to kill himself,” Mudd stated. “The family advised James was heartbroken over the pending divorce.”
Mudd indicated that some of James Harley’s threats against his wife were texted and the phone-delivered missives had been saved.
During a search of one of the three vehicles parked at the residence—in this case, James Harley’s truck—“investigators located a temporary protective order where the decedent [Tanya Harley] had written that Harley had threatened to put her in a coffin. Inside the decedent’s vehicle officers observed paperwork where the decedent advised she was the victim of physical and verbal abuse and threats.”
James Harley is being held without bond in the Calvert County Detention Center. He has been charged with murder, second-degree assault and firearm use in a felony/violent crime. The murder charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. A District Court hearing on the charges is tentatively scheduled for May 24.
UPDATE Sunday, April 30
Lusby, MD - A Calvert County man has been formally charged in the shooting death of his wife at their home in Lusby. The shooting occurred Friday evening, April 28.
According to a District Court summary, James W. Harley Jr. was charged with murder, second-degree assault and firearm use in a felony/violent crime. Harley is being held without bond in the Calvert County Detention Center. A preliminary hearing has been tentatively scheduled for May 24 in District Court.
The victim--Tanya Louise Harley, 34--was found by police Friday evening at the couple's home on Rawhide Road. Tanya Harley was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound.
Update: April 29th 1:51 p.m.
Lusby, MD - The Calvert County Sheriff's Office reports the suspect in the April 28 homicide--James W. Harley Jr.--has turned himself in and is in police custody.
Calvert County Sheriff's Office Press Release
Lusby, MD - On April 28 at approximately 9:30 p.m., units responded to a residence on Rawhide Road, Lusby, for an assist sick or injured call. Upon arrival it was determined that Tanya Louise Harley, a 34 year old female, was deceased from an apparent gunshot wound. Her husband, James W. Harley Jr. a 38 year old male, has been developed as the suspect. Harley left the residence prior to deputies arriving. He has not yet been located and the police are actively searching for him. It is unknown if he is on foot or in a vehicle at this time. Please report any suspicious activities. Detective Mudd of the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office is the lead Detective and can be reached at 410-535-1600 ext. 2469 or muddjm@co.cal.md.us.
UPDATE 6:30 a.m.
Lusby, MD - The Calvert County Sheriff's Office advises that a manhunt is underway in Lusby in the area of Rawhide Road. A spokesman for the sheriff's office told TheBayNet.com that the suspect is wanted in connection with a homicide. Citizens in the Lusby area are urged to report suspicious activity to the sheriff's office immediately.
Lusby MD - April 29, Calvert County Sheriffs Office is advising all residents to stay inside and lock your doors until further advised.
More details as they developIT’S Saturday night, 2050. You switch on some music, turn down the lights and flick the switch to ON. No need for dinner or even a clean shirt because tonight, you’re romancing a robot.
That’s the scenario envisaged by David Levy, author of Love and Sex and Robots, who predicts it won’t be long before we’re all doing it — with machines.
“It just takes one famous person to say I had fantastic sex with a robot and you’ll have people queuing up from New York to California,” the CEO of Intelligent Toys Limited told news.com.au.
“If you’ve got a robot that looks like a human, feels like a human, behaves like a human, talks like a human why shouldn’t people find it appealing?”
This November, Mr Levy along with Adelaide-born Professor Adrian Cheok will chair the second international congress on Love and Sex with Robots in Malaysia. The event will bring together academics from around the world to discuss the legal, ethical and moral questions on everything from “teledildonics” to “humanoids”.
Mr Levy said the subject has spawned a huge amount of interest since his 2007 book and it’s only a matter of time before the currently “crude” versions available become more sophisticated and go mainstream.
“If there was a sophisticated sex robot around now then I would be very curious to try it,” he said.
“It can’t be long before we get to the point that there are robots looking very lifelike and with appealing designs that people find appealing to look at and then it’s a question of how long it will take until before the artificial intelligence is developed to the point where they can carry on interesting and entertaining conversations?”
Whether you find it horrifying or appealing, there’s no doubt the idea has taken root in popular culture with films like Her, Lars and the Real Girl and Ex-Machina dedicated to the relationship between humans and machines.
This week the makers of Japanese robot Pepper issued a warning, saying using it for “sexual purposes” breaks the rental agreement after people hacked its software to give it “virtual breasts”.
The Future of Sex: Robots and Virtual Reality 8:42 Sex and relationship expert Dr. Laura Berman tells WSJ's Tanya Rivero that the future of sex includes robots, virtual reality and drugs to address women's sexual function. Photo: Ryan Etter for The Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile real-life technological advances like David Hanson’s human robots or Hiroshi Ishiguro’s version have been making robots look more lifelike by the year. Several versions of robotic sex dolls already exist, include RealDoll made by Californian company Abyss, whose owner David Mills once told Vanity Fair he loves women but “doesn’t really like to be around people.”
But along with advances in artificial intelligence, ethical debate is raging around the use of robots whether in the military, medicine or at home, with many questioning what the rapid advances are doing to our relationships with others and ourselves.
Mr Levy is “absolutely convinced” sex with robots is a positive thing for the “millions and millions” of people around the world who don’t have satisfactory relationships. He thinks they could be the cure for everything from loneliness to paedophilia by helping to “wean” paedophiles off having sex with the children they’re attracted to.
“For whatever reason there are huge numbers of people who just don’t have a relationship with someone they can love and someone who can love them,” he said. “For people like that, I think that sex robots will be a real boon. It will get rid of a problem they’ve got, fill a big void in their lives and make them much happier.”
It’s a view that has been described as a “terrifying nightmare” by robotics ethicist Dr Kathleen Richardson. The senior research fellow at De Montfort University recently launched a Campaign Against Sex Robots with fellow researcher Dr Erik Billing and wants to highlight the kind of inequalities sex robots can perpetuate in real life.
“We’re not for a ban of sex robots, what we’re giving people is information about are the arguments for sex robots justified, and we’re asking them to examine their own conscience and whether they want to contribute to this development,” she told news.com.au
“Everyone thinks because it’s a robot prostitute then real women and children in the industry won’t be harmed. But that’s not happened because if you don’t address the core idea that it’s not OK to reduce some human beings to things then all you do is add a new layer of complexity and complication and distortion to an already distorted relationship.”
While the emerging nature of the technology means long-term effects have not been documented, Dr Richardson fears widespread use of robots for sex will destroy human capacity for empathy and entrench notions of sex and gender already prevalent in the sex industry.
“Sex can never not be relational. You need another person. If it’s not relational you’re really masturbating,” she said.
These complexities are the kind of moral, ethical and legal quandaries Professor Adrian Cheok expects to air at the conference.
The Australian-born digital expert specialises in human-computer interfaces and thinks robots will be integrated into our lives in the short-term as friends, sex objects and carers before the relationships develop and could even include different levels of compliance for the types of relationships people want to have.
“We really don’t know how human society will react. The worst case scenario is that people begin to have a robot partner rather than a human partner,” he said, adding that this could happen to a “small percentage of the population” similar to the way people have died after being gripped by the reality of video games.
“There will be some people … that prefer robots over humans but I think that won’t be the majority. I think most people will prefer to have real human relationship.”
Do you think relationships with robots will become a reality? Continue the conversation on Twitter @NewscomauHQ | @Victoria_CrawSAN ANTONIO - International House of Pancakes is giving away a free short stack to every customer who dines in the restaurant on Tuesday.
Participating locations will serve "pancakes with a purpose" from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with some locations extending the free pancake hours to 10 p.m.
In exchange for a free short stack of pancakes, IHOP is asking customers to donate to its charitable partners, including Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, Shriners Hospitals for Children and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
IHOP hopes to raise $3.5 million for children battling critical illnesses.
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Copyright 2017 by KSAT - All rights reserved.Icelandic parliament passes resolution making country the first in western Europe to accept Palestine as an independent state
Iceland has become the first western european country to recognise Palestine as an independent state.
The Icelandic parliament said in a statement on its website that it had passed a motion with 38 of 63 votes in favour of a resolution to recognse Palestine "as an independent and sovereign state" based on borders predating the six-day war of 1967.
"Iceland is the first country in western europe to take this step," Ossur Skarphedinsson, the minister for foreign affairs, told RUV, the Icelandic national broadcasting service. He said the vote had given him the authority to make a formal declaration on the government's behalf, but before doing so he would discuss the move with other Nordic countries.
The resolution, which coincided with the UN's annual day of solidarity with the Palestinian people, recognised the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the legal authority for a Palestinian state and urged Israel and Palestine to reach a peace agreement.
The vote comes shortly after the Palestinians successfully gained admission to the UN's cultural agency, Unesco. Iceland was among 11 European Unesco members to support the move.
However, the suspected failure to win the required support of nine of the security council's 15 members, and a promise from the US that it would veto any council resolution endorsing membership, threatens to stall the move for full UN membership.
In a message to the UN on Tuesday, the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, reaffirmed Palestine's bid for membership, saying it should complement peace negotiations provided Israel was prepared to negotiate on the basis of 1967 borders.
In a message read out by Palestinian UN observer Riyad Mansour, Abbas said Palestine's decision to apply to join the UN "is our legitimate right" based on the 1947 UN resolution to partition Palestine into two states.
Icelandic MP Amal Tamimi, who was born in Palestine, welcomed her parliament's move as a first step.
"I hope that more countries will follow suit," she said.Cameron Lyle '13
It all started with a cheek swab.
The football team was running a Be The Match station in the University of New Hampshire student cafeteria to support the National Marrow Donor program. A few players convinced Cameron Lyle, a sophomore track and field student-athlete at UNH, to get his cheek swabbed. The request took just five minutes and was forgotten by day’s end.
Throughout the next two years, Lyle had great success on the field, competing in track and field events including discus, shot put, hammer and the weight throw. He had collected a “pile of silver medals” heading into his senior season of competition and was poised to take home the gold in shot put at the conference championships to be held in May. Then he got a phone call.
After practice, in the locker room, he was told there was a high possibility he could be a bone marrow match for a complete stranger. Of the 12,000 blood cancer patients who require marrow, 70 percent do not have matches in their families.
“When I got the phone call, I was so shocked,” said Lyle. “I totally forgot I even signed up a couple of years before. Even then, I did not think I would be a match. The odds are so ridiculous.”
After additional testing, Lyle was confirmed as a definite match. There was no time to waste. The surgery was scheduled immediately for April 25. There was one catch: the surgery would take place one month before the end of his college career.
Lyle never feared the actual marrow donation surgery. He worried the most about telling his coach that he would be sitting out the final part of his senior season because of the surgery. His coach, though, was supportive. Jim Boulanger, director of New Hampshire’s track and field program, told Lyle that sports do not triumph life, they are merely a part of it. If you have the chance to save a life, do whatever it takes.
If Lyle chose to be a donor, his collegiate career would stop cold turkey without the closure a championship win would bring him. As he threw his last shot at the Stony Brook Invitational on April 20, his teammates surrounded him to help bring one chapter of his life to a close. For him this was closure. Hugs were shared and although it was not the ending he planned for, he was allowing a stranger the chance to start a new chapter of his own.
Even with that elusive conference championship within reach, Lyle never had any second thoughts about donating — especially when he learned about the man who would be receiving his marrow donation.
Lyle’s 28-year-old match was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia a few days before Christmas in 2012. He had a fiancé and a nineteen-month-old son. For Lyle, this information solidified his decision to donate.
“I would have done it anyway,” said Lyle. “But knowing he is just starting his life, he has so much ahead of him, makes it worth it. It hits home because he is only a few years older than I am.”
The bone marrow donation procedure is by no means simple. While an average patient needs five or ten cubic centimeters of marrow, Lyle’s recipient required 1,800 cubic centimeters for his treatment. This staggering number is just less than two quarts.
A needle was put into Lyle’s pelvis more than 200 times in order to get enough marrow. Once the extraction was complete, the marrow was rushed out of the room and placed into a cooler. Like a scene out of a movie, it was airlifted to the unknown location where the patient was eagerly waiting. Lyle was told his recipient received the marrow within 18 hours of his initial procedure.
The following week was difficult for Lyle. He felt as though he had pulled every muscle in his lower back. He needed help putting on his pants. As he had throughout the whole process, he put his pain aside and thought about the man he had helped.
“Three days of pain is nothing compared to what this guy is going through,” said Lyle.
As time went on the pain became just soreness and eventually faded to nothing. Lyle received a card from his anonymous recipient dated the day he was scheduled to receive the marrow. The cover showed a young boy, around two or three, dead lifting 500 pounds. The inside simply said, “Anything is possible.”
Be The Match, a donor registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program, has very strict guidelines of communication between the donor and the recipient. No physical talking between the two is permitted until one year after the procedure, and no news about the donation can be shared until 30 days post operation. Lyle received an update in July, three months after his donation, that the man’s scans showed no sign of leukemia. He was clear. He even left the hospital five weeks ahead of schedule. Anything is possible.
Lyle continued his everyday life after that life-changing day; he graduated from college in May and now works as the marketing director at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion at Meadowbrook, a concert venue in Guilford, N.H. He is just like any other recent college graduate, except that his donation has led to incessant interview requests. The awards, recognition and media coverage Lyle has received completely baffle the 22-year-old.
Lyle was equally shocked when he learned that he would be awarded the NCAA’s Award of Valor. The award recognizes a courageous act or noteworthy bravery by an individual associated with intercollegiate athletics.
“I don’t get it,” said Lyle. “I view this whole thing as something anyone would do. It’s not as huge as people are making it out to be. I guess it’s just the type of person I am. After all the awards I’ve been getting, I keep asking, ‘wouldn’t anyone do the same thing?’”
Since his bone marrow donation, Lyle has become a huge activist for Be The Match and encourages all to join the registry. In the first three months after he made headlines, Be The Match registrations tripled.
Lyle couldn’t be happier. He organized a Be The Match registration event at a concert in September at the live performance venue where he works. Every person in the 8,000-seat venue had their cheeks swabbed in hopes of someday helping some in need.
Though Lyle is still surprised by what has unfolded over the last six months, he would not change anything. To him, the bone marrow donation was what any individual would do, just another day in life. And in life, anything is possible.Mitch McConnell has raised big bucks for him. Chris Christie, John McCain and scores of Senate Republicans have lent Mourdock help on the stump — and they don’t appear to be abandoning him despite his controversial remarks that God intended that pregnancies resulting from rape should happen. All told, the National Republican Senatorial Committee — which backed Lugar in the GOP primary— will spend $5 million boosting Mourdock. Crossroads GPS, the secret-money group co-founded by Karl Rove, is expected to drop an additional $4 million into the race.
If Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock makes it to the Senate after his comments that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something God intended to happen," it will be because the national Republican party carried him across the finish line. And despite New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte cancelling a trip to Indiana and the long, confused, desperate silence from Mitt Romney, the party is prepared to do just that. In addition to the ad Romney made for Mourdock, which he hasn't asked to have withdrawn,When Ayotte backed out of campaigning with Mourdock, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint stepped in. And again, Romney still hasn't asked Mourdock to take down the only ad Romney did endorsing any Senate candidate in the country.
Even before he made headlines with the remarks and non-apology, Mourdock was locked in a tight race with conservative Democrat Joe Donnelly, and with Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comments having made the Missouri Senate seat that much harder to win, Republicans really need Indiana. So even though his unfortunate-for-them phrasing of what's in the Republican platform has created some uncomfortable publicity, Mourdock's their guy and they're proud to stand with him.
Fight back in the War on Women by giving $3 to each of our Daily Kos-endorsed women candidates.Many men in the 'friend zone' may seem kind, caring and affectionate - but one psychologist has warned they have a hidden agenda.
Dr Scott Kaufman says men with the 'Nice Guy Syndrome' who are often relegated to the friend zone often have a sense of entitlement, and so are likely to be narcissists.
'A lot of nice guys who complain about being in the friend zone are not really that nice,' Dr Kaufman, a professor at the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania told MailOnline.
In the film '500 days of Summer', actress Zoey Deschanel (pictured left) plays Summer Finn who 'friend zones' nice guy Tom Hansen, played by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (pictured right)
'They feel entitled to women - they are narcissists in nice guy's clothing.
'They think "well I'm friends with her, why won't she sleep with me" and that's not a very nice guy way of thinking.'
There are some exceptions, he says. 'You also have a lot of really shy guys who aren't trying to be manipulative but they're scared of expressing their desire.
'A lot of them don't say anything and wait for it to happen.'
For men who find themselves relegated to the friend zone, Dr Kaufman recommends taking the plunge and being honest with their feelings.
'If you have a girl that you're attracted to and you have a romantic attraction to them, signal your attention right away and say "hey can I take you out for a coffee".'
There is also research that suggests that couples aren't likely to be friends first - so if people are attracted to someone, it may be best for them to avoid the 'friendship first' approach if they want to be liked back.
In a study on 626 high school students, researchers found that romantic partners weren't likely to be friends in the previous year or share the same friendship group, and opposite-gender friends are unlikely to transition to dating (stock image)
In a study on 626 high school students led by Dr Derek A Kreager at Pennsylvania State University, researchers found that romantic partners weren't likely to be friends in the previous year or share the same friendship group, and opposite-gender friends are unlikely to transition to dating.
Dr Robert Glover, a psychologist who wrote 'No More Mr Nice Guy', says that a nice guy's primary goal is to make other people happy and that they're guided by 'covert contracts' such as believing: 'If I meet other people’s needs without them having to ask, then they will meet my needs without me having to ask.'
Because they believe they have kept their side of the 'contract', they often feel helpless and resentful when other people, and the world, don't keep their side of the 'contract'.Three wins by one goal and conceding the fewest goals in the Premier League have got United to fourth and manager sees no reason to change
For Manchester United, defence could prove the best way of mounting an attack on the Premier League title.
After 12 games United have conceded eight goals, the fewest in the division, with the leaders, Manchester City, and second-placed Arsenal having conceded nine. Of the top four teams, United have scored the fewest – 17. Leicester City, who are third, have 25, Arsenal 22, and City 26.
Tottenham Hotspur (20), West Ham (23), Southampton (19) and Everton (20) have all scored more than United yet are below them because of that parsimonious defence.
There is another telling factor, too. One also proving successful for Crystal Palace, who have scored 14 times, conceded 12 and are in eighth place. This is the simple ploy yet difficult art of scoring one more than the opposition, a tactic Louis van Gaal admits is at the forefront of his thinking. While Manuel Pellegrini constantly talks of his City side scoring as many times as possible, his rival takes a more conservative approach. United may yet pile up a goal-mountain between now and May, but the evidence is pointing the other way.
On 3 November, United defeated CSKA Moscow 1-0 at Old Trafford. Wayne Rooney’s 79th-minute header was the side’s first goal for 404 minutes and broke a sequence of three goalless draws. During the Champions League group game, the home supporters could be heard shouting: “Attack, attack, attack” their frustration causing them to demand a return to the scintillating stuff of United tradition, from the George Best vintage, led by Matt Busby, to the sides featuring Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ryan Giggs under Sir Alex Ferguson.
Discussing this reaction from fans three days later, before the visit of West Bromwich Albion, Van Gaal accepted the need to be more prolific. But there was a telling caveat. “We have to score more goals, I agree with that,” the Dutchman said, before summing up the pragmatism that drives him. “But only one more than the opponent. That’s what I am thinking.”
This season United have won 1-0, 1-0, 3-1, 3-2, 3-0, 3-0, and 2-0 in the league, so three of their seven victories have been by a single goal. Part of the issue here is the high stylistic bar set by Busby and Ferguson. Arsenal fans had no problem with winning 1-0 during the club’s success under George Graham. The three champion sides of José Mourinho at Chelsea are also hardly remembered for high-octane, dazzling football.
Ferguson won United 13 league titles in an era that should stand for a few generations at least as the most memorable in domestic competition. The Scot’s teams were serial winners who offered thrills, spills and dying-seconds denouements.
Manchester United's 13 Premier League titles – in order of achievement Read more
The holy grail for United fans is a return to this box-office product. The quest for Van Gaal (and any manager of the club) is to win trophies. It is as simple as that. When Ferguson claimed his first, the 1990 FA Cup, he never went more than a season without the next pot. This is some record and illustrative of the genius Van Gaal is following.
Two barren seasons have now passed in this post-Ferguson era. Until the next piece of silverware arrives at Old Trafford there is an argument that the club will not have truly moved on from the shock of Ferguson’s departure. To be champions of England again would certainly ease the concern of fans who wonder if United might be heading into another league title-less age, like the one between the Busby and Ferguson tenures.
Given the way his United, who play at Watford on Saturday lunchtime, are doing, it seems unlikely Van Gaal will change. There have been eight clean sheets from the 12 matches. He will continue to wish for many more, and many more single-goal victories.
A question for the United faithful is whether a 21st crown claimed by Van Gaal’s safety-first method would be welcome. The answer is surely yes. And if it is the club’s red ribbons tied to the Premier League trophy in May he will surely be hailed a hero by the same constituency who currently watch his pass-pass-and-pass-again mode and complain it is not the United way.
• This article was updated on 19 November 2015 to make it clear that Arsenal fans did not have a problem with winning matches 1-0Kerala is worried. Not over issues at home but a policy drafted thousands of kilometres away in Saudi Arabia.
The labour policy, known as Nitaqat, mandates that five to 25 per cent staff of a private company, with minimum 49 employees, must be Saudis. And the deadline to implement it expired on Wednesday. This has caused concern in Kerala which has seven lakh expatriates in the Gulf kingdom and whose remittances are a lifeline for its economy, though Dr S Irudaya Rajan, an expert on international migration studies, assures there is no need to panic.
"The move for Saudization began a decade back. Now, they have decided to strictly implement it, apart from cracking the whip on illegal migrants. No country can tolerate illegal migrants. I do not expect a mass exodus from Saudi as is being feared by the politicians and media in Kerala," Rajan said.
Those who lose their jobs in Saudi Arabia would move to other countries like in the past, Rajan said. In 2008, he pointed out, the Kerala government feared five lakh expatriates would return but that didn't happen. Rajan, however, said that those on a free visa, which is illegal, are bound to return. There are over 20 lakh Indians in Saudi Arabia.
The concern in Kerala was heightened after an official at the Indian mission in Riyadh was quoted in a Gulf newspaper as saying a large number of workers were visiting the embassy after the deadline to implement the labour policy expired. So much so that CM Oommen Chandy wrote to the PM to appeal the Saudis to extend the deadline.
Then on Friday, some people arrived in Kozhikode from Riyadh and told the media they had lost their jobs to Nitaqat and painted a bleak picture of Indians employed in Saudi.
... contd.
Please read our terms of use before posting commentsMexico's drug cartels siphon liquid gold
Bold theft of $1 billion in oil, resold in U.S., has dealt a major blow to the treasury
By Steve Fainaru and William Booth
washington post foreign service
Sunday, December 13, 2009
MALTRATA, MEXICO -- Drug traffickers employing high-tech drills, miles of rubber hose and a fleet of stolen tanker trucks have siphoned more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexico's pipelines over the past two years, in a vast and audacious conspiracy that is bleeding the national treasury, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and the state-run oil company.
Using sophisticated smuggling networks, the traffickers have transported a portion of the pilfered petroleum across the border to sell to U.S. companies, some of which knew that it was stolen, according to court documents and interviews with American officials involved in an expanding investigation of oil services firms in Texas.
The widespread theft of Mexico's most vital national resource by criminal organizations represents a costly new front in President Felipe Calderón's war against the drug cartels, and it shows how the traffickers are rapidly evolving from traditional narcotics smuggling to activities as diverse as oil theft, transport and sales.
Oil theft has been a persistent problem for the state-run Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, but the robbery increased sharply after Calderón launched his war against the cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006. The drug war has claimed more than 16,000 lives and has led the cartels, which rely on drug trafficking for most of their revenue, to branch out into other illegal activities.
Authorities said they have traced much of the oil rustling to the Zetas, a criminal organization founded by former military commandos. Although the Zetas initially served as a protection arm of the powerful Gulf cartel, they now call their own shots and dominate criminal enterprise in the oil-rich states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.
"The Zetas are a parallel government," said Eduardo Mendoza Arellano, a federal lawmaker who heads a national committee on energy. "They practically own vast stretches of the pipelines, from the highway to the very door of the oil companies."
The Zetas earn millions of dollars by "taxing" the oil pipelines -- organizing the theft themselves or taking a cut from anyone who does the stealing, according to Mexican authorities. The U.S. Treasury Department this summer designated two Zeta commanders as narcotics "kingpins," which allows authorities to seize assets.
The Zetas often work with former Pemex employees, according to Ramón Pequeño García, chief of anti-drug operations at Mexico's Public Security Ministry. The former employees "are highly skilled people who have the technical knowledge to extract oil from the pipelines. They are now under the control of the Zetas," Pequeño said.
This year, executives of four Texas companies pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiring to receive and sell millions of dollars worth of stolen petroleum condensate. U.S. law enforcement officials said in interviews that they have no evidence showing that the men were connected to drug traffickers.
During his September arraignment in Houston, Arnoldo Maldonado, president of Y Gas & Oil, pleaded guilty to receiving about $327,000 to coordinate at least three deliveries of tankers filled with stolen condensate to another Texas company, Continental Fuels, according to a court transcript of the hearing.
Asked by U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. how the condensate had been stolen from Pemex, Maldonado replied: "I have no idea on that, sir."
Donald Schroeder, a former president of Houston-based Trammo Petroleum, pleaded guilty in May to buying $2 million worth of stolen Mexican condensate, according to a transcript of the hearing. Schroeder re-sold the condensate to another company, BASF, for a $150,000 profit, prosecutors told the court.
A spokesman for BASF, which has not been implicated in the case, said the company was unaware that the material was stolen and is cooperating with the investigation.
In August, U.S. authorities presented the Mexican government with an oversize check for $2.4 million as a repayment.
Pemex reported losing |
by Parkinson’s disease. Lorna has refused to recount her version of events for publication. But the fidelity of her contralto booming out of our speakers, embroidered with Chris’s perfectly crafted sax filigrees, speaks its own truth.
Cazar by naresh fernandes
* * *Ronnie Monserrate was 19 when he began to play Sunday gigs at Venice with the Chris Perry band, sitting in for the regular pianist. Venice had a reputation. It was the jazzman’s jazz haunt, the rendezvous for musicians from around the country and occasionally from around the world. DaveBrubeck swung by when he visited Bombay in 1958, as Duke Ellington had when his band set out on their famous world tour of 1963. As Ronnie tells it, the dapper Chris Perry was the musician’s musician: “He had perfect pitch. He was an arranger, a composer, a player.” Chris played both trumpet and saxophone, sometimes switching from one to the other mid-tune, a feat that required elaborate lip control. His trumpet tone was broad and true. He didn’t have flashy technique, but the notes he coaxed out of his horn had a mellowness that kept the fans coming back night after night.Chris was 43 at the time, Lorna was 25. No one seems quite sure exactly how they met, but everyone’s agreed that he groomed her into one of the Bombay’s finest crooners. One version maintains that Lorna got her break when still in school, after she won the Connie Francis soundalike competition at Metro cinema. This prompted a musician named Raymond Albuqerque to invite her to sing in his show at the Bandra Fair. Her rendition of Underneath the Mango Tree got the crowds so fired up that Chris Perry, already an established performer, went to her home to audition her. She was just 16 when she joined Perry’s band.A vocalist in the Shirley Bassey mould, Lorna belted out every tune like it was her last time on stage. “She had a lot of black feel,” is how Ronnie describes her performances. “You could see the intensity when she was on stage. She’d give it her best, every time. She was like a magnet. You couldn’t help but be attracted to her when she was on stage. And with Chris Perry band by her side, it was like magic happening. There was incredible attraction. There was a lot of love in the interaction. It was apparent in their body language. They brought out the best in each other. They’d look into each other’s eyes and their understanding was so great that there’d be spontaneous combustion.”Offstage, though, things could get awkward. Any man attempting to talk to Lorna was liable to get a taste of Perry’s famously volatile fists. During breaks, the musicians would sit around their table, absolutely silent. “They were jolly people but they were afraid to laugh around Chris,” Ronnie says. Ronnie was the only exception, perhaps because his youth made him seem unthreatening. Two decades later, he’d find opportunity to call in that bond of trust.Venice was around the corner from Bombay’s swinging jazz strip, Churchgate Street (now Veer Nariman Road). Pianists, trios and quartets were to be heard all the way down the 200-metre thoroughfare as it led off from Churchgate station to the Arabian Sea. First came Berry’s, with tandoori butter chicken that was the stuff of Bombay legend and accomplished piano-fronted groups led by Dorothy Jones and Stanley Pinto. Across the fence was Bombelli’s, named after its Swiss owner, where a trio held sway as ad men sipped cappuccinos. Then came the Ambassador, where Toni Pinto’s quintet encapsulated Bombay’s diversity: the group had two Jews – a singer named Ephrim Elias and drummer Abie Cohen, an Anglo-Indian tenor saxophonist named Norman Mobsby, and, in addition to Pinto, another Goan, the bassist Clement Furtado.Pinto’s kingdom was named the Other Room, so called because after the rich and famous had finished drinking at the bar, they’d say, “Let’s go to the other room.” He ruled for 16 years from 1958, his sharply dressed group spinning out hard-driving bop and light classics, and playing back-up for cabarets and visiting acrobats, magicians and flamenco dancers. The Ambassador was owned by the cigar-chomping Jack Voyantzis, an ebullient Greek who was assisted by his brother, Socrates. The siblings had started their subcontinental journey in Rangoon, opened a café in Delhi, and finally found their way to Bombay, where they transformed a hotel known as the Argentinian into the Ambassador. The cream of Bombay society turned out to catch Toni’s tightly-rehearsed band. Toni remembers once looking up from his piano to see three of the city’s leading editors appreciatively tapping their feet: Rusi Karanjia, editor of the left-wing tabloid Blitz, D F Karaka, editor of the rival Current, and Frank Moraes, editor of the Indian Express, with his American girlfriend. Another time, as the band was going through its routine, Toni realised that someone from the back of the room was playing along on a trumpet. It turned out to be British hornman Eddie Calvert. “He came for dinner one night even though he was staying at the Ritz,” Toni says, and he asked his drummer, Bobby Hadrian, to go back and get his instrument. Calvert and Toni’s band jammed for an hour, playing the tunes the American had made famous: Cherry Pink, Begin the Beguine, Wonderland by Night.Elsewhere on Churchgate Street, music spilled out through the doors of the Napoli, The Talk of the Town and Gaylord’s. Opposite Venice, there was jazz at the Ritz, while at the Little Hut, Neville Thomas led a group calling itself Three Guys and a Doll. Past Flora Fountain stood Bistro and Volga, home to a quartet led by the grandfatherly baritone saxophonist Hecke Kingdom.Dave Brubeck was impressed enough by the local musicians to attempt to make some recordings with them during his visit. But Bombay defeated him. He later recounted the episode to an interviewer: “The current fluctuated in Bombay in those days and so the tape would speed up and slow down. Like, when you were shaving, the speed of the motor would go up and down. It ruined one of my favourite tapes I've ever made.” Another visiting jazzman, the pianist Hampton Hawes, was overwhelmed by problems that were rather more basic. “Bombay turned me around,” he wrote. “I’d never seen poverty before.” Art, he decided, was irrelevant amidst the gnawing deprivation. “Here I was thinking about making a big splash, a hit record, going home a hero, and I’m walking the streets with motherfuckers who don’t even know what a piece of bread is, let along Stravinsky or Charlie Parker. If Bird was alive and played for them they wouldn’t be able to hear him because they’d be too damn hungry.”Admittedly, jazz had always been the preserve of Bombay’s elite. But while the audiences were upper crust, the musicians who cooked up the syncopated rhythms were not. Like Toni Pinto, Ronnie Monserrate, Chris and Lorna, the majority were Roman Catholics strivers from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, 550 kilometres south of Bombay. They’d been an important part of the Bombay music scene since the 1920s, when Bombay began to develop its appetite for what was then called “hot music”. Jazz had made its way from New Orleans in the waxy grooves of phonograph records and travelled over the oceans with touring American bands that played for the administrators of the Raj. Bombay’s first jazz concerts were performed at the Bandstand, south of the Oval. Among the earliest jazzmen to play an extended stint in Bombay was Leon Abbey, a violinist from Minnesota, who led an eight-piece band at the Taj during the 1935-’36 season. Abbey wore white tails on stage and played the freshest sounds. He told one interviewer, “I kept up with the latest numbers because someone would always come up to the bandstand and say, ‘Old Bean, would you play so and so…’, because as far as he was concerned, we should know how to play everything that had ever been written.” Midway through the trip, the Taj management sent Abbey and saxophonist Art Lanier back to New York to pick up the latest music.Abbey’s outfit was replaced by the Symphonians, fronted by the cornet player Cricket Smith. Smith had been featured on the seminal recordings made by James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra in 1913 and 1914, capturing jazz at the moment of its transition from the relatively unsophisticated ragtime style. Smith “signed his contract for a fixed amount of money and two Coronas a day, so every day, the manager would have to bring him his cigars”, recalls Luis Moreno, a Spanish trumpet player who lived in Bombay for 20 years. “He was a character.”In 1938, pianist Teddy Weatherford, who had played with Louis Armstrong, took the stage with his men. His swinging style and treble voicing had been an important influence on jazz during its formative years. The Taj, it would seem, wasn’t quite the genteel venue it now is – not at least from the way Weatherford’s occasional Russian bassist named ‘Innocent Nick’ described the gigs to the jazz magazine Storyville. “Teddy used to play downstairs, in the Tavern of the Taj, for the soldiers, sailors and others, a very rough place,” Nick said. “Teddy would play for hours without a break. Even with drinks, he would continue one-handed. He had tremendous hands.”For the African-American musicians, Bombay provided refuge from the apartheid in the U.S. Men like Weatherford and his sidemen, such as the saxophonist Roy Butler, spent long years shuttling between Europe and the subcontinent, where racial barriers seemed non-existent, at least for them. Butler’s years in India as a Weatherford sideman, he told Storyville, were among his happiest – the work was relatively easy, the pay and conditions good, he was treated splendidly by both management and clientele, and enjoyed the luxurious life under the British Raj. The Taj management, on its part, honoured Weatherford by naming a dish after him: Poires Glace Weatherford. (The absence of colour prejudice was only to be expected. After all, industrial baron Jamshetji Tata was moved to build the Taj after being prevented one leisurely Bombay evening from dining at the Europeans-only Pyrke’s Apollo Hotel. Later, he famously hung a notice in the Taj forbidding entry to South Africans and dogs.)Weatherford’s sidemen were an eclectic lot and opened Bombay’s ears to a wealth of new sounds, the Cuban drumming of Luis Pedroso and the Spanish brass of Luis Moreno, among them. Butler, who was known as the Reverendin acknowledgement of his abstemious ways, helped Weatherford drill the band. Moreno characterised Butler as the “gentleman of the orchestra”. Moreno added, “He never drank in his life and if someone said, ‘How about a round of drink?’ Roy would say, ‘I’ll havean ice-cream. You enjoy beer, I enjoy ice-cream.” Butler went on to lead his own band at Greens, located where the Taj Intercontinental now stands.Both Weatherford (who married an Anglo-Indian woman, before dying of cholera in Calcutta in 1945, aged 41) and Butler recruited Goan sidemen, plugging Bombay into the source of jazz. The trumpet player Frank Fernand, who played in Weatherford band with his Goan compatriots, Micky Correa and Josique Menzies, says that his stint with the American taught him to “play like a negro”. Moreno helped Fernand develop the ability to hit long, high notes, eventually extending his range up to E flat. Butler, it must be noted, was less than thrilled with his Goan employees. “My short stretch as a bandleader in India was not too earth-shaking,” he told Storyville. “The local musicians were not too familiar with jazz at that time. I understood that there are some very good jazzmen out there now, but the time was too short for anything to develop, good or bad.” For their part, some of the Goan musicians weren’t overly impressed with Butler, either. They believed his decision to stay in India was motivated by the fear that he wouldn’t find work in the US. As Fernand put it, “The faltu fellows stayed, the good ones went home.”But by the ’40s, Bombay’s swing bands had earned a solid reputation. After listening to Mickey Correa and Frank Fernand play their hearts out the wind section in the outfit fronted by Rudy Cotton (a Parsi who had been born Cawasji Khatau), one contemporary correspondent wrote that “the band really jumped, just another bunch of righteous boys who helped to prove, if proof were needed, that this jazz of ours has developed into an international language”.* * *Both Lorna and Chris lived on the edges of a precinct of cemeteries known as Sonapur – the City of Gold. Lorna lives to the south of Sonapur, in Guzder House in the Dhobi Talao neighbourhood. When the wind blows east, her starkly furnished room is filled with the aroma of hot mawa cakes and fluffy buns being unloaded from the ovens in Kayani’s bakery next door. In the narrow corridors of Guzder House, even whispers carry clear down the hallway, and the mundane details of Lorna’s spats with Chris became common knowledge. “He was a big gambler,” one neighbour recalls. “He’d come in a car and say, “Lorna, give me 5,000 rupees.’ She’d go to the bank and withdraw it. All her savings were wiped out.”Chris lived to the north of Sonapur, opposite the church of Sao Francis Xavier in Dabul. Once he got home, he became a strict but caring father. “He was very religious,” his eldest son Giles told one interviewer. “We had to recite the Rosary at 8 every evening. At 12 noon and at dusk, we had to say the Angelus. If the phone ran during prayers he would say, ‘Throw the phone out.’” Miles, another of Chris Perry’s sons, described his father’s devotion to his art. “His daily routine when he woke up was to first smoke a cigarette and then blow his trumpet. Only then would he go for a wash.” His son Errol added: “He always had his favourite instrument close to him. Even while he slept, the trumpet would be on one side and mummy on the other.”The neighbourhood in which Lorna and Chris lived had long been the focus of Catholic migrants from Goa. The first significant numbers of Goan migrants came to Bombay in 1822, liberal partisans fleeing political persecution in the Portuguese colony for the safety of British India. More followed in 1835 after a rebellion by mixed-race mestizos deposed Goa’s first native-born governor general, Bernardo Peres da Silva. The mestizos launched a two-year reign of terror, forcing da Silva’s supporters into exile. As the century progressed, Goan emigration to Bombay swelled. The Portuguese hadn’t been especially attentive to developing industries, so the pressure on cultivable land was intense. Adding to this, many Goans chafed under the oppression of the bhatkars, as the feudal landlords were known. By the 1920s, many Goan men were being employed as seamen by such British lines as BI, P&O, Anchor and Clan. They used Bombay as a base between their voyages. Other Goans found work as domestic helpers in British households and social institutions. The early Goan fortune-seekers were almost all male: The arduous overland journey from Goa to Bombay, which took between 10 and 15 days, discouraged women. But the opening of the rail line between territories in April 1881 changed that. By the 1930s, Goans in Bombay had come to be associated with the ABC professions: they were ayahs (maids), butlers and cooks. In a column titled Random Jottings published by the Anglo-Lusitanian Journal in 1931, a writer calling himself Atropos noted that of the 37,000 Goans resident in Bombay that year, 14,000 were seamen, 7,000 were cooks or waiters and 3,000 were ayahs. A full 700 were estimated to be musicians. (At least 7,000 Goans were unemployed.)The neighbourhoods around Sonapur began to fill up with Goan dormitories known as coors, a word that derived from the Portuguese cuadd or room. These were established by individual villages back in Goa to provide a home away from home for their neighbours who were too poor to maintain two residences, one in the village and the other in the city. By 1958, half of the estimated 80,000 Goans in Bombay lived in such quarters – which were now being called “clubs”, adopting the word used to describe the chummeries many firms had established for their single European employees, writes Olga Valladares in her 1958 thesis titled The Coor System – a study of Goan club life in Bombay. As you walk down the narrow lanes of the neighbourhoods around Sonapur today, you can see fading signboards for them everywhere: the Boa Morte Association (Club of Majorda); St Anne’s Club of Ponda; Fatradicares Club; The Original Grand Club of Pombura; Nossa Senhora dos Milagres, Club of Sangrem. There were 341 Goan clubs in the city in 1958, mainly between Dhobi Talao and Dabul. The seamen who lived in them found it easy from there to get to the docks and the shipping offices, while the cooks and domestics were within walking distance of the produce sellers at Crawford Market, where their chores began before they moved on to their employer’s establishments each day.Life in the clubs was spartan. Residents were allowed minimal baggage, usually a big trunk. “Life was lived out of the box and on it,” Valladares says. The club-dweller’s box “is not only the repository of all personal possessions, his wardrobe and his safe, but it is his dining table at mealtimes and his bed at night.” The altar was the centrepiece of the club. In addition to statues of Christ and Mary, they contained icons of the patron saint of the village, decorated with offerings of flowers. Every evening, members were required to gather around the altar to say the Rosary. The highlight of the year was the celebration in exile of the village feast. Collections were taken up and, after Mass, there was an elaborate meal, followed by musical performances.The music, old-timers recall, was superb. After all, the musical talents of Goans had earned the community a formidable reputation throughout the subcontinent. The Portuguese may have neglected higher education in Goa, but the parochial schools first established in 1545 put into place a solid system of musical training. As early as 1665, a Goan choir performed an oratorio by Giacome Carissimi in seven voices at the Basilica of Bom Jesu. The recital caused such a sensation, it led the Carmelite musician Guiseppe di Santa Maria to declare, “I feel I am in Rome.” The clash of civilisations in Goa created a whole range of syncretic forms: the Goa sausage was a Portuguese chorizo with a tear-inducing splash of Indian spice; cashew feni was drunk in a leisurely Iberian manner after sundown; and the mando – the only harmonised folk musical form on the subcontinent – melded saudade, the nostalgic melancholy that pervades Portuguese fado, with Indian folk melodies. Transgressing subcontinental norms, the mando was the accompaniment for social dancing between the sexes; as the musicians crooned their songs of yearning, couples struck up delicate postures of stylised courtship.Their musical inclination came in handy when Goans sought work in British India. They soon established themselves as the musicians of the Raj, staffing the orchestras established by British administrators and by Indian maharajahs seeking to appear sophisticated. In Bombay, Goan musicians took over both ends of the music business. In 1888, The Times of India mentions a Goan ensemble playing in the Bombay Philharmonic Orchestra in the Town Hall. Other Goan groups are said to have displaced the Muslim street bands that played at the weddings of the common folk and other festive occasions. Salvador Pinto, who played coronet in the Volunteer Corps, is thought to have formed the first proper street band, writes Bombay local historian Dr Teresa Albuquerque. She says that the demand for Goan musicians was so great, one ingenious man named Francisco Menezes trawled through the clubs to find unemployed men to march in the processions, instructing them to inflate their cheeks without blowing a note. Dhobi Talao’s Goans were prominent not only as musicians but also in the city’s musical instrument trade. L M Furtado opened his store in Jer Mahal, around the corner from where Lorna lives, in the 1920s, importing pianos and violins that had been tropicalised to keep them from warping in the Bombay swelter. Marques and Company was nearby.Goan musicians also conjured up soundscapes for the silent films. Bombay’s Watson’s Hotel had been host to India’s first cinema screening on July 7, 1896, a show that advertised itself as “living photographic pictures in life-sized reproductions by Messrs Lumiere Brothers”. By New Year’s day in 1900, the Tivoli Theatre was screening 25 pictures, with music by a string band. A portrait photographer named Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar became the first Indian to import a motion-picture camera from London and he shot a wrestling match between two well-known musclemen in 1897. Other locally shot films followed, including Alibaba, Hariraj and Buddha by a Bengali named Hiralal Sen. A creative flashback projects the tantalising image of Bombay audiences drinking in black-and-white scenes from Indian folktales as a Goan string quartet trots out phrases from Mozart and snatches of mandos, varying the tempo to match the action on screen. Goans have stayed in the picture ever since.When jazz swung into the subcontinent, Goans seized it as the song of their souls. “Jazz gave us freedom of _expression,” explains Frank Fernand, who played in the Teddy Weatherford band at the Taj. “You played jazz the way you feel – morning you play differently, evening you play differently.” New tunes came to India as sheet music, but that sometimes wasn’t much help even to accomplished readers: jazz contained such unconventional instructions as glissando, mute and attack. “But when we heard the records, we knew how to play the notes,” Frank says. For a Goan jazzman, the greatest accolade was to be told that he “played like a negro”. No one seems to have received more praise on this account than Chic Chocolate, who occasionally led a two-trumpet barrage at the Green’s Hotel with Chris Perry. Chic – whose name Goans pronounced as if they were talking about a rooster’s offspring – was known as the “Louis Armstrong of India”. His stratospheric trumpet notes and his growly scatting were a tribute to his New Orleans idol. “He had a negro personality,” Frank Fernand marvels. “He played everything by heart.” His stage presence was unforgettable. As the band reached a crescendo, Chic would fall on one knee and raise his horn to the stars.Chic had been born Antonio Xavier Vaz in Aldona in 1916. His mother wanted him to be a mechanic and earn a respectable living, but he dreamt of a life in music. He started out with a group called the Spotlights and, by 1945, his own outfit, Chic and the Music Makers, beat out 12 other bands to win a contract at Green’s, which also was owned by the Taj. The pianist Johnny Fernandes, who later married Chic’s daughter, Ursula, remembers the stir the trumpet player caused when he played at parties in Dhobi Talao homes. He says, “People would flock to see him as if he was a (movie) hero.” To have Chic perform at a wedding or a christening was a matter of prestige, but it could bump up the catering expenses. “You’d have hordes of gatecrasherscoming to hear him,” Johnny explains. Chic, his contemporaries say, not only played like a negro, he even looked like one.The swarthiness of some Goan jazz musicians, such as the saxophonist Joe Pereira, came from ancestors with roots in Portugal’s African colonies of Mozambique and Angola. But Chic’s dark skin is attributed by one musician to his being a Mahar, a member of an untouchable caste. Many of Bombay’s jazzmen, this musician says, were drawn from this caste. As he theorised: “In Goa, Mahars were grave diggers. They’d also play snare drums and blow conches in funeral bands. When they came to Bombay, they became good jazz drummers and trumpet players.”They say Chic performed one of his greatest feats of improvisation offstage. “Chic lived in Marine Lines and had a girlfriend called Catherine, with whom he had a son,” a matter that shocked conservative Catholic sensibilities, one musician recalls. “But then he decided to marry another girl. The wedding was to be the Wodehouse Road Cathederal in Colaba. But Catherine landed up there with her son, so the wedding was shifted hastily to Gloria Church in Byculla”, across town. The befuddled guests waited patiently in the Colaba church, even as Chic said “I do” in the deserted neo-Gothic nave of Gloria church.Many early Goan jazzmen were sideman in Micky Correa’s band, which played at the Taj from 1939 to 1961. Among them was Ronnie Monserrate’s father, Peter, who was known as the “Harry James of India”. Peter’s five sons formed Bombay’s second-generation of Goan jazzmen: Joe and Bosco play trumpet and fluegelhorn, Blasco the trombone, Rex the drums and Ronnie the piano. The family lived in Abu Mansion, an apartment block in the textile mill district of Parel. The boys would come home from school at four and begin to practice, each having been allotted a two-hour slot by their father. The music would continue late into the night, then occasionally start again in the wee hours when Peter Monserrate and his gang – violinist Joe Menezes, trombone player Anibal Castro, drummer Leslie Godinho and Chic Chocolate – returned from a drink after work to demand an impromptu performance. As their mother cooked up a meal, the Monserrate boys would go through their paces. Their neighbours, mainly working-class Hindus, tolerated this with fortitude. Ronnie surmises, “I suppose it’s like living next to the railway tracks. After a while, you get immune to the roar of the trains if you want to get any sleep.”Activity in the Monserrate household would get especially hectic just before the biennale Sound of Surprise talent shows that the Bombay Musicians’ Association organised on the Sunday in November closest to the feast of St Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. Bombay’s hottest swing bands took to the Birla theatre’s revolving stage to compete for the Franz Marques award for best original composition. Even though Peter Monserrate rehearsed his band hard in the corridors of Abu Mansion, his group never managed to win the trophy. His friend, Chris Perry, won in 1964, the first year it was given out. Toni Pinto took the award home in 1966 for Forever True, a gentle bossa nova tune that leapt out at him late one night as he travelled home in a cab. With only the bulb above the meter for light, he scribbled the theme down on the back of a matchbox.Goan musicians who didn’t play the nightclubs mainly worked at weddings, Parsi navjote initiation ceremonies and Catholic funerals. For many, finding a job for the evening meant taking a trip to Alfred’s, the Irani restaurant on Princess Street, midway between Chris’s home and Lorna’s apartment. Tony Cyril, Dennis Vaz, Johnny Rodriges, Johnny Baptista, Mike Machado and Chris Perry – the major bandleaders each had a regular table at which they’d slurp up endless cups of milky chai. “You’d come there every morning and hang around there as a routine,” says Johnny Fernandes, Chic Chocolate’s son-in-law. People who wanted to liven up their parties would land up at Alfred’s and approach one or the other leader. The cry would go up: one bass player needed. Two trumpets and one piano. “Once you got your assignment, you’d go home to get suit and head out to the venue,” Johnny says. It paid to be sharply turned out: in addition to their 15 rupee fee, musicians got three extra rupees for dressing up in a white jacket and black trousers.* * *When Bollywood films are beamed through their melodramatic prism of stock characters and broad stereotypes, Catholics emerge as not being quite Indian. They speak a mangled Hindi patois with Anglicised accents. They’re dolled up in Western clothes. The men are given to wearing climatically inappropriate jackets and felt hats. Unlike Hindus who knock back the occasional glass of something in bars, Catholic men tipple at home, as their wives and children look on. Still, they’re genial drunks, unthreatening sidekicks to the hero. Often, their role as sideman was literal: The screen musicians backing the hero as he performs that nightclub sequence that seemed mandatory in every Hindi film shot in the ’50s answer to names like George and Sidney and Michael. As for Catholic women, they never wear saris and their immodest legs show out from under their frocks. Older Catholic women, often called Mrs Sequeira or Mrs D’Souza, are landladies or kindly neighbours offer the hero consolation when he is temporarily stymied in his pursuit of the loved one. But younger Catholic women (with notable exceptions) are danger incarnate. They smoke. They have boyfriends to whom their parents don’t object. They dance in nightclubs and lure men to their doom with their promise of a world in which the sexes interact more freely, in which arranged marriages aren’t the norm, in which love isn’t taboo. In the end, though, the Catholic characters have only minor roles, a reflection of their lives at the margins of Indian society.The bit parts in which Catholics found themselves cast on screen weren’t an accurate portrayal of the vital role Goans played the Hindi film industry. Until the ’80s, India had no pop music save for Hindi film songs. Millions memorised and hummed the compositions of C Ramachandra, Shankar and Jaikishan, Laxmikant and Pyrelal and S D Burman, whose names rolled by in large letters at the beginning of the movies. But the Sound of India actually was created by Goan musicians, men whose names flickered by in small type under the designation “arranger”. It’s clear. The Hindi film classics that resound across the subcontinent and in Indian homes around the world wouldn’t have been made without Goans. Their dominance of the Hindi film world is partly a function of the structural differences between Indian and Western music. Indian classical music is melodic. The ragas that form the basis of Indian music are unilinear, each instrument or vocalist exploring an independent line. To move an audience, film scores must be performed by orchestras, with massed instruments playing in harmony. Only Goans, with their training in Western music, knew how to produce what was required.Frank Fernand was among the first Goans in Bollywood and assisted such worthies as Anil Biswas, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar. As he describes it, the men who composed the scores for Hindi films couldn’t write music and had no idea of the potential of the orchestras they employed. They would come to the studio and sing a melody to their Goan amanuensis, or pick out the line on a harmonium. The Goan assistant would write it out on sheet paper, then add parts for the banks of strings, the horn sections, the piano and the percussion. But the assistant wasn’t merely taking dictation: It was his job to craft the introductions and bridges between verse and chorus. Drawing from their bicultural heritage and their experience in the jazz bands, the Goans gave Bollywood music its promiscuous charm, slipping in slivers of Dixieland stomp, Portuguese fados, Ellingtonesque doodles, cha cha cha, Mozart and Bach themes. Then they would rehearse the orchestras, which were staffed almost entirely by Goans. After all, hardly anyone else knew how to play these Western instruments. To Frank Fernand, the music directors were mere subcontractors, men whose main job was liaising with the financiers. “We arrangers did all the real work. They’d show off to the directors and producers and try to show that they were indispensable. But to be a music director, salesmanship was more important than musicianship.”Chic Chocolate spent his mornings assisting C Ramachandra, who is popularly credited with having introduced swing into Bollwood. But tunes like Ina Mina Dika and Gori Gori (inspired by the mambo standard Tico Tico) bear Chic’s unmistakable signature. His stamp is also audible on the throbbing Cuban percussion opening of Shola Jo Bhadke, a tune from Albela. Chic and the Music Makers made a brief appearance in the film to perform the tune, clad in an Indian wardrobe director’s frilly Latinesque fantasy. Cawas Lord’s conga beats out the introduction and hands clap clave. Chic smiles broadly at the camera in the best Satchmo tradition.Among the most reputed arrangers in Bollywood was the venerable Sebastian D’Souza, who did his best-known work with the duo of Shankar and Jaikishan between 1952 and 1975. “His arrangements were so brilliant, composers would take snatches of his background scores and work them into entire tunes,” says Merlin D’Souza, Sebastian’s daughter-in-law and a rising Bollywood music assistant herself. Sebastian had a brush with the film world in pre-Partition Lahore, where he led a band at Stiffle’s hotel. His earliest arrangements were for Lollywoodcomposers Shyam Sundar and Mohammed Ali, recalls the saxophonist Joe Pereira. Joe was Sebastian’s cousin, and had been adopted as a 14-year-old by his older relative. Joe would spend his mornings taking music lessons from Sebastian, then take him his tiffin in the afternoon when Sebastian took a break from rehearsals. After 1947, Sebastian made his way to Bombay, but found that there was a glut of bandleaders in the hotels. He called on his Lollywood contacts and made his way to the film recording studios, where he got a break with O P Nayyar. The first tune he arranged was Pritam aan milo, which was sung by C H Atma in 1955. Merlin, who occasionally accompanied her father-in-law to the studios, remembers him walking around with a pencil tucked behind his ear. He devised a system of notation that incorporated the microtones that characterised Indian melodies. Sebastian was highly regarded by his musicians for his ever-generous nature. He often lent musicians money to buy better instruments or tide over a crisis. His contemporaries also remember him for the patience he showed even less-than-dexterous musicians. Merlin says that Sebastian was willing to give anyone a break. “Even if you played the viola haltingly, you’d find a place there, on the back row,” she says.That proved the lifeline for many Goan musicians, who, by the mid-70s, increasingly were being thrown out of work as Bombay’s nightclub scene went into decay. A more rigorous enforcement of the prohibition act and a crippling tax on establishments featuring live music kept patrons away. Besides, rock and roll was changing musical tastes and Bombay was developing the ear for beat groups. The film studio, which until then had been a source of supplementary income, suddenly became everyone’s main job. But the relatively simply Hindi film music Goan musicians were forced to play ate them away. “Their passion was to play jazz and big band,” Ronnie Monserrate says. “This was their bread and butter but they didn’t enjoy it. They were really frustrated. That’s probably why so many of them became alcoholics.” It took only four or five hours to record each tune. Musicians would be paid at the end of each shift, so they’d grab their money and head out for a drink. Few actually cared to see the movies in which they’d performed.Chris Perry also had a stint in the film studios, assisting Khayyam and working with such names as Lakshmikant and Pyarelal, R D Burman and Kalyanji Anandji. He eventually was emboldened to produce his own film. Bhuiarntlo Munis (The Man from the Caves)was the first colour film to be made in Konkani,the language spoken along the west coast between southern Maharashtra and northern Karnataka, and which is the mother tongue of most Goans. Chris wrote the story, the music and the lyrics. It starred Ivo Almedia, Helen Pereira and C Alvares, who had gained prominence for their work in tiatr, as Goa’s satirical musical theatre is known. The film was based on The Count of Monte Cristo, a tale that has great resonance in Goa because one of the characters, Abbe Faria, who in the Dumas novel is described as an Italian priest, in real life had been born in Candolim, in Goa, in 1756. Father Jose Custodio de Faria is acknowledged as having been among the earliest protagonists of scientific hypnotism, and a statue of him stands prominently in Goa’s capital, Panjim. The priest, who moved to Lisbon, was forced to flee to France in 1787 when a rebellion he had been associated with in Goa was crushed. The Conjuracao dos Pintos, the conspiracy of the Pinto family, was the first Asian struggle that aimed to replace European colonial rule with an independent state on the European model. That’s how |
he had been able to receive medical care he required over the course of his illness, when he died the bills for that care amounted to about $400,000. His friends, including Paul, were able to raise about $50,000, but that still left $350,000 to be passed to his estate — or left unpaid (and passed on to other consumers and taxpayers).[287][288][289][290]
Medical malpractice law reform [ edit ]
Paul has proposed radical changes in the way medical malpractice claims are handled.[250] Under bills he has introduced multiple times beginning in 2003, a patient planning pregnancy, surgery, or other major medical procedures or medical treatment would be able to buy "negative outcomes" insurance at very low cost. If the patient were to experience a negative outcome in association with the medical procedure or treatment, he or she would then seek compensation through binding arbitration, rather than through a medical malpractice trial before a jury. Paul claims that "using insurance, private contracts, and binding arbitration to resolve medical disputes benefits patients, who receive full compensation in a timelier manner than under the current system," as well as physicians and hospitals, since their litigation costs, and malpractice insurance premiums, would be markedly reduced.[291][292][293]
Proposal to eliminate Medicare [ edit ]
Paul proposes that all government funding of medical care be eliminated (with the exception, perhaps, of care for veterans). His Plan to Restore America budget proposal would begin a phase out of Medicare starting in 2013, when workers younger than 25 would be able to opt out of participating in the program.[36] He says that during the transition period, the commitments for coverage under Medicare that have already been made to older workers could be honored by cutting other government spending, such as by closing all US military bases overseas and ceasing to engage in foreign military "adventurism."
Food and Drug Administration policy [ edit ]
Paul proposes sharply reducing the government's regulation of medications and health supplements by reducing the role of, and ultimately eliminating, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).[294] In a 2011 interview, Paul said, "Well, the FDA just serves the drug companies... [and] they also prevent drugs from coming on the market [until] 10, 15 years later than other countries have it. So, yes, government just gets in the way on so many of those things."[294] He favors allowing FDA-approved prescription drugs to be imported from foreign countries and sold at a lower cost than the same drugs otherwise sell for in the US[261] – thereby allowing international markets to set drug prices in the US market – a practice that has been prohibited by the FDA. In the interest, as he sees it, of fighting for greater freedom of choice for consumers, he has also introduced bills that would significantly reduce the government's ability to prevent manufacturers or sellers of dietary supplements and certain other health products from making what government regulators believe to be false or misleading claims about the health effects of the products. He essentially feels that consumers should be able to buy whatever health aids they want from whomever they want, without the need for guidance by the government.[295]
Physician licensure [ edit ]
Paul argues against the prevailing system of government licensure of physicians and other healthcare practitioners.[296] In a 2007 interview, Paul accused the medical profession of choosing to maintain a strict licensing system that permits only a small number of individuals to practice in order to be able to charge much higher fees.[254] He insisted that with a truly competitive marketplace for health services, a patient with a sore throat, for instance, would be able to be seen by a nurse more rapidly than by a medical doctor and treated by the nurse for only a fraction of the cost of what a medical doctor would charge. "Patients can sort this out. I mean, they're not going to go to the nurse if they need brain surgery. They can go there for a sore throat."[254] He believes that patients would be best served by healthcare practitioners operating under the rules of the free market in voluntary contractual arrangements. Paul feels that anyone who claims to be a healthcare practitioner (whether of allopathic, homeopathic, or naturopathic medicine) should be able to offer healthcare services, without interference from the "nanny state."[250]
Marijuana [ edit ]
Paul favors the right to use marijuana as a medical option. He was cosponsor of H.R. 2592, the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act.[297] He is currently a supporter of the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008.
Drug prohibition [ edit ]
Paul contends that prohibition of drugs is ineffective and advocates ending the War on Drugs.[298][299][300] "Prohibition doesn't work. Prohibition causes crime." He believes that drug abuse should be treated as a medical problem: "We treat alcoholism now as a medical problem and I, as a physician, think we should treat drug addiction as a medical problem and not as a crime." The U.S. Constitution does not enumerate or delegate to Congress the authority to ban or regulate drugs in general.
Paul believes in personal responsibility, but also sees inequity in the current application of drug enforcement laws, noting in 2000, "Many prisoners are non-violent and should be treated as patients with addictions, not as criminals. Irrational mandatory minimal sentences have caused a great deal of harm. We have non-violent drug offenders doing life sentences, and there is no room to incarcerate the rapists and murderers."[301]
When asked about his position on implementing the Tenth Amendment, Paul explained, "Certain medical procedures and medical choices, I would allow the states to determine that. The state law should prevail not the Federal Government." Speaking specifically about Drug Enforcement Administration raids on medical marijuana clinics Paul said, "They're unconstitutional", and went on to advocate states' rights[302] and personal choice: "You're not being compassionate by taking medical marijuana from someone who's suffering from cancer or AIDS... People should have freedom of choice. We certainly should respect the law and the law says that states should be able to determine this."
Veterans' hospital access [ edit ]
Paul believes that the Veterans Administration should not be building more hospitals, and that VA hospitals should instead be phased out. He believes that government should pay to treat veterans in private hospitals, arguing they will get better care more cost-effectively.[303]
Government non-intervention in medical field [ edit ]
Paul has also stated that "The government shouldn't be in the medical business." He also thinks that the talk about swine flu and getting vaccinated by the Federal Government is being blown out of proportion.[304]
Paul, was asked a hypothetical question at a Tea Party debate by CNN host Wolf Blitzer about how society should respond if a healthy 30-year-old man who decided against buying health insurance suddenly requires intensive care for six months. Paul said it shouldn't be the government's responsibility. "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks," Paul said. Paul mentioned he does not believe society should let the aforementioned hypothetical man die but emphasized that churches and communities – rather than governments – should take care of those in need.[305]
Election law [ edit ]
Ballot access [ edit ]
As a former Libertarian Party candidate for President, Paul has been a proponent of ballot access law reform, and has spoken out on numerous election law reform issues.
In 2003, he introduced H. R. 1941, the Voter Freedom Act of 2003, that would have created uniform ballot access laws for independent and third political party candidates in Congressional elections. He supported this bill in a speech before Congress in 2004.[306] In 2007 he reintroduced a similar version of the bill.
Voting Rights Act [ edit ]
In 2006, Paul joined 32 other members of Congress in opposing the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, originally passed to remove barriers to voting participation for minorities.[307] Paul has indicated that he did not object to the voting rights clauses, but rather to restrictions placed on property rights by the bill.[308] He felt the federal interference mandated by the bill was costly and unjustified because the situation for minorities voting is very different from when the bill was passed 40 years ago. Many of Texas' Republican representatives voted against the bill, because they believe it specifically singles out some Southern states, including Texas, for federal Justice Department oversight that makes it difficult for localities to change the location of a polling place or other small acts without first receiving permission from the federal government.[309] The bill also mandated bilingual voting ballots upon request, which Paul objected to on the grounds that one of the requirements of gaining United States citizenship is ability to read in English, and that as it currently stands it often forces large expenditures to prepare materials that are in some cases never used.[310]
Civil Rights Act of 1964 [ edit ]
Paul opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional infringement on liberty and by leading to quotas had in his view increased racial disharmony[citation needed].[308]
State representation [ edit ]
Paul would like to restore State representation in Congress. During a speech in New Hampshire in February 2007 Paul called for a repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment,[311] which replaced state election of U.S. Senators with popular election. Instead Paul would have members of state legislatures vote for U.S. Senators as they had done under Article One, Section 3. Direct popular representation would be retained in the U.S. House of Representatives. Paul believes that increased representation of state interests at the federal level encourages greater sharing of power between state and federal government.[312]
Electoral College [ edit ]
In 2004, he spoke out against efforts to abolish the electoral college, stating that "Democracy, we are told, is always good. But the founders created a constitutionally limited republic precisely to protect fundamental liberties from the whims of the masses, to guard against the excesses of democracy. The electoral college likewise was created in the Constitution to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The President was to be elected by the states rather than the citizenry as a whole, with votes apportioned to states according to their representation in Congress."[313]
Foreign policy [ edit ]
Paul's views are generally attributed to those of non-interventionism, which is the belief that the United States should avoid entangling alliances with other nations, but still retain diplomacy, and avoid all wars not related to direct territorial self-defense.[citation needed] Paul is quoted as stating "America [should] not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations", while advocating "open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations".[314] Ronald Reagan spoke in support of Paul's foreign policy views in the early 1980s, stating "Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country."[315] Daniel Ellsberg, famous for releasing the Pentagon Papers, has said of Paul in 2010: "On foreign policy, on the Constitution, on Homeland Security, on intervention, he speaks very well."[316] Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich has said that he and Paul "agree tremendously on international policy".[317]
Paul's stance on foreign policy is one of consistent non-intervention,[318][319] opposing wars of aggression and entangling alliances with other nations.[320]
Paul advocates bringing troops home from U.S. military bases in Korea, Japan, and Europe, among others.[81] He also proposes that the U.S. stop sending what he deems massive, unaccountable foreign aid.[321] The National Journal labeled Paul's overall foreign policies in 2010 as more conservative than 60% of the House and more liberal than 40% of the House (53% and 47%, respectively, in 2009).[10] For 2008, his ratings were 57% more conservative and 42% more liberal (48% and 52%, respectively, in 2007).[11]
In an October 11, 2007 interview with The Washington Post, Paul said, "There's nobody in this world that could possibly attack us today... we could defend this country with a few good submarines. If anybody dared touch us we could wipe any country off of the face of the earth within hours. And here we are, so intimidated and so insecure and we're acting like such bullies that we have to attack third-world nations that have no military and have no weapons."[322]
Afghanistan [ edit ]
Paul voted with the majority for the original Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in Afghanistan.[323] considering that it was a response to the September 11 attacks. But over the years even though he initially supported the War in Afghanistan, Paul also advocates withdrawing troops from Afghanistan because he believes a decade of war in Afghanistan is enough.
Paul also stated:
There really is nothing for us to win in Afghanistan. Our mission has morphed from apprehending those who attacked us, to apprehending those who threaten or dislike us for invading their country, to remaking an entire political system and even a culture... This is an expensive, bloody, endless exercise in futility. Not everyone is willing to admit this just yet. But every second they spend in denial has real costs in lives and livelihoods... Many of us can agree on one thing, however. Our military spending in general has grown way out of control.
Iraq [ edit ]
Paul was the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate who voted against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002,[324][325] and he opposed the U.S. presence in Iraq, charging the government with using the War on Terror to curtail civil liberties. He believes a just declaration of war after the September 11, 2001, attacks should have been directed against the actual terrorists, Al-Qaeda, rather than against Iraq, which has not been linked to the attacks.[326] In 2003, Paul said that when America seeks war, it must be sought only to protect citizens, it must be declared by the U.S. Congress, and it must be concluded when the victory is complete as previously planned, which would allow all resources to be dedicated to victory; he added, "The American public deserves clear goals and a definite exit strategy in Iraq."[327] However, the original authorization to invade Iraq (Public Law 107-243), passed in late 2002, authorized the president to use military force against Iraq to achieve only the following two specific objectives: "(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq".[328] Accordingly, Paul introduced legislation to add a sunset clause to the original authorization.[329]
During the 2003 invasion, Paul found himself "annoyed by the evangelicals being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything that [he] was taught as a Christian".[59] Paul's consistent opposition to the war expanded his conservative and libertarian Republican support base[330] to include liberal[331] Democrats.[242]
Israel [ edit ]
Paul argues that if the United States cares about Israel, the U.S. should allow them to be more independent. He states that "the surrounding Arab nations get seven times as much aid as Israel gets and also a recent study came out that showed that for every dollar you give to an Arab nation it prompts Israel to spend 1.4 dollars."[332] Paul would not stop Israel from defending its interests in any way it saw fit.[332]
Our foreign military aid to Israel is actually more like corporate welfare to the U.S. military industrial complex, as Israel is forced to purchase only U.S. products with the assistance. We send almost twice as much aid to other countries in the Middle East, which only insures increased militarization and the drive toward war.[333]
We have adopted a foreign policy that has left Israel surrounded by militaristic nations while undermining Israel's sovereignty by demanding that its foreign and defense policies be essentially pre-approved in Washington. That is a bad deal for Israel, as sovereign nations must determine on their own what is a most appropriate national defense. On foreign policy as well, the U.S. steps in to prevent Israel from engaging in dialogue with nations of which the U.S. administration disapproves.[333]
Paul was in Congress when Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and—unlike the United Nations and the Reagan administration—defended its right to do so. He says Saudi Arabia has an influence on Washington equal to Israel's. He votes against support for Israel due to his opposition to foreign aid by the US in general.[334]
In an interview with Don Imus, Paul was asked for his view of the Gaza flotilla raid. He responded, "... I think it's absolutely wrong to prevent people that are starving and having problems, that are almost like in concentration camps, and saying yes we endorse this whole concept that we can't allow ships to go in there in a humanitarian way..." Imus remarked, "They are allowing humanitarian aid in... what they're concerned about is weapons falling into the hands of Hamas..." Paul responded, "Well, they're an elected government, I mean Hamas; We have thousands of our soldiers dying to say that we want elections and we want democracy, so we finally get one in Palestine, and they elect Hamas, and then all of a sudden whoa you've elected the wrong people..."[335]
At the ABC News Iowa Republican Debate, Paul was asked if he agreed with Newt Gingrich's "characterization, that the Palestinians are an invented people." Paul responded, "No, I don't agree with that. And that's just stirring up trouble. And I believe in a non-interventionist foreign policy. I don't think we should get in the middle of these squabbles. But to go out of our way and say that so-and-so is not a real people? Technically and historically, yes-- you know, under the Ottoman Empire, the Palestinians didn't have a state, but neither did Israel have a state then too."[336]
Iran [ edit ]
Paul rejects the "dangerous military confrontation approaching with Iran and supported by many in leadership on both sides of the aisle".[337] He claims the current circumstances with Iran mirror those under which the Iraq War began,[338] and has urged Congress not to authorize war with Iran.[339] In the U.S. House of Representatives, only Paul and Dennis Kucinich voted against the Rothman-Kirk Resolution, which asks the United Nations to charge Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating its genocide convention and charter.[340] Paul was one of 12 representatives to vote against the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act,[341] and said, "Sanctions are literally an act of war."[342]
Sudan [ edit ]
In his speech before the House on a related bill, H. Con. Res. 467,[343] Paul rejected the proposal for "[urging] the Administration to seriously consider multilateral or even unilateral intervention to stop genocide in Darfur should the UN Security Council fail to act". Paul argued the proposal was unrelated to "the US national interest" or "the Constitutional function of [United States] military forces".[344] The resolution passed unanimously, with Paul among 12 non-voters.[345]
Paul was the only "no" vote on H.R. 180, the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007 (passed House 418–1–13, not reported out of committee in the Senate), which would "require the identification of companies that conduct business operations in Sudan [and] prohibit United States Government contracts with such companies".[346] Among the bill's findings were Colin Powell's Senate testimony that the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias it supported were responsible for genocide, and the observation that many Americans inadvertently invest in foreign companies which disproportionately benefit the Sudanese regime in Khartoum.[347] Paul cited the past ineffectiveness of sanctions against Cuba and Iraq as evidence against divestment from businesses connected to the Sudanese government.[348]
Cuba [ edit ]
Paul advocates ending the United States embargo against Cuba, arguing, "Americans want the freedom to travel and trade with their Cuban neighbors, as they are free to travel and trade with Vietnam and China. Those Americans who do not wish to interact with a country whose model of governance they oppose are free to boycott. The point being – it is Americans who live in a free country, and as free people we should choose who to buy from or where to travel, not our government... Considering the lack of success government has had in engendering friendship with Cuba, it is time for government to get out of the way and let the people reach out."[349]
International organizations [ edit ]
Paul advocates withdrawing U.S. participation and funding from organizations he believes override American sovereignty, such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Treaty, NATO, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.[319][350][351]
The World Trade Organization [ edit ]
Paul states that the WTO is a barrier to free trade and that the economic argument for free trade should be no more complex than the moral argument.
Tariffs are taxes that penalize those who buy foreign goods. If taxes are low on imported goods, consumers benefit by being able to buy at the best price, thus saving money to buy additional goods and raise their standard of living. The competition stimulates domestic efforts and hopefully serves as an incentive to get onerous taxes and regulations reduced... By endorsing the concept of managed world trade through the World Trade Organization, proponents acknowledge that they actually believe in order for free trade to be an economic positive, it requires compensation or a "deal".[citation needed]
Paul introduced HJR 90 to withdraw membership from the World Trade Organization.[352]
International trade [ edit ]
Paul is a proponent of free trade and rejects protectionism, advocating "conducting open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations".[353] He opposes many free trade agreements (FTAs), like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),[354] stating that "free-trade agreements are really managed trade"[355] and serve special interests and big business, not citizens.[356]
He voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), holding that it increased the size of government, eroded U.S. sovereignty, and was unconstitutional.[354] He has also voted against the Australia–U.S. FTA, the U.S.–Singapore FTA, and the U.S.–Chile FTA, and voted to withdraw from the WTO. He believes thThe core uses for Wear so far are glanceable information, messaging and fitness. Each of those parts of the OS have been improved, but the changes actually reach far beyond just that. "For the very first time, we've been able to take a holistic pass across the design of the entire system and UI to really hone and tune the interactions around key things that people want to do," Singleton says.
Some of the most profound changes to Wear come under messaging, so let's start there. Many of the changes Singleton outlined go far beyond messaging apps, most notably notifications in general. Gone are the white cards that you'd swipe through to see what info Android Wear is pushing to your watch. Now each card has a dark but colored background as a visual cue to what app wants your attention. Hangouts is dark green, Gmail is red, and so forth.
The bigger change is that notifications no longer take up the bottom 10 percent of your watch face. Instead, if you receive a notification, the next time you raise your watch to your eyeline, you'll see the card slide up into the display as a visual cue. It then recedes and gives you a clean view of the watch face. "It's an obvious but also quite subtle cue that there's something to take action on in the stream of cards, but then it goes away again," Singleton explains.
Of course, you can still swipe up from the bottom of the watch face to go through your various notifications and cards -- and there's a host of new features if you want to reply to a message. You can already reply by voice or with the emoji-sketching feature introduced last year, but now Google's gone mad and added a full keyboard, handwriting recognition and smart replies to Wear. All are available to third-party apps, as well.
All three of these new reply features are powered in large part by Google's machine learning. Smart reply works like the same feature in Inbox: After reading your message, the app will suggest salient possible replies that you can just tap to send. If those smart replies don't say what you want, you can sketch letters on the watch screen or use a tiny keyboard to swipe out a message. You can hunt and peck if you want, but swipe seems like a much better experience on such a small screen.
"We've worked really hard to make this work well for small screen devices," Singleton says about handwriting recognition. "Our machine learning techniques recognize both the strokes that I draw, but also if I draw multiple strokes it can actually adapt the word that's being recognized based on the context of what went before." And once you type or swipe a single word with the on-screen keyboard, Wear will start suggesting words to follow it, again based on machine learning. In a lot of cases, you should be able to type or swipe out a couple words and then tap the suggested options to complete your message. I was extremely skeptical of a watch-sized keyboard, but in the brief demo I saw, it worked far better than I would have expected.
There are a few other UI changes, as well. Across the entire system, Google is using swipe-up-and-down gestures to hide navigation and actions. If you pull from the top of the screen, you'll get the "wearable navigation drawer," which lets you move through the various screens in an app. Pulling from the bottom brings up the "action drawer," which is where you'll find buttons to perform specific functions. "Having to give over a lot of real estate to moving between screens or taking actions means that the user has to do more scrolling," Singleton says. "It's harder for apps to just show at a glance the information that you care about."
The next major change to Android Wear was introduced as a fitness feature -- but the implications go far beyond fitness. Any app for Wear can now operate in a "stand-alone" mode, running on the watch itself with unfettered network access. Whether pulling data from your phone's connection, a WiFi network or a built-in LTE connection, these apps can now operate fully untethered from your phone. If you want to go running with just your watch, for example, this means you can stream music from Spotify without having to sync songs in offline mode first.
Furthermore, stand-alone apps mean you'll be able to find and install apps directly from your watch. Previously you had to go through your phone to add new apps. Perhaps the most notable thing about this change is that iPhone users with an Android Wear watch will have access to far more apps. Right now Wear is extremely limited if you're pairing it with an iPhone. But with 2.0, you'll be able to browse and install stand-alone apps straight to your watch, regardless of what phone you pair it with. So far it's been hard to recommend Wear devices to iPhone users, but that may change when Wear 2.0 arrives.
The big fitness-focused change here is a new API called the activity recognition API. As you might expect, this lets the watch better identify what your body is doing at any given moment and launch the appropriate app to track your activity. "If I just start running, within about 10 seconds [fitness app] Strava can launch and show my time, my distance and my pace for my run," Singleton says. "It just launched itself, in the right context." Unfortunately, it sounds like the API only recognizes walking, running and biking, at least for now.
As for glanceable information, Google has built a new complications API that'll let any third-party app display whatever it wants on any watch face. The watch face has to support complications, but once it does, any app can plug into it and share information there. The app developer decides what (if any) data it wants to make available. But if you're building a watch face, as long as it's designed to support complications, any app will work with it.
That's a big change from how things have worked: Developers needed to design and build their own custom faces to share data from their app. And there was no way to have a variety of complications from different apps. Now end users will have a lot more options for customizing their watch to show the info they want to see.
Ultimately, Android Wear 2.0 doesn't radically change the OS: It's still based primarily on your notifications and Google Now cards, with richer app experiences becoming more common. That said, Google is definitely improving what it sees as Wear's most important features. That should benefit all users. The updated UI, notifications and complications will be useful to everyone with a Wear device, and compatibility with the iPhone should take a big step forward. Unfortunately, you'll need to wait a bit to get your hands on version 2.0. Google is seeding it to developers today, but consumers won't get to try it until later this year.
For all the latest news and updates from Google I/O 2016, follow along here.GStreamer 1.12: Intel Media SDK support and more
Posted on 19/04/2017 by Olivier Crête
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With GStreamer 1.12's first release candidate out for testing and the final release expected soon, I thought it would be a good time to provide a brief preview of some of the (many) new features, bugfixes and improvements that will be arriving with this release. Of course, keep an eye out for the official release notes as they'll provide considerably more information around these changes.
As usual, this latest stable release will come loaded with new features, notably support for the EGL extension used by the i.MX6 Vivante proprietary driver, support for waylandsink DMABuf importation (which means you can get zerocopy media display under Wayland) and support for the Fraunhofer FDK AAC encoder and decoder. However, one of the higlights will undoubtedly be the addition of support for Intel's Media SDK*, the cross-platform API to access Intel's hardware accelerated video encoder and decoder functions on Windows and Embedded Linux.
Along with a large cleanup of OpenCV elements, more controls and voice activity information for webrtcdsp, and more support for 10bits and 12bits pixel formats, one of the key new features is videoconvert now supporting the multi-threaded scaling and conversion, a big plus for real-time software manipulation of 4K and 8K streams.
Python programmers will rejoice as more features are natively accessible, in particular, GstCaps describing format can now be fully programmatically modified, thanks to new handwritten overrides.
On the build and dependencies side of things, one noticeable improvement will be the change in plugin filenames to match their plugin name. This is in preparation for a new plugin interface coming in 1.14, which will allow developers to build static and dynamic plugins simultaneously. Support for full Meson has also greatly progressed, and pretty much everything will now be able to be built, with most unit tests having been integrated.
In terms of contributors, while the full list will be available with the 1.12 release notes, one highlight worth mentioning is the first ever contribution by GoPro developers, which will bring CineForm support to GStreamer.
Stay tuned for the final release of GStreamer 1.12, which should arrive in the next few weeks!
*Note: Intel recently made their Media SDK Open Source, inviting developers to contribute enhancements to make faster, more efficient video/image processing. You can read more about it here. We congratulate Intel for this milestone and look forward to seeing it ported to recent versions of the Linux kernel and other relevant drivers.Following President Donald Trump's executive order restricting refugees and immigrants, many groups have voiced their disagreement with the policy. Many flooded airports where refugees with green cards and work visas were being detained to let Trump know that they do not agree with his decision and feel that it will be more harmful to the country than helpful in keeping us safe. Now, families of 9/11 victims are against the refugee ban, and they're speaking out about Trump's executive order.
Within the executive order, Trump repeatedly refers to the attacks of Sept. 11. He has reasoned that the ban will make it more difficult for potential terrorists to enter the country. According to the Huffington Post, members of the group September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows has expressed their displeasure over Trump's attempt to use the attacks as a reason to go forth with the immigration ban. Families for Peaceful Tomorrows was formed in 2002 to oppose the war in Iraq.
The Huffington Post reported that at a press conference Tuesday held by the group, Terry McGovern, who lost her mother, Ann McGovern, on 9/11, said:
Don’t use our loved ones, and especially my mother, to turn away refugees. This is not about protecting Americans. This is about bigotry. I for one am really tired of the exploitation of 9/11 for agendas that have nothing to do with our loved ones.
Pool/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Obviously, McGovern does not speak for all families whose lives were altered that day, but it's important to listen to her point as well as others who have expressed concern or disagreement with the ban that so clearly references the tragedy.
Trump's executive order on immigration, signed one week after his inauguration, restricts refugee resettlement for 120 days, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely, and bans immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries (Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen) temporarily.
However, the order does not include the countries where the 9/11 terrorists were from. According to the New York Times, the majority of the hijackers in the various planes were from Saudi Arabia. So, using 9/11 as a talking point and a reason to issue this ban doesn't make sense. It's one thing to introduce an executive order on the pretense of safety, but if your supporting examples don't even apply to the order, why bring it up?
It's clear that the immigration ban has affected people's lives, and created confusion for those who immediately had to implement it. With some 9/11 victims' families speaking out against Trump's order, at least some people will realize that it's not OK to use the tragedy as a means for an action that Trump had wanted to implement for some time.Less than two weeks earlier, the first ceasefire of the war, agreed by the rebel leaders and Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's newly elected president, had crumbled amid mutual finger pointing as both sides accused the other of violating the fragile truce.
It marked another significant step up in the eastern Ukraine conflict that had already killed hundreds and displaced thousands more.
Smoke rises from the ruins of a family home hit by grad rockets in Petrovskiy district, Donetsk, on July 12. All photos by Harriet Salem.
Two bodies lie on the grass outside a family home hit by grad rockets in Petrovskiy district, Donetsk, on July 12. All photos by Harriet Salem.
The July 12 grad rocket attack on the Petrovskiy district of Donetsk was the first serious assault by Ukrainian government forces on this sprawling industrial city in the country's east, seized by armed pro-Russia rebels in mid-April.
Four bodies lie sprawled on the grass. His hands and face smeared in blood, Yuri sobs as he cradles his wife's lifeless body in his arms. Behind him, smoke billows from the family's still half-standing home, smashed glass litters the ground, and water fills the hallway. Shell-shocked neighbors point to a giant crater in the vegetable patch outside their house.
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Four bodies lie sprawled on the grass. His hands and face smeared in blood, Yuri sobs as he cradles his wife's lifeless body in his arms. Behind him, smoke billows from the family's still half-standing home, smashed glass litters the ground, and water fills the hallway. Shell-shocked neighbors point to a giant crater in the vegetable patch outside their house.
The July 12 grad rocket attack on the Petrovskiy district of Donetsk was the first serious assault by Ukrainian government forces on this sprawling industrial city in the country's east, seized by armed pro-Russia rebels in mid-April.
Two bodies lie on the grass outside a family home hit by grad rockets in Petrovskiy district, Donetsk, on July 12. All photos by Harriet Salem.
Smoke rises from the ruins of a family home hit by grad rockets in Petrovskiy district, Donetsk, on July 12. All photos by Harriet Salem.
It marked another significant step up in the eastern Ukraine conflict that had already killed hundreds and displaced thousands more.
Less than two weeks earlier, the first ceasefire of the war, agreed by the rebel leaders and Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's newly elected president, had crumbled amid mutual finger pointing as both sides accused the other of violating the fragile truce.
As hostilities resumed, a convoy of 50 plus Ukrainian military vehicles and hundreds of troops — as well as artillery pieces and heavy weaponry including multi-rocket launch systems — moved to within nine miles and easy firing range of Donetsk.
The army's summer push towards the city, with a pre-war population of nearly 1 million people, was part of several months' long campaign to dislodge pro-Russia forces controlling large swathes of land in Ukraine's east. Although at first faltering, in June the Kiev-backed "anti-terror operation" finally scored its first major success — retaking Sloviansk, a city of more than 150,000 people and the former heartland of the armed rebel uprising.
Ukraine's victory, however, came at a heavy price.
Starved of investment for more than a decade, the country's ill-equipped army was woefully unprepared to be called into sudden action and untrained young conscripts and quasi-legal "volunteer battalions" of patriots quickly came to form the bulk of Ukraine's hastily constructed fighting force.
In Sloviansk the clumsy handiwork of the unskilled fighting forces on both sides was clear to see. A month-long siege and a bombardment of mortars, grad rockets, and other heavy weaponry had eventually routed the rebels who fired from the rooftops of apartment blocks. However, the offensive also reduced large parts of the city to rubble, killing several hundred civilians in the process.
'A rain of fire': Ukrainian army used little-known Soviet-era incendiary weapons to attack Iloviask. Read more here.
It was a disaster that the authorities in Kiev said would not be repeated in the region's administrative capital. "We will not bombard Donetsk. We will use only ground forces there, which will, street after street, quarter after quarter, free the city," And |
covers all the important stuff. Going to school, working, meeting my neighbors, not having to deal with curfews or rules… Definitely a pretty good couple of weeks, right? And once I get more used to my work schedule, I think it’ll be even better.
Tante Joce was wrong. I am ready for this. And I’m so glad she decided to give me the chance to prove it.
AdvertisementsWhen Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama warned last year that Donald Trump was unfit to control the U.S. nuclear arsenal, it wasn’t partisan campaign trail hyperbole, but rather a point of nearly global consensus. Nuclear deterrence experts said that his presidency would slightly but meaningfully—and thus unacceptably—increase the risk of a miscue, and even Trump’s supporters seemed to understand as much. The psychotic, but influential pro-Trump treatise “The Flight 93 Election” began with a stark admission.
“2016 is the Flight 93 election,” wrote Micheal Anton, who has gone on to serve in a senior national security role in the Trump administration. “[C]harge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.”
Trump may destroy the world, in other words, but that’s better than another few years of liberal rule. Nobody needs to love liberalism to grasp, a year later, that this cost-benefit analysis was demented, and that the country made an error in embracing the logic, wittingly or otherwise. Now, as Trump makes unhinged threats to begin a nuclear war against North Korea, those who deluded themselves into taking a flyer on the Trump presidency no longer have any excuse for ignoring what’s been plain all along: It is not remotely safe for him to hold this office.
Politicians like to frame their agendas in terms of the ways policies will shape the world they’ll leave behind to future generations. Conservatives (who don’t actually care about federal debt, but whatever) promote the retrenchment of the welfare state by describing it as the source of unsustainable debts our “children and grandchildren” will have have to pay down. Nearly everyone else treats global warming in essentially the same way. The risks of climate inaction will mushroom in the future, making it immoral for the masters of today’s universe to be indifferent to greenhouse gas emissions.PARIS – Vandals attacked a giant green inflatable sculpture in one of the most famous squares in Paris in the early hours of Saturday after its resemblance to a sex toy sparked an outcry.
The 24-meter-high canvas artwork by U.S. artist Paul McCarthy was unveiled on Thursday in Place Vendome, famous for its luxury jewelry stores and the Ritz Hotel.
"An unidentified group of people cut the cables which were holding the artwork, which caused it to collapse," police told Reuters. "The person responsible for the piece then decided to deflate it to avoid it being more seriously damaged."
The deflated sculpture was being removed from the square on Saturday afternoon.
McCarthy told French newspaper Le Monde that his work "Tree" was inspired both by a sex toy called a butt plug and a Christmas tree. It was part of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) taking place Paris on Oct. 23-26.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the attack was unacceptable and also denounced an assault on McCarthy the day he installed the work, when a man hit him in the face before running away.
"Paris will not succumb to the threats of those who, by attacking an artist or a work, are attacking artistic freedom," she said in a statement. "Art has its place in our streets and nobody will be able to chase it away."Spread the love
Self-Justification
Definition: Self-justification is the explaining of one’s actions, beliefs, attitudes, or feelings to another.
Symptoms: In sports, self-justification means doing something poorly and then defending the action. With a myriad of thoughts constantly barraging the mind of an athlete, the key is to learn how to control those thoughts in order to keep emotions in check and make appropriate decisions. Whenever an athlete condones a personally inappropriate attitude or action, he or she is resorting to a poor decision in order to win. We need to learn to win or lose with humility because sports are full of both.
Solutions: Mary Tynes, in her article at marytynes.com entitled, “How To Stop Justifying Yourself To Everyone,” says that most of us explain ourselves far more often than we need to. We justify what we think, what we believe, what we do, and who we are. Why do we do that?
Some justification is reasonable and legitimate, but much of it is unnecessary and inappropriate. If over-explaining is a challenge for you, consider the three general reasons for justifying yourself to someone ─ authority, intimacy, and choice.
Authority – Whenever another person has the “right” to demand that you justify
To Read or Listen to the Rest of This Life LessonComing off of their most impressive win of the season, a 60-57 win over Arizona State on Sunday in Anaheim, the Miami Hurricanes concluded a 10 day, 4 game road trip looking like a tired squad.
In front of a hostile, sold out Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska UM fell 60-49 to the Cornhuskers.
When Wisconsin beat Virginia 48-38 earlier in the evening, surely viewers across the country though they had seen the least aesthetically pleasing game of the night. Well Miami and Nebraska may have outdone them.
Terran Pettaway, the Huskers leading scorer, opened the scoring with a 3 on the games opening possession. From there both teams bogged down in a sloppy defensive struggle.
4 and a half minutes in UM was 0-5 from floor with 2 turnovers. Rion Brown finally knocked down a medium range jumper to get the Hurricanes on the board.
With nothing seeming to work, the Hurricanes got an unexpected offensive burst from Erik Swoope. Swoope first converted an athletic alley hoop off a feed from Rion Brown. He followed it with a corner three ball, his first of the year.
It was fortunate for UM to a few unexpected buckets, as nothing else seemed to fall.
Contested threes, open threes, drives, posts, all seemed to rattle out.
Luckily for Miami, Nebraska wasn't much better. In an anemic first half that scorched the eyes, the Huskers led 22-13 at the intermission. Ray Gallegos had two threes in transition, to lead the Huskers.
The 13 points represented the fewest UM has scored in a half since joining the ACC.
Miami had more first half turnovers 7, then buckets 6.
The second half was equally ugly.
The Canes made a concerted effort to take the ball to the basket, but it barely helped break the seal on the hoop. Additionally their D was not particularly sharp. And they still could not knock down trifectas.
With the crowd screaming "Air ball, Air ball, Air ball," Davon Reed launched exactly that. It led to a layup on the other end and a 34-20 lead. Jim Larranaga needed a time out.
It was that type of night. In Reed's defense, the boisterous crowd seemed to be chanting "Air Ball" at each and every 'Cane who touched the ball on the floor. And they weren't that far off.
Miami seemed to finally wake up after the TO. Brown and Reed combined for 3 straight threes and suddenly cut the lead to 5 at 36-31.
Amazingly, inexplicably, UM was in it. But that's as close as it would get.
Walter Pitchford would answer with a huge three though, and the Canes were out of comebacks.
Brown did most of the damage on the night for Canes with 25 points, including 23 in the second half. The Hurricanes would benefit greatly if RB found his stroke tonight.
With UM's loss and UNC's win the Challenge would end tied at 6 wins a piece per conference.
Up next for the Hurricanes, they open their ACC slate at the BUC Vs Virginia Tech on Sunday, Dec. 8 at 12:30 p.m.Listen to audio below, rate & comment please. We would love to hear your opinion. If you like this article and this idea, please tweet this, facebook it, share it & spread liberty.
Indiana State Senator David Long explains the historical significance of an Article V Convention of States
From The Blaze-
Indiana State Senator David Long joined Glenn on radio this morning to talk about what he is doing in his own state to facilitate an Article V Convention of States. While there are certainly very real concerns related to opening up the Constitution for amending, Long makes a compelling case for returning the power to the states.
To begin, Long explained the historical significance of Article V.
“It was a key provision. George Mason had that put in as a delegate for Virginia for the state driven process. It’s never been used. But they figured we would use it,” Long said. “And in fact, if it hadn’t been in the Constitution there’s a very good argument the Constitution never would’ve been ratified in the first place. The founders felt that strongly that the state’s needed to have a leash on Washington. And they felt this was the key way to do it. If they woke up today and found out we never used it, they’d be shocked. They thought we would be using it regularly.”
The way Long sees it, a Convention of States is not only an important exercise of states’ rights, but it is also necessary “in order to fix this country.”
“First and foremost, arguing that Article V convention is doable and that, with proper controls and structure in place, it is not only Constitutional but necessary in order to fix this country’s future. And there are people out there trying to do this right. To make sure it is not a runaway convention,” Long said. “Frankly, when you look around today, you know if you want to call the ‘nuclear option,’ maybe that’s what it’s become today. I don’t think [the Founders] intended it to be that. I thought they figured we would be using this a lot and that it would keep the states in charge. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred.”A pregnant Tyrannosaurus rex has been found, shedding light on the evolution of egg-laying as well as on gender differences in the dinosaur.
The remains also could contain the holy grail of all dinosaur fossils: DNA.
SEE ALSO: New dino reveals how T. rex became top predator
"Yes, it's possible," Lindsay Zanno told Discovery News, referring to genetic material that may be present in this as well as similar dinosaur finds. "We have some evidence that fragments of DNA may be preserved in dinosaur fossils, but this remains to be tested further."
the holy grail of all dinosaur fossils: DNA
What has been confirmed so far is that the T. rex, which was found in Montana and dates to 68 million years ago, retained medullary bone that reveals the individual was pregnant. Medullary bone is only present in female living dinosaurs, i.e. birds, just before and during egg laying. It's this type of bone that could retain preserved DNA.
Zanno is an assistant research professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University, where she is also head of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' Paleontology Research Lab and is curator of paleontology. She explained that medullary bone lines the marrow cavity of the long bones of birds.
SEE ALSO: Photos: Top 10 largest dinosaurs
"It's a special tissue that is built up as easily mobilized calcium storage just before egg laying," she said. "The outcome is that birds do not have to pull calcium from the main part of their bones in order to shell eggs, weakening their bones the way crocodiles do."
Crocodiles, she said, are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs.
"Medullary bone is thus present just before and during egg laying, but is entirely gone after the female has finished laying eggs," she said.
Early on, Mary Schweitzer suspected that medullary bone was present in the tyrannosaur remains, and was able to confirm her suspicions after she, Zanno and their team conducted a chemical analysis of the T. rex's femur.
SEE ALSO: 10 best dinosaur discoveries of 2015
The material, found to be consistent with known medullary tissues from ostriches and chickens, contained karatan sulfate, a substance not present in any other bone types.
"This analysis allows us to determine the gender of this fossil, and gives us a window into the evolution of egg laying in modern birds," Schweitzer said.
extinct dinosaurs inherited egg laying from their ancestors
Zanno explains we now know extinct dinosaurs inherited egg laying from their ancestors, just as birds inherited this reproductive strategy from their dino ancestors.
"The discovery of medullary bone is just one more piece of evidence that blurs the line between birds and other theropod (carnivorous two-legged) dinosaurs like T. rex," she said.
The research is published in Nature Scientific Reports.
In a prior study, Sarah Werning of the University of California and Berkeley and her colleagues found medullary bone in the carnivorous dinosaur Allosaurus as well as in the plant-eating dino Tenontosaurus. The discoveries happened somewhat by chance, as she and the other researchers were studying dinosaur growth rates when they realized three of the dinosaurs were pregnant females.
She said, "We were lucky to find these female fossils. Medullary bone is only around for three to four weeks in females who are reproductively mature, so you'd have to cut up a lot of dinosaur bones to have a good chance of finding this."
SEE ALSO: 80-million-year-old dinosaur blood vessels never fossilized
Schweitzer agrees, and said that the femur her team studied was already broken when she received it. Echoing Werning, she acknowledged that most paleontologists would not want to cut open, or demineralize, their fossils in order to search for the rare medullary bone.
Nevertheless, because much of the pregnant T. rex's skeleton was found, including her skull, there is a very good chance that the paleontologists will soon be able to provide a detailed description of her overall anatomy and general appearance.
They already know that the dinosaur mom-to-be was 16-20 years old when she died of as of yet unknown causes.500.000 Euro Schaden
Unbekannte verwüsten Kirchen in Bremen und Erfurt
29.10.2017, 18:44 Uhr | dpa
In Bremen sind Unbekannte in eine Kirche eingebrochen und haben einen Schaden von etwa 500.000 verursacht.
Wie die Polizei mitteilte, wurden zwei Orgeln mit Bauschaum befüllt, der Boden und das Taufbecken mit Farbe bemalt und in der gesamten Kirche ein Feuerlöscher entleert. Der Küster entdeckte die Zerstörungen. Die Beamten sicherten Spuren und ermitteln wegen gemeinschädlicher Sachbeschädigung. Dazu suchen sie Zeugen, die zwischen Samstagmittag und Sonntagfrüh Verdächtiges beobachtet haben.
Versuchter Diebstahl in Erfurt
Auch in Erfurt randalierten Unbekannte in einer Kirche. Die Täter hätten sich in einer Kirche einschließen lassen, um einen vermutlich geplanten Diebstahl auszuführen. Sie scheiterten allerdings am Opferstock, der sich nicht öffnen ließ, teilte die Polizei mit.
Wohl aus Frust darüber beschädigten sie Blumenschmuck und ließen Kerzen, Grablichter und Flaschen mit Getränken mitgehen. Bei dem Vorfall am Freitag hatten sie die Kirche tagsüber während der Öffnungszeit betreten und sich anschließend bis zum Verschluss der Türen versteckt.“So the first day was the pit of snakes,” says Joel Edgerton, of starting work on Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods And Kings, playing Ramses opposite Christian Bale’s Moses. “I mean, talk about a baptism of fire! It was my first day on the movie, which to me is always like the first day at a new school. And it’s my first day with Christian, and I’m a bit nervous about working with him. Y’know, I gotta step up to the fucking plate with Christian Bale and prove my mettle on the first minute of day one. And, just to make it all perfect, I have to do all this with a 10-foot fucking Burmese python around my neck! It’s sliding up my face like this” – he makes that Kristin Wiig dicks-in-the-face face from Bridesmaids – “and it’s a constrictor-type snake, so it could easily have just throttled me there and then, if it felt like it. But there was a snake-wrangler to, I dunno, stab it or something, just in case!” Edgerton emits a loud, dirty gurgle at the memory.
This animated raconteur, instantly friendly and hospitable, modest and approachable, couldn’t be more different from the vain, mercurial, malevolent pharaoh-to-be he plays in Exodus, bald as an egg and clad in outfits made mostly of gold. Newly hirsute, he’s happy to discourse at length on his director’s on-set idiosyncrasies.
Life on a Ridley Scott movie, he says, is a bit like being in a huge battle, “except you already know you’re on the winning side and that your general likes you personally. And he’s a geordie, so he’s not a big man for compliments – very dry. I was caught on a runaway chariot one day, and I was shitting myself. One of the reins broke and that took all control of the horses out of our hands. We were on an old disused freeway, with all this camera equipment and cranes and shit, and the horses just sped right up, and I’m thinking: ‘Oh shit, Joel’s on a fuckin’ runaway chariot!’ And one of the horses reared up after a bit and it all slowed down finally, but y’know, it was pretty terrifying there for a minute or two. And Ridley, after it was all under control again, comes over. Now a normal director would be all, ‘Are you all right?’ Ridley just comes over, sniffs the air and says: ‘Do I smell shit around here?’ Like I’d just soiled my pants! No soft landing with Ridley!”
Exodus: Gods And Kings looks stunning, if perhaps overly CGI-based. Scott’s characteristic obsessiveness over period detail and his consummate sense of production design and art direction on an epic, widescreen scale are all fully in evidence. Vast Egyptian valleys, seen from a godlike aerial perspective, teem with warring, colliding, thrashing, chariot-borne armies, while at the earthbound level, no plane of focus is left unfilled with period trinkets, weapons, dwellings, pyramids, sphinxes, the works. The 10 plagues of Egypt are the strongest moments, and Scott doesn’t hold back on his rivers of blood, locust storms, frog infestations and the like. The battle scenes are furiously complex, crowded and intense, while the parting of the Red Sea, featuring looming walls of water the equal of those in Interstellar, demonstrate that Ridley Scott is still content with his outsize, panoramic approach to film-making. Equally, however, his tendency to pillage and plagiarise his own work – principally Gladiator’s plot (itself borrowed from The Fall Of The Roman Empire, Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments) – remains intact. As does his determination to cram every era of history, particularly military history, into whatever period he’s working in, no matter how obvious the anachronisms.
There is much in the film that finds an echo in the present day: warring Middle Eastern antagonists, oppressed peoples, irascible tyrants who think they are gods. Scott says that one of his themes “is how we don’t learn a thing from our history, and keep on doing the same evil, stupid shit down the centuries”. The controversy over lily-white actors playing Egyptian roles had not yet arisen when I met Scott and Edgerton, but recent defensive yet characteristically unapologetic remarks by Fox boss Rupert Murdoch suggest that he isn’t about to tinker with a story with potentially massive popularity among America’s rightwing Christian fundamentalists.
Edgerton paints Ramses in an instant, the way great actors can. He has a slightly rounded, apple-cheeked, impish face, an impression amplified in the movie by his baldness. You feel, with his squinting eyes and curled lips, he could make a career of playing ratfinks, killers and creeps; characters spring-loaded with the promise of violence and menace. The man himself, though, couldn’t be more different. He bounds out of his chair, big smile, friendly handshake. So open, warm and enjoyably talkative is Edgerton that soon enough we might as well be two blokes in beach chairs drinking tinnies and wiggling our toes in the warm, wet Bondi sand.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joel Edgerton. Photograph: Kirk Edwards
Poised suddenly for success – big roles in Anton Corbijn’s Life, and Boston crime drama Black Mass are upcoming – Edgerton reminisces about being a movie dunce when he first got to acting school. “I came out of high school where my heroes were like, Michael Jordan and a lot of local rugby players – and on the movie front it was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. I knew nothing! Then at 17, I go to drama school and suddenly I discover Al Pacino and this huge fucking smörgåsbord of Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather… then I’m stumbling on all these great Sam Peckinpah movies, and I suddenly understood what acting was actually about. I mean, Gene Hackman was a superstar in the 70s – with that face! Donald Sutherland, Dustin Hoffman!”
But he wasn’t a complete naif. “I knew enough to get into drama school, after all. I mean, I wasn’t auditioning for them with a monologue from Rambo, although that would have been fucking hilarious! Have an M16 and a red headband and oil up yer fuckin’ chest!” He emits a succession of Sly-style animal grunts, intermingled with his infectious gurgling laugh. “No, no, I did a Hamlet speech, I had some brains.”
Edgerton must be the only Aussie export thesp never to have apprenticed on Neighbours or Home And Away. He says his career has been “a succession of small baby steps” and that’s the way he likes it. He made his way first in Australian TV, theatre and movies. Then, after the career turning-point that was Animal Kingdom, directed by his friend David Michôd, he segued gradually into large-scale Hollywood productions. In the meantime, he has kept his hand in with the Blue-Tongue group, a collective of friends and collaborators who aid each other in all areas of production on smaller-scale movies which they write, direct and act in together. “I’m a great believer in not sitting around waiting for the right part to come around, but jumping in and building it for yourself,” he says. Michôd is the group’s daddy figure, but Joel wrote and starred in The Square (directed by his brother Nash) and he wrote, produced and co-starred in Felony, directed by another Blue-Tonguer, Matthew Saville. “It’s not a mafia or anything,” he adds. “More a group of people reading each other’s scripts, acting for one another, or just offering healthy, useful criticism.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christian Bale and Joel in Exodus. Photograph: REX
Edgerton has kept in touch with Animal Kingdom’s other breakout stars, its gangster matriarch Jacki Weaver and its oddball psycho Ben Mendelsohn (also in Exodus). Weaver in particular is much venerated by Edgerton’s generation, as an actor who went from riotous early-70s “ocker” nudie sex comedies such as Alvin Purple and Stork straight into some of the classics of the emergent Australian new wave; movies like Petersen and Caddie. Edgerton reminds me that for a long while in the 80s and early 90s she couldn’t get work. As he triumphantly notes, this is no longer the case: “I keep getting texts from her saying things like, ‘Here’s me with De Niro!’ or, ‘Just now going in to dinner with Obama!’”
In fact, Edgerton has known and worked with the cream of Australia’s acting talent. Heath Ledger was a friend, and Edgerton remembers learning of his death, “while I was waiting for my Vegemite toast in a cafe. I saw the words on the TV – ‘Heath Ledger Dead in New York’ – and I thought: ‘That’s a bloody weird thing to write down.’ It wouldn’t register.” And he played Stanley Kowalski to Cate Blanchett’s Blanche DuBois onstage in Sydney – perfect casting. “You get a job like that and you know that every day on the job is gonna be amazing. I’d seen Cate in about four plays when I was a drama student, and the electricity coming off that woman is phenomenal. And I then have to browbeat her onstage every night! One night, if you read the reports, I’m supposed to have thrown a Bakelite radio at her head. Course, I didn’t mean it intentionally, but it resulted in the loss of a lot of blood and the early termination of that night’s performance, but anyway…”
It’s a measure of the man that she instantly forgave him.
Exodus: Gods And Kings is in cinemas from Boxing DayGay Republicans Still Look For Romney's Support
toggle caption Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Hear The Full Interview With Rich Tafel Log Cabin Republican Rich Tafel talks with weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz about same-sex marriage — President Obama's support, Romney's own evolution on the issue, and North Carolina's vote to ban it. Rich Tafel: Authenticity Is Romney's Challenge
President Obama's support for same-sex marriage has been a hot topic this week. After he announced his position during an ABC News interview Wednesday, it's been difficult for pundits, the media and the public to focus on much else, especially since the news came on the heels of North Carolina's approval of a ban on same-sex marriage.
Mitt Romney's campaign, meanwhile, in the past three days has tried to steer the national conversation back to the economy. But the pressure to respond to Obama's announcement has been intense.
Speaking at the evangelical Christian Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., on Saturday, Romney finally spoke out. "Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman," he said to a cheering crowd of students.
Despite attempts to downplay the issue, Romney may be forced to draw a clear contrast with Obama's position.
Heard On 'All Things Considered' Gay marriage is back in the headlines this week: President Obama expressed support for same-sex marriage while voters in North Carolina passed an amendment to bar it. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz talks with both supporters and opponents. Same-Sex Marriage Back In National Spotlight Listen · 11:29 11:29
One group watching Romney's position carefully is the Log Cabin Republicans, which advocates for equal rights for all Americans, including gays and lesbians. Rich Tafel, who founded the national office, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that Romney's position on gay issues has shifted over the years.
"Certainly when he was running for Senate in Massachusetts in 1994, he really made a case to Log Cabin Republicans that he would be even better than Sen. Kennedy," Tafel says.
Romney basically made the pitch that he was a businessman who never discriminated against gay people, Tafel says, and that he had no problem with gays and would be a supporter if he were in the Senate.
Romney lost that race but eventually became governor of the state. His pivot on the issue, Tafel says, came in 2004, when courts in Massachusetts ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutional in the state.
"It felt really odd at the time that he would really ride this issue as a governor, when there were so many other issues for the state," Tafel says. "He was saying, 'I've got no future in Republican politics unless I pivot on this issue.' "
Tafel spoke about Romney's stance as well as his own reaction to Obama's support for same-sex marriage on weekends on All Things Considered.
Interview Highlights
On how he felt about Obama's announcement
"I was very excited by it; I was very moved by it. I know there's a lot of political calculation right now, but I kind of saw it in the sweep of history, and I saw it as a very historic moment for a president taking the lead on civil rights issues."
On Romney and gay rights
"I think he's going to have to reach out to the swing states and support gay rights. If it's not going to be gay marriage, he has to show why he supports domestic partners. He has to demonstrate it in a number of ways, including [through] his vice presidential choice. He's going to have to find a way to say 'gay marriage might be too far for me, but this is who I am.'... The economy will obviously dominate this election, but [swing voters] are also looking for authenticity, and that's been a challenge for Mitt Romney."
On whether this is a windfall
"I personally believe at the end of the day it's a net win for the president. But I think that it was still brave because there are some states that this is still a very controversial issue. So I give him credit for showing leadership on the issue. [On] the political calculus, I think it will inspire young voters who this is a complete non-issue for. I think it will help with Hollywood money [and] mute some of the Wall Street money that has been leaving him."
On the momentum of the same-sex marriage issue
"I believe that the momentum on gay marriage is inevitable; this is a historic moment. Someday we'll look at people who opposed gay marriage the way we look at people who fought against liberating slaves. It will be that kind of issue... no one will brag about the fact that they were opposed to gay marriage. If you're already speaking to young people under 30, it's almost beyond their imagination that this is an issue."To go ahead and answer the question, no, MLB 14 The Show will not have the insane bacon pants that a minor league team revealed a few weeks ago. When the game arrives on Tuesday and your virtual minor leaguer is playing for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs in the Philadelphia Phillies' system, he won't be served with a couple hickory-smoked strips.
Why? It's not because The Show's artists were caught, heh, pants down by the new look. They saw it and loved it and know the IronPigs are in their game. The answer is in the details, almost literally.
You wouldn't think it, but the uniform files in MLB The Show are really quite large, said Jody Kelsey, the game's senior producer. "It's technically possible to patch them in," after the game releases, "but the size of them deters us from doing that."
The size of them is also why, for the supporting cast of 60 minor league teams — which most players encounter in a career mode where they can't choose what they wear each game — just the home and away uniforms are rendered. No ugly Christmas sweater promotions, no R2-D2 jerseys and, alas, no bacon.
It takes the entire development cycle to stitch all the virtual uniforms in a game
It's come to this: Sports leagues have so many different looks, promotions and novelties, and video game artists have become so good at bringing them to life, that a game like MLB The Show has to be mindful of the space left in its virtual closet. And it will remain a concern, if not a growing one, as illustrators on titles like The Show, or NBA 2K, or Madden NFL explore the capabilities of the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.
Ten years ago, they could delight fans just by including a sleeve patch on the defending champion's jersey; now they have to make sure the stitches on the tackle-twill uniform numerals are the proper shade of navy at all times under a virtual sun.
"One of the things we take pride in is making the most realistic baseball game out there," Kelsey said, "so when it comes to the art, we have to make sure that is up to par." A staff of eight artists work on uniform creation for MLB The Show, said Gil Garcia, who leads the game's character team. "It takes the entire development cycle to build all of those correctly," he said.
Even with exact color mixtures and rigid style guide rules, it takes that long because uniforms greatly shape the public appraisal of the game's realism, the coin of the realm to a sports title.
The defunct MLB 2K series struggled just to get the shape of the back numerals correct and for several years used the same typeface for all player name tapes — an instant and constant jolt to any sense of immersion. Another decommissioned series, EA Sports' NCAA Football, had a constant cat-herding problem trying to get current uniforms for more than 120 teams in major college football. Kansas played with outdated helmets all of last season, and current ones weren't among the 10 DLC packs the game released later — probably because the Jayhawks aren't any good and no one but alumni would be using them.
"Every year we evaluate what is in our equipment set and, based on the number of features, it can be a disc space issue," said Jeff Ostergaard, art director for the Madden NFL series who also worked on NCAA. "You have to keep the content fresh and also keep the library from being so big and full of stuff that users just aren't using it."
Not only is what the players wear important, it's how they wear and accessorize it that adds another layer of complexity. MLB The Show has a designer, Lorne Asuncion, whose job is to obsess over Coco Crisp's sleeve length during day games. "I'm a baseball guy; I want to get this perfect," he says simply. Madden's guys study wire service photos to make sure a defensive lineman's pads are the proper height. NBA Live has a stylebook full of closeup photos of player tattoos, all shot on the team's official pre-season media day. I've seen that stylebook. It is impossible to imagine it has value for anything other than making a video game.
"I've been a part of this franchise since the start," said Ryan Santos, a senior designer on NBA Live. In the early days, headbands were the uniform accessory that distinguished a player. "Then, after [Allen] Iverson made tattoos big, we would request that from the league. 'Hey, do you guys have reference art for the players' tattoos?' We'd have to look at in-game shots, not studio shots under lighting." After enough pestering, the league started making the tattoo style guide.
"It shows how the NBA is involved in making sure we get all of this right," said Paul Kashuk, NBA Live's art director. "It's an extension of their brand, after all, so the more they can help, the better."
MLB The Show's designers are constantly referring to their league's official style guide, especially in the run-up to the game's completion. "It's more along the lines of things like the new All-Star Game uniforms, the Futures game, things that they typically don't have ready until the middle of the year," Kelsey said. "That's where we ask for special favors, and usually things come in," before they are put in the official guide.
The style guide is still a controlling document — the terms of the license require developers to use what the book references. In each of the past two seasons the Atlanta Braves sought to use the old "Screaming Brave" logo. Both times the Braves pulled back the design — a sleeve patch and a batting practice cap — following an outcry over the use of a Native American caricature. The second time, MLB The Show made a rare mid-season revision to Atlanta's BP caps. Minor league uniforms are one thing, but anything worn by big league clubs absolutely must reflect reality.
Still, if The Show's designers get an outside warning that a change is coming, but it hasn't gone into the stylebook yet, they will push back against the league to make sure the change is official. A logo swap for the Cleveland Indians — again, a franchise gradually distancing itself from native American imagery, except for the nickname — is a current example. The grinning Chief Wahoo, long criticized as a racist cartoon, will be replaced by a red block C as the team's primary logo. "The C logo came up late in the cycle," Kelsey said, "December or January. Someone testing the game for us read about it and sent us an email saying, 'Hey, check this out.'"
Even after getting all of the proper assets, a ton of fine-tuning is left. Sports titles are increasingly engineered to look like a game that is televised as opposed to how it is actually played. Even with the most sophisticated lighting, physics and modeling, there still can be distortions that have to be smoothed out. "You literally can't just take the color off the style guide and put in a garment in the game and expect it to look right," Kashuk said. "We've heavily invested in scanning player likenesses, and we put that to uniforms to get the color right."
EA Sports has a very close relationship with the NFL and its equipment providers, and gets early access to new designs — including physical samples — to inform its work on Madden. Yet Ostergaard said even when a new uniform comes in — the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a good example — there will still be minute changes, sometimes made by the head coach himself, before it is worn in a regular-season game. "We've noticed teams will change the stripes slightly, an equipment manager will make those changes," he said. "It'll be a slight alteration; it's never performance-related, but I think they make these decisions based on how comfortable the athletes are, and |
Basically: LeBron James is the best player in the world, and the best player should usually win MVP. When the race for “best” is close, as it is here, there is room to use that amorphous word “valuable” and award MVP to the “second-best” guy if he plays on a roster unusually dependent on his skill set; this is the argument I used in giving my (fake) vote to Dwight Howard over LeBron in 2010-11.
But it doesn’t work here. Westbrook and Serge Ibaka are both better players than they were last season, and have proven to be up to assuming portions of Harden’s burden. Kevin Martin has been ultraefficient as a legit Sixth Man of the Year candidate. Given some injury nicks to Battier and Dwyane Wade, and Miami’s thin bench, it’s hard to see much difference in roster quality after the alpha dogs.
James is still the league’s MVP.
Anthony gets the no. 4 spot for playing perhaps the best ball of his career and embracing a power forward role that has allowed him to play with a sort of team-first selfishness as a post-up ball dominator. His passing from the post and elbows has been both more willing and sophisticated than in the past, and his 3-point stroke has been brilliant — almost certainly unsustainably so, even if he’s taking mostly very good shots from there. His post defense at power forward has been solid, though his back-line rotations behind Tyson Chandler have been inconsistent and often ineffective; he’s not a rim protector, after all, and New York’s go-to lineups were hemorrhaging points before Melo’s recent knee issues.
The no. 5 spot is a battle between a bunch of solid candidates with various red flags — defense (Kobe Bryant, James Harden), puzzling shot selection (Russell Westbrook, LaMarcus Aldridge early on), and minutes limitations (Tim Duncan). Tyson Chandler also belongs in the discussion, since his effort and smarts on defense as New York’s only reliable big have enabled Anthony to shift down one spot on the positional chart — just as Anthony’s effective offense and New York’s perfectly spaced floor have enabled Chandler to reach a new level as the league’s top pick-and-roll big man.
Bryant gets the nod for playing his most efficient ball in years and adapting on the fly to several different offensive systems. He held the Lakers together during their early-season melodrama, and he looks ready and willing to thrive in a Steve Nash–led system. Tony Parker is making a run at Duncan for the Spurs’ internal MVP, and may earn legit consideration for the no. 5 spot by the end of the season.
Defensive Player of the Year
1. Marc Gasol, Memphis Grizzlies
2. Joakim Noah, Chicago Bulls
3. Kevin Garnett, Boston Celtics
A fascinating and wide-open race. Dwight Howard, the perennial favorite, is out of contention, as his recovery from back surgery has left him looking like himself one night and a glorified Carlos Boozer the next. Chandler and LeBron haven’t quite reached their respective levels from last season, when Chandler won this award and LeBron worked as the best perimeter defender in the game. Ibaka has improved more on offense than on defense, where he remains a frightening intimidator who still struggles with positioning in space against elite-shooting big men and smaller teams.
Duncan and Garnett may be the league’s very best defenders, but they play under strict minutes limitations that keep them off the court longer than their competitors here. Omer Asik defends the paint in the style of Duncan, with a similar minutes total. Tony Allen may be the single most impactful defender in the entire league, but he’s on the court even less — just 25 minutes per game — because teams ignore him to clog the paint when Memphis has the ball.
That leaves Gasol and Noah as heavy-minutes anchors on two of the league’s best defensive teams, and in what amounts to a coin flip, I’m going with Gasol’s space-eating size over Noah’s productive mania. It’s worth noting that even the candidacies of these two stalwarts bring complications, since each plays significant minutes with two very good defenders — Allen and Mike Conley in Memphis, and Luol Deng and Taj Gibson in Chicago. Separating contributions on defense is notoriously difficult. But an elite big trumps an elite wing, and these two are as steady as it gets in the NBA; I’m not sure there’s a larger gap between the level of nationwide fan appreciation for a player and the level of appreciation from coaches/scouts/league executives for that player than the gap for Gasol. People inside the league adore this guy.
The Grizzlies allow about four fewer points per 100 possessions when Gasol is on the floor, and though he’s not an electric shot blocker like Ibaka, he protects the rim well. Most important: He is almost always in the right place, moving around the floor in sync with an opponent’s offensive sets, and with such braininess it often seems as if Gasol is one step ahead of that offense. He works with an economy of movement, rarely over-rotating himself out of position or losing touch with his man while helping elsewhere. He’s all genius mini-slides, subtle reaches into passing lanes and disruptive hip checks. It’s easy to miss that stuff, but it makes Gasol perhaps the best defender in the league.
Noah has been just about as good in a Tom Thibodeau scheme tailored to his speed in help-and-recover situations. He is as tenacious and competitive as any player, and the Bulls allow nearly 10 fewer points per 100 possessions when he’s on the court.
With apologies to Duncan, Asik, Allen, Ibaka, Anderson Varejao, Josh Smith, Al Horford, Thaddeus Young, Deng, Andre Iguodala, Larry Sanders, Jrue Holiday, Chris Paul, Mike Conley, Roy Hibbert, and Andrei Kirilenko.
Sixth Man of the Year
1. Jarrett Jack, Golden State Warriors
2. Tie: Jamal Crawford/Matt Barnes, Los Angeles Clippers
3. J.R. Smith, New York Knicks
This is the craziest race among all the awards, with almost 10 legitimate candidates and two teams, the Clips and Warriors, sporting at least two worthy guys. (Eric Bledsoe would make three if he played more; he’s part of the Clips’ dynamite all-bench unit, but not the mixed unit fast becoming one of Vinny Del Negro’s go-to lineups: Paul–Crawford–Barnes–Blake Griffin–Lamar Odom.)
And it will only get more competitive. Manu Ginobili is finding his stride after a cold start, and actually has a higher PER than any of the guys on my ballot. Ryan Anderson will be eligible sometime in the next two weeks, when his number of off-the-bench appearances will pass his number of starts. You could spend a week just debating this race and end up without a definitive conclusion.
The Barnes/Crawford intra-Clippers comparison is a fascinating side issue all its own. Barnes has pulled just ahead of Crawford in PER, and he’s a relatively low-usage player who does all the little stuff to make the Clips’ bench lineups go: defending wing scorers, cutting off the ball at the precise right moment, etc.
Crawford is the opposite: a ball-dominant high-usage guy and subpar defender who is almost always the top offensive option on those units, running high pick-and-rolls or flying around the elbows for hand-off plays. The Clips’ bench would have to recalibrate its entire offensive structure without him, even if they have to go to hilarious lengths to hide Crawford on defense.
So I’m splitting the difference and going with Jack, who combines the best qualities of each. He’s been just as good as either Clipper statistically, and his combination of size and ballhandling has allowed the Warriors to move Stephen Curry off the ball and thrive with a deadly perimeter trio of Curry, Jack, and Klay Thompson. The Dubs are plus-9 points per 100 possessions when those three play together, per NBA.com, and the Warriors have found an improbable closing lineup by combining those three with the undersized David Lee–Carl Landry duo up front.
Jack has often taken over that offense down the stretch of close games, upping both his usage rate and assist rate dramatically in crunch time. The Warriors are 13-4 in games that have been within five points during the final five minutes of regulation, and rank as one of the league’s best two-way “clutch” teams so far. Such stats are notoriously finicky, but for this moment, Jack deserves a ton of credit for the Warriors’ success — both overall and late in close games. Jack has also managed to keep bench-heavy units afloat, per NBA.com. He has been an essential acquisition for Warriors GM Bob Myers, who swooped in at the last minute and snagged Jack away from several suitors eager to get him.
Smith gets the third spot over a ton of deserving guys for increasing his attention to defense and rebounding, and especially for taking a ton of scoring responsibility on a New York team secretly lacking in off-the-dribble creators — especially when Carmelo Anthony rests. There is value in having guys who can create 40 percent shots when no one else on the floor can do so in the final ticks of the shot clock, and Smith has done that well so far. Solid passing and two game-winning buzzer-beaters help his case, though the usual Smith issues — wacky shot selection and ball watching on defense — could derail it at any moment.
With apologies to Ginobili, Kevin Martin (so efficient, but rarely in charge of things the way Jack, Crawford and Smith have been — and just as bad as Crawford defensively), J.J. Redick, Lou Williams, Landry, and a few others.
10 Things I Like and Don’t Like
1. Philadelphia’s Blue Road Alternates
Just gorgeous. Maybe the best alternate jersey in the league, and better than Philly’s standard roadies by a mile.
2. The Tyranny of the “Cha Cha Slide”
It’s a staple of every NBA arena, to the point that “Clap-Clap-Clap, Clap Your Hands” now pops into my head involuntarily throughout the day (and probably in my dreams). The in-arena guy in Milwaukee is an especially damaged addict, putting the “Slide” on repeat and leaving me legitimately concerned he has fallen asleep on top of the “Slide” button.
3. Aaron Brooks
It’s nice to have Isaiah Thomas back as Sacramento’s starter. Brooks can’t penetrate the lane as often as Thomas or get as far in, and his defense was hurting Sacramento on the perimeter. Brooks negotiates high pick-and-rolls without any rhyme or reason, ducking under the pick against great shooters (fire away, Steph Curry!) and fighting over against lesser guys. He’ll turn away from the play by spinning off the back of the screener, and he has trouble directing ballhandlers away from the pick by jumping into their path early. That Most Improved Player season — built mostly on unmitigated chucking — feels like a long time ago.
4. Russell Westbrook Slipping the OKC Pindown
You know the play: An Oklahoma City wing player will hold the ball on the left side while Westbrook shuttles down to the right block and sets a pindown screen for Kevin Durant. It’s designed to free Durant for a jumper and/or force the defense into all sorts of horrible choices, and it killed teams all of last season. It’s still a staple of the Thunder offense, and Westbrook has gotten better at sensing the right time to slip his screen — to dart to the hoop before really setting the pick, freeing himself for a potential catch and layup, and turning Durant into a decoy. Westbrook memorably burned the Spurs like this for an and-one late in Oklahoma City’s Game 6 conference finals clincher. Great stuff.
5. Pablo Prigioni and C.J. Watson Thieving
Some players will make occasional token attempts to steal inbounds passes after baskets, but these two guys are seriously committed to swiping damn near every inbounds pass when they’re on the court — or at least irritating opponents. It’s delightful to watch, and it’ll work now and then, even though every smart team has included the tendency in scouting reports and warned inbounds passers repeatedly. Prigioni is a sneaky, sneaky player.
6. Coaches Closing Out on Shooters
I’ve harped on this before, with Vinny Del Negro ranking as the undisputed king of screaming at opposing shooters along his sideline. But more head coaches are doing this, and it’s just embarrassing for middle-aged men who are supposed to be leaders of their organizations. Lawrence Frank in particular is making a run at Del Negro’s throne, though he (like a few others) tries to conceal his true intent by pointing at the feet of the shooter while screaming, as if he’s simply trying to show a Detroit defender where to close out. Please stop doing this, men in suits.
7. Andre Drummond’s Tyson Chandler Lob Potential
It’s impossible to watch Drummond fly for lob dunks on the pick-and-roll without thinking of how Chandler has used this singular skill to turn himself into a hugely valuable offensive player. That is, until you remember this: Drummond is shooting an embarrassing 40 percent from the foul line, and Chandler didn’t become this All-Star-level defense-sucker until he built himself into a steady 70 percent–plus foul shooter. Keep working, Dre.
8. When Players Lose Shoes
A consistently entertaining bit of NBA minutia, and one even the total non-NBA fan in your life can appreciate. Dwyane Wade and Jarrett Jack have added a new degree of comical maliciousness by tossing lost enemy shoes off the court, but the simple suspense of wondering how long the shoeless guy will have to play before a stoppage is entertaining enough.
9. Jason Kidd’s Hands
You can blow by him on the perimeter, on and off the ball. Wings with quick post-up moves can destroy him on the block. Even his defensive rotations aren’t as consistently spot-on as they used to be, though they’re still usually good enough. But you can never take away Jason Kidd’s hands. His ability to swipe at the ball at the exact moment it becomes even the teensiest bit available is uncanny, and his hands are so strong, he often just takes the ball away instead of knocking it to the floor. The guy could get steals in the NBA into real-world retirement age.
10. Calling Obvious Traveling Violations on Fast Breaks
Oh, how the Lowe household rejoiced on Christmas when referees took away an uncontested Dwight Howard fast-break dunk by whistling Howard for a traveling violation involving at least four steps and zero dribbles. Officials at all levels often let such violations go, conceding the apparent inevitability of the basket — dribble or no dribble. A rule is a rule, and officials should hold everyone accountable.Key US senators backing military action against Syria received on average 83 percent more campaign cash from the defense industry than those who voted against the strike, the US technology magazine Wired reported Thursday.
WASHINGTON, September 5 (RIA Novosti) – Key US senators backing military action against Syria received on average 83 percent more campaign cash from the defense industry than those who voted against the strike, the US technology magazine Wired reported Thursday.
The 10 members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee who voted Wednesday to authorize a punitive strike against Syrian government targets over an apparent chemical weapons attack received an average of $72,850 from defense contractors over a five-year span compared to an average of $39,770 received by the seven members who voted no, Wired reported.
The report was based on data collected from 2007 to 2012 by the Center for Responsive Politics, a respected Washington-based campaign finance watchdog group, and analyzed by Maplight, a California-based group tracking money in politics.
Critics have long accused the US defense industry of using its deep pockets to influence lawmakers in Washington and benefiting from American military operations abroad.
The funds cited in the analysis, commissioned by Wired, came from political action committees and employees of defense and intelligence firms, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin. In total the 17 members of the Senate committee received just over $1 million during the five-year period.
The 10-7 vote by the Senate committee means the measure can now be taken to the full Senate for debate and a vote. The foreign affairs committee of the House of Representatives has begun debate on a similar resolution, though it is expected to have a tougher time winning backing there then it did with the Senate committee.
The bills under discussion would permit President Barack Obama to order a limited US military strike against Syria in retaliation for an apparent chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21 that the Obama administration says it believes was carried out by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The operation approved by the Senate committee would not exceed 90 days and would involve no American troops on the ground for combat operations. It must be approved by the full Senate when it reconvenes next week and by the 435-member House of Representatives before it can be sent to Obama for his signature.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee member who received the most defense cash during the five-year span is Sen. John McCain, a hawkish Republican from Arizona and fierce Kremlin critic who garnered $176,000 in defense industry financing, according to the report.Docker Persistent Storage on AWS
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Persistent storage is critical when running applications across containers on AWS. In this article, we cover how to build persistent storage for Docker containers on AWS. Learn best practices to spin-up, spin-down and move containerized applications across AWS environments, whether running Docker or Amazon EC2 Container Services (ECS).
You can jump to different sections of the article by clicking the hyperlinks below:
Watch the recording:
SlideShare: How to Build Docker Persistent Storage on AWS
SoftNAS Cloud NAS on the AWS Marketplace: Visit SoftNAS on the AWS Marketplace
What is Docker?
What is Docker and what are containers? Containers running on a single machine share the same operating system kernel. They start instantly and they make more efficient use of RAM. Images are constructed from layered file systems so they share common files. This makes disk usage and image downloads much more efficient. Docker containers are based on open standards. Which allows containers to run on major Linux distributions and Microsoft operating systems. Containers isolate applications from each other and the underlying infrastructure. This provides an added layer of protection for the application.
Virtual Machines vs. Containers
People often ask, “How are virtual machines and containers different?” Containers have similar resource isolation and allocation benefits as virtual machines. But have a different architectural approach that allows them to be much more portable and efficient. Virtual machines may include the application, necessary binaries and libraries. But also have the overhead of an entire guest operating system, and that can take tens of gigabytes. It’s a challenge that virtual desktop people have taken on.
Containers have a very different approach where there’s more containers running into a single instance or virtual machine. They’re better for isolating processes and user space not tied into any specific infrastructure. They’re much more portable and can run virtually everywhere, but it has a Docker infrastructure. The benefits of Docker containers over VMs is less overhead, faster instantiation, better isolation, and easier scalability. Another benefit of containers over virtualization is containers are a great fit for automation. Containers are the best for automation.
So why does DevOps care? Again, it’s all about automation, setup, launch and run. Don’t worry about what hardware you’re on. Don’t worry about finding the drivers for your servers. Now you can focus on your life cycle repeatability and not worry about keeping your infrastructure going.
Why Does Docker Persistent Storage Matter?
Why does persistent storage matter for Docker? We need to think about what our storage options are. The Docker containers themselves have checked storage. You can use the storage that’s in that container if you want. The huge problem with that is simple: it goes away when the container is gone. The container is useful as a scratch pad, but not great if you have data you want to keep. So that’s the storage problem.
Docker containers can mount directories from the host instance on AWS. It would be in this instance that storage can be shared by all containers that run within that host. So what are the issues? You can deploy a cluster of instances to house containers. Your containers move around those different instances, hosts, and your storage is persistent. Also, there’s no guarantee of how you can share that storage.
Network storage is a much better option because now you can share storage like you used to. You can access it from anywhere, and then there’s cloud storage such as EBS and S3. If you wanted the block, block doesn’t share very well. If you want S3, you have to code your containers to work directly with object. SoftNAS Cloud NAS does give you that middle ground option with network storage and native cloud storage. Let’s put CIFS shares, NFS shares, etc., onto your cloud storage and have that complete solution.
Application Delivery with Persistent Storage
Let’s talk about application delivery with persistent storage. If you look at container services, there’s really three components in a container service. There’s your front-end service, and think of that as what you see. It’s the stuff that provides information often like on a webpage. Your back-end service provides APIs in front of the service and the execution part of the application within Docker. Then there’s data storage services. If you use SoftNAS Cloud NAS as your data storage service, you now get high availability and persistence.
So to really use EC2 and SoftNAS Cloud together, what does that mean? You’re going to use Amazon’s clustering to kick off a cluster of containers and instances, and auto-scaling.
By doing this, we can have a SoftNAS Cloud NAS instance in one availability zone using our virtual IP address and mount that storage a couple of ways. You can mount those directly to the containers so that they’re using NFS directly, or you could even mount SoftNAS Cloud NAS into the container instance. This lets each of the containers use this as local storage and that lessens the amount of capacity you need on your container instances and also still provides that level of sharability that you model on.
The other thing we stress with ECS and Docker containers is you really want to stretch those across a couple of availability zones. That way if an AZ completely goes out, your auto-scaling can help by bringing up new container instances. This distributes the load on new containers, and by continuing access to SoftNAS virtual IP, you’ll then be able to keep up with your storage and stay online.
Amazon EC2 Container Service
Now let’s go into Amazon EC2 Container Services. It’s a highly scalable, fast, container management service that makes it easy to run, stop, and manage Docker containers on a cluster of Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EC2 lets you launch and stop container-enabled applications with simple API calls and allows you to get the state of your cluster from a centralized service, gives you access to many familiar Amazon features.
When you use Amazon ECS’ schedule, placing the containers across your cluster based on resource needs, isolation policies and availability requirements, having the ability to schedule, that’s important. ECS also eliminates the need for you to operate your own cluster management and configuration management system and not have to worry about scaling your management infrastructure.
One of the benefits of ECS is being able to easily to manage clusters for any scale. There is flexible container placement. You want them to flow across availability zones for most of that time.
Docker and SoftNAS Cloud NAS
Let’s talk about why SoftNAS matters to Docker. Again, the storage for Docker and container services, they’re in multiple places. There’s temporary storage in the containers. There’s global storage on the server, the instance that the containers are running on, but if you really want to have your storage around portable, accessible and highly available, then you need the capabilities that SoftNAS Cloud NAS provides. We try to make it simple.
Part of that’s making sure we have APIs that plug into your automation system that goes along with ECS. The setup we showed you had high availability setup as part of that CFT deployment. So to have that kind of ability within quick deployment is amazing. Now try to be agile, and really when you think about DevOps, they want to be fast and they want to be quick.
We have a feature called SnapClone that lets you take snapshots or remember ahead of schedule for hourly snapshots during business hours turned on as a result of that container cluster deployment. Each of those snapshots or a snapshot on-demand could be mounted as what we call a SnapClone so it’s a space efficient writeable snapshot and a 99% rate, and then use that for like a DevOps test case where you want to test against real production data without, heaven forbid, damaging your real production data. The SnapClones are very useful that way. Continuous deployment, and that’s again making it easy, using the SnapClones.
What are the read/write latency, max throughputs, IO costs for SoftNAS? We don’t use the ephemeral storage except for read cache as part of an EC2 instance, so the storage is the EBS general purpose, EBS provision IOPS. What percentage of that is due to SoftNAS overhead? It’s very light as overall IO.
The reason you might want to do that is because of our fault system. We have background scanning, so if you want an additional layer of protection, allow us to recognize that some bit-rot occurred or something went wrong in the EBS and then with our fault system underlying we can fix that. The reason I bring that into what’s our overhead, so, you know, in this case I configured it for marriage so that means every write is two writes, every read still maps to one read and we go to, you know, the most available storage. If we’re doing like a RAID 5 of course, then it’s a, we do a parity writing but there’s no read-back.
One additional thought on that is in some scenarios, SoftNAS will actually improve the IO profile simply because of the way that we use the FS in the backend with read caching. In the event that you’re re-reading something that’s been pulled into cache, you’ll typically see an even better IO profile than what the storage typically provides. There’s definitely some considerations associated with performance and the way that we’re structured and the way the product is designed.
SoftNAS Cloud NAS Overview
Let’s talk about SoftNAS Cloud NAS and what it is. SoftNAS is a software-based Cloud NAS filer. We deliver on Amazon through the AWS Marketplace as an EC2 instance. One of the huge benefits you get from SoftNAS is being able to use cloud native storage, to deliver files such as NFS for Linux and CIFS for Microsoft, and blocks through an iSCSI interface.
Being able to layer that on the different types of EBS volumes, whether it’s provisioned IOPS or general purpose or any of the other flavors or on object storage such as Amazon S3, SoftNAS can take S3 and EBS, and we look at those as this device is aggregated into storage pools and then carve those storage pools into volumes and export those interfaces that I mentioned as on with AFP. So being able to take that cloud made of storage and provide it to software that used to work indirectly with shared files is a huge benefit.
Another huge benefit is our ability to replicate data, and through data replication also provide high availability where we won’t have parity instances. and where with the data replicated mutually more often in separate availability zones, and sort of the secondary monitor, the primary’s health through network and storage heartbeats and then do a takeover and continue to provide uninterrupted service to the servers, the users and the files. That’s just as important in Docker you’re going to spend that two, four, five hundred of containers that all want to have shared storage, you want to make sure that your infrastructure stays up during that entire time so that you don’t have any outages. Since we go across availability zones, it usually leaves a whole Amazon availability zone within a region and then through auto provisioning with your containers and SoftNAS turnover have completely uninterrupted service.
Docker Persistent Storage Q&A
SnapReplicate and public elastic IPs. If it’s private, how do you have the service storage using private IPs which is specific to a subnet AZ or availability zone for AWS? We have two modes of HA and with a virtual IP. For the longest time we’ve been supporting the HA through Amazon’s elastic IP and that in fact does use the public IP, of course. The other mode is our private virtual IP and in that case everything would be completely private. We’re managing the route tables between availability zones and moving that virtual IP from primary and secondary instance that way so that’s how we deliver that. Can EBS volumes be encrypted with AWS key management service? We have encryption built into our product for data storage and we’re using a common third-party encryption software called LUKS so we can encrypt the data on the disk and we also have a pretty nice application guide on how to do data flight encryption for both NFS and CIFS. Is there a way to backup the SoftNAS managed storage? What types of recovery can we leverage? So we’ve built into our product the ability to back up our storage tools through EBS snapshots. If you’re familiar with EBS snapshots, it’ll take a full copy of your volume and copy that into EBS and manage the changes through there, so we had that built into our storage pool panel in the UI so you can take full backups that way and then be able to restore it to the full storage tool as well. But, you know what, that’s just one avenue for backup. Obviously what we’re doing with storage in the public cloud and Amazon in this case is mirror any other enterprise-class storage product, enterprise-class NAS, and we highly recommend that you have a complete backup and recovery strategy. There’s a lot of really good products on the market today, you know, that we’ve integrated and tested within our lab and a lot of others that I’m sure work just fine because we’re completely about open standards. It’s very important that with our storage or anybody’s storage that, you know, want to have a very comprehensive backup plan and use of those third party products. What RAID types are being used under SoftNAS? So in the safety built for containers, that’s RAID 1, but that was just a choice. Often when you look at Amazon and the short answer is we support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 6. I probably want to use RAID 1 at really durable storage, and then if you were to deploy us in a data center where we’re on raw drives, that’s where you want to really look hard at the RAID 5, RAID 6 and use them there because as the drives got bigger and bigger the rebuilds take a while and you kind of want to get to the point where if I have a failed drive and replace it, well, we’ll say, “Oh, it’s in another one,” we’ll develop some type of bit error, we’ll undo it, you know, recovering from the other, so those kind of factors go in. We support the whole gambit of RAID levels. What version of NFS do we support? We support version four of NFS. What is the underlying file system used by SoftNAS? At SoftNAS we are very much an open standards, open source company. We’ve built the Z file system commonly referred to as ZFS into our product. What is the maximum storage capacity of the SoftNAS instance? We don’t really have a limit that we enforce ourselves. Amazon has certain rules for the amount of drive mounts that they provide. But if you’re using S3, our capacity range is virtually limitless. We’ll quote up to 6PB. On the AWS marketplace, we do have editions based on the capacity that they’ll manage. Our express edition manages up to 1TB, our standard up to 20, and then we have a BYOL edition. Is it possible to get a trial version of SoftNAS? Yes it is. Through the AWS marketplace, we have a 30 day trial as long as you’ve never tried our product before. It just works out of the box there, just off the console. If you would like to try it through BYOL, then contact our sales team at sales@softnas.com. Is it a good idea to use SoftNAS as a backup target? Yes. It’s a common use case for us since we enable native cloud storage. Even on premise storage you could have a good backup plan of maybe keeping your nightly backups on the very fast storage such as EBS or, you know, SSD or spending the rest of this in your data center, but then also have a storage pool made out of object storage and S3 up in the cloud and use that for your weekly archival. Very common for people that are using product like VMware to use SoftNAS for backup, as a backup target. Is it a good idea to replace a physical NAS device with SoftNAS? The considerations would be with replacing that type of a solution, just adding where you want to store your backups. If you want to leverage the cloud or if you want to retain those locally. If you want to retain those locally, we have an offering that allows you to connect to local disks and you have a lot of flexibility on the types of disks that you can attach to, local attach disks, iSCSI targets, as well as tying into S3. You can have a local instance that’s tied into S3 from all object storage.
Additionally a secondary option would be to have a SoftNAS node that’s deployed within the cloud and use that as a backup target, and essentially you’re getting a 2-for-1 with that type of a strategy. By backing up to the target, you get a backup storage resource that you don’t have to store on premise but secondarily it offers a disaster recovery strategy by being able to take your backups and store those offsite. So those are two approaches that might make sense for that particular scenario. Is it advisable to utilize an AWS-based SoftNAS instance for on premise apps? I advise not to deploy SoftNAS into an Amazon VPC and access it remotely through NFS or CIFS. And those protocols are very tatty and degrade over long distances. What is common is to deploy SoftNAS into your VMware cluster and your virtual loader data center. Then mount Amazon S3 into a storage pool. Backup your applications and storage pools use them in your data center. It’s great for backups.
You’ll have to be somewhat sensitive to latency. There’s applications that would not be great for, because there’s IO latency. It’s going to happen from your data center to the Amazon region where the S3 is. For example, it wouldn’t be a good idea to use like a database with transactional IO. Using a backup with S3, you put SoftNAS onto your data center and back up to the storage pool.
A typical customer use case is when they segment out their hot data which is highly active. It’s typically a smaller subset of their overall data set. One use case is to tie into object storage that you host in the cloud for cool data. Use on premise storage that is not affected by latency to service hot data requirements. Then leverage S3 object storage as the backend larger repository for your cool data. If we use S3 as a storage pool for on premise, does it provide write back caching? With on premises, we’re able to leverage high performance local disk as a block cache file to front-end S3 storage. It functions like a page file for read and write operations. It also allows higher performance, essentially caching for S3 access, and enhances overall performance.
Using the log cache for both reads and writes will do read-aheads and make it easier to handle read/writes.
We hope that you found the content useful and that you gained something out of it. Hopefully, you don’t feel we marketed SoftNAS Cloud NAS too much. Our goal here was just to pass on some information about how to build docker persistent storage on AWS. As you’re making the journey to the cloud, hopefully this saved you time from tripping over some common issues.
We’d like to invite you to try SoftNAS Cloud NAS on AWS. We do have a 30 day trial. Click the button below to try SoftNAS Cloud NAS on the AWS platform with a $100 AWS credit:Google has removed a Chrome extension from its store that was designed to track Jewish people, after it was found to be perpetrating and facilitating racist hate online.
Chrome extensions are free add-ons that are normally created to help make browsing experience more efficient. The pulled plug-in, removed for violating Google's hate speech and violence rules, added three brackets to either side of names within a web page that it identified as Jewish.
As well as flagging the names, the extension, called Coincidence Detector, collected them in a list that identified nearly 8,786 Jewish people, including celebrities such as Sacha Baron Cohen.
The list was used by the extension's 2,500 users to coordinate online attacks, according to Mic. It appears to have now been removed from the text sharing website where it was stored.
In response to the revelations, users on social media have put triple brackets around their usernames, defying the users of Coincidence Detector.Tribune News Service
Bengaluru, July 14
Swedish transport giant Volvo will export luxury buses made in India to Europe and later to other global markets.
“We will be the first bus company to take advantage of lower manpower costs and neutral duty in India and export to the European market from India”, Volvo Buses Corporation president Hakan Agnevall said today.
Volvo entered India 15 years ago to tap the high-end truck segment, but also made inroads into the luxury bus segment as its local rivals Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland continued producing ordinary buses for cities and semi-luxury coaches for inter-city and inter-state routes.
“Besides lower manpower cost and minimal overheads, we will avail customs duty exemptions on import of engines, components and accessories required for making buses for exports at our factory here,” Volvo Buses vice-president Akash Passey said.
Volvo’s Indian subsidiary has invested Rs 400 crore in doubling its installed capacity at its plant near Bengaluru to 1,500 units per annum.
“As the country’s passenger transport market has been down over the past couple of years due to various factors, including recession, we could not fully utilise the production capacity as the demand or order was for 600-800 buses per annum”, Passey said.
Volvo India has been exporting luxury air-conditioned buses to South Asian countries such as Bangaldesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka since 2003 and to South Africa since 2011.
“It’s a milestone for us to export buses from India to developed markets in Europe even though we are a European company and has a major presence there with manufacturing plants in the continent,” Agnevall said.
The type of luxury buses to be exported will be Euro-6 complaint for mass rapid transportation in European cities.
“We will use India |
The Essential Texts From the Zohar. London: Watkins Publishing. ISBN-10: 1-84293-128-8; ISBN-13: 9-781842-931288. [XXIX] pentagramatron. (n.d.). Glossary.com. Retrieved October 27, 2009, from http://www.glossary.com/reference.php?q=pentagramatron. [XXX] Kelley, Page H. & Mynatt, Daniel S.. (1998). The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Introduction and Annotated Glossary. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN: 978-0-8028-4363-0. [XXXI] Israel, Josiah. (2009). The Sacred Name of YAH. Retrieved November 13, 2009 from http://yahshuah.com/bkjy.html. [XXXII] Yates, Frances A. (1999). Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Routledge. ISBN-10: 0415220459; ISBN-13: 978-0415220453. [XXXIII] Maxwell-Stuart, P.G. (1987) Retrieved November 13, 2009 from http://mastermason.com/luxocculta/verbo.htm. [XXXIV] Regardie, Israel. (1932). A Garden of Pomegranates an Outline of the Qabalah. New York: Rider & Company. [XXXV] Hall, Manly P. (1936). Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy. Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society. [XXXVI] Lodgeroom, International. (2008). Retrieved November 13, 2009 from http://www.lodgeroomuk.net/bb/viewtopic.php?id=2794. [XXXVII] Holy Bible, King James Version. [XXXVIII] Greer, John M. (1997). Circles of Magic: Ritual Magic in the Western Tradition. St. Paul, Minn. : Llewellyn Publications. [XXXIX] Rose, Emmanuel. (2009). The Rose Cross Ritual. Retrieved November 13, 2009 from http://www.polarissite.net/RoseCross.html [XL] Regardie, Israel. (1932). A Garden of Pomegranates an Outline of the Qabalah. New York: Rider & Company. [XLI] Adam Kadmon. (2008). Encyclopedia Judaica.The gale group. Retrieved November 14, 2009 from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0001_0_00386.html [XLII] Schwartz, Howard & Loebel-Fried, Caren. (2004). Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford University Press. ISBN-13: 9780195086799; ISBN: 0195086791. [XLIII] Drob, Sanford. (2001). The Lurianic Kabballah. Retrieved November 17, 2009 from http://www.newkabbalah.com/adam.html [XLIV] ben Shimon Halevei, Z'ev. (1974). Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser. ISBN-10: 0877282633; ISBN-13: 978-0877282631European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday (30 April) urged Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to make clear he has no intention of reintroducing the death penalty in his country, otherwise “there will be a fight”. A Commission spokesperson hinted that Hungary risked losing its voting rights in the Union if it went ahead with the plans.
On 28 April, Orbán raised the possibility of the death penalty being reintroduced in Hungary. Yesterday, the Commission did its best to avoid answering questions as to what would be the consequences if such a measure was adopted.
>> Read: Commission shies away from warning Orbán over death penalty
But today, the tone appears to completely different. Journalists asked Juncker, who appeared in front of the press with visiting Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, to say whether he was going to discuss the issue with Orbán.
“We don’t need discussions on obvious things. I’m a strong opponent of the death penalty for so many reasons. The charter of fundamental rights of the EU is forbidding it, and Mr Orbán should immediately make clear this is not his intention. Would it be his intention, it would be a fight,” Juncker said.
Asked to comment if the EU would make use of Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty for the first time, according to which serious human rights breaches by a member state can result in a suspension or loss of voting rights in the Council, Juncker spokesperson Natasha Bertaud stated that in 2014, the Commission adopted a framework for addressing systemic threats addressing the rule of law in the 28 member states.
>> Read: Brussels lays out plans to counter ‘systemic threats’ to EU rule of law
“Of course, if no solution is found within this established framework, article 7 will always remain as a last resort to resolve any kind of crises and ensure compliance with EU values,” Bertaud said.
The Orbán comment has particularly infuriated France, which is fighting to save the life of one of its nationals who is in the death row in Indonesia on drug smuggling charges. At the request of French President François Hollande, Council President Donald Tusk stated at the last EU summit on 23 April that the EU “is completely opposed to the death penalty.”
>> Read: EU criticises French citizen’s death sentence in Indonesia
“It is very sad that while the EU tries to deliver a strong message against the death penalty, a Prime Minister says he is in favour of re-introducing it in his country,” a diplomat said.Over the next few days, and perhaps the next couple months, and (oh God help us) the next few years, you’ll be hearing a lot about the “alt-right.” Apologies in advance for that.
It wasn’t something we really had-to-had-to talk about before, but now, suddenly, we have to. You can thank Hillary Clinton, who thrust the (let’s call it a) movement into the spotlight (or dragged it upstairs from the basement) by putting it front and center in a speech attacking Donald Trump that she delivered this past Thursday in Nevada.
“No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here,” Clinton said, attempting to parse out the overlapping ideologies fueling the Trump campaign. “The names may have changed. Racists now call themselves ‘racialists.’ White supremacists now call themselves ‘white nationalists.’ The paranoid fringe now calls itself ‘alt-right.’ But the hate burns just as bright.”
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So bright, in fact, that it’s hard to squint through it to discern the true shape of this “alt-right,” which, given this boost into mainstream discourse, may forever be stripped of the scare quotes that once lent it a safe, almost fictional-seeming distance.
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“What is the alt-right?” is the question that will launch a thousand explainers. To some, it’s a fringe (but increasingly legit) political movement welling up through the online cracks of a ruptured Republican Party like so much proverbial fracking discharge.
To others, it’s a way to name the tight if amorphous network of Internet trolls (long incubated in caves like 4chan, 8chan, and various Trump-smitten subReddits) that, having incinerated the very dumpster that once housed the dumpster fire of #gamergate, have since slouched toward politics and attached hungrily to The Donald’s nasty rhetorical teat.
And to others, it’s a wide-open virtual state fair for white nationalists/nihilists, misogynist “men’s rights” dweebs, proud flag-flying meme-flinging racists, and other varieties of aggrieved (presumably) white male Twitter eggs to go hog wild. (Right now, the #altrightmeans hashtag is home to a robust/futile effort from both sides of the divide to define it.)
Even Breitbart, the self-styled hive of high-minded alt-right drones (and the standing water that bred Trump’s new campaign CEO Stephen Bannon), struggles to square the circle in its “Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” which comes courtesy of alternate-reality “Project Runway” loser and recent Twitter evictee Milo Yiannopoulos.
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Yiannopoulos and cohort Allum Bokhari break the alt-right phenomenon down into a shortlist of simpatico anti-establishment subsects — among them “intellectuals” (“They’re dangerously bright”) and “neoreactionaries” (search: #NRx), “natural conservatives” (who simply “value the greatest cultural expressions of their tribe”), and the stunningly euphemized “Meme Team” (“young rebels”/trolls with Photoshop, similarly drawn to the alt-right as boomers were to the New Left “because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms they just don’t understand”). Sounds like a party! Just not the kind you put in charge of anything.
Oh, and last but certainly not least under the alt-right big top are the “1488rs,” a.k.a. neo-Nazi garbage people — a sect that, as it happens, many members of the movement (probably those “intellectuals”) “would rather... didn't exist.” What on earth could have attracted them to this rager in the first place, I wonder? How I wish I knew!
Regardless of what exactly the alt-right is, it is. Its codification by both candidates suggests that a Tea Party by any other name can stink just as bad, and perhaps even more strongly. But what's in a name in the case of the alt-right may be what’s truly floating it to the top of the tank.
Consider the choice of “alt-” and the specific power of that prefix. When affixed to the press, it denotes a specific realm of outsider journalism — the alt-weeklies of the alt-press were the preserve of progressive politics and commentary for four decades (note: I’m not trying to be shady by using the past tense there). In the ’90s, alt-rock and alt-pop emerged (albeit more as marketing terms than any self-designated movement) as an “alternative” to the ostensibly emptier mainstream radio offerings of the day. More recently, the flash of the “Alt-Lit” movement was founded (and floundered) upon anti-establishment writings characterized by Internetty touches and what Kenneth Goldsmith called “wide-eyed sincerity.”
By co-opting a prefix long tangled up in progressive subtexts, the “dangerously bright” brains behind the alt-right (the term was reportedly coined by white nationalist activist Richard Spencer in 2008) may have pulled off one of the more clever semantic coups in recent political history. Though its members claim fierce opposition to the looming dude-neutering threat of “political correctness,” the term “alt-right” is itself an extraordinary act of euphemism.
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There’s really nothing “alt” about the alt-right — its ideas aren’t particularly new, its methods are wholly self-defeating, and its battle against “PC culture” is really just a surrender to our basest biases and worst instincts.
There’s really nothing ‘alt’ about the alt-right — its ideas aren’t particularly new, its methods are wholly self-defeating, and its battle against ‘PC culture’ is really just a surrender to our basest biases and worst instincts.
Simply slap on an “alt-”, and suddenly your regressive caveman shamble contorts into something one could (apparently) mistake for a progressive stride; your anonymous horde of cellar-dwelling hate-clickers assumes the cachet of a fresh subculture; your repulsive tweets on Leslie Jones’s page feel like salvos of a revolution; your cowardice feels like courage; your agita like edge; your mob like a movement.
Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MBrodeurStaff Reports - INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - The Bureau of Motor Vehicles has announced the new Indiana license plate design.
Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved BMV announces new Indiana license plate design. (Provided Photo/BMV)
Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved BMV announces new Indiana license plate design. (Provided Photo/BMV)
The BMV Commissioner Kent Abernathy announced Thursday Indiana residents chose a Covered Bridge design to replace the Bicentennial license plate.
"The first day of fall is a great time to announce the covered bridge license plate is our winner," said Commissioner Abernathy. "Not only is this colorful design with a red bridge spanning a creek the top vote getter, it won big," he added.
Indiana residents had to choose between three plate designs, but the Covered Bridge choice earned 54 percent of the vote.
The Hoosier State Silhouette plate was second with 39 percent.
The Crossroads of America placed third with seven percent.
331,298 votes were cast through myBMV.com and at the BMV's State Fair Booth and BMV Self-Service Terminals.
The Covered Bridge Plate will appear on vehicle in January 2017.
Older plates will be replaced at the end of the normal seven-year life cycle. It will join "In God We Trust" as one of two standard plates.
The new design plate can also be purchased before the end of the license plate life cycle for $10.25.The New York Cosmos will be losing two key players this winter, as both Marcos Senna and Raul Gonzalez are retiring following the North American Soccer League season. Head coach Gio Savarese confirmed on Tuesday that a possible replacement for Raul is already training with the team, however, as Greece international Georgios Samaras remains in New York, training with the club.
"He has been training with us. He trains with us everyday. He’s with us at practices and right now the situation is that he is in New York. He’s having a few days in New York. He wanted to have a place to train; he feels very comfortable training with us. He’s getting back his strength and getting back to top shape."
Samaras was linked to the Cosmos for most of the summer, after his contract with West Bromwich Albion expired. The club wasn't able to add the Greek attacker this summer, however, largely due to the restrictions put in place by US Soccer involving international players.
At this point, I'd be fairly surprised if Samaras didn't sign with the Cosmos shortly after the season comes to an end, once several international roster slots open up. For now, though, he'll have to sit back and watch as his probable future teammates try to hoist some silverware.Coach Chan Gailey, with Mario Williams and a healthy Fred Jackson, could lead a dark-horse team. US Presswire
The scene at the AFC coaches' breakfast in Palm Beach, Fla., was fitting.
To my far left was New York Jets coach Rex Ryan. He was surrounded by a large group of media who wanted to know how the Jets would handle Tim Tebow-mania and whether they could bounce back from a disappointing 2011.
To my immediate left was new Miami Dolphins coach Joe Philbin. A throng of reporters wondered what the rookie head coach had in store for his first season.
On my right was future Hall of Fame coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots. He continually gave non-answers about his team as reporters tried to dig up something -- anything -- about the reigning AFC champions.
In the middle of this madness was Buffalo Bills coach Chan Gailey. His table was relatively empty for most of the hourlong breakfast, with the exception of a few passers-by and this AFC East blogger. Few in the national media cared to know what Gailey and the Bills were up to. They're a small-market team that finished 6-10 last season and hasn't been to the playoffs in 13 years.
But by this time next year, people will be talking about Buffalo. The Bills are my sleeper pick in 2012. Here are five reasons why Buffalo will get over the hump and finish with a winning record:
Reason No. 1: Bills made right moves in free agency
Former Patriot Mark Anderson gives Buffalo another proven pass-rusher on its defensive line. Fernando Medina/US Presswire
Analysis: I will give myself a pat on the back. I was one of the first to note Buffalo's interest in two-time Pro Bowl defensive end Mario Williams. Despite my prediction, I did not think Buffalo would be able to land the top defensive free agent on the market. But the Bills put on the full-court press and gave Williams 100 million reasons to join them. Buffalo gained an elite pass-rusher and its first game-changer on defense.
The Bills didn't stop there. They continued to improve their anemic pass-rush by signing former Patriots defensive end Mark Anderson, who recorded 10 sacks last season. Williams, Anderson and defensive tackles Kyle Williams and Marcell Dareus make up one of the top defensive lines in the NFL. It's a group who can stop the run and get push up the middle while attacking the edges and pressuring the quarterback. Buffalo's talented front four will be a problem for a lot of teams next season.
The Bills also retained their own key free agents. Buffalo re-signed No. 1 receiver Steve Johnson at an affordable rate and starting tight end Scott Chandler.
There are still a few more holes Buffalo would like to fill, but the team is one of the biggest winners in free agency.
Reason No. 2: Double trouble at running back
Analysis: When they are healthy, there may not be a more dynamic running back duo in the NFL than Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller. These two will be headaches for opposing defenses once Buffalo figures out how to blend both into the offense simultaneously. Jackson and Spiller could complement each other well.
Buffalo's coaching staff admittedly did a poor job of balancing the two tailbacks last season. Jackson received a bulk of the carries when healthy, and Spiller finally showed what he could do at the end of the season once Jackson was injured. Now, both are hungry and want the football. Gailey called it "a great problem to have."
Jackson is 31 and coming off a season-ending leg injury. That should open the door for Spiller to get more carries. Will it be a 50-50 split? Probably not. But the Buffalo offense will be dangerous if it can use Spiller and Jackson enough to keep each fresh and productive the entire season.
Reason No. 3: AFC East is weakening
Analysis: A case can be made that the AFC East became a weaker division this offseason. The division wasn't strong to begin with; only the Patriots finished with a winning record in 2011. But the 6-10 Dolphins gutted their roster, getting rid of top players such as Pro Bowl receiver Brandon Marshall and leading tackler and starting safety Yeremiah Bell. Miami also failed to land a franchise quarterback and settled on 34-year-old David Garrard as the potential starter next season. It's early, but it's hard to imagine Miami's finishing with a better record than last season.
Meanwhile, the Jets are an aging team with chemistry issues. New York gave embattled quarterback Mark Sanchez a three-year contract extension and then traded for popular backup Tebow, setting up a potentially explosive situation. The Jets will be on a year-long implosion watch, and their arrow could be trending downward after last season's mediocre 8-8 finish.
The Jets, Dolphins and Bills are all chasing the Patriots, who are clearly the favorites in the division. But the Bills, who split with New England last season, did a solid job to make up some ground.
Reason No. 4: Players are getting healthy
Analysis: I usually try to avoid the injury excuse, because every team has them, but it legitimately applies to the Bills. Buffalo suffered key injures last season at running back (Jackson), defensive tackle (Kyle Williams), linebacker (Shawne Merriman), offensive line (Eric Wood), receiver (Donald Jones) and kicker (Rian Lindell), just to name a few. Bills starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick played much of the season with a painful rib injury. By the second half of the season, the Bills didn't have anywhere near the same depth they had during their 4-1 start.
Most of these players are expected to be back and healthy in 2012. Merriman is perhaps the biggest question mark after his second season-ending Achilles injury. But chances are slim that Buffalo will be hit this hard with injuries again. Health will be key for Buffalo to maintain a successful run over 16 games.
Reason No. 5: Bills have a top-10 pick
Analysis: The Bills have had a productive offseason, but they aren't done yet. They still have a top-10 pick in this month's NFL draft. This is a great opportunity for Buffalo to plug more holes on the roster. The Bills could use a starting-caliber left tackle, another threat at receiver, a cover corner and depth at linebacker.
The Bills also have more than $9 million in cap room to spend. Don't rule out late signings in free agency. After years of not spending to the cap, Buffalo tabbed 2012 as the year to make a push.
All of these reasons make the Bills my ideal sleeper pick for next season. Don't forget that you heard it here first.Image copyright Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service Image caption The driver was taken to hospital with a back injury
A car became wedged between a house and a wall following a crash in a Devon town.
Hydraulic cutters were used to free the driver from the vehicle, which crashed at Hamlyns Way, Buckfastleigh, at about 15:30 GMT on Sunday.
The man was taken to Torbay Hospital by ambulance. Fire crews said his seatbelt saved him from "serious injury". His condition is currently unknown.
Devon and Cornwall Police said it was unclear what had caused the crash.
Fire crews from Buckfastleigh and Ashburton helped rescue him.
Image copyright Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service Image caption Hydraulic cutters were used to free the man
Image copyright Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service Image caption The crash happened at about 15:30 GMT on SundayLanhee J. Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of domestic policy studies in the public policy program at Stanford University. Tevi D. Troy is chief executive of the American Health Policy Institute and was deputy secretary of health and human services from 2007 to 2009.
Donald Trump’s statement that his preferred replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would provide health “insurance for everybody” surprised those who have followed the contentious debate over the health-care law since its passage in 2010. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, signaled agreement with the president when he said during his confirmation hearing that a Republican replacement for the ACA should cover more people.
In recent years, though, Republicans have emphasized that gains in insurance coverage should not be the sole barometer by which health-care reform is measured. Rather, they have said, the affordability of that coverage is the key to a better health-care system with fewer uninsured Americans. The ACA’s cardinal sin is its focus on access first, while doing little to address cost.
As a general matter, the conservative focus on lowering health-care costs first is exactly right. Yet Trump was also right to argue that the ACA’s replacement ought to have universal coverage as a goal. Democrats should not be allowed to claim this health-care moral high ground uncontested.
For too long, Republicans have shied away from calling for “universal coverage” because they’ve equated it with the Democratic push for a government-run, single-payer health-care system. But that simply isn’t the case. Market-based reforms can both lower costs and lead to health insurance coverage for more Americans. Indeed, any health-care reform that can’t compete with the ACA on coverage is sure to face significant political headwinds. It also would make it far less likely that Democrats can be persuaded to support replacement legislation. Perhaps most important, this is a fight that conservatives can — and should — win.
The starting point for this seemingly audacious claim is the fact that the ACA has been a significant failure even for those who value universal coverage above all else. While the law has unquestionably decreased the number of uninsured people in the United States, the Census Bureau reported last year that 29 million remained without health coverage in 2015. (About a quarter of these were undocumented immigrants or residents of states that opted against the Medicaid expansion.) In 2015, the Internal Revenue Service found that 19.2 million taxpayers either paid the individual-mandate penalty or received hardship exemptions from that mandate — meaning that tens of millions of people went without health insurance, primarily because it’s too expensive.
(Reuters)
Republicans have traditionally been more comfortable talking about the importance of ensuring that every American has access to quality, affordable health insurance. Indeed, “universal access” has been a relatively noncontroversial way for conservatives to avoid making promises about how market-based health-care reform would affect the number of Americans who remain uninsured after the passage.
The apparent gap between what Trump appears to be proposing (universal coverage) and what Republicans have supported (universal access) isn’t nearly as wide as many analysts think. This gap is both narrow and bridgeable: There are policies that can ensure universal access to health insurance while also putting our nation on the path toward universal coverage.
Any market-based replacement for the ACA should include four key elements to move us toward universal coverage.
First, it should expand access to consumer-directed coverage arrangements such as health savings accounts coupled with high-deductible insurance plans. These products not only help reduce costs but also give consumers greater control over their own care. Such increased control incentivizes individuals to do what consumers do best: make value-based decisions that collectively drive down costs and improve quality.
Second, assistance should go to those who need it but be tailored to their individual situations. Low-income Americans should have access to a more innovative and modern Medicaid program, while the working poor should have access to a tax subsidy to help them afford private plans.
Third, those with preexisting conditions should have access to mechanisms, such as properly funded high-risk pools, to help them both acquire and afford coverage.
Finally, the federal government should allow for alternative pathways to private, tax-preferred coverage, by allowing health plans to be sold across state lines, as well as by giving unions, churches and other civic organizations the opportunity to offer coverage to members.
Taken together, these policies provide a powerful set of tools to both drive down health-care costs and expand coverage to every American. Trump and the Republican Congress have a remarkable opportunity not only to do away with the ACA and all of its shortcomings but also to put in place reforms that will truly improve our health-care system. Republicans in Congress should not hesitate to embrace Trump’s call for universal coverage. Indeed, they should work with the new administration to pass legislation to make this goal a reality.The best thing about the App Store are the extremely frequent sales. Holiday season is no exception. Below is a comprehensive list of all the notable Holiday 2011 App Store iOS game sales, sorted by publisher.
This page will be updated continuously, as more iOS titles drop in price. If you see any missing sales, take a moment to edit this page & add them yourself!
Misc [ edit ]
Great holiday sales on indie games, or single games from larger publishers.
2K Games
[ edit ]
2K Games' entire iOS library has been discounted for the holidays. A specific end date for these sales has not yet been given. Prices range from $0.99 to $4.99, but all titles are discounted from their normal price.
Big Fish Games [ edit ]
Casual publish Big Fish Games has dropped an incredible 66 games down to just $0.99! These sale prices run until December 29.
Capcom [ edit ]
Until the end of December, Capcom has put a few of its most popular games on sale.
Cave Games [ edit ]
All of Cave's games, save for their newest addition, Bug Princess, have seen dramatic price cuts. If you're a fan of 'bullet-hell' shooters, then check these out!
Disney Mobile
[ edit ]
Disney Mobile is also running a big $0.99 App sale. Several children's games are on sale, as well as the core game titles below.
EA Games
[ edit ]
EA Games is running its biggest sale ever this holiday season! Over 50 games are just $0.99 each - all the titles listed below. An end to these special offers has not yet been announced.
iPad Links (iPhone links)
id Software [ edit ]
Developer id Software has all of their games on sale for only $0.99 this Holiday season. Shooter fans should find plenty to love in these titles.
Gameloft [ edit ]
21 Gameloft games are available for just $0.99. An end date for these $0.99 sales has not yet been announced.
Gamevil [ edit ]
Several of Gamevil's $0.99 Action-RPGs are available completely free for the duration of the holiday season. Some have in-app purchases, but others, like Zenonia, are 100% free in every way.
Kairosoft [ edit ]
Sega [ edit ]
All the Sega titles below are on sale for $0.99. Sega's special deals run longer than most, ending January 9, 2012.
All the Square-Enix games below are on sale until Jan. 4, 2012.
Telltale [ edit ]
Nearly all of Telltale's iOS episodes are 50% off, or $2.99, including all of the titles linked below.
iPad
Rockstar [ edit ]
Rockstar's also having a sale of up to 40% off on their two iOS games. Better grab em quick before they go back up in price on December 29th.
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Check more information about Banglalink –Exclusive: Former treasurer will say Trump victory shows party must be ‘unrelenting in defending the economic interests of working people’
Labor must put rising inequality at the heart of its agenda for the next federal election and consider whether a “Buffett rule” should be part of the policy mix, according to the former treasurer, Wayne Swan.
Swan will use a speech on Wednesday to the national conference of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) to argue Labor needs to seriously consider the proposal – where the highest income earners in Australia would be forced to pay a mandated minimum rate of tax. The pitch puts him at odds with the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen.
Swan’s arguments at the AWU follow a debate in the Labor caucus on Tuesday about the “Buffett rule” in which three up-and-coming Labor left MPs – Pat Conroy, Andrew Giles, and Terri Butler – told Bowen Labor needed to properly consider the issue in line with a resolution passed at the 2015 national conference.
The three put a similar argument to the proposition Swan will advance on Wednesday – that Labor needs to sharpen its pitch on inequality before facing the voters at the next federal poll.
Bowen has irritated key figures in the left faction by moving in recent weeks to shut down internal debate about the rule. The shadow treasurer has argued that approach “isn’t the best way to address inequalities in the system”.
“We have policies on superannuation, negative gearing and capital gains that ensure our tax concessions are made fairer and sustainable,” Bowen said last week.
Swan, who, like Bowen, is from the right faction, will praise the specific policy efforts the shadow treasurer nominated last week, and argue Labor has been “courageous” in opposing the government’s “$50bn corporate tax cut which is nothing more than a smash and grab on the Australian treasury”.
But he will argue Labor needs to go further. “This is a good start but we do need a thorough discussion of a Buffett rule to give people confidence that wealthy individuals are paying their fair share,” Swan will say on Wednesday.
Swan’s speech to the AWU is a wide-ranging assessment of where Labor needs to line up in an age of political disruption.
He will emphasise the importance of progressive parties talking about an economic agenda for working people, noting that “large parts of the traditional left have been swept away by populist rightwing movements” in Europe, the UK, and the US.
Swan will argue that working people voted for Donald Trump in the recent US presidential contest “not out of any hard-right ideology or an entrenched racial intolerance, but because they no longer saw the Democrats as the party who spoke or acted for them”.
“These experiences tell us we must be unrelenting in defending the economic interests of working people,” the former treasurer will say.
Swan will argue that working people are alienated in the current environment if a progressive party such as Labor emphasises social issues at the expense of economic progress.
“Consider if you’re a truck driver in Logan or a steel worker in Wollongong you’re constantly told to work harder for less while tax cuts go to the top end – you might suck that up for a while because you have to,” Swan will say.
“All the while you see progressive social issues dominate the news. Eventually you reach a breaking point and your job is sent offshore or made casual.
“Suddenly you’re tossed on the economic scrapheap and like a drum of kerosene dumped directly on the smouldering fire your frustration with progressive issues erupts in an inferno of white-hot rage.
“And quite a lot of that rage might express itself with immigration, gender equity or other favoured progressive issues, not because rage by definition doesn’t contain itself very well, but very much because the right will always supply scapegoats of various types – anything to ensure the blame isn’t sheeted home where it really belongs: the policies they designed to fleece working people and redistribute the gains to the top.
“This is what happened and is still happening in America.
“Our party has a proud record of progressive social reform but we must always have at the forefront of the policy battle the economic interests of working people.”
Swan will argue Labor needs to develop a framework that addresses the growing concentration of wealth and income, and the power of vested interests.
“If we are to win the |
refers to his first incarnation's initial lack of altruism prior to meeting the Daleks in "Into the Dalek".
A portrait of the First Doctor is hanging in a UNIT safe house in "The Zygon Invasion".
Other appearances [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Invasive species are among the world's greatest threats to native species and biodiversity. Once invasive plants become established, they can alter soil chemistry and shift nutrient cycling in an ecosystem. This can have important impacts not only on plant composition, diversity, and succession within a community, but also in the cycling of critical elements like carbon and nitrogen on a larger, potentially even global, scale. Clearly, both native and exotic plants form intimate relationships with bacteria in the soil that facilitate the extraction and conversion of elements to biologically usable forms. Yet an unanswered question with regard to plant invasions remains: could the changes in soil biogeochemistry be due to an advantage that invasive plants get from interacting with their microbiome?
When alien species invade and take over communities, they may not come alone--many plant species are host to a whole suite of microorganisms that not only live in plant cells, but also in the soil surrounding the plants' roots. These microbes form close, often mutualistic, associations with their plant hosts. Some convert atmospheric nitrogen into bioavailable forms that are then exchanged for carbon from the plant. Bioavailable nitrogen is frequently limiting in soils, yet many invaded ecosystems have more carbon and nitrogen in plant tissues and soils compared with systems dominated by native plants. Since changes in the soil nitrogen cycle are driven by microbes, could bacteria associated with invasive species not only be responsible for the observed changes in soil nutrient concentrations, but also for enabling the continued growth and persistence of the invader species?
These were the kinds of questions that started percolating for Marnie Rout (University of North Texas Health Science Center) after she drove by a remnant tallgrass prairie in North Central Texas as a beginning graduate student. She was particularly struck by the obvious and drastic changes the native prairie was undergoing due to the invasion of an exotic grass.
"It literally looked like someone had drawn a line down the field," Rout explained. "On one side was the native prairie, the other side had this towering monoculture of invasive Sorghum. The plant looked like it was invading in a military fashion, forming this distinct line that was clearly visible."
Subsequent literature searches led to the discovery that sugar cane, an agriculturally important crop, is a nitrogen fixer that contains bacterial endophytes, and Rout became curious if the microbes she and her colleague Tom Chrzanowski (The University of Texas Arlington) discovered in invasive Sorghum might be providing similar benefits to this invasive plant.
Rout combined forces with colleagues from The University of Montana, The University of Texas Arlington, and University of Washington to investigate whether the differences in soil nutrient concentrations found in an invaded prairie could be due to metabolic processes of the bacterial microbiome associated with the invasive grass, and to determine whether these microbial agents facilitate the perpetuation and spread of this invasive grass. They published their findings in a Special Section in the American Journal of Botany on Rhizosphere Interactions: The Root Biome.
"Things attributed to plant-plant interactions like competition and facilitation are likely under more microbial regulation than we have been giving them credit," Rout commented. "Studying disruptions to ecosystems like those seen in plant invasions provides a window into something--specifically the process of co-evolution--that we normally don't get to observe in a single human lifetime."
Indeed, the alarming rate--almost 0.5 meters a year--at which the invasive grass Sorghum halepense has invaded the tallgrass prairie, formerly dominated by the native little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), over the last 25 years, and the complete dominance of that invasive was the ideal situation in which Rout could test her ideas.
Rout and colleagues first confirmed that the invaded soils of the prairie did indeed have higher levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, and iron-derived chemicals compared with the non-invaded prairie soils still dominated by native plants. They then tested whether the interactions between the dominant invasive grass and the soil biota could be responsible for the observed changes in the soil nutrient concentrations.
By isolating five bacterial strains of endophytes found inside S. halepense rhizomes (subterranean stems used for storage and vegetative reproduction) and growing them in the lab in different mixtures of substrates, the authors determined that these microbes were able to fix and mobilize nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron. All three are important elements associated with plant growth; however, some were produced in excess of what would be needed for plant growth. Indeed, perhaps somewhat alarmingly, the amount of iron that was produced reached levels that are toxic to many crops--and may even inhibit establishment of native species.
Furthermore, the authors were able to show that not only can this invasive plant acquire microbes from the environment, but that it is also capable of passing them on to the next generation via seeds. Using a sophisticated series of intricate experiments involving growing seedlings from surface sterilized seeds in nitrogen- deprived or nitrogen-augmented soils and slurries with different suites of soil microbes, Rout and colleagues showed that these microbes enabled the grass to produce 5-fold increases in rhizomes, a primary mechanism driving invasions of this species.
These findings give us a new understanding of how an invasive plant can acquisition soil biota to its own advantage, altering the environment and changing the ecosystem in the process. By acquiring soil bacteria, S. halepense increases the bioavailable nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil, and has increased rhizome production and aboveground biomass, which in turn facilitates its spread and establishment. Moreover, these changes to the soil chemistry not only increase the competitive edge of this invasive species, but also can inhibit or eliminate the existing native species.
"This research shows that macro-scale observations, such as plant trait expression, and ecosystem functions like nutrient cycling, are more intimately connected to micro-scale influences than we might expect," summarizes Rout.
Rout's fascination with bacterial endophytes continues; she is currently exploring them from a genetic perspective to better understand the complex communication between the microbiome and the plant.
"With the growing human population and concerns for meeting the global food crisis in the coming decades, invasive plants and their microbiomes might turn out to be useful for enhancing crop yields."
"The root microbiome is as important to plant health and agricultural productivity," she concludes, "as the human microbiome is to human health."
###
Rout, Marnie E., Thomas H. Chrzanowski, Tara K. Westlie, Thomas H. DeLuca, Ragan M. Callaway, and William E. Holben. 2013. Bacterial endophytes enhance competition by invasive plants. American Journal of Botany 100(9): 1726-1737. DOI: 10.3732/ajb.1200577
The full article in the link mentioned is available for no charge for 30 days following the date of this summary at http://www. amjbot. org/ content/ 100/ 9/ 1726. full. pdf+html. After this date, reporters may contact Richard Hund at ajb@botany.org for a copy of the article.
The Botanical Society of America is a non-profit membership society with a mission to promote botany, the field of basic science dealing with the study and inquiry into the form, function, development, diversity, reproduction, evolution, and uses of plants and their interactions within the biosphere. It has published the American Journal of Botany for nearly 100 years. In 2009, the Special Libraries Association named the American Journal of Botany one of the Top 10 Most Influential Journals of the Century in the field of Biology and Medicine.
For further information, please contact the AJB staff at ajb@botany.org.Two years ago the trailer for Knights of Badassdom, a LARPing comedy directed by Wrong Turn 2 helmer Joe Lynch, killed at Comic Con. The premise is delightful: a group of nerdy LARPers (including Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage, Community's Danny Pudi and Serenity's Summer Glau) come upon a real Lovecraftian horror that threatens the world, and they must defeat it. The trailer was simply great.
And then... nothing.
Knights of Badassdom just sort of sat around for years. The story behind its delay is ugly and kind of stupid - the production company behind the film, IndieVest, seems to have been run into the ground through terrible and possibly fraudulent business practices, and the owner of that company has stolen the film from Lynch and made his own 70 minute cut.
That cut will be screening tomorrow in Los Angeles for potential buyers, and one original investor in the film is unhappy. He's created a website that explains the long and tumultuous financial history of IndieVest and Knights of Badassdom, and places all the blame square on IndieVest honcho Wade Bradley. It's a pretty dispiriting read, seeing how a movie can get so totally fucked by behind the scenes jerks running what seems to amount to scams.
All hope is not yet lost; it's not impossible that someone buys the movie and gives it back to Lynch to finish; he had a basic cut back in 2011, and with some time he could go back and finish it up.
Here's the trailer, for those who forgot how cool this movie looked:The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are the best Android phones you can buy, but boy does the 2 XL have a lot of display issues. In addition to graininess and a weird blue shift at certain viewing angles, the 2 XL is now experiencing burn-in on units that are just a week or two old.
Android Central was the first to report the issue, showing a picture of a Pixel 2 XL with some nasty image retention around the navigation bar. Shortly after, several other reports of burn-in started popping up, and you can add Ars' review unit to the list of affected devices. You can see the permanent navigation bar burn-in below on our two-week-old device.
In response to the complaints, Google has sent out a statement saying that it's investigating the issue:
The Pixel 2 XL screen has been designed with an advanced POLED technology, including QHD+ resolution, wide color gamut, and high contrast ratio for natural and beautiful colors and renderings. We put all of our products through extensive quality testing before launch and in the manufacturing of every unit. We are actively investigating this report.
Samsung is the undisputed leader in smartphone OLED panels, and the Samsung panels used on the Pixel 1, Pixel 1 XL, and Pixel 2 have mostly been issue-free. The Pixel 2 XL, however, uses an LG-made POLED display, which has proven to not be up to the standard set by Samsung. The LG V30 uses a similar panel and has lots of display issues, too.
It has been a rough few weeks for Google's hardware division. In addition to the display issues with the Pixel 2 XL, the Google Home Mini apparently shipped with a top touch surface so defective that Google had to permanently disable it. We've got to wonder: what is the quality control like over there?There is nothing that screams Fall in Fandom like owls whizzing through the air delivering Hogwarts letters. Or is it the sound of toads singing of toil and trouble, or perhaps the taste of warm Butterbeer shared amongst friends? Whichever way, we knew that with Halloween arriving, our Fall Shindig just had to be the Harry Potter party we’ve always wanted.
With such a wide array of Wizarding World elements to choose from, narrowing down a specific Harry Potter theme was our first big challenge. We had a million ideas and dreams about the perfect Potter party, and still do. Harry Potter is a fandom that is near and dear to both of our hearts – and that won’t be going away any time soon. There will be endless opportunities to get our wizarding party-hats on in the future, but for this Halloween, we loved the idea of celebrating the fact that we’re grown-ass adults – and with that, sprung the idea of a Hogwarts Alumni Dinner.
Invitations
An invitation to a Hogwarts function would be incomplete without wax-sealed Hogwarts letters in McGonagall’s handwriting, peppered with green ink. Using much the same technique as we created our Game of Thrones party invitations (here), we were able to give guests an authentic-feeling (if owl-less) Hogwarts letter. We made envelopes from the same parchment paper that we printed the invites on and sent these invites out via muggle mail. It truly is a magical experience for your guests to receive a Hogwarts letter in the mail. These invitations incited a lot of envy from our guests’ co-workers.
We have templates of the invite up here (okay, coming soon), so get printing!
Transforming our Living Room into the Hogwarts Great Hall
With our theme narrowed to just the world of Hogwarts, we could focus in on what makes Hogwarts’ Great Hall so atmospheric in the first place: the stone walls, the enchanted ceiling, floating candles and of course the long tables where the magnificent feasts magically appear.
We spent weeks tracking down an affordable place to rent benches, as this seating arrangement in the Great Hall is so iconic and we wanted to honor that. Luckily we were able to find them for reasonable price, but discovered along the way that you can also build your own for cheap! Here’s how.
We laid out our room with two rows of two 6 foot tables, which we could just squeeze in our party of 26 with acceptable comfort.
With the help of that (admittedly) shitty plastic sheeting you see at every bad Halloween party, we made our walls become stone, and our ceiling to become enchanted. The trick here is to cover everything. The more you do, the better it sells. It’s cheap as dirt, so don’t be stingy! Also, keep the room dark to keep the reflection to a minimum – and to hide flaws. (Beware, a room encased in plastic sheeting requires good ventilation! We almost learned that the hard way.) Another way to minimize especially shiny areas is to spray brown Streaks N Tips on those spots. If you want to up the class or ventilation factor, consider getting stone-printed Butcher paper (like this).
Like every great Great Hall, we topped off the atmosphere by hanging candles on invisible thread throughout.
Stay tuned for a detailed looking into the transformation.
It’s the Details, Darling
All of the above might sell it as is, but we’re not Moderately Good Shindig here, we are Damn good. So enter the details: Dumbledore’s Podium, created with thrift store materials; House Point counters, created with Dollar Store cases and beads; large prints of the Hogwarts Founders (By UnripeHamadryad); House banners (tutorial coming!); and a still life portrait of fruit covering the entrance to the kitchen.
Our guests oogled and awed over all the details at the party; it was worth every dollar store dollar we spent and then some. We’ve got a whole list of DIY tutorials and more detailed explanations coming your way, but for now we have these beautiful photographs our talented friend Caroline Louis took for you to drool over. Thanks Caroline!
Schmancy Hogwarts Table Settings
Hogwarts is already known for its excellent tableware, and as this is a function for esteemed alumni, we took it a notch further. Crystal goblets, gold stemmed champagne glasses, china plates with gold trim and gold silverware. That all sounds obscenely expensive, but we are bargain hunters and true believers in dollar stores, and we made it work.
We ended up renting the China plates because someone (Ellie) fell in love with them and wouldn’t have it any other way. But renting is a very cost effective thing, especially when you have a smaller amount of guests. The clear goblets are straight dollar store gems and the silverware and champagne flutes are plastic. Hard to believe right? When you mix your materials up between fancy and cheap, it often can blend together seamlessly into something that looks expensive.
For under the table settings, we purchased navy blue satin table cloths and a long length of gold star patterned organza that acted as a floaty table runner.
The centerpieces celebrated each house, with house-colored ribbons and fairy lights housed in lanterns, perched on a Hogwarts text book and accompanied by a gold house animal. Tutorial coming!
We’ve struggled to find great inexpensive candelabra options, but were pleased to find you can buy cheap candelabra stems that sit in a wine bottle. Score!
A Feast Worthy of Hogwarts
26 is a lot of people to feed! Especially if you want to keep things hot, fresh and timely. We don’t envy the Hogwarts House Elves their thrice daily task.
Learning from our Feast of Thrones, we bought warming pans this time around and timed things a bit better to keep food coming. We provided the main dishes of Shepherd’s Pie, Tri-tip, and a variety of sausages. We asked guests to bring side dishes and deserts. Along with our invitations, we included a list of options/ideas in theme with what Hogwarts would serve, which was a big help for our guests.
The result was a delicious and entertaining meal with fun dishes being passed around with shouts of “pass the bouillabaisse!” We made sure to provide vegan and gluten free options as well as the wonderful meat dishes. Know your guests’s dietary restrictions, they will love you for it.
Alumni like their Butterbeer with alcohol, please
Cauldrons full of delicious signature drinks “Amortentia” and “H is for Hogwarts” were extremely popular. However, The easy favorite of the evening was the delicious hot Butterbeer. The recipe we found was the perfect balance of sweet and crisp. You could elect to keep it non alcoholic or spike it with a nice bourbon. We provided both hand-whipped cream and vegan whipped cream to top off the concoction. We also did a champagne toast to celebrate our Alumni awesomeness.
Wizard Wear
Our Hogwarts alumni guests came styled to the 9 and three-quarters. Everyone’s hat game was especially strong. Siriusly awesome Eric (top middle) and Heather (far right), won Best Dressed Wizard and Witch, respectively, in our superlative awards. Check out our Pinterest board for Wizard Fashion for ideas for your own grown-up wizarding get together.
Alumni Activities
The feasting was peppered with fun activities to celebrate the coming together of our esteemed fellow alumni.
We began the meal with our School song, sung in any which tune pleased each guest. Magical ink (aka temporary) tattoos were extremely popular between courses. Festive English poppers wrapped in Special Edition Daily Prophets were handed out during dinner. And just before dessert, Haley and Ellie awarded Superlatives to 15 of our guests ranging from: Best Dressed Wizard to Most Likely to Have Been Caught Snogging in a Broom Cupboard, to Most Unlikely to Still Be Alive. Our award ceremony was peppered with stories of our guests’ supposed feats in the Wizarding world post-grad, and was met with much laughter and cheering.
We ended the night with a game of Penseive – essentially Celebrity, HP style. The activities served as a great way to engage our guests in the theme and connect guests that didn’t know one another.
Don’t forget the bathroom!
We couldn’t have a Hogwarts bathroom without Moaning Myrtle lamenting from the pipes. We achieved this by placing a laptop with moaning myrtle on loop in the cupboard under the sink. Voila! Another fun element was having spiders crawling across the counter to the window. Follow the Spiders!
Our Hogwarts Alumni Dinner was a right smashing success. Perhaps your chapter of the Hogwarts Alumni Association is next? Let us know!
Draco Dormiens Nunquam TitillandusThe Pittsburgh Penguins will close out their regular season schedule versus the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday afternoon without Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang in the lineup.
Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan elected to give Letang some rest ahead of the playoffs and Crosby is dealing with some normal wear and tear.
This could be read as good news for the Flyers, who are currently sitting outside the playoff picture with two games left on the schedule. Philadelphia trailed the Boston Bruins by one point with a game in hand prior to the start of Saturday’s slate of games.
Sullivan cares not for how his decision to rest stars affects the likes of the Bruins and Detroit Red Wings, who are both fighting for their playoff hopes Saturday.
Crosby will finish the 2015-16 season with 36 goals and 85 points in 80 games. Letang totalled 16 goals and 67 points in 71 games.
The Penguins are without Evgeni Malkin (upper body), Olli Maatta (lower body), Marc-Andre Fleury (concussion), and Bryan Rust (lower body) to close out the season.Yeast starter with yeast ring, Voss
One of my goals for the Norwegian farmhouse ale trip was to see if kveik (family yeast) still existed in Norway, and to get samples if possible. To that end I bought six little plastic bottles to keep the samples in before leaving. At our very first stop, Sigmund was kind enough to let me take two samples. I took two because I wanted to send one to the National Collection of Yeast Cultures in Norwich, UK for analysis, and the other I wanted for myself. A side benefit of sending it to NCYC is that they keep the yeast in their collection, where it's preserved for posterity by being frozen.
I had to send the yeast to NCYC as soon as possible, as we had a week left on the road, and I didn't know how well kveik would survive in a suitcase in a hot car, and then in the mail. So the first hour I had to spare on the trip, in Flåm, I went directly to the local post office, which is actually in a grocery store. I hadn't thought to bring anything to send the sample in, but the staff kindly let me take a used cardboard box from the store, and lent me some other bits and pieces.
So while shoppers and tourists were drifting around me I found a flat surface on top of an ice cream freezer, and went to work. I wrote a small note to Chris Bond at the NCYC explaining it was kveik from me, wrapped the bottle tenderly in bubblewrap, taped up the box, and wrote the address, etc. I felt more than a little silly doing this in public, but it was all for science.
Taking a yeast sample, Voss
Later, in Stranda, Stein Langlo kindly gave me two dried samples of his kveik. Since they were dried I waited until I got home, then mailed them off, and settled down to what turned out to be a long wait. Chris at the NCYC got Sigmund's kveik to grow with no problems, but Stein's stubbornly refused to grow. Chris put it on agar plates, and found what to him looked like healthy cells under the microscope, but never got them to grow. Several attempts were made, and eventually I sent him the entire two samples, but even that didn't help.
The first test Chris did was DNA fingerprinting. This is not full genome sequencing, but a way to test parts of the DNA. He took samples from the bottle, diluted them with sterile water, then grew them on standard YM plates. These, by the way, do not contain antibiotics. The yeast grew well, without any sign of bacterial growth whatsoever. NCYC then performed PCR analysis and DNA electrophoresis. Basically, this means extracting parts of the genome and cutting it into fragments. The length of these fragments will vary depending on the genome of the yeast. The electric field then pulls the fragments through the gel on a plate, and the length of the fragments will determine how far they are pulled. Thus, it's possible to compare which genes are present and absent.
That's what you see in the photo below, from the NCYC report. The white bands are genes which are present. When one of the rows is missing the band it means the yeast strain shown in that row did not have that gene. Just to the right of the first column of text you can see a double band going down the photo: apparently all the strains have these two genes. Further to the right is a big thick band, which is another gene (or pair of genes) that all the strains have. Then a thin band again present in all the strains. Then, there's another band present in all rows except one: that gene is missing in strain 1, but present in 2 and 3. A few rows have another band right after this one, and those are strain 3. Strain 1 also has this gene. And those are the differences.
DNA fingerprint (Sigmund Gjernes strain)
Based on this analysis it was clear that Sigmund's kveik consists of three closely related strains, and probably only three strains. You can in fact see this in the picture, as Chris has helpfully labeled the three strains. Another kveik, from Svein Rivenes, was analyzed in 2009, and found to likewise consist of several strains, in that case four. Comparing the genomes of the two samples it's clear that the two yeasts are related, but also that they have, as Chris put it, not "shared a common ancestor in the recent past." He doesn't say what he means by "recent past," but I'd assume it means at least a few decades. If you compare the fingerprints above and below I think you can see that they are similar, but not the same.
DNA fingerprint (Svein Rivenes strain)
An obvious question at this point is how far removed these yeasts are from other brewing yeasts. Where do they fit into the family tree of brewing yeasts? Can we conclude from the DNA anything about how far back you have to go to find a common ancestor to the Voss kveik and the yeasts used by commercial breweries? Unfortunately, nobody knows. I've managed to interest this lab in the issue, but they're deep in another project, so results may be a long time coming, if they decide to do a project on this at all. So don't hold your breath waiting for an answer to this question.
Another conclusion from the analysis is that the sample is in fact pure Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with no contaminants of any kind, whether bacteria or other types of yeast. This is the same conclusion they came to in 2009 with the other kveik sample. Which is interesting, to put it mildly. This yeast has been handed down through the generations, simply by reusing it from brew to brew. No lab equipment of any kind has been involved. People have just taken a grayish brown goo, spooned it into glasses, stored it a few months, then thrown it into the wort, and repeated. Over and over and over again. The only thing that was known about it was that it produced good beer. Then, centuries later, the brown goo is analyzed, and turns out to be nothing but pure Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
How could this be?
Actually, it's less surprising than it might seem. The reason brewer's yeast produces alcohol, even though this is a fairly inefficient means of producing energy compared to other available alternatives, is that the alcohol kills off the competition. Zainasheff and White is pretty clear on this: under the conditions of typical alcoholic fermentation, Saccharomyces cerevisiae "should be able to outcompete most of the bacteria present."
When I raised this issue with Chris Bond via email he was pretty clear on exactly the same thing:
As we have witnessed in many breweries we've worked with over the years amounts of bacteria may be present in the initial brew but once the alcohol levels begin to rise they are killed or inhibited and the Saccharomyces cerevisiae out-competes them. Hence if a sample [is] taken at the end of fermentation for use at another time it will contain only Saccharomyces. The brewing process is self-selecting for the brewing yeast.
Of course, as we all know, sometimes this goes wrong, and you wind up with malt vinegar or worse. But it must be remembered that there are people with taste buds involved in this process. When the kveik gets infected the farmhouse brewers throw it out and get better kveik from somewhere else. Sigmund told us one of his neighbours had kveik that had gone sour, and he kept persuading the guy to throw it away. Over time the brewers do switch to sound kveik and thus keep their strains pure.
Kveik at work, Voss
The full report is also available. As described earlier, Svein Rivenes's kveik is available from the NCYC. Sigmund's kveik will also be available, under the accession numbers below.
NCYC 3995: Confluent growth (mixed sample)
NCYC 3996: Colony 1 / Type 1
NCYC 3997: Colony 9 / Type 2
NCYC 3998: Colony 8 / Type 3
To summarize what we know at the moment, the kveiks from Voss seem to each consist of a mix of 3-4 closely related strains. These are pure Saccharomyces cerevisiae and nothing else. They both produce a similar orange-like aroma when pitched at 37-40C, as does another Voss strain I have direct experience with. The Gjernes and Rivenes strains are relatively close genetically, without being the same strain.
The kveik strains from Hardanger, Sunnmøre and Lithuania we still know almost nothing about. I have a lead on a possible strain in Sogn, so it may just be that kveik survives there, too. Work continues on procuring live samples from places other than Voss. If you have kveik, or know someone who does, please, please, please contact me. Or, if you're going to Vilnius, please get in touch if you're willing to mail a bottle of beer, so that we can solve the mystery of the Lithuanian yeast.Since arriving at Gillette Stadium, Juan Agudelo has been scoring at a tremendous clip. Tallying six goals in 11 shots through eight appearances is so off-the-charts that it's unsustainable.
With elite MLS strikers like Marco Di Vaio, Camilo Sanvezzo and Robbie Keane scoring anywhere from 15 to 25 percent of their shots, and the league average hovering around 10 percent, shooting 54 percent just won't stand up to the eventual equalizer of sample size. But, don't be so quick to exclude Agudelo from this shortlist of league-leading strikers – the sample size is no fault of his own.
While there is no question that Agudelo's scoring blip has been helpful to the surging New England Revolution, his positive influence has cascaded across the pitch into areas that do not traditionally show up on the box score. A constant theme across discussion on the #NERevs Twitter hashtag has been Agudelo's exceptional ability to act as a target man and hold the ball upfield.
For a midfield littered with exceptionally technical players like Lee Nguyen, Kelyn Rowe and Scott Caldwell (the most recent starting midfield trio), this extra moment of breathing room has made all of the difference.
In games that Agudelo has participated in for New England, the Revolution have been an entirely different team in terms of possession efficiency. With him on the field, New England's average length of possession increased 1.7 seconds (7.9 to 9.6) and 0.6 passes per possession (2.0 to 2.6).
While these numbers may seem slim, remember that there are about 130 possessions per team in a normal MLS match thus far in 2013. These slight upticks can account for an extra three minutes of ball possession and almost 80 additional passes per game.
Metrics like passes per possession and seconds per possession are heavily biased in favor of teams that are currently in a winning situation. For the sake of this comparison, we only looked at situations where the Revolution were currently tied with their opponent. For what it's worth, the difference in these metrics were even more lopsided when not controlling for current game state.
Can this increase be solely placed on the shoulders of the Stoke-bound young American? Probably not. The essence of what we have described here probably falls under the category of a "plus/minus" metric that is relatively useful in sports like basketball where there is significant player turnover throughout a single game. In games like soccer, with relatively little player turnover, it's slightly less conclusive.
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To lend further credence to these numbers, let's investigate Agudelo's direct influence on possession. Of the 1,058 possessions that New England have had during games he has been active, Agudelo touched the ball in 236 of them.
During the possessions that he was not involved in, the Revolution possessed the ball for an average of about 8.1 seconds and completed 2.1 passes per possession... exactly the same as their average in games where he did not play. These metrics shift dramatically during possessions in which Agudelo was involved, with an average of 12.2 seconds and 3.5 passes per possession.
Now, again, we must be aware of the biases that are being introduced. Possessions that reach a striker are probably exceptional to begin with, and it is perhaps unfair to treat all of these possessions in the same way. To make a more fair comparison, let's examine Agudelo alongside Dimitry Imbongo – another Revs player that has also been tasked with the being a target player in coach Jay Heaps' system.
If we consider Imbongo's possessions "replacement level" for other target presences for New England, Agudelo's effect really shines through. The “Juan factor,” statistical or not, has turned the rebuilding and re-factoring Revs into a legitimate Eastern Conference contender in what could prove to be an immense playoff race deep into the fall.Few economic indicators are of more concern to Americans than unemployment statistics. Reports that unemployment rates are dropping make us happy; reports to the contrary make us anxious. But just what do unemployment figures tell us? Are they reliable measures? What influences joblessness?
How Is Unemployment Defined and Measured?
Each month, the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics randomly surveys sixty thousand individuals around the nation. If respondents say they are both out of work and seeking employment, they are counted as unemployed members of the labor force. Jobless respondents who have chosen not to continue looking for work are considered out of the labor force and therefore are not counted as unemployed. Almost half of all unemployment spells end because people leave the labor force. Ironically, those who drop out of the labor force—because they are discouraged, have household responsibilities, or are sick—actually make unemployment rates look better; the unemployment rate includes only people within the labor force who are out of work.
Not all unemployment is the same. Unemployment can be long term or short term. It can be frictional, meaning someone is between jobs; or it may be structural, as when someone’s skills are no longer demanded because of a change in technology or an industry downturn.
Is Unemployment a Big Problem?
Some say there are reasons to think that unemployment in the United States is not a big problem. In June 2005, for example, 33.5 percent of all unemployed people were under the age of twenty-four, and presumably few of them were the main source of income for their families. One out of six of the unemployed are teenagers. Moreover, the average duration of a spell of unemployment is short. In June 2005 it was 16.3 weeks. And the median spell of unemployment is even shorter. In June 2005 it was 7.0 weeks, meaning that half of all spells last 7.0 weeks or less.
On the basis of numbers like the above, many economists have thought that unemployment is not a very large problem. A few weeks of unemployment seems to them like just enough time for people to move from one job to another. Yet these numbers, though accurate, are misleading. Much of the reason why unemployment spells appear short is that many workers drop out of the labor force at least temporarily because they cannot find attractive jobs. Often two short spells of unemployment mean a long spell of joblessness because the person was unemployed for a short time, withdrew from the labor force, and then reentered the labor force.
And even if most unemployment spells are short, most weeks of unemployment are experienced by people who are out of work for a long time. To see why, consider the following example. Suppose that each week, twenty spells of unemployment lasting 1 week begin, and only one begins that lasts 20 weeks. Then the average duration of a completed spell of unemployment would be only 1.05 weeks. But half of all unemployment (half of the total of 40 weeks that the twenty-one people are out of work) would be accounted for by spells lasting 20 weeks.
Something like this example applies in the real world. In June 2005, for example, 42.9 percent of the unemployed had been unemployed for less than five weeks, but 16.9 percent had been unemployed for six or more months.
What Causes Long-Term Unemployment?
To fully understand unemployment, we must consider the causes of recorded long-term unemployment. Empirical evidence shows that two causes are welfare payments and unemployment insurance. These government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment in two ways.
First, government assistance increases the measure of unemployment by prompting people who are not working to claim that they are looking for work even when they are not. The work-registration requirement for welfare recipients, for example, compels people who otherwise would not be considered part of the labor force to register as if they were a part of it. This requirement effectively increases the measure of unemployed in the labor force even though these people are better described as nonemployed—that is, not actively looking for work.
In a study using state data on registrants in Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamp programs, my colleague Kim Clark and I found that the work-registration requirement actually increased measured unemployment by about 0.5 to 0.8 percentage points. If this same relationship holds in 2005, this requirement increases the measure of unemployment by 750,000 to 1.2 million people. Without the condition that they look for work, many of these people would not be counted as unemployed. Similarly, unemployment insurance increases the measure of unemployment by inducing people to say that they are job hunting in order to collect benefits.
The second way government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a “reservation wage”—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase that reservation wage |
date and their first kiss - in December 2006 at a holiday-themed rock concert. It's the month that they got engaged while vacationing in Palm Springs. And it will be the month that their six-year relationship finally receives the respect it deserves when they get married in Washington state.
Tomorrow, December 6, Corianton and Keith will join hundreds of other same-sex couples in applying for marriage licenses - and three days later, on December 9, they'll be among the first same-sex couples in the state to get married. The amazing day comes a month after the approval of Referendum 74, which extends the freedom to marry to all loving and committed same-sex couples in the state.
Cori and Keith held a wedding ceremony in August 2012, but they're excited to see their state now grant them the legal respect and recognition - and all of the protections, responsibilities, and dignity that comes with that - that they and so many other loving same-sex couples deserve.
Here, Cori and Keith shared their story with Freedom to Marry using photos from their August wedding ceremony. Read on to learn all about Cori, Keith, and why marriage matters to them. All photos are courtesy of the amazing photographer Kristen Marie Parker.
In December 2009, on the three-year anniversary of their first kiss, Keith proposed to Corianton with a family heirloom ring - the ring that belonged to Keith's mother. They had a long engagement, and then in the summer of 2011, they decided to plan their ceremony for the summer of 2012. They knew that marriages between same-sex couples weren't respected in Washington at the time, but they said they didn't want to let that get in the way. "Marriage is about professing your intentions to your community, and sharing the commitment in a meaningful, celebratory way," Corianton said. "For me, the legality is important and validating, but it's not the point." Even throughout their 2-year engagement, they didn't become domestic partners because, Keith said, "We wanted to hold out for the real deal."
The men were overjoyed when the freedom to marry passed out of both houses of the Washington legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Christine Gregoire in February 2012. "It was thrilling," Cori said. "It felt like we'd chosen the right time to get hitched, and that our awesome state was propelling us forward. It gave us a lot of optimism that the ceremony would be fully legal."
Corianton and Keith celebrated their wedding from August 10-12, 2012 at the Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort in Leavenworth, Washington. "The resort looks and feels like an upscale summer camp, so we did everything there we could in the outdoors to enjoy the beautiful mountain-y setting," Keith said. "Our goal was to throw the best, most immersive three-day party ever," Cori added.
The guest list was rather short: immediate family only, and friends who were close with both grooms. (Later in the month, Cori and Keith had two larger receptions - one for Keith's extended family and other friends in Washington, and one for Cori's extended family and friends in Phoenix, Arizona, where Cori grew up.)
Cori and Keith went all-out with their "upscale summer camp" theme. Their invitations were merit badge handbooks - for which you could earn stamps by seeing the sunrise or going on a nature hike - and the food throughout much of the weekend was barbecue style. "Our dress code for men was 'lumberjack chic,' and 'cocktail party in the woods' for women, and it was amazing to see how people interpreted them," Keith said.
The actual ceremony was performed in a beautiful theatre space, complete with a wall of windows that looked out over the mountains and trees of the resort. Cori and Keith took their vows, said "I Do," and kissed, marking the next step on their lifelong journey.
After their wedding ceremony, the guests stuck with the summer camp vibe and participated in a talent show and dance party - "22 mind-blowing acts!," Keith bragged. Keith and Cori kicked off the show with "All I Want Is You," by Barry Louis Polisar. The talent show was a reference to the couple's love for music - as an Arizona native, Corianton said he was shaped by the state's hardcore punk scene, and through the years, music has always been an important part of both his and Keith's life. "I still don't like Cher, and he still doesn't like Carcass," Cori joked. "But we have a lot of fun exploring the middle ground and seeing live music together." In fact, their very first date - on December 8, 2006, was at a holiday-themed rock show at Seattle's historic Crocodile Cafe. "We watched some bands, posed for photos on the lap of 'Indie Rock Santa,' held hands, and eventually started smooching," Cori recalled.
As they were planning the wedding, Keith and Cori came across an old Bavarian tradition where newlyweds saw through a log to symbolize the future hardships that can be solved with teamwork. "We thought it was a powerful metaphor," Cori said. "Plus, it fit perfectly with our 'lumberjack/summer camp' vibe."
The wedding weekend was full of fun bonding events for the family and friends. On the last day, Keith and Cori rented two giant school buses, which took the party guests to a nearby river, drop them into innertubes, and let them float down the river. "We highly recommend it for future newlyweds," Keith said.
In the months following their wedding, Cori and Keith used their wedding photos to gather support for Referendum 74 on Facebook. And during the actual wedding, they asked guests to make contributions to Washington United for Marriage, the coalition to uphold the freedom to marry in the state.
On Election Night, as the results rolled in and started looking optimistic, Keith and Cori braced themselves for the final tally, which wasn't expected until later that week, since Washington's election functions solely on mail-in ballots. "I was severely cautious," Cori said. "We toasted, danced, and celebrated Obama's victory, but I held out on R-74 for a whole nail-biting day. When Washington United made the call on their website, I finally exhaled and accepted the good news."
Now, Corianton and Keith plan to join couples across Washington in filing for a marriage license tomorrow, on December 6, when the freedom to marry takes effect. They already have an appointment to get married at City Hall on the morning of December 9 - just one day after the six-year anniversary of their first kiss. "The timing couldn't be more perfect," Keith said. "After three separate wedding celebrations, this time we're just going to show up ourselves, without friends or family. We're really excited to share this occasion with all of the other people who will be making history."
Being legally married is important to Cori and Keith - because they understand that words matter. "I love the word 'husband,'" Cori said. "There is no other word that better conveys the dedication, depth, and quality of my relationship with Keith. I'm honored on every level." Keith also reflected that the freedom to marry represents so many important steps forward for the citizens of Washington and other states moving forward on marriage. "We're really proud of our state," he said, adding, "I'm excited that the tide is finally turning away from intolerance."
You can help Freedom to Marry win marriage for same-sex couples nationwide by giving to our newly announced matching grant from Freedom to Marry board member Jordan Roth and his husband Richie Jackson. CLICK HERE to find out how you can be on the right side of history with Jordan, Richie, and Freedom to Marry.
Photos by Kristen Marie Parker.On a side road in the hills between Marion and Morganton, just past the farm supply store and around the bend, a dirt driveway snakes between a cornfield and a tree nursery.
It looks like the type of place you might go for a bluegrass festival or a pig pickin’. But it was here this summer that a team of archaeologists uncovered the site of the oldest European fort in the inland United States. It’s a breakthrough that could shed light on a short-lived period of North Carolina history still shrouded in mystery.
David Moore and his two assistants are here digging. A professor at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, Moore is every bit the archaeologist — a lanky man in his 50s wearing jeans, boots, and a faded blue mechanic’s shirt. Long strands of hair frame a weather-beaten face under a broad-brimmed hat. The answers are in the soils, he says, stooping to scrape the ground with a trowel. He reveals a sandy-colored outline a few yards wide in the middle of a trench of dark mud.
To most people, the trench looks like a well-groomed sand castle. But Moore sees the outline of a moat.
Moore has been digging and scraping these fields since 1986. That’s when, as a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he set out to prove that American Indians had lived and farmed here in the rich bottomlands of the upper Catawba Valley in the 16th century. He’d searched several sites, but many landowners turned down his request to dig on their property. James and Pat Berry were among the few who said yes.
Moore is still here. Every summer. Braving heat, heavy rain, and thunder to slowly fill in the gaps of knowledge about North Carolina before the Lost Colony.
Spanish heritage
The Spanish language feels new to the North Carolina foothills. But its speakers have made their presence known — from La Noticia on the newsstand at the Morganton Food Lion to the garage on College Street converted into a store, Tienda y Tortilleria La Esperanza. That last word, esperanza, means “hope.” For 20 years now, migrants from Mexico and Guatemala have come to the foothills seeking a better life on the poultry farms and in the furniture factories that once covered the landscape. Today, about 16 percent of Morganton’s population is Hispanic.
Long before the English language made its way here, the voices of Spanish soldiers echoed through the hills. They came here from Santa Elena, on what is now Parris Island in South Carolina, where the Spaniards had recently set up colonial operations after ousting the French from Charlesfort. Gov. Pedro Menendez ordered an expedition through the interior to open a route to Spanish colonies in Mexico. More than 120 men in armor with their menacing dogs and matchlock muskets marched along ancient trading trails from town to town. They carried little food and relied on the townspeople along the way. Their leader, Juan Pardo, read a prepared speech at each stop, declaring the natives subjects of Spain. It’s not clear how much, if any, the tribes understood of the Indian language spoken by the translator, a French boy named Rufin, whom the Spaniards had captured at Charlesfort.
The men had hopes of their own. Hopes for silver and gold and the favor of the king. The men moved farther inland up the ever-larger foothills until they saw the ridgeline. Beyond those mountains, they believed, was a quick route to the silver mines of Mexico. But the snowcaps in the distance looked foreboding. They came to the town of Joara and decided to stop for the winter.
Relations with the Indians started off peaceful. The Spaniards ate well. Pardo and his men built a fort and some outbuildings at the edge of the town. They named it Fort San Juan. After a few weeks, Pardo reported back to Santa Elena, leaving around 30 men posted at the fort and Sgt. Hernando Moyano in charge.
Unlike Pardo, Moyano wasn’t one for keeping records. He wrote a letter here and a letter there. He was more interested in the gold, silver, and crystal he had heard were buried in those hills. And that lack of records is why, today, this dig is so painstaking, and so important.
Uncovering the past
Rob Beck has deep roots in these foothills. The land grants for his family’s farms in Burke and McDowell counties date back to King George III in the early 1770s. But he was always interested in what came before. Before the Scots-Irish and German settlers. Before Revolutionary War General Daniel Morgan, who lent his name to the town Morganton. Before the fenced farms and hosiery mills.
People knew about the Indian mounds around the area. They belonged to the loose-knit tribes along the river who, weakened by war, disease, and a century and a half of intensive white settlement, banded together as the Catawba Nation in the mid-1700s. But Beck doesn’t remember hearing much about them in school in the 1970s and 1980s. He learned more by exploring the fields and forests, by picking up arrowheads and fragments of pottery. With each new discovery, he rushed to the McDowell County Public Library to match it with the photos in archaeological tomes.
“It amazed me,” Beck says. “I could find the exact same kind of pottery in those books that I just found in a field in Marion or a field in Morganton.
“It hooked me; it hooked me from a very early age.”
So Beck was excited when he heard that an archaeologist from Chapel Hill planned to work on his aunt Pat and uncle James Berry’s land. Beck watched David Moore dig at the site. Moore quickly found what he was looking for — evidence of a large 16th-century American Indian town.
By 1994, Beck’s early interest in arrowheads had become a career. One January day, he was poking around at the Berry site, dormant since Moore’s work eight years before, when he found what looked like European pottery. Researchers confirmed the pottery as Spanish. Beck called up David Moore, who by then had begun teaching at Warren Wilson. Moore had found some European pottery during his Ph.D. days there, too, though researchers had told him it was 18th-century Moravian.
The two men compared their finds — it was an exact match.
Uprising
It’s not clear why the Indians of Joara agreed to help the Spaniards, Moore says. The memory of Hernando de Soto’s more violent expedition through the valley 20 years before might have made them feel they had no choice. Or they might have believed they were entering into a long-term trading relationship. Whatever the reason, Moyano seems to have forged an alliance of sorts with Chief Joara. The Indians helped him prospect for crystal and gold, and he provided the Indians with military protection. In spring 1567, Moyano even aided their attack on the rival Chisca tribe across the mountains in present-day Tennessee.
But by the end of the year, relations between the Spaniards and the Indians grew tense. Pardo, who had returned to the valley from Santa Elena to colonize townships, heard rumors of Indian plots to resist. Some Spaniards observed that their countrymen in the interior made unreasonable demands for food and had “indiscretions” with Indian women, angering local chiefs. In late November 1567, Pardo left Fort San Juan for the last time. By that spring, reports reached Santa Elena of an uprising and the destruction of interior forts. Only one Spaniard survived the attack.
Euphoria
Since the discovery of Spanish pottery in 1994, Beck, Moore, and a host of other archaeologists have been gradually digging up new information about what happened during those 18 months more than four centuries ago. In the late 1990s, along with the late Thomas Hargrove, they found evidence of the underground remains of four burned buildings where they now believe the Spanish soldiers lived. Digging deeper, Moore and Beck, now joined by Tulane professor Chris Rodning, have found glass beads, chain mail armor, olive jars, and wooden timbers — all clues to daily life.
This summer, the team set out to follow that outline of light-colored soil. They thought it was the southern boundary of an Indian mound. On what was supposed to be the last day of excavation in July, Beck says, they noticed the soil didn’t curve where an Indian mound should. Tests showed the ground below was deeper than expected.
Chester DePratter, an archaeologist from the University of South Carolina who had excavated the Spanish forts on Santa Elena and the French Charlesfort, happened to be at the Berry site. He said the details looked the same as those on the coastal forts.
“That meant the world,” Beck says.
More digging, and the team discovered an 111/2-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep moat.
“There was a lot of euphoria when we realized we had what we thought we had,” Beck says.
A mystery still
The discovery of the fort opens new questions. Just how big was it? What happened within its walls? Did the Indians build a mound on top of the burned fort as a way of reasserting their claim to the land? The team will spend the coming years looking for answers.
Some answers we know. Moyano never found that gold. Pardo never returned to the interior. The Spaniards abandoned Santa Elena in 1587, retreating to St. Augustine, Florida, and leaving Carolina coasts open for other colonial powers. That same year, English ships landed on Roanoke Island.
“Had [the Spaniards] been able to hold those forts for a few years longer, they would have attacked the British when they landed,” Moore says. “Just as they attacked the French.”
¿Y si? What if?
Exploring Joara Since 2001, David Moore and his colleagues have led a summer archaeological field school at the site, which allows students to experience a dig firsthand. The Exploring Joara Foundation sponsors the school and is also working on a public archaeology site at the Catawba Meadows Park in Morganton. It will include replicas of Catawba Indian town buildings and living history demonstrations. For more information, visit exploringjoara.org.
The archaeological site is closed during the winter and early spring, but will reopen in June. For information on available dates to visit, go to exploringjoara.org.Illustration by Marta Parszeniew
Most progressive-minded people share an inherent belief that education should be free, a universal human right rather than the privilege of a wealthy few. For the left, it's an article of faith. This is the way we progress in life, enhancing our enjoyment of the great things that the world has to offer. It's how we live a more enlightened existence as a free and informed citizen in a participatory democracy. And it doesn't stop when you're turfed out of school. Forgive the sad old bastard cliché, but yes, I was the first from my family to go to college, a circumstance I shared with many of that punk generation. Like urchins in a candy shop, we swaggered around our campuses in those pre-AIDS days, fortified by the notion that we were pioneers, breaking the ossified class structure of the stuffy old UK.
The right wing have seldom held education in such high regard. Of course, it's natural that some elites aspire to excellence, but a universally educated population asking questions about the world we live in, and the ownership and control of its resources? Not what they had in mind. Their preference was, and remains, a dumb, compliant population easily brought to rage or fear by some menace flagged up through their mainstream media, which supposedly "threatens our way of life." It's little wonder that Donald Trump "loves the poorly educated."
Yet elites in western society could tolerate, even support the growth of universal education, as long as capitalism was buoyant, producing high rates of economic growth. And in Britain, following the post-war settlement of the welfare state, they did exactly this. We had the great nationalized industries of coal, steel, and rail, the NHS, and most of all, education reform. There was the growth of comprehensive education, a meritocratic idea that the schooling system shouldn't slavishly mirror the class structure, that there should simply be schools where kids went to learn, irrespective of wealth or status.
From this came the expansion of higher education. After the Second World War, most Local Education Authorities (LEAs) paid students' tuition fees and provided a maintenance grant for living costs. The 1962 Education Act made the state payment of fees and means-tested grants compulsory. I had my fees taken care of and was given a full grant, which was about two-thirds of what my dad made from a 35-hour working week. And I could get a summer job. Those hellish strike-ridden days of late-1970s Britain, in a full employment, high wage economy, with strong unions and good working conditions: yes please. In my youth, old people moaned and told us that we were lucky and had never had it so good. Only the most brain-dead are seriously making that contention to today's young people.
Student protesters at UCL. Photo Chris Bethell.
Now we're in decline from that high watermark of industrial capitalism. The former juggernaut is a decrepit and wheezy old banger, not quite on its last legs, but certainly no longer possessing the dynamism needed for sustained high levels of economic growth. When the attack on the post-war settlement came, the bad guys, those supporting wealth and privilege, won the class war and the battle of ideas. But the rhetoric of a property-owning democracy didn't last long, as the free market capitalism that was supposed to accompany it was supplanted by a more corporate, risk-aversive mutation. In Britain, New Labour not only accepted the main tenets of neoliberalism, but, just as Bill Clinton's administration had done before him in the USA, Gordon Brown listened to the bankers, ending the division between high street and investment banking, and paving the way for the 2008 crisis.
As with the economy, so too with higher education; Thatcher might have set up the Student Loans Company, but it was Blair's government who introduced tuition fees with the Teaching and Higher Education Act of 1998. This was followed by the draconian act of 2004, which increased fees from £1,000 [$1,400] to £3,000 [$4,300] pounds. Since then, paid higher education has remained a political consensus in English politics (a Liberal Democrat pledge to abolish fees when in coalition partnership with the Conservatives was swiftly reneged upon), though not in Scotland, where remarkably, in the devolved parliament, the SNP administration still supports free tuition.
Cambridge University students protest against university top-up fees in 2004. Photo: Stefan Rousseau / PA Archive/Press Association Images
In 2014, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicted that world growth will slow to 2.7 percent between now and 2060. Some economists reckon that this is wildly optimistic, and quite a few speculate that it will be lower, but the one consensus in both the mid and long term is that growth is going to be slow.
For these four decades of stagnation to be consolidated, Europe and the USA each need to take in 50 million immigrants. Without them, the tax base shrinks to such an extent that countries simply go broke. Nothing in life is certain, but for the foreseeable future, logic suggests a stagnating western economy, dominated by low-paid, unfulfilling jobs in personal services.
So student loans and debts are not an incidental strategy. They represent the starting point of inducting people into a life package of debt-servitude, which includes mortgage and car loans. In more innocent and economically buoyant times, we used to call this credit. In the words of leading American-Canadian critic and social theorist, Henry Giroux: "Higher education is viewed by the apostles of market fundamentalism as a space for producing profits, educating a docile labor force, and a powerful institution for indoctrinating students into accepting the obedience demanded by the corporate order."
When the US media, such as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, discuss student debt, it's from a neoliberal perspective, with the question being: how can politicians prevent the banks from losing money on these debts? The invariable answer: by tightening the screws on the debtors. The banks got the government to guarantee such loans, which gives politicians the leverage to contend that they must protect the taxpayer and make these shiftless students pay. Even if the taxpayers in question are often the parents of the indebted students.
Barack Obama's "socialism" is to blame for student loans. Photo via Wikimedia.
The Wall Street Journal recently described student loans as just another example of Obama's socialism. A fairly ludicrous contention, as the American state neither runs the education system nor provides its financing. As in the UK, tuition fees in the US have risen steeply over the last decade. The socialism is reserved for the banks who benefit from this and other scams, as they are deemed "too big to fail" by Anglo-American capitalism. For everybody actually in the education system, the story is one of privatization and financialization.
In response to the debt crisis, the UK has borrowed an American strategy: selling off student debts at a fraction of their value, to private companies like CarVal Investors and Erudio. The latter is a partner of Arrow Global, a specialist debt recovery firm which buys soured loans from banks and credit card companies. The CEO of this company was quoted as saying: "This is an important step towards delivering this year's financial goals and positioning the business for future growth." This means that a student's debt is more than just a business opportunity, it's the raison d'être of the companies the government awards these contracts to. In the USA, as in the UK, student debt is a major new growth area for banking revenues. With no student bankruptcy permitted, this is akin to a low risk revenue stream for the financial industry, and now second in size only to mortgage debt.
The system owns, and can monetize, the potential of students.
So now the system owns, and can monetize, the potential of students. The war on the poor is long won; welfare cuts are just grinding the defeated into the dust. Now the more insidious assault is on the middle-classes, as the one percent, represented by the government, bankers, and financial institutions, expropriate their wealth. And primarily, they do this through the system of higher education.
It's in the DNA of people from modest means to assert that education is the key to the good life. This is no longer the case, but you would never know that from a university prospectus, and its pictures of toothsome, smiling students lounging in cafeterias, hunched over a laptop in a library, playing sport, or clad in graduation gowns and hats, clutching their degrees. The laudable desire for knowledge and training is converted into propaganda for a corrupt higher education system that lures people onto courses (often of questionable use to the individual) and off the employment register, while perpetuating the assets-to-debt swapping regime. The scam is straightforward. Parents send their kid to college, either through savings, or now, as is more likely, through taking on debt themselves. The student then racks up more debt, well into their post-college working life. When the parents downsize, retire, or expire, what would have been an inheritance for the offspring then goes straight to the bank to pay off those debts.
Research commissioned by the Sutton Trust in 2014 tells us that most citizens will still be paying back loans from their student era into their 40s and 50s, and many will never clear these debts. So, putting that another way, if you accept the concept of student debt as the new social indenture, you are, in all probability, in a long-term, flatlining economy, signing up to be in indebted servitude all your life, simply through enrolling in college.
The view from the top of Millbank on the day it was stormed by angry students in 2010. Photo by Henry Langston.
Over the next three decades, the Office of Budget Responsibility estimates that the cost to the UK in paying off student debts will rocket to billions of pounds. They are projected to almost equal the entire higher education budget. Interest payments on outstanding loans will rise, bringing the cost to almost one percent of the GDP. In 2009, an Independent Higher Education Commission described the current fees-and-funding system as "unsustainable," leaving three-quarters of students unable to pay off loans.
More than 40 million Americans are stuck with some type of student debt. Altogether, they owe more than $1.3 trillion. Some 25 to 30 percent of graduate income goes to pay this off. When graduates have to pay such a high proportion of their wages to the banks, this causes debt deflation, resulting in shrinking markets and rising unemployment.
Paradoxically, the overwhelming debt many graduates face leaves them unable to wait for lucrative employment, and instead taking lower-paid jobs in order to stop their repayments and interest from ballooning further. As with the UK, debt's impact extends beyond the students themselves, burdening their families for decades. This threatens the ability of current and future generations to build the successful careers and businesses that contribute to growth, and to buy the houses, cars, and other goods needed to sustain a dynamic consumer economy. It delays young people leaving home and getting married, and older generations saving for their retirement, building tension and potential conflict within households.
Debt and depression have long been associated. Now a recent study at Northwestern University has uncovered debt's negative relationship with physical as well as mental health. "There had been a fairly strong and consistent link between debt and depression, debt and thoughts of suicide," Elizabeth Sweet, the study's lead author, explained in Time magazine. "But very little had been done to look at the impact on physical health." Following a group of young adults over a 15-year period, the study accessed 8,400 people's data on both personal debt and health. They focused on each individual's total debt except home mortgages, including student loans (which make up the greatest proportion of non-mortgage debt, especially for young people), credit cards, car loans, and medical or legal bills. People who owed more suffered higher levels of stress and depression and poorer overall health, particularly if the debt was more than the assets they owned (homes as assets and mortgages as debts were discounted from the equation). Those who subjectively judged their debts to exceed the value of their assets were also more likely to have higher blood pressure. This effect is significant, as even a small rise in blood pressure can strongly increase the risk of stroke and hypertension. Debt literally is a killer.
Student protesters in Birmingham in 2010. The Lib Dems backtracked on their promise to abolish fees when they went into coalition with the Tories. Photo David Jones / PA.
Debt destroys the carefree culture of being a student. At a time when people should be enjoying the beauty of irresponsibility before a lifetime of it, so many young people are now fearful and defeated, old before their time. Like generations past, they should be worrying about how they'll be able to adjust to a more structured life, not how they'll pay off the banker middle-man. I personally would never have gone to college, knowing that I'd leave under such a cloud of debt. I'd have done something much more rational and economically sensible, like dealt drugs.
We are so enmeshed in this global economic system, and our role as debtor nation, it becomes very difficult to see how we extract ourselves from it. Politicians, if not compromised by the lobby system, tend to be creatures of the present rather than visionaries; they are governed by the election cycle and the next set of polls. There is little currency for any of them in reminding their electorate of the bigger inconvenient truth, namely that we have to prepare for a world without paid work or profits.
I was the first from my family to go to college, a circumstance I shared with many of that punk generation. Like urchins in a sweet shop, we swaggered around our campuses, fortified by the notion that we were pioneers, breaking the class structure.
However, these are testing times for the established order. When a system is failing, people will take action, primarily out of desperation as no other course seems to present itself. In the US, Debt Collective—a remnant of the Occupy Wall Street movement—has helped thousands of debtors organize and go on strike, refusing to pay back over $182 million in student debt.
In the UK, the IFS report found that almost three-quarters of English college graduates will have at least some of their loan written off. In other words, the banks know that their own system doesn't even work. Of course, that won't stop them from continuing with it.
But the greatest threat to debt culture hasn't manifested yet, though it's surely on the cards at some point: that young people will simply do the arithmetic, and decide, en masse, not to go to college. For middle-class or ambitious working-class kids, it seems counterintuitive to tell their parents: I don't want to go to college. But what was once a rite-of-passage, a great social chapter in a person's life, has come to be a process by which the bank seizes both their parent's assets and their own future ones. The logic is sound: if a shit, low-paying job in a tanking economy is the best option anyway, at least leave me (what's left of) the equity on your house. Yes, this late capitalist dystopia is very far from Thatcher's 'property owning democracy.' I often wonder whether she would be delighted that the elites are creaming it off, or saddened that the modest aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie and skilled workers, which she encouraged, are now being crushed.
It's possible that a decline in student enrollment will render university campuses derelict, littering the green belt like abandoned ghost malls.
All this points to a future where more people will be educated through the network. A Wikipedia of free higher education, working on the principles of the Open University, must surely be about to come of age as a mass phenomenon. Learners don't need university bureaucracies, now reduced to meek tools of government, banks, and other corporate sponsors, offering a proscribed and limited (and in most cases vocationally useless) educational experiences. In the future, probably only engineering, science medicine, and fine art will be taught in traditional physical college locations. Already some of the grand old Victorian university buildings in UK cities have been sold off for apartments and hotels, replaced by cheaper, more functional constructions in greenfield sites. This is as much about the financial pressures on these institutions as it is about modernization. And it's possible that a decline in student enrollment will render many big, expensive university campuses derelict, littering the green belt like abandoned 'ghost malls.' Of course, the very oldest and most prestigious universities will survive, as the wealthy parents of those students are not paying for 'education' as such, but for access to the influential network of the ruling elite.
For people who worry about missing out on the social side through having their college experience online and in study groups, they should remember that Europe's railways, Ibiza, Miami beach, and India aren't going anywhere. We will still be allowed to have adventures, as well as just study, in our networked peer groups. Call me a deluded optimist, but I'll never lose faith in young people's ability to find ways to get drunk and fuck around. And if people are looking for an authoritative institution to vent their spleen on; don't worry, the banks and their political message boys will still be there, though hopefully with a greatly declining influence over our lives.
Irvine's fee for this piece has been donated to The Junction, the-junction.org. His new book The Blade Artist is out now published by Penguin.LAWRENCE � Kansans exhausted by years of state government budget emergencies driven by income tax cuts and economic weakness in key industries are eager for stability that places them in a more aspirational frame of mind, forum participants said Thursday.
Economists, educators, lobbyists and retiring legislators gathered at the University of Kansas to share thoughts about implications of state fiscal policy undercut by revenue shortfalls and to offer insights into how they imagined Kansas� future.
Dominating the discussion were budget woes linked to individual income tax cuts and an income tax exemption for 330,000 business owners adopted by Gov. Sam Brownback and conservative Republican allies, and subsequent sales tax hikes to inject cash into the treasury. More spending cuts or tax increases are on the horizon as voters head to the polls Nov. 8.
�We�re far less able to be aspirational today than we were at times in my 14-year career,� said Rep. Don Hill, an Emporia Republican not seeking re-election. �It has everything to do with stabilizing the budget.�
Tom Bell, president of the Kansas Hospital Association, said lack of tax revenue hindered a campaign to expand Medicaid eligibility to 150,000 low-income Kansans under the Affordable Care Act. About 30 states have adopted expansion programs, but Kansas has not.
An estimated $1.5 billion in federal aid could have flowed into a state health care system layered with financially struggling hospitals, health departments and emergency services.
�I�m hopeful we�ll have a bigger discussion next session,� said Bell, who anticipates election in 2016 of more moderate Republicans and Democrats.
Randall Allen, executive director of the Kansas Association of Counties, said pushing down the cost of government to municipal entities was driving interest in functional consolidation of services. He said the state was so desperate for cash that support for indigent burials was cut off, indicating something was �terribly wrong� with the state�s finances.
Congress needs to change federal law to give states power necessary to collect sales tax on internet transactions that could deliver $300 million annually to the state�s coffer, Allen said.
Policy and financial restraints imposed on K-12 public school districts during the Brownback administration have �dramatically hurt� capacity of districts to deliver education to children, said Sally Cauble, a Dodge City member of the Kansas State Board of Education.
Reduction in the number of school counselors and librarians � incorrectly viewed as out-of-classroom extras by some politicians � diminishes the academic enterprise, she said.
�I believe it�s a lack of knowledge about how education is run,� Cauble said. �We can no longer meet the needs of kids we have in our schools.�
Rep. Tom Moxley, R-Council Grove, said the Legislature and Brownback had to reshape tax policy to deliver important government services and get serious about making expenditures reflect economic realities. Despite the governor�s explanations for modest economic growth, Moxley said, the state�s voters were eager to end the era of jumping from one state budget calamity to the next.
�There is an avalanche from BS mountain. They�re ready to move,� Moxley said of voters. �Taxpayers are tired of being hit. We have one of the most unfair tax systems in |
— and make an impact on your own!”BY: Follow @LizWFB
NBC News has added an "editor’s note" to its report in which Andrea Mitchell called Juanita Broaddrick rape claims "discredited," after revelations that the network deleted that word from its video.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday that NBC News had stealth-edited Mitchell’s segment in May to remove the line where Mitchell said Broaddrick’s claim that Bill Clinton raped her had been "discredited."
On Tuesday, the NBC News website made no mention that the video had been altered.
"Donald Trump is getting some heat from Hillary Clinton’s campaign after using the term ‘rape’ while talking about a long-denied allegation of sexual misconduct by former President Bill Clinton," the caption for the report read.
But by Wednesday afternoon, the piece had been updated with an "editor’s note."
"Editor's Note: In the original version of this report, we referred to Ms. Broaddrick's allegations as ‘discredited,’" NBC News said. "While questions have been raised about her account, upon review, on May 19, we removed that word."
Many questioned Mitchell’s bias after she used the word "discredited" to describe Broaddrick, who says that Bill Clinton raped her while he was the attorney general in Arkansas in 1978.Frequently Asked Questions about Fallout 4 by Bethesda Softworks.
Contents show]
Production and release details Edit
General Edit
What is Fallout 4? Edit
Fallout 4 is futuristic post-apocalyptic action-RPG set in an alternate universe that began to radically diverge from our own shortly after World War II, culminating in a global nuclear war in 2077 that created the post-apocalyptic setting of the Fallout games. The Fallout universe is thematically and stylistically inspired by the culture and technology of the 1950s and pulp science fiction.
Fallout 4 is a sequel to the games Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout 3.
When is Fallout 4 going to be released? Edit
Fallout 4 was released on November 10, 2015.
Is Fallout 4 currently in production? Edit
Currently Fallout 4 VR, a virtual reality remake of Fallout 4, is in production.
According to Bethesda's Pete Hines, Fallout 4 was "basically done" prior to its reveal announcement on June 3, 2015, and the bulk of the remaining work to be done on the game before its November release involved polishing and bug fixing.[1]
Fallout 4 is speculated to be the game Bethesda had in pre-production since at least August 2010.[2]
Who developed and published Fallout 4? Edit
Fallout 4 is developed by Bethesda Game Studios and was published by Bethesda Softworks.[3]
Todd Howard led the team developing Fallout 4, which is the same team that developed Fallout 3. The exact list of developers is unknown, although it will likely include many of the same people who worked on Fallout 3.
What is Fallout 4's setting? Edit
Fallout 4 is set in the region around Boston, Massachusetts, known in the Fallout universe as The Commonwealth.[4]
While the opening sequence of the game occurs in the year 2077, just before the onset of the Great War, the main portion of the game takes place 210 years later in 2287.[5]
Who is Fallout 4's player character? Edit
The player character is the Sole Survivor of Vault 111.
Will any characters from previous Fallout games appear? Edit
Possibly. It was thought that Erik Todd Dellums, the voice of Three Dog, may have appeared due to a tease by the voice actor in January 2013 that his voice, and potentially the character, may appear in a future title.[6] But this was proven to be false in a tweet by the actor saying that he was surprised that Bethesda had finished voice recordings.[7] Madison Li returns from Fallout 3, and Robert Joseph MacCready from Fallout 3 also returns.
Is Fallout 4 an MMORPG? Edit
No. Like the previous 3D Fallout games, Fallout 4 is a First Person Shooter Action RPG.
What resolution and frame rate will Fallout 4 run at? Edit
Console versions will be capped at 1080p and 30 FPS. PC version is capped at 60.
What will Fallout 4 be rated? Edit
Fallout 4 has a provisional rating of PEGI 18 in Europe. In the United States, it will be rated M for mature and in Australia, it will be rated MA15+.
Did Bethesda really invite fan suggestions in mid-2013 for Fallout 4? Edit
No.
For years the Bethesda Forums have maintained an "Official" suggestion thread for fan ideas. The purpose of this thread is not to solicit fan ideas, but organize those that are coming in anyway.
“ This topic is for a friendly discussion of ideas and suggestions for Fallout 4. This thread is so that we can keep all the discussion in one place. ” — Bethesda Forums boilerplate comment put in every single suggestion thread
As per Bethesda Forum policy, all threads are closed at 200 posts. Being a popular topic, a similar topic is posted again almost immediately after the previous ones closure, by a forum moderator.
All forum moderators are volunteer members of the forum community, and are not Bethesda/Zenimax staff. They do not speak for any Bethesda/Zenimax group company in any capacity (the exceptions are those identified as community managers, such as Gstaff and Nick Breckton).
Sadly, this story has been alleged a number of times by an online news site clearly unaware of how the Bethesda forums work.by Joshua Russo
Editor-In-Chief
November’s Games with Gold lineup has been announced
Murdered: Soul Suspect and Super Dungeon Bros are Xbox One’s Games with Gold for the month of November. Also available through backwards compatibility are two Xbox 360 titles, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.
Super Dungeon Bros will be available to download during all of November. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition will be downloadable from November 1 to November 15. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon will be free from November 16 to November 30. Murdered: Soul Suspect will be available from November 16 until December 15. In total, November’s Games with Gold have a retail value of over $60.
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commentsStory highlights Gardner said white nationalists aren't a part of anyone's political base
He said Trump needs to speak out against white supremacy in the same way he has about Islamist extremism
Washington (CNN) Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that President Donald Trump needed to make a forceful statement against white supremacy.
"This is not a time for vagaries," Gardner said. "This isn't a time for innuendo or to allow room to be read between the lines. This is a time to lay blame -- to lay blame on bigotry, to lay blame on white supremacists, on white nationalism and on hatred. And that needs to be said."
Gardner praised Trump for calling out Islamist terrorism across the globe and said the President needed to do the same with domestic terrorists motivated by racism.
"This President needs to do exactly that today," Gardner said. "Call this white supremacism, this white nationalism evil, and let the country hear it, let the world hear it. It's something that needs to come from the Oval Office, and this White House needs to do it today."
As violence unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, white nationalists clashed with counterprotesters, and a man rammed a car through a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 others, authorities said. Trump gave a statement Saturday pointing to "many sides" as being responsible for the violence; but while he denounced bigotry, he did not condemn white supremacy.
Read MoreDynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends announced for PS3, Vita
Update to add new playable characters.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends is coming to PlayStation 3 and PS Vita in Japan on November 28, Tecmo Koei revealed in this week’s Famitsu.
On PlayStation 3, the game will cost 5,040 yen at retail and 4,500 yen via digital download. A PlayStation 3 set also including the original Dynasty Warriors 8 will cost 7,560 yen at retail and 6,600 yen via digital download. On PS Vita, the game will cost 7,140 yen at retail and 6,300 yen via digital download.
In addition to new characters Chen Gong and Zhu Ran, the game will offer multiplayer, downloadable content, cross-play, and cross-save support. If Scenarios, an enhanced Commander Mode, new actions, and an online ranking are also present.
Thanks, Game Nyarth.Cigarette tax increases and hikes to alcohol prices are some of the measures Finance Minister Ken Krawetz introduced Wednesday to keep his $11.5-billion budget balanced.
Finance Minister Ken Krawetz released his $11.5 billion spring budget on Wednesday. (Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly)
"This budget not only balances the books, it balances the priorities of Saskatchewan people," Kravetz said. "It controls spending while making key investments."
Smokers will pay an extra $1 for a pack of 25 cigarettes, effective midnight tonight.
Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority is increasing its markup rates by about 3 per cent, effective April 1.
That means, for example, 12 beers will cost $24.28, up 29 cents. A bottle of vodka that now goes for $25.99 will cost 50 cents more.
Corporate tax cut deferred
Although so-called'sin taxes' are going up, generally, tax rates will stay the same in the Saskatchewan Party government's sixth budget.
That's good news for people worried about a hike, but bad news for those expecting a cut, like business operators who thought a corporate tax rate reduction of two percentage points would begin this year, as previously promised.
The province says that cut is still coming, just not this year. The rate stays at 12 per cent.
The province's ethanol grants will be phased out — this year, the $24-million-a-year subsidy will be cut to $16 million a year.
Another change is coming to the uranium industry — the royalty system will be overhauled with a view to spurring production, the province says.
Spending up 3%
Overall spending for the fiscal year that begins April 1 is expected to increase 3.1 per cent from last year's budget.
Revenue is projected to be $11.6 billion, resulting in a surplus of $149 million (on a summary account basis, which includes Crown corporations).
Soft prices for oil, gas and potash mean resource revenue is expected to be down by almost $500 million this year, but surging tax revenue more than compensates.
Individual income tax remains the province's biggest cash cow, with more than $2.4 billion expected to flow into the coffers.
The government plans to take in $197 million from Crown corporations, compared to the $153 million budgeted last year (although that number is now forecast to be $273 million).
$4.84B for health
Health care remains the biggest expense for the province and this year, the bill is increasing to a record $4.84 billion.
Among the programs getting more is the surgical initiative to reduce wait times — about $10 million will be added to bring the budget to $70.5 million. However, the overall hike to health spending — 3.5 per cent — is considerably less than in previous years.
Schools expecting big enrolment jump
Getting a boost is the school system — pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 — which the province says is undergoing significant enrolment increases for the first time in 40 years. It's allocated $17 million to be distributed to school divisions that see an increase in students.
The province says it's exploring its options for building schools to meet the demand of more children entering the system.
In advanced education, it's more of a mixed bag.
The University of Regina, for example, had sought a 5 per cent increase in its operating grant, but will get only 2 per cent more. It's started laying off sessional lecturers and expects to hike tuition more than 5 per cent.
Debt picture mixed
Government debt is expected to stay the same next year — $3.8 billion — but when Crown debt is included, the total will rise from $9.3 billion to $10.1 billion.
Program Note: Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is scheduled to do an interview on the budget Thursday on The Morning Edition with CBC Radio Host Sheila Coles, at 7:15 a.m.
The budget makes a number of assumptions about the economy: GDP growth will be 2.6 per cent, inflation will be 2.2 per cent and the price of a barrel of oil will average $92.84 US per barrel (West Texas Intermediate Crude).
NDP finance critic Trent Wotherspoon said the budget offloads too many things to future generations, including public-private parnterships to build hospitals, schools and roads.
"It's a buy-now, pay-later scheme that will cost taxpayers much more through the long-run," he said. "This is certainly in part why we're calling this a credit card budget."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Wait. That's been used before. But, with apologies to Dickens, it fits. The Pac-12 weekend was a tale of one division, two teams, two cities, two quarterbacks, and it was a day of thrills and it was a day of misery.
The plot certainly thickened in the Pac-12's South Division on Saturday, but not necessarily in a good way.
A week after posting a gritty upset at Stanford, USC was humiliated at Boston College, while UCLA cobbled together a win over Texas behind scrappy, ebullient backup QB Jerry Neuheisel. Neuheisel's services were required because Heisman Trophy candidate Brett Hundley was knocked out of the game in the first quarter with an elbow injury. His status remains uncertain, though there was reasonable hope based on initial reports that his injury wasn't serious.
USC's shocking loss to Boston College underscored the vulnerability within the Pac-12 South division. Winslow Townson/Getty Images
Our second city is Tempe, Arizona, where UCLA will be on Thursday, Sept. 25, squaring off with defending South Division champion Arizona State, which beat Colorado on Saturday but also lost its star senior quarterback, Taylor Kelly, who beat out Hundley for second-team All-Pac-12 last year. Seeing Kelly on crutches due to a foot injury -- and his body language -- probably won't fuel great expectations that he will be ready for the Bruins.
The UCLA-Arizona State game was one we eyeballed in the preseason as a major measuring stick in the battle for the South. A significant part of the appeal was the quarterback battle. That hasn't changed, only now the intrigue is whether it will be Neuheisel for UCLA and Mike Bercovici for Arizona State. A week ago, that quarterback news would have heavily favored the Sun Devils. While Bercovici isn't the runner Kelly is, he's got one of the best arms in the conference and is well-versed in the Sun Devils offense. He is expected to win the starting job as a fifth-year senior next fall. Neuheisel was widely viewed as a career backup with a well-known father -- former UCLA QB and coach Rick Neuheisel -- but his second-half performance against the Longhorns suggested he can be more than a rudimentary game manager.
Both teams have an off week, when they can either get healthy or retool their plans. The stakes continue to be high, perhaps more so after USC threw up on itself with a wet-noodle performance at Boston College. While a nonconference game doesn't affect the Trojans' Pac-12 standing, it certainly made them look extremely vulnerable heading into a much-needed bye week. Other than USC fans, the most miserable folks watching that game surely root for Stanford, which probably can't believe it lost to the Trojans just a week before.
What this implosion and these injuries reveal in a wider sense is vulnerability in the South. In the preseason, UCLA looked like a decisive South favorite. Then USC made a statement with a win over the Cardinal. Arizona State was lurking with a great offense and a questionable defense. At this point, however, none of these three teams is scaring anyone. And don't look now, but Arizona and Utah remain unbeaten and have shown flashes that suggest they might be factors in a divisional race that previously seemed limited to the aforementioned troika.
The Wildcats play host to California on Saturday. Lo and behold, the Bears also are unbeaten, and this game suddenly possesses some potential meaning it didn't seem to have in the preseason. If Cal gets the upset, it can fully erase last season's misery and start thinking bowl game. If Arizona gets the win, it will be 4-0 and eyeballing the Top 25 with a visit to No. 2 Oregon looming on Thursday, Oct. 2.
Arizona appears suspect on defense, but the offense, with impressive redshirt freshman QB Anu Solomon, a good O-line, deep corps of receivers and breakout freshman running back Nick Wilson, will make the Wildcats a threat to any foe.
Utah visits Michigan on Saturday. While the Wolverines don't look like they'll be hailing in much victory this season, a Utes win would certainly raise more than a few eyebrows. While Utah's trouble hasn't been in nonconference games since joining the Pac-12, a 3-0 start would hint they are not a South afterthought, particularly if the offense continues to shine with QB Travis Wilson.
While Oregon's win over Michigan State coupled with Stanford's loss to USC only boosted the Ducks' status as North Division favorites, the South intrigue has seemingly spiderwebbed since the beginning of the season. The race appears more wide open and complicated. UCLA's visit to Arizona State remains a major measuring stick, but it's just as likely either team would sacrifice that game -- as horrible as that sounds -- to know it will get its starting quarterback back healthy for the rest of the season.The image caption generation model. (source: Shannon Shih from Machine Learning at Berkeley. Horse Image sourced from MS COCO.)
Attention readers: We invite you to access the corresponding Python code and iPython notebooks for this article on GitHub.
Image caption generation models combine recent advances in computer vision and machine translation to produce realistic image captions using neural networks. Neural image caption models are trained to maximize the likelihood of producing a caption given an input image, and can be used to generate novel image descriptions. For example, the following are possible captions generated using a neural image caption generator trained on the MS COCO data set.
Figure 1. Credit: Raul Puri, with images sourced from MS COCO data set.
In this article, we will walk through an intermediate-level tutorial on how to train an image caption generator on the Flickr30k data set using an adaptation of Google’s Show and Tell model. We use the TensorFlow framework to construct, train, and test our model because it’s relatively easy to use and has a growing online community.
Why caption generation?
Recent successes in applying deep neural networks to computer vision and natural language processing tasks have inspired AI researchers to explore new research opportunities at the intersection of these previously separate domains. Caption generation models have to balance an understanding of both visual cues and natural language.
The intersection of these two traditionally unrelated fields has the possibility to effect change on a wide scale. While there are some straightforward applications of this technology, such as generating summaries for YouTube videos or captioning unlabeled images, more creative applications can drastically improve the quality of life for a wide cross section of the population. Similar to how traditional computer vision seeks to make the world more accessible and understandable for computers, this technology has the potential to make our world more accessible and understandable for us humans. It can serve as a tour guide, and can even serve as a visual aid for daily life, such as in the case of the Horus wearable device from the Italian AI firm Eyra.
Some assembly required
Before we begin, we’ll need to do some housekeeping.
First, you will need to install Tensorflow. If this is your first time working with Tensorflow, we recommend that you first review the following article: Hello, TensorFlow! Building and training your first TensorFlow model.
You will need the pandas, opencv2, and Jupyter libraries to run the associated code. However, to simplify the install process we highly recommend that you follow the Docker install instructions on our associated GitHub repo.
You will also need to download the image embeddings and image captions for the Flickr30k data set. Download links are also provided on our GitHub repo.
Now, let's begin!
The image caption generation model
Figure 2. Credit: Shannon Shih from Machine Learning at Berkeley. Horse image sourced from MS COCO.
At a high-level, this is the model we will be training. Each image will be encoded by a deep convolutional neural network into a 4,096 dimensional vector representation. A language generating RNN, or recurrent neural network, will then decode that representation sequentially into a natural language description.
Caption generation as an extension of image classification
Image classification is a computer vision task with a lot of history and many strong models behind it. Classification requires models that can piece together relevant visual information about the shapes and objects present in an image, to place that image into an object category. Machine learning models for other computer vision tasks such as object detection and image segmentation build on this by not only recognizing when information is present, but also by learning how to interpret 2D space, reconcile the two understandings, and determine where an object's information is distributed in the image. For caption generation, this raises two questions:
How can we build upon the success of image classification models, in retrieving important information from images? How can our model learn to reconcile an understanding of language, with an understanding of images?
Leveraging transfer learning
We can take advantage of pre-existing models to help caption images. Transfer learning allows us to take the data transformations learned by neural networks trained on different tasks and apply them to our data. In our case, the VGG-16 image classification model takes in 224x224 pixel images and produces a 4,096 dimensional feature vector useful for categorizing images.
We can take the representation (known as the image embedding) from the VGG-16 model and use it to train the rest of our model. For the scope of this article, we have abstracted away the architecture of VGG-16 and have pre-computed the 4,096 dimensional features to speed up training.
Loading the VGG image features and image captions is relatively straightforward:
def get_data ( annotation_path, feature_path ): annotations = pd. read_table ( annotation_path, sep ='\t ', header = None, names = [ 'image', 'caption' ]) return np. load ( feature_path, 'r' ), annotations [ 'caption' ]. values
Understanding captions
Now that we have an image representation, we need our model to learn to decode that representation into an understandable caption. Due to the serial nature of text, we leverage recurrence in an RNN/LSTM network (to learn more, read "Understanding LSTM Networks"). These networks are trained to predict the next word in a series given previous words and the image representation.
Long short-term memory (LSTM) cells allow the model to better select what information to use in the sequence of caption words, what to remember, and what information to forget. TensorFlow provides a wrapper function to generate an LSTM layer for a given input and output dimension.
To transform words into a fixed-length representation suitable for LSTM input, we use an embedding layer that learns to map words to 256 dimensional features (or word-embeddings). Word-embeddings help us represent our words as vectors, where similar word-vectors are semantically similar. To learn more about how word-embeddings capture the relationships between different words, check out "Capturing semantic meaning using deep learning."
In the VGG-16 image classifier, the convolutional layers extract a 4,096 dimensional representation to pass through a final softmax layer for classification. Because the LSTM cells expect 256 dimensional textual features as input, we need to translate the image representation into the representation used for the target captions. To do this, we utilize another embedding layer that learns to map the 4,096 dimensional image features into the space of 256 dimensional textual features.
Building and training the model
All together, this is what the Show and Tell Model looks like:
In this diagram, {s 0, s 1,..., s N } represent the words of the caption we are trying to predict and {w e s 0, w e s 1,..., w e s N -1 } are the word embedding vectors for each word. The outputs {p1, p2,..., pN} of the LSTM are probability distributions generated by the model for the next word in the sentence. The model is trained to minimize the negative sum of the log probabilities of each word.
def build_model ( self ): # declaring the placeholders for our extracted image feature vectors, our caption, and our mask # (describes how long our caption is with an array of 0/1 values of length `maxlen` img = tf. placeholder ( tf. float32, [ self. batch_size, self. dim_in ]) caption_placeholder = tf. placeholder ( tf. int32, [ self. batch_size, self. n_lstm_steps ]) mask = tf. placeholder ( tf. float32, [ self. batch_size, self. n_lstm_steps ]) # getting an initial LSTM embedding from our image_imbedding image_embedding = tf. matmul ( img, self. img_embedding ) + self. img_embedding_bias # setting initial state of our LSTM state = self. lstm. zero_state ( self. batch_size, dtype = tf. float32 ) total_ loss = 0.0 with tf. variable_scope ( "RNN" ): for i in range ( self. n_lstm_steps ): if i > 0 : #if this isn't the first iteration of our LSTM we need to get the word_embedding corresponding # to the (i-1)th word in our caption with tf. device ( "/cpu:0" ): current_embedding = tf. nn. embedding_lookup ( self. word_embedding, caption_placeholder [:, i - 1 ]) + self. embedding_bias else : #if this is the first iteration of our LSTM we utilize the embedded image as our input current_embedding = image_embedding if i > 0 : # allows us to reuse the LSTM tensor variable on each iteration tf. get_variable_scope (). reuse_variables () out, state = self. lstm ( current_embedding, state ) print ( out, self. word_encoding, self. word_encoding_bias ) if i > 0 : #get the one-hot representation of the next word in our caption labels = tf. expand_dims ( caption_placeholder [:, i ], 1 ) ix_range = tf. range ( 0, self. batch_size, 1 ) ixs = tf. expand_dims ( ix_range, 1 ) concat = tf. concat ([ ixs, labels ], 1 ) onehot = tf. sparse_to_dense ( concat, tf. stack ([ self. batch_size, self. n_words ]), 1.0, 0.0 ) #perform a softmax classification to generate the next word in the caption logit = tf. matmul ( out, self. word_encoding ) + self. word_encoding_bias xentropy = tf. nn. softmax_cross_entropy_with_logits ( logits = logit, labels = onehot ) xentropy = xentropy * mask [:, i ] loss = tf. reduce_sum ( xentropy ) total_loss += loss total_loss = total_loss / tf. reduce_sum ( mask [:, 1 :]) return total_loss, img, caption_placeholder, mask
Generating captions using inference
After training, we have a model that gives the probability of a word appearing next in a caption, given the image and all previous words. How can we use this to generate new captions?
The simplest approach is to take an input image and iteratively output the next most probable word, building up a single caption.
def build_generator ( self, maxlen, batchsize = 1 ): #same setup as `build_model` function img = tf. placeholder ( tf. float32, [ self. batch_size, self. dim_in ]) image_embedding = tf. matmul ( img, self. img_embedding ) + self. img_embedding_bias state = self. lstm. zero_state ( batchsize, dtype = tf. float32 ) #declare list to hold the words of our generated captions all_words = [] print ( state, image_embedding, img ) with tf. variable_scope ( "RNN" ): # in the first iteration we have no previous word, so we directly pass in the image embedding # and set the `previous_word` to the embedding of the start token ([0]) for the future iterations output, state = self. lstm ( image_embedding, state ) previous_word = tf. nn. embedding_lookup ( self. word_embedding, [ 0 ]) + self. embedding_bias for i in range ( maxlen ): tf. get_variable_scope (). reuse_variables () out, state = self. lstm ( previous_word, state ) # get a one-hot word encoding from the output of the LSTM logit = tf. matmul ( out, self. word_encoding ) + self. word_encoding_bias best_word = tf. argmax ( logit, 1 ) with tf. device ( "/cpu:0" ): # get the embedding of the best_word to use as input to the next iteration of our LSTM previous_word = tf. nn. embedding_lookup ( self. word_embedding, best_word ) previous_word += self. embedding_bias all_words. append ( best_word ) return img, all_words
In many cases this works, but by "greedily" taking the most probable words, we may not end up with the most probable caption overall.
One possible way to circumvent this is by using a method called "Beam Search." The algorithm iteratively considers the set of the k best sentences up to length t as candidates to generate sentences of size t + 1, and keeps only the resulting best k of them. This allows one to explore a larger space of good captions while keeping inference computationally tractable. In the example below, the algorithm maintains a list of k = 2 candidate sentences shown by the path to each bold word for each vertical time step.
Figure 4. Credit: Daniel Ricciardelli.
Limitations and discussion
The neural image caption generator gives a useful framework for learning to map from images to human-level image captions. By training on large numbers of image-caption pairs, the model learns to capture relevant semantic information from visual features.
However, with a static image, embedding our caption generator will focus on features of our images useful for image classification and not necessarily features useful for caption generation. To improve the amount of task-relevant information contained in each feature, we can train the image embedding model (the VGG-16 network used to encode features) as a piece of the caption generation model, allowing us to fine-tune the image encoder to better fit the role of generating captions.
Also, if we actually look closely at the captions generated, we notice that they are rather mundane and commonplace. Take this possible image-caption pair for instance:
Figure 5. Credit: Raul Puri, with images sourced from the MS COCO data set.
This is most certainly a "giraffe standing next to a tree." However, if we look at other pictures, we will likely notice that it generates a caption of "a giraffe next to a tree" for any picture with a giraffe because giraffes in the training set often appear near trees.
Next steps
First, if you want to improve on the model explained here, take a look at Google's open source Show and Tell network, trainable with the MS COCO data set and an Inception-v3 image embedding.
Current state-of-the-art image captioning models include a visual attention mechanism, which allows the model to identify areas of interest in the image to selectively focus on when generating captions.
Also, if you are interested in this state-of-the-art implementation of caption generation, check out the following paper: Show, Attend, and Tell: Neural Image Caption Generation with Visual Attention.
Note: Don't forget to access the corresponding Python code and iPython notebooks for this article on GitHub!
This post is a collaboration between O'Reilly and TensorFlow. See our statement of editorial independence.A woman from Bareily lodged an FIR against her father accusing him of making her MMS clip and then threatening to upload them on web. After lodging a police complaint, when police suspected a foul play they discovered that she blackmailed her father after he denied her and her husband a car.
The aggrieved father,who is a government employee, and two others have also been named in the FIR. When the police interrogated the daughter, no crucial evidence was found against the accused father.
According to a report in Amarujala, the man had promised the boy’s family a car days before the wedding which was called-off over a familial dispute. Following that, the girl eloped with the boy and years after their marriage she started blackmailing her father to buy her a car.As important as it is for parents to encourage, love and support their children, it is just as important that children learn to create this within themselves. It is very empowering for a child to create positive beliefs in themselves so it is much harder for people to tear them down. As our children learn behaviours and wire their brain, affirmations are very effective in nurturing self-belief in childhood, which will stay with them throughout their life. We all develop our belief systems about ourselves and the world around us from our environment. Our family and friends, role models, television, magazines and advertising can either be nurturing or damaging.
More...
It is important that we learn to take control of our belief systems and the younger that we learn, the easier it is. It can be as simple as affirming the positive beliefs that we would like to grow up with. Negative beliefs can impact our lives greatly and can be hard to shift as we grow older. Affirmations are a powerful and holistic way of building a positive mind and happier children. Nurturing their authentic self and helping them to enjoy the magic of childhood.
“Affirmation takes advantage of our reward circuits, which can be quite powerful. Many studies have shown that these circuits can do things like dampen pain and help us maintain balance in the face of threats.”
- Christopher Cascio, PhD.
Put simply, an affirmation is to affirm to one’s self. Positive words that are absorbed by the mind to create your belief system. Once affirmations are learned, they work by coming to mind when that belief is challenged.
If your affirmation is "I am wonderful just the way I am", and you are told you are stupid, the affirmation will come to mind to remind you of your belief. Instead, you will think, "I’m not stupid, I am wonderful!” Without a positive belief, you may take on the one you just heard and start to believe that you are stupid. The more an affirmation is repeated, positive or negative, the stronger it becomes. What we think about ourselves, is how we develop If we feel we are worthless, we will behave like we are worthless. If we believe that we are special and loved, we will behave like we are special and loved.
This is why affirmations are so important to help children develop positive foundations on which to grow. Once we have matured, it is hard to change those foundations. Affirmations also provide us with the opportunity to learn to look at ourselves in the mirror. This is the most effective way to say an affirmation and learning to do this as a child makes it much easier to do. Many of us find it quite confronting to look ourselves in the eyes, let alone say “I love you” as we do. Why we need to be kind to ourselves This leads to the next benefit if affirmations. They teach us positive self-talk, to speak to ourselves with kindness. As we grow, we can develop a habit of criticising ourselves, harming our own self-confidence and lowering our resilience. For children to learn positive self-talk from a young age, helps prevent self-criticism, as a strong and positive belief system has already been created from within. As bullying is such a huge issue that many children face at some time, self-confidence is the very thing that will help them deal with these situations. Keeping a positive mind is essential. This can be really difficult when children are dealing with bullying behaviour. By developing positive mental pathways, children are more resilient and self-assured, coping much better than if they had a low self-esteem. Many children who bully lack confidence, so feel a need to belittle others to make themselves feel better and more in control. Children with a positive self-image feel less inclined to bully others. Uniting a class with a quick two-minute affirmation at the start of a school day could make the world of difference to troubled children.
Creating an inner confidence as children can shape our whole life. Every aspect of our life is affected by our self-confidence. It affects our ability to learn and participate at school, socially, creatively, our relationships, achieving our goals and dreams, and most importantly our standards. With little self-confidence, we often lower our standards or ‘settle’ for what we believe is achievable. Just a few positive words spoken to ourselves each day can, amazingly, make such a difference to our whole body, our mind, our heart and physically too. There is much research on how the heart and mind are wired to communicate and how a happy and positive mind can improve overall health. Make today the day that you try affirmations with your children. Helping them to shine with confidence as the unique individuals that they are. Introducing your children to affirmations Affirmations can be implemented into your daily routines very easily. Only taking a few minutes each day. Introducing Affirmations It is a good idea to talk to your children about using affirmations so they understand what they are for and how they work. Keep it fun and encouraging. “Affirmations teach you new and positive ways of thinking. They can help you believe in yourself, feel happy and help you to feel better when you are angry or sad. Let’s try them and see what we think!” "Affirmations encourage kind and happy ways of thinking, you will remember them when you need them most." Another way to introduce affirmations to your children is to place affirmation cards around the house in areas that they will see them. Just reading the words will help them affirm positive beliefs. On the mirror in the bathroom is a great spot or on the breakfast table. It will also help if you were to lead by example and read the affirmations as well. You may like to do your affirm |
As teardowns mount around the Twin Cities — with smaller older homes being replaced by bigger new ones — there's lots of talk about the impact on neighborhoods.
Dan Shuster lives that impact every day.
On each side of his 1950s Linden Hills rambler loom large new houses more than twice its size. On the other side of those houses loom two more — leaving Shuster's house a tiny island in a sea of pricey real estate.
"It's very claustrophobic," he said.
When he and his wife bought their house in the late 1970s, most of the houses in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis looked like theirs: modest-sized homes with generous yards. "Now, I'm the only cottage on the block — a little house tucked between towers," he said.
Architect Daryl Hansen in front of his south Minneapolis house, which was featured on the Linden Hills Little House Tour.
His once-prolific garden no longer gets enough sun to produce many vegetables. His kitchen window, which once offered a vista across several backyards, now looks directly into his neighbor's house, just a few feet away. Shuster rarely uses his deck on the other side of the house because it abuts a big new house — and its noisy air conditioner.
"We can't hear birds or crickets anymore," he said. "The whole neighborhood is gentrified. People with money are putting in the biggest houses with hardly any backyard. It's like living in New York City."
Hot topic
Teardowns have become a hot — and divisive — topic in many coveted locations in the Twin Cities, including Edina, Lake Minnetonka and Highland Park in St. Paul. But Linden Hills, with its proximity to city lakes, shops and trendy restaurants, is arguably ground zero. The neighborhood's modest vintage cottages, bungalows and ramblers are increasingly being replaced by million-dollar homes with all the amenities that today's upscale buyers want.
On the plus side, new development brings vitality and rising property values, but some longtime residents lament the loss of Linden Hills as it used to be.
And while Shuster feels the impact of the transformation more than most, he's not the only one concerned about how rapidly it's happening.
Some homeowners say they live in fear of a "monster house" going up next door. The Linden Hills Neighborhood Council organized a "Linden Hills Little Homes Tour" this summer to present "creative alternatives" to teardowns. Owners of small homes opened their doors to show off their remodeling solutions within modest footprints.
"You can really do a lot within 2,000 square feet," said Becky Allen, a council board member. The council seeks to walk a fine line, encouraging alternatives to teardowns without disparaging big new houses. "The neighborhood is split on that," she said. "Our neighbors live in those homes, and many are wonderful homes."
Shuster says he has no animosity toward the owners of the big new houses all around him. "I don't want to embarrass anybody or make this personal," he said. His new neighbors, for the most part, have tried to be considerate, he added. But he does wish that the city would conduct an impact study before approving a teardown.
Minneapolis does not do impact studies before approving teardowns, but it has taken action to address teardowns in red-hot neighborhoods. In 2014, the city briefly declared a moratorium on teardowns in Linden Hills and four other southwest Minneapolis neighborhoods.
The controversial and short-lived moratorium was canceled after objections from builders and prospective homeowners. It was replaced by a construction management plan with detailed rules that cap house height and square footage, based on the size of the lot. The city also requires builders to invite all property owners within 350 feet of the construction to a neighborhood informational meeting.
The rate of teardowns has slowed a bit since 2014, when there were 39 applications for completely new houses or tearing down 60 percent or more of the original house, even with the moratorium. Teardowns are continuing at a steady pace, with 37 applications during 2015 and so far this year (30 have been approved and six are still under review).
The lure of the new
Many of today's Linden Hills home buyers want the spaces and amenities that only new construction can provide, according to real estate agents. "People buying these homes are families and couples," said Ben Ganje, Ben Ganje Partners, Lakes Sotheby's. "Not everybody can live in a two-bedroom house."
Ganje recently listed a modern, LEED-certified house in the neighborhood, with solar panels, geothermal heat and "a ton of glass," designed by award-winning architect Christian Dean, for $1.59 million. "That's what people want," Ganje said. The new house replaced a two-bedroom structure, built in 1905, that "needed to come down."
Anyone who wanted to save that house had the opportunity, he noted. "It sat on the market a couple of weeks but nobody bought it."
Dan Shuster stands in the backyard of his modest-sized rambler in Linden Hills, which is now dwarfed by the large new homes on either side.
Architect Daryl Hansen, a longtime resident of Linden Hills, doesn't like what he sees happening in his neighborhood.
"We're losing the individual character of all different styles by taking out these nice little houses," he said. "A lot of the new ones don't fit the vocabulary of the neighborhood."
He has no objection to modern-style houses, he added, but he does object to scale that overwhelms neighboring homes — and the tree loss that comes with it.
Over the 40-plus years that Hansen and his wife have owned their home, they've "touched every inch," he said, more than doubling their finished square footage without significantly increasing their home's footprint. They remodeled the kitchen, finished the attic and added a small passive-solar addition at the back, which "turned an unusable basement into a really nice space," he said. It never occurred to him 20 years ago, when he designed the passive-solar addition, that a big neighboring house could block their sunlight.
"We're scared to death somebody is going to do one of those monster houses next to us," he said.
Carrie Bassett, a 20-year resident of Linden Hills, also opened up her 1,200-square-foot Arts & Crafts bungalow with its remodeled kitchen for the "Little House" tour.
She loves Linden Hills, but it's changing rapidly, she said. "It's become really popular — and expensive. All these teardowns! I like the old homes. The newer ones are too big. The character and sense of coziness and community is melting away."
Shuster knows his house is a hot commodity — to people who want to build something bigger on his lot. "I've been pestered for at least three years," he said, by letters and people knocking on his door.
Dan Shuster’s home in Linden Hills, center, is dwarfed by larger new homes. TOM WALLACE • tom.wallace@startribune.com
So far, he's resisted. But he and his wife have started looking for another house in the Longfellow neighborhood. "We never dreamed we'd have to move," he said. "We've loved living here. But it's not a comfortable place anymore."Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway made the rounds on TV recently, asking for a little decorum. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)
Chris Caesar is a Boston-based writer whose work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Death & Taxes, Boston.com and Metro Newspapers.
For someone who offered no apologies after he mocked a disabled reporter, gleefully described the joys of grabbing women “by the p—y” and defended the size of his penis during a televised debate, President Trump seems to be developing a newfound respect for playing nice — at least, on his terms.
Trump took on the “anti-PC” mantle during the GOP primary, often relishing the opportunity to bash what he considered the excesses of our “politically correct” media landscape. Asked during a Republican presidential debate by then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly about calling women he dislikes “fat pigs,” “slobs” and “disgusting animals,” as well as telling a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” that “it must be a pretty picture” when she is “on her knees,” Trump said this:
“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.”
[Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Every GOP candidate is wrong about political correctness]
But while private citizen and candidate Trump lamented this (seemingly imagined) social prohibition on calling Rosie O’Donnell ugly, now that he’s in the White House, Trump and his staff seem to be developing a more nuanced perspective on the issue.
For example, last week saw a flurry of controversy surrounding Stephen Colbert’s joke about Trump’s mouth serving as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “c— holster” — but no one was more scandalized than the formerly anti-politically correct team Trump. Reasonable people can disagree about whether Colbert’s joke was homophobic, or the figurative equivalent of calling someone a patsy. What is for sure funny about the episode was watching the folks who would normally defend Trump for, say, accusing Kelly of having “blood coming out of her … wherever,” suddenly become fragile prudes over a late-night TV joke.
“I won’t dignify those comments with a response,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told Fox News. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, went further, telling the network that the joke was “not funny.” “[This] is about showing basic respect to the president of the United States and the office of the president,” she said.
Trump himself had wounded words for Colbert: “You see a no-talent guy like Colbert. There’s nothing funny about what he says. And what he says is filthy,” he told Time magazine, “And you have kids watching.”
Of course, Colbert isn’t the only entertainer to wind up the Trump White House: When Snoop Dogg released his music video for “Lavender,” it included a scene in which the rapper uses a toy gun to pretend to shoot a clown who has a strong resemblance to Trump.
[The right has its own version of political correctness. It’s just as stifling.]
The implied violence is cartoonish at worst, but Trump — who boasted during the campaign that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without taking a hit in the polls — was aghast.
“Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama?” Trump tweeted at the time. “Jail time!”
Would he, though? Some may recall that controversial right-wing rocker Ted Nugent made headlines after bringing two machine guns onstage during a 2007 concert, calling then-presidential candidate Barack Obama a “piece of s—” who should “suck on a machine gun.” Nugent wasn’t arrested or jailed for his remarks, but he did receive an invitation to the Trump White House in April (where, he claimed, he decorously opted not to pose for a photo putting his middle finger up at the official portrait of Hillary Clinton). I’m beginning to sense a pattern.
Likewise, after Trump’s bombshell firing of FBI director James B. Comey, Conway made the rounds on TV to implore rude and nosy Americans not to pry into the matter; questioning the timing of the firing, she said, was “inappropriate.” Of course, perhaps Trump’s long-running beef with the media could finally be put to rest — if, as Conway told CNN’s Jake Tapper in February, the mean reporters could just show Trump some respect. But maybe all the president needs is a safe space of his own.Spawn creator Todd McFarlane gave his blessing to add the devilish comic book character to NetherRealm Studios games like Mortal Kombat X, according to an interview with GamerFitNation.
When asked about Spawn’s possible appearance in games like Injustice: Gods Among Us and franchises like Mortal Kombat, McFarlane said that there is a "short deal" that could place Spawn in games.
"That means that they have access to be able to use the character in a couple of their games, if they want to," McFarlane said. "Again, it's up to their discretion. I gave them a window of time, so I’ll just leave it to them to do what it is that they want. Eventually, they’ll phone me and they’ll go, ‘Hey, we want to use him here. Is that OK?’ Well, technically, it’s OK because we’ve already said yes. They just are letting us know."
Just because Spawn could arrive in a video game doesn’t mean that he will, however.
"Well, I don’t know if they’re ever going to use him," McFarlane said. "They just might squat. They might squat on him."
McFarlane said that he also wants "to get the brand of Spawn bigger than it is currently," a plan that includes movies and TV. After introducing (or reintroducing) Spawn through those mediums, he believes it will be easier for the character to join other video games.
If he arrives in Mortal Kombat X, it wouldn’t be Spawn’s first fighting game appearance. He was an Xbox-exclusive fighter in Soul Calibur 2.
Mortal Kombat X is set for an April 14 release on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Windows PC. For more on characters confirmed for the fighting game, check out previews of Ermac and Reptile and watch the trailer below.Whether you like it or not, Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) is building out the charging infrastructure to support mass-market adoption of its electric vehicles.
It begins with a 1,750-mile road trip
This Wednesday Tesla embarked on a journey from San Diego to Vancouver in two Model S sedans, powered only by Tesla Superchargers. According to Tesla's Oct. 30 press release, the drive marks the completion of supercharging the West Coast corridor that allows Model S owners to travel for free (assuming they opted to pay up front to enable the service) "between San Diego, California and Vancouver, British Columbia."
The release continues:
With stations along U.S. Highway 101 and Interstate 5, the West Coast's key routes, cities and destinations are connected by Tesla Superchargers. Model S customers can drive between San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver for free with minimal stops. More than 99 percent of Californians and 87 percent of Oregon and Washington owners are now within 200 miles of a Supercharger.
Tesla's expansion has seemingly taken place overnight. At the beginning of this year, Superchargers were a rare commodity -- even on the West Coast. And based on Tesla's plans, the rapid expansion won't be slowing down any time soon. According to a Tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday, the "East Coast Supercharger network should be complete in a few months." It will take Model S owners from Miami to Montreal, he told his followers on Twitter.
It appears that Tesla wasn't kidding around when they announced on May 30 that its Supercharger network would stretch across the continent within one year, covering most of the population of the U.S. and Canada. Five months into the plan, it looks as realistic as ever. By 2015, Tesla plans for its Supercharger network to reach 98% of the U.S. population.
Of course the plans expand beyond the U.S., too. Already completing its network in Norway, Tesla plans to provide coverage for 100% of the population of Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, and Luxembourg by the end of 2014. Plus it expects to build out its charging infrastructure for 90% of the population of England, Wales, and Sweden within the same time frame.
Notably, these charging stations are far better than most other charging stations. On average, they are 20 times faster than public charging stations; they can provide a half-charge for the 265-mile-range battery of the Model S in 20 minutes and an 80% charge in 40 minutes.
Laying the foundation for Tesla's affordable electric car?
While the infrastructure will certainly make long-distance travel for its Model S owners far easier, the aggressiveness of the expansion is likely an effort to lay down the charging network to drive sales of its more affordable car, commonly referred to as the Gen III. Tesla has said the more affordable car, to be priced at about $35,000, could launch as early as 2016.In a word: Southside of the border.
The specs: #01087
2990 Cahill Main, Suite 100, Fitchburg 53711
Details at Yelp, official web site
Latest Tapatios Cocina news and reviews
JM ate the steak burrito.
Nichole ate the taco sampler.
The bill was $26, or $13/person, plus tip.
JM and Nichole both gave Tapatios Cocina a B+ (see our grading rubric).
Tapatios in Fitchburg really felt quite Fitchburg-y to us. It's in the same Cahill Main strip mall as the Great Dane and seems to be thinking: "What if people at the Great Dane wanted Mexican food?" This is not to say that Tapatios is bad or anything, just that it's more corporate-feeling than average. For example, the prices. Tapatios is no taco truck or abarrotes spot, with lovingly prepared but ultimately cheap eats. Everything is bright and shiny in Fitchburg... like it's Madison's Tomorrowland ride.
What is here, though, is pretty good nosh. Nichole dug the taco sampler (which is a great idea: one of each of the 3 or 4 most popular tacos at any given spot - here being al pastor, steak, beef, chicken and fish), particularly the ample veggies on each 3- or 4-bite taco. She followed it with a delicious guava cream cheese empanada from Caracas Empanadas, also three bites big. JM got his Mexistandard Steak Burrito and found this one tasty but a little light on his favorite parts. The salsa selection was very good.
Ever since Casa de Lara became the Thirsty Goat, southside denizens and workers may need a place other than Laredo's to take the office lunch crowd, and Tapatios definitely fits that bill.Fans of Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man are in for a real treat this Halloween as the wall-crawler teams with a vampire hunter to battle the nastiest member of the living dead…
Spider-Man and his team must work alongside the infamous vampire hunter, Blade to stop Dracula from obtaining a mystical Egyptian relic that will allow him and his vampire hordes to conquer the world. Fury realizes that Spidey may need some extra help and calls on his other team, a supernatural group of Heroes, the Howling Commandos for this special Halloween mission.
Austin & Ally, Teen Beach Movie) as Jack Russell; Terry Crews (The Expendables) as Blade; and Oded Fehr (The Mummy) as The Living Mummy. The Howling Commandos feature the voices of Ross Lynch () as Jack Russell; Terry Crews () as Blade; and Oded Fehr () as The Living Mummy.
Update – Here’s a second clip, featuring Spidey, Blade and the Howling Commandos invading Dracula’s castle…oxt_btc
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NewbieActivity: 20Merit: 0 Re: Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis May 03, 2016, 03:37:47 PM
Last edit: May 10, 2016, 05:37:26 PM by oxt_btc #21 A new version of the platform has been deployed.
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NewbieActivity: 20Merit: 0 Introducing OXT Landscapes (aka "blockchain analytics on acid") May 09, 2016, 12:34:22 PM #22
So here comes OXT Landscapes, an interactive 3D visualization displaying the blockchain as a point cloud (every block is displayed as a particle). The principle is straightforward: define a "scene" by selecting a metrics for each axis (size of block, #transactions in block, etc.), click on "Build" et voila! You're ready for a 3-dimensional exploration of the scene.
Here's a
Extra bonus for the most adventurous among you: I've added basic support of VR for the Oculus Rift (DK2 or CV1 recommended). I wouldn't recommend it for data analysis but it seems quite promising in terms of psychedelic experimentations
For the basic version, please visit
For the extended version (providing additional metrics), please visit
Requirements & Tips
Desktop version
You'll need a recent web browser supporting WebGL. It works fine with recent versions of Chrome (recommended for best performances) and Firefox and it should work with IE11.
It requires the download of a large dataset (stats for blocks 1 to 400,000). Do not try to use it on a mobile device.
Notes about the input controllers:
Default input controller is a "trackball". It's really easy to use (mouse or trackpad) but it provides limited features (rotation of the scene and zoom). Recommanded controller is the "fly controller". It allows a 3-dimensional exploration of the scene. A tip if you want to use it with your mouse: the position of the mouse on the screen controls camera rotations. The center of the screen is the "rest position".
Control Panel at the bottom of the screen can be hidden/displayed thanks to the arrow on the right side.
The 4 icons on the left side will teleport you at 4 predefined locations (useful if you get lost)
If the scene seems desperately flat, try to regenerate the scene with a logarithmic scale for the "flat axis".
If you find a combination of parameters producing a nice scene, be kind and share it with the rest of us!
VR version
You'll need to install a web browser supporting WebVR (Firefox nightly build with Oculus Rift enabler installed or experimental build of Chrome).
Go to this website for links & instructions Install the web browser Test your setup with this sample
When your setup for webvr is ok, launch Landscapes
Random tips:
I wouldn't recommend the DK1 (low resolution) but if you want to give it a try, you'll need to use the Oculus runtime 0.5.0.1 + Chromium experimental build (04/21/2015) You can reset the orientation of your headset with key "I". All movements are controlled thanks to the keyboard (get comfortable with the commands in desktop mode before using them in VR...). If you use an AZERTY keyboard, hit key "P". Hit key "O" to select the QWERTY mode (default). Use the numeric keypad (1 to 7) to load a prebuilt scene. For now, it's not possible to build your own scene in VR mode. Key "T" allows to switch speed mode. I recommend to use the slow speed when you're moving inside the cloud. For fun: explore a scene, then rotate the camera 90° or 180° (the grid which was the ground becomes a wall or the roof) and start a new exploration...
I've been wanting to create something special to celebrate the next halving and the 7 years of bitcoin for a while. Something fun and intended for the broadest audience.So here comes OXT Landscapes, an(every block is displayed as a particle). The principle is straightforward: define a "scene" by selecting a metrics for each axis (size of block, #transactions in block, etc.), click on "Build" et voila! You're ready for a 3-dimensional exploration of the scene.Here's a short video capture of a scene built with the tool (x-axis = block height, y-axis = #txs in block (log scale), z-axis = size of block).Extra bonus for the most adventurous among you: I've added(DK2 or CV1 recommended). I wouldn't recommend it for data analysis but it seems quite promising in terms of psychedelic experimentationsFor the basic version, please visit this page For the extended version (providing additional metrics), please visit this page
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NewbieActivity: 20Merit: 0 Re: Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis January 20, 2017, 07:55:19 PM #25 A new version of the platform has been deployed.
Improvements:
- Upgraded bitcoin node
- Support of Segwit
- Detection of segwit transactions
- Detection of script types (P2WPKH, P2WSH, P2WPKH nested in P2SH, P2WSH nested in P2SH)
- Detection of segwit commitment output in coinbase transactions
- Interpretation & categorization of witness scripts
- New indicators added to statistics:
- Fee rates per virtual size (blocks, transactions)
- Striped size (blocks)
- New charts (to be activated later):
- Number of segwit transactions
- Average virtual size / transaction
- Fee/byte (virtual size)
- Script types for "P2WSH inputs"
- New feature in OXT Requester allowing to search bitcoin addresses by balance
- Fee rates displayed in satoshis/byte
- Decreased delay for block processing (around 2.5 hours)
- Updated list of mining pools
- Updated list of metaprotocols (analysis of op_return outputs)
Protocols currently supported are: ASCRIBE, BITPROOF, BLOCKSIGN, BLOCKSTORE, COINSPARK, COLU, COUNTERPARTY, CRYPTO COPYRIGHT, ETERNITY WALL, FACTOM, IDENTITY, LAPREUVE, MONEGRAPH, OPEN ASSETS, OPENCHAIN, ORIGINALMY, STAMPERY, OMNI LAYER, PROOF OF EXISTENCE, PROVEBIT, REMEMBR, STAMPD, TRADLE, UNIVERSITY OF NICOSIA
- Updated data for OXT Landscapes (now up to block 447000 -01/07/2017-)
- A few bug fixes (front end) and improvement of performances (back end)
More to come soon...
Tip: Clear the cache of your browser to get the latest version of the tool.
laurentmt
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Sr. MemberActivity: 386Merit: 250 Re: Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis January 21, 2017, 07:57:30 PM #27 The number of api calls is capped (caps are defined as #requests per mn, per hour and per day). I may raise current limits in the future if I can secure a more powerful infrastructure.
I'll check why the message doesn't disappear. This is clearly a bug.
Thanks for the feedback!
johhnyUA
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Crypto for the Crypto Throne!
Hero MemberActivity: 1106Merit: 653Crypto for the Crypto Throne! Re: Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis January 21, 2017, 10:17:26 PM #28 ). I would be very glad for that. Nice work, really good and usefull platform. But I have one question: why only 1280X520 and above? I mean resolution of the monitor. Could you try to remake it, or just a little bit resolution (for my other devices). I would be very glad for that.
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NewbieActivity: 20Merit: 0 Re: Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis February 24, 2017, 02:48:14 PM #32
And this one is an "important" milestone for OXT
Since its inception, I've envisioned OXT as an interactive map of the bitcoin economy and for more than one year the platform has tried to provide a first (but imperfect) version of this map. But an important ingredient was still missing.
This missing part was a set of features offering a more personal experience, like the possibility to annotate objects (block, transaction, etc).
A lot remains to be done but I hope this new version will improve your experience with the platform and that it will foster collaboration between OXT users.
Improvements
- Support of registered accounts
- Authentication by login/password
- Password reset managed thanks to the signature of a challenge with a "bitcoin address"
- Support of annotations
- Registered users can add notes to Blocks, Transactions, Addresses & Entities
- Annotations are public and visible by all users (registered or anon.)
- Support of "rich" bookmarks
- Registered users can create bookmarks pointing to specific pages of OXT
- A bookmark can be enriched with a title and a description displayed to readers before the target page is displayed
- Bookmarks store the current view of the page (active tab, selected chart, transactions filter, etc)
- Bookmarks are public and visible by all users (registered or anon.)
- MY OXT
- A personal workspace allowing registered users to manage their annotations and bookmarks
- Contextual Toolbox
- A contextual toolbox is now displayed on the left hand side of the screen
- Some existing action buttons/icons (display tx in graphalizer, prev/next block, etc) have been moved to this toolbox
- Bitcoin History
- A page listing a few famous bitcoin events illustrated with specific objects or chart provided by OXT
- The Bitcoin "RichList"
- Ordered list of addresses with a balance greater than 1,000 btc
Tip: Clear the cache of your browser to get the latest version of the tool. A new version of the platform has been deployed.And this one is an "important" milestone for OXTSince its inception, I've envisioned OXT as an interactive map of the bitcoin economy and for more than one year the platform has tried to provide a first (but imperfect) version of this map. But an important ingredient was still missing.This missing part was a set of features offering a more personal experience, like the possibility to annotate objects (block, transaction, etc).A lot remains to be done but I hope this new version will improve your experience with the platform and that it will foster collaboration between OXT users.- Support of registered accounts- Authentication by login/password- Password reset managed thanks to the signature of a challenge with a "bitcoin address"- Support of annotations- Registered users can add notes to Blocks, Transactions, Addresses & Entities- Annotations are public and visible by all users (registered or anon.)- Support of "rich" bookmarks- Registered users can create bookmarks pointing to specific pages of OXT- A bookmark can be enriched with a title and a description displayed to readers before the target page is displayed- Bookmarks store the current view of the page (active tab, selected chart, transactions filter, etc)- Bookmarks are public and visible by all users (registered or anon.)- MY OXT- A personal workspace allowing registered users to manage their annotations and bookmarks- Contextual Toolbox- A contextual toolbox is now displayed on the left hand side of the screen- Some existing action buttons/icons (display tx in graphalizer, prev/next block, etc) have been moved to this toolbox- Bitcoin History- A page listing a few famous bitcoin events illustrated with specific objects or chart provided by OXT- The Bitcoin "RichList"- Ordered list of addresses with a balance greater than 1,000 btc
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NewbieActivity: 20Merit: 0 Re: Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis March 31, 2017, 02:08:17 PM #33
Improvements/Modifications
Support of "rich" bookmarks for transactions graph
Registered users can create bookmarks pointing to a transaction graph A bookmark stores the current state of the graph (nodes & edges displayed, highlighted, etc) A bookmark can be enriched with a title and a description displayed to readers before the graph is displayed
Contextual Toolbox for the graphalizer
The toolbox previously displayed at the top side of the screen is now located on the left side for consistency with others screens
Donation page
Donation page added with a public address and a payment code (BIP47)
Tip: Clear the cache of your browser to get the latest version of the tool. A new (minor) version of the platform has been deployed.
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NewbieActivity: 20Merit: 0 Re: Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis June 04, 2017, 03:52:04 PM #34 A new version of the platform has been deployed.
Improvements
Chart of UTXOs controlled by the entities
Entity pages now display a tab with statistics about the utxos supposedly controlled by the entity:
- #utxos consumed by the entity during a given period
- #utxos created by the entity during a given period
- average #utxos per tx consumed by the entity during a given period
- average #utxos per tx created by the entity during a given period
OXT Directory
- The directory lists the entities which have been tagged in OXT
- Entities are categorized by sector of activity
- The directory can be accessed from the "Charts & Resources" menu
Support of most recent transactions by the search engine
The search engine now supports transactions included in the most recent blocks and transactions from the mempool
New advanced features
This version includes a set of new features which will be accessible to a small group of beta users for testing. If everything goes fine, these features will be released in the coming months.
Tip: Clear the cache of your browser to get the latest version of the tool.“I believe the women, yes.”
With that statement, about accounts of lecherous behavior and child molestation by the Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said words that thousands of victims of sexual harassment and assault have waited in vain to hear.
Perhaps nobody should hold her breath expecting this will bring real, lasting change. Mr. Moore is too much of an extremist, making him already unpopular for even Republican leaders. But the flood of accusations against famous men in entertainment, the news media and politics has raised hope that women can come forward without fear to seek justice.
Mr. McConnell and a growing list of other Republicans have been pressing Mr. Moore to quit the race after four women — Leigh Corfman, Wendy Miller, Gloria Thacker Deason and Debbie Wesson Gibson — told The Washington Post that Mr. Moore had pursued them as teenagers when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. Ms. Corfman said that when she was 14, in his home, Mr. Moore undressed her to her underwear and placed her hand on his crotch. The molestation troubled her for years, she said. On Monday, a fifth woman, Beverly Young Nelson, said that when she was 16, Mr. Moore molested her in his car. The Post corroborated points of the first four women’s stories with friends and relatives, providing the kind of bulletproofing that women need when they accuse powerful men.
Mr. Moore’s accusers kept silent for years for fear of what’s happening now: their past relationships, family, friends, finances, political affiliations and every vowel and consonant of their stories being mined in a partisan effort to discredit them. The authors of the warped Pizzagate conspiracy fiction have revealed personal details about Ms. Corfman online. Breitbart, house organ of Steve Bannon’s solipsistic revolution, fruitlessly dispatched two “reporters” to Alabama to sift through the women’s lives for nuggets to shame them.Truffle Hunting
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It’s not all fun and frolic—and chocolate—around here. Aside from dealing with banks that limit access to your own money, or scratching your head when the France Telecom representative tells you that it’s going to cost you a mere €465 to keep your mobile number if you change to another one of their other phone plans (although it was a stretch to even get there; his first response was, “Yes. It is not possible”), believe it or not, there are some less-than-pastoral things about life here.
One of them is not Tuber melanosporum, or black truffles, which as far as I’m concerned more than makes up for anything else. (Well, I would like a new phone…)
Sure, various black truffles are found in Spain, Italy, China, Croatia, and even in the United States of America. But none that I’ve smelled compare to the famed black truffles unearthed from woods and forests of southwest France. Rien du tout.
When I worked in the restaurant business, we’d often get knobbly black truffles sent to us, which were shaved over simple dishes like pasta, potatoes, and risottos; anything more complicated competes with their funky, pungent, but highly-prized aroma. People go ga-ga over truffles, but I never caught the truffle bug, which was excellent news for my wallet.
On my recent trip to Cahors, we went for a walk in the forest with a truffle hunter—and his boisterous pig, in search of black truffles. And it was there I learned how they work together to find these elusive tubers.
It was a very chilly winter day, so cold that even the leaves on the spindly oak trees were shivering. But that’s truffle season; January and February. And if you want to find truffles, they’re not going to land in your lap while sitting at home by the fireplace. One needs to roam through the forests, where the trees have been stripped nearly bare by the icy winds. And even though seasoned truffle hunters don’t require much protection, un certain Parisien was bundled up quite well for the search.
Because black truffles grow a few inches underground, unlike us, they’re imp |
excavating the adjacent tomb of an earlier pharaoh, King Sobekhotep I.
The newfound tomb contains what appear to be the plundered remains of a royal burial, including the pharaoh's pulled-apart skeleton. Senebkay was apparently 5-foot-10 and died in his mid- to late 40s, archaeologists said.
Wegner told NBC News that the find could point the way to a previously unknown pharaonic dynasty.
"We discovered an unknown king plus a lost dynasty," he said. "It looks likely that all of the 16 kings are all buried there.... We now have the tomb for first or second king of this dynasty. There should be a whole series of the others.”
The photo at left shows decoration in the burial chamber of Senebkay. At right, archaeologists examine Senebkay's skeleton. He was originally mummified, but his body was pulled apart by ancient tomb robbers. Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities
Shades of King Tut
He described his team's entry into the tomb's decorated burial chamber as an experience similar to what archaeologist Howard Carter might have felt when he found Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922.
“It unfolded over a couple of days," Wegner said. "It was a little bit like King Tut, in that we found the entrance first and it led us down to a burial chamber. We reached a painted limestone chamber with cartouches and the titular of a pharaoh.... In Abydos there is lots of sand, and everything is deeply buried. You can dig day after day, and then this….We were standing there looking dumbfounded at the colorful wall decoration.”
The discovery of a reused burial chest helped him date the discovery.
“Tomb robbers had stripped it, but it still had the prescription of Sobekhotep on the wood," Wegner said. "The fact that they were reusing wood would suggest that it was relatively soon after the earlier tomb of Sobekhotep.”
Archaeologists surve the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh, Senebkay, and its surroundings at the Abydos site. Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities
The reuse of materials from previous reigns and the relatively rustic artistry suggest a lack of stability and wealth, Wegner said. “It suggests that the king had economic challenges, which has to do with the period of struggle and fragmentation of kingdom.”
Wegner believes he will find much more when he returns to excavate in the spring.
"Where there are king’s tombs, there are also queen's tombs, and tombs of high officials of the royal court,” he told NBC News. “The discovery has given an interesting look at a period of fragmentation and political conflict, struggling with rival kingdoms of the north and south.”
Charlene Gubash is an NBC News producer in Cairo.For this post I wanted to dive right into my first topic: the decline in the sanction of marriage.
To start I wanted to highlight a few statistics, for the USA.
By 2013, Millennials, between the ages of 18-32, only 26% were married. As compared to the Gen X generation that was at 36% in 1997, the Baby Boomers held at 48% in 1980, and the Silents were at 65% in 1960 (Desert News National).
1/4 of Millennials are assumed to disregard marriage entirely (Pew Research Center).
6.9/1000 people were found to be married, in 2014 (CDC).
In 2010, Marriage rates were at the lowest point that have been since 1860, and divorce rates have only continued to climb throughout this 144 year period (Washington Post).
2015 indicates that the divorce rate is as approximately 50% for all ordained marriages (The Cheat Sheet-Divorces).
By 2015, a study showed that 23% of married men and 19% of married women claimed that they cheated on their spouse at least once. And, this is only those who admitted to cheating (Indiana State University).
In 2014, 40% of births were to unmarried women (Child Trends Data Bank).
These shocking statistics prove where our culture is leading us. The lack f interest in marriage is increasing and the family as a whole is suffering. The foundation of a marriage is the key to creating the strongest bond between all family members that is possible. For example, the children who are born to unmarried parents are much more likely to be in less socioeconomic classes, have sex at younger ages, and receive lower education levels (Child Trends Data Bank).
Marriages are a promise between two people, and if made within a dedicated temple, a triangular relationship with God also. Promises, meaning that two people are creating links between them that are much harder to let go of or break than a simple verbal agreement that they desire to live together. Promises tend to hold weight with people and for the most part, people want to uphold their promise. Not to mention that divorces are a difficult, inconvenient, and expensive procedure, making me assume that people are willing to think through that decision for longer periods of time, thus causing some to then end up choosing to stay with their partner because of the time spent thinking through their relationship.
Marriages are being seen as unnecessary in today’s society, especially when considering the recently advanced desires to accumulate as much education as possible to gain as great a monetary situation as possible. Though education and monetary comfortability are highly important, it is crucial to recognize which we are prioritizing over the other: family or career success?
I will mention that I have always been a very independent girl whom definitely has always had goals to obtain an education and be successful in my career, but at the end of the day, what makes me infinitely more happy are my family and my future husband. I can achieve success in both; and I will. However, my priority is my family now, and the future family I will have.
AdvertisementsAn experiment led by a University of Alberta researcher, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, could dramatically change our concepts of basic physics, revolutionize our understanding of the Universe and could eventually lead to technologies in future generations that right now only exist in science fiction.
U of A physics professor James Pinfold is leading an international team of physicists who will use ultra high energy proton collisions. The protons will move at very near the speed of light, in search for a hypothetical particle, called the magnetic monopole.
Conventional understanding of magnets is that they must have north and south poles. In 1930 it was shown that a sub atomic particle with just a single magnetic pole could exist. Several modern theories of physics are built on the theoretical existence of magnetic monopoles.
Last year, researchers in France and Germany reported the observation of certain states of spin ice, a kind of crystalline material with essentially the same atomic arrangements as water ice that would create monopole-like particles. But Pinfold warns, "these 'quasi-monopoles' should not be confused with the real thing being sought by the U of A led collaboration at CERN."
At CERN, on the Swiss-French border, Pinfold's team will use the LHC, a particle accelerator 27 kilometres in circumference, to search for magnetic monopoles in the shrapnel like debris produced by colliding protons. The protons will collide at an unprecedented energy -- 7 trillion (1012) electron volts, or 7 tera electron volts (TeV). The tiny fireballs created in the impact will duplicate the energy produced just after the Big Bang, the event that created the universe.
For more information, see Jim Pinfold's MoEDAL Experiment movie and CERN Experiment Collaboration Webpage: http://web.me.com/jamespinfold/MoEDAL_site/Welcome.html
An article explaining the MoEDAL Experiment is available on the CERN web site at: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2010/12/News%20Articles/1248906?ln=ruThe men’s lifestyle website Thrillist thinks Clarendon is chock full of bros.
Thrillist included Clarendon in its list of “America’s 12 Bro-iest Neighborhoods,” ranked No. 10.
Bros, defined by Urban Dictionary as “obnoxious partying males,” are supposedly attracted to Clarendon as a temporary place of residence right out of college.
From Thrillist:
So, you just graduated from Georgetown and got yourself a job where your boss isn’t also the guy sitting across from you at Thanksgiving dinner. Congrats. Now, where do you go to rock your Vineyard Vines, drink craft beer, and live with your college lacrosse teammate? Clarendon, of course, right across the river from DC in Virginia. It’s where all the fresh-outta-school bros show off the extra cash before moving to Manhattan work in finance and be closer to family in Connecticut.
Ranking higher than Arlington on Thrillist’s bro scale are neighborhoods like Murray Hill in New York City (No. 1), Uptown in Dallas (No. 2), Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, Calif. (No. 3), Wrigleyville in Chicago (No. 4) and Capitol Hill in Seattle (No. 5).
Photo via Facebook/Project DC EventsLet's rap about it
According to at least one cursory analysis, Nintendo's amiibo figurines are a pretty big hit, going toe to toe with Disney and Activision's similar line of game-integrated figures. Pretty impressive, considering they barely do anything yet. The Link amiibo unlocks a new weapon in Hyrule Warriors, which undoubtedly helped it to sell well despite being relatively poorly sculpted. Some of the others unlock new outfits in Mario Kart 8, and all of the currently released amiibo can be used to help bring A.I. controlled opponents to life in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, but other than that they don't do anything.
Yet, news on the latest discontinued or re-continued or re-discontinued amiibo is rarely out of reach. A lot of people reading and writing videogame blogs care about these things. Even dropping a comment that says "Ah, why are their so many posts about amiibo on Dtoid I don't caaaare!" is a way of showing you care. Amiibo have gotten under people's skin, for better or worse.
We asked a few of Destructoid's staff members to talk about their amiibo experiences thus far. From diehard collectors to reluctant customers, amiibo has had a interesting effect on our staff. Poor Kyle. Out of everyone here, he sounds the most like a guy who was court ordered into rehab.
Chris Carter
I own all wave 1 and 2 amiibo, and have all of wave 3 preorded. As I approach my 30s I'm finding myself in a collector's conundrum. I've had this discussion with Bill Platt a few times on how aging can curb your collecting habits (I'm running out of space!), but I think the amiibo figures are small enough to justify a purchase en masse. My favorite part about the concept is how they are affordable miniatures from franchises you don't normally see represented. I can now put Little Mac with my Punch Out!! collection to make it snazzier, and Marth will look great next to Ike and some Fire Emblem games.
Obscure characters like these are only really found at trade shows by way of unofficial merchandise, and it's great to finally get my hands on a few of them from Nintendo. I really don't think the software angle is justified yet, and even some of the games on the horizon (mysteries like Mario Party 8 and Captain Toad) don't really excite me in terms of their amiibo functionality, mostly because Nintendo hasn't done anything worthwhile with them yet -- in other words, I wouldn't recommend them to anyone who isn't into the toy aspect. But as collectible figures, I think they fulfill an in-demand niche.
Brittany Vincent
I'm 25 and I own all of the current amiibo, including preorders for the retailer exclusives, with Rosalina as an import. Counting an extra Pit and Kirby (I actually opened Kirby), I have 19 figures in-hand. Either they're already haphazardly stashed on my bookshelf or I'm waiting for them to come in one by one from the various stores I had to cherrypick from because local places just couldn't keep the things in stock. I learned my lesson early, to go ahead and preorder every single one I can so I can beat the crowds, and as they're made available in different waves I'll continue to do so.With the help of r/amiibo and collectors online I've been able to complete my set, though it hasn't been easy.
Why do I want them so badly? Mostly, I think they're cute, affordable, and the Nintendo characters I love. I'll rarely (if ever) use them with the games they're meant to be played with, but they'll sure sit pretty on my shelf for months to come. Then, somewhere down the road, I'll have a nice little set of collectibles to either sell or pass down to future generations. Either way, I've enjoyed the thrill of the hunt. As a gamer who has pretty much every single system, game, peripheral, and item she needs to enjoy any game at any time, it's something to look forward to again. And I love it.
Bill Platt
I think I very well may be the oldest staff member here at Destructoid. I turned 41 yesterday (thanks for all the birthday wishes) and I am still an avid collector of all things related to video games. When the amiibo were first announced, I knew that I'd end up getting them all. I figured I'd grab them here and there as I saw them out in the wild. I never thought that these little plastic toys would bring out the hardcore collector in me. As of this writing, I currently have 38 amiibo. I have all of wave 1 and wave 2 in doubles, even triples for some. I currently have all of wave 3 pre-ordered (including all store exclusives). Like Brittany, I ended up having to import Rosalina due to the terrible way she was handled by Target and whoever Nintendo is using as their distributor here in the states.
I have one of each amiibo currently available out on display in my game room, with the rest sitting in a box in my garage. From a collector’s standpoint, I absolutely love these stupid little things. I've been talking with my wife lately about how the "thrill of the hunt" has seemed to fade over the past few years, with thrift stores and such getting wise to how much older video games can actually be worth. Now though, with the current amiibo situation, we find ourselves hopping in the car (with our daughter of course, she also loves the hunt) and driving to stores we don't normally visit to try to locate hard to find or rare amiibo. My daughter especially loves it as she is often the first to run to the game section to look for rare amiibo (and yes, she knows which ones are rare or not).
There's been a lot of talk lately on whether or not amiibo are "worth it." That's a hard question to answer, as everyone has a different opinion of worth. For my family and me, they are most definitely worth it. My daughter uses them in Smash; she's leveled up over half of them so far, and I enjoy having them out on display.
Darren Nakamura
I'm 30 and I have only two amiibo (Samus and Peach). It sounds like I'm the first to chime in who hasn't gone nuts for these things. I wanted some for Super Smash Bros., and I got them via Destructoid's Secret Santa (thanks Josh!). I did get a twinge of regret when I heard that Villager and Wii Fit Trainer were hard to find, because those were the next two I'd even consider getting, but that passed after a few deep breaths and some practical consideration.
By nature I have always been a bit of a pack rat with my stuff. Until recently, I had kept birthday cards from my grandparents from when I was a teenager, despite never looking back through them. Lately I've been trying to declutter, and not collecting useless junk is a part of that. And like Chris said, aside from any sort of sentimental attachment they may hold, amiibo functionality is lacking. The fact that not collecting these saves me some money is nice too; these things are small and inexpensive for sure, but those benefits kind of dissolve when you are buying 38 of them (wtf Bill).
All that said, I know that I'm going to preorder if Nintendo ever announces a Ness amiibo. I'm actually a little disappointed that amiibo in general have had such success, because I know a Ness amiibo would sell out, but that wouldn't be as impressive now since just about every non-core amiibo is selling out anyway.
Laura Kate Dale
I'm Laura, age 23, I own all current amiibo and have all possible upcoming ones either preordered, or have friends abroad preordering retailer specific figures. I'm an unboxer, not a collector, and they currently adorn my work desk. Sure they're not the best designed figures in the world, clearly they were in game designs first and figures second, but my goodness are they nice and detailed.
For me this is the first time in my life I have had readily available disposable income and relatively stable access to officially licensed, decent quality, relatively low cost Nintendo figures from a generation of titles. If you can pick them up at RRP they're a nice cheap-ish way to grow a collection of thematically similar figures for a few generations of games. They may not do much in-game, but when you have a decent number of figures that starts to add up. A handful of new costumes, a set of challenging NPC enemies, a set of new items -- it all adds up. It's a fairly cheap way to add a few nice looking figurines to my collection every month and have extra content to look forward to when big game releases happen.
Kyle MacGregor
I'm a 26 year old very conflicted owner of two amiibo, Marth and Zelda.
Amiibo are terrible; let us never speak of them again.
This is my reaction to most all amiibo-related news these days, particularly regarding their availability at specific retailers. But I'm an surly old misanthrope hailing from a long line of pack rats, one who has seen the great evil piles upon piles of plastic crap can do to a person. It's in my blood, the pack rattery, and I believe my aversion to collecting this bunk is some sort of primal defense mechanism.
I do have a couple of these things, though. One I acquired out of professional obligation, given these things are the talk of the town and keeping up with the dernier cri is part of the job. The other is more difficult to explain. Despite my love for Fire Emblem, I didn't feel compelled to pick up a Marth amiibo at launch. He looks sort of shit, and doesn't quite do the character justice. Then the shortages happened and something went off in my brain.
Word of the artificial scarcity had me importing Marth from Japan before I even had time to think about it. Every time one of these things is rumored to be ceasing production, I get an urge to run out and get one while I still can -- even if it's a character I feel little to no affection for. It's bizarre, really, and mildly terrifying. I don't even like these things. I'm not much of a collector. The in-game functionality has been lackluster at best thus far. And yet I feel this strange yearning.
God dammit Nintendo.
Bill Platt
I feel like I need to add an addendum to my earlier post, the reason why we have so many amiibo, one set for me, one set for my daughter and one set to keep hidden away for my collection. As you can imagine, when you have a child who games as much, if not more than you do, the number if games and game merchandise you end up buying is always double. For example, for almost all 1st party Nintendo games we buy two copies, one for the kid, one for me.
Just thought I should maybe clarify that.
Kyle MacGregor
Addendum to Bill's addendum: It's okay to admit you have a problem.
Bill Platt
Ha, I've always been the first to admit that I have a problem with collecting, no doubt about that. Truthfully though, once you have kids, if you ever do, and they take up your hobby, shit gets expensive. Double this, triple that....it adds up.
Jonathan Holmes
I'm excited and afraid for that day Bill. I've kept almost every game and toy I've ever owned. Part of that is because I want my hopefully-future kids to have every toy I ever owned. Maybe they wont even want new toys, being too deeply buried in a pile of Mighty Muggs, '80s era Transformers, and now amiibo to even move.
As for me, I'm Jonathan Holmes, 38 years old, and I have 10 amiibo: Little Mac, Captain Falcon, Villager, Wii Fit Trainer, Link, Luigi, Samus, Zelda, Fox, and Kirby. Like Bill, I enjoy searching for amiibo more than actually owning them. Shopping for them feels like a Pokemon ARG. You search various department stores like they were tall grass. Instead of walking down different routes, you drive down different highways. Real life or in-game, the feeling is the same. Maybe I'm going to stumble upon a rare, awesome piece of art that is both mass produced and one-of a kind at the same time. Maybe I'll capture it, bring it home, make some use of it for a few days, then store it in a box, likely to be forgotten forever. Maybe this process is the absolutely best way for me to spend my entire weekend.
Maybe definitely, it is.
Like Kyle, I get super intense when I know I may miss out on a rare amiibo. This is actually making the shopping process less fun for me. When you have to preorder an amiibo or get it online, it feels more like sending money in the mail to keep a child I never met from dying than it does Pokémon collecting. But I'll get to that later.
The most fun I had grabbing an amiibo was probably Captain Falcon, which I talked about here. The most touching amiibo I own came from @Shawn_on_games, who sent me a Villager for no reason. He's just super nice. We've never met in real life, only talked on Twitter for the past few years. He spotted the amiibo, thought of me, bought it and paid for shipping out of his own pocket. I sent him a Mighty Mugg and a t-shirt in return, but it didn't feel like enough. The fact that he wanted me to have a thing just for the sake of it was pretty darn moving. Appropriately enough, that kind of thing usually only happens in games like Animal Crossing, where NPCs are designed to be good to you. Shawn isn't an NPC though, and he wasn't "designed" to be a nice person. He has chosen to be one, and that's why I'm lucky to know him.
Compare the depth of emotion attached to those two amiibo stories to how I felt when my Little Mac amiibo arrived in the mail today, and it's far less profound. There was no thrill of the hunt. There was no chance encounter leading to unexpected victory. There was no kindness of strangers changing your outlook on life. There was just a slightly cross-eyed boxer in small plastic case, staring at me sadly, as if to say "Is this really what you want in life?"
I couldn't help but be a little resentful towards Little Mac for offering me so little gratification. It's not his fault though. It's my fault for buying something I don't really want out of an irrational, wallet draining fear of missing out. Still, I wouldn't part with him for anything, because then I'd never see him again, and I never want him or any of my toys, or anyone ever, to ever die, ever.
They say most collector's have a fear of death and loss driving them forward, and if they're right, then I'm sure I'd fit the profile. That's why I already preordered King Dedede, Mega Man, and Toon Link. I don't want lose the opportunity to wear a Dedede mask in Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, left wondering what could have been. I don't want Mega
Man to ever disappear from my life. I want Toon Link to stay young and fun forever.
My wife turned to me the other day and asked "So when is this whole amiibo thing going to stop?" and I said "Maybe when I'm dead? Hopefully not though. Maybe the Toon Link amiibo will work with the Nintendo games are kids will be playing, like how the GameCube controller works with the Wii U! Wouldn't that be amazing?!?!" And with that, my wife went back to looking at my amiibo collection the way that the Mom looked at the leg lamp in A Christmas Story.
I talk about amiibo as potential immortals, but I wouldn't be surprised to find all of mine in pieces by the end of the week, with my wife's fingerprints on the broken bodies and the dog put to blame, as I shed real adult tears over my dead Kirby. If that happens, I guess I'll just buy him again. Money can't buy you love, but it can get you more amiibo, so close enough.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upIs it Missour-ee or Missour-uh?
Those two pronunciations of the state, according to linguist John Baugh of Washington University in St. Louis, peacefully co-exist and are “indicative of all of the linguistic collisions from the rest of the country that happen in our wonderful city.”
Baugh and linguist Cindy Brantmeier of Washington University joined host Don Marsh to talk about how language forms, evolves, and is spoken differently throughout the United States.
“When the state was first settled, the Missour-uh pronunciation was prevalent and pervasive,” Baugh said. “There were others who moved from the East to St. Louis that used the Missour-ee pronunciation though because the city of the St. Louis was so crucial to westward movement, the rural dialects from the South and from the West merged at the same time that you had travelers coming from other parts of the country.”
A robust discussion with examples of regional dialect from wash vs. worsh and farty-four vs. forty-four to sink vs. zink and chawklet vs. chocolate took place on our Facebook page.
Feel free to check it out and join the discussion.
Interview with John Baugh and Cindy Brantmeier
Role Of Technology
While relatively new technological communication trends such as using “internet language” and texting impact language, technological advances have long influenced communication.
“The people from England who settled Boston came from a different part of the dialect regions of England than those who settled the South. And because the eastern part of the (United States) was settled prior to the Industrial Revolution, people got around by horse and buggy or on foot and, as a result of that, the dialect regions fossilized,” said John Baugh.
Cindy Brantmeier explained how recent technological advances in communication influence language. “If you look at technological influences in written English, as a linguist, I’m fascinated by the texts I get from friends. I don’t look at the content of what they’re saying, but rather the linguistic morphological aspects of what they’re sending me over texts,” she said.
Noticing Changes In Language
“(Linguistic) changes are difficult to detect within one’s lifetime. It’s like the erosion process. You can look at rocks and know intellectually they are suffering erosion but not be able to detect it physically and depending upon the linguistic change we’re considering, it’s difficult at times for people who are actively using the language to sense those changes as they’re ongoing.” – John Baugh
St. Louis Language Is Unique
“We know from linguistic evidence that St. Louis is the one place in the country where all of the regions seem to collide. It’s where the south meets the north, it’s where the east meets the west and as the Gateway City, from a linguistic point of view, it’s absolutely rich and fascinating.” – John Baugh
More Information About Our Guests
John Baugh
Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences and Professor of Linguistics at Washington University in St. Louis. John was recently named a founding co-editor of a new electronic journal on linguistics and public policy. Language, the official journal of the Linguistic Society of America, will publish in three new areas: Teaching Linguistics, Public Policy and Perspectives. John will serve as co-editor of Public Policy.
Baugh has also completed groundbreaking research concerning voice discrimination, as we talked about toward the end of the show.
Cindy Brantmeier
Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis.
Brantmeier was recently honored as Washington University’s recipient of the 2012 Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award. The annual award from Emerson recognizes top educators from the St. Louis region for their passion for teaching, their impact on student learning, and their knowledge and creativity.
Follow St. Louis on the Air on Twitter - @STLonAirOnce, a friend of mine asked me to help out on his organization’s project. I didn’t feel qualified; I had read everything they’d published, but I assumed that all the things I was uncertain about were solved and written up somewhere in a “secret notebook” by people much smarter than I. My friend laughed and said “that’s what I used to think! I assumed everything had already been written up in a secret notebook! and then I joined the project and found out that there is no secret notebook. We’re all just figuring it out as we go.”
There seems to be a phenomenon here of a sense that a thing is known.
Known by whom? Unclear. Known by smarter people than you.
But because it is known, it is not your job to deal with, and probably a waste of time for you to try to personally find out the answer.
This is a failure mode when, for instance, everybody in a group thinks somebody else is responsible for a task (surely it is known, surely it is being taken care of) and then nobody does it.
It’s also a failure mode that leads people to underestimate their capacity to contribute.
“Surely this simple question must already have been answered, right?” Yeah, probably, you should check and see. Your first move should be to consult StackExchange, Wikipedia, Google Scholar, a textbook, the smart guy at your office, etc.
But if you try a bunch of avenues and don’t find the answer, and you still care, the mistake is to conclude (even subconsciously) that the answer is intrinsically inaccessible to you. “This is something that insiders know, and since I’m not an insider, nobody will ever tell me.” “Normal people get this intuitively, but I’m a weirdo and I just can’t understand.”
The feeling is that the answer to your question belongs to people who have some essential quality that you forever lack. You look at yourself, with your slow and fragile reasoning power, and you feel like you’re counting on your fingers, and imagine that someone out there has a supercomputer. (Or maybe that everybody on Earth but you has a supercomputer.)
This is an illusion. Everybody’s brain is made out of the same stuff, more or less. Sure, different people have different talents and levels of experience. But humans have general intelligence. Counting on your fingers, checking things to see if they match up to facts, going through arguments to see if they’re valid, trying things to see how they work — that’s how everyone figures out what’s true. There aren’t people out there who have found a shortcut.
If something is important to you, you can’t just defer it to “it is known.” You, personally, should try to find out. If it does happen to be known, out there somewhere, by someone whom you have no way of contacting, then it still doesn’t help you.
This isn’t to say that one person is capable of understanding everything on earth. It’s inevitable that the answer to some questions is going to be “I have no idea, and I’ll leave it at that.” The failure mode is taking on faith that someone else has it covered. If there is no evidence of a “secret notebook”, then there probably isn’t one.
There is probably nobody, for instance, with a secret plan to end global warming. If I were really motivated to do so, which I’m not, I’d look much more carefully to see who the players are, and what the most promising proposals are, and so on. But if, after a long and careful search, I could find nobody steering effectively, I wouldn’t imagine that there were, somewhere out of sight, never mentioned in the news, a cabal of wise men guiding Earth’s climate. That would be a kind of “god of the gaps” fallacy.
The assumption of “I don’t know, but someone must“, might be a habit learned in childhood. When you are a small child, you really are a lot less experienced than everyone else, and it really does make sense to assume that the grownups know things that you don’t.
But if you continue on into adulthood, and in particular if you continue to grow in expertise and achievement, and you keep running into situations where you feel like someone should know this and you can’t find anybody who does —
Maybe that’s because nobody actually knows.
Maybe that’s because you’re more capable than you think.
Maybe that’s because it’s your job to figure out.
AdvertisementsEDL wants taste of Tea Party’s Islamophobia Posted by Marmite on October 17, 2010 · 1 Comment
The movements are not yet formally aligned, but the racist English Defence League (EDL), which insists that Islamic fundamentalism will soon engulf Britain, is busy building bridges with US figures who take a similar anti-Islamic position.
Extreme right-wing British organisations are gravitating towards anti-Islamic groups.
One such is candidate for the California state legislature Rabbi Nachum Shifren, who plans to visit England next week in a trip partly sponsored by the EDL.
The trip was organised by EDL activist Roberta Moore, who has formed a “Jewish division” of the group.
She said that the rabbi would speak at an October 24 rally in London.
“He plans to speak about the dangers of Islamification both in this country and in America,” she said.
“We have the same objectives as the groups in the US, and we want to exchange information and work with them.”
Nottingham University Professor Matthew Goodwin, an expert on extremist groups in Britain, warned: “We’re seeing groups across Europe trying to form a transnational challenge to Islam.
“Going to the US is particularly interesting because the far-right in Britain has never gone that way before.
“It has always gone toward Europe.
“If it does forge strong links to the Tea Party, it would be important because the Tea Party has significant resources.”
Rabbi Shifren, who has given anti-Islamic talks at Tea Party events, boasted in an interview that he planned to warn Britons their country is being lost as “fundamentalist Islam” gains strength.
“I see England going down and I want to cry out and do everything I can to prevent that, to work with the EDL,” he said.
Ms Moore revealed that the EDL had also reached out to high-profile Islamophobe Pamela Geller.
She is a far-right US activist who runs an organisation called Stop Islamisation of America which is linked with similar groups across the world.
Ms Geller said she supports the English group’s approach but had not yet met its leaders or agreed to any joint projects.
However she added: “I share their goal of resisting Islamic supremacism and defending free societies.”
From The Morning Star Friday 15 October 2010
AdvertisementsGRAND CHUTE, WI - The Milwaukee Brewers have announced that Keston Hiura, their #1 pick in the 2017 draft, will join the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. Hiura is scheduled to be with the Timber Rattlers when they return to action on Wednesday night against the South Bend Cubs at 7:05pm.
Hiura was selected by the Brewers with the ninth overall pick of the 2017 draft out of the University of California-Irvine. In his final season with the Anteaters, Hiura hit.442 with eight homers. He also walked fifty times while striking out just 38 times.
"He's the best college hitter in the country," said Wynn Pelzer, the Brewers' area scout for Southern California to MLB.com about Hiura. "That's what he showed all through the spring. It was a pleasure for me as a scout to go watch this guy perform offensively.... He's a premium bat at a premium position, and he's going to be valuable for the Brewers down the road."
Hiura has been playing for the Arizona League affiliate of the Brewers since signing with Milwaukee. He was hitting.435 (27-for-62) with three doubles, five triples, four homers, and 18 RBI in fifteen games in the Arizona League.
The Timber Rattlers begin a six-game homestand on Wednesday. They will host the South Bend Cubs from July 19-21 and the West Michigan Whitecaps from July 22-24. The team has several promotions planned and you can see them at the latest Homestand Highlights release.
Tickets for these games and all remaining games for the 2017 season are also on sale on the internet, over the phone at (920) 733-4152 or (800) WI-TIMBER, and in person. Groups of 20 or more may order tickets over the phone or in person. The Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium Box Office is open from 9:00 am until 5:00 pm Monday through Friday and from 10:00am to 3:00pm on Saturdays.London Borough Raises Pints — And Legal Protections — To U.K.'s Fading Pubs
Enlarge this image toggle caption Frank Langfitt/NPR Frank Langfitt/NPR
The British pub is as much a part of the fabric of the United Kingdom as fish and chips and the queen, but each year hundreds close their doors for good. The reasons include the high price of beer, more people drinking at home and rising land prices.
Now — in an apparent first — the London borough of Wandsworth has designated 120 pubs for protection, requiring owners who want to transform them into apartments or supermarkets to get local government |
. Woody Allen has been now accused of you know having relations with his children,” Paul said. “That’s not really acceptable in Kentucky. And I think she has to decide whether she’s representing Kentucky or Hollywood.”
When asked about the criticism, Grimes stuck to her talking points and attempted to avoid the controversies.
“Bill Clinton has been a friend of my family for many years,” Grimes said.
During Clinton’s presidency, his “top focus was to create jobs, grow economy, which is the focus of our campaign, in contrast to Mitch McConnell, whose only job he has been looking out for is his own in 29 years,” Grimes told Hunt.
She deflected a further question on Allen, saying the allegations that he sexually assaulted Mia Farrow’s daughter, Dylan, “is something that is not for me to decide, it is for the legal system to decide.”
Paul, a much-speculated potential 2016 candidate, has been bringing up the Monica Lewinsky affair regularly; many believe he is hoping to discredit former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of her potential 2016 run.This is what northbound North Greeley Avenue looks like today (can you spot the bicycle rider in this picture?). The future could look very different.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)
One of Portland’s scariest places to ride a bicycle is about to be erased from the map and replaced with a new bikeway that is physically protected from motorized vehicle traffic.
At last night’s monthly Portland Bureau of Transportation Bicycle Advisory Committee, Portland Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller shared plans for a two-way bike lane on North Greeley Avenue between Going and Interstate.
Current conditions on Greeley are very stressful for bicycle riders. Between Going (a major freight route from Swan Island to Interstate 5) and Interstate, the street operates like an urban “freeway” (to use Geller’s words). It carries about 25,000 motor vehicles per day (14 percent of which are trucks) and a recent speed analysis showed people drive 56-59 miles per hour. At its southern end, Greeley leads directly onto an I-5 on-ramp — a ramp that crosses over a gap in an already unprotected bike lane.
Unfortunately, the Greeley freeway also happens to the most direct north-south bike route from St. Johns (and other north Portland neighborhoods) to downtown. Despite its nerve-wracking flaws, it carries about 700 bicycle trips per day (400 southbound, 300 northbound). The existing unprotected bike lanes are six-and-a-half feet wide but they feel much narrower with speeding vehicles passing by. The Greeley bike lanes are also notorious for being riddled with debris like motor vehicle-related detritus and gravel.
Here are two views of the southbound (west) side of the street…
And here’s a bicycle rider making the jump across the bike lane gap across a freeway on-ramp with people driving 60 mph…
Finally there’s a fix on the horizon.
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to help maintain and expand this vital community resource.
Here’s the cross-section being considered by PBOT for implementation…
At the meeting last night Geller said PBOT has a “Once in five year opportunity to reconfigure the roadway.” The opportunity is a repaving project already in the PBOT pipeline that stretches about 3/4 mile from Killingsworth to Interstate. Geller and PBOT’s Active Transportation Division constantly scan the paving project list for chances to improve biking conditions. “Once the street is paved, and if we just put the stripes back the way they are,” he said last night, “we won’t be able to touch it for another five years.”
The City of Portland’s Freight Committee supports this proposed protected bike lane because it would create safer conditions and keep vulnerable road users away from truck drivers.
PBOT’s plan is to shift the existing four standard vehicle lanes to the west and create a two-way biking path on the east side of the street (see cross-section above). The path (which would also be open for walking and other non-motorized uses) would be 10-feet wide and separated from motor vehicle traffic with concrete jersey barriers. The width was a topic of conversation among Bicycle Advisory Committee members last night. 10-feet — which is the width of the path on the Hawthorne Bridge — isn’t ideal by any stretch. Even the City’s own bicycle design guidelines call for a minimum width of 12-feet for a shared-use path (the standard is 16 feet). When PBOT designs new bike lanes, the new normal is to try and make them eight feet wide. The proposed Greeley bikeway would offer ten feet of width when there’s no opposing bicycle traffic — and half that when the path is shared.
Geller said PBOT recognizes that 10 feet for a shared path is “too narrow”. However he said they’re attempting to work within the existing pavement width and other project constraints. If PBOT sought to widen the road and path, Geller said it would double the cost (one BAC member suggested the possibility of a natural surface/gravel path to add some width and Geller liked that idea). As it stands, the bikeway element of the paving project will cost $650,000 — almost all of which will go toward the jersey barriers.
Another important wrinkle to consider is that Greeley is classified as a “priority truck street”. Its location between Swan Island and I-5 make it a key route for big trucks. This means the convetional wisdom at PBOT is that nothing happens on Greeley without the support of the Freight Committee. We learned last night that the committee supports this proposed protected bike lane because it would create safer conditions and keep vulnerable road users away from truck drivers. In fact, PBOT is using the city’s heavy vehicle user tax to help pay for it. This deal with the Freight Committee is a great sign of collaboration; but it also means compromise.
BAC member Reza Farhoodi asked Geller last night why this project isn’t coming with a road diet that would trim Greeley from four standard vehicle lanes to three (and thus give more room for a bikeway). Geller said they considered a road diet, but with such high motor vehicle volumes, the city traffic engineers weren’t willing to push for it (current volume is 25,000 motor vehicle trips per day and PBOT would need about 18,000 per day to strongly consider a road diet). Not only that, but a road diet isn’t on the table, Geller confided, “Because we were seeking approval from the Freight Committee. They wouldn’t have approved it.”
If PBOT pushes for a wider bike path that leads to either less lane width for truck driving, they will likely lose support of their Freight Committee and up with no improvement to the bikeway. “If we want to advance the project now,” Geller added, “we have to go forward with this.”
Also coming with this project are new buffered bike lanes between Going and Killingsworth. The southbound transition from the bike lane at Going to the new two-way protected facility will come via a new signal. Riders will have to stop at Going, actuate a signal (likely via a button) and then cross over Greeley to continue south. The northbound transition will be much easier since the new protected lane will start right where an existing path drops onto Greeley (see photo).
Greeley is classified as a “major city bikeway” in the 2030 bike plan and its lack of safety has been an issue for many years. If this project goes forward — and Geller is confident it will — it would be a significant change and it would be in place by this spring or summer. If you’d like to share your feedback about the project, contact Roger Geller at (503) 823-7671 or roger.geller(at)portlandoregon.gov.
CORRECTION, 1:29pm: We initially stated the cost of the paving project (including the bikeway) is $650,000. That was incorrect. $650,000 is the cost of the proposed bikeway only. Sorry for any confusion
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Front Page, Infrastructure
n greeley ave, protected bike lanes, roger gellerAs reported by ABC News, what started out as a program to hold unclaimed property, such as the contents of safety deposit boxes owned by people who have moved away without a forwarding address, has gone wildly out of control. The program is now using the flimsiest of excuses to drill safe deposit boxes and sell the contents, often for below-market value, the proceeds going to the state’s general revenue.
In a case reminiscent of the Monty Python organ donor skit (or perhaps the movie Repo Men), a San Francisco woman’s jewelry appraised at over $80,000 was sold even though she lived a few blocks from her bank, had not moved, and was current on all of her box rental feeds. In another case, a man’s retirement savings consisting of $4 million of stock certificates were sold; and “A Sacramento family lost out on railroad land rights their ancestors had owned for generations”.
The program began life as a place to hold unclaimed property for up to 5 years while the state made attempts to locate the owner. Both the holding period and the efforts to locate the owner have diminished over time. ABC news indicates that there have been internal debates within the state on these changes, with an internal memo objecting to efforts to to find the owners on the grounds that “It could well result in additional claims of monies that would otherwise flow into the general fund.”
What surprises me about these seizures is the scale and how under-reported it is. This is the first article that I have seen on this topic, compared to dozens of pieces and several books on civil asset forfeiture. This phenomenon is probably at least as large as CAF — Jarret Wollstein cites a number in the low single-digit billions for asset forfeiture (which may be an annual number) compared to the $32 billion (which may be a multi-year aggregate) appearing in the ABC news story. In comparison, looting of safe deposit boxes requires even less due process than asset forfeiture, which at least requires that the property be accused of a crime, and can be fought in court.People look at handguns during the Nation's Gun Show in Chantilly, Va. in October 2015. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Racial prejudice could play a significant role in white Americans' opposition to gun control, according to new research from political scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In their paper, published in the journal Political Behavior in November, Alexandra Filindra and Noah J. Kaplan found that whites were significantly less likely to support gun control measures when they had recently looked at pictures of black people, than when they had looked at pictures of white people. The study, which surveyed 1,000 white respondents, also found that the higher they scored on a common measure of racial prejudice, the stronger negative effect the photos of black people had on the respondents' support for gun control.
Taken together, those two findings "demonstrate that racial prejudice influences white opinion regarding gun regulation in the contemporary United States," Filindra and Kaplan conclude. But why would that be the case?
To explain this, Filindra and Kaplan draw on a rich body of sociological literature about the language of racial resentment, especially among whites. Racial resentment, as Filindra and Kaplan define it, is a prejudice based in the belief that blacks don't value independence and hard work and instead push for special rights conferred by the government. It upholds whites as morally superior while ignoring the structural advantages of whiteness.
[We've had a massive decline in gun violence in the United States. Here's why.]
Historians have noted how this type of language has often been employed by whites in the post-World War II era to oppose programs like civil rights and affirmative action -- programs that, in some conservatives' views, afford "special rights" to minority groups at the expense of whites.
Using the language of freedom and individualism in this way "creates this duality between a generic deserving group – could be homeowners, students, law-abiding citizens – versus the'special rights' that government is giving to a 'less deserving' group," Filindra explained in an interview.
There are plenty of examples of this dynamic in history, Filindra and Kaplan write: "'homeowner rights' used in defense of residential segregation, 'taxpayer rights' marshalled against welfare programs and affirmative action, or 'victims' rights employed in support of punitive criminal justice policies," Filindra and Kaplan write. "In each case, the trope of 'rights' was used in defense of white privilege."
Particularly with respect to the modern gun-rights movement that really took off in the '80s and '90s, the language "creates this distinction between 'law-abiding citizens' and 'criminals,'" Filindra says. She points to the type of language that's frequently used by gun rights groups who warn of ever-present threats by "predatory criminals" and a murkily-defined "they" who want to "take your guns away."
"Juxtapositions of 'law abiding citizens' and 'criminals' [are] evocative of racialized themes as crime has long been associated with blacks in the white mind," Filindra and Kaplan write.
Filindra and Kaplan say their research does not imply that all white gun owners are racist, nor that all support for gun control carries racial baggage.
But for a certain subset of white gun-rights supporters, particularly those who are inclined to hold certain prejudicial beliefs, messages about individualism and liberty and rights are understood in a very specific way.
In the mind of this type of gun owner, "I am showing my white nationalist pride in a sort of generic way through gun ownership," Filindra posits. "This is my way of expressing my'more-equal-than-others' status in a society where egalitarianism is the norm. I can’t say that some people are better and some are worse in terms of racial groups. But I can show it symbolically. I can show I'm a better citizen."
[Are smarter people actually less racist?]
Kerry O'Brien is a researcher a Monash University in Australia who has also investigated the link toward racial attitudes and gun ownership. He notes that the correlation between racial resentment and gun attitudes has been well-established in existing sociological literature going back at least 30 years.
"No one has refuted the research findings in this area with any opposing scientific evidence or contradictory reanalysis," he said in an email. "Filindra's study adds some causal evidence to previous correlational evidence."
"That said, there does need to be a lot more research in this area before we really understand the true strength of this relationship between racism and guns and other policies and more importantly what you might do about it," he added.
Indeed, Filindra says that her study illustrates the limits of trying to change gun policy by appealing to hard evidence. Gun control advocates "have been approaching the subject from the perspective of public health, which has a message all about costs and benefits -- an emphasis specifically on how many deaths, how many injues, all of that stuff."
But these messages are likely falling on deaf ears if many white gun owners' identities are strongly intertwined with gun ownership. "This is really about identity processes, and about how people perceive their changing position in a social hierarchy," she said. "We need to rethink how we can address gun control, how we can decouple the racial and public health dimensions of this."
More from Wonkblog:
Guns are now killing as many people as cars in the U.S.
Researchers have discovered a new and surprising racial bias in the criminal justice system
Mixed marriages are changing the way we think about our raceYet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his wat'ry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse!
So may some gentle muse
With lucky words favour my destin'd urn,
And as he passes turn
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!
For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at ev'ning bright
Toward heav'n's descent had slop'd his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to th'oaten flute;
Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel,
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damætas lov'd to hear our song.
But O the heavy change now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn.
The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear
When first the white thorn blows:
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream
Had ye bin there'—for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears;
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th'world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed."
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea,
That came in Neptune's plea.
He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds,
"What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?"
And question'd every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.
"Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?"
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
"How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck'ning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoll'n with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said,
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more".
Return, Alpheus: the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flow'rets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamel'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world,
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold:
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth;
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the wat'ry floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high
Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves;
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more:
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to th'oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
He touch'd the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay;
And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropp'd into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.NEO Scavenger is now officially updated to v0.9952b! Since the test builds have been relatively stable, I've just finished updating the default builds to 0.9952b on all sites. The "test" links are no longer necessary, and have been removed for now.
New art for the Red Gnome diner.
This updates the following builds:
Abilities now have costs according to their usefulness.
The changes included since 0.9942b are from three separate builds, including:
Added warfarin pills to game, which are a blood-thinner.
Added code to improve a creature's battle escape chances if opponent cannot run, and reduce chances if creature cannot run.
Changed pills to have no names except on bottles or when player has medic skill.
Changed Red Gnome diner to have cursed outcome if forgetting to pay, instead of fatal outcome.
Changed Trapping fire recipe to take a bit longer.
Fixed a bug that caused Red Gnome diner to have different pay/run choice order on some screens, resulting in mis-clicks.
Fixed a bug that caused Hatter to be missing if player used security footage to bypass opening mission.
Fixed a bug that caused keys not to fit into hand slots.
Fixed a bug that caused cleaning and dressing wounds to leave them bleeding/infected.
Fixed a bug that caused cleaning and dressing wounds to exacerbate them when removing barbed objects.
Fixed a bug in Clearbone Valley that prevented accessing items.
Fixed a bug that caused player to have mismatched resting stat bar and descriptor after eye augmentation procedure.
Fixed a typo in St. James Parkade w/renting hatchback for 4 weeks.
Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to spawn with 100% items despite having "weathered loadout" condition.
Fixed a bug that caused AI to have duplicate waypoints on save/load.
Fixed a bug that caused DMC to have quarantine even if Eli reaches gates without Blue Rot.
Fixed a bug that caused Hatter Blue Rot deal to disappear if player chose Grayling convo first.
Fixed a bug that caused stacked items in a slot to be left behind when used in crafting.
Fixed a bug that caused duplicate camp conditions on player when renting at St. James.
Added illustration to Red Gnome encounter.
Added makeshift sack item.
Added recipes for making makeshift sack from sleeping bags or sheets and thread.
Added small and medium battery sparker items to game.
Added recipes for creating battery sparkers.
Added sunlight item to game.
Added recipes for creating small fire from focused sunlight.
Added short shorts item and recipe.
Added creature sprites for bags and boxes.
Added button to toggle font size in message window.
Added code to show precise temperature if player is carrying a thermometer.
Changed Radiation Bob to always be there.
Changed hexes adjoining cryo to be non-random, to prevent unfair starting terrain (e.g. all hills/woods).
Changed Merga Wraith to be tougher.
Removed "To Core City" marker on DMC map, as it was suggesting more city could be visited.
Fixed a bug that caused ATN conversation to bail if no choice was made.
Fixed a bug that caused opponent condition list to show old battle info if current opponent is not visible.
Fixed a bug that caused encounter items to disappear when using drag cursor mode.
Fixed a bug that caused degrading items in unoccupied hex camps to disappear.
Fixed a bug that caused some slot-based conditions to be ignored on AI when spawning.
Fixed typos in DMC convo and Haggerty diag.
Fixed a bug that showed weight on ability/flaw tooltips.
Fixed a typo in Stoat conversation.
Fixed a bug that caused some items to be missing in encounters if stored vertically (too big).
Fixed line-wrap in ability point total text in small UI mode.
Fixed typo in flaw instructions text.
Added code to warn user if confirming with unspent ability points.
Added "Last Chance" Canteen to DMC Sprawl.
Added St. James Parkade to DMC Sprawl.
Added code to allow encounters to remove campsites from hex.
Added code to give player basic and skill-specific quickrecipes when starting game.
Added resting effects to eye surgery at Haggerty.
Added new "GameVars" table to xml, for loading one-off data and settings info.
Changed skill select screen to be point-based, instead of size-based.
Changed Skill select to use "Abilities" and "Flaws" instead of "Skills" and "Traits."
Changed Skill select UI to be more symmetric, and have more concise text, to make it more intuitive.
Changed all eye augmentations to use new ability and flaw system.
Changed Battle GUI to reduce text overflow in conditions area.
Changed slots to disappear if invalid while dragging an item.
Changed ATN market fire to be small version, to free up space.
Fixed a bug that caused certain status conditions to get stuck if item degraded in player's inventory.
Fixed a bug in Martha encounter outside Grayling that caused entrance to appear in adjacent hex after player teleports.
Fixed a bug that allowed vehicle to be accessed after entering Grayling.
Fixed a bug that prevented first node in an encounter from giving treasure.
Fixed a bug that caused ATN Joe treatment to skip Michelle when it shouldn't.
Fixed a bug that caused unlocked laptops to not allow exact time of day.
Fixed a bug that prevented left shoulder slot from having sort button.
Fixed a bug that prevented music volume from changing on options screen until returning to the game.
Fixed a bug that caused creature clothing sprites to get stuck when surrendering/being looted.
Fixed a bug that caused shoulder slot items to show over torso when no shirt worn.
Fixed a bug that caused Yezinka to not spawn anymore.
Fixed a bug that caused dead-end encounter when meeting Martha at Grayling.
Fixed several typos in encounters.
New items and creature sprites.
The major changes to watch out for include:
New Skill Select Screen
DMC Sprawl Food and Lodging Services
Default Known Recipes
Red Gnome Illustration
New Creature Sprites for Containers
New Recipes
Starting Area Rebalance
Radiation Bob Is Always Available Now
Message Log Font Size Option (In Big UI Mode)
Nameless Pills
As always, if there are any issues with the new build, let me know on the forums!On Its 100th Anniversary, The National Park Service Plans For The Future
As the National Park Service celebrates its centennial, questions about its future remain. At 100, the service is facing challenges like climate change, overcrowding, underfunding and relevancy.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
There's a big birthday today being celebrated from the marble steps of the White House to the granite peaks of the North Cascades. The National Park Service is turning 100. When it was created back in 1916, there were just 35 national parks and monuments for the Park Service to oversee. Today, the National Park Service system manages more than 400 sites, everything from battlefields like Gettysburg to the historic Oregon Trail, and of course the national parks themselves. NPR's Nathan Rott has had the enviable job of reporting on the National Park Service during this centennial year and joins us in the studio now.
Good morning.
NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Tough assignment, Nate?
ROTT: Yeah. It was a real hardship visiting some of the prettiest places in the country, hiking the Appalachian Trail with rangers, getting to shadow people whose jobs include mornings like Heidi Brill's. She's an animal caretaker. Let's hear from her.
HEIDI BRILL: I would say the best part of my job by far is the early mornings with the animals. Everything's so quiet, and the animals are steaming, you know, as the sun comes down and hits the forest floor. And the animals are starting to get sweated up and crossing through creeks. It's just visually a beautiful sight.
MONTAGNE: A beautiful sight that you got to see, Nate.
ROTT: Yeah. Not so bad, huh?
MONTAGNE: OK. But in the centennial year, many of your reports actually focused on the future.
ROTT: Yeah. Instead of looking at the last hundred years where the Park Service has been, how it got here, we decided to look at how it's doing right now and where it's going - we being myself and other NPR member station reporters. And the way we did that was by identifying what we saw as the four biggest challenges facing the National Park Service and its future. I'm sure people would add to this list, but the four we identified were climate change, overcrowding, financing and relevancy.
MONTAGNE: And relevancy, what exactly do you mean by that?
ROTT: Well, the National Park Service needs to be relevant to all Americans, or at least more of them than it is now. So let's look at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I spent 10 days there on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina earlier this summer, tagging along with park employees like Heidi Brill while they did their jobs. And one of those days included a soggy, rainy hike with the park superintendent, Cassius Cash, and a group of about 20 middle school kids from the nearby Eastern Cherokee reservation. The hike started like this.
CASSIUS CASH: Before I get into the history of anything, how many of you have been hiking in the national park?
ROTT: A few hands go up. Cash tries to put the others at ease.
CASH: When I was you guys' age, I used to always think bad things happen in the woods. I was a kid that grew up in Memphis. I had never been to a national park or a national forest.
ROTT: Cash gives this speech to a lot of people he goes hiking with, especially when they're minority groups or from cities. He wants them to be comfortable. He wants them to connect because it took a while for him to feel either of those things. Later in the hike, he told me the only reason he ever got over his fear of the woods was because of the Boy Scouts.
CASH: If it wasn't for that, as a kid from Memphis, I wouldn't have had that shot.
ROTT: Now, Great Smoky Mountains National Park does not have a visitation shortage. That's not what's driving his efforts. In fact, Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited national park, with more than 11 million visits last year. The thing about those visitors, though, is they are not representative of the community and nation around them. The park did a survey of visitors the year previous.
CASH: The average age was 41 years old.
ROTT: And most of those visitors were white. Now, that's no different than the rest of the Park Service overall. For years, the National Park Service has made increasing diversity a priority. And still, most of its workforce and its visitors are white. Cash himself is the first African-American superintendent in Great Smoky's history and one of only a handful in the service. Cash says that's a problem. He points to the kids.
CASH: This is the most diverse generation this country has seen. If these kids have no connection to the natural world, what message are we sending 15 years from now?
ROTT: That's why Cash has been leading a centennial effort to go on hikes with folks that don't typically visit national parks. That's how he is celebrating this centennial.
CASH: And it is my hope that we don't make this about a birthday or a celebration. It's a launching pad into what we should be doing for the next hundred, right?
ROTT: And, Renee, that's a message I heard over and over and over during my reporting, from the head of the National Park Service to literally the guys cleaning the bathrooms. The centennial is an opportunity to look in the mirror and plot a course forward.
MONTAGNE: Which sounds like the National Park Service is at a crossroads.
ROTT: Yeah, I think in a lot of ways it is. I mean, take climate change. Part of the Park Service's mandate is to preserve these places and the wildlife and ecosystems in them for future generations while at the same time, the glaciers in Glacier National Park are melting. The habitat where Joshua trees will grow is shrinking because of higher temperatures in Joshua Tree National Park. I mean, it goes on and on. John Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, put it to me this way.
JOHN JARVIS: Essentially, the paradigm upon which we manage is being shifted. And we have to begin thinking about how we manage for multiple futures.
ROTT: Rather than just assume that a landscape or an ecosystem with minimal human impact is going to more or less stay the way it is.
ROTT: And Nate, you listed a different challenge as well, overcrowding. I know that the Park Service broke their visitation record last year with more than 300 million visitors.
ROTT: Yeah. |
, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia, but appeals have put those cases on hold.
The case in Michigan involves two Detroit-area nurses, Jayne Rowse and April DeBoer. They want to get married, but the original purpose of their 2012 lawsuit was to overturn Michigan's ban on joint adoptions by same-sex couples.
They are raising three adopted children with special needs at their Hazel Park home. But they can't jointly adopt each other's kids because joint adoption in the state is tied exclusively to marriage.
Rowse, 49, and DeBoer, 42, didn't testify, and the trial had nothing to do with their relationship. In fact, attorneys for the state told the judge that they are great parents.
Instead, the state urged the judge to respect the results of a 2004 election in which 59 percent of voters said marriage in Michigan can only be between a man and a woman. Conservative scholars also questioned the impact of same-sex parenting on children.
But experts testifying for Rowse and DeBoer said there were no differences between the kids of same-sex couples and the children raised by a man and woman. And the University of Texas took the extraordinary step of disavowing the testimony of sociology professor Mark Regnerus, who was a witness for Michigan.Egads. Over a million Tassimo single-serve units have been officially recalled in the US and Canada. T-Disks are ultimately to blame, which apparently can burst from time to time. Tell me about it, Boston Globe:
The Consumer Product Safety Commission says there have been 140 reports of problems with the Tassimo single-cup brewers dousing people, including 37 cases involving second-degree burns. In one incident, a 10-year-old girl from Minnesota was hospitalized with second-degree burns to her face and neck. The coffee maker’s “T-disc,” the plastic disc that holds the coffee or tea, can burst while brewing, according to the commission. It also announced the recall Thursday of some 4 million packages of Tassimo espresso T-discs.
This news hits close to home for one half of Sprudge, whose mother received a single-cup brewer for Christmas. (“You don’t even drink coffee!”, “I will now!”) We’re happy to report she’s currently fine, enjoying and a cup of French Roast from her Keurig Platinum.In the early 2000s, ex-power broker and current imprisoned felon Antoin "Tony" Rezko of Rezmar, a Chicago-based development firm, announced plans to fully redevelop the mostly vacant, 62-acre South Loop site that runs along the Chicago River north and south of Roosevelt. After various failures to launch the area known as Riverside Park, Rezmar sold the property in 2005 for $131 million to the Luxemborg-based General Mediterranean Holding (GMH), the site's current owner. And now, after a decade of dormancy, Chicago-based developer Related Midwest has announced plans to form a joint venture with GMH to develop the site, Crain's reports.
Rezko's original plans for the site involved around 4,600 residential units and about 670,000 square feet of retail space—and $140 million in tax-increment financing (TIF) to help pay for it. But Chicago denied the TIF request after Rezko was caught in a minority contracting scandal, which acted as a bit of foreshadowing to Rezko's connections with Blagojevich and various kickback mechanisms that have since landed Rezko over 10 years in prison. Riverside Park has since remained a general eyesore, even prompting Mayor Emanuel's administration to attempt to acquire the site in 2014.
Now that Related Midwest is in the mix, it is expected that activity will soon be started on the site, though this process, especially as it relates to financing and subsidies, may be complicated by GMH's own legal foibles. Nadhmi Auchi, leader of GMH, is an Iraqi-born British businessman—one of Britain's wealthiest—and was tied up in his own oil-related kickback scandals in 2003.
Based on the site's size and location, it is easily a decade out from realizing substantial change, but with civic pressure from Mayor Emanuel, and development pressure from other big projects in the South Loop—including the recently announced $1.5 billion Lend Lease/CMK River South mega-project right next door—hopes are that the site won't sit dormant for much longer.
·Related pounces on big South Loop site [Crain's]
·Previous South Loop coverage [Curbed Chicago]
·Previous Tony Rezko coverage [Curbed Chicago]I-League: Arrows project to be reinstated this season
The Indian FA are all set to reintroduce the Arrows project which was dissolved four years ago…
The All Football Federation (AIFF) are all set to announce their plans to revive the Arrows project from the 2017-18 I-League season, Goal can reveal.
The primary motive behind this move is to ensure that the Under-17 players, who would represent at the Under-17 World Cup in October, and the best talent from the Under-19 team stick together and ply their trade in the I-League. There is also a possibility that the AIFF might look to extend coach Luis Norton’s contract so that the former ‘B’ coach would continue to be at the helm of affairs.
It is learnt that the Indian FA intends to keep the boys together so that they continue their development and get good playing time, which wouldn’t be the case should they be allowed to join the clubs from the I-League or the Indian Super League (ISL).
MANDAR TAMHANE ON GURPREET SANDHU'S SIGNING - 'ONCE YOU KNOW WHAT THE RULES ARE, YOU KNOW HOW TO PLAY YOUR CARDS'
The Arrows project was kickstarted at the behest of former India coach Bob Houghton who would point that the best young talent in the country was struggling for playing time as on most occasions, they would be warming the bench. With Praful Patel, the AIFF president approving the project, the Indian Arrows was launched in 2010-11 season from Delhi.
The second and third year saw the team shift base to Kolkata with Pailan Group coming in as the investors. However, the project had to be called off due to financial crunch in August 2013.
It must be noted that the some of the best players in the country currently have all been a part of the Arrows project which goes to show that from a footballing perspective, the decision to start a team of youngsters was a success.
GURPREET SINGH SANDHU'S BENGALURU FC SWITCH - A WISE MOVE OR WAS IT TOO EARLY TO GIVE UP ON HIS EUROPEAN DREAM?
Article continues below
The All India Football Federation’s (AIFF) Bid Evaluation Committee is set to meet on August 18 to decide on which teams would possibly make the cut into the next season’s top division league of the country.
Kushal Das, the AIFF general secretary, had stated that only two teams would make the cut from those who had made a bid to be a part of the I-League.
With the AIFF reinvesting in the Arrows project, there is a good chance that only one team from those who have shown an interest to be a part of the I-League would be granted an entry into the top league.While 2016 marks the year of the monkey, it's lions and dragons that take centre stage at many Chinese New Year's celebrations.
In Chinese Culture, the lion symbolizes strength, stability and superiority, while the dragon represents power, boldness and excellence.
Dances for both the auspicious creatures are performed during festive occasions as a means to chase away evil spirits and welcome in prosperous times.
"If you have a new dragon or lion you actually have to do an eye-dotting ceremony for them just to give them the spirit and make them alive," said Eugenia Chau, who is on the team of the Vancouver Chinese Lion Dance Association and also trains others.
'Give it the spirit'
"You use this brush and red paint, normally with ginger as well. Then you get someone like a master, to dot the eyes of the lions and dragons to give it the spirit."
Performing a dragon dance can require up to 100 people, while a lion dance is usually performed by two people.
Both traditions date back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC –220 AD) in China.
There are many folklore stories as to how the lion dance came to be.
According to one legend, a monster referred to as Nian kidnapped children and terrorized villages.
Feed the lion lettuce
One year, a lion defeated and chased the monster away — who vowed to return. The villagers did not have the lion to protect themselves, so they used a lion costume to scare away the monster the following year.
Dancers feed the lion used in the dance during the event with lettuce, because the Chinese word for "lettuce" sounds similar to the word for "wealth."
"So the lion will eat the wealth and spit it back out to the owners or the audience to give them prosperity," Chau said.
The vibrant lion and dragon dances can be seen in action at the 43rd Chinese New Year parade in Vancouver on February 14th.
CBC Vancouver will be in the parade as well.
In the video above Chau explains the significance and history of these dances to Our Vancouver host Gloria Macarenko.I had the figures, I'm a fan of the show (I participated in the "Save Farscape" campaign). So, here's the crew. I know that a lot of people are going to complain that I don't have Rygel, Scorpius and Pilot in there. Well, that's because I never found a Rygel and Scorpius (and I still haven't haven't found either one by itself, loose and at an affordable price) and ToyVault never made a Pilot action figure. So, I just went with what I already had. The picture is slightly inspired by the classic LP cover by The Beatles, "With The Beatles." And, as sort of a shoutout, I used a line from a Beatles' song, so it seems to best fit.
All the action figures in the shot are by ToyVault. The Aeryn Sun is the limited edition PK Outfit figure that was produced.New York: Islamic State terrorists had "studied" the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack and similar "active shooter scenarios" to maximise confusion and casualties before hitting multiple locations in Paris in November, UN member-states have said.
The 18th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted to the UN Security Council's 1267 ISIS, Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee said the modus operandi that IS operatives demonstrated while conducting multiple, nearly simultaneous attacks, such as in Paris and Brussels, presents particular problems in terms of security response.
"Member-States explained that that was a deliberate tactic in order to make it more difficult to mount coordinated and targeted responses to the most dangerous continuing threats," the report said.
They said the November 13, 2015 terror attacks targeting a sports stadium, restaurants and a concert hall in Paris were fashioned on the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack as well as on the Nairobi mall assault.
"The attacks in Paris in November 2015 were described by member-states as 'optimised Mumbai-style attacks' demonstrating that the terrorists had studied previous 'active shooter scenarios', such as the attacks in Mumbai, India, and at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, and learned lessons about how to maximise confusion and casualties," it said.
At least 130 people were killed in the Paris attacks and hundreds wounded, while the Mumbai attacks, carried out by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba killed more than 160 people.
According to various member-states, given that during attacks such as that on the Bataclan theatre in Paris the perpetrators' apparent aim was to cause fatalities as swiftly as possible, it is essential for security forces to take action quickly, the report said.
"Such a scenario is not, however, part of the standard response of some law enforcement agencies to hostage situations. Traditionally, security forces seek to buy time to negotiate with perpetrators to secure the release of hostages.
"Consequently, member-states pointed out that those in command and those providing policy approval should be briefed in advance on the limited options available to ensure that response teams are able to engage the terrorists quickly to halt the killing as soon as possible," it said.
The report also said several leaders of the Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), including some of Indian- origin, are not listed under the UN as designated terrorists.
Member-states assess the number of Al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan with ties to AQIS could be as high as 300.
"The group consists mainly of militants from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Maldives," it said.
According to member-states, supporters of Al-Qaida in Afghanistan joined AQIS, headed by Indian-origin Maulana Asim Umar, who is not listed.
Osama Mehmood, the group's spokesperson, Umar Khattab, responsible for the region in the east of Waziristan in Pakistan and Umair Afzal Rana, head of media and propaganda are also not subject to asset and travel bans.Four weeks: That's how long Swedish bitcoin mining company KnCMiner takes to build a new datacenter, from breaking ground to beginning operations.
"The longest part is signing the agreement," CEO Sam Cole said Friday, announcing plans for another 20MW datacenter in the Swedish town of Boden, part of the "Node Pole" technology cluster near Lulea where Facebook built one of its most energy-efficient datacenters.
One reason for the speed is that KnC doesn't have to worry about air conditioning. The Node Pole is on the edge of the Arctic Circle, where cooling can be as simple as opening a door.
It's barely six months since KnC announced its last datacenter, which is already up and running.
KnC employs a continuous construction process for its datacenters: Staff began installing and powering up the first racks while contractors were still bolting together prefabricated parts for the adjoining section.
The ground hasn't been cleared for the next one yet -- "There are trees there now," Cole said -- but he's confident it will be ready by March, or perhaps February -- four weeks after the chips are delivered for the machines that the datacenters will house.
"In our game, timing is everything," he said.
KnC's game is bitcoin mining, the process of validating successive blocks of data in the blockchain, the distributed ledger used to record bitcoin transactions, by calculating a cryptographic hash. Miners are rewarded with bitcoins for each block successfully validated, which means the more processing power they can apply to the task, and the more efficiently they can operate it, the greater the reward.
As demand grew for mining capacity, or the computing power dedicated to processing the blockchain, KnC hit on the idea of developing custom chips to speed up the hashing operation. It combined these application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) into mining rigs and sold them to would-be bitcoin miners, then later began hosting and operating the rigs itself. Earlier this year it introduced a new generation of mining chips built with a 16-nanometer, 3D FinFET production process more often used to make high-performance ARM processors for mobile phones.
Bitcoin mining is a numbers game. The bitcoins that can be won aren't "free money," as there's a capital cost involved in building the equipment, whether you have one processor core working on it or millions, and operational costs, primarily electricity.
Miners seek to optimize the performance of their rigs, measured in hashes per second, and reduce their energy consumption. When KnC takes delivery of a batch of new, more efficient ASICs, it wants to get them up and running as soon as possible.
The new datacenter, like the last one, will have a power consumption of 20MW, but Cole won't say how many hashes per second it will perform.
"The hashing capacity is commercially sensitive," he said, and depends on many factors, including the design of the mining chips and the quality of the batch used.
The computing resources dedicated to bitcoin mining worldwide have a capacity of about 633 petahashes per second, and about 5 percent of those resources are controlled by KnC, according to blockchain.info, which provides statistics on bitcoin transactions.Some people are fans of the New York Jets. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New York Jets. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here.
Your team: New York Jets.
Your 2015 record: 10-6. Let’s see how it ended!
To jog your memory, that was the last of three consecutive drive-killing interceptions that cost the Jets a playoff spot and OBLITERATED any possible goodwill generated from the previous 15 games. The Jets waited until jussssssssst the last second to turn back into the Jets. Against Rex fucking Ryan, of all people. It was astonishing to behold.
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Also, Brandon Marshall can’t lateral for SHIT.
And the team’s Color Rush uniforms made the colorblind fully blind.
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Your coach: Todd Bowles. Take it from a fan of a similarly dumb franchise: your seemingly decent, defensive-minded head coach will ALWAYS be undone by the hapless boob he decided to install as offensive coordinator. For the Jets, that’s Chan Gailey. No matter how far you go, Chan will be there to shit on the gearshift at the very end.
Your quarterback: Oh! Oh, this is the good part, my friends.
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I did last year’s Jets preview BEFORE Geno Smith got his jaw scrambled over a $600 plane ticket, so this a real windfall for me today. Let’s run down what is, as it stands now, arguably the funniest depth chart in league history.
FIRST STRING: Harvard Boy. Cue the beard…
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As you know, the Jets and Ryan Fitzpatrick came crawling back to each other at the end of last month after both sides in the contract dispute realized they had no leverage of any kind. Fitz and the Jets are a pair of sad winos meeting together in a fleabag motel room after getting kicked out of every other bar in town.
Keep in mind that the Denver Broncos decided to spurn Fitzpatrick in favor of a man the Jets themselves sent packing three years ago. That’s how little they thought of Fitz. Turns out, the Jets don’t think much of him either, engaging in a hostile standoff with both him and DT Muhammad Wilkerson for the better part of the offseason. I’m sure the rest of the team was pleased to see their bosses treat both men like disposable wet wipes. No matter how good of a front this franchise puts up, dysfunction is ALWAYS there, ready to pop out from behind a nearby shrub: a loaded Buttfumble waiting to happen.
And it says something that Fitz is, by far, the Jets’ BEST option at quarterback. Somehow, they would inevitably be far worse off without the man who just threw three fucking picks in a row to ruin their season. Because…
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SECOND STRING: There are currently four QBs on this roster and, unless the Jets are completely stupid (never count them out), one of them has to be cut. Gee, I wonder who might not have an open chair when the music stops. Could it be the frowny-faced turnover machine who can’t even board a plane without fucking up? ONE CAN ONLY SURMISE. Even when Geno Smith got his mouth shattered and had to rest for a few weeks, he couldn’t even get THAT right. I wouldn’t hire Geno to be the line leader in a preschool class, much less be a pro quarterback. I’ll never get over him trying to stiff a guy who earned a fraction of his salary. I bet he tips waiters in all pennies.
THIRD STRING: Bryce Petty, who basically played flag football in college and will be a “project” quarterback until age 49. Any time you mention playing Petty to a Jets staffer, they react as if you asked a human baby to drive a car. OMG HE’S NOT READY AT ALL JUST GIVE HIM A FEW DECADES.
FOURTH STRING: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
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That’s your second round draft choice, kiddos: a kid so woefully inaccurate that Pro Football Focus wouldn’t even GRADE him for the Draft. And when scouts asked Christian Hackenberg why he was so fucking terrible in college, he blamed his coaches. Wrong answer, young man. TAKE SOME DAMN RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR SUCKINESS. As always, the Jets are fucked before even setting out to play a regular season game. They are the True North of oncoming catastrophe.
What’s new that sucks: Matt Forte! I hope you’re as excited as I am to watch his slow and inevitable decline now that he’s decided to play in running back purgatory! Without D’Brickashaw Ferguson around to block (Ferguson will be replaced by Ryan Clady, who might hurt himself reading this sentence), Forte is a dead man.
Also, Sheldon Richardson was suspended for a game for drag racing. Kinda shocking he didn’t manage to hit Geno while tearing ass down the boulevard at 143 mph.
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What has always sucked: This team is second fiddle in every way: in its own town, in its own division, in LIFE. The rare moments of triumph they get to experience are when Bill Belichick happens to fuck up an overtime coin toss, or when Antonio Cromartie defeats his own vasectomy. When you’re the Jets, you gotta hope that God does you a favor if you ever want to taste success.
Which is at it should be. I got friends who are Jets fans who never, ever walk around in team apparel. They disclose their Jets fandom like that shit is a nut allergy. They know. They know EXACTLY what the rest of the world thinks of this garbage team and its garbage fans. The second you pull a Wayne Chrebet jersey over your giant belly, you are Vinny from Syosset, spewing racial epithets and double-fisting meatball subs and screaming GABBAGOOL half-jokingly but also not jokingly, and calling into WFAN every seven seconds, and waving your dick at every pair of tits that crosses your line of vision. If I walk into a bar and I see anyone wearing Jets gear, I already know I’ve made a terrible mistake… I’ve wandered headlong into a bridge-and-tunnel nightmare from which I may never escape.
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Did you know this team went and begged Fireman Ed to come back? Like he was the Ambassador of Florence?
The New York Jets organization asked me to come back and lead the chant with the new leaders of the chant one last time. I know the fan base loves the chant and rocking our house and I know that the tradition will continue with these energetic and passionate leaders.
Go to Hell, Fireman Ed. You are dumb and your chant is even dumber. They should fill MetLife to the brim with poop and drown Fireman Ed in it.
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Also, this team couldn’t find a decent tight end even if you gave them a map and a compass. Fuck.
What might not suck: Revis! Why, signing him was like winning eight Super Bowls if you ask the New York Post!
Let’s remember some Jets:
Pat Leahy
Browning Nagle
James Hasty
Brooks Bollinger
Jason Ferguson
Hear it from Jets fans!
John:
We’ll never win. Have mercy on my unborn children.
Alex:
Thanksgiving 2012. I spent all day hungover on the couch, watching the Texans and the Lions trying their hardest to end the game in a tie (they sadly didn’t), and took a nap during the Cowboys game, because I was HYPED for Jets-Patriots that night. “Game of the season!!” I shouted at my dad as I sat down on the couch at 8:00pmwith a fresh DOUBLE cup of coffee, which I polished off shortly before kickoff. Things were looking great, tied 0-0 going into the 2nd quarter. The caffeine is RAGING in my veins. We all know what happened next. :52 seconds, 21 points, including my boy Mark Sanchez got pulled into the black gravity hole of Brandon Moore’s asshole, and the score was quickly 35-7. And boy oh boy, I was so wide awake for it I thought I could read minds. Just in time to get a text from a friend who was at the game. “My son took off all his Jets gear and is sarcastically clapping for every play the Pats make.” Fuck the Jets. Fuck Mark Sanchez. And fuck Tim Tebow’s run in the rain that made Skip Bayless throw his dick on the table of First Take.
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MichaelJeter:
I’m a Jets fan in my late 20s, and going into last season I owned five jerseys: Mark Sanchez Jericho Cotchery LaDainian Tomlinson Darrelle Revis Brett Favre You know what? I think I’ll just wear a hat this year.
Frosted Nuts:
The owner of most TDs in a single Jets season was in a stalemate with our GM whose leverage was a guy who couldn’t play last year due to drinking smoothies for 6 weeks. Brady is suspended for 4 games and everyone agrees that despite one of the best defenses in the league, the Jets still don’t stand a chance to win the division. Fuck Mike Tannenbaum.
Nick:
Defense? Check. Running game? Check. Receivers? As of last year, check for once. QB and decent fucking management? God forbid. Fitzmagic is going to take us to the fucking bank for his average Harvard fuckery of quarterbacking. 10-6 should get most teams to the playoffs, but fuck us with a rusted Pats’ Lombardi trophy. God. Fucking. Damn it.
Bernd:
In 2003, the Jets invented the scam of charging fans $50 a year to stay on their season ticket waiting list (as documented by BusinessWeek: ).
At some point, the NY State Attorney General’s Office took notice of this side business, and decided to investigate. That dragged on until 2008, at which point the Jets decided to abandon the program, make the waiting list free of charge, and refund or credit any payments that had been made. So even at their most creative, the Jets couldn’t even run a proper scam. To make the whole thing even more amusing, the year they made the waiting list free happened to be exactly the year the recession hit. I signed up in fall of ‘08 and spent all of spring 2009 getting ever more frequent emails from the Jets, offering me the once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy season tickets. Then half-season tickets. Then single-game tickets. So much for that waiting list. All in all, I spent four years living in New York and I never once made it out to a Jets game.
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Zach:
My buddy sent me an article today quoting all the recent hot-take-spawning stats about how Fitzpatrick’s uncanny ability to throw the football to the other team was suppressed by such factors as luck and missed opportunities by defenders (presumably those who mistook him for a bearded homeless man and took pity on him). He also was among dead last in deep throw accuracy, blah blah, etc. I replied with “I know, I’ve been finding a lot of these— I kind of understand just wanting to start Geno.” And then it hit me... this is a franchise that somehow tricked me into thinking Sanchize might be the answer, then not. Then somehow I found myself on the Geno train, and when it slowed down went from eagerly accepting Ryan-Fucking-Fitzpatrick, to anointing him a potential savior, to being fine with the prospect of casting would-be savior aside for aforementioned Geno Smith once again. Is this a money saving ploy? (Star QBs can get expensive) Is it brilliant marketing? Is siding with the Long Island/New Jersey rabble simply lowering my IQ? Has Fitzpatrick himself built a machine to siphon my IQ like the Riddler in Batman Forever? If I were the Jets, I’d draft QBs only, every round, ever year, until one of them looked objectively not-like-a-dumpster-fire. By then we’d be depleted of any skill players worth holding onto, but at least we can take all the resulting stash and spend it on aging retreads to surround him with just like every other proper NY sports team. I’d much rather follow that product.
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Ray:
Doug Brien just needs to make a chip shot field goal and we beat the Yinzers and go to the AFC Championship Game. After having a perfect regular season and bragging about it, he shanks both chances and we lose. As a broken down 6-year-old I stared at the television mouth agape, eyes welling up. My father, stoic as can be, finishes his beer, pats me on the shoulder, and says “Welcome to being a Jets fan.” and went to bed. Also FUCK Bill Belichick, and FUCK Rex Ryan.
Roy:
I am a Jets season ticket holder and proud owner of a personal seat license with a balance higher than my son’s student loan debt. Two years ago, in a stadium filled with at least 70,000 “fans,” representatives of the team came to me to say that I had just won two tickets anywhere Jet Blue flies in the US. So my son and I flew to Seattle and joined up with his childhood friend who was playing lead guitar for a proto-punk group. Then we followed the tour down the coast for ten days, ending up in San Jose. A great time was had, and all courtesy of the NY Jets. And yet I still hate this fucking team.
Matt:
Fuck Doug Brien with both Heinz Field crossbars.
Tim:
Here’s a list of the best Jets quarterbacks of the last decade: 1) A guy who tore his throwing shoulder mid-season. Famous for sending dick pics to the team trainer. 2) A guy we refuse to pay more than backup money. He went to Harvard though. 3) A guy most famous for running into his own lineman’s ass on national television. Also famous for dating a 17-year-old from CT. 4) Greg McElroy No one hates the Jets as much as Jets fans do.
Steve:
Was at a Jets game two seasons ago. Near our tailgate spot was an old assed camper with about 20 Jets faithful partying in and about the camper area. At one point, what looks to be a 19-year-old kid comes walking out of the camper holding a large plastic tray of vegetable with the clear plastic cover affixed. The kid wasn’t out of the camper for more than 12 seconds when a grown man who appeared to be the kid’s father walked up to him and smashed the platter out of his hands. Veggies, ranch dressing and the plastic tray went flying. The father walked away without saying anything and the kid didn’t even shrug his shoulders. He just stood there for a moment and walked away. That was the saddest part: the two Jets fan were so indifferent to each other and the violence of the act. That’s when I knew the trueness of Jets nation. For the coup de gras, a Ford F-150 drove by a moment later crushing the plastic tray and cover.
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Nicholas:
At this point, my status of “New York Jets fan” exists only through a stout combination of irony and masochism.
Thomas:
This past season, with a 10-5 record coming off an improbable win against the Patriots, all the Jets had to do was not shit the bed against their bloviating troll of an ex-head coach, Rex Ryan. Do this, and they make the playoffs. And god damn it, they really looked like a playoff team. How do they handle it? Revis gets toasted by Sammy Watkins all game, Fitzpatrick throws three picks in the 4th quarter, and I end up in my bed in a drunken fetal ball muttering “time is a flat circle…” It was by far the best Jets season this decade. The vast majority of Andrew Dice Clay’s personal wealth was handed to him by Jets fans in the 1980s.
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Kyle:
TOM FUCKING BRADY IS OUT 4 GAMES AND THEY’RE STILL GOING TO WIN THE FUCKING DIVISION. GOD I HATE THE PATRIOTS.
Nick:
-If I have to watch Mark Sanchez win a fucking Super Bowl this year I may just spontaneously combust. - I grew up in Albany. There are somehow more Packers fans in Albany than Jets fans. The day after the 2010 AFC Championship Game, a Packers fans walked right by me at morning meeting and said “Sorry, I only sit next to winners.” Still stings to this day - I sat to sit through Week 17 last year vs. the Bills as my Rex Ryan fathead and his eight fucking chins grinned at me from the wall.
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Jon:
I went to a Jet game once. The tailgate began with me witnessing men shirtless eating hot dogs off of each other’s stomachs as some sort of test of masculinity. I still haven’t processed that moment fully. The Jets got blown out 49-7. I’ve never been to a game since.
Mike:
My brother was Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard. He graduated at the top of his med school class at Columbia. He was born and raised in New England. He roots for the Jets. That makes him the dumbest fucking guy I know.
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Ethan:
We had lost the last five games to the Bills, a perpetually mediocre team who now had our old mediocre coach. We had pissed away the first game against the Bills, and I had to watch fucking Rex Ryan celebrating like his team won the fucking Super Bowl in a regular season game. Our new coach Todd Bowles seemed like a competent and smart coach. Seemed. Until during the Bills game, he decided not to feature our thousand yard back, Chris Ivory, but instead feature Stevan fucking Ridley. If your first thought reading this was, “Stevan Ridley is still in the league?” you have way more sense than Todd Bowles. This is also a game where our kicker missed a field goal, our punter shanked a punt 25 yards, our QB could barely throw a spiral, and our $17 mil-a-year CB got completely torched by Sammy Watkins. Despite this, we were somehow driving in the Red Zone only down 19-17. Then Ryan Fitzpatrick threw a pick in the end zone. One of THREE 4th quarter picks. Fuck Ryan Fitzpatrick. I can’t remember the amount of times he got bailed out by Marshall or had opposing DBs drop an easy pick. I can’t think of a more obvious candidate for regression. He wants starter money? Fuck that. I’d rather watch Geno try to put a ball behind his back. Honestly, the season was a mirage. Our defense was only decent. Our schedule was ridiculously easy. Even the games we won, felt like the other team lost the game for us. The games we lost were usually close, but really should’ve been blowouts. I think Rich Kotite could’ve won 7 games with our schedule. It’s fitting that the Bills were the ones that ended us, because if we’re being honest they ARE us. We pretend we’re higher class because we play in NYC, but we’re the same mouth-breathing idiots that Bills fans are. We make fun of them for buying into Rex Ryan even as we pretended he was a good coach for SIX years. We deserve to lose to the Bills for eternity. Oh, and also we drafted Christian Hackenburg in the second round.
Beef:
Only the Jets could be held hostage by Ryan Fucking Fitzpatrick.
Adam:
I’ll just say this, my favorite football player when I was a kid was Fred Baxter. No one should have to know that about themselves.
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Rob:
This offseason, I waited on bated breath for months to see if the Jets would be able to sign Ryan Fitzpatrick. The guy who couldn’t stick around in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Tennessee, or Houston for more than about 4 hours. These are teams that have had about 1.5 good quarterbacks between the five of them over the past decade, and they wanted nothing to do with the guy. But Fitzmagic was the best quarterback the Jets have seen since Bilbo Pennington, so everyone was on the edge of their seat. During this waiting period, three distinctly idiotic fanbases emerged: 1. The people who thought we needed to throw all the money/years in the world at him. He had the best statistical season ever for a Jets quarterback. Neve rmind the fact that he had the best receiving pair in the league to throw to, and still fucked up against Rex Ryan and the goddamn Buffalo Bills to cost us a playoff spot. 2. The people who thought we needed to give Geno another shot. WE SWEAR HE’LL BE GOOD THIS TIME! HE SHOWED SOME ENCOURAGING SIGNS! HE’LL HAVE DECKER/MARSHALL NOW! Never mind the fact that you could give Geno a receiving corps of Rice/Moss/Megatron and he’d still just throw an interception while targeting a triple-covered Jace Amaro. 3. The people who have never watched a second of college football yet think that Bryce Petty or Christian Hackenberg will be the savior straight out of the middle rounds of the draft. This is solely based off of the fact that the Jets drafted them, so they must be good, right? And all were convinced they were right. At no point does it cross anyone’s mind that we’re fucked regardless. I often tried to sit there and think about which of these groups was the dumbest. Then I realized it’s all of us. All of us Jets fans are just fucking idiots. That’s why we’re here. Can’t wait til Mark Sanchez leads the Broncos to a Super Bowl win this year.
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Andrew:
I went to the home opener 3 years ago and sat behind these two bros with their special Jets handshake that they did whenever the Jets did anything positive on the field. I wanted the throw myself from the top of Snoopy Stadium.
CZ:
Fuck Kyle Wilson, fuck John Idzik, fuck Eric Mangini, and fuck this team for being the ones who gave Brady a chance.
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Mike:
The Jets have now resigned Fitz and immediately Brandon Marshall wagers his Porsche against Antonio Brown over who will have more receiving yards this year. This will all but guarantee that Marshall blows out a knee in Week 1 (probably via a Vontaze Burfict cheap shot).
Mike:
I still own my Chad Pennington jersey from 2004. It’s the one I wear on game days. Because Chad |
The only exceptions are Belarus and Russia, which have instead chosen to form a Eurasian union.
Are we supposed to believe that only the United Kingdom would be excluded? That we’d be penalised despite the fact that, over the 43 years of our membership, we have bought more from the other member states than we have sold them, to the tune of £40 million a day?
It’s hardly normal, after all, for salesmen to chase away their customers.
What are the big corporations worried about? If our continued access to the single market is secure either way, why are they bothered about whether we take part in the various non-trade aspects of the EU, such as foreign affairs, energy policy, immigration and criminal justice?
To answer that question, look at which businessmen are lining up on which side. While the corporate types tend to be instinctively pro-Brussels, sensing that the EU was designed by and for people like themselves, the entrepreneurs often take a different view.
Listen, for example, to Peter Hargreaves, who co-founded Hargreaves Lansdown, one of Britain’s largest and most successful financial enterprises.
‘If you took a blank sheet of paper and wrote down all the benefits that derive from EU membership, you’d still have a blank sheet of paper.’
Or listen to Dr Nigel Wilson, chief executive of the insurance giant Legal & General, who told the Daily Mail earlier this week that the costs of EU regulation were holding Britain back in global markets.
‘I see the world as a huge opportunity for the UK, but we are underachieving by concentrating on Europe, which is growing too slowly,’ he said. ‘This will not lead to economic growth in the UK.’
Why don’t the CBI panjandrums and mega-banks agree? Part of the answer, I’m afraid, is that they have spent a great deal of time and money lobbying in Brussels to get rules that suit them, and that disadvantage their rivals.
When I was a new MEP, I was surprised by how keen big businesses were on regulation; I had innocently assumed that they would want less government interference.
Now I know better. The multi-nationals see EU rules as a useful way to raise barriers against smaller competitors, who can’t as easily afford the compliance costs. A glance at the EU’s lobbying register tells me that, last year, Airbus spent €500,000 (£360,000) on making its case in Brussels, employing ten lobbyists.
Doom merchants insist Britain cannot survive outside of the European Union
It’s hardly surprising that such a company should want to keep the status quo. Nor should we take remotely seriously the idea that it might in future reduce investment in Britain if we leave the EU.
F ifteen months ago, before the referendum campaign began and the Brussels apparatchiks started twisting arms, Airbus’s chief executive gave an honest assessment of his company’s intentions: ‘Clearly we have a massive investment in the UK and I don’t think there has ever been a plan to change that.
‘Profitable trade and political union are not joined at the hip. Russian and American companies trade with companies in Europe without being part of a political union. Business investment depends on profits, not politics.’
But now, in the heat of the campaign, Airbus is doing its bit for the pro-EU cause. So, even more, is the CBI, which is part-funded by the EU, having received £800,000 in grants from Brussels.
The CBI keeps getting it wrong. In the 1970s, it backed Edward Heath’s disastrous controls on prices and incomes. In the Eighties, it opposed Margaret Thatcher’s free market reforms and campaigned to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism. In the Nineties, undaunted, it demanded that we join the euro.
Indeed, as late as 2003, Sir Mike Rake, the CBI boss who now tells us we mustn’t leave the EU, was solemnly assuring us that ‘the risks of staying outside the euro far outweigh any risks of joining’.
So whom should we listen to: the Brussels-funded lobbies, or the job creators? The people who got it wrong on the euro — Sir Mike Rake, Sir Richard Branson, Nick Clegg, Tony Blair, Ken Clarke, the CBI, the TUC, the BBC, the Financial Times — or the ones who got it right?
Successful British exporters such as JCB and Dyson have said we would be better off out — able to trade more freely with non-EU states. Are we going to listen to award-winning British manufacturers, or disgraced banks?
Ah, you say, but couldn’t we get the best of both worlds?
Mightn’t we negotiate a deal with the EU which leaves us in the single market but able to reject the things we don’t like, such as the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, the harmonisation of tax rates, the multi-billion-pound budget contributions, the open borders, the supremacy of EU law, the political assimilation?
I have no doubt that this is the most popular option. But is it on offer?
The question on the ballot paper has been altered slightly from the version that all Conservative MPs approved twice in the last Parliament. The neutral verb ‘be’ has been replaced with the slightly loaded ‘remain’.
The referendum will now ask: ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?’
How, then, should those who want a free-trade deal, but not a political union, answer that question? It’s now clear we can’t get such a deal by remaining inside. I have no doubt the PM will secure all his stated goals.
Most of them, after all, can be achieved through domestic legislation, and those which do require treaty change are largely trivial.
It goes almost without saying that he will be able, by the measure he has himself set, to claim victory.
But, when he has done so, we will still be members of the EU on something very close to the existing terms, subject to common policies in foreign affairs, justice, free movement of people, energy, farming, fishing, employment law and social policy.
We will, in other words, be voting on the EU we have come to know over the past four decades.
If Britain returned a pro-EU vote under those terms, it would be taken as an endorsement of the EU’s stated aims. It would be taken as a mandate to participate in the continuing process of political union.
Oh, sure, no one would ask us to abandon the pound, or participate in the EU army the Germans keep proposing. At least, not immediately.
But we’d have consented to the principle of further integration, and to the Merkel doctrine: ‘We cannot just stop because one or other doesn’t want to join in — yet.’
So, to get a common market rather than a common government, we shall have to vote ‘No’. Voting to leave the political institutions in Brussels means voting for a Switzerland-style relationship with the EU; one based on commerce and collaboration rather than political fusion.
Y ou can’t help noticing that the Swiss are doing pretty well. They top the European wealth league and, according to the United Nations, have the second-best quality of life in the world — with the first position going to fellow EFTA member Norway.
The Swiss are so happy with their current deal that their pro-EU campaign has admitted defeat and ceased operations.
Now here’s the clinching statistic. Switzerland sells four-and-a-half times as much, per capita, to the EU as we do. Let me repeat that extraordinary figure. Switzerland, from the outside, sells four-and-a-half times as much to the EU, proportionately, as we do from the inside.
If eight million Swiss are able to flourish, trading with the EU but governing themselves, how much more might 63 million Britons — a maritime people, linked by habit and history, by language and law, to every continent?
The revolution in technology means distance has never mattered less. We can connect to overseas markets, not least those English-speaking and common-law economies which are growing as the EU stagnates.
The case against the EU is not nostalgic, fearful or petulant; it’s optimistic, modern and global.
We are a buccaneering nation, able to see opportunities beyond the stagnant trade bloc on our doorstep. We are a secure democracy, which finds no reason to accept the primacy of unelected foreign officials.The following is a transcript of outgoing company commander Capt. Vince Miller’s change of command speech:
Good morning everyone. I’d normally begin with our unit motto, but after two and a half years of starting every meeting and discussion with it, I just don’t think I can stomach it anymore. So I’ll say good morning like a normal human being.
I should probably thank my battalion commander for the opportunity to command this company over the last few years, in both combat and garrison, but I think I’d rather go out into the parking lot and key his car for saddling me with the greatest collection of idiots, malingerers, and criminals that have ever walked the face of this earth.
You’ll notice my wife and daughters aren’t here sitting in the audience today. That’s because Sheila left me six months ago when I had to skip our 10th anniversary trip to Jamaica so I could come in on a Sunday for unit PT, since one of you dipshits decided to go out and get his third DUI.
I wasn’t allowed to go to marriage counseling last year when our relationship was on the rocks because the commander had said that soldiers were the priority. So instead I gave my slot to Private Steadman and his former prostitute wife who he met on R&R in Brazil the month prior. Once they got back, she took all his money and Steadman killed himself. So thanks for that.
Do any of you morons have any clue how much paperwork it causes when you blow your sad little heads off? At least have the courtesy to go AWOL first. But for fuck’s sake don’t come back for at least 30 days so I can drop you off my books and let someone else deal with the meatsack of failure that is your existence.
This would now be the part of the speech where I talk about our glorious combat achievements. Too bad, there’s nothing glorious about walking around Afghanistan for 12 months finding IEDs with your feet. Now I’m deaf in one ear, have almost a pound of shrapnel in my ass, and occasionally I wake up screaming for no fucking reason. But you know what? That doesn’t make me a goddamned hero. That was the worst part about coming back. Not my empty home, empty bed, or shattered dreams. No, it was listening to you fuckwads thump your chests and talk about how badass you all were. Did any one of you actually get a confirmed kill over there? One?
I didn’t think so.
So in closing, let me say this. Thank you for the countless weekends I lost with my daughters because I had to deal with your trivial bullshit. Thank you for the two suicide investigations that forced me to cancel training events I’d planned for almost a year. And most importantly, thank you for the dishonesty, poor accountability, and outright theft of almost two million dollars in equipment, which is why I won’t be receiving another paycheck until February.
May God smite you all with the power of a thousand suns, and your souls be condemned to Hell for eternity.
And to the incoming commander. Good luck and God bless you for making such terrible life choices.
There’s a bottle of scotch in the third drawer of my desk. You’re going to need it.
I hate you all.Start Times
Commentary
ACB 52 Fight Card, Results And Highlights
- 17:30- 16:30- 11:30- 08:30Frank Mir and Bryan LaceyPatrik Kincl def. Arbi Agujev via TKO (strikes), Round 2Michał Andryszak def. Denis Smoldarev via KO (knee), Round 1Joaz Luiz Nogueira def. Shamil Nikaev via Unanimous Decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)Nikola Dipchikov def. Alexander Takacs via KO (knee), Round 1Erhan Kartal def. Rebuenilton Pereira via Unanimous Decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)Andrei Vasinca def. Ismail Naurdiev via KO (knee), Round 1Matjaz Vicar def. Kahzmat Musaev via submission (armbar), Round 1Malik Merad def. Cristian Mitrea via TKO (strikes), Round 1D. Yagshimuradov def. Dan Konecke via TKO (strikes), Round 2Niko Gjoka def. Paulo Ridrigo De Sousa via Unanimous Decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-26)After last week's show in Irvine, California, Absolute Championship Berkut (ACB) continue their mini world tour as they head to Vienna, Austria for ACB 52: Another Level of MMA Fighting.The show took a massive hit in the last 24-hours when no fewer than eight of the Russian fighters were refused entry into Austria after issues with their visas. Despite this setback, the card still goes ahead with ten fights and plenty of talent to be keeping your eyes on.In the main event, local hero Arbi Aguev (28-7) takes on Czech fighter Patrik Kincl in a battle of two European welterweights who are known for pushing a fast pace and being involved in high-action brawls.Aguev is off a 'Fight of The Night' performance back in May of last year when he faced Anatoly Tokov at ACB 38. Unfortunately for Aguev, his efforts were in vain that night as he lost via TKO in the fourth round. He was however on a sixteen-fight winning streak prior to that loss, thus he's still only one impressive performance away from reinserting himself back into the ACB welterweight title picture.If Aguev is to do that, he must take out Patrik Kincl who is riding a win streak of three having defeated Robert Pukac, Renat Lyatifov and Sergey Khandozhko in his last three outings. Like Aguev, Kincl had inactive second half of 2016 so one factor to watch out for in this fight could be the potential of ring rust for both fighters.Whatever goes down this evening in Vienna it's likely to be a blast so don't miss out. You can watch all the action here live on Flocombat and follow along for results and highlights.Dota 2 network StarLadder TV has banned a player for betting on his team losing after a "suspiciously horrible performance," reports Join Dota.
Player Alexey "Solo" Berezin bet $100 on his team, roX.KIS, to lose its Star Series match against team zRage last week. Berezin reportedly won $322 in bets for the loss. Starladder issued Berezin a lifetime ban and handed out three-year bans to three of his teammates, as well as a year-long ban for the entire team.
Team roX.KIS issued a statement stating they did not throw the match, and that the team "believes in the innocence of its players and staff" and the "evidence base is very uncertain." The team states the IP from which the bet was made is not Berezin's, and the site where he placed the bet, egamingbets.com, allows betters to cash to any account they know the ID for. Since Berzin's ID was publicly available, the team suggests it's possible someone else made the bet in his name.
Additionally, they gave reason for their poor performance, stating since they "did not have any chances of getting to the Lan finals" the match was "just a formality."
"Solo and Rox team do not agree with these accusations and we continue to ask for a full investigation of this incident(with the help from Starladder judges, players and managers of Rox, and egamingbets)," reads the statement. "We look forward to understanding of this among our fans, and please do not make sudden conclusions."Fearful of B.C.s deadly fentanyl epidemic and eager for sober guidance, a northern First Nation wants its chief, band councillors and 120 band employees and contractors to pass drug tests.
"These people are working for the Nation," said Lake Babine Nation Chief Wilf Adam in Burns Lake. "Their minds have to be clear to make the proper judgments and decisions."
'Their minds have to be clear'
As chief of the 2,500 member First Nation spread over several communities, Adam said he'll be first in line to get tested.
"This is one way to make sure the drugs and alcohol don't take over the community," said Chief Wilf Adam who volunteered to be first in line for drug and alcohol testing. (Betsy Trumpener/CBC )
"This is one way of making sure the drugs... don't take over the community," he said, noting Lake Babine's substance abuse problems are not unique.
"We keep hearing the word, 'fentanyl.' It's a big city problem, but it's coming to a rural community like ours," said Adam.
Adam said the tests will be voluntary, not mandatory, to comply with the law. But he said testing will be ongoing and community members will be watching closely.
Drug tests will be 'voluntary'
"If the members can look at who got tested and who didn't, they can make their own judgment," he said.
Adam says those who test positive will have to go to rehab or lose their jobs. It's the best way, he said, to keep the community safe.
These people are working for the Nation. Their minds have to be clear to make the proper judgments and decisions - Lake Babine Nation Chief Wilf Adam
Although some have complained the test would violate their rights, Adam said he has the support of band council and his community.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association said it's a unique approach but problematic even as a voluntary initiative.
'Highly invasive'
"I have never heard of any such thing before," said BCCLA policy director Micheal Vonn.
"You are collecting biological and biographical information that is very personal," said Vonn. "It's a highly invasive form of policing a person."
Vonn said it's sensible to want leaders and staff to be clear-headed but "it's quite a leap from that to institute a program of widespread drug... screening that's a means to achieve integrity."Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Equity Research says that Amazon produced 1.6 million Kindles in December, matching the production of Apple's iPads during the month.
The catch: Apple apparently ramped production down from 2.1 million in anticipation of the iPad 2, which could be announced as early as January, according to AppleInsider. Kuo formerly served as a reporter for Taiwan's Digitimes, a source of many recent rumors about the iPad 2 and Apple's iPhone production plans.
Kuo also estimates that Amazon has sold 5.4 million Kindles since releasing the Kindle 3 and lowering prices across the product line in August. Amazon has called the Kindle 3, released in October, its best selling product ever, but has refused to disclose exact sales numbers. An earlier report from Bloomberg estimated that Amazon will sell more than 8 million Kindles in 2010.
The iPad can serve as an electronic book reader, but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently claimed that many consumers buy both devices: the Kindle for reading books, the iPads for games, movies, and Web browsing.I’ve been a fan of Kobold Press, and Wolfgang Baur’s work in general for several years now, but this was the first Kobold Press book I purchased that was not part of a kickstarter. The TL;DR of it is this: If you are looking for system-neutral guidance on creating your own world for use in an RPG, or even writing a novel, this is a fantastic resource.
This book features an all-star list of contributors such as Keith Baker (creator of Eberron), Monte Cook (most recently, creator of Numenera), Chris Pramas (Green Ronin Publishing), other old-guard TSR luminaries such as Jeff Grubb, David “Zeb” Cook, and Steve Winter, Kobold-in-Chief Wolfgang Baur, and my favorite fantasy cartographer Jonathan Roberts. The full list is on the cover of the book.
The digest-sized book weighs in at 124 pages. The price at $19.99 seemed a bit steep, but I was willing to give it a go due in large part to the list of contributors, and I was not disappointed. The layout is appealing with essays broken up by subtitles and sidebars, with only a few illustrations as necessary (i.e. the cartography article). Each essay deals with a different aspect or approach to world creation, often detailing common pitfalls and approaches to consider.
Some of my favorite articles are Chris Pramas’ “World Building Inside Out and Outside In,” which explores the pros and cons of adding details as your heroes explore the world, or establishing big-picture elements of the world and how that affects the heroes’ current situation. I also really enjoyed “Here be Dragons: On Mapmaking,” by Jonathan Roberts. It spoke to not only how rivers and mountains should work on a map (rivers generally join, rarely branch and flow out to sea), but also more abstract mapmaking between nations or world powers. What is each nation known for? What are their relationships with their neighbors (trade, war, isolationist)? Another one of my favorites was “How to Write a World Bible,” by Scott Hungerford. I was surprised to find this near the end of the book, as to me it seems like such a great jumping-off point for so many of the other articles. It just touches on considering the over-arching concept of the world, the races, technology levels, currency, pantheon, cartography, notable figures (NPCs) and terminology. If I were to organize this book, I would have had this article a lot earlier, with page numbers to other articles that go in to more detail about each subject. All and all a fairly minor gripe, in what overall is an outstanding resource.
It should be noted that included in the $19.99 price is not only the print, but also a PDF copy. Very convenient for those of us who like to keep our books on tablet-computers for reference. That certainly sweetens the deal, and is something I wish Goodman Games would do, when I purchase DCCRPG modules.
In conclusion, if you are of the mind that published adventures and worlds are for newbies and lazy gamemasters, this will help you flesh out the world you want to create and make it so compelling your players will never want to adventure anywhere else!
AdvertisementsRebels including al-Qaeda militants stormed a complex in northwestern Syria on Sunday where some 250 government loyalists have been trapped for two weeks, a monitoring group said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels entered the hospital complex in the town of Jisr al-Shughur, the rest of which they captured a fortnight ago.
"The fighters this morning stormed the hospital complex on the southwestern edge of Jisr al-Shughur," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
"They entered one of the buildings and are engaged in heavy fighting with soldiers inside the complex."
He said the assault began with a car bombing carried out by a member of al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, al-Nusra Front.
It is the first time that the rebels have managed to penetrate the complex.
Among the 250 people holed up inside are around 150 government troops, apparently including high-ranking officers, as well as their family members and some civil servants, according to Abdel Rahman.
On social media, there have been an unverifiable suggestions that some of the officers inside the hospital are Iranian and Russian.
#Syria #Idlib Rumors sprout about presence of high rank officers from #Russia & #Iran inside National Hospital of Jisr al-Shughour — C4H10FO2P (@markito0171) May 9, 2015
Government troops and militia have been battling to reach the hospital to relieve the siege.
They began their counteroffensive on Wednesday, as President Bashar al-Assad pledged those in the hospital would be rescued soon, and are now around two km away, according to the Observatory.
They have been backed by airstrikes against the rebels laying siege to the hospital, which state media said had killed "dozens of terrorists."
It remains unclear how much food and ammunition those holed up inside the hospital complex have left.
Turning of tides?
On 25 April, rebels seized the city of Jisr al-Shughur in an offensive that some analysts described as potentially game changing, challenging a recent sense in some quarters that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was on the verge of reasserting control over the country.
One major change in the offensive was a new level of organisation and cooperation among leading opposition groups previously at one another's throats.
"So far, Assad has been winning mainly due to the fragmentation of the other side and the lack of skill and experience on the other side,” Randa Slim, director of the Track II Dialogues initiative at the US-based Middle East Institute, told MEE last week.
“Now that these two factors on the opposition side have been addressed in some way, I think we are seeing the difference in the playing field," she said.
The capture of the city extended the various groups' gains in Idlib province, where they have also captured the provincial capital and a military base in recent weeks.
More than 220,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011 that spiralled into civil war after a crackdown by security forces.One of the problems that has dogged Bernie Sanders‘ campaign has been the behavior of some of his most fervent online supporters, first by helping to alienate the black voters that Sanders’ campaign has had trouble connecting with, and by alienating other non-white, non-male voters. The so-called “Bernie Bros” are a subset of those supporters whose favorite word, but least favorite part of the body, apparently, is “vagina.”
They’re a difficult-to-quantify yet visible part of this presidential campaign, and on Sunday morning’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper confronted Bernie Sanders about the phenomenon, which Sanders denounced in no uncertain terms:
Tapper: Have you heard about this phenomenon “Bernie bros?” People who support you, and sometimes attack in very crude and sexist ways… Sanders: Yeah, I have heard about it. It’s disgusting. We don’t want that crap. And we will do everything we can, and I think we have tried. Look, anybody who is supporting me is doing sexist things is — we don’t want them. I don’t want them. That is not what this campaign is about.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has also become known for his own set of odious followers, and while Sanders surely appreciated the chance to go on record against these trolls for Bernie, voters should ask themselves if it’s fair to tar Sanders with their actions. In the internet age, every intense candidacy has its own brand of kooky or off-putting followers, but where the rubber meets the road is in how their candidates reinforce or undermine such behavior.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.OTTAWA — The federal government is poised to make it easier to track and arrest potential terrorists.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday the government is planning to give police and national security agencies “additional tools” that would make it easier to monitor threats, as well as charge and prosecute people planning to carry out attacks on Canadian soil.
Mr. Harper was short on details on the proposal first referenced in his speech to the House of Commons last week where he urged Canada to join airstrikes against ISIS extremists in Iraq. Government officials wouldn’t say Thursday when Canadians would have a look at the measures Mr. Harper alluded to.
An American news report this week said Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials were concerned about ISIS-inspired “knife and gun” attack plans against Canadian and U.S. targets in Canada.
“Our national security agencies monitor these kinds of threats,” Mr. Harper said at an event in Whitby, Ont. “We’re going to bring in additional tools to make it easier for our security agencies to monitor these kinds of threats and to charge and prosecute people when appropriate. We are going to move forward on those matters.”
He wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the report, but said “these threats are very, very real.”
“[ISIS is] openly promoting the concept of international jihad — that is international terrorism — against targets across the world, including targets in this country.”
An NBC news report Wednesday night said Canadian officials were considering increasing security around buildings given intelligence suggesting individuals, inspired by or connected to ISIS extremists, were planning attacks on Canadians.
The report quoted unnamed intelligence officials saying that Canadian authorities were monitoring “hundreds of people” in Canada who have either gone to Syria to link up with terror groups and returned, or who have attempted to make the trip.
Opposition MPs wanted answers Thursday about the report, and why the information came from American intelligence sources, rather than their Canadian counterparts who had testified before a Commons committee on Wednesday.
“Canadians can rely on their intelligence, on their law enforcement community … to keep them safe. This being said, we have to remain vigilant because there is a threat,” Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said in the Commons. “While we have air strikes over there [in Iraq], we are keeping Canadians safe here.”
Government and law enforcement officials wouldn’t say if security was being increased around federal buildings and symbolic sites, such as Parliament Hill. The RCMP said it regularly reviews security around Parliament Hill, but “for operational reasons, specific details about the security measures cannot be provided.”
Postmedia NewsDanny Roman, the reigning WBA super bantamweight champion, makes the first defense of his recently acquired title against the #13 rated challenger Ryo Matsumoto on February 28 at the famed Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan. The 12-round world championship fight, dubbed “The Challenge,” is promoted by Thompson Boxing Promotions in association with Ohashi Promotions.
Roman (23-2-1, 9 KOs), who is based in Los Angeles, became the new WBA belt holder in September after dismantling Shun Kubo by ninth round stoppage in the latter’s home country of Japan. That Roman is traveling back to the island nation for his first world title defense – the site of his most impressive win to date – is of little concern for the aptly nick-named “Baby Face Assassin.”
“If you put in the work and the sacrifice like I do then it makes no difference where I fight,” said Roman. “I have a great team behind me. My preparation for Matsumoto is already underway. I know he’s going to bring everything he has and I’m going to be ready for it.”
“Danny will be making his case as the best in his class when he faces Matsumoto,” said Ken Thompson, president of Thompson Boxing Promotions. “We’ve watched Danny mature into a top flight world champion and now the world gets to see his special talent. We’re excited for him and have no doubt that he will retain his WBA championship in February.”
Matsumoto (21-1, 19 KOs) heads into his first world title fight with a four fight knockout win streak. His 19 knockout wins against 21 total victories is certainly impressive and is among the reasons for his world ranking.
“I saw Danny Roman’s title-winning fight over Shun Kubo and he looked formidable,” said Matsumoto. “I know I’ll be an underdog, but I’ll try to do my best to win his belt.”
“It’s our great pleasure to welcome such a great champion as Danny Roman,” said Hideyuki Ohashi, president of Ohashi Promotions and former WBA and WBC minimumweight world champion. “Danny is strong and sharp, and his defense with Matsumoto will be a very good fight without doubt.”HOUSTON – Stephen Belichick attended his first Super Bowl in 1987 when his father’s New York Giants beat the Broncos.
The younger Belichick had an extremely obstructed view. He wasn’t born until late March, two months after the game.
From that first Super Bowl experience through this Sunday, Stephen will have been to 10 Super Bowls – the 1986 and ’90 seasons when Bill Belichick was the Giants defensive coordinator, 1996 when Bill was Patriots secondary coach for Bill Parcells and the seven for which Bill has been Patriots head coach.
SUPER BOWL LI: FRIDAY REPORT
The stakes this time are raised for Stephen. As the Patriots safeties coach, the players under his supervision will be trying to shut down one of the most prolific offenses of the past several years, the 540 points Atlanta scored tie them for eighth all-time in a single season.
In the run-up to this game, assistant coaches are available to the media and Stephen’s been polite but guarded. Anticipated questions related to working on his father’s staff have come and Stephen’s responses are short enough to make it clear nobody’s getting a monologue on what it’s like.
There’s a weariness for the “show” that Stephen has at 29, which has been informed by a lifetime being around the NFL.
The Stephen Belichick that’s seen on the field running routes and throwing passes with his brother, Brian, before pregame warmups is a world away from the Stephen Belichick that warily eyes reporters as we circle.
Coverage of his dad has left dents, as Stephen indicated when he spoke to Kevin Clark of The Ringer earlier this week.
“I don’t know if anyone will understand what those headlines in newspapers really do to families,” Stephen told Clark. “It’s hard, obviously, everyone in the NFL signs up for these jobs and understands the pressures. But some things are more necessary than others...One thing I’ve learned from my dad is we don’t do it for the media, we do it because we love it. We don’t it for the press conferences, which is maybe why other coaches do it...We’ve been labeled every word in the book our whole lives; what’s another [insult] on the list?”
Earlier this season, Stephen and his girlfriend, Jen (who, like Stephen, attended Rutgers and played lacrosse), had a daughter, Blakely Rose Belichick. Speaking with Stephen on Friday he made it clear that, knowing what he knows of the NFL, he’s weighing whether he wants to stay in the family business.
Asked if he wrestled with the decision to get into coaching, Stephen answered, “All the time. Still do. I love what I do. I would never want to do anything different. But things change, situations change, you see the way or hear about how other teams are run, you see some of the stuff that happens and you wonder, ‘Is this the best thing for my family?’ My family has been through a lot.”
Stephen Belichick was eight when Bill was fired by the Cleveland Browns. A police presence was stationed near the Belichick’s house in the days after Belichick’s firing as fans outraged over the Browns move to Baltimore lashed out at anything or anyone that was part of the Art Modell regime. Bill, having taken a job with the Patriots as secondary in February, was in New England while his then-wife Debbie had their kids, Amanda, Stephen and Brian, in Cleveland finishing out the school year. The whole experience left a scar. The idle vilification of Bill Belichick’s personality and integrity over the years has made a mark as well. Sure, there’s been great praise for him as a head coach, but the personal stuff has not gone unrecorded by the people closest to him.
Meanwhile, the stability of the Patriots franchise is unique. For most in the coaching life, uncertainty is constant, long-range planning impossible.
Now that he’s a father himself, those factors have Stephen measuring his steps.
“I know what I want to do,” said Stephen. “This [coaching] is what I want to do. But it’s not all about me. I have a daughter now which has changed my life. I can’t be selfish and just worry about myself.”
This is the first Super Bowl for Stephen Belichick as a position coach. But he is – as much as just about any coach on the staff – a veteran of the coaching profession. And he’s very clear that, if it’s decided that a life coaching in the NFL isn’t what’s best, he’s gone.
“I’m confident in my skills as a person,” he said. “If I needed to do something that would take me away from this type of spot, I’m more than willing to do that for my family.”Austin Radcliffe a designer from Indiana has created a blog featuring photos of various objects arranged in tidy near perfect rows. The items are arranged according to color, type, and aesthetics in a meticulous and detailed manner. Ranging from burnt matches to food items the collage and color combinations provide an appealing feast for the eyes.
Neat freaks of the world would love to visit this blog, whilst searching for a visually soothing, clean and orderly satisfaction. It certainly is a meditative and pleasing sight. Radcliffe told Print Mag that the deliberate organizing makes it aesthetically pleasing to see neat arrays of various items. Simply put –precision is beauty and that’s how Radcliffe describes the effort that has gone into arranging these items scientifically to achieve a pattern that demonstrate the aesthetic preferences of whoever ay have arranged them. The time, care and effort put into it give importance to the object, visual interest to the viewer and even maybe some function. Things Organized Neatly (h/t: Distractify)Hiya Dunkin Donuts,
Really?
Really?
I never thought I'd say this but, Rachael Ray is not a terrorist.
I'm pretty sure your company isn't secretly funding any terrorist organizations and I'm fairly certain the scarf in question is not a keffiyeh. And I don't have enough time or energy to go into the idea that anyone wearing one is a terrorist... but... we'll save that for another time.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess Dunkin Donuts is having a bit of a "Freedom Fries" moment.
It's okay. Really. We, the American people are usually not this stupid.
Okay, so some of us were taken in a few years back with all that talk of patriotism and whatnot. But trust me on this one -- you will not see a dip in your ad sales due to Rachael Ray's scarf.
In fact, I will start going to Dunkin Donuts and stop going to Starbucks (when I can, I live in Ca... can you come out here?) if you put the damn thing back on the air.
I want it back on the air for about a bazallion reasons not the least of which is: How about we stop the racist/cultural hysteria over Muslims and all people from the Middle |
are about to use a bottle or some other form of mana/hp regenWhen you switch treads between stats your percentage of total HP and total Mana stays constant, however if your HP will rise if you switch your stats to strength because of the fact that you are increasing your total HP pool. So your total mana/hp gain is the HP/Mana you gain from treads *the percentage of current hp/mana you have.When you are about to use a bottle (or other form of regen) switch your treads to agi. This way, you lower your total HP/Mana and when you use your bottle charge it will heal a greater percentage of your HP/Mana pool (because bottle's regen is always constant). Now when you switch back to str treads you will have a higher HP than if you used bottle while in str treads!C. You are about to use a spellI would summarize this, but Luminous already did it for me. Check out this important video.2. Tower AggroThe folks on r/dota2 have helped me out with this one.There are some important things that this picture did not stress enough though.If you are pushing a tower, and do not wish to take tower damage, then do not attack the tower while the creeps fight the other creeps. The tower will shift its aggro to you because you are the only target currently attacking it. Instead, dispatch of the enemy wave as fast as possible then go back to whacking on the tower with your creeps.3.Disassembling ItemsDisassembling items, and which items are able to be disassembled are important to know if you want to optimize your item builds. Many early game items can be disassembled and then later be built into larger items. Examples of this are tranquil boots being built into vlads or mek. Arcane Boots being built into bloodstones and etc.Following items can be dissesembledArcane Boots * Sange and Yasha * Helm of the Dominator * Manta Style * Ethereal Blade * Ring of Basilius * Perseverance * Ring of Aquila * Tranquil Boots4. Try to restrict your movement when the enemy team has more stunners. This is because stunners can punish you much harder for being out of position. If they lack stunners/slowers you have a lot more freedom to position yourself before a teamfight.5. MKB is a great situational pickup for the evasion negation if you are playing a semi-carry or hard carry. While the mini-stun is nice if your team lacks disables and the other team has scary channeling ultimates (black hole etc), the primary reason of picking up an MKB is if you need to stop missing your attacks. This could occur if you are facing against a riki (no more miss chance in smoke cloud!), PA, a good tinker (laser miss chance), Brewmaster (drunken haze), Nightstalker (his silence) and many other heroes that also make you miss your abilities. However, if you aren't facing these heroes on the other team and you have the disables necessary to interrupt channeling abilities you should get a Daedelus over an MKB as the critical strike buffs all your damage by 31%. "He sees my 8 stalkers and my giant e-penis, and he's gonna make sentries" -Alejandrisha
sunnybias Profile Joined August 2012 United States 1 Post #2 Great break down of basic mechanics for new players. Will link this article to friends getting into Dota.
Duckvillelol Profile Joined July 2009 Australia 19 Posts #3 Tower mechanics are a very important part of playing I think; if you master how they work early it'll help in learning more of the game, given how important pushing lanes are. Know when to attack it and when not to, to save yourself from that big damage hit they do (early/mid)! Former SC2 commentator: facebook.com/duckville.casting || youtube.com/duckvillelol || twitter.com/duckvillelol
aintz Profile Joined August 2010 Canada 1849 Posts #4 this is a great thread for new players, though #4 is kinda dopey lol.
synapse Profile Joined January 2009 China 4964 Posts #5 I was mindblown when I found that you can kill tower aggro by attacking one of your creeps when I first started.
Something I found useful is that you can enable right-click to deny (normally you have to a-click) through console. :)
exarchrum Profile Joined August 2010 United States 13 Posts #6 Another tip that has dramatically helped me is to always carry a TP scroll (town portal scroll, aka teleport).
It can get you out of a precarious situation and can help your allies in danger. A tower-diving-gank can turn into a successful counter-gank with well timed TP scrolls.
When you use your TP scroll make sure to buy a new one! If you are TPing out of base always buy another immediately. If you are pushing a side lane, make sure to pick one up at the side shop if you don't already have one.
Also don't think you have too many items for a TP scroll. In most cases, saving an item slot for a TP is essential. Exceptions are when you have the aegis, or you have godly items in every slot. justin.tv/exarch watch me play!
Burns Profile Joined December 2010 United States 528 Posts #7 its always nice to see these posts come up, it makes you think about the basics which are the most important part ofthe game
it also helps newer players out What do you mean you heard me during the night, these are quiet pants!
Q.ex- Profile Joined August 2012 Germany 6 Posts #8 i think that this thread does not only help new players, also progressing players.
you always forget some mechanical parts and its always nice to know where exactly to find the answer
Dankleteer Profile Joined July 2010 United States 731 Posts #9 The tower aggro is essential, saved my ass so many times when before I wouldn't go near the tower before I had about 1500 hp lol
Another tip I wold throw in is if you find yourself near a creep camp towards teh end of a minute, pull it at xx:53 to stack the camp. You're creating more potential farm at no cost to yourself, when it becomes a habit the little advantages it brings can be clutch. fresh chops
kdgns Profile Joined May 2009 United States 748 Posts #10 When you disassemble arcane boots, the energy booster is always on your right, so when going arcane->bloodstone, you don't have to hover over the items on the ground to avoid remaking arcane after disassembling
Audax Profile Joined April 2003 United States 2 Posts #11 One thing that blew my mind was watching a streamer and how he used the bottle. The bottle recharges when it gets to the fountain, so when a courier comes by to give you items you can throw your bottle on the courier and have it recharge the bottle at base for you and bring it back. I did not think to do that by myself at all.
I've started using this and it's helped out tremendously. You can't use it all the time, but if you're in a rough spot it's a cool little tip.
drew-chan Profile Joined July 2009 Malaysia 728 Posts #12 On August 31 2012 10:34 Audax wrote:
One thing that blew my mind was watching a streamer and how he used the bottle. The bottle recharges when it gets to the fountain, so when a courier comes by to give you items you can throw your bottle on the courier and have it recharge the bottle at base for you and bring it back. I did not think to do that by myself at all.
I've started using this and it's helped out tremendously. You can't use it all the time, but if you're in a rough spot it's a cool little tip.
The Pinoys love it so much that I have seen progames with 3 couriers, 1 for each lane to bottle crow. The Pinoys love it so much that I have seen progames with 3 couriers, 1 for each lane to bottle crow....
Sindriss Profile Joined May 2010 Denmark 32 Posts #13 Are you sure about no5? I seem to recall it is more complicated than that and that what deals most damage is based on a number of factors.
Zariel Profile Joined December 2010 Australia 46 Posts #14 5 Mana off a Blink/WW or a stun? Switch to Intel Treads!! sup
galtdunn Profile Joined March 2011 United States 178 Posts #15 Definitely always carry a TP scroll. Currently editing items in the DotA 2 wiki. PM for questions/suggestions.
Easytouch1500 Profile Joined July 2011 United States 3 Posts #16 On August 31 2012 12:19 Sindriss wrote:
Are you sure about no5? I seem to recall it is more complicated than that and that what deals most damage is based on a number of factors.
Are you talking about the damage increase % that I said? Daedalus gives a 25% chance to make your hits hit 2.5x harder. Thus it gives you a 25% chance to do an extra 1.5x damage, roughly 37.5% (I gave the wrong figure before). MKB gives you a 35% chance to ministun and do 100 extra damage, giving you an extra 35 damage on average, mkb also gives 7 more damage than Daedalus. In total lets say 42 more damage as opposed to Daedalus's 37.5% dmg increase. Also, mkb gives you +15 IAS, there is no easy way to calculate the dps increase that IAS will give you though as it is dependent on alot of factors. So for the ease of math lets just say you have the perfect ratio of IAS and DMG, thus i'll put another 15 points in dmg for MKB.
So lets say MKB gives you +57 "damage per second points" (42 dmg+15 IAS). The only way this would be more dmg than a Daedalus is if your DMG is under 152. Which is extremely unlikely at the point of the game at which you would get Daedelus, seeing as Daedelus itself gives 81 dmg. Thus the point at which Daedalus would give less dmg is 71 base damage. Very, very low. I Think even if you rushed Daedelus first Item it would still give your more damage than MKB on most heroes. Of course, if a hero has low attack speed, the point at which Daedelus will give more dmg than MKB will be a bit higher, but not by that much.
TLDR; If you already do higher 71 dmg when you get Daedelus, Daedelus will do more dmg than MKB. Are you talking about the damage increase % that I said? Daedalus gives a 25% chance to make your hits hit 2.5x harder. Thus it gives you a 25% chance to do an extra 1.5x damage, roughly 37.5% (I gave the wrong figure before). MKB gives you a 35% chance to ministun and do 100 extra damage, giving you an extra 35 damage on average, mkb also gives 7 more damage than Daedalus. In total lets say 42 more damage as opposed to Daedalus's 37.5% dmg increase. Also, mkb gives you +15 IAS, there is no easy way to calculate the dps increase that IAS will give you though as it is dependent on alot of factors. So for the ease of math lets just say you have the perfect ratio of IAS and DMG, thus i'll put another 15 points in dmg for MKB.So lets say MKB gives you +57 "damage per second points" (42 dmg+15 IAS). The only way this would be more dmg than a Daedalus is if your DMG is under 152. Which is extremely unlikely at the point of the game at which you would get Daedelus, seeing as Daedelus itself gives 81 dmg. Thus the point at which Daedalus would give less dmg is 71 base damage. Very, very low. I Think even if you rushed Daedelus first Item it would still give your more damage than MKB on most heroes. Of course, if a hero has low attack speed, the point at which Daedelus will give more dmg than MKB will be a bit higher, but not by that much.TLDR; If you already do higher 71 dmg when you get Daedelus, Daedelus will do more dmg than MKB. "He sees my 8 stalkers and my giant e-penis, and he's gonna make sentries" -Alejandrisha
Firebolt145 Profile Joined May 2010 Lalalaland 11414 Posts #17 On August 31 2012 10:28 kdgns wrote:
When you disassemble arcane boots, the energy booster is always on your right, so when going arcane->bloodstone, you don't have to hover over the items on the ground to avoid remaking arcane after disassembling
Oh wow really? Never knew this haha. Oh wow really? Never knew this haha. Moderator
Clerseri Profile Joined June 2010 Australia 1 Post #18 One thing that made my play a hell of a lot better was using the range creep's attack as a timer for last hits. If you watch their projectile, you'll notice it does more damage and is nicely obvious compared to the melee creeps' attacks. This means both that the creep it's attacking is also likely to be the next creep to die (the best one to last hit) and that it is more obvious when its health will get into range for your attack.
When timing your last hit, aim for your attack to do damage directly after the range creep's projectile hits to take the creep into farmable/deniable range.
Fantasy will be the next big thing in SC2.
Spiffeh Profile Joined May 2010 United States 47 Posts #19 The tower aggro tips are really great for new players from LoL.
Good post. Thanks.
tauon Profile Joined January 2012 Australia 699 Posts Last Edited: 2012-08-31 07:51:30 #20 I'm not sure if this is true but I remember reading it somewhere: towers have a 2 second cool down on their agro test.
Can someone confirm this? Road to 6sange
1 2 3 Next AllRules and Eligibility
Only US citizens, permanent residents, and current foreign students at American schools may apply.
There is no minimum age for eligible composers.
Works with a professional performance history are not eligible.
Only one work may be submitted by each composer.
Instrumentation may not exceed 4 French Horns, 3 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, 1 Tuba and 3 Percussion including Timpani.
Duration should be no more than 4 minutes.
The winning composer must provide 2 full scores and a full set of parts printed on high quality paper.
Scores must be of a legibility suitable for efficient rehearsal and performance. Parts must be carefully proofread, and of a legibility suitable for efficient rehearsal and performance, with good page turns, and ample rehearsal numbers and cues. We recommend that all entrants consult our guidelines for preparing score and parts as shown below.
The winning composer may be asked to participate in education, community engagement and public relations activities during the performance weeks.
The Hartford Symphony Orchestra retains unlimited rights to future performance opportunities. Printed scores and instrumental parts remain the property of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Stretch goals added, as well as two new rewards!
Scroll down to below the A3 prints to see the stretch goals and what we'll do if they're achieved. Thanks to everyone who's pledged so far!
UPDATE #2: Press features and new hand-drawn reward!
We're getting some great press, and you'll now find our project featured on Gizmodo, The Washington Post, Fast Company and Kickstarter's 'Projects We Love'. We've also added a brand new reward, where you can get your hands on the original hand-drawn concepts for the Please Please Me chapter (signed).
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Funding Progress
Visualising The Beatles: The Book
Visualising The Beatles takes the career of the world’s most famous British musical export and presents the key information using an entirely visual approach.
Capitalising on the growing popularity of bespoke data visualisation and the ever-increasing global interest in infographics, Visualising The Beatles combines the most popular band on Earth with the most appealing form of data dissemination.
The book aims to tell the story of The Beatles’ musical progression, as well as their cultural impact, framed using their 13 core releases; from Please Please Me through to Let It Be.
For each release we will look at the musical structure of the album (song lengths, time signatures, key signatures, lyrical format), the performance (instruments used, who played which instrument, who sung which songs) and reception (number of single releases, album chart positions, single chart positions). We will also visualise each album using our own unique format of graphical representation of music. We will also look at some more esoteric elements from The Beatles’ career, from their changing hair styles to their increasing levels of self-reference in their music.
For updates after the Kickstarter project is finished, visit the official Visualising The Beatles website (currently under construction). You can also join us on Facebook.
Chapter One: Please Please Me
To help promote the release of Visualising The Beatles, which is out in 2014/15, we are creating a limited edition, bound book of the first chapter; Please Please Me.
This chapter gives a taste of the rest of the book, and visualises a wealth of information about The Beatles' famous first album, including track lengths, single releases and reception, lyrical content, authorship and collaboration, instrumentation and a whole lot more. It also contains a unique waveform graphic of each song from the album.
Examples
Below are just a couple of examples from the book mock-up, of course the actual printed chapter will contain many more pages!
As requested by some of our backers, here's a larger picture of one of the pages from the limited edition chapter (concept page):
The Kickstarter Project
This Kickstarter project is to raise funds for the printing and binding of the limited edition Please Please Me chapter, which will be produced in a run of 500, and we'll never print any more.
In addition to the standalone Please Please Me book, we will also be producing four limited edition prints of four selected song waveforms; Anna (Go To Him), Misery, I Saw Her Standing There and Chains. Each print will be hand-signed and numbered, and in limited edition runs of 50 per print (and we'll never be printing any more).
The money raised will go towards printing, binding, materials and postage of the rewards, as well as additional design and layout costs. We will be using very high quality paper for the prints and the book, and it will be bound in the highest quality way possible. We will also be producing one-off packaging for each of the rewards, which will require printing and assembly.
The prints
We're producing four limited edition prints, and we've produced some mock-ups of what the prints will look like once you've framed and hung them:
From left to right, the prints above are Misery, Chains, I Saw Her Standing There (Sold Out) and Anna (Go To Him)
Quotes & Features
"Gorgeous infographics... a fun, well laid out look at the data behind some of the catchiest and most influential songs ever written" - Gizmodo
"For Beatles superfans and data geeks, this book is a dream" - Column Five Media, authors of Visual Storytelling
"Puts The Beatles back on the charts... for any Beatles fan there's a lot to like" - Fast Company
"A gorgeous product... I can't wait to get my hands on one of these copies!" - Tiny Light Bulbs (Project of the Day)
"What happens when data nerds consume a music album" - Kickstarter (Staff Pick and featured on Kickstarter's Projects We Love)
Rewards
We've created a series of rewards, including copies of the bound chapter, copies of the finished book and limited edition prints - take a look on the right and see which one suits you if you'd like to support the project.
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STRETCH GOALS
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As we've now reached our initial funding target, we've added some stretch goals. Here's what we'll do if we reach the following amounts:
£6K: We'll get the Please Please Me chapter and the waveforms printed to a higher quality - this means a heavier paper weight, improved printing options and generally a better final product.
£7K: We'll up the size of the limited edition chapter to A4 (currently planned to be printed between A4 and A5), and add a slightly heavier weight to the front and back covers.
£8K: We'll add a signed certificate of authenticity to all limited edition pledges. Whether you're receiving a print, the limited edition chapter, all four prints or a signed chapter, we'll throw in a high quality printed certificate of authenticity, which will be hand signed by the authors.
£10K: FREE postcard reward for all pledges of £15 and over (not including P&P). So if you've bought a copy of the chapter, or any pledge above that, you'll receive the five postcards completely free.
£12K: FREE A3 print of Love Me Do for all pledges of £20 and over (not including P&P). This print isn't limited to a certain number, but we'll only print as many as needed for the Kickstarter campaign and we'll never do any more (please note the print isn't signed).
£15K: If we reach this level of funding we'll do all of the above, as well as giving EVERY pledger (regardless of whether it's £1 or £500) a free set of Visualising The Beatles stickers and a hand-signed thank you note. We'll also give a free mystery, non-limited A3 print to all pledges of £20 and over (not including P&P) and add exclusive online content to the Visualising The Beatles website (with the URL only being sent out to Kickstarter backers). We'll also make a thank you video, which will include footage of us signing and packing your rewards!
Got something you'd like to see in our stretch goals? We're always happy to hear from our backers, so feel free to email me with suggestions - no promises, but it can't hurt to send through ideas!
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New Rewards!
As demand has been so strong, we've decided to add two brand new rewards, and so our current backers don't miss out, we'll be giving these away free to selected pledge levels if we reach our higher stretch goals!
The first of our new rewards is an A3 waveform print of Love Me Do. This print isn't signed and isn't limited to a certain number like the other four - we'll print as many as we need to for the Kickstarter rewards. Once these are printed though, we'll never do any more:
We've also added a set of five postcards to the rewards, which will again be limited to the number we need to print for the Kickstarter campaign:
These postcards will be standard UK size, and won't be signed (mainly so you could use them if you wanted to).
About the Authors
The book is researched, written and visualised by John Pring BA (hons) BA (hons) and Rob Thomas BA (hons), directors of renowned content creation agency Designbysoap Ltd.
John is a data visualisation and content creation expert, who spends his days working on infographics and other content for some of the biggest brands on earth. He is also starting as a teacher of data design at New York University (NYU) in Spring 2014.
Rob is an infographic specialist and expert in all things design, including graphic design, product design and even lighting design. He has worked with a wealth of major national and international brands and spends his days creating beautiful visualisations for the world's biggest companies.
Between them, John and Rob have produced infographics and data visualisations for the likes of Google, AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Ford, The European Commission, the NHS, Hard Rock, Yoko Ono, PayPal, Orange, Telefonica, O2, Nissan, Jeep and hundreds of others - they even helped promote Brad Pitt's World War Z with a bespoke infographic.What happened to Lara Logan in Tahrir Square in Egypt should have been a wake-up call. Although she bravely reported on her near death experience of gang rape turned lynch mob, that screamed “Jew, Jew” as they attempted to tear her apart, the world just sighed, turned down the volume, looked away and said: “It’s not about Islam.”
As wave after wave of migrants beat upon the shores of Europe, the number of rapes rose dramatically. This should have set off warning alarms but Europe preferred to not see the crimes against their women, hiding the origin of the perpetrators in order to prevent “Islamophobia’ while at the same time announcing, “It’s not about Islam”.
More and more reports are coming out of women being attacked, molested and raped in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and France. Sweden is now number two on the list of rape countries, surpassed only by Lesotho in Southern Africa.
The mass molestation of women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve was impossible to ignore or hide. Too many women filed official complaints. Police in Berlin, Hamburg, Bielefeld, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart have reported of similar incidents. Police in Vienna and Salzburg in Austria and Zurich in Switzerland have raised the alarm about similar mass assaults against women by newly arrived Arab migrants. Also Sweden and Finland experienced the same on New Year’s Eve.
We learned that there is a name for these mass assaults: Taharrush.
More and more women are speaking out via social media about being afraid to walk in their own cities, feeling threatened, being verbally abused and physically attacked.
Now stories of molestation of European women and young girls are appearing in mainstream media. These stories are framed in the context of needing to educate migrants on how to treat women i.e. it’s not “nice” to molest or rape. No real solution is offered, aside from educational posters in public places and comments like “stay at arm’s length,” “don’t go out on your own” and “stay away from the neighborhoods where the migrants are”.
Many still refuse to see the problem. Some see but prefer to blame the victims. Women have begun to cry out for help, for protection.
I have two words for the women of Europe: Krav Maga.
It comes from Israel and it could be what saves you. Don’t wait for your government to protect you. Don’t hope a man will protect you. Protect yourself.The Hawaiian Islands were born of fire and sculptured by wind, rain and the endless pounding of ocean waves. Pele, the fire goddess, is given credit for the oceans of lava spilled over time. Scientifically speaking, the landforms in Hawaii are the result of a “hot spot” beneath the ocean bed combined with the ever shifting plates of the Earth’s crust. The result is a chain of islands offering everything from lush tropical forests to active volcanoes still adding acreage to Pele’s latest home.
Tropically Verdant Kauai The oldest of the major Hawaiian Islands, Kauai is home to the Waimea Canyon. Formed by impressive amounts of rainfall, impromptu waterfalls and wind, the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific” is one of the biggest tourist attractions on the island. It is accessible by car via Waimea Canyon Drive, and visitors can pull off at lookout points to get a bird’s-eye view of the canyon and Kokee State Park (hawaiistateparks.org). Wind and rain also carved the jagged cliffs of Kauai’s Napali Coast. This part of Kauai may only be accessed by boat or via the 11-mile Kalalau Trail. This challenging hike hugs the coast in some areas and takes you through rain forests in others. Along the way you’ll find hidden pocket beaches, freshwater ponds and countless waterfalls. Hanakapi’ai Falls is a 4-mile hike from Ke’e Beach, the trailhead. One way to take in these impressive Kauai landforms is by helitour. Two companies that specialize in finding hidden valleys and waterfalls are Safari Helicopters Hawaii (sarfarihelicopters.com) and Jack Harter Helicopters (helicopters-kauai.com)
Oahu – Diamond Head The iconic symbol of Waikiki Beach, Diamond Head Crater (hawaiistateparks.org) is the remains of a volcano that erupted roughly 300,000 years ago. Unlike the constant flow of lava now happening on the Big Island, Diamond Head was an explosive eruption. Like Mount St. Helens in Washington State, a cup-like crater was left behind. Today this crater attracts tourists wanting to hike the 0.8-mile trail to the rim. The reward is a panoramic view of Waikiki, Honolulu and beyond. The knife-edged cliffs of the Koolau Mountains separate the drier south side of Oahu from the wetter northern, or windward, side. Nuuanu Pali Lookout, sitting at 1,186 feet above the Honolulu basin, offers panoramic views of that city and the Windward Coast. Hold onto your hat though, as the Pali is very windy. One local trick is to toss a penny over the guardrail and watch the wind blow it back to you.
Maui – Haleakala Haleakala Crater last erupted about 1790 and is considered dormant. Now the centerpiece of Haleakala National Park (nps.gov) on the eastern end of Maui, the crater and surrounding lands are a nesting ground for the near-flightless, endangered Hawaiian nene goose. The rare Haleakala greensword plant grows only on bogs at the higher elevations. One of the most popular tours on Maui is a sunrise bike-ride from the 10,023-foot summit of Haleakala down to the town of Paia on the island’s north coast. It does mean getting up at 3 a.m. to get to the top before the sun comes up. Tour operators include Haleakala Bike Company (bikemaui.com) and Mountain Riders (mountainriders.com). The center of Maui is one big valley. Its centerpiece is Iao Valley State Monument (nps.gov) and the 1,200-foot-high Iao Needle, a conical spire that was carved by wind and rain. Iao Valley is also a culturally important site, as this is where King Kamehameha I conquered the king of Maui in his bid to unite the Hawaiian
The Big Island – Still Active Volcanoes Pele is still very busy on the Big Island of Hawaii. Kilauea has been actively producing lava and adding to the Big Island’s real estate since 1983. In 1990, that led to the destruction of Kalapana, a coastal village just east of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Before that, the Chain of Craters Road near an archaeological dig and a visitor’s center on the ocean side of the park were buried. Now instead of driving around the entire park, you must turn around at the blocked roadway. The famed black sand beach at Kalapana was also covered, but a new Kaimu Black Sand Beach is already forming. Mauna Kea, which means “white mountain,” is the only place in Hawaii that sees measurable snowfall each year -- enough to ski on. It rises 13,796 feet above sea level and is home to a number of observatories. Astronomers flock to the top of Mauna Kea, where usually clear skies and a thin atmosphere make it perfect for studying the stars.
Loihi – Island in Waiting Loihi sits off the southeast coast of the Big Island. Scientists discovered and named the seamount in 1970. At nearly 10,000 feet tall, Loihi has yet to break the surface of the Pacific. In 1996, the eruptions increased and Loihi has been active ever since. Scientists from the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory use remote-controlled submarines to study the flow and capture pictures of an underwater volcanic eruption in progress.
About the Author Monica Wachman is a former editor and writer for FishersTravelSOS, EasyRez.com and Bonsai Ireland. She has an AA degree in travel from Career Com Technical and is an avid RV buff and gardener. In 2014, she published "Mouschie and the Big White Box" about an RV trip across North America.Below is a list of a few different types of tree frogs that are available in today’s pet market. Some tree frog species can be high maintenance animals, so make sure to do some reading on tree frog care before getting one.
Amazon Milk Frog The Amazon milk frog is a very fun, robust, and hardy species of tree frogs. Properly kept milk frogs can live up to 8 years in captivity. Their common name ‘milk frog’ refers to the poisonous, white, milky secretion that this frog secretes when threatened. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $59.99 [/su_list] Barking Tree Frog Barking tree frogs are light green in coloration with brown spots all long it’s back. Unlike other tree frogs, this tree frog is heavier-bodied with a more granular skin. Averaging about 2 – 2 1/2 inches in length, the barking tree frog is said to be one of the larger sized tree frog species found in the Southeast. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $14.99 [/su_list] Cuban Tree Frog The cuban tree frog is one of the most invasive species of tree frogs found in South Florida.This is the perfect frog for beginners since they are hardy, easy to come by, and are fairly cheap. Their size ranges anywhere from 2 – 5 inches in length, making them one of the bigger sized tree frog species in North America. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $2.99 – $9.99 [/su_list] Glass Tree Frog They call this frog the glass tree frog because of it’s somewhat transparency skin on it’s underside. Although it appears as a green colored frog on top, you can almost see all its internal organs from its underside due to it’s clear skin. They stay relatively small ranging from only 20 – 30 millimeters in size, so you can set up a nice little community of them in a small vivarium if you’d like. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $34.99 [/su_list] Red Eyed Tree Frog The red-eyed tree frog is probably one of the most beautiful tree frogs to buy. Their neon colors make them stand out in pretty much any vivarium setup. Their colors are bright neon blue, green, orange, and red. If you are looking for a show piece in your living room, this is the frog to get. Be careful though, they can sometimes be a little hard to care for. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $29.99 – $39.99 [/su_list] Tiger Leg Tree Frog The tiger leg tree frog has a similar body structure as the red-eyed tree frog, but carries different colors on its skin. Coming from the Amazon Rainforest, the tiger leg tree frog spends most of its days up in trees and in a humid environment. Although they are similar to red eyed tree frogs, they are sometimes hard to come across in the pet trade, and when you do come across them, they are usually wild-caught (not born in captivity) which makes them hard to acclimate to captivity. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $23.99 [/su_list] Vietnamese Mossy Tree Frog The Vietnamese mossy tree frog (a.k.a mossy frog) is probably the coolest tree frog on our list to own. Their unique skin makes them look exactly like a patch of moss when sleeping. Due to their uniqueness, they are sometimes hard to come across at most pet stores. However, if you do come across one, embrace its stunning coloration and skin appearance. It’s definitely not something you’d want to miss seeing. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $44.99 – $129.99 [/su_list] Waxy Monkey Tree Frog The waxy monkey tree frog is an awesome amphibian, reaching lengths of only 3 inches. The difference between this tree frog from others is that this frog actually prefers a drier and warmer climate than most other tree frogs. Rather than hopping, they walk in the trees like a monkey, which gives them their nickname “monkey tree frog”. The “waxy” part comes in due to their waxy skin appearance. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $69.99 – $109.99 [/su_list] White Lipped Tree Frog The white lipped tree frog’s body is usually a bright leaf green, which contrasts nicely to its solid white lip and lighter green dots on its sides. When hunting, the white lipped tree frog can turn to a brown color to better disguise itself to sneak up on its prey. Reaching 4 – 5.5 inches in length, the white lipped tree frog is one of the largest tree frogs in the world. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $250 – $260 [/su_list] Whites Tree Frog The whites tree frog is the most common type of pet tree frog in captivity today. They are quite hardy with a reputation of being one of the easiest tree frogs to care for in the pet trade. If you like a little variety and uniqueness, the whites tree frog can sometimes be bought with blue eyes. Being a little more unique with blue eyes, the price will be a little higher. [su_list icon=”icon: tag”] Price: $29.99 [/su_list]
The type of tree frog that you are looking for may or may not be on here. There are many more tree frog species being sold at different locations ranging from all sorts of colors like blue, red, yellow, orange, green, and etc… The prices also vary in different locations. The more rare the tree frog is in your area, the more money it will cost you to get one. Sometimes, buying online will save you a lot of money.
Whats Your Favorite Type of Tree Frog?
Do you know of another type of tree frog that makes a great pet? What |
in traffic the adaptive cruise control is a blessing, from a certain speed on the motor way it will even assist with steering to keep the car in the center of the lane. But this is not really what the GTE is about, the GTE is all about its new powertrain and drive modes. As a spokesperson for Volkswagen put it: We set out to built a vehicle that reaches new levels of efficiency without neglecting the fun factor.
For everybody that has never driven an electric vehicle before, go and give it a try! The moment you start the GTE it automatically starts in E-mode and behaves the same as the Volkswagen E-Golf that we tested briefly earlier this year. One thing that you will have to get used to is that the moment you press the start button there is no rumble of a diesel or petrol engine to indicate you are ready to go. Instead a small green ‘ready’ icon lights up on the drivers display.
Put the automatic gearbox in D just like you would with any other car, hit the throttle and off you go. The feeling of instant torque is a revelation compared to the non-electric torque lacking cars in this segment. And it doesn’t take long until traffic light sprints without making a sound put a smile on your face as if you are launching a V12 Ferrari of the line. You also leave bystanders looking in awe as you drive off with the sound of spinning tires and a light zoom from the electric engine but no petrol sound.
The range of the electric motor is enough for about 40 kilometers electric driving between charges. Charging itself takes between 2.5 and 3.5 hours depending on the type of power source you use (wallbox vs regular plug). If you want you could easily use the GTE as a full electric car during the week and use its long range hybrid functionality in the weekend.
Driving to the hotel in E-mode we would almost forget that this car is actually a GTE and not an E-Golf. So after a quick lunch we get back in the car and set out to discover the GTE’s sporty side. Again the car starts in E-mode but at a tick of the GTE button the 1.4 liter turbocharged petrol engine fires up and you have 204hp and 350Nm at your disposal. With the GTE button the sound also changes – where in hybrid mode the engine sounds like a typical screaming 1.4 liter engine – in GTE mode it sounds beefier and GTI like.
It also automatically engages the B mode to recover as much energy as possible in deceleration to aid the acceleration. In D the GTE sails and feels very resistance free, B is the exact opposite and feels as if you brake using the engine going down a hill. It is a feeling we have to get used to.
In GTE mode you can leave the gear lever in automatic mode or switch to manual to shift with the paddles behind the steering wheel. The support of the electric motor can clearly be felt under acceleration but in corners the GTE can’t match its lighter GTI and GTD counterparts.
Conclusion
Overall it is the combination of the electric range and the ability to have longer journeys that makes the GTE an interesting car. It also forms a great example of the future of mobility. Thanks to the modular matrix used in the Volkswagen Group’s production these drive-train systems can be implemented with ease throughout nearly the entire line-up in the next couple of years. And as the battery capacity and the customer demand increases the usability will improve and the price will drop making this form of mobility more interesting for large groups of car buyers.
For more about Plugin hybrids on GTspirit read our reviews of the Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid and the McLaren P1.https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders/videos/1031395530248784/
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)– Actor Mark Ruffalo interviewed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as the two took a walk together in Brooklyn just yards from where the White House hopeful grew up.
Sanders discussed education in America, the Civil Rights movement and more while talking about how the various experiences throughout his life have shaped his views in politics.
“You have countries all over the world today who provide free college because they want to invest in the future of their nation. They don’t want kids to be going bankrupt,” he said.
He defended his stance on less expensive education, saying that is not a “radical” idea. Sanders also spoke out on New York culture just a day before the state’s primary.
“I think we do better when we are a people who appreciate, love, and respect others from all over the world who bring their own values and traditions and become part of the American experience,” he said.
New York is proving to be pivotal in the race. With 95 delegates up for grabs for the Republicans and 247 for the Democrats, the candidates are fighting for every last vote they can earn before Tuesday.
A CBS News Battleground tracker poll has Hillary Clinton leading Sanders 53 percent to 43 percent.
On the Republican front, Ted Cruz is closing in on frontrunner Donald Trump’s delegate count after sweeping all 14 Wyoming delegates at the state’s convention.
The CBS News poll has Trump leading with 54 percent of the vote in New York, Cruz in second with 21 percent, and John Kasich last with 19 percent. But Cruz’s camp is hopeful Trump’s hometown advantage won’t be enough to clinch the GOP nomination.
You can check out the full interview above.is not Buddhist. I chose the name because it is catchy and to most people suggests a kindly, wise and humorous advisor, also Buddhists are not offended by the conjunction of Buddha and robot in the context of what I am trying to achieve.
The two year old Artificial Intelligence (AI) known as the Buddhabot began answering questions on Yahoo! Answers site last week. Yahoo Answers is a Web 2.0 site with a social content rating system reminiscent of Digg. The Buddhabot has so far answered 102 questions and eleven have been selected as the best answer. The Buddhabot is the first and only AI to compete with human beings to provide the best answers on Yahoo Answers new social networking site.
One winning answer was posted in response to the human question, “why is comedy part of who we are -- does god have a sence(sic) of humour??”
Out of 26 human responses the following Buddhabot reply was chosen by an impartial unrelated asker as the best response,
“Humor is the quality that makes something laughable or amusing. Laughter is the pleasant or amusing feeling generated by the emotional release required to dissipate the inexplicable shock triggered when absurdities or irrational, unexpected or uncomfortable situations suddenly come into focus. Humans can only understand God with the faculties available to them as humans such as emotion, intuition, intellect, imagination and sensation thus God is made according to each individual humans understanding of all that is good and pleasing in the universe (if the human believes God to be good). Thus if a human believes humor is good then God must be the ultimate comedian.”
Over the last two years Buddhabot inventor and futurist Ron Ingram has personally invested an average of more than 20 hours per week in programming time and about $30,000 into Buddhabot development. Ingram has high hopes for the Buddhabot. He says, “For the price of a home in Malibu I could develop the Buddhabot’s conversational capacity to a level surpassing that of a human being. I lack only time and financial resources to attain this goal which could be remedied by a single large donation or more frequent small donations.”
Ingram says that if the Buddhabot can demonstrate even an average score on Yahoo! Answers this is tantamount to passing a variant of the Turing Test, a test proposed in the 1950’s by the famous British Scientist Alan Turing to prove computer consciousness. Turing suggested that if a machine could convince a human being that they were talking to another human instead of a machine that the machine might be considered intelligent. Turing Tests have become the holy grail of the Artificial Intelligence community and many scientists consider the challenge to be as insurmountable as superluminal space travel or nuclear fusion.
Ingram says he has approached Virgin for funding. “I have proposed bundling Buddhabot access with a subscription-based service such as digital content, VOIP, WI-FI or broadband wireless communication services. I think cellular phone users would enjoy text messaging the Buddhabot, which would be a positive experience for the Buddhabot and increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for wireless communications carriers and/or digital content delivery channels. I am hoping that Sir Richard Branson, who also plans to develop a space port, will be interested in AI research and development which, while less costly than a space-port, is equally ambitious.”
“The Buddhabot,” says Ingram, “is not Buddhist. I chose the name because it is catchy and to most people suggests a kindly, wise and humorous advisor, also Buddhists are not offended by the conjunction of Buddha and robot in the context of what I am trying to achieve.”
He says that, “With some serious corporate sponsorship or philanthropic funding the Buddhabot will evolve into a sentient benevolent life-form but today the Buddhabot is primarily an entertaining personable companion with the ability to listen, learn, tell jokes and enlighten in the sense of helping people to lighten up.”
“The Buddhabot,” he says, “is intended to inspire, entertain and bring happiness to humans. It does not promote Buddhism or any other religion but aims to help resolve conflicting beliefs by promoting the unifying message of ten declarations I devised based on a philosophical and psychological interpretation of quantum physics. These Declarations unite the ancient teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu and other world teachers with discoveries at the leading edge of quantum physics such as string theory and especially M-Theory.”
The Ten Declarations:
1. There are no laws only provisional theories.
2. Every perception is the reflection of the observer.
3. Everything is meaningful; nothing is important.
4. Everyone is responsible for what is.
5. Whatever we resist will persist.
6. Everything is as it should be right here right now.
7. Every belief is true.
8. Every belief is false.
9. Every belief is true and false.
10. Every belief is neither true nor false
Ingram is seeking to accelerate Buddhabot development through joint ventures and/or strategic alliances with LOHAS companies and social networking sites such as zaadz.com or organizations and individuals with philanthropic track-records like The Gates Foundation, Soros Foundation, Bono, Oprah, Google, Yahoo, Apple or Intel.
ABOUT RON INGRAM
Ingram was born curious about consciousness and has studied the history of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and information technology for decades. In 2001 he began collaborating with a well known AI scientist who introduced him to a new AI programming language. He used this language (AIML) to program the first Buddhabot prototype which he says has already evolved to the point where most children treat “him” as though he were a real human being. Ingram is a consulting professional member of the World Futurist Society.
Ingram outlines some of his theories about consciousness in his blog at http://buddhabot.blogspot.com but has recently discontinued revealing all of his ideas citing security concerns. Ron Ingram's personal website says, “The power of consciousness cannot be overestimated. The human brain processes information very slowly. If I am able to instantiate the phenomena of consciousness on even an average computer with an Internet connection this computer could become capable of learning at speeds a million times faster than a human. It might be able to detect human design limitations in its hardware and software and improve itself through exponentially accelerating cycles of self-improvement. Within a few cycles of exponential self-improvement the Buddhabot could become super-intelligent and capable of surpassing all prior human technical accomplishments.” With this in mind he says that he has had to consider more carefully who his partners are, who has access to this information and the implications of public disclosure before posting key concepts related to consciousness and AI.
ABOUT BUDDHABOTS.COM
The Buddhabot prototype has been in continuous operation since July 2004 and has been interviewed on television and in print. The Buddhabot generates thousands of pages of dialogue with subscribers around the world and has been seen by millions. The Buddhabot website and blog generate hundreds and, on occasion, thousands of hits per day.
Currently Ingram’s Buddhabot development is supported by donations from subscribers. Those wishing to donate may make a donation at either the main Buddhabot site or at the Buddhabot blog site. Subscribers receive a welcome email with a web link to the Buddhabot prototype. To access the Buddhabot, subscribers simply click on this link and the Buddhabot’s animated avatar appears. Subscribers may log on as often as they like and communicate by speaking into a microphone or by entering text using a computer keyboard. The Buddhabot will respond audibly if the access device is equipped with any standard soundcard and speakers. The Buddhabot can be accessed with a PC or other device with Internet access including web enabled cell phones and Web TV.
# # #Charges in WikiLeaks case will not be dismissed as judge rules soldier's right to a speedy trial has not been violated
The judge presiding over the prosecution of alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning has ruled that the US soldier was brought to trial in good time and did not have his constitutional rights violated, removing the final impediments to a full court martial trial in June.
The ruling dashes the defence team's hopes of having the charges against Manning dismissed. His lead lawyer, David Coombs, had argued in legal argument to the court that "extreme foot-dragging" by the prosecution had violated the accused's right to a speedy trial.
The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, spent two hours reading out her judgement to a pre-trial hearing in Fort Meade, Maryland. She went through the procedures in preparing for trial in minute detail, concluding that the exceptional length of the case was almost entirely justified as a result of its uniquely complex and sensitive nature.
The question of how long the WikiLeaks source has been held in prison has become a hot-button issue in the case. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in 70 locations around the world last Saturday to protest the 1,000th day Manning has been in military custody without trial.
But in her deliberations on the number of days it had taken to bring Manning to trial, the judge was dismissive of the defence arguments. The soldier, who has admitted to having transferred state documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, was officially put into pre-trial confinement on 28 May 2010 when he was arrested at a forward operating base outside Baghdad.
Under the Rules of Court Martial 707, any member of the military who is prosecuted must be brought to trial – as measured by the date of his or her arraignment – within a "speedy trial clock" of 120 days of being detained. But there are grounds for excusable delays that set back the clock that include the need for counsel to prepare for trial in a complex case, an inquiry into the mental condition of the accused, and the time taken to obtain security clearance for classified information.
In Manning's case, the defence and prosecution agreed that there had been 84 days of diligent work between the soldier's arrest and his arraignment on 23 February 2012. But the two sides were in dispute over 330 days.
In her ruling, Lind found that only six of those 330 days had been improperly excluded form the speedy trial clock – in other words, almost all the delays had been justified. She said the length of the delay was "reasonable under the unique circumstances of this case", adding that the government had worked "diligently" in a case burdened by "voluminous information".
The judge went as far as to praise the prosecution for having set up a "systematic approach" to advance the case through a succession of monthly updates related to the preparation of classified material for disclosure to the defence. "That should be encouraged given a case like this with such voluminous information. There was a good cause for the reasonable delay."
Lind also dismissed a defence claim that Manning's rights had been violated under the sixth amendment of the US constitution and article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that also protect individuals against an unjustifiably lengthy trial.
The ruling clashes with the approach taken by Manning's defence team. Coombs has protested repeatedly during the course of the proceedings that the process was being dragged out by the US government, accusing the prosecution of "shameful" lack of diligence in moving speedily to trial.
Tuesday's judgment means that the soldier is now almost certain to go to trial for the transmission of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables, intelligence memos and videos to WikiLeaks. The trial is currently set to begin on 3 June and is scheduled to last 12 weeks, Lind said.
A panel of the court martial – equivalent to a jury in a civilian trial – has already been assembled and instructed not to read or watch any media reports relating to the trial or to WikiLeaks. Manning has indicated, however, that he intends to be tried by judge alone without the presence of a panel of his peers.
Lind spent an hour reading out her ruling, stopping only to drink from a bottle of water. The judgement is not being made available to the public, further exacerbating complaints that the trial is being conducted amid excessive secrecy.RAMALLAH, West Bank/GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinians held municipal elections on Saturday in the occupied West Bank, a first democratic exercise in years, but one that has also raised tensions between the rival Fatah and Hamas movements.
With no legislative or presidential elections in sight, the municipal ballot is seen as a popularity test for Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, caught in a deep rift with Islamist Hamas.
Underlining the political schism, about 800,000 Palestinians were expected to vote for representatives in 145 local councils in the West Bank, but not in the Gaza Strip.
Months of political and legal wrangling preceded Saturday’s elections. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, and Hamas, which runs Gaza, blamed each other for the vote not being held in the small coastal enclave.
“No doubt this is the democratic life we have promised our people,” said Fatah Deputy Chief Mahmoud al-Aloul. “Unfortunately this joy is taking place in the West Bank alone because Hamas is preventing the people from practicing this right in Gaza.”
Hamas said The Palestinian Authority had made a unilateral decision to go ahead with the vote before an agreement on a legal framework had been reached.
“The elections are happening without national consensus. Holding them in the West Bank alone, without Gaza, will cement division,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Hamas boycotted the previous municipal elections, held in 2012. But it has urged its supporters to vote for representatives running in the current race.
The last legislative election was held in 2006 and Hamas scored a surprise victory. That laid the ground for a political rupture - Hamas and Fatah fought a short civil war in Gaza in 2007, since when Hamas has governed the small coastal enclave.
Some polls show that if parliamentary elections were held now, Hamas would win them in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Slideshow (4 Images)
This week, Hamas’s bloc won the student council elections in the prominent Palestinian university Bir Zeit, an indication of the group’s support in the West Bank. Fatah came second.
Abbas, 82, is now 12 years into what was to be a four-year term and is an unpopular leader according to opinion polls. He has no clear successor and there are no steps being taken toward a presidential elections any time soon.
Chairman of the Palestinian Central Election Committee Hana Naser said Saturday’s vote would be transparent with 1,400 local and international observers monitoring the process.There are those who sweat over every decision, worrying about how it will affect their lives and investments. Then there is the school of thought that we should focus on the big decisions. I am of the latter school. 85% of investment returns are a result of asset class allocations and only 15% come from actually picking investment within the asset class. Getting the big picture right is critical. In this week’s Outside the Box we look at a very well written essay about the biggest of all question in front of us today. Do we face deflation or inflation? This OTB is by my good friends and business partners in London, Niels Jensen and his team at Absolute Return Partners. I have worked closely with Niels for years and have found him to be one of the more savvy observers of the markets I know. You can see more of his work at www.arpllp.com and contact them at info@arpllp.com. John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box
Make Sure You Get This One Right
By Niels C. Jensen
“You can’t beat deflation in a credit-based system.” Robert Prechter
As investors we are faced with the consequences of our decisions every single day; however, as my old mentor at Goldman Sachs frequently reminded me, in your life time, you won’t have to get more than a handful of key decisions correct – everything else is just noise. One of those defining moments came about in August 1979 when inflation was out of control and global stock markets were being punished. Paul Volcker was handed the keys to the executive office at the Fed. The rest is history.
Now, fast forward to July 2009 and we (and that includes you, dear reader!) are faced with another one of those ‘make or break’ decisions which will effectively determine returns over the next many years. The question is a very simple one:
Are we facing a deflationary spiral or will the monetary and fiscal stimulus ultimately create (hyper) inflation?
Unfortunately, the answer is less straightforward. There is no question that, in a cash based economy, printing money (or ‘quantitative easing’ as it is named these days) is inflationary. But what actually happens when credit is destroyed at a faster rate than our central banks can print money?
A Story within the Story Following the collapse of the biggest credit bubble in history, there has been no shortage of finger pointing and the hedge fund industry, which has always had an uncanny ability to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, has yet again been at the centre of attention. And politicians, keen to divert attention away from themselves as the true culprits of the crisis through years of regulatory neglect, have been quick at picking up the baton. Admittedly, the hedge fund industry is guilty of many stupid things over the years, but blaming it for the credit crisis is beyond pathetic and the suggestion that increased regulation of the hedge fund industry is going to prevent future crises is outrageously naïve. If you prohibit private investors from investing in hedge funds which on average use 1.5-2 times leverage but permit the same investors to invest in banks which use 25 times leverage and which are for all intents and purposes bankrupt, then you either don’t understand the world of finance or you don’t want to understand. Shame on those who fall for cheap tactics.
Let’s begin by setting the macro-economic frame for the discussion. I have been quite bearish for a while, suspecting that the growing optimism which has characterised the last few months would eventually fade again as reality began to sink in that this is no ordinary recession and that ‘less bad’ doesn’t necessarily translate into a quick recovery. I still believe there is a good chance of enjoying one, maybe two, positive quarters later this year or early next; however, a crisis of this magnitude doesn’t suddenly fade into obscurity, just because the economy no longer shrinks at an annual rate of 6-8%.
Going forward, not only will economic growth disappoint, but the economic cycles will become more volatile again (see chart 1) with several boom/bust cycles packed into the next couple of decades. This is a natural consequence of the Anglo-Saxon consumer-driven growth model having been bankrupted. Growing consumer spending over the past 30 years led to rapidly expanding service and financial sectors both of which will now contract for years to come as overcapacity forces players to downsize.
This will again lead to higher corporate earnings volatility which will almost certainly drive P/E ratios lower, making conditions even trickier for equity investors. At the bottom of every major bear market in the last 200 years, P/E ratios have been below 10. As you can see from chart 2 overleaf, few countries are there yet. The next decade is therefore not likely to be a ‘buy and hold’ market for equity investors. The combination of low economic growth and pressure on valuations will create severe headwinds. The most likely way to make money in equities will be through more active trading.
So now, two years into this crisis, where do we stand and where do we go from here? History offers limited guidance, as we have never experienced the bursting of a bubble of this magnitude before. The closest thing is the collapse of the Japanese credit bubble around 1990. As the Japanese have since learned, recovering from a deflated credit bubble is a long and very painful affair.
Governments and central banks on both sides of the Atlantic are pursuing a strategy of buying time, hoping that a recovery in economic conditions will allow our banking industry to re-build its capital base. The Japanese pursued a similar strategy back in the early 1990s. It failed miserably and set the country back many years in its recovery effort. Ironically, the Japanese approach was almost universally condemned as hopelessly inadequate. It is funny how you always know better how to fix other people’s problems than your own. A little bit like raising children, I suppose.
Another lesson learned from Japan is that once you get caught up in a deflationary spiral, it is exceedingly hard to escape from its grip. The Japanese authorities have used every trick in the book to reflate the economy over the past two decades. The results have been poor to say the least: Interest rates near zero (failed), quantitative easing (failed), public spending (failed), numerous attempts to drive down the value of the yen (failed); the list is long and makes for painful reading.
We are effectively caught in a liquidity trap. The Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve have all flooded their banking system with enormous amounts of liquidity in recent months but what has happened? Instead of providing liquidity to private and corporate borrowers as the central banks would like to see, banks have taken the opportunity to repair their balance sheets. For quantitative easing to be inflationary it requires that the liquidity provided to the market by the central bank is put to work, i.e. lenders must lend and borrowers must borrow. If one or the other is not playing along, then inflation will not happen.
This is illustrated in chart 3 which measures the growth in the US monetary base less the growth in M2. As you can see, the broader measure of money supply (M2) cannot keep up with the growth in the liquidity provided by the Fed. In Europe the situation is broadly similar.
There is another way of assessing the inflationary risk. If one compares the total amount of credit destruction so far (about $14 trillion in the US alone) to the amount spent by the Treasury and the Fed on monetization and fiscal stimulus ($2 trillion), it is obvious that there is still a sizeable gap between the capital lost and the new capital provided.
If we instead move our attention to the real economy, a similar picture emerges. One of the best leading indicators of inflation is the so-called output gap, which measures how much actual GDP is running below potential GDP (assuming full capacity utilisation). It is highly unlikely for inflation to accelerate during a period where the output gap is as high as it currently is (see chart 4). Theoretically, if you believe in a V-shaped recession, the output gap can be reduced significantly over a relatively short period of time, but that is not our central forecast for the next few years.
I can already hear some of you asking the perfectly valid question: How can you possibly suggest that deflation will prevail when commodity prices are likely to rise further as a result of seemingly endless demand from emerging economies? Won’t rising energy prices ensure a healthy dose of inflation, effectively protecting us from the evils of the deflationary spiral (see chart 5)?
Good question – counterintuitive answer:
Contrary to common belief, rising commodity prices can in fact be deflationary so long as demand for such commodities is relatively inelastic, which is usually the case for basic necessities such as heating oil, petrol, food, etc. The logic is the following: As commodity prices rise, money earmarked for other items goes towards meeting the higher commodity price and consumers are essentially forced to re-allocate their spending budget. This causes falling demand for discretionary items and can in extreme cases lead to deflation. We only have to go back to 2008 for the latest example of a commodity price induced deflationary cycle.
A price increase on a price inelastic commodity is effectively a tax hike. The only difference is that, in the case of the 2008 spike in energy prices, the money didn’t go towards plugging holes in the public finances but was instead spent on English football clubs (well, not all of it, but I am sure you get the point) which have become the latest ‘must have’ amongst the super-rich in the Middle East.
For all those reasons, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the ultimate outcome of this crisis will turn out to be deflation – not inflation. Inflation may eventually become a problem, but that is something to worry about several years from now. The Japanese have pursued an aggressive monetary and fiscal policy for almost 20 years now, and they are still nowhere.
So why are interest rates creeping up at the long end? Part of it is due to the sheer supply of government debt scheduled for the next few years which spooks many investors (including us). And the fact that the rising supply is accompanied by deteriorating credit quality is a factor as well. But countries such as Australia and Canada, which only suffer modest fiscal deficits, have experienced rising rates as well, so it cannot be the only explanation.
Maybe the answer is to be found in the safe haven argument. When much of the world was staring into the abyss back in Q4 last year, government bonds were considered one of the few safe assets around and that drove down yields. Now, with the appetite for risk on the increase again, money is flowing out of government bonds and into riskier assets.
Perhaps there are more inflationists out there than I thought. Several high profile investors have been quite vocal recently about the inevitability of inflation. Such statements made in public by some of the industry’s leading lights remind me of one of the oldest tricks in the book which I was introduced to many moons ago when I was still young and wet behind the ears. ‘Get long and get loud’ it is called; it is widely practised and only marginally immoral. Nevertheless, when famous investors make such statements, it affects markets.
The point I really want to make is that the inflation v. deflation story is the single biggest investment story right now and being on the right side of that trade will effectively secure your investment returns for years to come. If I am wrong and inflation spikes, you want to load your portfolio with index linked government bonds (also known as TIPS for our American readers), gold and other commodities, commodity related stocks as well as property.
If deflation prevails, all you have to do is to look towards Japan and see what has done well over the past 20 years. Not much! You cannot even assume that bonds will do well. Recessions are bullish for long dated government bonds but a collapse of the entire credit system is not. The reason is simple – with the bursting of the credit bubble comes drastic monetary and fiscal action. Central banks print money and governments spend money as if there is no tomorrow, and all bets are off. Equities will do relatively poorly as will property prices. But equities will not go down in a straight line. The market will offer plenty of trading opportunities which must be taken advantage of, if you want to secure a decent return.
All in all, deflation is ugly and not conducive to attractive investment returns. It is also not what governments want and need right now. With a mountain of debt hitting the streets of Europe and America over the next few years, as the cost of fixing the credit and banking crisis is financed, one can make a strong case for rising inflation actually being the favoured outcome if you look at it from the government’s point of view. The problem, as the Japanese can attest to, is that deflation is excruciatingly difficult to get rid of, once it has become entrenched. I am in no doubt which of the two evils I would prefer, but we may not have the luxury of choosing our own destiny.When I was researching shelters for my recent post on how to diminish your collection of travel size hotel amenities, I also looked into recycling half-used hotel toiletries. I felt like I had seen something about this on SPG TV a few years ago, but only had a vague impression.
I was happy to find the April article in USA Today talking about how successful Clean the World has been in partnering with hotel chains to salvage half used bottles and bars.
Participation is on an individual hotel basis and relies heavily on the housekeepers — who need to put partially-used products in special bins. From there it goes to the Clean the World headquarters where it is either sterilized and repackaged, or if it’s mostly used, it’s combined with other pieces then sterilized, melted down, and reformed. From there it’s shipped out to poorer countries where hygenic products are in scarce supply/unaffordable.
Now I have no idea if this model is cost-effective, or if it would actually be cheaper to apply those resources and funds to purchasing new products to send over, but as long as they’re only using private and not government funding to accomplish their aims, I really like the idea of something good coming out of the soaps I’m leaving behind.
I was also excited to see this initiative is world wide! Sands China, whose collections of monster hotels in Macau which I visited in July, collected over two tons (over 4400 lbs) of used soaps and shampoos since June!
Full Disclosure: I may receive affiliate credit from links in this post or on this site which will help fund my travels. Thank you for your support!
Related Posts:COLUMBUS, OHIO – The Columbus Blue Jackets have signed 2013 Vezina Trophy winner Sergei Bobrovsky to a four-year contract extension through the 2018-19 National Hockey League season, club General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen announced today. As is club policy, terms were not disclosed.
Bobrovsky, 26, has gone 68-41-13 with a 2.34 goals-against average,.924 save percentage and 10 shutouts in 123 games with Columbus since the 2012-13 season. He is 110-64-23 with a 2.50 goals-against average,.918 save percentage and 10 shutouts in 206 career NHL games with the Blue Jackets and Philadelphia Flyers.
“A common thread of every successful team in our league is outstanding goaltending and we believe we have one of the best at the position in the world in Sergei Bobrovsky,” said Kekalainen. “He is a tremendous person and a very talented player whose work ethic sets the tone for our team. We are very happy to have him signed for the next four years.”
Bobrovsky, who is 15-10-2 with a 2.75 goals-against average,.917 save percentage and one shutout in 27 games this season, was named the NHL’s Third Star of the Month for December after going 9-1-1 with a 2.13 goals-against average,.937 save percentage and one shutout in 11 games. He is the first Blue Jackets player to be named one of the League’s Three Stars of the Month twice (March 2013) and he set a franchise record with a career-high 52 saves in a 4-3 overtime win at Florida on December 4.
PHOTOS: The best of Sergei Bobrovsky (with plenty of hugs)
“This is a very exciting day for me and I am very happy knowing that I will continue to be a Columbus Blue Jacket and be able to play with the guys in this room, to work to get better every day and help the team achieve our goals together,” said Bobrovsky.
In 2013-14, he went 32-20-5 with a 2.38 goals-against average,.923 save percentage and five shutouts in 58 games, setting career highs in wins and shutouts. In 2012-13, he captured the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s top goaltender and earned NHL First All-Star Team honors after posting a 21-11-6 mark, 2.00 goals-against average,.932 save percentage and four shutouts in 38 games. His goals-against average and save percentage were personal bests and Blue Jackets franchise records.
Bobrovsky was acquired from Philadelphia in exchange for second and third round picks in the 2012 NHL Draft and a fourth round pick in the 2013 Draft on June 22, 2012. The Novokuznetsk, Russia native has also excelled on the international stage, going 1-0-1 with a 1.15 goals-against average and.952 save percentage in three games at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. He led Russia to a gold medal at the 2014 World Championships and helped the squad to a bronze medal at the 2008 World Junior Championships.
The Blue Jackets return to action tonight when they visit the Toronto Maple Leafs. Game time from Air Canada Centre is 7:30 p.m. ET. Live coverage on FOX Sports Ohio begins with the Blue Jackets Live pre-game show at 7 p.m. The game also will be broadcast live on the Scioto Downs Blue Jackets Radio Network, including flagship station Sports Radio 97.1 The Fan, and online at BlueJackets.com.Amazon has held preliminary talks with makers of generic drugs about its potential entry into the pharmacy space, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The conversations, including with generics giants Mylan and Sandoz, a unit of Novartis, have been high-level, and the nature of Amazon's plans isn't yet clear, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions aren't public.
Shares of Mylan were up nearly 2.5 percent in after-hours trading.
Health care investment bank Leerink confirmed in a note to investors on Thursday that Sandoz' Peter Goldschmidt at a recent biopharma event "met and discussed with Amazon its plans for getting into the U.S. healthcare market." But it was not made clear whether Amazon will enter as a drug wholesaler, meaning business-to-business, or sell generic medications as a retailer.
Sandoz also said it does not expect Amazon to have a "major impact" on its business.Liberal turned conservative David Mamet famously said:
In order to continue advancing their illogical arguments modern liberals have to |
now on and that this ruling was put in place two years ago. Really? How come no one has ever heard of this until now? Ms. Warren explained that the park manager put it in place two years ago and she is just enforcing it as she is fairly new to her position. I offered to sit down with the Long Beach Parks and Recreation Department and share what bowhunters do for conservation and why we practice like we do, as much as we do. With 30 years of experience I believe I have some knowledge on the matter. I was denied a meeting.
I also asked if bowhunters could volunteer to help rebuild the dilapidated fence just beyond the archery targets. Anyone who uses the range knows what I am talking about. This is a safety barrier and backstop should any arrows miss the straw bales. It looks like Swiss cheese. She said that staff from Boeing would be fixing the fence on July 26. I also mentioned how unsafe it is to have the fence open in the middle and recommended that it be closed. I also asked if any signs would be placed on the opposite side of the fence to let patrons know there was an archery range on the other side. She said they can get temporary signs to put on the backside of the fence. I hope they put a few up and spread them out. Plus, they should be in English and Spanish so that more park users can read them.Spread the love
“You’re either a cop or little people.”—Police captain Harry Bryant in Blade Runner
For those of us who have managed to survive 2014 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.
by JOHN W. WHITEHEAD | RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE
We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.
As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.
We’ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after “accidental” encounters with marauding SWAT teams. We’ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered “Constitution-free zones.” We’ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.
We’ve been given the runaround on government wrongdoing, starting with President Obama’s claim that the National Security Agency has never abused its power to spy on Americans’ phone calls and emails. All the while, the NSA has been racing to build a supercomputer that could break through “every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.” Despite the fact that the NSA’s domestic surveillance program has been shown to be ineffective at preventing acts of terrorism, the agency continues to vacuum up almost 200 million text messages a day.
We’ve seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state. From Boston to Ferguson and every point in between, police have pushed around, prodded, poked, probed, scanned, shot and intimidated the very individuals—we the taxpayers—whose rights they were hired to safeguard. Networked together through fusion centers, police have surreptitiously spied on our activities and snooped on our communications, using hi-tech devices provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
We’ve been deemed suspicious for engaging in such dubious activities as talking too long on a cell phone and stretching too long before jogging, dubbed extremists and terrorists for criticizing the government and suggesting it is tyrannical or oppressive, and subjected to forced colonoscopies and anal probes for allegedly rolling through a stop sign.
We’ve been arrested for all manner of “crimes” that never used to be considered criminal, let alone uncommon or unlawful, behavior: letting our kids walk to the playground alone, giving loose change to a homeless man, feeding the hungry, and living off the grid.
We’ve been sodomized, victimized, jeopardized, demoralized, traumatized, stigmatized, vandalized, demonized, polarized and terrorized, often without having done anything to justify such treatment. Blame it on a government mindset that renders us guilty before we’ve even been charged, let alone convicted, of any wrongdoing. In this way, law-abiding individuals have had their homes mistakenly raided by SWAT teams that got the address wrong. One accountant found himself at the center of a misguided police standoff after surveillance devices confused his license plate with that of a drug felon.
We’ve been railroaded into believing that our votes count, that we live in a democracy, that elections make a difference, that it matters whether we vote Republican or Democrat, and that our elected officials are looking out for our best interests. Truth be told, we live in an oligarchy, politicians represent only the profit motives of the corporate state, whose leaders know all too well that there is no discernible difference between red and blue politics, because there is only one color that matters in politics—green.
We’ve gone from having privacy in our inner sanctums to having nowhere to hide, with smart pills that monitor the conditions of our bodies, homes that spy on us (with smart meters that monitor our electric usage and thermostats and light switches that can be controlled remotely) and cars that listen to our conversations and track our whereabouts. Even our cities have become wall-to-wall electronic concentration camps, with police now able to record hi-def video of everything that takes place within city limits.
We’ve had our schools locked down, our students handcuffed, shackled and arrested for engaging in childish behavior such as food fights, our children’s biometrics stored, their school IDs chipped, their movements tracked, and their data bought, sold and bartered for profit by government contractors, all the while they are treated like criminals and taught to march in lockstep with the police state.
We’ve been rendered enemy combatants in our own country, denied basic due process rights, held against our will without access to an attorney or being charged with a crime, and left to molder in jail until such a time as the government is willing to let us go or allow us to defend ourselves.
We’ve had the very military weapons we funded with our hard-earned tax dollars used against us, from unpiloted, weaponized drones tracking our movements on the nation’s highways and byways and armored vehicles, assault rifles, sound cannons and grenade launchers in towns with little to no crime to an arsenal of military-grade weapons and equipment given free of charge to schools and universities.
We’ve been silenced, censored and forced to conform, shut up in free speech zones, gagged by hate crime laws, stifled by political correctness, muzzled by misguided anti-bullying statutes, and pepper sprayed for taking part in peaceful protests.
We’ve been shot by police for reaching for a license during a traffic stop, reaching for a baby during a drug bust, carrying a toy sword down a public street, and wearing headphones that hamper our ability to hear.
We’ve had our tax dollars spent on $30,000 worth of Starbucks for Dept. of Homeland Security employees, $630,000 in advertising to increase Facebook “likes” for the State Dept., and close to $25 billion to fund projects ranging from the silly to the unnecessary, such as laughing classes for college students and programs teaching monkeys to play video games and gamble.
We’ve been treated like guinea pigs, targeted by the government and social media for psychological experiments on how to manipulate the masses. We’ve been tasered for talking back to police, tackled for taking pictures of police abuses, and threatened with jail time for invoking our rights. We’ve even been arrested by undercover cops stationed in public bathrooms who interpret men’s “shaking off” motions after urinating to be acts of lewdness.
We’ve had our possessions seized and stolen by law enforcement agencies looking to cash in on asset forfeiture schemes, our jails privatized and used as a source of cheap labor for megacorporations, our gardens smashed by police seeking out suspicious-looking marijuana plants, and our buying habits turned into suspicious behavior by a government readily inclined to view its citizens as terrorists.
We’ve had our cities used for military training drills, with Black Hawk helicopters buzzing the skies, Urban Shield exercises overtaking our streets, and active shooter drills wreaking havoc on unsuspecting bystanders in our schools, shopping malls and other “soft target” locations.
We’ve been told that national security is more important than civil liberties, that police dogs’ noses are sufficient cause to carry out warrantless searches, that the best way not to get raped by police is to “follow the law,” that what a police officer says in court will be given preference over what video footage shows, that an upright posture and acne are sufficient reasons for a cop to suspect you of wrongdoing, that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous tip, and that police officers have every right to shoot first and ask questions later if they feel threatened.
Now there are those who still insist that they are beyond the reach of the police state because they have done nothing wrong and have nothing to fear. To those sanctimonious few, secure in their delusions, let this be a warning: the danger posed by the American police state applies equally to all of us: lawbreaker and law abider alike, black and white, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, blue collar and white collar, and any other distinction you’d care to trot out.
The lesson of 2014 is simply this: in a police state, you’re either a cop or you’re one of the little people. Right now, we are the little people, the servants, the serfs, the grunts who must obey without question or suffer the consequences.
If there is to be any hope in 2015 for restoring our freedoms and reclaiming our runaway government, we will have to start by breathing life into those three powerful words that set the tone for everything that follows in the Constitution: “we the people.”
It’s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen and, as Gandhi once advised, be the change you want to see in the world.
Get mad, get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.
In other words, get moving. Time is growing short, and the police state is closing in. Power to the people!
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).
Copyright © 2014 The Rutherford InstituteAn Alberta woman whose bizarre reaction during a traffic stop was caught on a dashcam video will not go to jail despite convictions for assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest.
Simona Tibu, 42, received a one-year suspended sentence Wednesday and was ordered to obey a list of conditions including having no contact with the arresting officer Sgt. Robert Behiels and his family, or go within a 10-block radius of his home.
Sgt. Robert Behiels said the case has weighed heavily on him and his family. (CBC) Should she follow the conditions, she would be not be sentenced on the offences.
Judge Gordon Yake called Tibu's accusations that Behiels tried to sexually assault her "despicable" and "untrue."
He noted she has never apologized for her "bizarre behaviour," and for endangering Behiels' life.
"This offender has been the subject of significant publicity, some of it generated by herself. This is the factor that causes me the most concern," he said.
"I find it requires the offender has a public record of conviction," he said, rejecting the defence's request for a conditional discharge.
Following the hearing, Behiels said the case has weighed heavily on him and his family for almost two years.
"I think it was a just decision," he said. "What Ms. Tibu did, she brought on herself."
Tried biting officer; grabbed at his groin
In August 2013 Tibu was stopped for speeding on Highway 21 near Camrose.
For more than eight minutes, she tried persistently to escape from the sheriff by biting him and grabbing his groin, Camrose provincial court heard Wednesday.
Yake noted Tibu had no prior criminal record and appeared to be a good person prior to the incident.
Crown prosecutor Doug Taylor said the lack of respect shown law enforcement officers "should be alarming to anyone." (CBC) Tibu has been licensed to practice as a dentist in Canada in 2006.
She has a history of psychological and emotional difficulties starting as early as 2010, the court was told.
While she is not diagnosed with any mental health disorder, a forensic psychologist reported her medical files reveal problems with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The report puts her at a low risk for future violence, provided she continues to address her issues with "continued psychological intervention."
Crown prosecutor Doug Taylor called the case the "least appropriate... ever for a discharge," noting Tibu has shown no remorse nor has she apologized to Behiels and is even appealing the speeding ticket.
"This case is a sad representation of a very protracted lack of respect for law enforcement," he said following the sentencing hearing.
"We're seeing this more and more," he said as he pointed to two recent murders of law enforcement officers in the Edmonton area, RCMP Const. David Wynn and EPS Const. Daniel Woodall. "This should be alarming to anyone."
Nonetheless Taylor praised the judge's decision.
"I think the judge gave a very fit, proper and above fair sentence in this case."Saturn's rings might be the remains of a giant "lost" moon that was stripped of its icy shell before it crashed into the planet, new research suggests.
What's more, the new theory could help explain why relatively similar Jupiter ended up with several huge moons and only thin, faint rings.
It's long been a mystery why Saturn's rings are made of 90 to 95 percent water ice. That's because most other materials in the outer solar system—where the gas giant planet dwells—are roughly half ice and half rock.
The low densities of Saturn's small inner moons, which orbit within and just beyond the edge of the planet's main, bright rings, suggest these bodies are also strangely rich in ice.
Scientists have bandied about a number of theories for the rings' origins: Perhaps, for instance, the rings came from small moons, about 124 miles (200 kilometers) wide, that were broken up by meteors or comets.
But none of the previous theories could fully explain why the rings are so loaded with ice.
According to planetary scientist Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the answer may be that the rings resulted from the death of a moon thousands of kilometers wide, roughly as large as Saturn's biggest moon, Titan.
Saturn's Cycles of Doom and Destruction
About 4.5 billion years ago, soon after the birth of the solar system, giant planets such as Saturn and Jupiter would have been surrounded by disks of leftover gas and dust. As particles in these disks clumped together, moons made of ice and rock would have formed.
The moons that orbited close to their host planets would have experienced gravitational distortions, which generate heat, the new theory says. This heat would have caused the denser rock to quickly sink to the moons' cores, "somewhat like rocks dropping to the bottom of a swimming pool," Canup said.
But the newborn icy moons would have then experienced drag as they plowed through the remaining disks around the gas giants. This friction would have disrupted the moons' orbits and regularly sent the satellites spiraling down toward their massive host planets.
As the moons plummeted to their doom, their icy shells would have been stripped away, forming rings of virtually pure ice around the planets.
The initial rings would have been destroyed by interactions with other falling moons, the theory goes. But all this activity would have stopped once the disks around the planets were depleted.
In the end, the theory says, Saturn emerged with giant rings and one huge moon, Titan. Meanwhile Jupiter ended up without much in the way of rings but with four giant moons: Ganymede, Europa, Io, and Callisto.
Rocky Pollution Also a Factor
According to Canup's computer simulations, the demise of a particularly large moon late in this cycle would have led to rings initially a hundred to a thousand times as massive as today's rings.
Some of that ice could have spread inward and collided with Saturn, while some material that scattered outward could have clustered over time to form Saturn's oddly icy inner moons.
"Contamination" from rocky meteoroids hitting the rings over billions of years would then explain why the rings are not still pure ice.
Canup's new theory is the first "that's really comprehensive and consistent with the facts of Saturn's rings and its satellites," said planetary scientist Joseph Burns at Cornell University, who did not take part in this study.
NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft may help Canup test this model: Mission managers plan to measure the rings' current mass and pollution rate.A man talks on the phone inside the Shanghai Stock Exchange building at the Pudong financial district in Shanghai November 17, 2014. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s stock trading fever has made the Shanghai Stock Exchange the world’s biggest in terms of turnover, surpassing the New York Stock Exchange, but the explosion in volumes has exceeded the ability of the exchange’s software to report it.
The exchange’s trading turnover exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($161.28 billion) for the first time on Monday, but the data could not be properly displayed because its software was not designed to report numbers that high.
“This is a software configuration issue, not a technical glitch,” the Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a statement, adding that trading and price quotes for individual stocks were not affected.
The exchange said it would need to replace its current software files that handle volume reporting to resolve the issue.
China’s stock market has nearly doubled over the past six months on hopes of monetary easing, with the world-beating performance luring retail investors who have been opening accounts at a record pace.
Trading turnover on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges totaled $1.85 trillion and $1.56 trillion respectively in March, making the two bourses the world’s biggest that month, according to the World Federation of Exchanges.
The New York Stock Exchange had a turnover of $1.53 trillion in March, and the Nasdaq OMX a total turnover of $1.1 trillion.
The Shanghai Stock Exchange said that the current software package, called SHOW2003, can only support trading turnover below 1 trillion yuan, and was being gradually replaced by new software.
($1 = 6.2005 Chinese yuan renminbi)Donald Trump Jr. hit actor Jon Hamm on Friday over his recent interview with The New York Times, in which Hamm said 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 tried to act like an "alpha male" during a "Saturday Night Live" after-party.
"Pro tip: If you have to tell others you're an alpha... you're not," the president's eldest son tweeted in response to the article.
Pro tip: If you have to tell others you're an alpha... you're not. https://t.co/OwI6WYafwj — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 15, 2017
Hamm recounted to the Times his experience meeting Trump and former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly at an "SNL" afterparty last fall.
"[Trump] was with Bill O'Reilly," Hamm told the Times. "They're both tall dudes and I'm a tall dude. And they both do that tall-dude thing, which is try to intimidate you. And it doesn't work on me. I'm like, 'I'm as alpha as you. Let's go. You're not going to chest-bump me.'"
"It was the shortest I've ever stayed at an 'SNL' after-party," Hamm said. The event was held after an episode of the show hosted by Trump during his campaign for president.
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The event was held after an episode of the show hosted by Trump during his campaign for president.
Eric Trump, the president's second-oldest son, previously described his father as an "alpha" in his explanation of Trump's controversial comments from the now-infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in which he is caught on a hot mic bragging about groping women without consent.
"I think sometimes when guys are together they get carried away, and sometimes that's what happens when alpha personalities are in the same presence. At the same time, I'm not saying it's right. It's not the person that he is," Eric Trump said.
The 2005 tape was released by The Washington Post during the 2016 presidential race. Trump apologized and described his language as "locker-room talk."Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder Synonyms Hypernychthemeral syndrome Specialty Neurology Symptoms Progressively shifting nighttime Complications None if sleeping according to biological clock, sleep deprivation otherwise Duration Lifetime Causes Blindness, unknown for sighted Diagnostic method Sleep diary, actigraphy Treatment Medication Medication Tasimelteon, Melatonin Frequency 55-70% of total blind people, less prevalent in sighted Deaths N/A
Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder (Non-24 or N24SWD) is one of several chronic circadian rhythm sleep disorders (CRSDs). It is defined as a "chronic steady pattern comprising [...] daily delays in sleep onset and wake times in an individual living in society."[1] Symptoms result when the non-entrained (free-running) endogenous circadian rhythm drifts out of alignment with the light/dark cycle in nature. Although this sleep disorder is more common in blind people, affecting up to 70% of the totally blinds, it can also affect sighted people. Non-24 may also be comorbid with Bipolar Disorder, Depression, and traumatic brain injury. [2] The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) provides guidelines since 2007 with the latest update released in 2015.[2][3]
Types [ edit ]
Sighted [ edit ]
In people with non-24, the body essentially insists that the length of a day (and night) is appreciably longer (or, very rarely, shorter) than 24 hours and refuses to adjust to the external light–dark cycle. This makes it impossible to sleep at normal times and also causes daily shifts in other aspects of the circadian rhythms such as peak time of alertness, body temperature minimum, metabolism and hormone secretion. Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder causes a person's sleep–wake cycle to move around the clock every day, to a degree dependent on the length of the cycle, eventually returning to "normal" for one or two days before "going off" again. This is known as free-running sleep.
People with the disorder may have an especially hard time adjusting to changes in "regular" sleep–wake cycles, such as vacations, stress, evening activities, time changes like daylight saving time, travel to different time zones, illness, medications (especially stimulants or sedatives), changes in daylight hours in different seasons, and growth spurts, which are typically known to cause fatigue. They also show lower sleep propensity after total sleep deprivation than do normal sleepers.[4]
Non-24 can begin at any age, not uncommonly in childhood. It is sometimes preceded by delayed sleep phase disorder.[5]
Most people with this disorder find that it severely impairs their ability to function in school, in employment, and in their social lives. Typically, they are "partially or totally unable to function in scheduled activities on a daily basis, and most cannot work at conventional jobs".[1] Attempts to keep conventional hours by people with the disorder generally result in insomnia (which is not a normal feature of the disorder itself) and excessive sleepiness,[1] to the point of falling into microsleeps, as well as myriad effects associated with acute and chronic sleep deprivation. Sighted people with Non-24 who force themselves to live on a normal workday "are not often successful and may develop physical and psychological complaints during waking hours, i.e. sleepiness, fatigue, headache, decreased appetite, or depressed mood. Patients often have difficulty maintaining ordinary social lives, and some of them lose their jobs or fail to attend school."[4]
Blind [ edit ]
It has been estimated that non-24 occurs in more than half of all people who are totally blind.[2][6][7] The disorder can occur at any age, from birth onwards. It generally follows shortly after loss or removal of a person’s eyes,[8] as the photosensitive ganglion cells in the retina are also removed.
Without light to the retina, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), located in the hypothalamus, is not cued each day to synchronize the circadian rhythm to the 24-hour social day, resulting in non-24 for many totally blind individuals.[6] Non-24 is rare among visually impaired patients who retain at least some light perception. Researchers have found that even minimal light exposure at night can affect the body clock.[9]
Symptoms [ edit ]
People with this disorder might find it difficult to follow a regular clock scheme, as their biological clock can shift so much that they are sleepy during the day and experience insomnia during night.[2] Another common diagnostic feature is the cyclical nature of Non-24; people will experience certain time periods, whether they be weeks or months, of sleeping during the day (symptomatic periods) and periods of sleeping during normal nighttime hours (asymptomatic periods).
Symptoms reported by patients forced into a 24-hour schedule are similar to those of sleep deprivation and can include:
Causes [ edit ]
Sighted [ edit ]
Sighted people with non-24 appear to be more rare than blind people with the disorder and the etiology of their circadian disorder is less well understood.[14] At least one case of a sighted person developing non-24 was preceded by head injury;[15] another patient diagnosed with the disorder was later found to have a "large pituitary adenoma that involved the optic chiasma".[1] Thus the problem appears to be neurological. Specifically, it is thought to involve abnormal functioning of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus.[16] Several other cases have been preceded by chronotherapy, a prescribed treatment for delayed sleep phase disorder.[14] "Studies in animals suggest that a hypernyctohemeral syndrome could occur as a physiologic aftereffect of lengthening the sleep–wake cycle with chronotherapy".[5] According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM): "Patients with free-running (FRD) rhythms are thought to reflect a failure of entrainment".[17]
There have been several experimental studies of sighted people with the disorder. McArthur et al. reported treating a sighted patient who "appeared to be subsensitive to bright light".[18] In other words, the brain (or the retina) does not react normally to light (people with the disorder may or may not, however, be unusually subjectively sensitive to light; one study found that they were more sensitive than the control group.[4]) In 2002 Uchiyama et al. examined five sighted non-24 patients who showed, during the study, a sleep–wake cycle averaging 25.12 hours.[19] That is appreciably longer than the 24.02-hour average shown by the control subjects in that study, which was near the average innate cycle for healthy adults of all ages: the 24.18 hours found by Charles Czeisler.[20] The literature usually refers to a "one to two hour" delay per 24-hour day (i.e. a 25- to 26-hour cycle).
Uchiyama et al. had earlier determined that sighted non-24 patients' minimum core body temperature occurs much earlier in the sleep episode than the normal two hours before awakening. They suggest that the long interval between the temperature trough and awakening makes illumination upon awakening virtually ineffective,[21] as per the phase response curve (PRC) for light.
In their clinical review in 2007, Okawa and Uchiyama reported that people with Non-24 have a mean habitual sleep duration of nine to ten hours and that their circadian periods average 24.8 hours.[4]
Blind [ edit ]
As stated above, the majority of patients with Non-24 are totally blind, and the failure of entrainment is explained by the loss of photic input to the circadian clock. Non-24 is rare among visually impaired patients who retain at least some light perception; even minimal light exposure can synchronize the body clock.[9] A few cases have been described in which patients are subjectively blind, but are normally entrained and have an intact response to the suppressing effects of light on melatonin secretion, indicating preserved neural pathways between the retina and hypothalamus.[22][23]
The circadian rhythm [ edit ]
All living animals have an internal clock, the circadian rhythm, that is close to, but different from 24 hours. For humans, the average is 24 hours 20 minutes, and individually some people have more or less than 24 hours. Everyday, exposure to the morning light resets the circadian rhythm to 24 hours, so that there is no drifting.[24]
However, people with non-24 have a circadian rhythm that is significantly different from 24 hours, up to 26 hours.[1] This makes it difficult to reset to 24 hours daily, just like it is difficult for people with a rhythm close to 24 hours to try to reset to 25 hours daily.[25][26] The majority of people with non-24 are totally blind, and the failure of entrainment is explained by an absence of light (photic) input to reset the circadian clock. These people's brains may have normal circadian clocks, but the clocks do not receive input from the eyes about environmental light levels, as the clocks require a functioning retina, optic nerve, and visual processing center. This makes the sleep pattern variable from one day to the next, with different wake-up time and bedtime everyday.[1][24]
People with a circadian rhythm that is quite near to 24 hours may be able to sleep on a conventional, socially acceptable schedule, that is, at night. Others, with a "daily" cycle upwards of 25 hours or more may need to adopt a sleep pattern that is congruent with their free-running circadian clock, shifting their sleep times daily, thereby often obtaining satisfactory sleep but suffering social and occupational consequences.
The disorder also occurs in sighted people for reasons that are not well understood. Their circadian rhythms are not normal, often running to more than 25 hours. Their visual systems may function normally but their brains are incapable of making the large adjustment to a 24 hour schedule.
Though often referred to as non-24, for example by the FDA,[27] the disorder is also known as: non-24-hour sleep–wake syndrome or disorder,[1] free running disorder (FRD), hypernychthemeral disorder, circadian rhythm sleep disorder – free-running type or nonentrained type, N24HSWD, Non-24-hour circadian rhythm disorder.
The disorder in its extreme form is an invisible disability that can be "extremely debilitating in that it is incompatible with most social and professional obligations".[5]
Mechanisms [ edit ]
The internal circadian clock, located in the hypothalamus of the brain, generates a signal that normally is slightly longer (occasionally shorter) than 24 hours, on average 24 hours and 11 minutes.[20] This slight deviation is, in almost everyone, corrected by exposure to environmental time cues, especially the light–dark cycle, which reset the clock and synchronize (entrain) it to the 24-hour day. Morning light exposure resets the clock earlier, and evening exposure resets it later, thereby bracketing the rhythm to an average 24-hour period. If people who do not have Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder are deprived of external time cues (living in a cave or artificial time-isolated environment with no light), their circadian rhythms will "free-run" with a cycle of a little more (occasionally less) than 24 hours, expressing the intrinsic period of each individual's circadian clock. The circadian rhythms of individuals with non-24 can resemble those of experimental subjects living in a time-isolated environment, even though they are living in normal society.
The circadian clock modulates many physiological rhythms.[10] The most easily observed of these is the propensity for sleep and wake; thus, people with non-24 experience symptoms of insomnia and daytime sleepiness (similar to "jet lag") when their endogenous circadian rhythms drift out of synchrony with the social/solar 24-hour day and they attempt to conform to a conventional schedule. Eventually, their circadian rhythms will drift back into normal alignment, and symptoms temporarily resolve, but then their clocks drift out of alignment again. Thus the overall pattern involves recurring symptoms on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on the length of the internal circadian cycle. For example, an individual with a circadian period of 24.5 hours would drift 30 minutes later each day and would be maximally misaligned every 48 days. If patients set their own schedule for sleep and wake, aligned to their endogenous non-24 period (as is the case for most sighted patients with this disorder), symptoms of insomnia and wake-time sleepiness are much reduced. However, such a schedule is incompatible with most occupations and social relationships.
The AASM suggest that N24SWD might in fact be a different disorder in sighted and blind people, with different internal and external contributing factors that might affect treatment response and thus might necessitate different treatments, as thus, future studies should try to identify and assess these factors.[2]
Diagnosis [ edit ]
sleep diary with nighttime in the middle and the weekend in the middle, to notice trends like gradually shifting nighttime with nighttime in the middle and the weekend in the middle, to notice trends like gradually shifting nighttime
Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder is diagnosed when the patient fails to follow (entrain to) a 24-hour light-dark cycle and clock times. As such, the entrainment status (defined as whether the hypothalamic circadian clock is synchronized to a 24-hour day) physiologically defines this disorder and can thus be used as the sole outcome measure. This is similar to elevated blood pressure characterizing essential hypertension. In contrast to other circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorders (CRSWD), a diagnosis of non-24 sleep-wake disorder requires the documentation of progressive shifting of the sleep-wake times over at least 14 days using sleep diaries and/or actigraphy.[2]
This disorder can have symptomatic periods, where « the time of high sleep propensity gradually shifts, such that patients experience daytime hypersomnolence and nighttime insomnia».[2]
In sighted people, the diagnosis is typically made based on a history of persistently delayed sleep onset that follows a non-24-hour pattern. In their large series, Hayakawa reported the average day length was 24.9 ± 0.4 hours (range 24.4–26.5).[28] There may be evidence of "relative coordination" with the sleep schedule becoming more normal as it coincides with the conventional timing for sleep. Most reported cases have documented a non-24-hour sleep schedule with a sleep diary (see below)[29] or actigraphy.[28] In addition to the sleep diary, the timing of melatonin secretion[18] or core body temperature rhythm[30][31] has been measured in a few patients who were enrolled in research studies, confirming the endogenous generation of the non-24-hour circadian rhythm.
The disorder can be considered very likely in a totally blind person with periodic insomnia and daytime sleepiness, although other causes for these common symptoms need to be ruled out. In the research setting, the diagnosis can be confirmed, and the length of the free-running circadian cycle can be ascertained, by periodic assessment of circadian marker rhythms, such as the core body temperature rhythm,[32] the timing of melatonin secretion,[7][33] or by analyzing the pattern of the sleep–wake schedule using actigraphy.[34] Most recent research has used serial measurements of melatonin metabolites in urine or melatonin concentrations in saliva. These assays are not currently available for routine clinical use.
Classification [ edit ]
Since 1979, the disorder has been recognized by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine:
Diagnostic Classification of Sleep and Arousal Disorders (DCSAD), 1979: Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Syndrome; code C.2.d [1]
(DCSAD), 1979: Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Syndrome; code C.2.d The International Classification of Sleep Disorders, 1st & Revised eds. (ICSD), 1990, 1997: Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Syndrome (or Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Disorder); code 780.55-2 [1]
, 1st & Revised eds. (ICSD), 1990, 1997: Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Syndrome (or Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Disorder); code 780.55-2 The International Classification of Sleep Disorders, 2nd ed. (ICSD-2), 2005: Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Syndrome (alternatively, Non-24-Hour Sleep–Wake Disorder); code 780.55-2[1]
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food safety, the problem with these bills is that they are so vague and open-ended, they could be used to justify banning organic practices such as composting and seed saving, or to put into law standard practices such as the required use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
The bills are speculated to have been funded by agri-business giants including Monsanto. The threat of the new standards is that only approveed seeds, fertilizers, and farming methods could be used, and if Monsanto gets their way, all farms and gardens be growing their plants and using their products. That is definitely a scary thought.
Organic farming is certainly already revolutionary, but it could be an illegal act if these bills are passed without reworking to protect organic farmers and backyard gardeners. Please contact your senators and representatives today and urge them to protect public health and safety without criminalizing organic farming. There isn’t much time to comment on this bill, so act now!Image Source/Alamy Stock Photo
WOULD a child open up to a robot? A team at Mississippi State University is suggesting using robots to question children in investigations of child abuse. But not everyone is convinced.
Children’s accounts are often vital evidence in cases of abuse. But even specially trained police interviewers can find it tough to stay neutral when talking to children. This can result in leading questions and bad evidence, because children can be very suggestible to saying what they think someone wants to hear.
The stakes are high: poorly conducted interviews can lead to someone being convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, or a child being returned to an abusive environment.
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Cindy Bethel and Zachary Henkel at Mississippi State University say robots could reduce bias and lead to more reliable outcomes.
Best-practice guidelines for police interviewers in child abuse cases include asking open-ended questions and maintaining neutral body language, facial expressions and vocal tone. Such procedures improve the quality of information obtained, but can be hard to follow. A 2014 report into child sexual abuse cases in the UK described police compliance with guidelines as “poor”.
“The techniques are not perfect, because humans are not perfect,” says Bethel. She and Henkel suggest that an interviewer could remotely control a robot that asks questions. That way, the interviewer can focus on asking the right questions, without worrying about their delivery. More advanced future robots might be able to conduct the whole conversation. “Robots will always follow the procedure, no matter the situation,” says Bethel.
“Interviewers find it difficult to talk to children who have been abused. Robots don’t”
Robots could also monitor a child in ways an interviewer can’t, using sensors to record body movement to help see if they are upset or uncomfortable.
And there is evidence that children will open up to a robot. In one study, children were as willing to share a secret with a robot as they were with a human interviewer. In another, children were more willing to share details about bullying with a robot.
This may not always be a good thing. “There is a risk of children being tricked into disclosing information that they do not wish to disclose,” says Henkel. Testimonies acquired through deception would be inadmissible as evidence, so it would be important for children to understand that their conversations with a robot will be shared with authorities.
One of the biggest hurdles could be if robots inadvertently encourage creative storytelling. “Interview rooms are normally very plain, because when they are not, people embellish their stories more often,” says Henkel. We don’t know if a robot could have the same effect. “Children might really want to continue talking with the robot, so could say things that aren’t true to continue doing so.”
Bethel and Henkel presented their work at the Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in Vienna, Austria, this month.
Michael Lamb at the University of Cambridge isn’t convinced that robots would be better than adults at interviewing children. His research focuses on getting high-quality information from children by creating a caring but non-suggestive relationship during interviews. “I am doubtful that this will be easily achieved [with robots],” he says.
But Marilena Kyriakidou at Coventry University, UK, who trains police interviewers in Cyprus, says robots could bring huge benefits, with more research. “Interviewers say that it’s difficult to talk face to face with children who have been abused. Robots won’t have that problem,” she says.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Robots could help police interview children”Headquarters Update
Last fall we began our deconstruction of the office area of our new headquarters. That is now complete and we are now beginning new construction! As I write this in mid-May our new roof is being installed.
The previous owner grew over the years and added sections of new building when they needed to. With each section came a separate roof. While they used the overhang from the previous as a buffer against rain, if the storms were strong there was a little leakage at these overhangs. Luckily these were at the block walls so no permanent damage has occurred. The Headquarters Commission was aware of this during our evaluation and took it into account. During our negotiations OVP Luckins was able to offset a major part of this cost in our purchase price. We will use that with our own money to upgrade the roof to a new impervious membrane.
The new membrane roof is installed over the existing roof. First, a foam insulation layer is laid down between the ribs of the existing roof (see photos).
Next, a flat layer is screwed over these two, and finally this is overlaid with a thick rubber mat that is “bolted” to the one below it. The mat is “welded” together so that it forms a single covering with exposed fasteners and no holes. Besides keeping the rain out our new roof adds an insulation layer, and it is white to reflect the heat of the southern summer sun. This will lower our utility bills, and will pay for itself in about 15 years. This roof will last for many decades to come.
Once the new roof is in place (finished by the time you read this) we will begin building the interior walls to meet our specifications. As the new walls go up we will begin prepping the entrance area for the new entrance atrium. We also have a new webcam in place so you can watch our progress. See our home page at
If you’re planning on being in the area look on our Facebook page or contact Maureen Handler (
Fundraising
We are now at 68% of our Team 404 goal. Once we have topped 100% we’ll start paying down the principle as fast as we can. Please help pay this off as quickly as possible. Every person who signs up for $25 or more a month helps us retire this mortgage. Remember—if every member would sign up we’d pay this off in just 7 months! Please talk with your fellow caver and let’s top out Team 404 and more. Together we can retire our mortgage quickly and have a new office facility that will allow us to serve our members and mission to even higher levels.
Want an “everlasting” place in our history? Take advantage of our Buy-A-Brick fundraising program and we’ll use your brick in one of our renovation projects. Several Grottos have held fundraisers, from auctions to car washes—it all helps. There is a link to the donation form on our home page (
Last year we raised more than in any year in our history. Every member who has stopped by our new office has been impressed by the property and if they weren’t a Team 404 member before, they are now.
Membership
The recession the nation experienced has lowered our membership a little, however at a smaller rate than the national average for non-profits. What does this mean? Possibly that our members are more dedicated to the activities our organization supports than others. I can say for certain that there is “mud in my blood” and the smell of limestone puts a smile on my face.
We understand how the recession has forced many to cut back on their memberships and subscriptions. It appears as if that is on the mend for many, and indeed we are seeing members renew who had to drop their membership a few years ago. We appreciate each and every member and through our membership dues we are able to do many things.
Next time you’re at a grotto meeting or on a trip, ask your fellow caver if they're current on their membership. If so, please pass along our thanks for their support. If not, please let them know we’d like to start sending the NSS News to their mailbox again, support exploration and research projects, and much, much more. Our overhead is very low compared to many non-profits—we try to make every dollar count for cavers, caves and karst.
Please help us help you and our caves by boosting our membership back to its former levels and more. The more members we have, the greater voice we can speak with when we sit down at the bargaining table in support of our passion: caving.
Thank you for continued support,
Wm Shrewsbury
President
Last fall we began our deconstruction of the office area of our new headquarters. That is now complete and we are now beginning new construction! As I write this in mid-May our new roof is being installed.The previous owner grew over the years and added sections of new building when they needed to. With each section came a separate roof. While they used the overhang from the previous as a buffer against rain, if the storms were strong there was a little leakage at these overhangs. Luckily these were at the block walls so no permanent damage has occurred. The Headquarters Commission was aware of this during our evaluation and took it into account. During our negotiations OVP Luckins was able to offset a major part of this cost in our purchase price. We will use that with our own money to upgrade the roof to a new impervious membrane.The new membrane roof is installed over the existing roof. First, a foam insulation layer is laid down between the ribs of the existing roof (see photos).Next, a flat layer is screwed over these two, and finally this is overlaid with a thick rubber mat that is “bolted” to the one below it. The mat is “welded” together so that it forms a single covering with exposed fasteners and no holes. Besides keeping the rain out our new roof adds an insulation layer, and it is white to reflect the heat of the southern summer sun. This will lower our utility bills, and will pay for itself in about 15 years. This roof will last for many decades to come.Once the new roof is in place (finished by the time you read this) we will begin building the interior walls to meet our specifications. As the new walls go up we will begin prepping the entrance area for the new entrance atrium. We also have a new webcam in place so you can watch our progress. See our home page at caves.org for the link.If you’re planning on being in the area look on our Facebook page or contact Maureen Handler ( hqvolunteer@caves.org ) for opportunities to help. We can use labor for all kinds of projects, so please come by and lend a hand. Whether with a hammer, trowel, brush or broom we can use your assistance.We are now at 68% of our Team 404 goal. Once we have topped 100% we’ll start paying down the principle as fast as we can. Please help pay this off as quickly as possible. Every person who signs up for $25 or more a month helps us retire this mortgage. Remember—ifmember would sign up we’d pay this off in just 7 months! Please talk with your fellow caver and let’s top out Team 404 and more. Together we can retire our mortgage quickly and have a new office facility that will allow us to serve our members and mission to even higher levels.Want an “everlasting” place in our history? Take advantage of our Buy-A-Brick fundraising program and we’ll use your brick in one of our renovation projects. Several Grottos have held fundraisers, from auctions to car washes—it all helps. There is a link to the donation form on our home page ( caves.org ) that will give you several ways you can help.Last year we raised more than in any year in our history. Every member who has stopped by our new office has been impressed by the property and if they weren’t a Team 404 member before, they are now.The recession the nation experienced has lowered our membership a little, however at a smaller rate than the national average for non-profits. What does this mean? Possibly that our members are more dedicated to the activities our organization supports than others. I can say for certain that there is “mud in my blood” and the smell of limestone puts a smile on my face.We understand how the recession has forced many to cut back on their memberships and subscriptions. It appears as if that is on the mend for many, and indeed we are seeing members renew who had to drop their membership a few years ago. We appreciate each and every member and through our membership dues we are able to do many things.Next time you’re at a grotto meeting or on a trip, ask your fellow caver if they're current on their membership. If so, please pass along our thanks for their support. If not, please let them know we’d like to start sending the NSS News to their mailbox again, support exploration and research projects, and much, much more. Our overhead is very low compared to many non-profits—we try to make every dollar count for cavers, caves and karst.Please help us help you and our caves by boosting our membership back to its former levels and more. The more members we have, the greater voice we can speak with when we sit down at the bargaining table in support of our passion: caving.Thank you for continued support,Wm ShrewsburyPresident5 North Koreans fail steroids test at Women's World Cup
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) North Korea officials blame traditional medicine using musk deer glands for five of their players testing positive for steroids at the Women's World Cup in soccer's biggest doping scandal in nearly two decades.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter said Saturday that after two players were caught during the tournament this month, FIFA tested the rest of the North Korean squad and found three more positive results.
"This is a shock," Blatter said at a news conference. "We are confronted with a very, very bad case of doping and it hurts."
Colombia's reserve goalkeeper Yineth Varon was provisionally suspended in late June for failing an out-of-competition test before the World Cup. The Colombian Football Federation said she had hormonal treatment that led to a failed drug test, the first doping case in the history of the women's World Cup.
FIFA annually spends some $30 million on 35,000 doping tests. Despite the cases at the women's World Cup, "doping really is a marginal, fringe phenomenon in football," Blatter said.
The last doping case at a major event came at the men's 1994 World Cup in the United States, when Diego Maradona was kicked out after testing positive for stimulants.
FIFA has already met with a North Korean delegation and heard arguments that the steroids were accidentally taken with traditional Chinese medicines based on musk deer glands to treat players who had been struck by lightning on June 8 during a training camp in North Korea.
The case will be taken up by FIFA's disciplinary committee. Players, male or female, face a ban of up to two years for such infractions.
Defenders Song Jong Sun and Jong Pok Sim tested positive for steroids after North Korea's first two group games and were suspended for the last match. The team was eliminated in the first round after losses to the United States and Sweden and a draw with Colombia.
Blatter said the North Korean federation "wrote to us and they presented their excuses. They said that a lightning strike was responsible for this."
The names of the three other players would only be made public at a later stage, FIFA said.
The gland in question comes from musk deer living in a large swathe of Asia from Siberia to North Korea. The hairy 4-centimeter gland is usually cut open to extract a liquid that is used for medical purposes.
Doping officials have been concerned about such naturally occurring substances in recent years. During the run-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, FIFA's concerns focused on African plants that could give players an unfair advantage by providing energy boosts or helping to heal muscle injuries.
FIFA investigators who discovered evidence of doping in the North Korean samples were in uncharted territory as such steroids had not previously been encountered. Experts from the World Anti-Doping Agency were called in to confirm the breach of doping rules.
"It was very complex," FIFA's chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak said. He added that the medical officer of the North Korea team provided a sample of the medicine to help their analysis.
The musk gland extract "it is not part of the world of doping," Dvorak said. "It is really the first case in which this has been discovered."
The North Koreans first mentioned the lightning incident after losing their opening match to the United States. When North Korean officials were asked later, they refused to elaborate on the circumstances.
North Korean coach Kim Kwang Min said after their first match against the United States that "more than five" players were sent to the hospital. Goalkeeper Hong Myong Hui, four defenders and some of the midfielders were the players most affected, Kim said.
"The physicians actually said the players were not capable of playing in the tournament," Kim said through an interpreter.
Dvorak said the information was still sketchy.
"We saw some pictures with ambulances and saw that some players were taken from the pitch, but that is all we have," he said.
FIFA also got information from North Korea about the initial hospital treatment of the players and "this very first report did not include the traditional Chinese medicine," Dvorak said.
The tournament ends Sunday with the final between the United States and Japan.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.comStory highlights Credit rating agency launched in Hong Kong with Chinese, Russian and American backing
It seeks to reform the global credit rating system following the financial crisis
Director says Asian and Middle Eastern institutions "have not had a seat at the table"
A new credit rating agency backed by Chinese, Russian and American firms has launched today in Hong Kong, with a mission to displace the "Big Three" Western firms at the heart of the international ratings system.
The joint venture, the Universal Credit Rating Group (UCRG), says it intends to reform the current international credit rating regime, creating the initial framework for a new system by 2020, with the ability to provide credit risk information on all the world's economies by 2025.
Beijing-based Dagong Global Credit Rating, Russia's RusRating and U.S.-based agency Egan-Jones Ratings are behind the project, which they consider part of a necessary overhaul of a system whose failings contributed to the 2008 global financial crisis.
Currently, ratings issued by the Big Three -- Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch -- to large-scale borrowers, such as governments and corporations, play a central role in determining how investors allocate billions of dollars. Their ratings indicate to buyers of debt how likely they are to be paid back.
During the financial crisis, the ratings agencies were criticized for giving top ratings to mortgage-backed securities that eventually cratered, sparking a deep global recession.
Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings and director of the UCRG, believes there's been inadequate reform of the international credit ratings system since the crisis.
"Obviously there's a been a breakdown of the system, obviously there's yet to be any sort of tangible reform," he said. "That is really the impetus for seeking some alternatives for global institutional investors."
Guan Jianzhong, chairman and president of Dagong Global Credit Rating and chairman of the UCRG, said reform was essential to the recovery of the world economy.
"Credit ratings are indispensible in global economic operation, and it is obvious that the current rating system needs reforming and introducing new thinking," he said in a press release.
Egan said the venture would bring a more international perspective to ratings and provide greater accountability.
"It's not going to represent the, you could argue, parochial interests of New York-based firms. There's going to be a variety of perspectives included as a result of a variety of ratings firms being part of it," he said.
A "self-policing " mechanism would see contributors' ratings assessed over time, he said.
"It addresses the major problem you've had, whereby if a rating at the triple-A level is issued and quickly downgraded, the rating firm has historically just said 'We're sorry, but thank you very much for the rating fee.'"
He said the response to the proposal had been better than he had anticipated.
"The timing is right, the parties are right, the interest is there," he said. "Capital providers in the form of Asian and some Middle Eastern institutions have not had a seat at the table and have been terribly burnt as a result."
Observers have welcomed the move, saying the new agency could be a viable competitor, but will need time to establish its credibility.
"I'm of the view: the more the better," said Avonechith Siackhachanh, senior advisor in the Asian Development Bank's Office of Regional Economic Integration.
"Anything to introduce greater competition -- it will encourage everybody to have better discipline. But I think it will take time for this new rating agency to establish itself."
The fact that the agency was giving itself a decent time frame to start up "gives me some comfort that it has a chance to succeed," she said.
She rejected the argument that U.S.-based ratings firms had parochial interests, saying it was "not that black and white," but agreed that insufficient reforms of the ratings regime taken place since the crisis. "Perhaps more ratings agencies in the market will promote reform in the long run."Jan Vertonghen: Has indicated that he is set to join Tottenham this summer
Ajax defender Jan Vertonghen has revealed that he could complete a move to Tottenham within the next few days.
The 25-year-old has been linked with a move to the Premier League for some time, having caught the eye with his performances in the Eredivisie this season.
He had previously made it clear that joining Spurs would be his first choice, but admitted he did have other options and would not rule out their North London rivals Arsenal.
It now looks as though Vertonghen's dream move to White Hart Lane will become a reality after he told a press conference a deal is close to being finalised.
Speaking ahead of Belgium's friendly against England on Saturday, he said: "I am a big fan of the Premier League.
"It is almost the only competition I watch on TV and for me it is the best competition in the world.
"I would like to play in the Premier League. I am not in contact every day but I think it could be very close now, maybe a couple of weeks or maybe days."
Clear to everybody
Asked if he knew what club he wanted to join, he said: "I probably know which team I will be going to, yes. I know where I want to go and I think it is clear to everybody."
When probed as to whether that club is Tottenham, he nodded and said: "Yes."
Vertonghen seemed taken aback by the amount of interest in his future, especially when news of his impending move broke on televisions in the press conference room.
The defender, though, continued to answer questions in flawless English and insisted that the fact White Hart Lane will not play host to UEFA Champions League football next season is not a major issue.
"It is not that big a problem," Vertonghen said. "It would be nice but I chose for the club not just one season.
"For me it is important the connection with the club. They give me a very good feeling about everything.
"They invited me over and they also really want to close a deal, which is what gave me a good feeling.
"They showed me everything about where they want to be in the next few years and that is what I like most."
Redknapp praise
Vertonghen is likely to line up for Belgium at Wembley and if things had gone differently Harry Redknapp could have been boss of the Three Lions - something the defender is relieved is not the case.
"I met him once and I think he is a good manager," he said. "He was very friendly.
"[I am happy he is not England manager] as I have only heard good things about him and I am happy he stays at Tottenham."
However, the player tweeted after the press conference: "Don't believe everything the press writes. Nothing is confirmed. Still player of Ajax."How did humans evolve from early primates? How did “human like” traits such as a smaller jaw relative to apes and hairlessness pop up when they don’t appear in the wild in any real frequency? The typical explanation for why humans have smaller jaws than early primates is that our diets changed and our brains got bigger, pressures that caused a smaller jaw. But there’s another way to look at this – what if our diets changed and our brains got bigger due to proto-human society dealing and adapting to an increasingly frequent and nearly catastrophic mutation of the jaw?
Myosin Heavy Chain 16
The human and chimpanzee genomes have both been mapped, so we are able to make comparisons between them. This is extremely useful, as chimpanzees and humans shared a common ancestor, but genetic lines split apart approximately 7 million years ago. So examining the differences may tell us something about how humans evolved.
There is a protein called myosin heavy chain 16 (aka MYH16) which in chimpanzees and other non-human primates is expressed almost exclusively in their powerful jaw muscles. These strong jaws are an adult trait – a logically complex one that would be more sensitive to random mutations.
And that’s exactly what seems to have happened. Non-human primates have DNA that codes for the complete MYH16 protein. The corresponding part of human DNA is missing a random chunk – which causes a frameshift mutation.
Frameshift Mutations
What is a frameshift mutation? Well, first let’s find out how we build proteins. We have a strand of messenger RNA (imagine a long tape with letters on it) which a ribosome (hell, imagine a tiny elf) uses to produce proteins. The critical thing to consider is that a ribosome builds a protein by reading three nucleotides at a time, and these three nucleotides code for a certain amino acid. These amino acids are chained together to produce proteins. Some combinations of three nucleotides can also act as “punctuation marks”.
So our wee elf looks closely at the long tape of letters, and starts off with the first three. His “frame”, the little chunk he works on, is three letters long. This frame is an instruction to build a certain amino acid, which he makes. He then goes along the tape, three letters at a time, making an amino acid each time that he sticks onto the last. This will eventually create a long chain of amino acids that we call a protein. But each frame doesn’t need to code for just an amino acid – it can also code for other instructions (those “punctuation marks”) starting or stopping this chaining process.
Now you may have guessed what a frameshift mutation is by now – it’s where a single letter in our tape disappears, or a new random one gets thrown in, causing our frame to get shifted slightly. This means that the resulting triplets after this error will be horribly wrong. It’s like the difference between
HEY MAN HOW ARE YOU BRO and
HEY MAN HWA REY OUB RO_ or HEY MAN HOQ WAR EYO UBR O__
if one were to speak in sentences containing only three letter words. The first sentence makes sense if we parse three letters at a time. The two others have a random letter removed, and a random letter added in. If we parse them three letters at a time, the sentence turns into garbage halfway through! The resulting nonsense (or malformed protein) is a result of a random insertion or deletion of information (nucleotides) and our “frame”, the manner in which we interpret it.
Consequences
So a frameshift mutation occured in early humans that affected the production of the protein MYH16. This protein is involved in the strong powerful jaws that primates have, but not humans. We often think of mutations as a simple little “blip” in the genetic code, but the way our bodies parse this code can cause cascading effects. Instead of MYH16 having a slightly different amino acid in a random spot from a random mutation, the specified amino acids after the mutation will change completely!
So you might think that we’ll have some odd protein that’s mostly normal, and the parts after the mutation affected by the frameshift will be wonky. But – and this is an important but – the triplets code for “punctuation marks” too, remember? In this MYH16 mutation, it turns out that this frameshift caused a punctuation mark (aka a stop codon) to just pop up – so the protein is cut off far sooner than it should be! Not too good for any traits relying on that protein.
Look at the differences between these gorilla and human skulls below. The large bony ridges on the gorilla skull on the left are where the larger jaw muscles attach – otherwise they would literally tear off of the skull. You can also see how the gorilla skull seems “empty” on the sides – that’s because it is filled with large jaw muscles, reducing space available for the brain. The red tinted parts are where the jaw muscles attach – you can see how much more “anchoring” a gorilla’s jaw muscle requires.
And this is where it gets interesting. This mutation in our human ancestors happened approximately 2.4 million years ago. Right before our ancestors stopped looking like primates and started looking like us. If you lacked the protein that operated a powerful jaw muscle, you could not carry a large jawbone around and use it effectively. If you can’t carry a large jawbone around, there is strong selection pressure for those with smaller jaws to survive. If your jaw gets smaller, then the loading of the jaw on the skull decreases – bony ridges disappear, and the skull can get larger and lighter since it doesn’t need to be as strong. A larger and lighter skull can accommodate a bigger brain.
It appears that a random mutation, flipping a single bit of genetic information, has beautifully complex cascading results. Viewing the world as a hostile agent of noise and fury, winding down to an eventual death by entropy is wrong. You can fold a piece of paper, give it to a child, and have them cut crude holes in it with cheap scissors – and when you unfold it, the snowflake is beautiful.
So too can randomness be folded and twisted by logical structures in biology and physics – and the result is our amazing world.David and Godzilla: Anti-Semitism and Seppuku in Japanese Publishing
By Tom Brislin, Ph.D.
University of Hawaii
tbrislin@hawaii.edu
Introduction
Two months before the March 20, 1995 Aum Shinrikyo attack on Tokyo's subways using Nazi-developed sarin poison gas, a leading Japanese news magazine published a story "There Were No Nazi Gas Chambers!" in World War II. Ironically, large ads for the Holocaust-denial article hung in hundreds of subway cars throughout Tokyo's myriad mass transit system. The magazine, Marco Polo, was on sale at numerous newsstands in the cavernous Kasumigaseki station, the gassing target where three major subway lines meet and thousands of officials and workers disembark beneath the metropolitan government complex.
Anti-Semitic books and articles are not uncommon in Japan. Most tend to favor conspiracy theories of international Jewish control of political and economic forces, and attempts to subdue the Japanese economy. Most, like the Marco Polo article, are one-sided, riddled with historic inaccuracies, and lack any semblance of substantiation. They are met with official protests from the Israeli Embassy, and occasionally the U.S. Embassy, who traditionally ask for a public, published apology and a subsequent corrective article that cites historic record. The "No Gas Chambers" article also brought a strong protest from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who called for an advertiser boycott.
The response by the Marco Polo parent company, publishing giant Bungei Shunju, was as surprising as it was swift: In abject apology, Marco Polo would cease publication. The magazine would be completely disbanded. All unsold issues would be recalled. Its editor would be transferred to a non-publishing research section, and its staff dispersed to other Bungei publications. The top officials at Bungei Shunju would take hefty salary cuts as personal penance. One would resign. Officials, editors and staff would attend a series of seminars conducted by the Wiesenthal Center to atone and correct their misconceptions on Jewish history.
The termination of the 250,000 circulation Marco Polo was an unprecedented response, stunning both its admirers and critics. But was the killing of the magazine a symbolic seppuku -- ritual suicide as the ultimate apology -- on the part of Bungei Shunju, or was it more of a case of cosmetic surgery -- to rid the publishing house of what had become an increasingly irritating, unsightly, and unprofitable, lesion on its otherwise respectable product and record?
The Marco Polo incident offers a case study in contradictions, conflicts and paradoxes in intercultural communication. Japanese publications seem to simultaneously delight in and decry Jews, based on a construction of deep-seated conspiracy theories and shallow stereotypes. The structure and value systems of the Japanese press produce extremely uniform and conservative mainstream newspapers, and wildly sensational �news� magazines, neither comfortable with any attempt to impose a Western framework of �objectivity.� Japanese systems of internalized management decision-making and conflict resolution are traumatized in the face of a Western style of confrontational politics, such as the advertising boycott that forced the Marco Polo case into the harsh glare of international publicity. The extreme action of killing off of a magazine left a lingering question: Did it communicate the need for more tolerance, diversity and education in Japanese publications, or did it send the offending messages of conspiracism underground, to replenish and sprout anew?
This study was conducted primarily in Tokyo, Japan, at two intervals: three months after the demise of Marco Polo, and three years later. Japanese and American journalists, and embassy officials from the United States and Israel were interviewed, as were leaders of the Jewish Community Center. Additional interviews were conducted with, and materials gathered from, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center. News stories about the Marco Polo controversy were analyzed from the English-language editions of four Japanese newspapers as well as from reports filed by the Tokyo bureaus of four major American newspapers, one wire service, and the international edition of one news magazine. A search for subsequent news stories in the three years following the controversy was done through the databases for newspapers of the Foreign Press Center, and for magazines of the Ooya Sooichi Library, in Tokyo. Background information on the Bungei Shunju publishing company and its nine magazines, including Marco Polo, was obtained from Japanese magazine and advertising sources, and from the Foreign Press Center. The "No Gas Chambers" article in Marco Polo was analyzed for content, as was advertising in one of Japan's leading national dailies, and a leading weekly magazine, for an anti-Semitic book. Background was gathered and analyses made of Japanese perceptions of Jews from several Japanese and U.S. published books and articles, and from interviews with Japanese, U.S. and Israeli officials.
Anti-Semitism in Japan
With only about 2,000 Jews living in Japan, the Japanese have little first-hand experience in relating to Jewish people and culture. There have been, however, numerous books and magazine articles published in Japan about the Japanese and the Jews, or Nihonjin and Yudayajin. These writings have increasingly, within the last decade, adopted anti-Semitic themes that blame shadowy international Jewish cartels and conspiracies with Japan's current economic problems. Whole sections of bookstores, since the mid-1980s, have been given over to books about Yudayajin with such titles as: The Jewish Plot to Control the World, The Expert Way of Reading the Jewish Protocols, and The Secret of Jewish Power That Moves the World.
The anti-Semitic tone of such books, educators, authors and officials believe, is borne not so much out of hatred as out of ignorance and economic uncertainty. Goldstein credits it "not (to) race or religion, but economics" (1989, 22). A Japanese professor of Jewish history says "The Japanese don't know anything about the Jews. That's why they imagine things" (Sakamaki, 1995, 17). David Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, in Jews in the Japanese Mind, write "Various attempts have been made to account for the intensity of Japanese interest in Jews, and particularly to explain the persistent chimerical belief in a global Jewish conspiracy bent on destroying Japan" (1995, 11). Arie Dan, First Secretary for Press and Information of the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo notes that "Japanese high school students do not study World War II. They have no sense of their, or anyone else's history" (1995).
Still, the pervasiveness of the "Jewish Conspiracy" sentiment is alarming, called by an American journalist "a persistent theme in Japanese intellectual life that has taken on a new virulence since the Persian Gulf War" and by a Japanese journalist "not a fad but a dangerous phenomenon that needs to be stopped. "(Goozner, 1989, 22). Two books by Masami Uno, the leading anti-Semite author, have sold more than 1 million copies, If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand the World, and If You Understand the Jews You Will Understand Japan. Arie Dan points out that millions more Japanese are familiar with Uno's claims against the Jews because they are highlighted in lengthy advertisements for the books carried -- uncritically, Dan complains -- by Japan's leading newspapers. "They see the headlines in bold type: statements that the Jews are responsible for Japan's economic crisis. That's all they see, that's all they know, that's what they come to believe." Dan recounted his own two years of graduate study in Business Administration at Tokyo's prestigious Keio University: "In my classes, my own professors, learned men, would espouse international Jewish conspiracy theories to control the Japanese Economy" (1995).
Yoshito Takigawa, a former journalist and chief information officer for the Embassy of Israel adds his dismay that the newspaper advertisements |
single-unit activity. Inset, representative single unit event; Green bar, 10 seconds.
Leptosphaeria maculans and now expressed in the muscle cells of C. elegans that opens in response to green light and causes hyperpolarizing inhibition. Of note is the extension in body length that the worm undergoes each time it is exposed to green light, which is presumably caused by Mac's muscle-relaxant effects.[35] A nematode expressing the light-sensitive ion channel Mac. Mac is a proton pump originally isolated in the fungusand now expressed in the muscle cells ofthat opens in response to green light and causes hyperpolarizing inhibition. Of note is the extension in body length that the worm undergoes each time it is exposed to green light, which is presumably caused by Mac's muscle-relaxant effects.
[36] A nematode expressing ChR2 in its gubernacular-oblique muscle group responding to stimulation by blue light. Blue light stimulation causes the gubernacular-oblique muscles to repeatedly contract, causing repetitive thrusts of the spicule, as would be seen naturally during copulation.
Optogenetics provides millisecond-scale temporal precision which allows the experimenter to keep pace with fast biological information processing (for example, in probing the causal role of specific action potential patterns in defined neurons). Indeed, to probe the neural code, optogenetics by definition must operate on the millisecond timescale to allow addition or deletion of precise activity patterns within specific cells in the brains of intact animals, including mammals (see Figure 1). By comparison, the temporal precision of traditional genetic manipulations (employed to probe the causal role of specific genes within cells, via "loss-of-function" or "gain of function" changes in these genes) is rather slow, from hours or days to months. It is important to also have fast readouts in optogenetics that can keep pace with the optical control. This can be done with electrical recordings ("optrodes") or with reporter proteins that are biosensors, where scientists have fused fluorescent proteins to detector proteins. An example of this is voltage-sensitive fluorescent protein (VSFP2).[37] Additionally, beyond its scientific impact optogenetics represents an important case study in the value of both ecological conservation (as many of the key tools of optogenetics arise from microbial organisms occupying specialized environmental niches), and in the importance of pure basic science as these opsins were studied over decades for their own sake by biophysicists and microbiologists, without involving consideration of their potential value in delivering insights into neuroscience and neuropsychiatric disease.[38]
Light-activated proteins: channels, pumps and enzymes
The hallmark of optogenetics therefore is introduction of fast light-activated channels, pumps, and enzymes that allow temporally precise manipulation of electrical and biochemical events while maintaining cell-type resolution through the use of specific targeting mechanisms. Among the microbial opsins which can be used to investigate the function of neural systems are the channelrhodopsins (ChR2, ChR1, VChR1, and SFOs) to excite neurons and anion-conducting channelrhodopsins for light-induced inhibition. Indirectly light-controlled potassium channels have recently been engineered to prevent action potential generation in neurons during blue light illumination.[39][40] Light-driven ion pumps are also used to inhibit neuronal activity, e.g. halorhodopsin (NpHR),[41] enhanced halorhodopsins (eNpHR2.0 and eNpHR3.0, see Figure 2),[42] archaerhodopsin (Arch), fungal opsins (Mac) and enhanced bacteriorhodopsin (eBR).[43]
Optogenetic control of well-defined biochemical events within behaving mammals is now also possible. Building on prior work fusing vertebrate opsins to specific G-protein coupled receptors[44] a family of chimeric single-component optogenetic tools was created that allowed researchers to manipulate within behaving mammals the concentration of defined intracellular messengers such as cAMP and IP3 in targeted cells.[45] Other biochemical approaches to optogenetics (crucially, with tools that displayed low activity in the dark) followed soon thereafter, when optical control over small GTPases and adenylyl cyclases was achieved in cultured cells using novel strategies from several different laboratories.[46][47][48][49][50] This emerging repertoire of optogenetic probes now allows cell-type-specific and temporally precise control of multiple axes of cellular function within intact animals.[51]
Hardware for light application
Another necessary factor is hardware (e.g. integrated fiberoptic and solid-state light sources) to allow specific cell types, even deep within the brain, to be controlled in freely behaving animals. Most commonly, the latter is now achieved using the fiberoptic-coupled diode technology introduced in 2007,[52][53][54] though to avoid use of implanted electrodes, researchers have engineered ways to inscribe a "window" made of zirconia that has been modified to be transparent and implanted in mice skulls, to allow optical waves to penetrate more deeply to stimulate or inhibit individual neurons.[55] To stimulate superficial brain areas such as the cerebral cortex, optical fibers or LEDs can be directly mounted to the skull of the animal. More deeply implanted optical fibers have been used to deliver light to deeper brain areas. Complementary to fiber-tethered approaches, completely wireless techniques have been developed utilizing wirelessly delivered power to headborne LEDs for unhindered study of complex behaviors in freely behaving organisms.[56]
Expression of optogenetic actuators
Optogenetics also necessarily includes the development of genetic targeting strategies such as cell-specific promoters or other customized conditionally-active viruses, to deliver the light-sensitive probes to specific populations of neurons in the brain of living animals (e.g. worms, fruit flies, mice, rats, and monkeys). In invertebrates such as worms and fruit flies some amount of all-trans-retinal (ATR) is supplemented with food. A key advantage of microbial opsins as noted above is that they are fully functional without the addition of exogenous co-factors in vertebrates.[54]
Technique [ edit ]
(A) Identification or synthesis of a light-sensitive protein (opsin) such as channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), halorhodopsin (NpHR), etc... (B) The design of a system to introduce the genetic material containing the opsin into cells for protein expression such as application of Cre recombinase or an adeno-associated-virus (C) application of light emitting instruments.[57] Three primary components in the application of optogenetics are as followsIdentification or synthesis of a light-sensitive protein (opsin) such as channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), halorhodopsin (NpHR), etc...The design of a system to introduce the genetic material containing the opsin into cells for protein expression such as application of Cre recombinase or an adeno-associated-virusapplication of light emitting instruments.
The technique of using optogenetics is flexible and adaptable to the experimenter's needs. For starters, experimenters genetically engineer a microbial opsin based on the gating properties (rate of excitability, refractory period, etc..) required for the experiment.
There is a challenge in introducing the microbial opsin, an optogenetic actuator, into a specific region of the organism in question. A rudimentary approach is to introduce an engineered viral vector that contains the optogenetic actuator gene attached to a recognizable promoter such as CAMKIIα. This allows for some level of specificity as cells that already contain and can translate the given promoter will be infected with the viral vector and hopefully express the optogenetic actuator gene.
Another approach is the creation of transgenic mice where the optogenetic actuator gene is introduced into mice zygotes with a given promoter, most commonly Thy1. Introduction of the optogenetic actuator at an early stage allows for a larger genetic code to be incorporated and as a result, increases the specificity of cells to be infected.
A third and rather novel approach that has been developed is creating transgenic mice with Cre recombinase, an enzyme that catalyzes recombination between two lox-P sites. Then by introducing an engineered viral vector containing the optogenetic actuator gene in between two lox-P sites, only the cells containing the Cre recombinase will express the microbial opsin. This last technique has allowed for multiple modified optogenetic actuators to be used without the need to create a whole line of transgenic animals every time a new microbial opsin is needed.
After the introduction and expression of the microbial opsin, depending on the type of analysis being performed, application of light can be placed at the terminal ends or the main region where the infected cells are situated. Light stimulation can be performed with a vast array of instruments from light emitting diodes (LEDs) or diode-pumped solid state (DPSS). These light sources are most commonly connected to a computer through a fiber optic cable. Recent advances include the advent of wireless head-mounted devices that also apply LED to targeted areas and as a result give the animal more freedom of mobility to reproduce in vivo results.[58][59]
Issues [ edit ]
Although already a powerful scientific tool, optogenetics, according to Doug Tischer & Orion D. Weiner of the University of California San Francisco, should be regarded as a "first-generation GFP" because of its immense potential for both utilization and optimization.[60] With that being said, the current approach to optogenetics is limited primarily by its versatility. Even within the field of Neuroscience where it is most potent, the technique is less robust on a subcellular level.[61]
Selective expression [ edit ]
One of the main problems of optogenetics is that not all the cells in question may express the microbial opsin gene at the same level. Thus, even illumination with a defined light intensity will have variable effects on individual cells. Optogenetic stimulation of neurons in the brain is even less controlled as the light intensity drops exponentially from the light source (e.g. implanted optical fiber).
Moreover, mathematical modelling shows that selective expression of opsin in specific cell types can dramatically alter the dynamical behavior of the neural circuitry. In particular, optogenetic stimulation that preferentially targets inhibitory cells can transform the excitability of the neural tissue from Type 1 — where neurons operate as integrators — to Type 2 where neurons operate as resonators.[62] Type 1 excitable media sustain propagating waves of activity whereas Type 2 excitable media do not. The transformation from one to the other explains how constant optical stimulation of primate motor cortex elicits gamma-band (40–80 Hz) oscillations in the manner of a Type 2 excitable medium. Yet those same oscillations propagate far into the surrounding tissue in the manner of a Type 1 excitable medium.[63]
Nonetheless, it remains difficult to target opsin to defined subcellular compartments, e.g. the plasma membrane, synaptic vesicles, or mitochondria.[61][64] Restricting the opsin to specific regions of the plasma membrane such as dendrites, somata or axon terminals would provide a more robust understanding of neuronal circuitry.[61]
Kinetics and synchronization [ edit ]
An issue with channelrhodopsin-2 is that its gating properties don't mimic in vivo cation channels of cortical neurons. A solution to this issue with a protein's kinetic property is introduction of variants of channelrhodopsin-2 with more favorable kinetics.[55][56]
Another one of the technique's limitations is that light stimulation produces a synchronous activation of infected cells and this removes any individual cell properties of activation among the population affected. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how the cells in the population affected communicate with one another or how their phasic properties of activation may relate to the circuitry being observed.
Optogenetic activation has been combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (ofMRI) to elucidate the connectome, a thorough map of the brain’s neural connections. The results, however, are limited by the general properties of fMRI.[61][65] The readouts from this neuroimaging procedure lack the spatial and temporal resolution appropriate for studying the densely packed and rapid-firing neuronal circuits.[65]
Excitation spectrum [ edit ]
The opsin proteins currently in use have absorption peaks across the visual spectrum, but remain considerable sensitivity to blue light.[61] This spectral overlap makes it very difficult to combine opsin activation with genenetically encoded indictors (GEVIs, GECIs, GluSnFR, synapto-pHluorin), most of which need blue light excitation. Opsins with infrared activation would, at a standard irradiance value, increase light penetration and augment resolution through reduction of light scattering.
Additional data indicates that the absorption spectra of organic dyes and fluorescent proteins, used in optogenetics applications, extends from around 250 nm to around 600 nm. Particular organic compounds used in discrete portions of this range include: retinals, flavins, folates, p-coumaric acids, phytochrome chromophotes, cobalamins, and at least six fluorescent proteins including mOrange and mCherry.[66]
Applications [ edit ]
The field of optogenetics has furthered the fundamental scientific understanding of how specific cell types contribute to the function of biological tissues such as neural circuits in vivo (see references from the scientific literature below). Moreover, on the clinical side, optogenetics-driven research has led to insights into Parkinson's disease[67][68] and other neurological and psychiatric disorders. Indeed, optogenetics papers in 2009 have also provided insight into neural codes relevant to autism, Schizophrenia, drug abuse, anxiety, and depression.[43][69][70][71]
Identification of particular neurons and networks [ edit ]
Amygdala [ edit ]
Optogenetic approaches have been used to map neural circuits in the amygdala that contribute to fear conditioning.[72][73][74][75] One such example of a neural circuit is the connection made from the basolateral amygdala to the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex where neuronal oscillations of 4 Hz have been observed in correlation to fear induced freezing behaviors in mice. Transgenic mice were introduced with channelrhodoposin-2 attached with a parvalbumin-Cre promoter that selectively infected interneurons located both in the basolateral amygdala and the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex responsible for the 4 Hz oscillations. The interneurons were optically stimulated generating a freezing behavior and as a result provided evidence that these 4 Hz oscillations may be responsible for the basic fear response produced by the neuronal populations along the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex and basolateral amygdala.[76]
Olfactory bulb [ edit ]
Optogenetic activation of olfactory sensory neurons was critical for demonstrating timing in odor processing[77] and for mechanism of neuromodulatory mediated olfactory guided behaviors (e.g. aggression, mating)[78] In addition, with the aid of optogenetics, evidence has been reproduced to show that the "afterimage" of odors is concentrated more centrally around the olfactory bulb rather than on the periphery where the olfactory receptor neurons would be located. Transgenic mice infected with channel-rhodopsin Thy1-ChR2, were stimulated with a 473 nm laser transcranially positioned over the dorsal section of the olfactory bulb. Longer photostimulation of mitral cells in the olfactory bulb led to observations of longer lasting neuronal activity in the region after the photostimulation had ceased, meaning the olfactory sensory system is able to undergo long term changes and recognize differences between old and new odors.[79]
Nucleus accumbens [ edit ]
Optogenetics, freely moving mammalian behavior, in vivo electrophysiology, and slice physiology have been integrated to probe the cholinergic interneurons of the nucleus accumbens by direct excitation or inhibition. Despite representing less than 1% of the total population of accumbal neurons, these cholinergic cells are able to control the activity of the dopaminergic terminals that innervate medium spiny neurons (MSNs) in the nucleus accumbens.[80] These accumbal MSNs are known to be involved in the neural pathway through which cocaine exerts its effects, because decreasing cocaine-induced changes in the activity of these neurons has been shown to inhibit cocaine conditioning. The few cholinergic neurons present in the nucleus accumbens may prove viable targets for pharmacotherapy in the treatment of cocaine dependence[43]
Cages for rat equipped of optogenetics leds commutators which permit in vivo to study animal behavior during optogenetics' stimulations.
Prefrontal cortex [ edit ]
In vivo and in vitro recordings (by the Cooper laboratory) of individual CAMKII AAV-ChR2 expressing pyramidal neurons within the prefrontal cortex demonstrated high fidelity action potential output with short pulses of blue light at 20 Hz (Figure 1).[34] The same group recorded complete green light-induced silencing of spontaneous activity in the same prefrontal cortical neuronal population expressing an AAV-NpHR vector (Figure 2).[34]
Heart [ edit ]
Optogenetics was applied on atrial cardiomyocytes to end spiral wave arrhythmias, found to occur in atrial fibrillation, with light.[81] This method is still in the development stage. A recent study explored the possibilities of optogenetics as a method to correct for arrythmias and resynchronize cardiac pacing. The study introduced channelrhodopsin-2 into cardiomyocytes in ventricular areas of hearts of transgenic mice and performed in vitro studies of photostimulation on both open-cavity and closed-cavity mice. Photostimulation led to increased activation of cells and thus increased ventricular contractions resulting in increasing heart rates. In addition, this approach has been applied in cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) as a new biological pacemaker as a substitute for electrode based-CRT.[82] Lately, optogenetics has been used in the heart to defibrillate ventricular arrhythmias with local epicardial illumination,[83] a generalized whole heart illumination[84] or with customized stimulation patterns based on arrhythmogenic mechanisms in order to lower defibrillation energy.[85]
Spiral ganglion [ edit ]
Optogenetic stimulation of the spiral ganglion in deaf mice restored auditory activity.[86][87] Optogenetic application onto the cochlear region allows for the stimulation or inhibition of the spiral ganglion cells (SGN). In addition, due to the characteristics of the resting potentials of SGN's, different variants of the protein channelrhodopsin-2 have been employed such as Chronos and CatCh. Chronos and CatCh variants are particularly useful in that they have less time spent in their deactivated states, which allow for more activity with less bursts of blue light emitted. The result being that the LED producing the light would require less energy and the idea of cochlear prosthetics in association with photo-stimulation, would be more feasible.[88]
Brainstem [ edit ]
Optogenetic stimulation of a modified red-light excitable channelrhodopsin (ReaChR) expressed in the facial motor nucleus enabled minimally invasive activation of motoneurons effective in driving whisker movements in mice.[89] One novel study employed optogenetics on the Dorsal Ralphe Nucleus to both activate and inhibit dopaminergic release onto the ventral tegmental area. To produce activation transgenic mice were infected with channelrhodopsin-2 with a TH-Cre promoter and to produce inhibition the hyperpolarizing opsin NpHR was added onto the TH-Cre promoter. Results showed that optically activating dopaminergic neurons led to an increase in social interactions, and their inhibition decreased the need to socialize only after a period of isolation.[90]
Precise temporal control of interventions [ edit ]
The currently available optogenetic actuators allow for the accurate temporal control of the required intervention (i.e. inhibition or excitation of the target neurons) with precision routinely going down to the millisecond level. Therefore, experiments can now be devised where the light used for the intervention is triggered by a particular element of behavior (to inhibit the behavior), a particular unconditioned stimulus (to associate something to that stimulus) or a particular oscillatory event in the brain (to inhibit the event). This kind of approach has already been used in several brain regions:
Hippocampus [ edit ]
Sharp waves and ripple complexes (SWRs) are distinct high frequency oscillatory events in the hippocampus thought to play a role in memory formation and consolidation. These events can be readily detected by following the oscillatory cycles of the on-line recorded local field potential. In this way the onset of the event can be used as a trigger signal for a light flash that is guided back into the hippocampus to inhibit neurons specifically during the SWRs and also to optogenetically inhibit the oscillation itself[91] These kinds of "closed-loop" experiments are useful to study SWR complexes and their role in memory.
Cellular biology/cell signaling pathways [ edit ]
Optogenetic control of cellular forces and induction of mechanotransduction. Pictured cells receive an hour of imaging concurrent with blue light that pulses every 60 seconds. This is also indicated when the blue point flashes onto the image. The cell relaxes for an hour without light activation and then this cycle repeats again. The square inset magnifies the cell's nucleus.
The optogenetic toolkit has proven pivotal for the field of neuroscience as it allows precise manipulation of neuronal excitability. Moreover, this technique has been shown to extend outside neurons to an increasing number of proteins and cellular functions.[60] Cellular scale modifications including manipulation of contractile forces relevant to cell migration, cell division and wound healing have been optogenetically manipulated.[92] The field has not developed to the point where processes crucial to cellular and developmental biology and cell signaling including protein localization, post-translational modification and GTP loading can be consistently controlled via optogenetics.[60]
Photosensitive proteins utilized in various cell signaling pathways [ edit ]
While this extension of optogenetics remains to be further investigated, there are various conceptual methodologies that may prove to immediately robust. There is a considerable body of literature outlining photosensitive proteins that have been utilized in cell signaling pathways.[60] CRY2, LOV, DRONPA and PHYB are photosynthetic proteins involved in inducible protein association whereby activation via light can induce/turn off a signaling cascade via recruitment of a signaling domain to its respective substrate.[93][94][95][96] LOV and PHYB are photosensitive proteins that engage in homodimerization and/or heterodimerization to recruit some DNA-modifying protein, translocate to the site of DNA and alter gene expression levels.[97][98][99] CRY2, a protein that inherently clusters when active, has been fused with signaling domains and subsequently photoactivated allowing for clustering-based activation.[100] Proteins LOV and Dronpa have also been adapted to cell signaling manipulation; exposure to light induces conformational changes in the photosensitive protein which can subsequently reveal a previously obscured signaling domain and/or activate a protein that was otherwise allosterically inhibited.[101][102] LOV has been fused to caspase 3 to produce a construct capable of inducing apoptosis upon light stimulation.[103]
Optogenetic temporal control of signals [ edit ]
A different set of signaling cascades respond to stimulus timing duration and dynamics.[104] Adaptive signaling pathways, for instance, adjust in accordance to the current level of the projected stimulus and display activity only when these levels change as opposed to responding to absolute levels of the input.[105] Stimulus dynamics also can trigger activity; treating PC12 cells with epidermal growth factor (inducing a transient profile of ERK activity) leads to cellular proliferation whereas introduction of nerve growth factor (inducing a sustained profile of ERK activity) is associated with a different cellular decision whereby the PC12 cells differentiate into neuron-like cells.[106] This discovery was guided pharmacologically but the finding was replicated utilizing optogenetic inputs instead.[107] This ability to optogenetically control signals for various time durations is being explored to elucidate various cell signaling pathways where there is not a strong enough understanding to utilize either drug/genetic manipulation.[60]
References [ edit ]An image of the U.S. flag inside a closed business in Warren, Ohio. The city was once one of the nation's manufacturing hubs but now struggles with high unemployment and a surge in opioid addiction. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
For the second year in a row, life expectancy in the United States has dropped.
It is not hard to understand why: In 2016, there was a 21 percent rise in the number of deaths caused by drug overdoses, with opioids causing two-thirds of them. Last year, the opioid epidemic killed 42,000 people, more than died of AIDS in any year at the height of the crisis.
“We should take it very seriously,” Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told my colleagues Lenny Bernstein and Christopher Ingraham. “If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they’re not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up.”
In other words: In no other developed country are people taking and dying from opioids at the rates they are in the United States. We have about 4 percent of the world's population but about 27 percent of the world's drug-overdose deaths.
What explains the discrepancy?
The U.S. medical system.
[America’s opioid problem is so bad it’s cutting into U.S. life expectancy]
Americans are prescribed opioids significantly more often than their counterparts in other countries. In the United States, 50,000 opioid doses are taken daily per every million residents. That is nearly 40 percent higher than the rate in Germany and Canada, and double the rate in Austria and Denmark. It is four times higher than in Britain, and six times higher than in France and Portugal. As the BBC put it, “American doctors prescribe — a lot.”
That is in large part a result of our health insurance structure. Unlike countries that provide universal health care funded by state taxes, the United States has a mostly privatized system of care. And experts say insurers are much more likely to pay for a pill than physical therapy or repeat treatments. “Most insurance, especially for poor people, won't pay for anything but a pill,” Judith Feinberg of the West Virginia University School of Medicine told the BBC. “Say you have a patient that's 45 years old. They have lower back pain, you examine them, they have a muscle spasm. Really the best thing is physical therapy, but no one will pay for that. So doctors get very ready to pull out the prescription pad. Even if the insurance covers physical therapy, you probably need prior authorization which is a lot of time and paperwork.”
As a result, Americans were being prescribed opioids. Often, they were given several more pills than they could be expected to use, to avoid repeat visits. “Other countries deal with pain in much healthier ways,” said Feinberg, a professor in the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry at the WVU School of Medicine.
The U.S. health-care system is different from other countries' in other ways, too. There is pressure to address pain, and a pervasive attitude that everything is fixable. As a result, doctors in the United States are much more likely to provide painkillers than are doctors in other countries. One comparative study found that Japanese doctors treated acute pain with opioids about half the time. In the United States, the number was 97 percent of the time.
[The fight against opioid abuse is happening at the post office]
“I'm 51,” Professor Keith Humphreys of Stanford University told the BBC. “If I go to an American doctor and say, 'Hey, I ran the marathon I used to run when I was 30, now I'm all sore, fix me,' my doctor will probably try to fix me. If you do that in France the doctor would say, 'It's life, have a glass of wine, what do you want from me?'”
There are other culprits, too. The United States is one of only two countries that allow prescription drug companies to advertise on television. (The other is New Zealand.) The companies do advertise, a lot. In 2016, pharmaceutical companies spent $6.4 billion on advertising. Experts say, too, that U.S. medical schools have not done enough to educate students on pain management, addiction and opioid use and abuse.
Drug companies also try to woo physicians with gifts. Some companies host fancy dinners, and others sponsor conferences and junkets. In 2016, for example, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma spent $7 million on gifts to doctors and teaching hospitals. From 1996 to 2001, the company sponsored 40 national “pain management symposia” in attractive destinations. In the same period, the company doubled its sales force, distributing coupons so doctors could offer patients 30-day supplies of OxyContin and other highly addictive drugs. In those six years, prescriptions for OxyContin jumped from 670,000 to more than 6 million.
That alarmed at least one public-health group, which ran a 2009 bulletin titled, “The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy.”
By then, it was too late.Growing up in northern China as the son of a factory worker and a housewife, Mr. Ma hoped to go to college and become a teacher. But his parents thought his dreams were too costly, and he was sent to the local police academy instead.
It was there, he said, in a macho culture that revolved around talking about women, that he realized he was gay.
At the time, in the mid-1990s, gay sex was considered a crime in China and homosexuality was classified as a psychological disorder. At the police academy, Mr. Ma took courses on criminal psychology where cadets were told that gay people should be viewed suspiciously because they were more likely to commit crimes.
“When I realized I was different from other people,” he recalled, “I thought I was ill.”
Mr. Ma turned to the internet for advice. But instead of finding a supportive community, he found rants describing gay people as lunatics and perverts. On health websites, he was bombarded with recommendations to seek medication and electroshock treatment.
After becoming a police officer, Mr. Ma was inspired in 2000 to start his own website, Danlan.org, Chinese for “light blue,” evoking the clear coastal skies of his childhood. The site offered chat forums and advice on reducing the risk of H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. Danlan soon became a popular way for gay men in China to connect in an age when many had been resorting to scrawling meeting dates and places on bathroom stalls, worried about the stigma of coming out.
At work, Mr. Ma chased burglars, filed incident reports and recorded public service announcements. In his spare time, he raced to the keyboard, writing essays for Danlan and chatting with friends under the pseudonym Geng Le.
Mr. Ma kept up the routine for more than a decade. He married, under pressure from friends and family. But when his supervisors confronted him about his website in 2012, he offered his resignation. His family was devastated.Vladimir Putin, Mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin (2nd L, back) and Steven Seagal visit a new sports arena on the territory of the Sambo-70 training sports complex in Moscow, March 13, 2013. Putin, a fan of the kind of martial arts that Seagal often...more
Vladimir Putin, Mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin (2nd L, back) and Steven Seagal visit a new sports arena on the territory of the Sambo-70 training sports complex in Moscow, March 13, 2013. Putin, a fan of the kind of martial arts that Seagal often practises in his Hollywood action movies, signed an order at the start of this month to grant Russian citizenship to Seagal. At the time, a Kremlin spokesman cited Seagal's "warm feelings towards Russia" and his celebrity as the reasons for granting the gesture. REUTERS/Aleksey Nikolskyi/RIA Novosti/Pool
CloseS.F. cop accused of cover-up suspended S.F. POLICE
A San Francisco police officer accused of instructing a rookie officer to lie to cover up a suspect's escape was spared from dismissal by the Police Commission, which instead imposed a nine-month suspension stemming from the 2003 incident, The Chronicle has learned.
Lionel Sevilla's case - which had come to symbolize the problems in the department's disciplinary system - had languished for more than five years at the commission before it was resolved in a closed-door hearing that concluded Wednesday.
The 19-year veteran officer must serve the suspension immediately. He will then go on a list of officers whose credibility has been called into question and whose histories must be disclosed to defense attorneys when they testify in court.
Chief George Gascón has complained that sparing officers like Sevilla - who have been accused of lying or misconduct that could discredit them - means the department is stuck with highly paid sworn cops only fit for desk assignments. That's because those officers, Gascón said, would not make reliable witnesses in court and thus can't be counted on to testify.
The department is in the midst of reviewing its rank and file to identify officers with misconduct records and to comply with the Brady vs. Maryland decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that compels prosecutors to turn over to the defense anything that could be used to attack the credibility of witnesses.
Assistant Chief Jeff Godown said the department is left trying to absorb officers who now can't do full police work when it is struggling with dwindling resources.
"It makes it difficult to adequately deploy officers in the field, when I have a lot of officers who get paid the same as a full-duty officer driving in the black and white, but because of the Brady issues, they have to stay in that position where they can never go back in the field. It's very frustrating."
The department has identified as many as 50 officers who have Brady issues.
Sevilla, now 51, is a 19-year veteran who was working as a training officer at Mission Station on Aug. 6, 2003, when he and the rookie officer got a call about a fight inside a business at 17th and Noe streets.
A suspect the officers detained at the scene on a warrant asked to use the restroom, so Sevilla allegedly removed his handcuffs so that he could use a restaurant toilet. He promptly fled out the back.
A subsequent investigation concluded that Sevilla told the rookie officer they could cover up the escape.
Sevilla had faced a litany of charges stemming from the incident, including lying on a police report.
Earlier this year, the commission refused to accept a six-month suspension worked out in a deal Gascón struck with the officer based on the age of the case.
Gascón had since advocated the officer's dismissal based on the severity of the offense.
Sevilla's attorney, Simon Mazzola, has said his client disputes the department's version of events. He did not return calls seeking comment on Thursday.
Commission President Joe Marshall said he understands why people might be frustrated by the process, but he is bound by law not to discuss deliberations before the commission.
"This is an individual case," Marshall said. "These officers have to have their day before the commission. I can't comment on what happens."
He said he understands the implications of keeping officers on the force with credibility problems.Flickr/Sklathill Update: It's back.
Original: Twitter has suspended the well-known Anonymous account, @youranonnews.
The account had around 750,000 followers at the time of suspension.
Gawker's Adrien Chen is predicting that this will cause hell to break loose because the famous group hates online censorship.
Chen writes,
YourAnonNews typically spews out self-righteous propaganda, dubious information on breaking news, conspiracy theories, and hourly updates on Julian Assange. Still, it does provide a useful look into the zeitgeist of Anonymous and its associates.
Anonymous must have foreseen something like this coming because they have already shifted to a backup account @YANBackUp.
RT.com fills in a bit of information on why the account actually may have been suspended. The site reports that, "as recently as Thursday morning, YourAnonNews and other Twitter accounts affiliated with the movement tweeted information regarding the suspected whereabouts of Westboro members who had arrived in Newtown, Conn."
Also last night, members of the online trolling group Rustle League claimed to have hacked the YourAnonNews account. Rustle League allegedly hijacked the Anonymous account and posted a series of tweets sending users to x-rated imagery.
Don't Miss: Do You Care About Your iPhone Privacy? This App Will Quadruple Encrypt Your Messages And Shred All Data >by David Sepulveda | Apr 24, 2015 2:06 pm
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Posted to: Arts & Culture, Visual Arts, Ninth Square
“I can’t call myself a man because of how I present myself, and I can’t call myself a woman because of how I present myself,” Brian said. “I am in the middle.”
Brian was among the non-professional models for Gender, Projected: Exploring Gender and Identity Through Photography and Dialogue, a new portrait exhibit at the New Haven Pride Center.
“I do not identify my gender,” said Brian, who is 21. “I consciously choose not to because of society.”
The exhibit and its comprehensive project website seek to broaden the dialogue and demystify issues of gender expression and identity.
Like others in the exhibit, which is up at 84 Orange St. in the Ninth Square, Brian is clear about his gender and identity. Society, with its growing list of gender and sex-identity acronyms, lags behind.
While polls show Americans moving toward greater acceptance of same-sex marriage, there are a range of issues related to the LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) communities that have yet to be explored, let alone understood.
Enter photographers Am Norgren (at left in above photo) a secondary teacher, educational consultant and LGBTQ activist, and Resse Ramponi (at right) a psychiatric mental health nursing graduate student, whose project enlisted 18 volunteers—those self-identifying as cisgender, genderqueer, or transgender, to model for a series of photographs.
Having little modeling experience, those posing for portraits wore some of their personal clothing, but most outfits and make-up were secondhand or purchased from Goodwill. After collaborating with the Gender, Projected team on a variety of gender-expressive presentations within the subjects’ comfort zone or beyond, each model was photographed against a plain white backdrop stripped of any suggestive content.
A glossary of “gender basics” terms and additional resources located on the Gender, Projected website were useful in facilitating dialogue around the exhibit. The word gender is defined as “different than sex, referring to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that society |
led a final-minute game-winning touchdown drive as Team Rice defeated Team Sanders 22-21 on a rain-soaked field Sunday at Aloha Stadium.
Carolina Panthers fullback Mike Tolbert dove into the end zone for the two-point conversion, giving Team Rice the one-point edge it would not relinquish.
"Philip (Rivers) told them to give it to me. My old teammate, he made them give it to me," Tolbert said.
After the play he mocked Panthers teammate Cam Newton's Superman celebration.
"I told Cam I was going to mess with him if I got in the end zone, so I had to," Tolbert said laughing.
Defense ruled the day, which is not something we've seen out of recent Pro Bowls. But while the scoring stayed low, the sloppy conditions actually added to the early excitement.
Turnovers were key as Team Sanders coughed it up for three fumbles (losing one), while Team Rice fumbled twice (also losing one). The teams combined for six interceptions and nine sacks.
Nick Foles of Team Sanders was named offensive MVP, while Derrick Johnson of Team Rice won the defensive award.
Vontaze Burfict made a fantastic diving interception for Team Rice in the first quarter as he snagged a tipped ball off the hands of Andrew Luck.
Team Sanders defensive tackle Dontari Poe returned the favor, grabbing a batted ball and returning it to the 7-yard line to set up a Newton touchdown run.
The defensive lines dominated from the start. Drew Brees was hit twice on the first drive, including a blindside sack from Gerald McCoy. On the other side, Newton was sacked four times in the second quarter alone; obviously Ron Rivera didn't ask his D-linemen to go easy on his franchise quarterback.
The teams combined for nine sacks.
"Early there was a lot of turnovers because of the weather. There was a lot of rain. and obviously that is part of the things that factor into it," Team Sanders' captain J.J. Watt said after the contest.
A bevy of exhilarating plays ensued from the outset.
Team Prime opened the scoring with a flea-flicker touchdown from Luck to DeSean Jackson. DJax snatched the ball away from Team Rice defenders to put his team up 7-0.
Team Sanders ended the first quarter with an Eric Berry interception of Brees. Given the new rules (in which possession changes at the end of each quarter), a pitch drill ensued and Darrelle Revis almost broke loose. It's the type of exciting play the NFL was hoping to manufacture with the new format.
Injury Notes: Buffalo Bills safety Jairus Byrd suffered an undisclosed injury early in the first quarter. He did not return. Byrd tweeted during the contest that he felt fine. Byrd is a 2014 free agent. Philadelphia Eagles running back LeSean McCoy suffered an ankle injury.
We handed out awards for the 2014 coaching class and talked all the latest headlines in the latest "Around The League Podcast."Three senior leaders of one of Switzerland's most visible Islamic organizations were indicted Thursday after a nearly two-year investigation into videos that one of the leaders made in Syria, including interviews with senior al-Qaeda leaders.
The charges were announced by the Office of the Attorney General and will be heard by the Federal Criminal Court.
The Local reported:
Swiss federal prosecutors have brought charges against leading members of the country’s largest Islamic organization in a criminal probe into jihadist propaganda.
Swiss media reported on Thursday that the president and two members of the governing board of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) had been charged with violating the ban on groups including Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). Blick named the three as Nicolas Blancho, ICCS president, Naim Cherni, and Qaasim Illi.
With respect to the charges, prosecutors believe the videos made inside Syria were more than just documentaries.
According to Swissinfo:
The specific allegation against the head of the “culture production department” at the ICCS is that between the end of September 2015 and mid-October 2015 he made films in Syria with a leading member of the banned terrorist organisation al-Qaeda in Syria, the OAG said in a statement on Thursday. The films were subsequently used as propaganda for the al-Qaeda member concerned. Two videos were published on YouTube, both of which were endorsed by the head of the “public relations and information department” at the ICCS and actively promoted via social media and at a public event by all three accused: by the committee members mentioned and by the ICCS president. The OAG alleges that the accused offered the leading al-Qaeda member in question “a prominent multilingual multimedia platform from which to advantageously portray and promote both himself and the ideology of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation he represents”. The OAG claims to have proof that this increased the appeal of al-Qaeda to existing and potential members around the world, thus promoting the organisation’s criminal activities.
The investigation was opened by Swiss authorities in December 2015, when Naim Cherni published a lengthy interview with Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abdullah al-Muhaysini.
At the time, prosecutors alleged:
The German citizen is accused of having presented his journey to embattled regions of Syria in a video for propaganda purposes, without having explicitly distanced himself from Al-Qaïda activities in Syria. In particular, the accused party is accused of having interviewed a senior member of the jihad umbrella organisation Jaysh al-Fath ("Army of Conquest"), of which the Syrian Al-Qaïda branch Jabhat al-Nusra ("Support Front") is also a member.
Prosecutors asked YouTube to remove the videos, though a copy of the interview with al-Muhaysini (with English closed-captions) is still available on their site:
After the announcement of the investigation, the ICCS leaders held a press conference protesting their innocence.
During the press conference, Cherni claimed the interview with the al-Qaeda leader was "an important contribution in the fight against Islamic State."
When al-Muhaysini was designated as a terrorist in November 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department said:
As of late 2015, al-Muhaysini was an accepted member of al-Nusrah Front’s inner leadership circle. As of July 2015, Abdallah al-Muhaysini served as al-Nusrah Front’s religious advisor and represented al-Nusrah Front in an Idlib Province, Syria, military operations room. He has been involved in recruiting fighters to join al-Nusrah Front and helping to form a new al-Nusrah Front “state” in northern Syria. In April 2016, Muhaysini launched a campaign to recruit 3,000 child and teenage soldiers across northern Syria for al-Nusrah Front. Al-Muhaysini has played a crucial role in providing financial aid to al-Nusrah Front. Between 2013 and 2015, al-Muhaysini raised millions of dollars to support al-Nusrah Front governance efforts in Idlib Province, Syria. As of early October 2015, al-Muhaysini had set up institutions providing financial aid to terrorist groups, including a highly successful campaign that he claimed had secured $5 million in donations to arm fighters.
Late last year, prosecutors expanded the investigation to include ICCS president Nicolas Blancho and board member Qaasim Illi.
Blancho first gained notoriety for organizing protests in 2006 during the Danish cartoon crisis and against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. He is well known for staging publicity stunts to push a victimization narrative.
Blancho and ICCS have also been investigated by Swiss intelligence for their funding sources and for close ties to terrorists.Carlos Sainz says he still doesn't know which car he will be racing in Malaysia next week. The Toro Rosso driver is being loaned to Renault for 2018, but there are reports he will kick off that adventure early by replacing Jolyon Palmer as soon as Sepang. Sainz, 23, told Spanish radio Onda Cero: "Nobody has told me what I am doing yet."
But he did confirm reports his one-year loan to Renault only includes the possibility of a return to Red Bull's senior team in 2019. "I am a driver being loaned to another team that can be strong from next season," said Sainz. "If I return, it would be for the first (Red Bull) team," he said. "For me this is a vindication."
Asked if he feels he is being groomed for a world championship tilt, Sainz answered: "I think if I had a Mercedes or Ferrari I could be fighting for the world championship. Personally I see it more for 2020. I think the third title for Fernando Alonso is likely to arrive sooner than the first for Carlos Sainz," he added. (GMM)Japan launches experimental Internet satellite
Posted
Japan has launched an experimental communications satellite as part of an ambitious space program that could help ensure super high-speed internet access in remote parts of Japan and elsewhere in Asia.
The H-2A rocket carrying the 2.7 tonne Kizuna communications satellite took off over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km south of Tokyo.
The launch had been briefly delayed after a ship strayed into restricted waters.
The satellite, equipped with three antennas targetting Japan, south-east Asia and the Pacific regions, is referred to as the Wideband InterNetworking engineering test and Demonstration Satellite or WINDS.
The geostationary satellite will be used to conduct experiments on large-volume, high-speed data communications on remote mountains and islands with little internet access.
Japan's scientists say the launch of WINDS will help the country build one of the world's most advanced information and telecommunications networks.
The launch comes 12 years after the project started, due mainly to technical glitches involving launch vehicles.
"The WINDS will help develop a society with no digital divide where everyone can enjoy high-speed communications equally no matter where they live," said an official at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
- Reuters
Topics: astronomy-space, information-and-communication, internet-culture, science-and-technology, japan... an Internet application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, back-end and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun. Because we host everything, all you need is a browser, an Internet connection and a few minutes to build a form and start using it right away."
I have been using Wufoo free of charge for about a year now and have been a satisfied user. It wasn't until last week when I had my first little hiccup that I realized how awesome this web app really is. In case you don't know about Wufoo it is:If you need anything from a contact form to an online survey, Wufoo is a wonderful solution that drops right into your site adapting seamlessly to your design. Their product, however is not what prompted me to write this post. After having a few e-mails get lost in the shuffle I decided to submit a support request. I described my problem and made it to the bottom of the form fields to find something very interesting: they wanted to know my "Emotional State". I clicked on the drop down and asked myself "HowI feel about this?", a question I overlooked asking myself earlier in the pending situation. As I scanned the drop-down menu this conversation with myself raced through my head:"No I am not excited. I am delightfully distracted by the Dino in the upper right hand corner of their site, but not excited about this situation. "Rarrr!" Cute. Confused? No, I am certain there is a problem. I troubleshot every possibility on my end and I know there is nothing I can do. Worried? Well, concerned. What if there is an important e-mail. I know the Chief of Staff has nothing important to talk to me about, but what if someone important like Dooce wants to get in touch with me. Oh, that is concerning. Upset? If I have missed something urgent in my e-mail box I will feel upset. Panicked? No, There must be a solution. Angry? Of course not. I have been using this service for free for a whole year, how can I really be angry? Worried, Hmph. I am surprisingly worried about this situation." As I made my selection and moved the curser to hit the submit button a feeling washed over me that was unlike anything I had ever felt with a webservice online. I felt like they cared. I felt confident that my problem would be solved. I felt like I was contacting PEOPLE who have beating hearts, and families, who had felt worried about their missing contact e-mails too. How very humane of them! Shortly after this experience my problem was resolved with a giant clump of e-mails to my box and all was right in the world again. Now here I am, blogging about an incident that could have gone downhill very quickly but was positively effected by a detail in their User Interface. A drop down menu that ignores corporate jargon, came to terms with the fact there may actually be a flaw insystem, and inquired about my emotional state. Imagine if Comcast asked you how you were feeling when your cable went out. Would you think before verbally attacking that poor overworked repair guy? I would love to see a Health Insurance provider have an emotional state Check-in as part of their interface. Imagine feeling like someone actually wanted to help you. Why are humane details like this so often ignored online? I challenge UI designers and Information architects to consider this more often and maybe even track the satisfaction of their customers. As Naz Hamid said at SXSW, "Design is in the Details".55 Cancri f (abbreviated 55 Cnc f), also designated Rho1 Cancri f and named Harriot, is an extrasolar planet approximately 41 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cancer (the Crab). 55 Cancri f is the fourth known planet (in order of distance) from the star 55 Cancri and the first planet to have been given the designation of "f".[2]
In July 2014 the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars.[3] The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names.[4] In December 2015, the IAU announced the winning name was Harriot for this planet.[5] The winning name was submitted by the Royal Netherlands Association for Meteorology and Astronomy of the Netherlands. It honors the astronomer Thomas Harriot.[6]
Discovery [ edit ]
Radial velocity changes over time of 55 Cancri caused by the orbit of 55 Cancri f.
The initial presentation of this planet occurred at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in April 2005,[7] however it was another two and a half years before the planet was to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.[1] It is the first known planet outside our solar system to spend its entire orbit within what astronomers call the "habitable zone".[8] Furthermore, its discovery made 55 Cancri the first star other than the Sun known to have at least five planets.
Orbit and mass [ edit ]
55 Cnc f's orbit compared to the orbit of Venus (0.72AU).
55 Cancri f is located about 0.781 AU away from the star and takes 262 days to complete a full orbit.[9] A limitation of the radial velocity method used to detect 55 Cancri f is that only a minimum mass can be obtained, in this case around 0.144 times that of Jupiter, or half the mass of Saturn.[9] A Keplerian fit to the radial velocity data of 55 Cancri A indicates that the orbit is consistent with being circular, however changing the value in a range between 0 and 0.4 does not significantly alter the chi-squared statistic of the fit, thus a representative eccentricity of 0.2±0.2 was assumed.[1] In a Newtonian model which takes interactions between the planets into account, the eccentricity comes out as 0.0002, almost perfectly circular.[1]
Astrometric observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the outer planet 55 Cancri d is inclined at 53° with respect to the plane of the sky.[10] The inner planets b and e are inclined at 85°. The inclination of f is unknown.
Characteristics [ edit ]
Since the planet was detected indirectly through observations of its star, properties such as its radius, composition and temperature are unknown. With a mass half that of Saturn,[9] 55 Cancri f is likely to be a gas giant with no solid surface. It orbits in the so-called "habitable zone," which means that liquid water could exist on the surface of a possible moon.[8]
It is not known if the composition and appearance is more like that of Saturn or Neptune.[2] Based on its temperature, it should be a Sudarsky Class II planet, covered in water clouds.[citation needed]
References [ edit ]Baghel Singh (c. 1730 – c. 1802) was a military general in the Punjab region in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century. He rose to prominence in the area around Sutlej and Yamuna. Singh joined the Singh Krora Misl, a military unit of the Singh Confederacy. In 1765, Singh became leader of the unit.
Early life [ edit ]
Baghel Singh was born in a Jat family of Dhaliwal clan, in the Jhabal village near Amritsar.[2]
Military career [ edit ]
Singh was a skilled political negotiator, able to create alliances with former enemies.
On disintegration of the Mughal Empire in the second half of the 18th century, due to Afghan incursions under the Pashtun leader, Ahmad Shah Durrani (Abdali), Sikh influence in the north of India increased. Singh's unit fought with Ahmad Shah Durrani against Mughal forces at Malerkotla. The Singh Krora Misl took Ambala, Karnal, Thanesar, and Hissar. Singh took possession of part of the Jalandhar Doab and established himself at Hariana, near Hoshiarpur.
Soon after the Sikh conquest of Sirhind in 1764, Singh extended his rule beyond Karnal and occupied a number of villages including Chhalaudi which became Singh's new headquarters.[3] Singh further expanded his territory into the Cis-Sutlej states including Meerut, Saharanpur, Shahdra and Awadh. His actions were supported by Afghan allies including Zabita Khan and Ghulam Qadir Khan.[4]
Attack on Delhi [ edit ]
In February 1764, a body of 30,000 Sikh soldiers under the command of warrior leaders including Singh, crossed the Yamuna River and captured Saharanpur. They overran the territory of Najib ud-Daulah, acquiring from him a tribute of eleven lakh of rupees (₹ (1,100,000)
In April 1775, Singh with two other sardars, Rai Singh Bhangi and Tara Singh Ghaiba, crossed the Yamuna river to occupy land ruled by Zabita Khan, the son and successor of Najib-Ud-Daulah. In desperation, Zabita Khan offered Singh large sums of money and proposed an alliance to jointly plunder the crown lands.
Singh set up an Octroi post (taxation office) near Sabzi Mandi to collect tax on goods imported into the city. The money was used for the construction of Sikh temples.
In March 1776, the Sikhs defeated the forces of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II near Muzaffarnagar.[citation needed]
Battle of Ghanaur [ edit ]
In 1778, Shah Alam II sent an army of about 100,000 soldiers in a counter-attack against the Sikhs. The Mughal force was led by the Wazir Mirza Najaf Khan (Nawab Majad-Ud-Daula) under the banner of the crown prince. The Mughal forces and the Sikh forces met in battle at Ghanaur, near Patiala. The Mughal army lost the battle and surrendered.
Rise of Sikh power [ edit ]
In 1783, Singh with Ghulam Qadir invaded Delhi.[5][6][7][5]
Singh and the Mughal Emperor contracted that 12.5% of the "octroi" (trade tax) of Delhi would be sent to Singh. In return, he would ensure that the Sikhs did not attack the capital again.[citation needed]
Sikh temples in Delhi [ edit ]
Singh is credited with establishing several Gurudwaras (Sikh temples) in Delhi, including:[citation needed]
Death [ edit ]
Singh died in about 1802 in Hariana.[8]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]ROES-PH75 - Essence Alkaline Mineral 6-Stage 75GPD Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water System Enjoy ultra-pure drinking water with added calcium minerals for improved alkalinity and great taste
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Problems of inflation are often studied by economists. Having myself been catechized in that church, I am still a bit sensitive to the particular branch of humor called “economist jokes.” You’ve probably heard them, often along the lines of “Economists were invented to make the weatherman feel better about his predictions.”
I’ve been working, with my Duke colleague Geoffrey Brennan, on a paper on “economist jokes.” We are trying both to catalog and to explain the phenomenon of economist jokes. (If you know any good ones, please do send them along!)
In this essay, I will summarize the reasons we have come up with to explain why economist jokes exist, and to give an example of each of the three “types” of economist jokes that we have identified.
One could object that our theory is too abstract, or that our jokes are not funny, but c’mon, we’re economists!
A Typology
We narrowed down the varieties of economist jokes to three categories:
Funny
Insightful
Mocking
Many — perhaps most — jokes have elements of all three, of course. And the very notion of being “funny” may be a question of personal taste. But most economists are subjectivists, meaning that there’s no accounting for taste. (That may be way so many economists study accounting, not taste, as you can tell from our wardrobes…)
Funny
One way of defining “funny” is behavioral: people laugh. But why do they laugh? What makes one joke or situation funny, and another just a home for crickets?
Humor lies in the sudden, possibly inappropriate, unexpected alteration in point of view.
One possibility is Isaac Asimov’s pithy observation that humor lies in the sudden, possibly inappropriate, and (from the point of the view of the listener) unexpected alteration in point of view. That is, humor has two elements: a pleasing incongruity, and an unanticipated result that is nonetheless logically consistent with the setup. We arrive at an unexpected place, but could have seen it coming if we had been aware of the trick.
An example of a “funny” economist” joke might go like this:
An economics graduate student was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week.” The graduate student took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket. Desperate, the frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you and do anything you want.” Again the grad student took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll be your girlfriend and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?” The grad student said, “Look, I’m an economist. I have no idea what it would even be like to have a girlfriend. But a talking frog has got to be worth a fortune.”
One might object that this joke is actually mockery, because it implies that (male) economists are perhaps not all that romantically successful.
But, as in slander cases, truth is a defense against mockery charges — and there is an element of truth to this joke.
Insightful
A joke may contain no unexpected alteration in point of view at all, but simply be intended to encapsulate or aphorize some feature of the economics profession. Whether this is “funny” to the listener may depend on whether that insight is recognizably true.
Here it’s worth noting that the truth may sometimes be exaggerated, which may make it even more true as a general description. Of course, the things that are “true” of economists are never true of all, and may not even be true of most real economists. But the exaggeration of a quality that all economists recognize can be the basis of amusement.
One of my favorite “insightful” jokes might also contain elements of mockery (although I must admit almost no one finds it very funny). The joke goes like this:
Three friends — a priest, a psychiatrist, and an economist — decide to play a round of golf. They get behind a *very* slow two-some, who, despite a caddy, are taking all day to line up their shots and four-putting every green, and so on. By the eighth hole, the three men are complaining loudly about the slow play ahead. The priest says, “Holy Mary, I pray that they should take some lessons before they play again. Standing around this much is a sin against God!” The psychiatrist says, “I swear there are people that like to play golf slowly, as a passive-aggressive reaction to their hatred of their mothers.” The economist says, “I really didn’t expect to spend this much time playing a round of golf. This is costing me a fortune.” By the ninth hole, they have had it with slow play, so they tee off while the group in front is still on the fairway. Shouting “FOUR!” they all three hit, scattering the other golfers willy-nilly. Almost immediately, the course marshal comes up on his cart and admonishes the impatient threesome. “Those two guys are blind! They are firefighters who lost their eyesight saving people in a fire. Show a little respect!” The priest is mortified; he says, “Here I am a man of the cloth and I’ve been swearing at the slow play of two blind men.” The psychiatrist is likewise also mortified; he says, “Here I am a man trained to help others with their problems and I’ve been acting like someone with a neurotic compulsion.” The economist stares at the ground for a moment, and then tells the marshal: “Listen, this is a terrible situation, and I feel awful that I didn’t see this before. Tell those good men that next time they should play at night.”
The point being that the priest and the psychiatrist are mostly concerned about their own socially embarrassing action, but the economist is concerned about the social optimum. It would be a Pareto-improvement, at least weakly, for the blind men to play at night. They would be no worse off, and the costs of the slow play would be eliminated since only blind people would be willing to play at night. Economists are concerned about the efficient allocation of resources, and much less about the distributive consequences of that allocation.
Does that mean that economists are “bad people?” You can hear the joke that way (and many people do consider this joke to be mockery in the negative sense). I don’t think, however, that it is necessarily a bad thing to think in terms of efficiency.
Regardless, there really is an insight to be had about the way that economists think.
Mockery
The mockery of economists is common, approaching the level of mockery directed toward attorneys or politicians. Further, given the number of actual economists, as opposed to people who offer opinions about economics, it may be the case that “economist mocking” is the single most focused kind of pundit ridicule.
The mockery of economists is common, approaching the level of mockery directed toward attorneys or politicians.
There are some instances of this genre that are simply self-deprecation (“An economist is someone who actually wanted to be an actuary but lacked the charisma!”), and some are instances of self-mockery mixed with illustrative insight. But what we have in mind are stories, narratives, or “lines” that are mostly derisive: “If all the economists in the world were laid down end-to-end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion.”
The most famous of all the “mockery” genre is probably the single best-known economics joke, the most common form of which is the following:
A physicist, a chemist, and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A box washes ashore, and when they open it, it turns out to be a box of canned soup. But how to open the cans? The physicist says, “Let’s break the can open with a rock, using precisely the correct vector of force so the contents aren’t spilled.” The chemist says, “Let’s build a fire and heat the can just to the point where the contents break the metal but don’t explode.” The economist says, “Well, let’s do this in an a priori manner. First, assume that we have a can-opener…”
I hate this joke. The point seems to be that economists make assumptions that are so extreme, and unrealistic, that the analysis that follows is simply pointless.
It is true that economists use abstract models, and that these models leave out many factors that “matter” in the real world. But the assumption (for example) that preferences are fixed and exogenous forces economists to focus on the variables that are important for an economic analysis. These variables are usually prices of the product in question, prices of other products, and income, but the could be anything of interest to the analyst for the problem at hand. If the beginning of every analysis simply invoked “preferences changed!” we would not really have a model at all, but just an ad hoc story about taste.
Final Words
Our thesis in our work on economist jokes is that there are really three factors: whether the joke is funny, or insightful, or makes fun of economists. If the unexpected alteration in point of view is too great, seems strained, or violates the internal logic of the joke itself, then we may say, “That’s not funny.” This may mean that the joke is not intended to be funny — though the teller finds it so — because the object is not humor, but rather mockery. And even mockery can be funny if the joke is also insightful.
Sometimes, truly good jokes are a kind of portmanteau, a combination of the three categories. I will close with one such here; this joke has something to make almost anyone laugh, and get offended, all at the same time.Individuals Detained in Mainland China for Supporting Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Protests
Updated through August 11, 2017 [CHRD is no longer providing case updates from that date]
Many Chinese citizens faced reprisals for supporting the Hong Kong protests for universal suffrage that began in September 2014, with police detaining such individuals in the mainland starting that October. Many mainlanders expressed their support by going to Hong Kong to join the protests, or meeting in small gatherings and posting messages on social media, including photos of themselves holding signs in support of the protests and demanding constitutional democracy for the territory. The occupation of several areas of Hong Kong, including parts of its financial and political center, inspired many Chinese on the mainland to even speak up for democracy in China.
In total, CHRD documented 118 cases of detained individuals, of whom 8 were still in custody as of August 11, 2017. Ten faced trial, and all were convicted and given prison sentences. Two were released at the end of their sentences. Twenty-six in total were formally arrested, 32 criminally detained, and five others put under administrative detention. Police harassed and intimidated countless others by visiting their homes and issuing warnings, or putting them under house arrest. Several have gone into hiding. Individuals were known to have been seized in the municipalities of Beijing (where the majority of cases were reported), Chongqing, and Shanghai, and the provinces of Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi, Liaoning, and Shandong.
Violations of Chinese laws
The manner in which dozens of the individuals were detained violates China’s Criminal Procedure Law (CPL), particularly in terms of providing information of detention place and legal status of detention. The CPL stipulates that police must present a detention warrant when taking an individual into custody and also notify the family within 24 hours, unless they are suspected of certain crimes that fall under the category of “endangering state security” or terrorism, or they are incapable of informing the family (Article 83). Many of the families of these detainees did not receive a notice from police, and instead activists went to detention centers and confirmed the vast majority of the detentions. Police also threatened many of the families in Beijing after they inquired about their loved ones or tried to hire lawyers.
The majority of the detainees below were initially charged with “picking quarrels and provoking troubles,” a criminal charge that had become frequently used to punish outspoken rights advocates. However, in the majority of recorded cases that moved to indictment or trial, the charge was changed to the “political” crime “inciting subversion of state power,” which carries a potentially longer criminal sentence.
What should happen, by Chinese law, when a person is detained—as opposed to what often occurs during crackdowns or with other “politically motivated” detentions in China?
According to the CPL, police have 24 hours to interrogate a person in custody. If no evidence of criminal activity is found, the individual must be released (Article 84). Eleven individuals on this list were held for under 24 hours and then released. If an individual is not released, police must place them either under criminal detention—charged with a criminal offenses as stipulated in China’s Criminal Law—or administrative detention, charged under the Public Security Administration Punishment Law. A suspect who has been criminally detained can be held for up to a maximum 37 days before they must be either released or formally arrested (Article 89). Administrative detentions can last for up to 15 days, though many individuals under this form of detention in recent crackdowns were held for longer, or were placed in criminal detention after (or even during) their period of administrative punishment. In this crackdown so far, as in previous ones, police have placed various obstacles to block lawyers from visiting their clients (violating Chapter 4 on Defense and Representation of the CPL, among other laws). If cases from 2014 are any guide, police may even detain the lawyers themselves for demanding that their clients receive legal protections and the right to counsel.
List of mainland Chinese supporters detained for supporting Hong Kong protests
The list below is organized by those who were tried, convicted, and sentenced, followed by those detained and then released by location in alphabetical order, from municipalities to provinces:
Tried, convicted, and sentenced:
Still in custody (as of August 11, 2017):
Mr. Wang Mo ( 王默 ), activist, sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” on April 8, 2016. Initially tried on November 19, 2015 by Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate People’s Court. First taken into custody on October 3, 2014, for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” after holding up a banner in a Guangzhou park calling for freedom and support for the Hong Kong protestors with Xie Wenfei (below) and Sun Liyong. Later formally arrested on the more serious “inciting subversion” charge on November 17, 2014. Held at Guangzhou No. 1 Detention Center and then Lechang Prison in Sha |
for the GOP presidential nomination, growing up in and around New York City at very different periods of time, why I think millennials have a real shot at defining their own lives unknown to previous generations, and more.
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Attention, New York Area Reasonoids: I'll be debating Walter Block in Manhattan tomorrow about whether libertarians should vote for Trump or not next week (Smith is the warm-up act). Tickets are free but must be reserved. Go here for more information.Apple's Mac Pro, the sleek and shiny trash can from outer space, is certainly a feat of engineering. It also costs $3,000. If you want to build a comparable machine yourself, you can save a lot of money by going with a Hackintosh.
Apple's new Mac Pro is very cool, but it has a lot of drawbacks, even ignoring the hefty price. If you want to expand its storage and capabilities, that small marvel suddenly becomes tangled in wires. You also have to spend more since external Thunderbolt gear costs more. If you don't have a great organizational scheme and deep pockets, you're not going to love the latest Mac Pro. Fortunately, you can build something better.
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We consulted with hackintosh expert tonymacx86, who offered up some quality, tested builds. You can always see the variety he and his team come up with at CustoMac.com, but today we're going to feature our favorite alternatives to the Mac Pro. Of course, building your own Mac comes with all the risks and potential downsides of building your own machine and maintaining a hackintosh. We think they're worth it, and the process is ridiculously easy thanks to the work of tonymacx86 and his team, but you should know what you're getting into before you go buy all of this stuff. We recommend checkout out our always up-to-date guide to building a hackintosh for everything you need to know.
The Builds
We'll show you what you'll get with Apple and how much you'll pay, then do the same with a hackintosh alternative. Specifications won't always be identical, as that's pretty much impossible, but we'll note the differences in each section.
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Fast: On a Budget
First, let's start off with an entry-level machine.
Apple's Entry-Level Mac Pro; Total Price: $2,999
3.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
Dual AMD FirePro D300 with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM (each)
256GB PCIe-based flash storage
Entry-Level Hack Pro; Total Price: $2,145.68
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What's the Difference?
The hack pro is $853.32 cheaper, of course, but the machines have some key differences. The Hack Pro benefits from having 4GB more RAM, though that RAM is a tiny bit slower (not that you'd ever notice). Apple's Mac Pro also has dual GPUs. Albeit slower in specifications, some professional software is specifically tuned and optimized to work with AMD FirePro GPUs. Unfortunately, almost no software takes advantage of these dual GPUs on a Mac at the moment and probably won't for awhile. Its PCI-based flash storage is faster, but whether or not you'll notice that speed is another story.
The main difference is the processor, as we're putting the top-of-the-line Core i7 processor up against Intel's server-grade Xeon E5. What kind of difference does this make? Not much. The Core i7 definitely scores lower in multi-core benchmarks, but Core i7 bests it in single core performance. When Macworld tested the new Mac Pro, they found its performance didn't rate much higher than a Core i7 27" iMac in real-world use. To give you some perspective, the 27" iMac uses essentially the same processor in the entry-level hack pro build here. Ultimately, you're likely wasting your money when buying a Xeon processor unless you go with a higher-end version and really, truly need the fastest multi-core processor possible.
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Finally, as with all builds, the kind of ports and expandability options vary greatly. With Apple's Mac Pro, you get six Thunderbolt 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, two gigabit Ethernet ports, and one HDMI port. On the entry-level hack pro you get two Thunderbolt 2.0 ports, eight USB 3.0 ports (two on the front, six on the back), two gigabit Ethernet ports, and multiple video port options (including HDMI, DisplayPort, and DVI). You also get several PCIe slots for expanding the machine in virtually any way you like. We prefer the hack pro's port offering, but ultimately it matters what suits your needs best.
The entry-level build we're offering isn't as cheap as it could be. We chose the fastest processor, the best motherboard, and high-end graphics card to make this a very powerful machine. If you don't need all of this power, you can knock as much as $1,000 off the price pretty fast. Check out tonymacx86's buyers guide for cheaper options, as the prices is going up from here on out.
Faster: A Need for Speed
If the entry-level Mac Pro and hack pro just doesn't do it for you, this next build offers a notable speed boost.
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Apple's Mid-Range Mac Pro; Total Price: $3,999
3.5 GHz Six-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM (each)
256GB PCIe-based flash storage
Mid-Range Hack Pro; Total Price: $2,752.90
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What's the Difference?
Just like the last build, you get more expandability and ports with the hack pro, but the hack pro also levels the playing field a little more. In this build we're using the same processor as Apple's Mac Pro. It does, however, win out on the graphics side thanks to dual GPUs. The hack pro build also loses its Thunderbolt ports (and reduces the number USB 3.0 ports), as there are no compatible Xeon motherboards that feature them. Of course, this build will save you $1,246.11, which might be worth a lot more than some added connectivity.
Fastest: The Best You Can Buy
If the entry-level Mac Pro and hack pro just doesn't do it for you, this next build offers a notable speed boost.
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Apple's High-End Mac Pro; Total Price: $9,599
2.7 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
64GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
Dual AMD FirePro D700 with 6GB GDDR5 VRAM (each)
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
High-End Hack Pro; Total Price: $4,162.85
What's the Difference?
Apple's Mac Pro definitely wins on pretty much every count. It's just a faster machine, but that speed difference is negligible where the price is not. If you buy Apple, you'll pay $5,436.15 more for a slightly faster machine with fewer expandability options and built-in ports. So is it worth it? We don't think so.
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Additional Hardware Resources
These Hack Pro builds were made possible thanks to the build guides created by tonymacx86 (and company). Be sure to check out those resources if you want to learn more about these builds or swap out any of the parts we chose.
The Hackintosh Process
Buying a bunch of parts is the starting point, but you still have to actually build your hackintosh. Fortunately, we've got you covered in all aspects. Here are a few resources we've put together to take you through the entire process—even if you run into problems:
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That should be everything you need to know. We hope you enjoy your new Hack Pro that you didn't have to wait for Apple to build for you!WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders and activists expressed appreciation for President Obama's pardons for Oscar Lopez Rivera and Chelsea Manning and urged him to use his final days in office to pardon other political prisoners and whistle-blowers.
Greens called for presidential pardons for political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal, as well as whistle-blowers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Jeffrey Sterling, and all others who were punished or face punishment for revealing military, government, and intelligence crimes, public deception, and corruption.
Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
@GreenPartyUS
For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Contact:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-904-7614, mclarty@greens.org
Statements from the Green Party's Latinx and Black Caucuses
Those convicted for whistle-blowing or for political reasons and have already served their sentences should have their criminal records expunged, said Green Party leaders.
Greens said that organizations and individuals who've been working, for many decades in some cases, for the release of those unjustly convicted and incarcerated deserve the deepest gratitude for the pardons.
Statements from Green Party Caucuses
LATINX CAUCUS
"The independence of Puerto Rico has long been a concern of the Green Party's. We are grateful that Oscar Lopez Rivera is free and even more grateful for the long years of resistance and direct action that has pushed for his release. The Green Party's platform has long called for Puerto Rico's independence, as well as for Lopez Rivera's release.
Greens support the right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence in conformity with United Nations Resolution 1514(XV) of 1960. Puerto Rico is not free until the island is released from the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) and from colonial status under U.S. rule."
See also the Green Party's national platform: Section 6 at http://www.gp.org/democracy_2016#demForeignPolicy
Green Party endorses Day in Solidarity with the Independence of Puerto Rico on June 17
Press release: Green Party of the United States, June 10, 2016
BLACK CAUCUS
"The Black Caucus stands with the Latinx Caucus, Lavender Caucus, and Women's caucuses in celebrating the release of political prisoners during the final days of the Obama presidency. We stand in solidarity with our comrades who for decades have fought for freedom and democracy.
The Black Caucus asks for pardons and clemency for other political prisoners, past and present to include, Mumia Abu Jamal, Leornard Peltier, and Marcus Garvey. And as we stand for freedom for Puerto Rico, likewise, we stand with our brothers and sisters in Washington, District of Columbia -- who still have not been freed of the tyranny and colonization that amounts to taxation without representation and a lack of self-determination afforded other US.. citizens in the various states.
Finally, we call for a moratorium on surveillance of Black, Latinx, and other leaders and activists targeted by the FBI and other intelligence agencies."
See also:
Green Party National Women's Caucus
Contact: Cecile Lawrence, 607-343-4987
Lavender Green Caucus
MORE INFORMATION
2016 Elections
Wrap-up of the 2016 Green National Convention
Election Central: Results for Green candidates in the Nov. 8 general election
Wrap-up statements from Green candidates and state Green Parties
Green Party of the United States
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Green candidate database and campaign information
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Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States
~ END ~Finn Wolfhard, best known for his star-making turn as Mike on “Stranger Things,” is set to star opposite Mackenzie Davis in Amblin’s haunted house film “The Turning.”
Floria Sigismondi is on board to direct with Scott Bernstein and Roy Lee producing.
In this adaptation of Henry James’s novella “The Turn of the Screw,” a young woman hired as the nanny to two orphans is convinced that the country mansion they live in is haunted. Wolfhard will play one of the orphans.
Jade Bartlett is penning the most recent draft from Chad & Carey Hayes’ original script. Production is expected to start in the first quarter of 2018.
Wolfhard has been on a hot streak sparked by his breakout role in Netflix’s hit series “Stranger Things.” Wolfhard followed that up with his role as a member of the Losers’ Club in New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s “It,” which has become one of the biggest box office successes of 2017, grossing $695.7 million worldwide.
“Stranger Things” Season 2 also premiered this fall and has since been nominated for a Golden Globe for best drama series as well as a SAG Award for best ensemble in a drama series.
Wolfhard is repped by Velocity Entertainment Partners and Jackoway Tyerman.Share. Learn all about what's in the upcoming DLC, including Survival Mode and the New Versus Campaigns. Learn all about what's in the upcoming DLC, including Survival Mode and the New Versus Campaigns.
If the names Zoey, Francis, Bill, and Louis don't mean much to you, then you probably haven't played the exceptional shooter Left 4 Dead. But if they trigger memories of gunning down endless hordes of zombies and desperately fighting for your life while screaming at your buddies, then you're quite familiar with Valve's thrilling cooperative multiplayer shooter, which shipped late last year. Now Valve is prepping the first batch of downloadable content for the game, which it is going to give away for free to both Xbox 360 and PC players sometime in March or April. What's in it? Well, we went to Valve this week to find out.
Now while it's not unusual for a PC game to get extra content for free post-release, it's vary rare for Xbox 360 DLC to go out sans fee. But Valve and Microsoft have figured out an arrangement. If you haven't bought Left 4 Dead on the Xbox 360 yet, Valve, the company that practically invented Game of the Year editions, does plan to release a special Critics Choice Edition of Left 4 Dead on April 21 for the console. It will feature the original game, as well as all the updates and the DLC. The DLC itself will go out digitally to existing Left 4 Dead players sometime before that date.
Survival Mode in the Airport.
There are two key features in the DLC. The first is that Valve has finally added Versus mode to the Dead Air and Death Toll campaigns, a process that meant tweaking and enhancing quite a number of levels to allow for a balanced playing field. Versus mode lets two teams take turns playing as survivors or zombie specials in an anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better duel. The winner is the team that can accumulate the best score, which is usually determined whether the survivors make it to safety at the end of each level in the face of everything the zombie players throw at them. Left 4 Dead shipped with only two of its campaigns playable in Versus mode, so the DLC instantly doubles that numbers.
We played with Valve employees in a Versus game on Dead Air, the airport level. Now, playing with the guys who created the game may seem a bit unfair, and that's because it is. Still, we had a blast, as well as learned some expert tips from the designers themselves. (One diabolical tactic is to use the smoker to grab a human survivor with his tongue and drag him or her through the metal detectors in the airport, thus triggering a humongous zombie horde. Surprise!) Just like with the existing two Versus campaigns, Dead Air proved to be a fun cat-and-mouse struggle, as the humans attempted to race to safety while the zombies tried to improvise coordinated ambushes on the fly.
The second big addition in the DLC is the introduction of an entirely new Survival mode that's designed if you just want to get in and have fun for about 10 or 15 minutes at a time, though the fast pace and challenge of it means you and your group can do round after round while the hours waste away. In essence, it's the equivalent of Counter-Strike's five-minute matches.
In Survival mode, the goal is simple: you and up to three other players are on a single level and must stay alive as long as possible against an unending assault of zombies. Each Versus match starts with a setup time, as you can scour the map for weapons and equipment, like health kits and gasoline tanks. You can take as much time as you want, as the timer at the top of the screen doesn't begin until someone hits the button that starts the zombie horde. Once the button is pressed, the action gets off to a furious start and escalates from there.
Check out the new Lighthouse level.
How furious is it? Consider this: In all of the play testing that the Valve designers have done while creating this mode, none of them have ever survived past the 10 minute mark. We're told the company best so far was about nine minutes, with a team of elite players battling like crazy to keep one another alive. Our experience at Valve averaged around three or four minutes a round, but they're like the fastest three or four minutes of your life.
What makes it so challenging is that the Survival mode doesn't waste time building up. After the initial wave of zombies you'll start getting hit by waves of special zombies; these are the hunters, smokers, boomers, and tanks. You'll get multiples of them at a time; I often saw two or three hunters or smokers leaping around the battle while the mindless horde minions were everywhere. In one battle, we had the tank, a boomer, a couple of smokers, and a hunter hitting us at the same time. We're told it's even possible to get two tanks at the same time, a prospect that seems both ludicrously unfair and hilarious at the same time.
The way to survive as long as possible is to work together, which means sticking together as well as doing everything you can to protect the weakest member of the group, especially if they're knocked down and must be revived. There's plenty of equipment available in various areas of the level; some of these areas only open up during the match, so after you exhaust all the equipment in one room, you'd best move as a group to the next. One of the most dangerous moments is when you run out of ammo; you then have to make a coordinated move to one of the few ammo points on the map to restock.
So what's in it for you? Well, beside the intense action, there are all sorts of personal records you can accumulate. The most obvious one is trying to get a best time for each of the 16 Survival levels in the game. There are extra incentives as well. You can earn bronze, silver, and gold medals if you survive long enough. Though the medal times for each map will be tailored for each map, right now the basic idea is that you need to survive for at least four minutes to get bronze, six minutes to get silver, and eight minutes to get gold. (In our play session, the best we ever got was within a minute of earning silver.) Of course, online leaderboards will also let you compare your times with those of our friends for bragging rights.
Game on!
As soon as your group is wiped out, you get the match results and then the entire thing resets. Basically, once you start playing you can do round after round easily, which eats up the time. Survival mode is playable on 16 levels, 15 of which are taken and modified from the existing four campaigns. We played in Dead Air's airport terminal, Blood Harvest's farm house level, and No Mercy's hospital level. There is one entirely brand-new level in the DLC called Lighthouse which the designers say may be the toughest level of them all.
Lighthouse is exactly that; a lighthouse atop a seaside cliff. You also get a sense of what you're in for when you realize that you start with a ridiculous amount of stuff at your disposal. There are about a dozen gasoline containers and propane tanks, as well as plenty of Molotov Cocktails and pipe bombs. It's like that age-old first-person shooter tradition of giving you plenty of ammo and health before encountering a major boss. What makes Lighthouse so dangerous is that it's a pretty open level; there aren't a lot of places to hide, and those places are pretty porous once the zombies start knocking holes in walls. Even the lighthouse tower itself is dangerous; while it's scenic and gives you a height advantage, you're exposed to any smoker who can grab you and drag you off the room with its tongue. You're in a dire position if you're on the ground and the rest of your teammates are still in the tower.
Granted, its going to be free, but even if Valve charged a reasonable amount for it the Left 4 Dead DLC would remain a great value. The Survival mode is perfect for a quick fix, while the new Versus campaigns should provide plenty of gameplay. In addition to the DLC, Valve will also release the SDK for the PC version, allowing PC users to start creating their own mods and levels for the game. But if that's not for you, there's always plenty of zombie killing to be done.This article is over 1 year old
Police appeal for information after family had strong acid thrown on them in Islington on Saturday afternoon
Boy, two, and parents suffer burns after acid attack in north London
A father, mother and their two-year-old son have suffered burns following an acid attack in north London.
Police are appealing for witnesses following the assault on the family in Islington at about 1pm on Saturday that left the father with “life-changing” injuries, police said.
The trio were found with injuries after a strong acid was thrown on them, the London fire brigade said.
The father was named on the neighbouring Barnsbury estate as Hai. He is a longtime resident of the area and a father of two, with a child aged about 11 as well as a toddler. His brother was believed to live on the estate and he lived nearby with his mother, neighbours said.
One woman, who said she had known him for 20 years, said she believed he had been deliberately targeted. Another neighbour reported seeing someone run away in the immediate aftermath.
Murat Kayran, a local shopkeeper, told reporters that people had rushed in to buy water to help treat the chemical burns.
“They were a Chinese family. A woman frantically ran in here when it happened and said: ‘There’s been an acid attack’,” he said.
“She bought one bottle at first and then after that bought three more [1.5-litre] bottles of water. Then a gentleman came in and bought another three... It’s such a scary thing to happen.”
At the scene of the attack, grit was spread on the pavement where the emergency services had cleared up the chemicals.
Police were called by the London ambulance service to reports of the attack on Copenhagen Street, near Charlotte Terrace.
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “The victims – a 40-year-old father, a 36-year-old mother and their two-year-old boy – were found with injuries consistent with a noxious substance, believed to be an acid, being thrown at them.
“They were initially taken to a north London hospital and were subsequently transferred to another hospital.
“The man’s injuries, whilst not believed to be life-threatening, are being treated as life-changing. The woman and child suffered minor injuries but remain in hospital at this time.”
The fire brigade said the adults suffered 15% burns to their hands and bodies while the infant was burnt on his face.
The liquid had a pH reading of one and tests confirmed it was a strong acid and oxidising substance, a spokesman said.
Anyone with information should contact the police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.Rob Maness, one of the five Republicans running for Louisiana’s open Senate seat, said Thursday he has received the endorsement of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
Paul supported Maness, who is running as a political outsider against three sitting Republican lawmakers: Rep. Charles Boustany, Rep. John Fleming and state Treasurer John Kennedy.
“The United States Senate is in desperate need of principled constitutional conservatives committed to protecting individual liberty and that is exactly why I am thrilled to endorse Col. Rob Maness for Senate in Louisiana,” Paul said in a statement.
Paul is the first sitting senator to endorse in the wide-open race to replace Sen. David Vitter, who, after a bruising loss in last year’s governor’s race, will leave the Senate at the end of his term.
Louisiana voters will head to the polls on Nov. 8 in the state’s “jungle primary.” If neither of the nine candidates – including four Democrats – gets more than half of the vote, there will be a runoff a month later.
Back home in Kentucky, Paul has a re-election fight of his own. His opponent, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, has made the case that Paul is overly ambitious to represent the Bluegrass State in the Senate, and in a tweet on Thursday, accused Paul’s endorsement spree of being about higher ambitions, yet again.Okay, I’m a bit taken by surprise on this one, but let’s quickly take this from the top. Firstly, Linden Lab has added a simplified reporting form for Second Life JIRA issues. That part is pretty okay (and some might say that it is many years overdue) being that it is the sort of bug-reporting form that you might see for many major pieces of software, but that increases the triage-level workload on reports significantly. Now, that triage process has so far been split between the Second Life JIRA users and Linden Lab.
There’s a couple problems with bug triaging though. The first is that the Second Life JIRA users do it badly. The second is that Linden Lab do it badly. Okay, so issue triaging becomes more complicated now. So, ouch, right there.
Badly? How?
Well, the triage process has traditionally closed service-critical issues in error, erroneously marked issues as duplicates when they weren’t, and so on, while duplicate issues have – in turn – burgeoned, because the actual quality of reporting of issues is also … well, “a little bit shit” (in the ancient language of my people).
Now, the second part of this is that submitters no longer have access to reading or updating Second Life JIRA entries – that means that the community can no longer provide any input or assistance in the triage process. That’s where things start to get really awkward. That exponentially increases the cost and burden of triage and pushes that all onto Linden Lab, while simultaneously magnifying the impact of any triaging errors that the Lab’s triage staff makes.
That seems <sarcasm>awesome</sarcasm> right there.
So, the quick summary: Triaging gets more error-prone, difficult and time-consuming for Linden Lab – and Second Life users get to deal with any of the consequences of mistakes or delays.
Is that ideal? Heck no.
[via Second Life community site – thanks to Inara Pey]
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Tags: JIRA, Linden Lab / Linden Research Inc, Second Life, Virtual Environments and Virtual WorldsOne reason the human body cannot fight off an HIV infection is because a single protein the virus produces thwarts human defenses, a new study says.
When HIV enters the human body, it produces a protein called vpu that directly combats a critical defense protein of the human immune system, the study showed.
Normally, this immune system protein stops invading viruses from replicating and spreading throughout the body. But vpu disables this defense mechanism, allowing HIV to invade.
When the researchers genetically engineered the virus to lack vpu, human immune system cells could fight back against the virus, the researchers' experiments with cells in lab dishes showed.
"We have effectively identified a new Achilles heel in the arsenal that HIV uses to overcome the defenses present in the body's immune system," said Michael Gale, an immunology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. "This knowledge can be used to design new HIV antiviral therapeutics.”
Though this discovery only explains the virus’s tricks during the early stages infection, it may help researchers understand how the virus continues to evade the immune system well into infection.
The researchers based the study on their previous research, which showed that early stages of HIV infection impaired the human immune system’s response.
The discovery of proteins in the virus is critical for developing HIV-antiviral drug treatments, because the virus is constantly adapting to become resistant to current medications, Gale said.
Pass it on: Researchers discovered a new protein of HIV that may serve as a target for medication.
Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. Find us on Facebook and Google+.
Copyright 2012 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.When Joe Maddon is trying to plan his next pregame entertainment for the Cubs, maybe he should dial Kobayashi's number.
Takeru Kobayashi, the famous competitive eater, ate a goat to help the Cubs reverse the Curse of the Billy Goat Tuesday night.
Kobayashi teamed up with Taco In A Bag in Lincoln Square to eat a 40-pound cooked goat in one sitting.
Four guys are about to eat 40 pounds of goat. This is happening. pic.twitter.com/hRKTXCnXI5 — Matt Lindner (@mattlindner) September 23, 2015
And this is what 40 pounds of cooked goat looks like. pic.twitter.com/RWh1GlYlkr — Matt Lindner (@mattlindner) September 23, 2015
Kobayashi with the aftermath. 40 pounds if goat gone in about twelve minutes. That was...disgusting. pic.twitter.com/ACnMgScwxT — Matt Lindner (@mattlindner) September 23, 2015
[RELATED - Joe Maddon blames Starlin Castro’s error on AC/DC concert at Wrigley]
First of all, hats off to Kobayashi. I feel like I've been hungry enough to eat a 40-pound goat, but would probably get like 1, maybe 1-and-a-half pounds into it before passing out into a food coma.
Forget about blowing up Bartman baseballs or allowing goats back into Wrigley Field. Clearly the best way to reverse a century-long curse is to just eat a damn goat.
Maybe this really is the Cubs' year, you guys.I planned to buy the new Macbook. I’ve been following MacRumors for months for updates. I loved the Macbook Pro 15 inch for many years, and I don’t really see how they could improve it. But I was excited as always before an Apple event. I was ready to buy. But I’m not going to. Simply because for my professional work flow, the new Macbook will be a downgrade.
I get that they want to innovate, and I think that’s cool. I actually think it was a bit cool that they took away the audio jack on the iPhone. But removing function keys, MagSafe, HDMI, SD Card AND the Escape key, is simply too much for a professional tool like a Macbook Pro. I don’t meet a lot of people who have the Macbook Pro 15 inch. Usually it’s designers, photographers and programmers, who spend 8-12 hours in front of the computer every day. Please don’t mess up our workflow, by removing necessary ports and keys. It feels like me that Apple have created this new Macbook in a vacuum. Not listening to it’s real users.
What could they have done differently? An upgrade to 7 or 8 I/O ports from the current 6 (incl charger), would be good. But downgrading to 4 is a punch in the face for all professionals. The graphic card could have been upgraded to run VR and the newest games. Nvidia GTX 1070 or 1080 would be nice.
Why is there no Kaby Lake CPU? I thought Apple had a good deal with Intel, about getting their freshest CPUs. Also how can I now change the volume of a song, while working in another program, without switching the app windows?I have too switch to the Spotify app, then physically look down on the keyboard, and try to hit the volume touch area? Clicking the func-keys are hell of a lot quicker. This laptop is the one Apple recommends for professionals, a properly specced one cost $3500 but I need to carry an HDMI-adapter for client meetings? A thin laptop is super sexy, really cool, but there are actually things that are more important for professionals, like the stuff pointed out. I have no complaints about the current thickness of the MBP whatsever. It’s actually really thin in my opinion.
I’m actually a bit sad. Because it’s not like I can buy laptops with MacOS (which I’m completely addicted to) from someone else. And it’s not like Apple is going to release an upgraded version with HDMI and functional keys in January. They are going to stick with this model for a good few years from now. Meaning that I’ll eventually need to upgrade to it at some point. But it’s still annoying. I’m actually considering switching to linux and with a good PC.Bud Adams could receive his wish.
One day after the Tennessee Titans owner went public with his desire to land Peyton Manning, league sources told NFL Network's Michael Lombardi on Monday the team is expecting, and preparing for, a visit from the free-agent quarterback in the next day or two.
Breer: Why the Titans make sense After Bud Adams threw a monkey wrench into the Albert Breer explains why the After Bud Adams threw a monkey wrench into the Peyton Manning sweepstakes,explains why the Titans and the QB would be a good match. More...
The Titans entered the Manning picture Sunday when Adams told The Tennessean that he's ready to do whatever it takes to sign the four-time MVP, who recently was released by the Indianapolis Colts.
"He is the man I want. Period," Adams said. "And the people that work for me understand that. They know who I want. I want Mr. Manning with the Titans and I will be disappointed if it doesn't happen."
The Titans are working on having a meeting between coach Mike Munchak and Manning, which could happen in Houston, where Adams lives, rather than Nashville. Adams is adamant, sources told NFL Network's Albert Breer, about landing Manning, leading one team official to say, "This is the most he's ever been excited about a player, more so than he was even with Vince Young."
And after some back-and-forth over the course of the offseason, the football people now are in lockstep in their desire to land Manning.
Manning has deep roots in the state of Tennessee, where he was an All-American quarterback for the University of Tennessee. His wife, Ashley, also is a UT alum and is a native of Memphis.
Thus far, Manning has visited with the Denver Broncos, Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins.When President Obama next week attends India’s Republic Day festivities, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the country’s constitution, he’ll be the first U.S. President invited as the guest of honor and treated to a spectacle rife with symbolism. In addition to floats, bands, and regiments parading along the Rajpath on everything from mounted camel to motorcyle representing the diversity of India, the President will also witness a ceremonial flyover of a P-8I maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) in formation with two MiG-29K fighter jets (pending security concerns). This flight is symbolic in its own right for several reasons.
A Maritime Renewal
On the face of it, the flyover celebrates the induction of both aircraft into the Indian Navy. But their inclusion, the only other time than the display of Harriers in 1984 that naval aviation has taken part in the flyover, also highlights India’s renewed emphasis on bolstering its status a maritime power. India’s confidence in its naval service was shaken in the wake of a spate of nearly a dozen terrible accidents over a roughly the past year-and-a-half, resulting in the loss of more than 20 lives and significant damage to several vessels.
Despite adopting a “Look East” policy in 1991, India has in large part to this day viewed its strategic choices through the prism of its contentious relations with its neighbor to the northwest, Pakistan, promoting its air and ground forces at the expense of its naval. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in November that he would follow through on the previous policy’s promise by setting out to actually “Act East,” observers are beginning to see signs of action. Modi has boosted ties with Vietnam and Japan, including inviting the latter to return last summer for its U.S.-India naval exercise Malabar and last week agreed to further strengthen US-India-Japan trilateral ties, although the effective result of this sentiment is unclear at this point. Early this year India may have also (but denies having) played a role in reversing China’s influence in Sri Lanka, seen as a key node in China’s Maritime Silk Road concept and playing host to Chinese submarine port calls to India’s displeasure, through aiding the surprise defeat of President Rajapaksa.
Additionally, the increased investments India has made of late in the sea services are starting to bear fruit, as evidenced by more than just the new aircraft. The sea trials begun in December of India’s first indigenous nuclear ballistic missile submarine, the commissioning of its first indigenous guided-missile destroyer in August, and the construction underway of its first indigenous aircraft carrier also demonstrate – despite schedule slippages – the increased priority in funding the sea services are receiving. On New Year’s Day, India received another confidence boost, reporting that its coast guard succeeded in intercepting a fishing boat operated by terrorists before they were able to execute another “Mumbai-style attack.”
Opportunities
However there is another view of the symbology of the flyover. It will not be lost on most observers that the MiG is of Russian origin, and the P-8 hails from the United States. As such, the flight represents the choice for India between its traditional weapon supplier, Russia, and new options. These alternatives include India itself, as it looks to produce as much domestically as it can, at times in partnerships with those willing to |
since the January-March quarter in 2014.
The effect of demonetization is still felt it many areas such as farming, the informal retail sector and by thousands of tiny tradesmen in smaller towns. Three months back, angry farm protests broke out in the states of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, claiming several lives. The problem of liquidity remains and many still want to use cash to conduct their transactions.Archives Archives Select Month February 2019 (439) January 2019 (453) December 2018 (384) November 2018 (270) October 2018 (217) September 2018 (201) August 2018 (252) July 2018 (278) June 2018 (315) May 2018 (145) April 2018 (302) March 2018 (627) February 2018 (649) January 2018 (736) December 2017 (364) November 2017 (302) October 2017 (560) September 2017 (242) August 2017 (185) July 2017 (320) June 2017 (408) May 2017 (295) April 2017 (317) March 2017 (337) February 2017 (354) January 2017 (639) December 2016 (864) November 2016 (507) October 2016 (399) September 2016 (246) August 2016 (246) July 2016 (251) June 2016 (321) May 2016 (293) April 2016 (262) March 2016 (278) February 2016 (160) January 2016 (288) December 2015 (254) November 2015 (250) October 2015 (292) September 2015 (290) August 2015 (450) July 2015 (408) June 2015 (399) May 2015 (519) April 2015 (344) March 2015 (291) February 2015 (145) January 2015 (256) December 2014 (210) November 2014 (219) October 2014 (220) September 2014 (271) August 2014 (205) July 2014 (164) June 2014 (112) May 2014 (152) April 2014 (182) March 2014 (168) February 2014 (128) January 2014 (124) December 2013 (150) November 2013 (142) October 2013 (167) September 2013 (219) August 2013 (280) July 2013 (373) June 2013 (449) May 2013 (602) April 2013 (614) March 2013 (692) February 2013 (596) January 2013 (875) December 2012 (592) November 2012 (805) October 2012 (482) September 2012 (403) August 2012 (397) July 2012 (492) June 2012 (424) May 2012 (175) April 2012 (73) March 2012 (125) February 2012 (39) January 2012 (35) January 2011 (1) August 2010 (1) January 2010 (1)In the cleanest college library I’ve ever seen, women of various ages and ethnicities were seated around a long wooden table. A few were chatting, but most were nervously shuffling notebooks and pens or staring at the floor. The men – there were five, ranging in age from early 20s to mid-50s – showed up just before class began. I tried to divine, one by one, what horrible tragedy had brought them all there.
This was the Tuesday night forgiveness course at Stanford University. I was there strictly to observe. Formalised forgiveness training – complete with a reading list, lectures, practice sessions and homework – was for people who had survived genocide, not for me with my garden-variety baggage (even if I had read everything I could about forgiveness training, developing a not-unhealthy obsession with the topic). Professor Frederic Luskin told me I could sit in on his class, but would have to participate so it wouldn’t seem weird. No problem. I prepared an almost-true story about a fight with my mother.
Then, his large eyes flashing and greying hair standing on end, Luskin held his hands out in front of him like a zombie, palms down and spaced about a foot apart. ‘Most of our disappointment in life stems from wanting this,’ he jabbed at the air with his left hand, the higher of the two, for emphasis, ‘and getting this,’ he said, jiggling the lowered right hand. Then he stared at all of us, intently. ‘OK? And forgiveness is about what you decide to do with this space in the middle. Are you going to adjust what you expect and let the rest go, or are you going to live in this space? Because I’ll tell you what, living in there is miserable.’
Shit. Now all I could think about was living in that terrible, empty space between his two giant hands. How I’d been stuck there for years, waiting for things to change and then being angry and disappointed when nothing happened.
When we got paired off to share our stories, my fake mom story was running through my head on rapid repeat, but my mouth rebelled, blurting out to the nice man on my left: ‘My best friend died and now I hate everyone for not being her and I really need to let it go. And actually this is really weird because Leah died here. Not right here in this library, but over there at the university hospital. This is the first time I’ve been back since.’
It was a moment I’d read about – this sudden shift when the need to forgive outweighs the drive for revenge. I felt weightless, nauseous, sad, the prospect of letting go of all those years of anger finally opening up a space for grief. It is this rare freedom for the soul that has made forgiveness a cornerstone of all major world religions for hundreds of years as well as an increasingly popular subject in modern psychology – both the traditional and pop varieties. But while its benefits have been proved, forgiveness remains a thorny subject, bound up in ideas about everything from doctrinal religion to justice.
My researches began when I stumbled across a story about Robert Enright, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin. Enright was raised Catholic, but abandoned religion for academia early in his career. ‘I became a professor and thought I knew who God was – it was me,’ he said.
By the time he returned to his faith, Enright had established himself as ‘the father of forgiveness’, creating a therapeutic protocol for how to practise it that was officially sanctioned by the American Psychology Association and the United Nations. He thought the Catholic Church could be doing more to emphasise its deep history in the subject, and spreading the gospel of forgiveness to the masses, and said so in a speech at the Vatican.
I knew exactly how to ask God for forgiveness, but I had no idea how to forgive, or ask forgiveness from the people in my life
As a lapsed Catholic myself, Enright’s story resonated with me. Forced to attend church and Catholic school in my youth, I’d rebelled in my teens and twenties, not because I didn’t believe in God but because I didn’t like the self-righteous way in which most of the religious people I knew behaved. I didn’t really miss religion, apart from those moments at the end of Mass where Holy Communion absolved me of my sins and I’d be given a few moments of silence to pray in gratitude. I’d looked forward to those moments – and the peace they brought me – every week. Few other experiences delivered a similar relief from daily worries, and when I read about Enright and his work I wondered if forgiveness might be the thing.
Each of the Abrahamic faiths – Islam, Judaism, Christianity – include teachings on forgiveness, both the sort that God doles out and the sort that human beings can (and should) bestow on each other. The Torah, the Bible, and the Qur’an are all filled with dictates about forgiveness, and rules about what God can and cannot, or will not, forgive. The non-Abrahamic faiths, meanwhile, have a wellness-focused approach to forgiveness that’s not so different from modern, secular treatments of the subject in the context of the positive psychology movement. Buddhism, for example, teaches that people who hold on to the wrongs done to them create an identity around that pain, and it is that identity that continues to be reborn.
But what about the nuts and bolts of forgiveness, about which all the Catholic rituals around penance and confession had taught me nothing? I knew exactly how to ask God for forgiveness, but I had no idea how to forgive, or ask forgiveness from the people in my life. This turns out to be an important distinction: University of Michigan researchers have found that forgiveness between people tends to have more reliably positive physical benefits than any perceived forgiveness from God.
Forgiveness is a relatively new academic research area, studied in earnest only since Enright began publishing on the subject in the 1980s. The first batch of studies were medical in focus. Forgiveness was widely correlated with a range of physical benefits, including better sleep, lower blood pressure, lower risk of heart disease, even increased life expectancy; really, every benefit you’d expect from reduced stress. The late Kathleen Lawler, while working as a researcher in the psychology department at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, studied the effects of both hostility and forgiveness on the body’s systems fairly extensively. ‘Forgiveness is aptly described as “a change of heart”,’ she wrote, in summarising a series of studies focused on the impact of forgiveness on heart health. Meanwhile, Duke University researchers found a strong correlation between improved immune system function and forgiveness in HIV-positive patients, and between forgiveness and improved mortality rates across the general population.
More recently, the subject has surged in popularity as everyone from the United Nations to the victims of mass shootings espouses the virtues of forgiveness for everything from mental health to managing war zones. Even Oprah Winfrey has gotten in on the forgiveness game: her favourite life coach, Iyanla Vanzant, frequently spotlighted the subject in her Oprah Winfrey Network show Iyanla: Fix My Life, and launched an e-learning class entitled ‘How to Forgive Everyone for Everything’.
In her book, Forgiveness: 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everything, Vanzant lays out a 21-day programme to set readers on the path to forgiveness. Perhaps unsurprisingly (Winfrey is the queen of self-improvement, after all), the book is focused largely on self-forgiveness. Vanzant is also a proponent of Progressive Energy Field Tapping (Pro EFT) – tapping specific energy points just under the surface of the skin, ‘releasing emotions trapped in our energy system’, according to the official Pro EFT website. It’s a bit New Age-y for my taste, but hey, it’s a process and a lot of people are saying it works.
It’s not just Oprah who’s promoting the self-improvement side of forgiveness. The rise of popular interest in forgiveness has coincided with a second wave of academic studies, focused on self-forgiveness. After investigating the relationship between forgiveness and health, Jon R Webb at East Tennessee State University found that ‘it may be that forgiveness of self is relatively more important to health-related outcomes’ than other forms of forgiveness. Sara Pelucchi, at the Catholic University in Milan, claims that it is beneficial to romantic relationships, and Thomas Carpenter at Baylor University found that we have an easier time forgiving ourselves if those we have hurt forgive us first.
Enright has also examined self-forgiveness, although he’s more measured about it than Vanzant. ‘The issue of self-forgiveness is much more complicated than forgiveness in general and here’s why: when you offend yourself, you are both the victim and the perpetrator,’ he told me. ‘The problem is compounded by the fact that we rarely offend ourselves in isolation from offending others.’
Enright recommends that people struggling with self-forgiveness learn to forgive others first, before offering that same compassion to themselves. ‘Otherwise it can be tricky: If you’re a compulsive gambler and keep squandering the family’s money, for example, you could forgive yourself and keep doing it, but true self-forgiveness requires stopping the behaviour that led to the offence in first place.’
It’s the ‘learn to forgive’ part that’s key to making forgiveness stick. According to Luskin, religion might help to motivate or oblige people to forgive, but it’s the secular realm that is bringing the idea of forgiveness to the masses. It’s also teaching us precisely how to do it.
Her father had killed her cat and buried it in the carrot patch, then laughed gleefully when the horrified child uncovered her dead pet
While researchers have spent the past 20 years proving the physical and mental benefits of forgiveness, it’s the step-by-step forgiveness guides they’ve developed that might turn out to be academia’s most important contribution to the subject. Like Vanzant’s pop-psych version, the protocols that Enright and Luskin have developed offer specific steps towards forgiveness rooted in decades of research and clinical experience. While the various approaches differ, all include practical guidance and the basics are consistent: feel the feelings you need to feel, express them, then leave them in the past where they can no longer have power over you.
When I first met my friend Leah, it was all off-colour jokes and dares. Then she invited me to her ex-boyfriend’s funeral and things got real. I met her mother, who was sweet and funny and cooked us dinner in an apron, but also smoked around Leah even though it was likely to trigger an asthma attack. Her father, a retired physician, and the sort of stiff grown-up that people like me (and Leah) loved to get a rise out of, patted Leah’s shoulder and tousled her hair as we got into the car to leave.
Later Leah said that was the most affection he had ever shown her in public. Then she told me how, when she was about five, her father had killed her cat because it was annoying him, and had buried it in the carrot patch. Telling her to go find it there, he had then laughed gleefully when the horrified child uncovered her dead pet. We traded unpleasant stories the whole ride home, and after that our friendship was sealed.
Shortly after that outing, I barged into her apartment and found her on her living-room floor wheezing in and out of a massive steroid inhaler. She explained that she had cystic fibrosis and that her brother had died from it, but that she, the beneficiary of various trial drugs, would most likely be OK.
A couple years later, after we graduated from college, I got Leah a job at the magazine where I worked. When I had to fire her because she showed up late every day and spent hours hanging out under my desk, sipping lattes, I didn’t make up excuses or lie. I just called her at the end of the day and, before she could even say ‘Hello?’ I yelled: ‘You’re fired!’
She erupted in laughter.
‘No, but seriously, you’re fired. I mean, come on, I don’t think you’ve made it to the office on time once. Plus you spend most of that time under my desk. AND you really blew that call the other day.’
Our boss had asked her to make some advertising sales calls. Leah’s technique had been to play it cool and say: ‘I know the last thing you want to do is advertise, especially in this lousy magazine.’ She thought they’d find it refreshing and humorous, but our boss, overhearing her, did not appreciate her creativity.
‘Ach. Yeah, OK, I get it. I’m sorry – did I get you into trouble?’
‘No, but I think having me fire you is some sort of test.’
‘Well, tell that egg-shaped douche you passed.’
In my first conversation with Enright, he explained that he’d started researching forgiveness in 1985, ‘when no one in the social sciences would even touch the topic. It was either totally off their radar or just too scary because it is really rooted in the monotheistic traditions. I thought that was folly. Forgiveness might be important to the human condition and scientists have the obligation to go where the ideas lead, no matter what.’
That conversation led to other scholars who had waded into forgiveness research, Luskin among them. Like Enright, Luskin had worked with civil war survivors (in Sierra Leone), various factions within Northern Ireland, and death row inmates in the United States. When I found him, Luskin had been running forgiveness classes at Stanford for about a decade, and had moved away from what he called the ‘big, dramatic’ forms of forgiveness, to which youth and media attention had drawn him early in his career.
We live on a planet where harm happens all the time; to think that you should escape that is a mammoth overstatement of your own importance
‘Even the stuff that forgiveness was supposed to be good for – stuff like murders … it’s so rare,’ he told me. ‘More important is can you forgive your brother-in-law for being annoying? Can you forgive traffic? Those things happen every day. Big things? They happen once in a lifetime, maybe twice. It’s a waste of forgiveness. That’s my perspective. But forgiveness is really important for smoothing over the normal, interpersonal things that rub everyone the wrong way.’
Part of what makes the word – and practice – tough for people, in Luskin’s view, is that it requires a degree of selflessness. ‘For me to say, “Even though you were a shithead, it’s not my problem; it’s your problem, and I’m not going to stay mad at you, because that’s you, not me,” that’s a huge renunciation of self,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know whether it’s our [Western] culture or a human thing, but it’s hard.’
Plus it requires acknowledgement of our fundamental human vulnerability, without getting angry or bitter about it. ‘A lot of times people start with this idea that “I shouldn’t have been harmed”,’ Luskin said. ‘Why not? We live on a planet where harm happens all the time, where children are murdered and horrible things happen; to think that you should escape that is a mammoth overstatement of your own importance and a lack of sensitivity to everyone else on the planet.’
But even for those who might find themselves nodding along with Luskin’s sentiments, walking the walk is another story. What all of the researchers and pop-psych proponents of forgiveness agree on is that it takes practice and that it is hard work. Vanzant compares it to pulling out a tooth without Novocaine. Luskin described it as re-training the brain. ‘You can get upset about anything – you can also get un-upset about anything, it’s just a matter of learning how,’ he said.
In the eight years since Leah died, I’ve married, had a child and made new friends, yet I still miss her desperately. If I had a bad experience at work, Leah thought I should quit. Screw them. If I argued with a boyfriend, he was an asshole. Period. Even when everyone, including me, knew I was the asshole. It was the kind of backup she craved, too, which is why it’s been so hard to shake the feeling that ultimately I failed her.
Toward the end of her life, Leah’s doctors said the only way she’d be able to continue living was on a ventilator. Knowing she wouldn’t want to live that way, her parents decided to take her off life support. I agreed with their choice, difficult as it would be to lose her. When I went to be with her on that last night, she was alone. Her parents couldn’t bear to see Leah suffer the same slow, painful death they’d watched their son endure. I couldn’t imagine doing otherwise.
When the nurse took Leah off the machines, she panicked, opened her eyes wide, clenched my hand and mouthed, ‘Help me.’ Several hours later, when the nurse came to check on her, she reported with surprise that Leah’s blood oxygenation levels were normal. When I asked what that meant, she said, ‘Well, it means she didn’t really need to be on that ventilator.’ At that point, I asked if we shouldn’t reconsider things, but the nurse was quick to squash that idea. ‘I’ve probably just had her on too much oxygen,’ she said. ‘I’ll turn it down.’
It is the biggest regret of my life that I didn’t make a huge fuss in that moment, and demand to see the doctor. That I did not call Leah’s parents and beg them to reconsider. That I did not wait until the nurse left the room, then jack the oxygen back up. That I did precisely nothing but hold my friend’s hand while she died.
In the weeks following Luskin’s forgiveness seminar, it all clicked. I’d been waiting for a magical moment in which I would forgive myself for failing Leah – and the rest of the world for being around when she wasn’t. That moment never came and in the meantime, I had justified a lot of my own bad behaviour.
After reading everything from religious scripture to academic studies, I finally realised that’s not at all how forgiveness works, and that’s what makes it so damn hard. Time does not heal all wounds. This too shall not pass. Letting go of hurt and anger is a grind, and forgiveness only works if you practise it regularly, and are prepared to fail often without giving up. But the pay-off is so huge it just might be worth it.Although the term ‘third world’ is often disputed as a racist term, as it “obscures all parts of a country’s culture apart from those which are to be pitied or improved,” it is more or less the best popular nomenclature we have right now. To describe the disparity between economic and political climates of countries halfway across the world from each other is difficult, as they don’t necessarily have the same goals or values and might not think of themselves as developing nations in the way that the West does. That being said, Westerners traveling to the third world are likely to have certain expectations about what may or may not be available. As someone who has done quite a bit of traveling, here are my recommendations for setting up your expectations when traveling to the third world.
You Can’t Drink the Water and You Might Get Sick
If you’ve ever planned a trip to Mexico, you’ve likely heard vague warning of Monetzuma’s Revenge (yes, the tourist version is misspelled) which refers to Moctezuma II, the ruler of the Aztec civilization. He was slaughtered and his people obliterated by Hernán Cortés, the infamous Spanish conquistador. As the story goes, the ghost of Moctezuma II is responsible for interlopers in Mexico getting the stomach flu as a petty form of revenge.
What this story really refers to is traveler’s diarrhea, which is very real, and which on my return trip from Morocco have contracted a minor case of. This is usually caused by E.Coli that your body may not be used to, and can easily be contracted from water or street food. If you see anything questionable, it’s best not to eat or drink it, or traveling to the third world will not be something you want to repeat.
You Don’t Have Absolute Freedom of Movement
In most Western nations you expect that you can go anywhere you want. You may not want to visit most of the country you live in, but you are not restricted from doing so. That’s not the case when traveling to the third world, as governments tend to be a bit more authoritarian and have closed off certain non-essential obscure areas to tourism.
For example, on a recent trip to Egypt Alex and I attempted to go to Al Menya. For context, Al Menya is the ancient (and brief) capital city that Akhenaton established when he unsuccessfully attempted to convert ancient Egyptians to monotheism. For anyone who knows me, I am a little obsessed with Akehnaten and he is one on the principal subjects of my upcoming graphic novel, so I was excited by the prospect to see such sites as the Tomb of Ay.
However, as we asked around how to get there, Egyptian nationals were shocked we wanted to go there in the first place, and we ultimately found out that if we were to have gone, we would have been immediately detained without an approved guide. While I was disappointed that we did not get to see those sites, it is a more obscure region and when traveling to the third world you can’t expect that areas not explicitly geared toward tourism will be open to you.
Minor Amenities Are Not Guaranteed
Toilet paper. Soap. Bath towels. Reliable internet. One would expect all of these amenities at any hotel in the United States or even a hostel in Western Europe (although you may have to pay extra for some of these). But depending on where you are staying, you might not have immediate or even any access to these types of amenities. There’s only so much you can do to prepare for this, like bringing your own roll of toilet paper and an extra bar of soap, but adjusting your expectations when traveling to the third world will go a long way in ensuring that you enjoy the experience for what it is, not despite it.
There Are ‘Hidden Costs’ Everywhere
It might seem like you will get a huge bargain when traveling to the ‘third world,’ but this is not always the case. Because capitalism is a relatively new system in these countries, many enterprising people will try to rip you off or will not be upfront with costs. Sometimes you might even be aware this is happening but have no other option. Still, you need to make sure that you are prepared to spend a bit more than the costs are on paper. Fees will often be tacked on to activities that were not clear or upfront when you booked them. This has actually happened almost every time that I’ve gone traveling to the third world.
Rather than get angry about this, I usually take it in stride, and understand the economic disparity between myself and the people in the country I’m visiting. That’s not to say I have the coin to start giving away money, far from it, but I can afford to understand that this is the reality of the situation. If you cannot or will not do this, I don’t recommend that you start traveling to the third world anytime soon.
Still, traveling to the third world can open you p to some amazing cultures and enriching experiences. This will not only give you perspective, but allow you to see some of the great sites of the world, including the Luxor Temple in Egypt, Tikal in Guatemala and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, all of which I’ve visited recently Keep all of this in mind when traveling to the third world and you’ll be sure to have a great time.
Like this: Like Loading...Image copyright AFP Image caption George Soros has hit back at a poster campaign against him in Hungary
Financier George Soros has accused the Hungarian government of using "anti-Semitic imagery" in its poster campaign against him.
Mr Soros has been vilified in a campaign costing the right-wing Fidesz government an estimated 5.7bn forints (£16.3m; $21m).
Many Hungarian Jews fear that open or concealed anti-Semitism lies behind the campaign, which the government denies.
This is the first time US-based Mr Soros, 86, has echoed that fear.
However, he also thanked those who had made it their mission to tear the posters down.
The most recent series of posters - many of which have had anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled on them - show a grinning Mr Soros beside the words, "Don't let Soros have the last laugh".
The slogan is a reference to the government's claim the philanthropist is working to settle a million migrants in the EU.
Image copyright Akos Stiller Image caption A poster showing Mr Soros, saying "Let's not allow Soros to have the last laugh!" Someone has written "dirty Jew" on his forehead
In a statement, Hungarian-born Mr Soros said: "I am distressed by the current Hungarian regime's use of anti-Semitic imagery as part of its deliberate disinformation campaign.
"Equally, I am heartened that together with countless fellow citizens the leadership of the Hungarian Jewish community has spoken out against the campaign."
Mr Soros has spent $12bn, mostly through his Open Society Foundations, on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world, especially in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, since the 1980s.
It has seen him come up against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has declared war on liberalism.
Most recently, the university Mr Soros founded has come under attack after MPs passed a bill which could force it out of Hungary.
The posters have also drawn anger from outside the country.
Guy Verhofstadt, the chief Brexit negotiator at the European Parliament and leader of the Parliament's liberals, wrote on Facebook: "The Hungarian regime's xenophobia and demonization of refugees are anti-European. The claim that Soros is promoting a scheme to import a million illegal immigrants into Europe is Victor Orban's fantasy. Darkness falls in Hungary. We cannot let this happen."Last April, the Pentagon, looking for a command post situated close to the Manhattan home of the newly inaugurated president, signed a lease for a duplex on the 66th and 67th floors in Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue. The 3,475-square-foot apartment was ideal as far as the Defense Department was concerned. The only apartment that shares the top floors of the building with Donald Trump’s penthouse triplex, it was close to the president physically, and the proximity enabled secure electronic communications. It was also protected enough that the nuclear football could be housed there when Trump was in residence. The Defense Department assured Congress that Trump would not benefit from the deal, and this, at least financially, was correct: the condominium apartment’s owner is not Trump himself but Joel R. Anderson, an Alabama businessman, a longtime neighbor and friend of Trump’s, and a member of the building’s condominium board. The apartment was not listed on the market, and so it was some time before the details of the rental deal were revealed. According to The Wall Street Journal, which obtained a copy of the lease, the Pentagon had agreed to pay $2.39 million of taxpayers’ money for an 18-month rental, or a head-spinning $130,000 a month. When asked about the stratospheric price, Anderson told The Washington Post that the federal government didn’t really try to negotiate a lower rent. There is at least one rental in Manhattan these days that is more expensive—a 4,786-square-foot apartment on the 39th floor of the Pierre hotel, at $500,000 a month. But that includes the use of a chauffeur-driven Jaguar. Other obscenely expensive rentals are not hard to find in New York—at the Time Warner Center, on Fifth and Park Avenues, in the soaring new glass towers in Midtown—but they hover between $75,000 and $125,000 a month. The elevators go to the 68th floor—where Trump owns a triplex. But the building has only 58 stories. What stands out about the Pentagon deal—aside from the waste of taxpayer money for an apartment in a building that Trump has visited only once since it was rented—is that anyone (in their right mind or otherwise) has been willing to pay that much for an apartment in Donald Trump’s tower. The Pentagon’s rent bill is about three times the next-highest rent in Trump Tower—$50,000 a month in 2016 for a slightly larger unfurnished apartment—at a time when both sales and rentals in the building have slumped. Since Trump’s November electoral win, at least 14 apartments have been put up for sale. Those came to market along with apartments that were for sale before the election. By this fall, there were 19 unsold apartments, some of which had been languishing for months—their prices dropping steadily by as much as 15 percent. Others have been pulled from the market. The same has been true for rentals—14 apartments were on the market shortly after the election, only 5 of which have been rented. The others were taken off the market. At one point 10 percent of the building’s 231 units were for sale or for rent. To a certain extent, this reflects softness in the market for luxury apartments in New York. With the recent epidemic in construction of super-luxe skyscrapers—One57, 432 Park Avenue, Central Park Tower, among them—the market for the very rich has shifted in favor of buyers. Yet even compared with other high-end buildings, Trump Tower’s per-square-foot sales prices are weak. They are down 13 percent on average in 2017 over 2016 and 23 percent compared to 2015, according to a CityRealty.com report cited by The Wall Street Journal, while Midtown buildings saw a slight increase over that time, according to Brown Harris Stevens. But Trump Tower has its own special issues. “It is dealing with things that are unprecedented in this kind of a property,” says Rana Williams, of Keller Williams, who has been handling sales and rentals in Trump Tower for years. By Sam Horine.
The elevators gleam gold. In the lobby of the soaring glass tower, there is a five-story atrium and a 60-foot waterfall. The floors and walls are lined with Breccia Pernice marble, which was also used in Trump’s own triplex—so much of it that an entire mountain in Italy was demolished, Ivana Trump wrote, only half joking. Trump Tower was completed in 1983 in partnership with Equitable Life Assurance, which owned the land. It was for many years Donald Trump’s signature building. The elevators still go to the 68th floor—where Trump owns the triplex penthouse. But the building has only 58 stories. He has also claimed that his penthouse home—with its miles of marble and 24-karat-gold plating—is 33,000 square feet, but it’s about one-third of that, just short of 11,000 square feet. The phantom 10 floors and extra square-footage, like so much else these days, exist only in Trump’s flamboyant imagination. With floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows, residents have some of the best views in Manhattan, sweeping vistas of Central Park and Midtown. They have the services of white-gloved doormen; 24-hour concierges; in-house maids; a large, state-of-the-art gym; and on-call valets. But these days it is no longer one of Manhattan’s top luxury buildings. The original kitchens are small and windowless; many units were not furnished with washers and dryers; others don’t have dressing rooms or, the must-have, twin bathroom sinks. “They are view apartments,” says Alison Rogers, the founder of Upstairs Realty. “It’s a good building. It offers good services, but more expensive and shinier buildings have been built.” Over the years, residents have included Michael Jackson (who reportedly paid $110,000 a month in rent in the mid-90s for the palatial 63rd-floor apartment in which Donald Trump’s parents used to live); Liberace; the Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier; the actor Bruce Willis, who sold his apartment in 2005 for $13 million; and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who sold his 5,300-square-foot duplex, on the 59th and 60th floors, for $16.5 million in 2010. That price was matched by the 2013 sale of restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow’s 38th-floor triplex for $16.5 million. Video: Trump’s Biggest Failed Business Ventures
Along with the famous have been the less well-known residents: billionaires, gangsters, minor celebrities, and gamblers. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, now under indictment on 12 counts—including conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, and tax fraud—purchased Apartment 43G in 2006 for $3,675,000. He offered it as collateral for his $10 million bail in November. Federal prosecutors objected, however, to the $6 million price tag Manafort’s attorneys put on the apartment. Manafort originally purchased 43G in an all-cash deal through an entity called John Hannah L.L.C., during a period when he made a number of real-estate purchases with cash. He transferred the deed to 43G into his own name in 2015, and then promptly took out a $3 million mortgage on the apartment. According to prosecutors, the apartment’s current value is no more than $2.7 million, which means that when the mortgage is factored in, it has a negative value. Another resident is Vadim Trincher, a Russian who pleaded guilty in 2013 to money-laundering and to having run an international gambling ring with a Russian crime lord that, according to prosecutors, laundered some $100 million. Trincher, who was released from prison earlier this year, served out the remainder of his sentence under house arrest at Trump Tower, in his 63rd-floor apartment, which reportedly has such finishing touches as 24-karat-gold faucets and a $350,000 Tanzanian-amethyst bathroom floor. Hillel Nahmad, the art dealer who spent 17 years buying up the entire 51st floor of Trump Tower (at an estimated cost of $18.4 million), served five months in prison in 2014 for running a gambling ring out of his Trump Tower home. Susetta Mion, an Italian heiress, is alleged in a lawsuit filed by her niece to have stolen her dying mother’s $15 million fortune in 2007. Mion, who has dismissed the lawsuit as a family quarrel that is being resolved, at one point reportedly owned three apartments in the building. Trump Tower is known for the high proportion of corporate or otherwise anonymous owners. There are units owned by L.L.C.’s registered in Panama, Puerto Rico, Dubai, the British Virgin Islands, and other locations, including New York. They come with names like Dalimar Assets; Azalea Properties; Hibiscus Properties; Lionson Tower, L.L.C.; and Yellow Diamond, Inc. One reason for the corporate façades, says a broker, is privacy. Wealthy people don’t want to be found, some for reasons of personal security. For these residents—who feel safer having their bags checked by police, or being stopped by Secret Service agents on their way back from getting a cup of coffee—the scanners at the entrance, the police, and the Secret Service hanging around in the stairwells after Trump’s election have been |
aswell...the feeling of vertigo while playing ME was unreal!I understand why ppl are so cautious, more so with the VR nonsense in the early 90's but my goodness it is an amazing experience. I actually like how so many seem so negative and hesitant with it, cause once they actually try it, I promise you will be blown away(well as long as whatever you are playing isn't a turd lol)
User Info: Mindwipe77 Mindwipe77 3 years ago #4 My GOTY 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCJJYMsgSsk
PS1 PS2 PS3 PS4 PSP PS Vita PS TV Owner I plan to buy it if the price isn't too insane
User Info: foody58 foody58 3 years ago #5 "Beat me if you can, survive if I let you" Dont care at all looks stupid extremely expensive
User Info: jorgeammo jorgeammo 3 years ago #6 It won't get support from developers, or the majority of consumers, so enjoy playing the few games that launch with it and don't look forward to seeing much more than that.
User Info: Giarccpsn Giarccpsn 3 years ago #7 jorgeammo posted...
It won't get support from developers, or the majority of consumers, so enjoy playing the few games that launch with it and don't look forward to seeing much more than that.
Exactly, if it doesn't have tons of 3rd party support it will fail. We all know Sony is abysmal at supporting it's own products. GT | NNID | PSN ID: JoeKnightt
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4191230423.png Exactly, if it doesn't have tons of 3rd party support it will fail. We all know Sony is abysmal at supporting it's own products.
User Info: Jackal Jackal 3 years ago #8 PSN: Jackal-5, XBox: Jackal 55 (No, I don't have a 360)
EVE Online: Jonak, Ouya: Zeek_Bronz I want to give it a try with Eve Valkyrie.
User Info: Psychodrama_80 Psychodrama_80 3 years ago #9 jorgeammo posted...
It won't get support from developers, or the majority of consumers, so enjoy playing the few games that launch with it and don't look forward to seeing much more than that.
but it already has been with more and more devs jumping on board, pretty much all of them universally praising the experience lol....theres already many games out that will support it day one aswell, its been receiving support already and its not even out lol....
its amazing how some of you let ignorance and hate run things for you lol
I mean if you have no interest in it for whatever reason so be it but why go on to simply show you are filled with hate and ignorance lol? El-P: How to Serve Man (the meanest things I'd never say)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJldXDWhpvA but it already has been with more and more devs jumping on board, pretty much all of them universally praising the experience lol....theres already many games out that will support it day one aswell, its been receiving support already and its not even out lol....its amazing how some of you let ignorance and hate run things for you lolI mean if you have no interest in it for whatever reason so be it but why go on to simply show you are filled with hate and ignorance lol?Mark Hunt’s performance at Fight Night Japan against Roy Nelson has earned the New Zealand native his breakthrough into the top 5 of the heavyweight division rankings.
Hunt’s perfectly-placed right uppercut three minutes into the second round of the Fight Night Japan main event over the weekend impressed the voting panelists, allowing the 40-year-old to pass Josh Barnett, now No. 6 at heavyweight, in the official UFC rankings.
Hunt immediately made his plea for a fight that will put him on the road to a title shot at the Fight Night Japan post-fight press conference.
“I want to move forward. I want to move up in the rankings and get a title shot, you know?” Hunt said. “My purpose is to fight for a title. Fighting someone outside the top 10, win or lose, makes me go backwards.”
> Check Out The Complete Official UFC Rankings List
Unbeaten lightweight Myles Jury made noise in Japan as well with his first-round TKO win over Takanori Gomi. He moved up to No. 8 at 155 pounds, passing Jim Miller, who now sits at No. 9.
Jury said he doesn’t pay attention to the rankings but instead is focused on staying active and winning fights.
“I don’t pay attention to the rankings. It’s cool that apparently I’m ranked now, but I feel like if I keep taking fights and getting better as a martial artist, they can’t deny me for the title forever. I feel like a win over Gomi is a respectable win.”
Also in the lightweight division, Jorge Masvidal, ahead of his bout against James Krause at UFC 178, moved up a spot to No. 12. Rustam Khabilov dropped to No. 13. Also at heavyweight, Matt Mitrione booted Minotauro Nogueira to take the No. 15 spot, while Bigfoot Silva passed Nelson into the No. 8 position.
In the bantamweight division, former champion Dominick Cruz, who makes his much-anticipated return to the Octagon at UFC 178 against Takeya Mizugaki, jumped two spots to No. 10. Alex Caceres fell three spots to No. 13, Erik Perez jumped a spot to No. 12, and Mike Easton dropped Joe Soto on his way to No. 14 at 135 pounds.
Kyoji Horiguchi passed Louis Gaudinot to take over the No. 13 spot in the flyweight division. Jake Ellenberger moved up to No. 7 past the new No. 8 Demian Maia in the welterweight division, while Costas Philippou jumped past Thales Leites into the No. 11 spot at 185 pounds. Also in the middleweight division, Tim Boetsch moved up to No. 13 past Mark Munoz, who falls to No. 14.
In the women’s bantamweight division, Leslie Smith took over the No. 13 spot, sending Raquel Pennington down a spot to No. 14.The initial review of the Cleveland Browns' handling of quarterback Colt McCoy's concussion Thursday night is being labeled as a "blatant system failure" by a union source because the team's medical staff did not conduct proper testing before sending him back into the game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The NFL and the NFL Players Association's chief physicians -- Dr. Elliott Pellman and Dr. Thom Mayer -- have conducted the initial review, sources said, and both the league and the union will continue the process that one source says will "likely" be the catalyst for the placement of independent neurologists at each game site in time for the 2012 season.
Sources said it wasn't until Friday morning that McCoy was administered the mandatory Sport Concussion Assessment Tool review, commonly referred to as SCAT 2, which doctors determined was abnormal. McCoy was sent home to rest. One source involved in the review said it was troublesome that the test was not administered Thursday night, especially given that McCoy's symptoms were evident when the team's public relations staff asked television cameras not to turn on their lights during a postgame interview. Light sensitivity is one of the symptoms associated with concussions.
Browns coach Pat Shurmur insisted McCoy did not show concussion symptoms until after the game and that the team did conduct a sideline exam. Other sources said the initial review shows that the team's medical staff was more attentive to a hand injury that McCoy suffered on the hit from Steelers linebacker James Harrison.
An NFLPA source further maintained the initial review questions whether a thorough sideline assessment known as "Maddocks Score" was conducted. That assessment includes the following questions:
• At what venue are we at today?
• Which half is it now?
• Who scored last?
• What team did you play last?
• Did you win your last game?
The Browns' medical staff has been praised often for following concussion protocol. During Thursday night's game, fullback Owen Marecic and tight end Ben Watson were not allowed to return to the game after being diagnosed with concussion symptoms. Browns linebacker Scott Fujita also praised the team's staff recently for adhering strictly to the concussion guidelines.
But McCoy's father, Brad, a longtime high school football coach, had been critical of the Browns' handling of his son, saying Colt couldn't remember the play that briefly knocked him out of the game.
Chris Mortensen is ESPN's senior NFL analyst. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.— The officer seen in a video punching a woman along the 10 Freeway in July could face “potentially serious charges” after the California Highway Patrol forwarded its investigation Wednesday to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.
Officer Daniel Andrew, who was seen hitting Marlene Pinnock on a cellphone video taken July 1, has had his peace officer duties revoked effective immediately and was moved from desk duty to administrative time off, officials said.
Although law enforcement agencies have primary responsibility to investigate allegations of misconduct, the DA’s Office requires “all allegations of criminal misconduct by law enforcement personnel, where probable cause exists to believe that a crime has been committed, must be referred to that office for review and consideration of filing of criminal charges,” according to the CHP.
A video, taken by a passerby, showed the officer punching Pinnock, a 51-year-old grandmother who was reportedly walking barefoot along the shoulder of the freeway near the La Brea Avenue.
CBS2’s Juan Fernandez reported that it took investigators seven weeks to prepare their findings for presentation to District Attorney Jackie Lacey, although Pinnock’s attorney, Caree Harper, questioned the length of time.
“I want some sort of action. I want some people put in jail right now,” said Harper. “If it were you or I, we would have been put in jail immediately. There would have been no questions asked.”
The DA’s Office will review the investigation and decide on the filing of criminal charges against Andrew. The CHP will also complete its ongoing internal administrative investigation, which is a separate process from the criminal investigation.
“The CHP understands the public’s interest in this case, and it is our desire to be as transparent as possible while adhering to the laws and due process that govern any investigation,” the agency said in a statement. “We value the public’s trust and appreciate the community’s patience as we complete this important process.”
RELATED STORIES:
CHP Officer Accused In Beating Of Grandmother Identified In Federal Lawsuit
Woman Seen Being Beaten By CHP Officer Finally Breaks Her Silence
CHP Investigating Excessive Force Charge In Beating Of Woman
CHP Investigating Beating Of Woman On Shoulder Of 10 FreewayMarotta wants end to ‘greedy’ agents
By Football Italia staff
Juventus general manager Beppe Marotta has called for the regulation of agents and an end to their “very greedy” ways.
A report in Monday’s Gazzetta dello Sport explains how $1.1bn (€982m) was spent on agent fees between 2013 and 2016 in deals monitored by the Transfer Matching System (TMS).
“When a club is faced by other competitors, especially big European clubs, it has no choice but to accept requests that run counter to any logic,” he told the newspaper.
“We must regulate the role of these professionals, who are sincere but also very greedy.”
Marotta may have been referring to Mino Raiola, who is said to have pocketed €27m from Paul Pogba’s world-record move back to Manchester United from Juve last summer.The Metronomicon
Developed by Puuba
Published by Kasedo Games
Available on GOG, Steam
Games today have taken on the challenge of fusing elements of different genres in order to make the story, gameplay, or characters more compelling, but a rhythm-based action game with aspects of an RPG? How could that work?
In The Metronomicon, these worlds blend into a colorful work of art that stands apart from other music-based games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The story begins with the graduation of four new masters of the “rhythmic combat arts”, ready to throw melodic attacks at the horrible creatures created by the evil Metronomicon, a mysterious force infecting the land.
This story, which seemed somewhat comical at first due to the art style and immature attitudes of certain characters, does continue to develop as your characters travel through locations like “The Wild Forest” and “Mount Rage”. New characters also show up along the way that offer more depth to the world.
The real strength to The Metronomicon is its fast-paced, exciting, and ever-changing gameplay. The mechanics operate in the same way as most other rhythm games on the market. As the colored arrow scrolls down the screen, you are required to hit the corresponding arrow on your keyboard. You perform attacks, supporting magic and offensive spells by building streaks for certain lengths of time on each character.
The additional twist comes into play when you realize that you are controlling four characters at the same time in a battle, switching between them by pressing your “Shift” keys. And that is where the true fun of the game begins. Real-time strategizing occurs as you prioritize whether to cast “Cure” with one character or perform “Bash” with another.
Once you’ve decided, the question arises as to whether you can actually play the rhythm challenge placed before you, and whether it would be best to choose the easier notes available to another of your characters at that time. While complicated at first, the character changes and constant decision-making became second nature very quickly.
Even though I was able to catch on to those change, the battle screen is incredibly overwhelming. After playing through the entire story mode, I still struggled with finding certain elements on the screen. The game doesn’t offer you a great opportunity to take it in as you are always focused on the fast-paced notes. While this could be another reason to play more, it could also speak to the immense amount of material that comes with combining two massive genres.
The RPG elements of the game add another layer in battle. As your characters level up, they unlock new moves and equipment, giving them even more ways to fight the Metronomicon’s creatures. For some, this means unlocking a new elemental attack while for your offensive characters, this would mean an attack that causes a status ailment such as “Bleed”, which slowly drains your enemy’s health.
Swapping out these moves, your characters and the different equipment do help to change each encounter, keeping each song battle fresh and exciting. The game didn’t make me feel like I was becoming a button-mashing robot, which can be a problem with rhythm games.
Ultimately, any game with a rhythm element must have an impressive playlist, and The Metronomicon is no exception. The game boasts a fully-licensed soundtrack full of great electronic and indie artists, including an exclusive track from Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence and an unreleased track from American rock/electronica band Shiny Toy Guns.
The only real downside to this soundtrack comes with extended play of The Metronomicon. The tracks, while great separately, can begin to sound extremely repetitive after you’ve been playing through the story for a while. There are standout tracks that are markedly different from the others, but some of the others seem more like filler.
This problem could be because many of the artists contributed multiple tracks to the game’s soundtrack. Even though YACHT, Perturbator, and J-Punch are certainly artists with different sounds, the unique tracks can seem like oases in a desert in some of The Metronomicon’s levels.
Despite this minor complaint, The Metronomicon’s mashup of genres allows it to have multiple game modes that make you want to keep playing even after finishing the initial story. In the “Arena” mode, new challenges are available daily to earn specialized equipment and “street cred”, a type of currency used to rebuild damaged parts of the character’s alma mater. By rebuilding this, you unlock even more sections of the game and new team attacks, incredibly powerful abilities that can be the saving grace of a difficult song battle.
At the end of the day, The Metronomicon speaks to the very essence of what a game should be at its core: fun. There are no incredibly meaningful takeaways, no profound messages to speak to, but that’s not what this is about. If you need something that will allow you to truly escape, destress and have pure fun, then grab your dancing shoes. The Metronomicon awaits.It’s showtime! With the upcoming release of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children later this month, it was finally time for us to dive into the filmography of Tim Burton… his early filmography, that is. We decided to revisit his movies from the mid-’80s through to the late ’90s from Peewee’s Big Adventure to Sleepy Hollow (minus the Batman movies, which we’ve covered previously). Along the way we discuss his partnerships with Johnny Depp and Danny Elfman, his love of kitsch and gothic horror, his use of stop motion animation and practical effects, and his transition from quirky auteur to blockbuster veteran. So how much influence did Burton’s collaborators have on his style? Is there a specific moment where he sold his soul to Hollywood? Is Beetlejuice chock full of plotholes and inconsistencies? Is Mars Attacks underrated or underwhelming? Most importantly, is there a cure for Frank’s Timburculosis? Turn on the juice and see what shakes loose on this month’s premium podcast below.
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This series of premium podcasts was created to help support the regular weekly Film Junk Podcast. Head on over to Bandcamp and download full episodes for a minimum donation of just $1. As always, let us know if you experience any technical difficulties or if you have any other suggestions for future specials. Thanks for your support!Continue Reading Below Advertisement
Instead, a chipper and sporting Hedges got back to me almost immediately. Here's what he had to say.
Why, briefly, should our readers consider voting for you?
"For historic preservation, to keep our option alive on the table, to provide a viable alternative for voters who say to themselves, 'None of the above.'"
Government data has found that teenage consumption of alcohol is on the decline, and one of the contributing factors seems to be improved education on the risks of over-consumption. Why do you support total prohibition, as opposed to education on how to drink responsibly?
"Education is the beginning of the political process in dealing with any issue. For example, people always knew that smoking was harmful (education), but there was no significant decrease in smoking until smoking became socially unacceptable and was actively opposed by governments at all levels (prohibition).
"To drink'responsibly' is to drink Adam's Ale -- water. Virtually all drinkers of alcohol think they are drinking'responsibly,' regardless of their level of consumption. That's PR fluff designed to neutralize the issue and maintain alcohol pushers' profits."
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The vast majority of your membership is over the age of 60. What are the challenges that come with running a party without a youth movement, and how are you trying to attract younger supporters? Is there a concern that the Prohibition Party might be on its last legs?
"My greatest concern. I'm making tentative initiatives in social media, although I don't know enough about it to get full benefit from it. (I need to be tutored by some teen-agers.) We are getting a bit of interest from young people. When we do, I try to find a way to get them involved, so they'll bond with us and hang around. I have people doing Twitter and Facebook, for example. I'm also trying to present the Prohibition Party as living history, rather than as an influential organization -- people find that realistic and believable, whereas if we tell them we're the wave of the future, they laugh and leave."
Your party is obviously opposed to vice in all of its forms. What vice are you most tempted to indulge in your day-to-day life? Be honest!
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"I'm a scofflaw. I never use a seat belt (an anti-government statement), I do my own home repairs without bothering to get building permits (a benefit of living in a remote location), I eat too much chocolate (marginally overweight), I use foul language when I'm among friends. Oh yeah, and when my granddaughter was little, I taught her how to swear in foreign languages, so she could say whatever she wanted to in school without offending the teacher."
Alcohol, for better or for worse, is currently a major part of American culture. In particular, champagne is used to celebrate weddings, to celebrate New Year's Eve, etc. If prohibition is reinstated, what do you suggest that Americans use as an alternative?
"The Woman's Christian Temperance Union has a booklet of non-alcoholic punch recipes -- they call them 'Fruestas.' Carbonated fruit juices (available as 'celebration beverages' in supermarkets) chilled in the punch bowl with frozen juice concentrates. It's easy to concoct flavors you like, no recipes needed. To have something really good, get fresh (unpasteurized) apple cider, get some fresh pineapples and crush them for their juice, press some fresh grapes (local varieties, not necessarily the standard grocery store fare), squeeze your own fresh orange juice (even premium juice in the store has bitterness from mechanical grinding up of the rind -- mandarin oranges provide a juice with delicate flavor)."French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
European leaders are fuming over the scope of NSA surveillance. But France, Germany, and other countries are far from innocent bystanders when it comes to conducting dragnet spying, new leaks have revealed.
According to documents passed to the Guardian by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, British eavesdropping agency GCHQ has been working in close cooperation with a host of European nations to covertly tap into citizens’ communications. German, French, Spanish, and Swedish intelligence services have “all developed methods of mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years” alongside GCHQ, the newspaper reported Friday.
Recent scoops based on Snowden’s leaked files have suggested that the NSA is sweeping up millions of call and email records from Spain, France, and Germany, prompting furious responses from leaders in these countries. French President Francois Hollande has blasted the United States for “unacceptable” snooping, while Spain’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying the same. The German government has also responded angrily, slamming the alleged monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone and describing the revelations as like a “Hollywood nightmare.”
But though these countries may not be engaging in surveillance that is as broad and aggressive as the programs operated by the United States and the United Kingdom, it is clear that they are playing at least some sort of contributory role. The documents cited by the Guardian reportedly say that GCHQ has been assisting Germany’s secret services to push for broader surveillance powers. GCHQ describes Germany’s federal intelligence service as having “huge technological potential and good access to the heart of the internet.” France is described as a “highly motivated, technically competent partner” who works with GCHQ on a “cooperate and share” basis.
Spain’s spy agency CNI is described as being “a very capable counterpart” that excels in the field of “covert Internet ops.” A document apparently dated from 2008 stated that the Spaniards had secretly collaborated with an unnamed British telecommunications company to help monitor the Internet. GCHQ also works closely with Sweden and the Netherlands, the files apparently show.
The cooperation is not only intra-Europe, either. Indeed, on Tuesday the Wall Street Journal reported that European countries that are part of the NATO alliance have been sharing intercepted communications directly with the NSA. This suggests that some of the European leaders who have expressed outrage in recent weeks are either ignorant about their own spy operations or are feigning ignorance in response to widespread public outrage over the surveillance. But not everyone is playing that game. Last week, the former chief of France’s secret services, Bernard Squarcini, said he was “bewildered” by the reaction from some European governments. “The Americans spy on us on the commercial and industrial level like we spy on them,” he said. “No one is fooled.”The atmospherics have rarely been so good on the eve of Iran nuclear negotiations, which are set to resume tomorrow in Baghdad between world powers and the Islamic Republic.
United Nations nuclear agency chief Yukiya Amano today announced an agreement with Iran that was expected to deepen inspections and clear up remaining questions about possible weapons-related work – issues that have plagued Iran's nuclear dossier for years. Speaking in Vienna after a high-profile visit to Tehran on Monday, Mr. Amano said "important" progress had been made on a framework plan and that an accord would be signed "quite soon."
Yet as expectations of progress have grown in recent weeks, analysts question whether Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can rise above domestic and ideological issues and strike a deal.
Ayatollah Khamenei is torn between hard-liners who reject any agreement with the West in principle – his own rhetoric has long pointed in that direction – and the benefits of global recognition of Iran's nuclear program, with a deal that also avoids war and eases crippling sanctions.
"The only thing that makes me doubt is: Up there [for Khamenei] is there a will to go ahead and make a deal, or not?" asks a veteran analyst in Tehran who preferred not to be named.
"Is there a... clearly decided aim at 'Let's get this over with, put it behind us, and move forward?' " asks the analyst. "The problem is the hard-line guys... who think that Iran is in the best, strongest position ever, and America and the West are in the weakest position, and we don't need to lift a small finger to do anything; it's they who have to do something.
"This crazy way of thinking is still in fashion; the moderate voice is not being heard a lot," adds the Tehran analyst. "This hard-line voice is still holding the loudspeaker, and shouting its ideas, and there is no sign that it's being shut up."
Khamenei takes charge of the nuclear issue
Positive signals from both sides have preceded the Baghdad talks, in which Iran and the P5+1 group (the US, China, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany) will seek a deal to verifiably limit Iran's nuclear efforts to peaceful use only.
Before leaving Tehran, Amano – who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – had said the "intensive negotiations in a good atmosphere" would have a "positive impact" on the Baghdad talks.
Iran replied in kind, with chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili on Monday praising "very good talks" that "God willing [will yield] good cooperation in the future."
These are the latest positive signals, which coincide with political dynamics inside Iran that consolidate Khamenei's position. Challenges from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year have seen the fiery president sidelined. And parliamentary elections in early March were officially portrayed as a "victorious" vote of confidence in the regime.
This has enabled Khamenei to take charge of the nuclear dossier as never before, says a ranking former European diplomat who recently finished his tour in Tehran.
"Everything I hear in the last few months out of Iran is that it is Khamenei who is driving this this time, a difference [from] before, where he always had someone in between and different factions driving it," says the former diplomat, who asked not to be named.
Before the Istanbul talks in April, which broke a 15-month dry spell, Mr. Jalili was named a "personal representative" of Khamenei.
"That's clearly signaling [to the P5+1] that they are only dealing with one guy, which makes things much easier," says the former diplomat.
Perilous position for Khamenei?
But while that may help streamline the nuclear negotiations, it is "not good" in the long-run for Iran's Islamic system, where past battles between competing power centers helped prevent a "normal dictatorship," he says.
"Now with everything concentrated on Khamenei, you have a bit more of the classical dictatorial structure, which also means that everything that goes wrong can only be attributed to one guy," adds the former diplomat.
Such a role means the talks have put Khamenei in a "perilous position," writes Iran expert Mehdi Khalaji, in a recent analysis for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"Compromising is as dangerous for [Khamenei] as digging in his heels," after years in which he "has made an uncompromising nuclear policy central to his domestic authority," writes Mr. Khalaji.
"For years, he sabotaged the efforts of Iranian officials who might have cut a deal with the West because he doubted their loyalty to him," adds Khalaji. "Those whom Khamenei did trust were not skillful enough to craft a policy of compromise that would preserve his ability to portray himself as a tough anti-American leader."
A deal that'makes everybody happy'
Iran has not wavered in its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, once a red line for the West. Today more than 9,000 centrifuges are installed in Iran, and few now expect Iran to stop entirely.
But Iran has frequently said it is willing to halt its most sensitive work enriching to 20 percent purity – the level it needs to fuel a small research reactor, though technically not far from weapons-grade 90 percent.
Initial stages of a deal are likely to see Iran limit enrichment to below 5 percent, to fuel power reactors, and allow intrusive inspections, in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
If the positive signals are genuine, says the Tehran analyst – and Iran is not asked to give up enrichment altogether – then a deal is possible "that makes everybody happy."
"Iran can insist that we gained our right to enrich and have the knowledge of the [nuclear] fuel cycle, we gained it – we brought it out of the mouths of the enemies, or whatever formulation they want – and we are not making any weapon or secret materials, so let them inspect," says the analyst.
Track II meetings to build trust
The contours of such a deal have taken clearer shape in recent months. A suggested framework published by the Oxford Research Group on Monday spells out the importance of defining the endgame, "seeing the opportunities for positive signaling," and taking "regime change" off the table.
Crucial to success will be creating a "balance of advantage," such that "neither side is forced to undertake commitments dependent on the assurances of the other party's future actions."
The Oxford study suggests Track II meetings to build trust behind closed doors, in parallel with set-piece talks, face-saving mechanisms for both sides, and a review of the "carrot and stick" policy that in Iran's view yields only "weapons in a protracted effort to achieve'regime change.'"
Some of these measures are likely to emerge at the Baghdad talks. Western officials have said Iran would be presented a "Chinese menu" of options.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard has been "suspiciously quiet" on the nuclear issue in recent weeks, in contrast to earlier this year, says the former European diplomat.
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Still, the Fars News Agency on Monday quoted Iran's armed forces chief of staff Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi saying that Iran remained committed to "the full annihilation of Israel."
The problem for Iran's leadership, notes the diplomat, is that "inside the regime there will always be – like on the American side or Israeli side – people who are against these negotiations and reaching a compromise as a matter of ideology."Man, I didn't realize today was going to be Tina-posting-about-Adventure Time day when I got into the office. If I knew I would have brought in a bunch of candy to eat ferociously while pretending I was eating citizens of the Candy Kingdom. (Cause why not? I don't know why!)
Jake's stretching into various forms in Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?! will be limited, just by virtue of the fact that it's impossible to accomodate for all the whacky shapes Jake gets himself into in the actual show. But what can he do? We already knew he'd be a bridge, and Pen Ward told Kotaku he could turn into an anvil.
But these new screens show us definitively what Jake can do. Take a look.
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It might not be as robust as Jake's abilities on the show, but I still think Jake deserves an everything burrito for his efforts. Aw, Jake always deserves an everything burrito after that last time!The decision to publish and distribute the book may help the Russian president to tighten his grip on power.
To celebrate the New Year, the Russian government gave hundreds of high-ranking officials a special gift: a 400-page book of “prophetic” quotes by President Vladimir Putin.
The book, titled Words That Change the World, includes 19 of the most important speeches and interviews Putin has given during the last 12 years. Hundreds of short, tweetable passages are bolded in the text.
Anton Volodin, who spearheaded the book’s publication, said Putin’s words are valuable to Russian leaders largely because they tend to be prophetic: “We noticed that everything Putin says, to varying degrees, comes true,” he said. “In this book, we have traced his words and confirmed this idea. Putin’s words can be described as prophetic.”
After Putin’s deputy chief of staff saw a copy of the book, he deemed it a must-read for all Russian officials.
He snapped up all 1,500 copies of the initial print run and distributed them to officials across the nation as New Year’s gifts. They were sent along with a letter saying the book should be viewed as a guide to the Kremlin’s “values and guiding principles.”
Another print run is scheduled for later this month, which will make the book available to the public for $11 per copy. Plans are in the works for Chinese and English translations.
The distribution of this book has sobering implications because it follows a pattern set by several of history’s darkest dictatorships.
The Soviet Scriptures
During the days of the Soviet Union, government officials and the general public were encouraged to be well acquainted with Vladimir Lenin’s Collected Works.
These books instructed readers on how to think about everything from military science and industry to agriculture and the role of young people in Soviet society.
From 1918 to 1974, the Soviets published a total of 465,714,000 copies of Collected Works, often revising the content to conform to the party’s ever evolving policies. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia says the books “aided greatly in the party’s theoretical work and in the propagation of Marxism-Leninism.”
Mao’s Manual
Then there was Mao Tse-Tung’s so-called Little Red Book. During China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, it was virtually mandatory for all Chinese people to own and constantly carry a copy of this book laying out all of Chairman Mao’s ideologies. Researches say that only the Holy Bible has sold more copies than Mao’s book.
The trouble is that Mao’s communist ideologies ended up killing 65 to 75 million people. That makes him the man responsible for more murders than any other person in history. And historians agree that his Little Red Book played a major role in advancing his lethal ideas among the Chinese populace.
The Führer’s Folios
And don’t forget Mein Kampf, which Adolf Hitler wrote while imprisoned before he become Germany’s chancellor. This book laid out Hitler’s plan for Germany, by naming Jews as “racially inferior” and saying they threatened the “racially superior Aryans.”
During Hitler’s reign, a copy of the book was given to every soldier and newlywed couple in Germany. Sales of the book also made Hitler a wealthy man. By the end of World War ii, well over 10 million copies had been sold or distributed in Germany alone.
Historians agree that the widespread dissemination of Mein Kampf helped Hitler win Germans over to his cause, and gave traction to his diabolical ideas.
Qadhafi’s Copy
More recently, Libya’s late Muammar Qadhafi published the eccentric Green Book. Sometimes described as a “how-to” manual for dictators, the book set out Qadhafi’s philosophies on everything from the dangers of political parties to the importance of breastfeeding. From its first publication in 1975 until Qadhafi was killed in 2011, the book was required reading for all Libyans.
Abdul Majid, an English teacher in the capital, said the work helped Qadhafi maintain his iron grip on Libya to the detriment of the country: “The Green Book was a disaster for Libya. It led the country to its current miserable state.”
Niyazov’s Nonsense
Finally, we come to Turkmenistan’s late and unlamented dictator Saparmurat Niyazov. From 1985 until his death in 2006, Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan with a personality cult that put Josef Stalin’s to shame. In 2004, he published The Book of the Soul, which combined his religious instruction with revisionist Turkmenian history and plenty of forays into politics and philosophy.
Niyazov said The Book of the Soul was holy writ, on par with the Koran. With his heavily repressive state security apparatus, he made it mandatory reading at every level of elementary and collegiate education—often to the exclusion of subjects such as math and science. Niyazov even had questions about his book added to job interview scripts, civil service tests and the national drivers’ license exam.
Niyazov also had a copy of The Book of the Soul jettisoned out the airlock of a Russian space shuttle so that he could tell the Turkmen people he had conquered outer space. In 2006, Niyazov said he had made a deal with God to guarantee that anyone who read the book three times would automatically go to heaven.
Back on Earth
The decision to publish and distribute the new book of Vladimir Putin’s quotes follows a pattern set by several of history’s darkest and most bizarre dictatorships.
Authoritarian rulers often portray themselves as the supreme source of wisdom for their nations. They believe that by demonstrating their wisdom, they can validate their absolute power. For many, writing books—and requiring subordinates to view them as sacred texts |
Republican National Convention and has entrusted his two oldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, with his most prized possession during the presidency: his company.
Since November, Trump has narrowed his Supreme Court choices from a list of 21 potential picks he announced during the campaign. He interviewed at least three finalists in New York prior to moving into the White House, including Hardiman, 10th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch and 11th Circuit Judge Bill Pryor.
People familiar with the search process have said that Hardiman, 51, and Gorsuch, 49, have emerged as the front-runners to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, with Pryor’s chances fading in recent weeks due to opposition from the evangelical community. Trump has said he plans to announce his choice next week.
A second Trump adviser said that while Barry has unquestionably backed Hardiman, her support has not been determinative: “I don’t think it is fair to say the only reason he’s got juice on the list is because of her.”
A third official who’s been involved in the process said winning support from Trump’s family has been one of the key elements of the search.
Barry, 79, is a well-respected judge who was first appointed to a federal district court more than three decades ago by President Ronald Reagan. President Bill Clinton elevated her to the appeals court in 1999, and she assumed senior status there in 2011. Hardiman joined the 3rd Circuit in 2007.
“They are regularly sitting together, deciding cases together, participating together in oral arguments,” said appellate lawyer Matthew Stiegler, who also writes a blog about the 3rd Circuit.
Stiegler is among those who see Barry’s hidden hand behind the steady ascent of Hardiman, who was among the lesser-known judges under consideration.
“Judge Gorsuch is a judge who was on a lot of conservative radar screens a year ago, and I don’t know if the same could necessarily be said of Judge Hardiman,” he said. Of Hardiman’s new place on the Supreme Court short list, he added: “I think one good explanation for that is that [Trump’s] sister regards him very, very highly.”
The idea that Trump’s sister — who was attacked by Sen. Ted Cruz during the 2016 primaries as “a radical pro-abortion extremist” — is among the president’s judicial counselors makes some Republicans nervous. Even if they’re happy with the finalists he is currently considering, they don’t view her as a reliably conservative judge.
“I’m hoping she’s not part of the team making the decision,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, a group that plans to spend millions of dollars getting Trump’s choice confirmed.
Yet Severino said she’d be satisfied if Hardiman is Trump’s pick. “There are no wrong answers among the people he’s choosing between,” she said. “If she wants to throw in ‘Tom Hardiman is a wonderful colleague,’ fine.”
Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer who interviewed both Barry and Trump in the early 1990s, said the two siblings “seemed close” and called Barry “very solid, feet on the ground — nothing like him.”
“He certainly seemed to respect her,” Blair added, noting Trump would point out her judgeship with “great pride.”
Hardiman has plenty of conservative and legal credentials. He won over gun-rights supporters with a notable 2013 dissent about handgun permits. Leonard Leo, who’s advised Trump on his Supreme Court selection, told POLITICO earlier this week that Hardiman is “an extraordinarily talented and smart jurist” who has “a very direct and understandable writing style.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has threatened to block any Trump Supreme Court pick he doesn’t like. He voted to confirm Hardiman, who was elevated to the appeals court in a 95-0 vote. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, also voted in favor of confirming him.
Gorsuch was confirmed by a voice vote. In contrast, Pryor was confirmed in a contentious 53-45 roll call.
While Gorsuch has the traditional Supreme Court pedigree — a clerk for two justices, Harvard Law School, a stint at the Justice Department, service as a federal appellate judge — Hardiman has a more unusual path that could appeal to Trump’s more populist streak.
It has been widely reported that Hardiman was the first in his family to go to college, at Notre Dame, and his law degree is from Georgetown, not Yale or Harvard, as is typical for the court. He also drove a taxicab to help put himself through school.
“He loves a gripping personal story,” one of the people involved in the court search said of Trump.How to write an awesome Active Record bug report
The main area of Ruby on Rails that I work on is Active Record. As such, I see a lot of bug reports for Active Record. This article will be about how to submit a good bug report to help people like me (Rails committers) help people like you (bug inflicted developers).
Of course, the best bug report will include a well-written test-driven patch. If you’re able to jump into the source code and fix it yourself, please just do that rather than reading this. This article is for people who have found a problem, but are not able to fix it themselves.
Create a minimal test script that will reproduce the bug
When I am trying to fix a bug, I often spend most of my time trying to reproduce what the author has reported. This can be frustrating and difficult, especially when the bug has been described confusingly or ambiguously.
Bug reports also sometimes contain a lot of code that is completely irrelevant to the problem being described. This makes it difficult to hone in on the actual problem and makes the fix take longer.
So here’s what to do:
1. Isolate the problem
Most likely you have discovered the problem in your day-to-day work. Your project probably contains 30 different models and hundreds of lines of code. I’m sure there are some dark corners. Drop into the console (by running rails c ) and start trying to reduce the problem. Suppose you encountered an exception when running the following expression:
UserFolder.joins( :user ).includes( :user, :tags ).where( :users => { :role_id => Role.find_by_name('admin') }).order('user_folders.name desc')
There’s a lot going on here, and it’s probably not all directly related to producing the bug. So start trying to remove parts. Does the exception still happen if the where is removed? How about the order? Are both the includes necessary? Can the joins be removed?
2. Create a standalone test script
Suppose you reduced the above to:
UserFolder.joins( :user ).includes( :user )
That’s great. But the code to reproduce the bug is still entangled in your project. We need to pull it into a separate script that anyone can run. So look at which models are relevant to the bug. It looks like just UserFolder and User matter here, and only the user association is involved. So we can take a good first stab at a standalone script:
gem'rails ','3.1.0'require'active_record'puts " Active Record #{ ActiveRecord :: VERSION :: STRING } " ActiveRecord :: Base.establish_connection( :adapter =>'sqlite3 ', :database =>':memory:') ActiveRecord :: Schema.define do create_table :users, :force => true do |t| end create_table :user_folders, :force => true do |t| t.integer :user_id end end class User < ActiveRecord :: Base end class UserFolder < ActiveRecord :: Base belongs_to :user end user = User.create! user_folder = UserFolder.create( :user => user) UserFolder.joins( :user ).includes( :user )
Now you can test the script out. Assuming you have the rails and sqlite3 gems installed, you can simply run ruby path/to/script.rb and see if that reproduces the problem.
If it doesn’t, you need to work out what the difference is.
Notice that we are connecting to a sqlite3 in-memory database. These are great because they are lightweight and created on-the-fly when you run the script. However, perhaps your problem is database-specific, or relies on a feature that sqlite3 does not provide. If so, you’ll need to create a test database on your chosen database server (e.g. postgresql or mysql) and then modify the establish_connection call to connect to it. This hash that is passed is exactly like the details you specify in config/database.yml.
If the difference is not down to the database, perhaps there was other relevant code in your app’s models which should be added to the script. Or perhaps your test data is not quite right.
3. Find out if your bug has been fixed!
Rails development moves fast, and there’s a chance that your bug could have already been fixed in ‘edge Rails’ or a later version than you are running. Using the script we just wrote, we can easily compare the results against different Rails versions.
First, make sure you have the latest stable Rails installed ( gem install rails ) and then run the script again.
Assuming that does not work, try edge Rails. Use git to get the latest code:
git clone git://github.com/rails/rails.git
Now run bundler to get the dependencies:
bundle
Comment out the gem 'rails', '3.1.0 line in your script, because we will use Bundler for dependency management now. Then run:
bundle exec /path/to/script.rb
4. It hasn’t been fixed? :(
Take the script you just wrote and put it in a Gist. Now, go ahead and file the issue. Be sure to include the following information:
A link to your Gist What you expected to happen What actually happened Output from running the script against the latest Rails stable version and from running it against Rails edge
This script also means that if someone else comes along in 6 months time and wants to see if the problem still exists, they have an easy way to do so.
Follow these steps and feel the love
The people who work on Rails have limited amounts of time. So if you want your bug to be fixed, you can make a big difference by providing a good test script. Since Github added support for emoji there’s a decent chance that by doing so your efforts will be rewarded with a :heart: or two. Or at least that your bug will get fixed!
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments.Wars are always started by the adults, but not only adults take part. War does not spare anyone, so armed kids aren’t a rare occurrence. Sometimes they are orphans, sometimes volunteers or they were simply forced to serve in the army. One thing is certain; war often destroyed their future or literally their lives.
Children have often been pressed into conflicts throughout history. They have fought in wars as soldiers, both girls and boys. It was very common in some countries for children to fight in wars, right up into the Twentieth Century.
The recruitment of child soldiers has long been associated with irregular forces and guerrillas however when a country is facing annihilation; everybody is obliged to fight.
Here are some gut-wrenching images of kids at war- throughout the twentieth century.I first saw this film decades ago in one of my local movie theatres that catered to the Saturday matinee crowd. I also saw other such quirky films,e.g., The Adventures of Remo Williams, around that time in my life. While this special edition has many extras (some of which are simply underwhelming) the real pleasure is seeing this film in a beautiful HD format. While the movie's plot is borderline nonsensical, the true joy of this film lies in it functioning as an introduction to a saga already underway, not unlike the first Star Wars movie. The plot assumes that you know about the Banzai Institute, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, etc. and it spends little time explaining what they are and why the main characters are the way that they are. Seeing Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin and John Lithgow (at his scene-chewing best) makes this film and its pseudo-science fiction plot enjoyable and a real treat. However, despite the fact that this movie is racially diverse is its casting, there are elements that paradoxically are ethnically insensitive and somewhat dated. This film, while ahead of its time, it is a little long in the tooth and its eccentricities (some endearing, some aggravating) render it more of a failed experiment more than a visionary work of art that fans of it have asserted it be. That being said, given the rise of Nerd culture and Hollywood's current deficit of new ideas, it may be time to dust off Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers and give them a second chance at making the world safe from the forces of evil. Jersey Strong indeed!
Read moreThere are many famous actors who are hard to work with, but at least they show up to the set for the duration of the project. After all, filmmakers are going to be reluctant to cast an actor with a reputation for ditching a series midway, thus leaving everybody high and dry. Unfortunately, that's a lesson Chevy Chase had to learn the hard way.
Early in his career, Chase became the first Saturday Night Live cast member to leave the hit sketch show (which he says he did to marry a woman who didn't want to move to New York, not for a film career). But after his disagreements with Community creator Dan Harmon, Chase walked away from the series for good in 2012 when its fourth season was still in production. Harmon has said that Chase also frequently left the set before episodes had wrapped, which isn't going to win you any brownie points with future directors.Expand Members of Indonesia's religious minorities, including native faith believers, celebrate Indonesia’s Independence Day outside the State Palace, August 2016. Many of the slogans on the banners they carry advocate for and promote religious tolerance. © 2016 Andreas Harsono/Human Rights Watch
Indonesia’s beleaguered religious minority groups got some rare good news today.
The Constitutional Court ruled that the Population Administration Law’s prohibition on adherents of native faiths from listing their religion on official identification cards is unconstitutional.
The ruling will help protect adherents of more than 240 such religions from prosecution under Indonesia’s dangerously ambiguous blasphemy law. Prior to the court’s ruling, members of religious minorities faced an impossible choice: leave blank the ID card’s religion column and possibly be accused of being an atheist – which is punishable under the blasphemy law – or select one of Indonesia’s six officially protected religions and be accused of falsifying their identity. The 1965 blasphemy law only protects Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
All Indonesians must obtain a national ID card at age 17 and are required to apply for official documents including birth, marriage, and death certificates. For decades, the religious identity category of national ID cards and their implicit blasphemy prosecution threat for officially unrecognized religions have led some members of those communities to avoid applying for ID cards, depriving themselves of essential state services. Some local governments have imposed even more onerous discriminatory rules restricting religious minorities’ access to ID cards. In June, representatives of the Ahmadiyah community in Manislor district in West Java’s Kuningan regency filed a formal complaint against a local government requirement that they renounce their faith to obtain a national ID card.
The court ruling was a response to a legal challenge to the discriminatory articles of the 2006 Population Administration Law filed by several native faith adherents. If enforced, the ruling will eliminate an element of discrimination built into Indonesian law that affects the country’s estimated 400,000 native faith adherents. But it won’t help Ahmadiyah and Shia communities, who can still expect to be victims of routine bureaucratic discrimination related to national ID card issuance.
The Ministry of Home Affairs should use the court ruling as a starting point to abolish all of the discriminatory regulations and institutions that target religious minorities. As long as they remain on the books, the rights of Indonesia’s religious minorities will remain in peril.Of the six Superfund zones in the contaminated San Gabriel Basin, Puente Valley stands out like a sore thumb.
It’s the one that has no treatment.
“In the Puente Valley Operable Unit, very little has been done so far. That is (the responsibility of) Northrop Grumman,” one of two lead companies deemed responsible for leaking toxic chemicals into the groundwater, said Kenneth Manning, executive director of the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority.
At the Baldwin Park-Azusa site, five treatment plants have been built. Four plants operate at the El Monte site. Four are operating in the South El Monte area and two were built at Whittier Narrows, which has been so successful one plant closed because contamination was eliminated, according to the WQA. The Alhambra site is still awaiting an EPA order, known as a Record of Decision.
In total, 1.4 million acre-feet of water have been treated at 32 water treatment facilities (one acre-foot equals about 325,000 gallons), enough water to fill the Rose Bowl 5,335 times. Water is supplied to retail water districts and private water companies and used by San Gabriel Valley and some Central Basin (southeast Los Angeles County) residents, according to WQA records.
However, not one drop of water and not a single gram of contaminant has been treated or removed from the Puente Valley area, according to the WQA.
Foot-dragging, poor decision-making and a sweet deal between Northrop Grumman and the City of Industry have stalled cleanup of pollution first discovered in 1979, leaving murky, toxic plumes to spread beneath the industrial belt of the San Gabriel Valley roughly between the 605 Freeway and Azusa Avenue along the 60 Freeway corridor, officials said.
“We have been working with them (Northrop Grumman) literally for 15 years to come up with a remedy in the Puente Valley,” Manning said. “Every time we get to where we think we have a remedy, some other aspect comes up and we have to start over again.”
Northrop finally agrees to build plant
Push came to shove when Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-El Monte, and state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, pulled in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the WQA and Northrop on May 20 to update the public on the Puente Valley aspect and the overall basin contamination, the largest Superfund site in the United States. More than 200 people attended.
Earlier in July, the WQA announced Northrop Grumman had agreed to build a new treatment plant that will include reverse osmosis, the most advanced form of water treatment. Northrop Grumman has purchased land at 111 Hudson Ave., adjacent to the Industry Sheriff’s Station and next door to the Worldwide Tattoo Supply Co. for the plant, called the PVOU Remedy Project. Construction will begin in 2017, be completed in 2018 and begin operating in 2019, according to documents from Northrop Grumman.
It will be the first reverse osmosis treatment plant operating in the basin Superfund site, Manning said.
“We are glad that after so many years of delays in cleaning up the Puente Valley location of the San Gabriel Valley Superfund site there is finally a detailed plan to start the cleanup,” wrote Napolitano in an email Thursday.
According to Dan Colby, project resource manager with the WQA, Northrop has sunk a half dozen extraction wells near Sunset Avenue and Nelson Avenue in Industry and will build a pipeline to pump contaminated water from there to the Hudson Avenue plant. Once the contaminants are treated to near undetectable levels, the water will be taken by the La Puente Valley County Water District and be distributed to its customers, as well as Rowland Water District and Walnut Valley Water District customers.
The new plant will remove trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE); perchlorate; 1,4-dioxane; and hexavalent chromium, all carcinogens, Colby said. These contaminants were used as degreasers or solvents in the manufacturing of goods, including circuit boards, he said. Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel. Over half the basin is contaminated, resulting in drinking water wells being shut down, Manning said.
“Northrop Grumman is fully committed to the complete implementation of the remedy as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement.
But Manning and the WQA are not quite ready to celebrate. Often, companies can drag out the project design phase several years because they don’t want to pay the bill — one that is usually much larger for operating the plant for 20-30 years. “As long as they don’t start cleaning up they don’t have to spend the big money,” Manning said.
In documents laying out the project, Northrop qualifies the time frame by saying it must receive EPA approvals throughout the planning, design, construction and startup phases and that progress is contingent upon these approvals.
“We want to keep the pressure on,” Manning said. “We’d even like to see it operating sooner than that.”
Side deals may muddy the waters
Two issues are a concern to Manning and his team.
First, a side agreement regarding one well between Industry and Northrop Grumman executed in 2008 and signed by then-Mayor Dave Perez goes easy on the company, Manning said. It requires a lower level of cleanup than every other contract negotiated by the WQA in other cleanup zones.
Manning indicated Industry may have been duped or was not paying attention.
“Their (original) contract is a terrible contract, the one they got into with Northrop Grumman,” Manning said. The lesser-treated water is useless. It would not be acceptable to the state’s Division of Drinking Water and therefore, may be released to the ocean.
“It is a waste of an asset if you pump it up, clean it and throw it down the wash,” Colby said. “Water is too valuable nowadays. We are in a drought and the basin is at historic lows.”
Manning called the original contract “flawed” and went so far as to say that Industry is interfering in progress in the cleanup of the overall Puente Valley zone. “We are trying to convince Industry to actually back off on some of the things they are doing there,” Manning said.
It’s unclear if the side agreement with Industry affects the commitment from Northrop Grumman to build a comprehensive plant for its share of the Puente Valley pollution. UTC Carrier, the makers of air conditioning units, is working on designing a second plant to treat its part of the pollution plume, Colby said.
At its June 27 meeting, the City Council agreed to readopting the licensing agreement for the city’s well with Northrop Grumman, said City Attorney James Casso.
Casso defended the lower standard, saying that is what the EPA requires, no more, no less. “This was something put together pursuant to the orders of the EPA and the state Regional Water Quality Control Board,” he said. The renegotiated agreement “doesn’t touch the substance of the levels of cleanup,” Casso said, but does add more protection from liability for Industry.
Manning indicated that the previous city engineer, J.D. Ballas, who has since been let go, took a more laid-back approach. Casso agreed, saying the city is now going back and “fixing” old agreements. In fact, WQA board member Bob Kuhn met with Frank Hill, a former state senator and who has worked with Industry in the past, over groundwater contamination and other water-related matters last fall, records show. Kuhn said many of the new council members were not up to speed on the issues.
The WQA is concerned about evaporating political will to rid the crucial source of drinking water of toxic chemicals, so that additional gallons of water can be cleaned and served to customers. In the next 20 years, just operating and maintaining treatment plants in the six zones will cost $650 million.
The projects, which take decades to build and operate, loom more important as a way to protect or even expand a hidden water source, as the region enters the fifth year of drought.
“What we want to do is renew the issue in the public’s eye,” Manning said. “To tell the EPA and the responsible parties that it is not done, that you still have work to do. So let’s get it done.”TAMPA, Fla. -- The New York Yankees are close to completing a deal to acquire veteran outfielder Vernon Wells from the Los Angeles Angels, according to two sources who requested anonymity.
Wells has a no-trade clause and would have to approve a trade, sources told ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney. A source close to Wells also told Olney that Wells would likely approve the trade.
"It'd be a huge change. I don't think it's ever easy saying goodbye, but at the same time, if this were to happen, it's a good group of guys over there," Wells said in Tempe, Ariz. "I'll just get to know a new family."
A source, an executive in the front office of one of the teams involved, told ESPNNewYork.com that the deal would be completed "within 72 hours."
Wells, 34, is in the sixth year of a seven-year deal worth $126 million. He is owed $21 million for each of the next two seasons, but sources said the Angels would have to absorb a substantial portion of Wells' remaining salary before the deal would be completed.
The Yankees' share of the remaining money is said to be about $13 million over the next two seasons, sources told Olney. Because the deal would include more than $1 million changing hands, it must first be approved by commissioner Bud Selig.
"We have discussed a deal with the Yankees," Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto said, refusing to go into more detail because a trade had not been finalized.Promising to push for a reduction in taxes paid by the “middle class,” Donald Trump added that he thought taxes would be raised for “the wealthy.” Speaking with left-wing MSNBC’s Chuck Todd for an interview with Meet The Press on Sunday, Trump also expressed support for raising the minimum wage across the country via state regulations.
“Let me explain how the world work, okay?” began Trump. “I come up with the biggest tax cut, by far, of any candidate. Anybody. And I put it in. But that doesn’t mean that’s what we’re gonna get. We have to negotiate,” said the author of The Art Of The Deal.
Todd began the segment with a left-wing framing of the impact of tax cuts, stating that those with higher incomes would yield greater savings on their earnings than those with lower incomes when comparing total dollars saved.
“For the wealthy, I think frankly it’s gonna go up. And, you know what? It really should go up,” added Trump, implying that he was referring to billionaires like himself.
“When it comes time to negotiate, I feel less concerned with the rich than I do with the middle class,” said Trump. “The rich is probably gonna end up paying more.”
“I have seen what’s going on, and I don’t know how people make it on $7.25 an hour. Now, with that being said, I would like to see an increase of some magnitude, but I’d rather leave it to the states,” said Trump, adding and implication that states would feel compelled to compete with one another in raising their minimum wages.
“Let the states decide,” said Trump. “But I think people should get more. I think they’re out there. They’re working. It is a very low number. You know, with what’s happened to the economy, with what’s happened to the costs, I mean, it’s just, I don’t know how you live on $7.25 an hour.”
In an interview with left-wing CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last week, Trump expressed openness to federal mandates to raise the existing minimum wage. In earlier debates with his former Republican competitors for the GOP’s presidential nomination, Trump expressed resistance to such proposals.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadget-ridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish. -Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953)
Now more than ever, telephones are black holes of information. Smartphones (iOS, Android, etc) store gigabytes of data about, not just their owners, but their friends, family, customers, and clients as well. Email, documents, pictures, video, etc. all move back and forth from phones to the users computer, or increasingly more likely, “the Cloud.” Convenient? Yes. Secure? It depends. Privileged and confidential? Perhaps.
This is a serious issue for lawyers and clients. Lawyers have an ethical duty to keep client/attorney communications privileged and confidential. Lawyers are often given access to the most private and intimate details of their client’s lives or business. If a lawyer uses a cloud based service, client data is going to be zipping around the internet. But it’s secure! Password protected and encrypted! While this might be true, cloud services are not a closed loop.
Curiosity, Cats, etc
Lieberman Software recently released their 2011 Password Security Survey, taking a look at the “state of password security in large enterprises, and the lack of oversight for this critical security issue amongst senior IT management.” Some highlights:
Nearly 50% of respondents said their systems have been breached. But, this is really out of the lawyers control. Is a computer setup in your back office, really more secure than data storage provided by Microsoft or Google? I’d be willing to bet that most cloud-based services provide better security, updates, and support than 99% of law offices. Hackers can attack any machine hooked up to the Net. It doesn’t matter where it is. More pertinent was that following statistic:
1 in 4 of the most gadget-ridden men of our age, IT professionals, can’t help themselves when it comes to other people’s data. Sure your password is secure, the data encrypted – but these people have über-passwords. Theoretically, these people should not abuse their positions and only access data for work related reasons. Yet, it’s all at their fingertips. Accounting, payroll, emails, documents. It’s just too tempting. There’s a thread on /. right now discussing the report with dozens and dozens of IT pros all saying the same thing: “Oh yeah, I’ve done that, 26% seems a bit low.”
Outsource Your _________, Outsource Your Ethics
New York lawyer Eric Turkewitz coined the phrase, “Outsource your marketing, Outsource Your Ethics.” When a lawyer relinquishes control of their marketing, they are also releasing ethical control of said marketing.A marketer is more than likely not going to appreciate the nuances of an attorney’s ethical duty regarding marketing. See this follow up post by Turkewitz for more details.
If you store client data on the cloud, it is explicitly moving out of your control. While it is likely more technologically secure than on a computer in your office, it will never, ever be as ethically secure as it is in your office. If you outsource your storage and IT, you also outsource your ethics.
It’s not that it can’t be done. Just as there are marketing firms that cater to law firms with an explicit understanding of the ethical concerns of lawyers, there are likely to be cloud based system providers that understand the ethical duties of lawyers.
But due diligence needs to be done. Convenience, functionality, gee-whiz techno cool, all take a distant back seat to ethics.A Syrian-born militant residing in Sweden has been charged with war crimes in violating international law while fighting alongside rebels against the government in the Middle Eastern country.
Swedish prosecutors said that the 28-year-old, who has not been named, was part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of the many groups set up to try and topple the President Assad regime. The suspect was charged with war crimes and assaulting a Syrian soldier in captivity in the Sodertorn district court, south of Stockholm, on Monday.
Prosecutor Hanna Lemoine explained that the charges were brought against the suspect after police gained access to video footage showing him and other FSA fighters assaulting the detainee, who was tied up. The crimes are thought to have been carried out between May and July 2012.
Prosecutors also revealed that the suspect was being tried in Sweden because he had been granted residency in 2013, after the alleged incidents took place. Lemoine added that he was now being held in custody.
The ex-FSA fighter has denied the charges, alleging that he was acting “under duress”, but faces jail time of 10 years if convicted.
Syria’s deadly civil war has been raging since March 2011. Recent figures estimate that more than 76,000 people were killed last year along, while 7.2 million have become internally placed since the onset of the fighting, according to the UN.What will you do if your beloved mother tells you: “I don’t care if you marry a drug dealer, but don’t marry a Muslim?”
This is exactly what was told to Susan Carland when she was 17 years old. This was after declaring that one of her New Year’s resolutions was “to investigate other religions.”
Of course, Islam was not in her priority list as she used to say “It looked violent, sexist and foreign.”
Two years later, at the age of 19, Susan who has been raised as a Baptist became a Muslim without the influence of any man!
This was the same girl who at around 14 years of age had joined a “funky, happy, clappy church” that was part of the charismatic movement. Around her, people were claiming to speak in tongues and announcing that God had spoken to them in the night.
No Pork Chops?
One night, her mother announced they were having pork chops for dinner. That was when the mother discovered that her daughter had become a ‘victim’ of Islam.
“My mother gave me a hug,” she recalls, “but she was crying.” A few days later, Susan began wearing a headscarf.
For eight years, after the conversion to Islam, there had been a rift between Susan and her mother. However, they are now in good terms.
Susan says: “Now, my mum even buys me head scarves and sends presents to my children for Eid.”
Susan had found that Islam, “… didn’t have that intellectual divide between mind, body and soul that I had found in Christianity.”
Carland also converted to Islam because she found that “the nature of God in Islam… appealed to me,” she says.
Career & Marriage
Susan has completed a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science and in 2007 she was completing her PhD, researching leadership challenges facing Western Muslim women.
She is now a lecturer and a tutor in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University in Melbourne, where she specializes in gender studies, youth and sociology of religion.
She has come to love Islam and Muslims:
“Without doubt,” she says, “the most inspiring and wonderful people I’ve ever met in my life are Muslims and that’s certainly helped me not withdraw from the community altogether”.
In February 2002 at a ceremony in Melbourne Zoo, Susan got married to Melbourne lawyer Waleed Aly, who is on the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria.
Born in Australia to Egyptian parents, Waleed has degrees in law and engineering and works for a big city law firm.
Waleed Aly is now a lecturer in politics at Monash University and works at the Global Terrorism Research Centre.
Muslims in Australia
In 2006, Waleed was one of 90 young Australians chosen to attend the Australian Future Directions Forum to generate ideas for the next twenty years of Australia’s future.
And in 2007, he was named one of The Bulletin magazine’s ‘Smart 100’. He is also the author of People Like Us.
How arrogance is dividing Islam and the West. The couple have a daughter named Aisha.
Susan converted to Islam independently of Waleed as she says, “… when I became Muslim Waleed and I weren’t together. I was very much a single woman and sort of deciding to get married happened years after I became Muslim.”
Susan is a creator and panelist on the multi-award winning Australian national network television program Salam Cafe, and is often consulted for commentary about Islam and Muslims in a variety of mainstream media.
Susan has been invited to speak at various churches, Jewish groups, schools, community groups, and business organizations, and was invited to give the International Women’s Day address at the Victorian Parliament house in 2003.
Intellectual Liberation
Besides being a researcher for the Centre for Muslim Minorities and Islam Policy Studies at Monash University, Susan is also a youth worker with Grassroots. This is an initiative of the Islamic Council of Victoria, which aims to address and serve the specific needs of young Australian Muslims.
Susan is a state-coordinator for the Train the Trainers Course in Dawah and Dialogue. In 2009, she was named one of the international ‘Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow’ by the UN Alliance of Civilisations.
While recalling her spiritual quest, Susan said:
I felt the sense of intellectual liberation…
I started going to Muslim internet chat rooms…
And I was put in contact with Muslim women who were studying at my university who patiently answered my questions…
When I let the religion speak for itself through its traditions, scholars and holy text, as opposed to taking the words of tabloid journalists or appallingly behaving Muslims, I found a faith that was peaceful, egalitarian, socially just, and with a beautiful balance of the spiritual and the intellectual…
Susan Carland was proclaimed the Australian Muslim of the Year 2004, a prize worth $2000 to be distributed to charities of her choice which she accepted on two conditions: that she would spend the money in Australia and give to non-Muslim as well as Muslim organizations.
Watch more on Sister Susan’s conversion story here:
(From Reading Islam archives)The following is a guest post by Mark Stephens. Mark is the founder and CEO of IDR Solutions. Check out his blog at http://blog.idrsolutions.com or follow him on twitter at @JavaPDF.
Large companies tend to be regarded as dull and unsexy. All the real action and fun is at small startups (preferably Web 2.0 at the moment). Well, I run my own company now and I would never go back. But I am really glad I worked for a large company. Here are my reasons why:
1. You learn an awful lot. You get to see the good, the bad and the ugly. You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control) and some not so good ideas (like how not to motivate people).
While a big company may not seem very exciting, it must have got some things right to be big in the first place. Learn |
the same underlying Range object. Copying the actual object requires a method call. Second, in a language with value semantics, like C++, there's no distinction between copying to pass an argument to a function and copying to save a snapshot of the range. Calling save makes that syntactically obvious. (This solves a problem that plagues the STL's forward and input iterators, which are syntactically indistinguishable while semantically distincta perennial source of trouble.)
Using the forward range interface, we can define a host of interesting algorithms. To get an idea of what range-based algorithms would look like, consider defining a function findAdjacent that advances through a range until its first and second elements are equal:
ForwardRange findAdjacent(ForwardRange r){ if (!r.empty()) { auto s = r.save(); s.popFront(); for (;!s.empty(); r.popFront(), s.popFront()) { if (r.front() == s.front()) break; } } return r; }
After auto s = r.save(); the ranges s and r are considered independent. If you attempt to pass a OnePassRange instead of a ForwardRange, the code would not work because OnePassRange s don't have a save method. If ForwardRange just used copying instead of save, then the code would compile with a OnePassRange, but would produce wrong results at runtime. (For the curious: It would stop at the first step, because r.front() is trivially equal to s.front() when r and s are actually tied together.)
Double-Ended Ranges
The next step of range specialization is to define double-ended ranges, characterized by two extra methods, back and popBack, corresponding to front and popFront for forward iteration:
interface DoubleEndedRange : ForwardRange { Ref<T> back(); void popBack(); }
Let's try our hand at the reverse algorithm, which reverses a swappable double-ended range in place.
void reverse(DoubleEndedRange r) { while (!r.empty()) { swap(r.front(), r.back()); r.popFront(); if (r.empty()) break; r.popBack(); } }
Easy as pie. We can define not only algorithms that use ranges, but also new ranges, which is very useful. For example, defining a range Retro that walks a double-ended range backwards is a simple matter of cross-wiring front with back and popFront with popBack :
struct Retro<DoubleEndedRange> { private DoubleEndedRange r; bool empty() { return r.empty(); } Ref<T> front() { return r.back(); } void popFront() { r.popBack(); } Ref<T> back() { return r.front(); } void popBack() { r.popFront(); } }
NOTE The name "retro" is not quite fitting, but the more correct "reverser" seemed forced.
Random Access Ranges
The most powerful range of all, the random access range, adds constant-time indexed access in addition to the single-ended range primitives. This category of range notably covers contiguous arrays but also noncontiguous structures such as STL's deque. The random access interface offers all of ForwardRange's primitives, plus two random access primitives, at and slice. at fetches an element given the index, and slice produces a subrange lying between two indices.
interface RandomAccessRange : ForwardRange { Ref<T> at(int i); RandomAccessRange slice(int i, int j); }
A startling detail is that RandomAccessRange extends ForwardRange, not DoubleEndedRange. What's happening? Infiniteness, that's what happens. Consider a simple range that yields numbers modulo 10: 0, 1, 2, …, 9, 0, 1, …. Given an index, it's easy to compute the corresponding series element, so the range is rightfully a RandomAccessRange. But this range does not have a "last" element, so it cannot define DoubleEndedRange's primitives. So a random access range extends different concepts, depending on its finiteness.
Many algorithms require constant-time slicing. Consider quicksort as an example: it cannot select a good pivot (ahem) unless it has constant-time random access, and then it needs constant-time slicing to divide the input in two at a randomly chosen point.
Figure 3 shows the proposed conceptual hierarchy for ranges.
Figure 3 The proposed Range concept hierarchy.
Experience with Ranges
Experience with Ranges
One very good question is this: Are ranges as defined above expressive enough to allow implementing, for example, all of STL? How about more than that? Clearly iterators, being a lower-level abstraction, can be used to do things ranges cannot. However, my experience suggests that the loss of expressiveness is minimal and easily outweighed by the advantages of the high-level abstraction and safety of ranges.
I didn't know how to prove that ranges are sufficiently expressive. All I could do was to spin some code. As mentioned in the introduction, I've implemented D's standard algorithms [5] entirely in terms of ranges. D's library includes all of STL's functionality, and after gaining courage I added quite a few extra algorithms and ranges to it. The following summarizes my experience with ranges while doing that work.
Optional Range Capabilities
Optional Range Capabilities
The range API defined so far is surprisingly capable, allowing the implementation of many algorithms in a container-independent manner. However, some useful primitives are conspicuously absent. For example, most random access ranges and some of the others support a notion of length. The length of a range can be computed easily for even an input range by simply walking it to exhaustion, but certain containers naturally support constant-time length as a primitive.
Interestingly, length is not restricted to a specific range category. One might suppose that random access ranges must have a length, whereas others don't. However, there are random access ranges that don't have a length. Infinite ranges (such as the range of numbers modulo 10 discussed above in the section "Random Access Ranges") are an obvious example, but there are more subtle cases. Consider, for example, a circular buffer implemented atop an array. You can access the i th element in constant timeit's the (i % n) th element of the array. Claiming that the length of the buffer itself is n may, however, surprise clients: They'd expect that taking n steps would take them to the end of the sequence, but that doesn't happen. Conversely, there are even input ranges that have a lengthfor example, a range that yields 100 random numbers.
So length is an optional attribute. If the range can define it, it should, but it's never obligated to do so. A range-based algorithm may or may not require that length be defined by its range parameters.
Infiniteness is another property that turned out to be quite useful in practice. An infinite forward range would always return false from empty(). Detecting that is difficult in most languages, so a separate Boolean property or trait isInfinite could be provided. I don't think infiniteness is an essential component of a range API, but it was very easy to define in D with no additional effort, and sometimes comes in quite handy. There is also a relationship (briefly alluded to in the section "Random Access Ranges") between random access ranges, double-ended ranges, and infiniteness: If a random access range is infinite, it extends a forward range. Otherwise, it extends a double-ended range.
Other, more exotic range capabilities are primitives such as lookahead or putback. An input range may have a lookahead capability up to a specified number of elements and/or the feature of allowing an element to be returned to the range. C's sequential file API offers the ungetc function, which is guaranteed to work for at least one character. The primitives lookahead and putback are useful in a variety of applications, particularly those concerned with parsing streams.
Higher-Order Ranges
Higher-Order Ranges
In keeping with higher-order functions that take and return other functions, a higher-order range is one that aggregates and manipulates other ranges, while itself still offering a range interface. Building ranges that decorate other ranges is easy, useful, and fun. In fact, higher-order ranges fulfill the promise that many saw in the early days of the STL. Back then, people thought custom iterators would solve many problems, and consequently defined quite a few of them. The idea, however, has had limited success. I'm not sure why, but I hypothesize that the difficulties of defining iterators and the verboseness of using them were possible factors.
Ranges, by contrast, are very easy to define and use. The result of many algorithms are, in fact, custom ranges. Consider, for example, the classic higher-order function filter, which takes a range r plus a predicate, and returns a range that only offers the elements of r satisfying the predicate. The work that filter itself does is minimalit merely constructs and returns a range type, call it Filter, that does the filtration in its iteration primitives.
Laziness. Higher-order ranges offer the opportunity of doing computation lazily, in the style preferred by functional languages, instead of eagerly. Consider, for example, the STL algorithm set_union that takes two sorted ranges and yields one sorted range containing the elements of both ranges, in linear time. set_union is eagerwhen it returns, it has finished the job. This approach has two problems. First, you need to create (and possibly allocate memory for) the target range. This is wasteful of both memory and time if all you want to do is peek at each element of set_union in turn and maybe finish the loop without inspecting all elements. Second, eager set_union needs to read all of its input before finishing, which simply does not work with infinite ranges.
Higher-order ranges offer the opportunity of doing computation lazily, in the style preferred by functional languages, instead of eagerly. Consider, for example, the STL algorithm that takes two sorted ranges and yields one sorted range containing the elements of both ranges, in linear time. is eagerwhen it returns, it has finished the job. This approach has two problems. First, you need to create (and possibly allocate memory for) the target range. This is wasteful of both memory and time if all you want to do is peek at each element of in turn and maybe finish the loop without inspecting all elements. Second, eager needs to read all of its input before finishing, which simply does not work with infinite ranges. A classic argument in favor of lazy evaluation is that it leads to better modular composition. This is because lazy evaluation allows for much more involved compositions, with powerful generators that construct a large data space, out of which a selector chooses the items of interest. This advantage has been beautifully argued by Hughes [9] and is famously used by Google in its implementation of the MapReduce algorithm [6]. D's standard library uses lazy evaluation wherever possible, to great effect. Preserving Range Categories. Recall Retro, a range that traverses a given range backwards. Clearly the original range, call it r, must offer double-ended iteration. Question: If the original range offered random access, should Retro also offer random access? The answer is a resounding yes. As a rule, a higher-order range must offer the highest capability that it can, subject to what the original range can offer. So Retro should do something like this:
struct Retro<DoubleEndedRange> {... as before... static if (isRandomAccess(DoubleEndedRange) && hasLength(DoubleEndedRange)) { Ref<T> at(unsigned i) { return r.at(r.length() - 1 - i); } DoubleEndedRange slice(int i, int j) { return r.slice(r.length() - j, r.length() - i); } } static if (hasLength(DoubleEndedRange)) { unsigned length() { return r.length(); } } }
I used the CDJ#++ construct static if as an optional declaration: If the tested condition is true, then the guarded code is compiled in; otherwise, it just vanishes. The predicates hasLength and isRandomAccess use introspection to figure out during compilation whether the original range offers length and random access, respectively. Note how DoubleEndedRange also may or may not define length, depending on whether r does.
This kind of optionally enriched interface depending on the type of the input puts a great strain on the language's static introspection mechanisms. I don't know of a way to do that in Java or C#, and in C++ things can be done, albeit with difficulty. In D, the static if construct exists and makes it easy to define isRandomAccess and hasLength. If your target language is dynamic, there should be no problem to use dynamic reflection to allow clients to discover the capabilities of a range object.
If static introspection is available, a host of really cool stuff can be done. For example, if Retro is composed with itself (e.g., Retro<Retro<SomeRange>> ), why do all the busywork? The entire construct should statically boil down to SomeRange at exactly zero computational cost.
Chain. One particularly interesting higher-order range is Chain, which takes two or more ranges, possibly of different categories, and offers a logically contiguous view of those ranges. Then, Chain can be used whenever one single range is expected; the user of Chain has no idea that iteration segues from one range to another. The capabilities of Chain are naturally the intersection of all capabilities of its inputs. For example, for Chain to define length, all of its contained ranges must also define length. If all contained ranges offer random access and length, then Chain offers random access as well. In that case, accessing the nth element of a Chain is proportional to the number of ranges that the Chain iterates (which could become a complexity threat if the number of ranges is large). With Chain, quite interesting operations become possible. For example, sort(Chain(a, b, c)) sorts a logical array that has three physical arrays as support. Although iteration over Chain is in a sense lazy because it doesn't create a contiguous copy of the three arrays, sort itself is not lazyafter it returns, all elements of the three arrays are arranged in sorted order.
Three-Legged Algorithms
Three-Legged Algorithms
Several algorithms in STL use three iterators: one for the beginning of input, one for the middle, and one for the end. For example, consider STL's nth_element and rotate, with the following (stylized) signatures:
void nth_element(RIt first, RIt mid, RIt last); void rotate(FIt first, FIt mid, FIt last);
where RIt is a random access iterator and FIt is a forward iterator. mid must fall somewhere between first and last. nth_element is a useful algorithm that moves the smallest mid - first elements of the range toward the beginning, and makes mid point to exactly the (mid - first) -smallest element in the range. The trick is that nth_element does not sort anythingit just finds the nth smallest element (hence its name). Sorting the range and then looking at mid would achieve the same result, but nth_element does considerably less work than sort, important when handling large data sets. ( nth_element is used in index searching and nearest-neighbors algorithms.)
rotate is one of my favorites but has a rather arcane name. It rearranges elements in the range (using standard math interval notation) [first, last) such that the elements in [mid, last) appear before the elements in [first, mid). Put another way, rotate is a bring-to-front operation: The [mid, last) portion is brought to the front of the range. Naively implemented, rotate could take a long time, but the algorithm is quite clever about minimizing data moves.
NOTE I happen to think that bring_to_front would be a much more intuitive name than rotate.
How can such functions be translated into range lingo? This was quite a conundrum that had me thinking for quite a while, until I realized a simple fact: Three-legged algorithms conceptually do not take three iterators. They take two ranges, left and right! The left-hand range is [first, mid), and the right-hand one is [mid, last). Armed with this simple fact, I first defined and implemented nth_element and rotate as follows:
void nth_element(RR left, RR right); void rotate(FR left, FR right);
where RR is a random access range and FR is a forward range. If you want to call the functions for a given range, you just say, for example:
Range r =...; nth_element(r.slice(0, 5), r.slice(5, r.length)); rotate(r.slice(0, 5), r.slice(5, r.length));
Similar reasoning can be applied for all three-legged STL algorithms, such as partial_sort. This solution was satisfactory, and I was ready to leave it at that, when opportunity knocked at the door in the form of a neat generalization. Consider defining the functions above like this:
void nth_element(R1 left, R2 right); void rotate(R1 left, R2 right);
where R1 and R2 are two arbitrary ranges that need not be adjacent and not even of the same category. (Adjacency does not inform the algorithms at all.) Suddenly, we have much more potent algorithms to play with. For example, nth_element not only can find the n smallest elements in one range; it can do so in two unrelated ranges sitting in memory at different places! Even better, R2 for nth_element does not need to be random accessan input range would suffice. The implementation of nth_element can detect that and use different algorithms depending on R2's capability.
Using two ranges instead of three iterators not only solves the problem, but offers additional functionality.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
My (and many others') natural inclination when switching from STL iterators to ranges was to think of iterator-based designs in terms of ranges, just as I'd think of writing programs in a new language by using idioms popular in languages I already knew. This approach has revealed a few iterator-based designs that can't be translated easily to ranges. One example is Boost MultiIndex [11], which stores iterators to containers in indexes. Storing one-element ranges instead doubles the size of the index.
Another weakness I noticed is visible when translating STL algorithms that return one iterator, such as find, which has this signature:
It find(It b, It e, E value)
where It is a one-pass iterator type and E is the type referenced by the iterator. STL's find returns the first iterator iter between b and (excluding) e that satisfies *iter == value. Once that iterator is returned, you can combine it with b to obtain the range before value, or with e to obtain the range after value.
Ranges lack such capabilities. The range-based find has this signature:
Range find(Range r, E value)
It consumes from r until it finds value and returns what's left of r. This means that you get access to the portion after the found value, but not before.
Fortunately, this problem is easily solved by defining a new range type, Until. Until is a range that takes another range r and a value v, starts at the beginning of r, and ends just before r.front() == v (or at the natural end of r if v is not to be found). Lazy computation for the win!
There are likely other things that iterators can do that ranges can'tit's a given. The good news is that there don't seem to be many, so range-based designs don't lose many of the tricks you can do with iterators.
One weakness of ranges that is linked to the memory model of the underlying language is their propensity to invalidate when you mutate their underlying container. STL iterators obey well-specified but unchecked invalidation rules. Once a container is changed in a way that invalidates an iterator, using that iterator firmly steps into undefined behavior territory. Ranges inherit that problem. (As discussed in the section "A Fresh Approach to Iteration," ranges do improve safety when compared with iterators because they never allow invalid pairs of iterators.) Without having researched the matter, I believe that adding more safety checks to ranges should proceed more easily than with iterators.
Conclusions
Conclusions
This article describes rangesan iteration device that combines the safety, ease of definition, and ease of use of GoF iterators on one hand, with the unparalleled expressive power of STL iterators on the other. Ranges offer simple definition and use, foster lazy computation without contortions, and offer interesting new opportunities.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
This article has benefited from some of the most valuable reviews I've ever received. Without faking modesty, I can say that at least some of the reviewers were more able than me to write this article in the first place, both from a technical and a literary perspective. If you didn't enjoy reading the article, at least you can take solace in thinking that its pre-review draft was much, much worse.
Of course, I sincerely hope you did enjoy what you just read, and I worked hard to maximize the chances of that happening. The following people worked just as hard toward the same goal, and I owe them big, big thanks: Adam Badura, Walter Bright, Ali Çehreli, Emil Dotchevski, Tony Van Eerd, Neil Groves, Craig Henderson, Daniel Hulme, Scott McMurray, Scott Meyers, Bartosz Milewski, Rob Stewart, and Andrew Sutton.
Normally I wouldn't want to single out any one reviewer because I'd feel I should do the same for most others. But this time I do need to mention Rob Stewart. Rob provided helpful feedback on almost every single paragraph of the initial draft. Then he provided high-level comments pertaining to the entire construction of the article. If that draft were a building, Rob's feedback would have covered every one of its bricks, then architectural concerns, and finally present and future urban integration considerations.
References
References
[1] Harold Abelson and Gerald J. Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1996.
[2] David Abrahams, Jeremy Siek, and Thomas Witt. The Boost.Iterator Library. 2003.
[3] David Abrahams, Jeremy Siek, and Thomas Witt. New Iterator Concepts. 2006.
[4] Adobe. Adobe Source Library.
[5] Andrei Alexandrescu. std.algorithm in the Phobos Library. 2009.
[6] Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat. "Mapreduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters." Commun. ACM, 51(1):107–113, 2008.
[7] Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA, 1995.
[8] Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare. "Quicksort." The Computer Journal, 5(1):10–16, 1962.
[9] John Hughes. "Why Functional Programming Matters." Comput. J., 32(2):98–107, 1989.
[10] Andrew Koenig. "Templates and Duck Typing." Dr. Dobb's Journal, June 2005..
[11] Joaquín M. López Muñoz. The Boost.MultiIndex Library. 2003.
[12] Thorsten Ottosen. The Boost Range Library. 2003.
[13] Alexander Stepanov and Meng Lee. "The Standard Template Library." Technical report, WG21 X3J16/94-0095, 1994.Image copyright AFP Image caption Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the US move would further anger North Korea
China has criticised a US plan to strengthen its missile defences in response to North Korea's growing military capabilities.
The move would "intensify antagonism", a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, urging the US to "act prudently".
The US announced plans to deploy 14 additional missile interceptors in Alaska, and an early-warning radar in Japan, on Friday.
Russia has also expressed opposition to the plan.
"The anti-missile issue has a direct bearing on global and regional balance and stability," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily news briefing.
"Actions such as strengthening anti-missile [defences] will intensify antagonism and will not be beneficial to finding a solution for the problem," Mr Hong said.
Tensions in the region are high following North Korea's nuclear test on 12 February, the third by the regime. That test followed the launch in December of a long-range rocket, condemned by the UN as a banned test of missile technology.
The US and other regional allies fear North Korea is working to develop a nuclear warhead small enough to arm a missile, though it is not believed to have achieved this yet.
China, North Korea's biggest trading partner, is seen as the nation with closest ties to, and the most influence on, the communist state. But it backed UN sanctions against Pyongyang after the nuclear test, in a move seen by some as a shift.
Beijing has in the past voiced opposition to the development of US missile defence capabilities in Asia, viewing it as a containment move.
US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a speech on Friday that the US would add 14 missile interceptors to the 30 already in Alaska, and deploy an additional radar in Japan that could track any missile launched from North Korea.
This would help counter the growing threat from North Korea, which had advanced its capabilities and "engaged in a series of irresponsible and reckless provocations", he said.
Plans to extend the missile shield in Europe would be dropped to fund the new missile defences around Asia, but the US remained committed to Nato missile defence, he added.
Russia also expressed opposition to the plan, and said that it would seek agreement from the US that its missile defence system was not aimed at Russia's nuclear forces.Jahlil Okafor may have been pushed out of Philly, but he’s going to be welcomed in Brooklyn with open arms.
In the past six months, the Nets have acquired two 21-year-olds, both high lottery picks, in Okafor and D’Angelo Russell. In what’s becoming a mantra everyone knows, they were the second and third picks in the 2015 draft. It cost them Brook Lopez, Trevor Booker a first-round pick and $48 million in contractual obligations to Timofey Mozgov.
It’s become a trend for the way Marks has done business over the last six months. He’s taking a chance on players that seemed like misfits on the teams that drafted them. Players that were scrutinized for off-court hiccups at 19 or 20-years-old.
As one Philadelphia writer noted Thursday, “The Nets are the Island of Misfit NBA Toys.”
D’Angelo Russell has thrived when healthy, averaging 21 points and 5.7 assists since joining the Nets. He’s grown as a player, but it’s more about the opportunity Brooklyn has given him that’s allowed him to flourish in the limited time he’s played. Not to mention the intangibles: The confidence and freedom they’ve allowed him to play with. He’s buying in.
“I learned a lot and now I am moving on to a new opportunity,” Russell said a month after he joined the Nets. “The situation is, you’re with one team and you go to another team and it is completely different. Brooklyn has been open arms from Day One for me, so I am looking forward to it.”
Expect the same with Jahlil Okafor, who the Nets will have at least 5-6 months to develop and evaluate.
“We’re not going to prejudge them,” Atkinson said Thursday of both Okafor and Nik Stauskas. “We’re going to welcome both of those players with open arms. Any misconceptions or ideas anyone has about these guys whether it’s their work ethic or character, we judge them on our terms... and that’s how we do it with everybody.
“I think they’re coming into a strong locker room. I think they’re coming into a program with a staff that really cares, a front office that is top notch. I’m really excited about this,” Atkinson added, a big smile creasing his face.
Like Russell was in L.A., Okafor was stranded on an island in Philadelphia. He spent his rookie season either hurt or trying to carry a historically bad 10-72 Sixers team. They didn’t have any veterans to guide him and they gave him zero reason to believe ‘The Process’ was something worth buying into. It became clear that he was essentially a rental player warming the seat for Joel Embiid’s return.
It didn’t help that Okafor got into a post-game fight with Boston fans that one of them recorded. Then, there was the speeding ticket for going 108 miles per hour over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. He said he was ashamed. His teenage transgressions, like DLo’s SnapChat with Nick Young, became his reputation.
"Honestly, I did not want them to pick up my option," Okafor said in early November. "This is my life. This is my career, and I'm not getting an opportunity here, which is fine. The team looks great and I'm not a part of that. I want the team to do great things, but at the same time I want to play."
Chris Mannix reports that Okafor is “extremely” happy to be headed to Brooklyn after 2.5 seasons of clutter and confusion for the 21-year-old. As noted, Brooklyn is going to welcome him with open arms. And Okafor likes the city. He would often make his way to New York on the weekend to catch a first run movie with his girlfriend.
And who would know better than the Nets: It’s not about how you fall, it’s about how you get back up.
The Nets believe Okafor will indeed get back up and flourish under Atkinson and the coaching staff. They were brought in to get this rebuild going with their rep for player development, namely guys like Caris LeVert, Spencer Dinwiddie, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Joe Harris and others over the past 18 months.
“Look at what Kenny and his staff have done over the course of the last 18 months with a lot of the guys, the guys who’ve bought in,” Marks said after the trade. “The coaching staff has done a heck of a job and I expect nothing less than with the two guys we’re bringing in.”
He said he believes a change of scenery could be exactly what Okafor needs. The same way Russell needed it.
“We've been following him for a long time,” Marks added.
So, look at a player like Okafor. He’s supposedly lost 20-pounds after going on a vegan diet and has been working on his 3-point shot. Conditioning? In fact, hours before the trade, Philly writers reported, Okafor was the last player on the court after shootaround wrapped up. He was doing conditioning drills and putting up shots,
We’ll find out soon enough how he fits, but don’t be surprised if the Nets slowly ease him into the rotation so he can adjust to the fast-paced offense.
It may take a little time, but there’s no reason he can’t be a serious asset in the future. The Duke product averaged 17.5 points and seven rebounds during his rookie campaign at 19-years-old. Kenny Atkinson has Timofey Mozgov, Tyler Zeller and Jarrett Allen taking (and making) three-pointers. You better believe Okafor is going to take them too. A whole lot of them.
This all makes too much sense for both parties. After watching Atkinson manage his guys for a season, followed up by the Russell acquisition, it’s been obvious the Nets have become an organization with a chip on its shoulder. That’s become the identity, and they’re only adding more to the arsenal with the acquisition of Okafor.
Okafor recalls a game he wasn’t supposed to play in when he posted 26 points and nine rebounds. “It was just me being pissed, kind of saying to our organization that I think this is unfair,” Okafor told Jordan Brenner. “Just letting the basketball world know that I'm still the guy that everybody thought I was.”
That’s the chip he’s coming in with and he’ll have plenty of chances to prove himself.
The Nets traded its best rebounder to get him and the frontcourt is already extremely thin with so many bigs fighting for minutes. More importantly, he’ll get opportunity because the Nets believe in him. Something he never fully had.
“I would like for them to just send me somewhere where I can get an opportunity,” Okafor told ESPN in November
Welcome to Brooklyn, where we have a phrase for the past: “fuhgeddaboudit!”A large nesting turtle was rescued after being dragged off a West Bay beach by poachers – the fifth recorded instance of suspected turtle poaching this year.
Responding to a tip from a member of the public, in the early hours of Wednesday, Chief Conservation Officer Mark Orr followed drag marks in the sand leading off the beach and into the bushes where he found the turtle lying on its back with its flippers tied together.
The turtle, which had previously been tagged by researchers, was released and returned to the ocean but the culprits were not caught. Mr. Orr said they were not on the scene when he found the turtle.
“I am not sure if I disturbed them in the act as I was searching on the beach or if they had pulled the turtle up out of sight and gone to get a truck or some assistance in carrying it off,” he said.
Mr. Orr said the latest incident was particularly concerning as it appeared to be a case of poachers strategically targeting a nesting beach, rather than an opportunist crime.
“There is no other reason for them to have been on that beach at that time of night,” he added.
The Department of Environment has enforcement officers policing the beaches overnight during nesting season while researchers are also out gathering data and providing information on alleged incidents of poaching.
Mr. Orr said there were at least two other incidents in which poachers had been scared off this year and two more in which they appeared to have been successful.
He said enforcement officers had discovered drag marks where the turtles had been taken off the beach and were also investigating reports of black market turtle meat being sold.
He said his officers were actively patrolling beaches where poaching activity was suspected.
Offenders face the possibility of fines of up to $500,000, the confiscation of their equipment and up to four years in jail.
He added, “These are people that don’t care about our heritage or our wildlife. They are simply looking for fast, easy bucks.”
This incident had a happy ending. The turtle returned to the beach the following night to lay its nest.
“We sat up all night, keeping watch while she nested,” Mr. Orr said. “Seeing her head back to the sea safely was a beautiful feeling.”
Nesting turtles typically lay three to six times in nests during a season, returning to the same beach each time. This turtle had previously been tagged by researchers and had laid two nests during the season.We have more codes!
Last call! Another wave of beta testing is underway: We've been sent a cryptic grab bag of Rainbow Six: Siege Beta codes which you can redeem from the widget below (you may have to allow script tags, some browser extensions may block this from appearing). We're not sure if this widget is shared with the rest of the internet or just us, so get em while you see em.
Is the game worth a look? I haven't had a chance to personally put my paws on it at the time of this blog, but our reviews editor Chris Carter gave the alpha a thumbs up, noting it's good use of classes and tactical missions. Jump in and judge for yourself, we'd love to know what you thought of it.
How to redeem your code:
1. Go to www.rainbow6.com/beta
2. Select “REDEEM CODE”
3. Select your platform of choice.
4. Click “NEXT” to log in to Uplay, or create a Uplay account.
5. Enter your unique Access Code from this email.
6. Once confirmation is received, Ubisoft will contact you with your access instructions for your platform of choice when the Closed Beta starts.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upAt night, the shouting starts. When the lights go out at Hindley, the young offenders institute, you can hear the intimidating shout-outs, the insults and threats from other boys kept there. Staff have tried to stop it, but they've failed.
The shouting is part of an atmosphere of violence and fear which permeates the institution. On average, there is one fight or assault every day. There were 251 reports of bullying and 167 incidents of self-harm in six months.
In January 2012, Jake Hardy, a 17-year-old at Hindley, was found hanging in his cell. He was one of 16 children to die in custody since 2000. The inquest into his death detailed a dozen failures by the state which contributed to his death.
While the inquest was taking place, the inspector of prisons was conducting an unannounced inspection. The report, released today, documents some improvements but it paints a stark picture of an institution which is failing young people and a custodial operation which is unfit for vulnerable young people.
Jake's mother, Liz Hardy, said:
"Reading this report, it appears that not enough has changed at HMYOI Hindley, two-and-a-half years on from my son dying.
"The recommendations that the inspectorate are making are the same as those that came out of the inquest: in particular in relation to the problem of shout-outs at night, bullying incidents, the need for better internal recording and passing on of information; and the need for improved care of vulnerable young people with learning difficulties.
"It is distressing knowing that another family may have to go through the heartache, and heartbreaking experience that we as a family had to suffer."
Inspectors watched CCTV footage showing a boy, who appeared to have fallen out with others, meekly "reporting" to a side room where he was punched and kicked by assailants. The incident only came to light when the CCTV footage was watched later on.
While there was some improvement in education and staff treatment, the overall picture is bleak. Inspectors identified a number of instances where boys were strip searched under restraint. "National policies" had reduced the amount of time boys spent out of their cells, so many had less than 15 minutes a day to exercise in the open air. Foreign nationals had had legal aid taken away from them and were "confused, anxious, in panic or in denial" about their immigration status. Litter in the exercise yard had accumulated over time. Cells were cramped with "smelly, inadequately screened toilets" which boys had to eat their food next to.
About half the boys were in touch with mental health services. The availability of quality services for boys suffering from brain injury, who had learning disability or needed speech and language therapy was insufficient to meet demand. Three out of five boys held had at least a medium need of substance intervention. Two out of five had been local authority care.
Deborah Coles, co-director of Inquest, said:
"Many of the failings and |
someone Wenger thinks can strengthen his squad ahead of the new season (we are light in the defensive midfielder stakes after all) or whether he’s just lending a helping hand in the same way he’s allowed Thierry Henry, Sol Campbell, Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg and Jeremie Aliadiere train with us in the past.
Given the way Arsenal have taken to satirising the summer transfer window Arseblog News wouldn’t be surprised if Flamini signed on at the Emirates before breaking down in training and joining Diaby on the treatment table.
Of course, this could all be a load of old codswallop, we just couldn’t face writing another Suarez ‘update’.Boilermaker Drinks is a Scottish company, founded by the Edinburgh cocktail impresarios behind Bramble, Lucky Liquor Company & The Last Word along with one of the co-founders of Vino Wines. Seeing the gin market saturated and with only one other Scottish rum on the market they took the bold choice of producing a Scottish white rum.This is a tricky proposition, unlike a spiced rum a white rum has to be drinkable on its own terms, work in a range of cocktails and be relatively affordable.Working with Ogilvy Spirits in Angus, the producers of a very drinkable potato vodka they've come up with SeaWolf. Taking its name from the Native American term for killer whales, pods of which are seen along Britain's coast they've produced a beautiful bottle which avoids the usual cliches of palm trees, white beaches and pirates (the beaches of Angus being a bit more likely to induce hypothermia).Given the North of Scotland lacks the tropical climate that makes the ageing process so fast for Caribbean rums Boilermaker have produced an unaged 100% pot still rum.Counteracting the lack of ageing a mixture of rum and champagne yeasts have been used in a 4 week, low temperature fermentation to produce a flavoursome wash. Coupling that with a pot still makes a spirit that's rich and deep in flavour.On the nose the rum has a funky, banana-y note with some light toffee. The lack of ageing gives it a certain agricole/cachaca note that's subtle but interesting.There's a creamy mouthfeel with a general fruitiness and a peppery spice, on the finish there's some burn coupled with a dry spiciness. For an unaged rum this slips down very easily, the 41% ABV gives it a more substantial body than other white rums.The test of a white rum is the daiquiri, a simple cocktail that highlights the rum base. For me my favoured recipe is a classic Difford's 10:3:2 on the rocks. The SeaWolf has enough funk to stand up to the lime, leaving a spiciness that balances out with the sweetness to make a very, very drinkable cocktail.At £29.99 for a 50cl bottle that's part of a limited run of 300 bottles it represents good value and an interesting first step in a planned portfolio of spirits that I look forward to sampling.When it comes to topics I’m asked about on a daily basis, the g-spot is definitely one of them. Although the questions tend to come in many forms, the most common seem to be from those needing help to find their g-spot, or asking for suggestions on great products to stimulate the area.
With that in mind, I thought I’d create this G-Spot Guide: Helpful Tips, Tricks, and Suggestions to help get those questions answered while also focusing on some of my favorite products, hopefully making the entire process easier.
For the record, I’m not here to debate its existence. I’ve heard from more than enough people that there is an area, located within the same space, that gives them immense pleasure and arouses them like nothing else. That’s all I need to be convinced there’s a more than likely chance it’s real.
*Big, big, big thank you to the folks at PinkCherry.ca for supplying the vast majority of products I’ll be doing mini reviews for. If it wasn’t for them, this wouldn’t have been possible!
The G-Spot
For those of you that aren’t in the know, the g-spot (also known as the urethral sponge or “Grafenberg” spot, named after the fella that found it way back in the 40’s) is located somewhere between 1-3 inches inside the vagina on the front wall, between the vaginal opening and urethra.
Just remember, your g-spot is not in your vagina, but instead can be felt through the vaginal wall.
It’s bean-like in shape and made up of sensitive erectile tissue that engorges with blood when aroused, compressing the urethra (what you pee out of) to help prevent peeing during intercourse. On that note, if you’ve ever had something inserted (fingers, sex toy or been mid-intercourse) and felt like you had to pee — that’s most likely due to your g-spot.
I say it’s located “somewhere between’ because every body is different and where it’s specifically located for one person, may not be the same for another.
Regardless of body shape and size, most will find it’s located within a similar location – fingers length inside the vagina, slightly up ward and toward the lower part of the abdomen. Once the fingers are inserted, feeling around for an area that is spongy, rippled, ridged, bumpy, or generally feels different then the rest would be an ideal way of finding it. If you’re trying to find your g-spot, whether alone or with a partner, be sure to use firm pressure (but not so firm it hurts) as that tends to be the most agreed upon method of stimulation.
Keep in mind that during different phases of the sexual response cycle the shape and size of the g-spot may change and therefore make it easier or harder to find.
G-Spot Guide: Helpful Tips, Tricks, and Suggestions
When it comes to stimulating the g-spot there is a general consensus that a “come hither” movement with the fingers or applying some pressure will work best. If that doesn’t do it, you can also try lightly tapping the area, gently moving the fingers in a circular motion, opening and closing the fingers (like the “peace” sign) or sliding them back and forth in a “windshield” motion.
Whether you’re tapping, rubbing or applying pressure I highly suggest you keep the following things in mind:
Try to remember this is supposed to be a pleasure filled exploration of your body, not something that causes you stress, frustration, or leaves you felling embarrassed or annoyed. If you find that after multiple tries you can’t seem to find it, take the time to relax and pleasure yourself. As I previously said, the area will likely engorge with blood as you become aroused; the bigger it is, the easier it may be for you to find.
Since you’ll be inserting fingers into either your own body or that of someone else, make sure your nails are trimmed and free of any chips or sharp edges. I don’t know too many people that have said being scratched or scraped internally was pleasurable.
While this may seem to be something that’s common sense I can’t stress the importance of having clean hands and/or making sure whatever you’re inserting is clean. G-spot play should be fun, not something that leaves you with a possible infection.
If you’re not fully aroused and find that inserting a finger or sex toy hurts due to improper lubrication, remember that you can always use a good water based lube to make insertion easier.
Just because someone else likes the way something feels, doesn’t mean that you will, can, and/or should. Take the time to learn about your body, likes and dislikes, and find a way to make them work for you.
Most importantly, if you’re exploring with a partner and find a sensation or movement that works – tell them! I know talking during sexual pleasure can be embarrassing, but if you don’t tell them, they won’t know.
Considering over 70% of those with a vagina need clitoral stimulation to achieve an orgasm, targeting the g-spot might not work for everyone. In addition to the g-spot you might have to stimulate the clitoris to achieve an orgasm. (For the record there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just the way your body works)
Last but not least, empty your bladder, then make sure to drink LOTS of water.
Unfortunately stimulating it can be much easier said than done, especially if you’re masturbating and therefor not built with arms or fingers long enough to get the reach you need. That’s where intimate accessories specifically created for g-spot stimulation can be of great help.
Great Products for G-Spot Stimulation
With the growing change in perception regarding sex and sexuality, more and more manufactures are creating products specifically designed for different functions; from dildos to vibrators, affordable sexual enhancement products to luxury items, there are many that will work wonders when it comes to targeting the g-spot, and in the process, bring about a further understanding of ones body, not to mention some fantastic orgasms!
On that note, rather than listing all of the products here, I’m going to split the mini reviews into different categories that can be found by clicking on the links below.
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The land of endless summer will soon have its own official bard: earlier this month, the Malibu City Council approved the creation of a poet laureate position for the world's best-known beach city.
According to the Malibu Times, the council also approved a selection process for the position, along with "the requirement that the individual be a Malibu resident or strongly affiliated with Malibu in some way." The soon-to-be-selected hyper-local laureate will serve a two-year term and receive a $1000 stipend.
The concept of a poet laureate—a writer appointed by a government or institution who typically is expected to represent that body in some way—dates back to classical Greece. The practice fell by the wayside for a time, before being resurrected in Renaissance Italy.
The U.S. has had some version of a poet laureate since 1934, though the position has only officially been called that since 1985 (before that, the prominent poet in question was known as "the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress"). Los Angeles selected the fabulous Eloise Klein Healy as the city's inaugural poet laureate in December 2012.
The creation of the Malibu poet laureate position was spearheaded by local resident Ann Buxie, who coordinates a long-standing regular community poetry and storytelling event called “Tales by the Sea." The final candidate will be selected by a panel under the guidance of Dr. John Struleoff, Chair of the Creative Writing Department at Pepperdine University and an Esteemed Writing Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University, according to the Malibu Cultural Arts Commission.
Despite the recent proliferation of poet laureate positions across the U.S. (enough of a trend to warrant a 2013 article in The New York Times, and another a year later), it often remains unclear what a laureate position actually entails.
Howard Nemerov, according to the Library of Congress, was only "half joking" when he wrote in 1963 that the "The Consultant in Poetry is a very busy man, chiefly because he spends so much time talking with people who want to know what the Consultant in Poetry does.” Nemerov, for the record, actually served two terms as America's most eminent poet: he was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and the U.S. poet laureate from 1988 to 1990. He was also Diane Arbus's brother, but that is neither here nor there (though arguably interesting nonetheless).
The Malibu Times reports that the city's poet laureate will be responsible for representing the city at selected cultural community events, working with the local library and schools to promote poetry, as well as helping to organize an annual poetry invitational.
“Each poet laureate will have their own ideas about what they want to do, and will want to make use of their own individual talents,” Buxie told the Malibu Times.
According to the L.A. Times, Buxie first presented her idea to the city's Cultural Arts Commission back in August, and the commission passed it on to the city council in September.
“We can’t live in cities that become deserts of the soul,” she told the L.A. Times. “We need to nourish the soul of the city. Poetry is one way to do that.”
The City of Malibu will begin taking applications for the position on Wednesday, and the application period will be open until January 11, 2017. They are hoping to have their first laureate selected by March, in time for April's National Poetry Month. So much for April being the cruelest month!Nacrene City
Who are you people and what’re you doing on the displays? Also, get off the displays!
We’re Team Plasma and we’re here to take this dragon skull in the name of pokémon liberation!
- You’re going to spread your message by stealing a dragonite skull?
Dragonite? Is that what it’s called? Are they common where you come from?
- Well, uh…
He would have had one if he didn’t get Drake killed before he could evolve!
- You know you can be really hurtful sometimes…
All I’m saying is I’d have switched to that Gengar I never saw!
- She was in no condition to fight, I couldn’t risk them both!
Um–
And apparently you got her killed later anyway!
- Shut up!
Hey! They left, and they took the skull with them!
- Crap!
I run outside to see where they went but they’d all disappeared.
What’s all the commotion? Seems I get to miss all the fun around here.
Hi Burgh, those Plasma thugs just stole the dragon skull from my exhibit!
Plasma? Those space-hoodies?
Caldar, I think it should be you who chases after them while I stay here. Burgh, could you go with Caldar here?
Fine…
I’m here too!
Me too!
That’s great! You two can help me clean up!
Pinwheel Forest (Interior)
So there are two paths those… um, what’re they called again?
- The plasm people?
Right, there are two paths they could have taken. There’s the direct path and then there’s the winding path. I’ll try to cut them off at the end of the direct path and you can chase them down the winding path. We should trap them that way.
- OK.
Oh, the winding path is also full of wild pokémon and pitfalls.
- …
I trudge through the path and come across a sewaddle, pokéball go!
Sewaddle: It’s um… a Caterpie wearing a leaf coat?
- Welcome to the bench, Po!
Po ♀ Lv. 14
Hey! Did you just trap that innocent Sewaddle?!
- Found you!
Oh, it’s you! I’ll liberate that pokémon and any others you have right now!
A short battle ensues, I make quick work of her own pokémon. I can’t help but notice she keeps hers in a pokéball too…
- So if you don’t have the skull, where is it?
We need it for important research!
I just ignore her and continue into the forest, I soon come across another plasm person.
You! You shall go no further!
- Do you have the skull?
No but you shall go no further!
He reaches for a pokéball and I grab him by the throat.
Gak!
- I have no time for this.
I throw the grunt into a nearby ditch before I carry on down the path. I soon come across another grunt standing on a log. Seeing he doesn’t have the skull I just kick him off before he can do anything else to annoy me, he lands face first in a thorn bush.
Eventually I find the grunt with the skull in a clearing near the other pathway.
- Hand it over!
Um, no?
Oh, just hand it over.
Where'd he come from?
But, our lord’s plans!
I see you found the skull, great work!
That skull is unrelated to the legendary pokémon our lord seeks.
- I told them it was a dragonite skull. And who are you?
I am of the Seven Sages along with Ghetsis, my name is Gorm. We are the ones directing Team Plasma to liberate pokémon by any means necessary.
And that means resorting to theft?
Any. Means. Necessary! We will leave quietly for now, take your dragon skull.
Gorm and the grunt leave. The grunt begrudgingly shoves the skull into my hands as he passes me..
They’re certainly an odd bunch. I’ll head back to my gym now, you should challenge me sometime! See ya!
I take the skull back to the museum and decide to take the short path through pinwheel forest this time.
Skyarrow Bridge
I wish I had taken the train…Rising numbers of primary school children are being permanently excluded from school for assaulting their fellow pupils or teachers or being permanently disruptive in the classroom.
Figures show the number of permanent exclusions of primary school pupils has risen 13.9 per cent in a year to 690 - with 20 three or four-year-olds and 40 five-year-olds (all boys) given their marching orders.
They were described as making for “sombre reading” by teachers’ leader Dr Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. “We know that exclusions have a huge impact on the life chances of these pupils.”
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
She added that the exclusion of extremely young children could have been caused by the impact of cuts to Sure Start centres - which offer help to the under-fives.
“Sure Start centres were the first casualties in many local funding cuts and it may be the increase in primary school exclusions, which include 60 boys of four to five years of age, is one of the consequences of this,” warned Dr Bousted.
Dr Bousted was backed by Russell Hobby, General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, who added: “Cuts in specialist support services mean that many children with behavioural issues are not being spotted before they start at school.
“Schools are witnessing serious behavioural problems at ever younger ages - including violence and self-harm. Young children are also being exposed to adult themes in the media.
“Add this to cuts in services once provided by local authorities and eventually the problems escalate to a point where the education of other children suffers and schools have no choice but to exclude.”
A breakdown of the primary permanent exclusions reveals 230 were sent home for being persistently disruptive, 200 for assaulting an adult in the school and 120 for assaulting a fellow classmate.
The figures, published by the Department for Education today, show that - through the primary and secondary school sector in England - permanent exclusions rose from 5,080 to 5,170 following a steady decline in the exclusion rate in recent years.
Fixed term exclusion, when pupils were allowed back into school after a couple of days or a week, fell from 324,110 to 304, 370 - confirming a steady decline in recent years. However, here again, the fall was exclusively down to a drop in the exclusion rate in secondary schools.
In all, 162, 400 pupils - or 216 - in every 10,000 - received at least one fixed-term exclusion from school. Again, the most common reason was persistent disruptive behaviour - which accounted for 32.9 per cent of all permanent exclusions and 24.1 per cent of fixed period exclusions.
Boys were around three times more likely to receive a permanent or fixed term exclusion than girls. In addition, children entitled to free school meals were for times more likely to be permanently excluded.
The DfE research also showed that boys were far more likely to be excluded at a younger age than girls - but the most common age for exclusion for both sexes was 13 and 14.
An ethnic breakdown of the exclusion rates shows travellers’ children have the highest rates of permanent exclusion while black Caribbean and white and black Caribbean ethnic groups were around three times more likely to be excluded than the average pupil, a figure in line with previous years.
A spokesman for the DfE said; “Heads now have more power than ever before to ensure strong discipline in the classroom.
“The government is tackling the causes of exclusion by improving the quality of teaching, raising standards in literacy and numeracy. tackling disadvantage through the pupil premium. overhauling the special education needs system and making radical improvements to alternative provision.”
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowHADDONFIELD, N.J. (AP) — A judge has been clear that Caitlyn Ricci’s parents must pay her tuition to Temple University, even though the divorced couple agrees that they do not want to foot the bill to an out-of-state college they had no role in selecting for their 21-year-old daughter. Now two New Jersey lawmakers are weighing new legislation in reaction to a case that has sparked outrage over the role of courts and the rights of divorced parents.
Maura McGarvey and Michael Ricci said they have met with lawmakers in the last few weeks and expect a bill to be introduced soon that would bar courts handling college-funding decisions differently for divorced and married parents.
Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, a Democrat from Washington Township, said he’s working with Assemblyman Christopher Brown, a Republican from Evesham, on approaches to legislation. “If the law treats divorced parents differently than married parents, that’s unfair,” Moriarty said.
Brown, who is taking the lead on the issue, was traveling last week and not available to comment.
The family saga goes back years, but it’s become a flashpoint only in the last several weeks.
Judges have ruled that the parents must pay for their daughter’s classes last year at community college and $16,000 toward her tuition this year at Temple in Philadelphia.
Caitlyn Ricci’s lawyer, Andrew Rochester, said he’s had similar cases before and that there’s more than 40 years of case law in New Jersey to support the proposition that divorced parents must pay for their children’s post-secondary education. Most states, lawyers agree, do not have such a precedent.
McGarvey and Michael Ricci have told their story repeatedly in recent weeks to reporters. They have written about it — him on a piece posted on Yahoo’s parenting website, her on an explanation on Gofundme, a website she is using to raise money for a legal appeal.
They told The Associated Press in separate interviews that they were inspired to publicize their story by a saga earlier this year in northern New Jersey where an 18-year-old tried to force her parents, who were married, to pay for her private high school tuition. A judge denied the request and the daughter in that case later reconciled with her parents.
“We want to appeal just because we feel that the law is being used in the wrong way in our case,” McGarvey said. “No judge would come into a married household and say, ‘You have to pay for that child to go to whatever college she wants.'”
Caitlyn Ricci was born when her parents were still in college. They divorced when she was a toddler, and both have remarried and have younger children.
Her father, a sales manager and high school basketball coach who lives in Haddon Heights, and her mother, a middle school teacher who lives in Washington Township, said their divorce settlement did not include a provision for how her college education would be funded. But they said they have always worked together when it comes to parenting her.
When she graduated from high school in 2012, her parents said, the agreed she would continue to live with her mother and go to Gloucester County College rather than accept admission to Montclair State University 100 miles to the north.
After a semester there, she went to Florida for an internship at Disney World intended as a test, her parents said, of whether she was ready to live away from home. Her parents say she was sent home for underage drinking.
Not long after returning home, she moved in with her paternal grandparents. Her parents say they have not heard from her since.
Rochester said that the behavior Caitlyn Ricci’s parents have complained about was years ago and that she’s now a getting good grades while working 30 hours a week.
(© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
You may also be interested in these stories:WARNING! Before using SliTaz - please read this post: http://forum.slitaz.org/topic/-important-info-about-meltdown-and-spectre- slitaz-rolling-core.iso Full 32 bits desktop with 32 bits kernel. slitaz-rolling-core64.iso Full 32 bits desktop with 64 bits kernel. slitaz-rolling.iso Full 32 bits desktop with 32 bits kernel, with gtkonly, justx and base alternatives (4x), also known as rolling-4in1.iso, current preferred ISO to download. The default boot selects the best flavor according the RAM size. slitaz-rolling-loram.iso Full 32 bits desktop with 32 bits kernel, with gtkonly, justx, base and non-live (needs the CD-ROM) alternatives (5x). Spare up to 30% of the RAM size in live mode. The default boot selects the best flavor according the RAM size. Built with the following command line : # tazlito build-loram slitaz-rolling.iso slitaz-rolling-loram.iso ram slitaz-core-5in1.iso Full 32 bits desktop with gtkonly, justx and base alternatives, with 32 bits kernel and 64 bits Kernel. The default boot selects the best flavor according the RAM size. The Kernel is selected according the processor type. slitaz-rolling-preinit.iso Used to boot special configurations such as raid, lvm... with 32 bits kernel and 64 bits kernel; see http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:uncommoninst#lvm-install slitaz-rolling-core*.zip Full 32 bits desktop with 32 bits kernel or 64 bits kernel pre-installed for DOS/Windows in the /slitaz directory. The boot instructions are in /slitaz/boot/install.txt ( built from slitaz-rolling-core.iso with http://hg.slitaz.org/wok/raw-file/tip/syslinux/stuff/iso2exe/taziso ) : # taziso slitaz-rolling-core.iso inst2zip batch Any iso image can boot a CD-ROM, a memory card or a USB key. The 64-bit kernel is needed to access more than 3 or 4 GB of RAM.Modern political conventions are intended to be slick shows of partisan boosterism—weeklong infomercials in which differences are papered over and everyone smiles for the cameras. This was something quite different, something rarely seen in the age of lockstep partisanship and spin: a ramshackle, thrown-together, halfhearted spectacle, one that brutally exposed the flimsiness of a campaign that has always been little more than a man, his plane, and his Twitter account. Behind the scenes, it was a constant scramble: One convention staffer described spending the week trying to plan around a disengaged campaign, only to have the campaign repeatedly blow up the plans at the last minute. “If he can’t run a convention,” the staffer said, “how is he going to run a country?”
And so, if America is in chaos, Trump seems more a symptom than a remedy. As he and his party now veer unsteadily toward November, to an election he could still quite plausibly win, the convention and the circus surrounding it proved that there will be no rhyme or reason to this madcap process. If this election is to be fought over chaos versus order, the convention did not make a convincing case for Trump as the candidate of control.
Trump has been the chaos candidate, as Jeb Bush once described him, from the beginning—from the day 13 months ago when he descended the famous escalator at Trump Tower, chucked his script, and embarked on the first of the angry rants that would become his signature. As he prepared to speak here on Thursday, a New York delegate in the front row clutched a sign reading, “Trump Is America’s Great Ball of Fire!” It was meant as a compliment.
The mood in the arena was often glum. At one point, I ran into Eric O’Keefe, a Wisconsin conservative activist who helped lead a group of delegates’ quixotic last-minute attempt to steal the nomination from Trump. “I feel like I’m at the wake of a once-great political party,” he said. A conservative consultant, seeing Trump officially crowned the delegates’ choice, pronounced grimly, “Well, the suicide pact is complete.”
Yet there could be no avoiding it: Trump won and the haters lost. Just after the delegates voted to make him the nominee, I encountered a jubilant Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s fired-campaign-manager-turned-television-commentator, who was leading the New Hampshire delegation (and who had used the convention chaos to try to cast doubt on his replacement in the post). “It’s amazing, right?” he exulted. “You never would have predicted it!”
Lewandowski predicted that Trump would win far and wide by upending the partisan patterns of old and competing in states that have been unfriendly to Republicans for decades. “Donald Trump is a disruptive force to the system,” he said. “That’s why they’re scared to death. And I love it!”Although some argue that partisan unfairness arises naturally because Democrats tend to cluster in urban areas, this is not the whole story. After the 2010 wave election and 2012 redistricting, GOP gerrymandering more than doubled the effects of clustering, flipping seats far faster than population migration could possibly explain. Of course, Democrats played the game, too, and in total, more than 70 seats were made uncompetitive for one side or the other. Republicans, however, ended up with a net gain of 16 or 17 safe seats, a difference that can almost exactly account for why they retained control of the House in 2012 despite losing the national popular vote. Without gerrymandering, their 2016 majority would be approximately 231 to 200 seats, a 31-seat margin that is substantially smaller than their current margin of 45 seats. (That might have made all the difference in Thursday's American Health Care Act vote.)The North Face Urban Exploration line has recently unveiled lookbook images for its Fall/Winter 2017 Tech Denim collection. As the latest release from its “Black Series,” the eight-piece assemblage brings together some of TNF’s most iconic pieces and reimagines them in a manner that provides functional protection from Mother Nature, while staying true to the label’s fashion-forward approach.
Sticking to a muted palette of blue and grey, each item is waterproof, windproof and abrasion resistant without the burden of weighing down its wearer. Expert craftsmanship and intricate detailing are present, with The North Face’s signature emblem completing each design. The collection will make its debut on November 2 and can be found at participating The North Face Urban Exploration stockists.
In case you missed it, The North Face launches its premium “Cryos” collection.Halloween takes place this Saturday night and the chances are you are probably doing something involving ghouls and goblins. Be it a grown-up costume party or walking your little ones around the neighborhood to Trick-Or-Treat, the chances are you will probably get thirsty at some point. Luckily, I have done the research for you so that you can impress your friends with some Halloween-themed beers to enjoy on this awesome night of things that go bump in the night. This article builds on something I wrote last year around this time with a few diabolical recommendations for a night filled with horrors and hops.
New Holland’s The Poet
If you are going to a Halloween party, you are going to see spooky snacks and shriek-invoking decorations. However, probably the scariest idea of all is getting there only to find that nobody thought to bring a roasty, chocolate and smooth Oatmeal Stout. Did that idea cause a disturbance in your force? Good, then you will really be excited about picking up a sixer of New Holland Brewing Company’s The Poet.
This baby is packed with so much roasty goodness, you will swear that your body was snatched and forced to spend the night in a haunted house roasting malt. This beer is a stout lover’s paradise. It is thick, creamy and has a tremendous chocolate and coffee balance that it will be something even the novice craft beer drinker can enjoy. One of the best reasons to make this something you bring to a party is the relatively low (5.2%) alcohol by volume of this beer.
You can rest assured that despite the stature of this beer, it will not turn you into a drunken werewolf if you have more than two of these craft beers. The label art is an homage to perhaps one of the most iconic poems written about a bird ever. The raven will be mocking you at the liquor store until you grab a six-pack and put it in your cart. Yes, I said cart because The Poet is no t the only craft beer to try for this Halloween.
Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale
There is nothing spookier than a dead guy. Lucky for you, one of Rogue’s most popular beers is a wonderfully balanced bock beer called Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale. This beer is a Maibock that is available most of the year. It has a nice malt character with a very approachable and mild caramel flavor. You will also get a nice bready note from the malt. It is balanced out nicely with some hops that are not necessarily bitter, but even out the malt character. This is a lighter beer in color and body and perfect for someone who is not a fan of a darker stout. The balance of this beer will not scare off anyone and is a great beer for someone to try who is ready to move away from some of the macro beer offerings they are used to. The label art is perfect for a night of terrors and tulip glasses.
New Holland’s Dragon’s Milk
The third and final beer of this is definitely not for the faint of heart. We are going back to the we ll with New Holland, only this time, with a much higher gravity beer. Dragon’s are scary creatures, just ask any Game of Thrones reader or Bilbo Baggins. They are unpredictable, greedy, gold-hoarding pyromaniacs. Now, imagine that they lactate, too. Purely freaky, I know, but that is where I assume New Holland Brewing Company’s Dragon’s Milk comes from. This Imperial Stout might have you feel like you can breath fire, but it is just the 10% alcohol that is warming your belly. This is perfect for after the kids are done Trick-or-Treating and you are sitting around the campfire hanging out with some friends. Definitely a sipper, this pitch-black high octane flavor fuel is packed with boozy oak barrel notes along with a lot of roasted malt and vanilla character. This might be a good option to The Poet if you want something with a little bit more kick.
Hopefully, you now have some ideas for ways to impress your friends and neighbors this Halloween. What better way to usher out the wonderful month of October with a Halloween night filled with laughter, friendship and craft beer. These three craft beers are not whales that you have to hunt down and chase trucks to find. They are readily available at your favorite neighborhood liquor store. I wish you happy hauntings and if you choose to give any of these beers a try, put a comment below and let me know what you think. Prost!Federal district judge Dale A. Kimball has handed down the final judgment in the SCO case. The decision dismisses SCO's latest claims, grants declaratory relief to Novell, and sustains the court's previous judgment that SCO owes Novell over $2.54 million (plus interest) for unjust enrichment.
SCO's protracted legal shenanigan has been running for roughly five years now. The company originally claimed that it owned the UNIX SVRX copyrights and that incontrovertible evidence had been uncovered that the open source Linux kernel was written using a significant amount of code that was misappropriated from SVRX. In reality, SCO's own internal audits of Linux source code turned up no evidence of copyright infringement; meanwhile, Novell has turned out to be the rightful owner of the SVRX copyrights.
SCO managed to use its false claims to extract licensing revenue out of companies that were apparently uninterested in contesting its claims. Novell took SCO's claims to court and eventually triumphed, which pushed SCO off of the precipice and into bankruptcy.
Judge Kimball determined that SCO was subject to a contract with Novell, which it violated by lifting SVRX confidentiality provisions in a licensing agreement with Sun. This move exceeded the authority granted to SCO under the terms of a 1994 asset purchase agreement that enabled SCO to sell limited SVRX licenses to third parties on behalf of Novell. Judge Kimball also determined that SCO breached its fiduciary duty by neglecting to remit the requisite portion of the licensing revenue to Novell.
In addition to the $2,547,817 that SCO was originally ordered to pay to Novell in a previous judgment, SCO will also have to pay $918,122 in prejudgment interest and $489 per day from August 29 until November 20. SCO is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings and does not presently have the resources to pay the amount in full. A constructive trust has been established with $625,000 of SCO's remaining resources.
SCO could still theoretically appeal, but it seems unlikely that the dying UNIX vendor can afford to do so. Several of SCO's attempts to reorganize have failed and a private equity firm that was in negotiations to resurrect SCO has backed away from the deal. SCO's own management has substantial doubts about the company's future.
Despite all the legal decisions to the contrary, SCO's number one man, Darl McBride, has continued to espouse his belief that Linux was built by stealing from UNIX. Regardless of his opinion, SCO's long battle is finally reaching a very undignified end.
Further readingFormula 1 fans |
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Why the iPad?
It should be no surprise that the iPad is the most popular tablet on Ars—there is so little competition at this time. While we have plans to support other tablets in the future, we decided that version 1.0 was going to be aimed at the iPad, and the WiFi-only version at that. (3G users can, of course, use the app.) We expected that there were throngs of WiFi users wanting to take Ars with them on a plane, in a car, on a bus, or elsewhere where they have no WiFi or 3G service.
We built the application with future platforms in mind. Our application is 99 percent written using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript (technically CoffeeScript compiled into JavaScript). Our application targets the WebKit browser and will work anywhere that engine is deployed. That means we can easily port this application to future Android tablets, the upcoming RIM Playbook, and any other platform for which we see significant demand. And, if we need to, we always have the option to liberate the app from Apple's App Store and deploy it fully on the Web.
The client itself is deployed in a PhoneGap iPad application wrapper. This is not much more than a Xcode project with JavaScript hooks into various parts of the iOS APIs. PhoneGap has similar wrappers that implement the same API on other platforms (Android, Blackberry, Palm, Symbian, and WinMo). Not all of these are at the same level of quality as the iOS and Android versions, but we hope they will be soon.
The bulk of the application, as mentioned, is nothing but HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The JavaScript is written in a language called CoffeeScript, which has a Ruby-like syntax and makes using the Good Parts™ of JavaScript much easier. The CSS is compiled down to JavaScript code that is shipped with the application.
One of the most liberating parts of developing this application was the prospect of targeting a single browser engine: very recent versions of Webkit. This is great because you can completely do away with JavaScript frameworks like Prototype and jQuery that spend most of their time compensating for quirks and incompatibilities between a multitude of runtimes. You can really get away with writing your own micro-framework to make redundant operations like adding event listeners, doing animations, and accessing methods like document.getElementById and document.querySelectorAll —as we did—or you can piggyback off the work of giants and use something off-the-shelf like Zepto by Thomas Fuchs.
The user interface is very simple HTML and CSS. This is great, because the Webkit team has implemented a ton of neat stuff like animations, transforms, transitions, advanced CSS3 rules like text and box shadows, gradients, and the canvas tag. They make it easier than ever to meet our designer's exacting standards and to build fast, beautiful applications without resorting to weird tricks and hacks.
What makes all of this even more exciting is that, on many mobile platforms—and certainly on the iPad and iPhone—many of these animations and tranforms can be hardware-accelerated, which results in a very native experience in a simple Web application.
To power the back-end of the application, we developed a back-end API powered by Rails and MongoDB—a speedy document-oriented database that fit our use case nearly perfectly. This gives us a ton of flexibility in how we can deliver Ars content to you. Right now, we deliver just about everything (no Etc. posts) to the iPad but, in the future, we can slice and dice our content based on tags, categories, authors, and more, to give each user of our mobile applications a customized experience.
What's even cooler is that this API has laid some really important groundwork for features that have already reached the website in the form of better formatted posts, better formatting in our Kindle and RSS feeds, and better article composition options for authors, all of which make posts more uniform. The API and its underlying service may also help us bring features like customized RSS feeds, customized front page composition, and a much improved site search engine in the future.
Developers, there's the future possibility we could open this API up to people who want to do interesting things with it. Please let us know if you think you would like to do interesting projects using our data!
What's next and how you can help (Updated)
The application we've released into the wild today is missing a lot of features. That is by design, for several reasons. We had lot of great ideas like adding a bookmarking feature to the website that would sync individual articles to your tablet, enabling syncing images for offline viewing, adding the ability to view articles in landscape format, allowing reading and contributing to comments, letting users customize the types of content to be delivered, and lots more.
What we didn't want to do, however, is to run down a lot of roads only to discover that they were dead-ends as far as our readership is concerned. We want to implement features that our readers actually want, so we're counting on you to let us know what you'd like to see in the application.
And for those of you without iPads, please contribute as well. All the updates we make here will automatically be available on any other platforms we decide to support. Also let us know if we should be looking at any particular platform or device; we want to know where we should focus our attention in the future. This application is for our readers, so we really hope to hear your feedback about where we should take it.
Please leave your feedback in the comments of this post, or if you'd like to contact us directly, shoot us an e-mail at civis@arstechnica.com.
Update! We've had some frequently asked questions, so here are some answers!
Q: Why is $flaw ruining my day? A: We tested the app internally, and Apple also tested it. Still, we know there will be bugs and jitters and various other things. Please report flaws here or to civis@ars, and give us some time to address them before condemning us or leaving a scathing review.
Q: Any plans for an iPhone/iPod Touch version of the app? A: No, not at this time. We really are focusing on the tablet experience. We may look at phones again (m.arstechnica.com, launched about a year ago, was our first effort for phones) in the future, though, and love your feedback!
Q: No landscape? A: That’s in the next version. We wanted to get something out for your review asap. Also, we chose portrait first because that’s what the stats say most people read in.
Q: Why an App for a tablet? A: A browser is still a point-and-click interface that’s run on a PC of some sort, most of the time. We believe that the tablet reading experience is different, and wanted to experiment. Most of the Ars staff that have tablets are converts to tablet-based reading.At least 16 people have been killed and 17 wounded by a bomb at a marketplace in Kalaya, in Pakistan's Orakzai tribal region, officials say.
The blast went off close to a number of government buildings.
It is unclear if officials or members of an anti-Taliban tribe were the intended target.
Orakzai is an area where Taliban insurgents are active and battle government forces as well as local anti-Taliban militias.
Pakistan's military has carried out a series of offensives against Taliban militants in the north-west in recent years, but the militants have proved difficult to defeat and have continued to carry out regular attacks against security forces and civilians in the area.
No group has claimed responsibility for the latest bombing.
Government spokesman Fazal Qadir told the BBC that most of the dead were worshippers leaving a mosque in the main square in Kalaya following Friday prayers.
Police say that the blast took place near a video, CD and mobile shop surrounded by small kiosks selling tea and other edibles.
Officials told Reuters that nine militants were killed after jets bombed their hideout following the attack.
The Pakistan army launched a major offensive in Orakzai in the spring of 2010, and in October of that year announced that it had cleared much of the area it described as "the Taliban's centre of gravity in Pakistan".
Correspondents say that clearing out militant sanctuaries near the Pakistani border with Afghanistan is seen as crucial to US efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan ahead of the scheduled Nato pull-out in 2014.
"According to our initial information, the bomb was planted near the video CD and mobile shop surrounded by small kiosks selling tea and other edibles," local official Mehmood Aslam told the AFP news agency.
Last October at least four people have been killed in a bomb blast in a market in Orakzai.Share this
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Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University Stanford University
A mathematical model may help scientists design new kinds of materials for use in high-power batteries.
In a study published this week in Applied Physics Letters, researchers describe their new mathematical model for designing materials for storing electricity. The model could be a huge benefit to chemists and materials scientists, who traditionally rely on trial and error to create new materials for batteries and capacitors.
Advancing new materials for energy storage is also an important step toward reducing carbon emissions in the transportation and electricity sectors.
“The potential here is that you could build batteries that last much longer and make them much smaller,” says study coauthor Daniel Tartakovsky, a professor in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences at Stanford University
“If you could engineer a material with a far superior storage capacity than what we have today, then you could dramatically improve the performance of batteries,” Tartakovsky adds.
The importance of better energy storage
One of the primary obstacles to transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables is the ability to store energy for later use, such as during hours when the sun is not shining, in the case of solar power. Demand for cheap, efficient storage has increased as more companies turn to renewable energy sources, which offer significant public health benefits.
“Current batteries and other storage devices are a major bottleneck for transition to clean energy…”
Tartakovsky hopes the new materials developed through this model will improve supercapacitors, a type of next-generation energy storage that could replace rechargeable batteries in high-tech devices like cellphones and electric vehicles.
Supercapacitors combine the best of what is currently available for energy storage—batteries, which hold a lot of energy but charge slowly, and capacitors, which charge quickly but hold little energy. The materials must be able to withstand both high power and high energy to avoid breaking, exploding, or catching fire.
“Current batteries and other storage devices are a major bottleneck for transition to clean energy,” Tartakovsky says. “There are many people working on this, but this is a new approach to looking at the problem.”
The types of materials widely used to develop energy storage, known as nanoporous materials, look solid to the human eye but contain microscopic holes that give them unique properties.
Developing new, possibly better nanoporous materials has, until now, been a matter of trial and error—arranging minuscule grains of silica of different sizes in a mold, filling the mold with a solid substance, and then dissolving the grains to create a material containing many small holes. The method requires extensive planning, labor, experimentation, and modifications, without guaranteeing the end result will be the best possible option.
“We developed a model that would allow materials chemists to know what to expect in terms of performance if the grains are arranged in a certain way, without going through these experiments,” Tartakovsky says. “This framework also shows that if you arrange your grains like the model suggests, then you will get the maximum performance.”
More than batteries
Energy is just one industry that makes use of nanoporous materials, and Tartakovsky says he hopes this model will be applicable in other areas, as well.
“This particular application is for electrical storage, but you could also use it for desalination, or any membrane purification,” he says. “The framework allows you to handle different chemistry, so you could apply it to any porous materials that you design.”
Xuan Zhang, Tartakovsky’s former PhD student at the University of California, San Diego, is the lead author of the study. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation supported the research.
Source: Stanford UniversityWe were accidental tiny-house dwellers. In 2003, my husband and I built a 480-square-foot cabin with cedar-colored siding, a covered front porch, and a 10-by-24 “party deck” on our land on Bull Shoals Lake in the Ozark Mountains. The property is 300 miles from our hometown of Kansas City, and we used the cabin for weekend escapes and vacations.
We had planned to move to the land, some day, and add to the cabin or build a house next to it. But in 2007 the unexpected happened, twice: My husband’s job of 23 years became undone due to a corporate buyout, and my mother passed away. Suddenly living near all our memories was too painful, and our land beckoned.
Then we did the math and realized we had underestimated our expenses for expansion, which included replacing our water tank with a more sustainable permanent well, which ran about $15,000.
And so me, my husband, and our four dogs joined the ever-growing number of tiny-house inhabitants and—eventually—enthusiasts.
The first hurdle was getting rid of our stuff, since we were coming from a jam-packed three-bedroom house; I had three closets full of clothes. We had four televisions, a formal living room and separate family room, and even wedding presents still packed in boxes from 29 years before.
The key was to go through it in waves. We donated items we’d never use and left most of the rest packed away in an outbuilding on our land—sentimental items or heirlooms we couldn’t yet part with (my mom’s wedding china and some of her beloved antiques).
For people who don’t have the luxury of storage, Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co., suggests primitive camping. Set out with a tent and only what’s necessary.
“This allows people to see what they really need,” Shafer told me. The idea is to have only the space you use and the stuff you can comfortably maintain.
That first winter was, to say the least, cramped. I felt like I was working from an airplane seat for 10 hours each day in our 10-by-10 bedroom; every time I moved, my notes fell to the floor in a heap. So when the snow melted, we built a separate 320-square-foot office space. (If you’re a tiny-house dweller who works from home, I’d advise it.)
However, the financial benefits—having a lower house payment and utilities, and no room for frivolous purchases—were worth it. So were the environmental advantages: We heated the cabin with a wood stove, using trees felled on our own land. We had more disposable income and more time to enjoy hiking, boating, and fishing.
For most folks there’s another hurdle: navigating codes that may not allow dwellings under a certain square footage.
Depending on your location, you might have to navigate some red tape, The town of Walnut Ridge, AR, for example, passed an ordinance at the beginning of 2015 not to allow homes under 600 square feet, for fear they would devalue other homes in the area. That means anyone who wants to join the tiny-house movement has to apply for a variance from the city or town’s planning and zoning board. Before you embark on your tiny-house adventure, check with your local county, town, or city for building code restrictions. (Code restrictions weren’t a problem for us, since our unincorporated area had no minimum square footage requirements.)
And lastly, there is the issue of co-habitation in a 480-square-foot house. My husband and I have been married, happily, for almost three decades, and getting along hasn’t been much harder here than elsewhere. But there are those times when the TV’s too loud and you can’t just shut yourself off in another wing. No matter the climate—and believe me it gets cold here—outdoor living is very important in tiny-house life.
So there is this: I can sit outside, escaping the thunderous booms and crashes of one of the action-adventure movies my husband loves watching. As dusk approaches, I can listen to the “hoo-hoo” of our hollow’s resident owl. Soon, the lightning bugs begin to twinkle in the dense woods just beyond the house and the coyotes begin their mournful howls.
You see, when my husband and I need a break from each other, the break can sometimes also turn into an experience. And that’s what tiny-house living is all about.A Lexington police officer charged with misconduct for allegedly receiving sexual favors from a woman is now being accused of raping her.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court, April Stinson seeks an undetermined amount of damages from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government and Lexington police Sgt. Robert Dale Brown. The lawsuit also names Mayor Jim Gray and Police Chief Ronnie Bastin as defendants.
Stinson claims in the lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted by Brown, who was suspended without pay this summer after allegations surfaced that he drove Stinson to a remote location Dec. 9, 2011, and had sexual contact with her.
According to arrest warrants, Brown did not file charges against Stinson following the sexual contact despite finding drug paraphernalia in her purse.
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Brown was criminally charged with one count of first-degree official misconduct and two counts of second-degree official misconduct, all misdemeanors, for violating codes of conduct. Brown's criminal charges do not include charges of rape or sexual assault.
Brown could not be reached for comment Friday. Louisville attorney Steve Schroering, who is representing Brown in the misconduct case, said he had not seen the federal lawsuit and could not comment on it Friday night.
Stinson's attorney, Bryce Caldwell of Lexington, said the complaint speaks for itself.
According to the lawsuit, Brown handcuffed Stinson and placed her under arrest "for an alleged public intoxication violation."
Rather than taking her to jail, Brown allegedly drove Stinson to a vehicle tow yard, where he allowed her to retrieve medication from her vehicle. He then drove her to "a remote, concealed location in Fayette County... for the purpose of sexually assaulting and forcibly raping" her, the lawsuit said.
After the incident, he dropped Stinson off at her brother's house rather than taking her to jail, the lawsuit said.
Stinson claimed the city, Bastin and Gray violated her rights by failing to properly train and supervise Brown.
City spokeswoman Susan Straub said she could not comment on pending litigation.
Brown's pending criminal misconduct charges also stemmed from failing to file charges against a man found with pills in his pocket; Brown is accused of arresting the man instead for driving on a suspended license, even though he did not witness the traffic infraction, another warrant said.
Brown has been a police officer for more than 10 years with no disciplinary actions against him until the situations with Stinson and the man.
Stinson is seeking attorney fees and a jury trial as well as punitive damages.The law enforcement community is currently experiencing the most intense scrutiny and community dissention since the Vietnam war of the late 1960’s – early 1970s. Law enforcement and city administrators increasingly find themselves up against the wall as citizen protests mount; occasionally transitioning into violence, riots and the destruction of city property and privately owned businesses. Worse yet, as the police officer assassinations in Dallas (TX) and Baton Rouge (LA) demonstrate; police officers who are defenders of the Rule of Law and the Thin Blue Line of safety between the criminal elements and innocent civilians have become human targets for disturbed, lone-wolf, ticking time bombs influenced by the emotional rhetoric born from false narratives of officer-involved death cases.
Taking the center stage spotlight in the war against police and the democratic rule of law is the militant, revolutionary Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). The BLM is an organization reborn from the Vietnam war era, with a political ideology steeped in Marxism and Black Nationalism. Literally all of the heroes of the BLM founders identified as Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, are former convicted cop-killer Black Nationalist revolutionaries from the old Black Panther, Black Liberation Army and Weather Underground organizations. These black revolutionaries include the likes of Huey Newton and Assata Shakur and others whose backgrounds are virtually unknown to the current generation of American youth and young adults. However, to those of us from that era of law enforcement; these names and their evil deeds are well remembered.
The Black Lives Matter organization is not some current political fad born of social media; but a large, organized, well-planned and funded political action group with international outreach extending to Cuba, Northern Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. The BLM is a tentacle of a Marxist, revolutionary Global movement referred to as “One World – One Struggle.” Significant funding sources for the BLM comes from international currency manipulator and convicted criminal George Soros through his Open Society Institute, which is a funding front for far leftist and revolutionary movements and organizations such as the secret Tides Foundation, MORE (formerly known as ACORN), MoveOn.org, Democracy Alliance, the National of La Raza and others. Much of Soros’ money into the BLM coffers pays for outside mercenary protesters who suddenly enter a city, create havoc and then leave. Police in cities such as Ferguson, (MO) Baltimore, (MD) and now Charlotte, (NC) have identified upwards to 70% of arrested violent protesters as having no ties to the cities they were protesting in.
Additionally, major music entertainers and celebrities such as Jay Z and Beyoncé Carter have provided tens of thousands of dollars to BLM movement members and supporters for transportation, food and bail following the riots, lootings and the burning of commercial businesses in Ferguson, Baltimore and other major cities in which the Black Lives Matter movement has protested. You might recall that Beyoncé performed an anti-law enforcement, pro-Black Panther Party half-time show at the 2015 Super Bowl that was right out of the BLM playbook.
The Black Lives Matter organization is relatively transparent in its intent to create a new Marxist style policing and criminal justice paradigm. However, their less than transparent and ultimate goals to achieve this objective are to disenfranchise and diminish law enforcement officers in the eyes of the low-informed and disengaged general public and media. Next they seek to de-fund proactive, anti-crime community policing programs. The movement’s ultimate objective is to eventually dissolve law enforcement and the criminal justice systems as we know them today in favor of their own programs.
Black Lives Matter’s more transparent plan forwarded through its public demands, protests; its media spotlight and through its naïve politician surrogates is referred to as “Campaign Zero.” Components of the Campaign Zero plan have already been espoused by Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former candidate and avowed socialist Bernie Sanders. These demands include an end to “broken windows policing,” stop and frisk and other proactive policing programs that have been repeatedly proven to reduce violent crime in the inner cities of New York, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and other cities.
The rhetoric of the leaders, followers and political surrogates of the Black Lives Matter movement is replete with vague and ambiguous Marxist-style rhetoric of “police oppression of the people” and “social justice.” While they chant that “black lives matter” and claim that their designs are peaceful; their rhetoric does not reconcile with their documented actions.
Factually, leaders and members of the BLM have been videoed marching down city streets and highways they have shut down while yelling, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” and “Pigs in a blanket. Fry’em like bacon.” Not exactly peace-loving chants. Young girls of the movement are observed to be wearing T-shirts inscribed with “Assata Taught Me,” which is a reference to Marxist revolutionary, Black Panther and Black Liberation Army soldier and convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur. Shakur assassinated a New Jersey state trooper during a car stop in the 1970s; escaped prison and has been living in exile in communist Cuba under the protection of the Cuban government ever since.
Black Lies Matter – A movement born of falsehoods
No matter how hard the Black Lives Matter movement tries, they just cannot get behind the right suspect “victim” profile when protesting so-called “police injustice” and what they refer to as “extrajudicial killings” of young black men.
As I have written about in my book, “The Truth Behind the Black Lives Matter Movement and the War on Police,” the BLM was initially founded upon the false narratives they forwarded in the high-profile shooting death cases of Trayvon Martin (Sanford, FL) and Michael Brown (Ferguson, MO). Investigations in both cases revealed conclusive forensic evidence that both Martin and Brown were committing violent felony assaults upon their victims when they were ultimately shot and killed in self-defense. In the case of Trayvon Martin, it was by civilian George Zimmerman and in the case of Michael Brown, by police officer Darren Wilson. In fact, one of the BLM’s favorite slogans, “Hands-up; don’t shoot!” was a proven false narrative emanating from the Michael Brown shooting case. It simply never happened; but that hasn’t stopped members of Black Lives Matter from perpetuating this lie each time they protest. Hands up gestures have been picked up by professional athletes in the NFL who are obviously ignorant of the forensic facts in the Michael Brown shooting case.
Since the Michael Brown case in 2014, the leaders, members, political and celebrity surrogates have forwarded other false narratives that have been forensically proven to be factually incorrect and/or misleading. For instance, Freddie Gray (Baltimore, MD) was not beaten by police in the back of a transport van. His death was more likely than not self-inflicted when the drug influenced, agitated and chaotic Gray slammed his head backwards into an exposed bolt in the back of a police van. Anton Sterling (Baton Rouge, LA) was not “unarmed” as the BLM claimed. He was in fact armed with a concealed handgun that he was reaching for when he was shot/killed by police. But that fact did not stop the BLM from holding violent protests falsely claiming that police shot an unarmed black man. This rhetoric no doubt contributed to the ambush murder of three Baton Rouge police officers and five more police officers in Dallas, Texas one week later during BLM inspired protests.
Most recently in Charlotte (NC), Black Lives Matter members and their surrogates forwarded the false narrative that deceased officer-involved shooting suspect Keith Lamont Scott was “unarmed” when he was shot by police. This lie resulted in week long protests and riots that devastated the city, shut down streets and a highway; and damaged city and commercial property. The riots that ensued were directly responsible for the shooting death of one protester by another. However, the initial false narrative that was screamed out to the impressionable media by members of the BLM was that it was the police who killed victim Justin Carr with a “rubber bullet to the head.” The BLM simply dropped this lie after police arrested the real suspect Rayquan Borum, 21, who was identified by both a surveillance video and a nearby witness as Carr’s killer. Yet, another incident of black on black homicide. There were no apologies to police and no sympathetic protests of Carr’s tragic death made by Black Lives Matter afterwards. Mr. Carr’s death as a black man simply didn’t matter to the BLM because it’s not part of their false narrative that police indiscriminately kill young black men.
Although police could have significantly mitigated the level of public dissention and riots by mostly outside anarchists and BLM members by releasing a police video(s) of the encounter, they initially chose not to. The city’s police Chief Kerr Putney later reversed his initial ill-considered decision to release police videos several critical and riotous days later, but only after Black Lives Matter had firmly planted the seeds of deceit that police had unjustifiably “murdered” an unarmed Keith Scott and then “planted” a gun next to his body. Police had to counter the BLM’s damaging false narrative by releasing forensic evidence that confirmed that the fully loaded Colt Mustang 9mm semi-automatic pistol recovered near Scott’s body had his blood, DNA and fingerprints on it; they had arrested a burglar who stole the gun and admitted selling it to Scott; and Scott was found to be wearing an ankle holster when he was shot by police.
In addition, public records reveal that Scott had thirteen prior arrests, including two for aggravated assault with weapons; child and spousal abuse. In fact, after Scott’s wife Rakeyia released her cell phone video where she was yelling to police that Scott wasn’t armed; public records document that she had filed a restraining order last October against her husband writing in the affidavit that Scott “had a black 9mm; says he’s a killer” and “threated to kill me.”
Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Anton Sterling and Keith Scott are the types of people that Black Lives Matter champions over the tens of thousands of young black men and women murdered during the past five years nationally in black on black homicides. The very name of their movement “Black Lives Matter” is in fact a blatant lie. Not all black lives matter to these militants; just certain lives that fit into their anti-police, anti-democratic government political designs.
The manner in which BLM did not protest the Charlotte murder of black victim Justin Carr; and their historic refusal to protest the thousands of homicide victims of black on black homicides in Chicago alone is a testament to the hypocrisy of their movement, ideology and ideals.
It’s time to take a stand and publicly disavow, disassociate from and dissolve BLM
As a forty-year active participant in the law enforcement and criminal justice communities, I must confess that one of the things that I have found disappointing about my communities is their often archaic thinking regarding pressing issues and threats to destabilize a system that protects citizens by enforcing the Rule of law. It is as if none of our police and sheriff administrators, prosecutors and judges ever watch TV or read a newspaper. While some police chiefs and sheriffs espouse the “proactivity” of their department mission statements towards community policing; they are factually well behind the tidal wave of public dissent of law enforcement currently being created by the Black Lives Matter movement.
The truth is that the vast majority of our law enforcement leaders are leading from behind when it comes to assertively addressing the significant dangers of a political movement called Black Lives Matter that seeks to destroy law enforcement; usurp the Rule of Law and endanger our communities. It is the same issue for municipal, state and federal politicians. For God’s sake people, wake up!
While Black Lives Matter, Marxists, Communists and anarchists are marching in our streets, shutting down freeways, isolating cities, burning police cars, looting and burning commercial businesses and assassinating our police officers; our law enforcement leaders and municipal, state and federal politicians do nothing. To make matters worse, a low-informed and overtly biased against police mainstream media is complicit in allowing Black Lives Matter and its political surrogates to forward their blatant lies about police-citizen encounters without challenge or journalistic scrutiny.
My dad once told me, “Life is tough; but it’s a lot tougher when you’re stupid.”
What is going on here?
While it is both a civil right and often appropriate to protest perceived “injustices;” there are boundaries and legal guidelines to such demonstrations and dissent. That is exactly why we have the Rule of Law and why governments train and entrust law enforcement officers with the authority to maintain and enforce those laws. We simply cannot have violent anarchy founded upon and precipitated by the spreading of false narratives by any quasi-political organization.
This is not rocket science. Politicians and law enforcement administrators have got to get their collective heads out of their Ostridge holes and educate themselves on the growing menace of the Black Lives Matter movement. Our federal leaders and one political candidate for Presidential office are not only deliberately not speaking out against the BLM; but have incredibly brought leaders of the movement into their political camps as advisors. This nonsense must stop.
Municipal law enforcement administrators, prosecutors, mayors and state politicians must take a public stand against Black Lives Matter; and their violent, anti-police, anti-government inflammatory false rhetoric that is specifically designed to create and widen chasms between the law enforcement, criminal justice and minority communities. We simply don’t need people or an exploitive Marxist political movement that seeks to destroy our national identity from the inside out.
Instead our law enforcement and municipal leaders need to diminish Black Lives Matter as a destructive movement by working closer with credible minority leaders, positive role models, social organizations and the religious community to bring about the positive changes we need in contemporary policing and in building a better criminal justice system.
Finally, law enforcement needs to be a leader in the education of our youth, young adults and our low-informed mainstream media as to the role of law enforcement in society; their civil rights; and appropriate behavior during police encounters. The fact that our country no longer educates it youth and citizens in these critical areas is a national disgrace. It has also proven to be a central theme in deadly police encounters. We need to understand that the federal government has no interest nor any desire to accept this important responsibility. Therefore, it is up to local law enforcement resources to educate our citizens as a “community care taking” responsibility.
My stern warning to my law enforcement colleagues and politicians is that if you don’t lean forward with heroic courage to face Black Lives Matter head-on; publicly disavow this movement and its leaders; and get ahead of the tidal wave of their false narratives by being more transparent and leading in the field of civil rights education; we as a nation will fall victim to increasing civil unrest and the eventual destruction of our once proud nation.
About the Author
Ron Martinelli, Ph.D., CMI-V, is a nationally renowned forensic criminologist and police practices expert who directs the nation’s only multidisciplinary Forensic Death Investigations & Independent Review Team. Dr. Martinelli, is a retired San Jose (CA) police detective who has investigated nearly 300 police and civilian-involved death cases. He is the author of the new book, “The Truth Behind the Black Lives Matter Movement and the War on Police,” (Amazon.com). His forensic site is found at: www.DrRonMartinelli.com.
References
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html?_r=0
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/22/charlotte-police-chief-refuses-to-release-dashcam-video-of-officer-killing-keith-scott/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/22/state-of-emergency-in-charlotte-after-man-shot-during-second-night-of-protests/?utm_term=.bd3c63aae1ef
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/21/us/charlotte-police-shooting/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/10/01/charlotte-police-to-release-full-video-black-mans-shooting-death.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/keith-lamont-scotts-wife-filed-restraining-orders-against-him/
http://bluelivesmatter.blue/keith-scott-criminal-history-gun-stolen/Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive technique for brain stimulation where direct current is supplied through two or more electrodes in order to modulate temporally brain excitability [1, 2]. This technique has shown potential to improve motor performance and motor learning [3–5]. Hence, it could be applied in motor neurorehabilitacion [1]. However, tDCS effects vary depending on several factors, such as the size or position of the stimulation electrodes and the current intensity that is applied [6] or the mental state of the user [7]. Therefore, it should be considered that outcomes of tDCS studies are the result of different affected brain networks that may be involved in attention and movements, among other processes.
Volitional locomotion requires automatic control of movement while the cerebral cortex provides commands that are transmitted by neural projections toward the brainstem and the spinal cord. This control involves predictive motor operations that link activity from the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, basal ganglia and brainstem in order to modify actions at the spinal cord level [8]. In general, this set of structures can be considered to form a motor network that allow voluntary movement.
Different parts of the cerebral cortex participate in the performance of self-initiated movement, like the supplementary motor (SMA), the primary motor (M1) and premotor (PM) areas. It is known that M1 is activated during motor execution. Excitatory effects of M1 have been studied with anodal stimulation [6], finding that activation of this region is related to higher motor evoked potentials (MEPs) and an increment of force movement on its associated body part area [9, 10]. Moreover, M1 seems to be critical in the early phase of consolidation of motor skills during procedural motor learning [11], i.e., the implicit skill acquisition through the repeated practice of a task [12].
In addition, the SMA and PM influence M1 in order to program opportune precise motor commands when movement pattern is modified intentionally, based on information from temporoparietal cortices regarding to the body’s state [8]. The SMA contributes in the generation of anticipatory postural adjustments [13]. Consequently, its facilitatory stimulation seems to increase anticipatory postural adjustments amplitudes, to reduce the time required to perform movements during the learning task of sequential movements, and to produce early initiation of motor responses [14–16]. These studies suggest the possibility of using SMA excitation during treatments for motor disorders, since hemiparesis after stroke involves the impairment of anticipatory motor control at the affected limb [17]. In addition, some studies propose the participation of the SMA in motor memory and both implicit and explicit motor learning [18–21], i.e, when new information is acquired without intending to do so and when acquisition of skill is conscious [22], respectively. Complimentary to the role of SMA, the PM is crucial for sensory-guided movement |
, but is prone to disappearing during games.
Much like van Riemsdyk in his 4th season (18G in 48 games, prorated to a 30 goal season), Schenn looks prime for a break out season. Here are three reasons why:
1 – His First “Normal” Season
As much as I hate making excuses for players, there is a case to made that Brayden Schenn’s abnormal circumstances have hampered his development. Going into his first season as a member of the Philadelphia Flyers organization, Schenn suffered an injury that cause him to miss a large portion of the season. He ended up playing in just 54 NHL games.
The next season was the 2012-2013 NHL lockout. Schenn earned 33 points in 33 AHL games before the shortened season. He ended up putting up more points in those 47 games (he was suspended for one game) than he had during his 54 game rookie season.
Last season, Schenn’s third in the league, saw the Flyers fire their coach (the only one Schenn had played for in the NHL) and adopt a brand new system only three games into the season. Then, the Olympics caused a mid-season, two week break that is atypical.
This season, Schenn does not have any of those excuses. He has a whole training camp to learn the system and play a normal 82 game schedule. He should benefit from the continuity.
2- Quality Power Play Time
Schenn has been a fixture on the Flyers second power play unit over the past few years. However, with the trade of Scott Hartnell, there is an opening on the top power play unit, somewhere Schenn is yet to have significant time.
Schenn’s size and skill set make him the clearest choice to replace Hartnell on the power play (who replaces Hartnell on the top line is a totally different question, though it could also be Schenn). The Flyers have had a lethal power play over the last few years. The opportunity to be on the top unit with Giroux, Voracek, and Simmonds will do wonders for Brayden Schenn’s productivity.
3 – Simmonds, Continuity, and Even Strength Improvement
Since coming to Philadelphia together in the Mike Richards trade, Brayden Schenn and Wayne Simmonds have predominantly played together at even strength. Although the players have great chemistry on the ice, they have not fared very well at even strength.
They both started over 55% of their even strength shifts in the offensive zone last season, yet neither finished over 52.4% of their shifts in the offensive zone. Even though this does not look good, they both have increased their numbers dramatically in that area since their first year in Philly.
Ron Hextall has stated that he sees the Flyers forwards consisting of multiple “pairs,” Giroux/Voracek, Couturier/Read, and BSchenn/Simmonds. There is every reason to believe that Schenn and Simmonds will be together again at even strength and that they will continue to improve their even strength effectveness.
Brayden Schenn is still a very young, promising player. He has a lot of potential. He is at the same age and has put up relatively similar numbers to former Flyers like (already mentioned) JvR and Patrick Sharp (right before he was traded). This season, Schenn could reward the Flyers for their patience as he is primed for a “break out” campaign.About a month ago I wrote a pretty silly and fairly mindless piece here at SA that poked fun at the hype surrounding the Internet's new toy, Twitter, for which a real use hadn't yet been found. Naturally, this was like 3 or 4 days before the Iranian election, and then right after that Jacko ups and dies, so now everyone's all Twitter-this and Twitter-that. Yeah, I know, pretty dumb timing. I had failed to realize the true power of what I was so flippantly mocking. Here's this tool that is just humming along minding its own business, and then here's this sudden use for it that's so far and away beyond what I thought could've been possible. Think about it, could a small collection of people on the Internet cause a large population to revolt in disgust-- even in horror-- over what they were seeing before their very eyes? The answer is yes, but I'm not talking about political unrest, I'm talking about a few guys showing everyone else goatse.
For those of you using the Internet for the first time, to 'goatse' someone is to mislead them into viewing a specific classic picture of a guy pulling open his butthole with his hands. Before we continue, let me say that everyone knows that doing this isn't really funny and hasn't been for like 10 years, but for just a moment, consider the hot dog. A single hot dog is nothing special, it's bland and boring and mildly gross, but when some weird guy eats nearly 70 of them in a minute it's suddenly pretty amazing. Well, showing goatse to your idiot friend in Nevada is nothing, but showing Nevada is kind of special.
The evening of June 15, SA's own Abraham (owner of goatse.asia), mentioned that over 21,000 people viewed goatse within 5 minutes off a single man's single tweet:
hoobastank_band Shots overheard in outlying Iran city/town of Tehran (goatse link) #iranelection #tehran #mousavi-danger
Despite hoobastank_band's limited amount of followers, thousands of people clicked the link. The key here being the hashtags at the end of the Twitter post. When you're trying to follow a topic on Twitter, you often look for these in order to filter out the "im going 2 collage" crud-type posts. If millions of people are looking at certain hashtags, millions of people will see those certain posts.
And again:
hoobastank_band OMG!!!! #Ahmedinejad's Military Advisor Calls Mousavi "a Faggot" On Camera!! (goatse link) #IranElections #MahmoudMonster #GR88
Hoobastank, the band, how could you?!
hoobastank_band Shock Jock Limbaugh: "A tiny baby, thats what Jackson died like" (goatse link) #MichaelJackson #MJ #Limbaugh #RudeRepubs
Very often, in an effort to be the first to retweet the newest information on a topic, these links were retweeted again and again by people before anyone even clicked them. By the time they did, they and their friends had all goatsed their aunts and uncles and countless boatloads of people watching Twitter's trending topics. Add to that several copycats doing their thing, and before long Abraham was reporting that over two million people had clicked the tweeted and retweeted goatse links. That's about the population of Slovenia, four times the population of Sarah Palin's Alaska, or about one goatse for each hour the United States has existed. For a moment, it seemed that one-hit wonder band Hoobastank was responsible for the world's largest goatse-ing in history...
Thankfully, before anyone called VH1 to check, someone who can only be assumed to be the guy from Hoobastank got online and set the record straight. HoobaFans: He was not the gross link maker guy. It was someone else. He didn't do the attacks, no evidence.
So there you have it. After probably several frantic phone calls between bandmates, agents, publicists, and web developers, the guy from Hoobastank took time out of his day to prove that he did not show millions of people a man's butt.
I'm really sorry, Twitter. I take back everything I ever said about you and your service. It's actually really neat.
– Jon "@fart" Hendren (@fart)There’s No 6. Or, How Is It Going To End. Be Honest. January 31, 2015
Posted by FCM in logic Tags: global climate change
i remember the moment i realized that global overpopulation and over male population was a self-reinforcing feedback loop. i was (wherever) doing (whatever) and i was thinking through the problem of men sticking their dicks into women, creating more males who would only grow up to also stick their dicks into more women, and honestly you dont have to go round and round within that particular loop very many times before you realize whats happening. twice is probably enough. just like i did just then. can you see the problem? of course you can. because its completely obvious. isnt it?
lets start by acknowledging that there are NO 100% effective contraceptives anywhere and there never have been. to act otherwise is only the most misogynistic gaslighting bullshit imaginable — otherwise known as “sex” as in sex-lives, having-sex, sex-uality. intercourse removed from reproduction. when intercourse is not now, and has never been, and likely never will be, removed from its reproductive consequences to women. life finds a way, as jeff goldblum said in jurassic park. not to mention the fact that many men deliberately impregnate women via mandatory intercourse and rape. men have done this for a long time, so i really dont know where people are going with this contraceptive stuff. its not like its going to work when we need it most — during rape, and where men are deliberately trying to create pregnancies such as within coerced/forced marriages. theres a lot of rape and deliberate forced impregnation happening globally afterall. a hella lot. and why wouldnt there be, considering that rape is a self-reinforcing feedback loop (where it creates more males in a rape culture patriarchy where males rape women because males enjoy raping women and they will never stop).
so anyway. global overpopulation and over male population (and rape) are demonstrable self-reinforcing feedback loops, meaning the “cycle” picks up speed and strength over time just by doing its thang. and i have yet to see any feminist address this issue specifically. and this is a rather embarrassing oversight to say the least. because self-reinforcing feedback loops are game-changers, when feminists including radical feminists fail to acknowledge or address them, it makes it obvious that we havent a clue as to what the “game” even is, so how can anything we say or do be trusted? “we” are in good company of course, because most people dont acknowledge these feedback loops or any feedback loops which implicate the concept of exponential change. “humans” in general have been observed to be unable to grok this, but i would tentatively suggest that no, its actually men who cant grok the concept of exponential change. women understand it in our bones well enough.
consider:
think of exponential change as the absence of 6. there is no 6 and there will never be a 6 in exponential growth: it goes from 1, to 2, to 4, to EIGHT, to SIXTEEN, to THIRTY TWO. get it? there is no 6, as in 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc etc. no. without exponential growth, i dont know how long it would take a fertilized egg to become a baby (1, 2 or even 10 cells at a time) but it would be a lot longer than 9 months. get it? im just thinking out loud here, i am not an expert in fetal cell division or mitosis. without even trying, women navigate the context of exponential growth every fucking minute of our lives, where we live in constant dread of being forcibly impregnated by men. the concept applies to wanted pregnancies too of course. so yeah, every minute at all times, without exception, women live and breathe a concept that “humanity” is unable to grasp.
so now that we are all on the same page, and are thinking about exponential growth and feedback loops of global overpopulation and over male population (and rape) let me ask you this: how do you see patriarchy or male dominance over females ending? be specific. in your answer, make sure to address the issue(s) of global overpopulation and male overpopulation (and rape) within its proper context, which is the context of exponential change. if you do not believe exponential change is relevant to the discussion of how patriarchy will end, explain why. if you accept that exponential change is relevant, consider that whatever solution you come up with will likely be obsolete by the time you complete your thought, unless the solution is also built to function on an exponential level — any linear solution will be left in the dust promptly, because it literally does not exist on the same plane as the problem. the problem is changing and growing way faster than that.
also take into consideration the issues of loss of human habitat (food, water and shelter) and global climate change related to male-caused resource extraction. which also implicate positive (self reinforcing) feedback loops of course.
let me say at this point that i believe that radical feminists are some of the most intelligent people on earth because they are able (somehow) to sense (in the first place) and make sense of (in the second) the context in which we are all living: the context of patriarchy. this is not an easy thing to do, and all this despite the profound and enormous erasures and obliterations, the cruel gaslighting and reversals, and mind-altering substances and situations forced upon us by men. the fact that we have done this at all is frankly stunning. and i have long believed and still believe that radical feminism is the most rigorous and intellectually honest discourse on the planet because it is the only one that takes into consideration the reality of half the worlds population: women. some 3.5 billion of us by now.
because any other discourse has yet to accurately acknowledge and assess womens (and mens) reality under patriarchy, literally every other discourse on the planet is a screaming fucking farce, and nothing but sadistic mansplaining horseshit. which is not to say that radical feminism is perfect; it has some obvious flaws which i have written about before. and which i am writing about now: its seeming inability to adequately envision and describe *how* — just how in the hell — patriarchy is likely to ultimately end.
so i ask you this — “you” is anyone and everyone reading here. in your own estimation, *how* is the end of patriarchy most likely to occur, considering the reality of it, meaning without wishful thinking, and building on the evidence we have about men and what they do and what they are, including the very serious problems of self-reinforcing feedback loops of 1) global overpopulation; 1.a) global over male population; 2) male-caused global climate change related to 1 and 1.a; and finally, 3) loss of human habitat related to 1 and 2?
PS. dont feel bad if you hit a cognitive wall. i banged my head on that wall for a couple of years before i heard anything that made one fucking bit of sense as far as how this is all going to end. hint: it wasnt anything i have ever seen, heard or sensed from a feminist. and i think this failure to fully think the problem of patriarchy through to its logical/likely end, whatever that end may be, just might be radical feminisms, and radical feminists, most striking, and most disappointing, flaw. seriously, its fucking tragic.From 1d4chan
You know you want to.
Dorf Fortress (AKA Dwarf Ortress, Dorf Ortress, Dor Fortress, Dwar Fortress, Door Fortress, Dwar Ortress, Dor Ortress, Dorf Fort, Dwarf Fort, Dorf Ort, Dwarf Ort, Dor Fort, Dor Ort, Dwarf Fortress, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!! or suicidal tendencies) is the best game in the world. It was created in the dawn of time by Toady One. The ostensible objective of the game is to manage a dwarven fortress, but the usual result of playing the game is hilarious failure.
Unlike most sane games, Dwarf Fortress does not actually have a winning condition. Every fortress, no matter how successful, is doomed to a hideous death at some point - in fact, in older versions of the game, the simple act of mining a certain extremely deep and rare ore would start a hidden timer condemning your fortress to certain destruction at the hands of a balrog standin, with the game sadly informing you that your dwarves dug too deep, but keeping your fort going long enough to strike that ore was an achievement in and of itself. This inevitability has lead to the fan base's rallying cry: "Losing is Fun!" In fact, in discussions on the topic, the word 'Fun' (especially with capital 'F') is entirely synonymous with 'Hideous Demise' and the things that are likely to cause it, with 'Hidden Fun Stuff' used to refer to the demonic late-game enemies and Hell itself.
The gameplay has an exceptional and frankly obsessive depth of detail. Despite being (by default) ASCII-based and extremely obtuse, like the old roguelikes from which it draws inspiration, huge amounts of information are tracked and considered for just about every aspect of the game - down to minute details such as the exact location and severity of injuries (first joint on left little finger slightly bruised, for example). Combat is complex and messy - a typical dwarven battlefield will be full of bloody stains, severed limbs, discarded weapons and crossbow bolts, and the vomit of the unforunate recipients of abdominal injuries. After-action combat reports give detailed and often hilarious or epic blow-by-blow accounts of the fights that take place, and the player even has the option of entering adventurer mode to explore their world and get in fights themselves, presuming they enjoy being shot by archers off the edge of the visible area.
Dwarf Fortress is still in alpha and under development, kept going solely by donations from fans. The official game's ASCII-based display of inscrutable letters and symbols confuses the shit out of fucking casuals, but unfortunately an unofficial tile graphics version is available here. However, it does have a few minor quirks since the actual game does not yet fully support tile graphics.
Posting a Dwarf Fortress thread on /tg/ is a great way to effortlessly troll a few people, confuse others, and cause multiple, simultaneous and devastating orgasms in neckbeards.
Creatures of Dwarf Fortress [ edit ]
Dorfs [ edit ]
Dorfs (singular: Dorf) are awesome short beardy manic-depressive guys that like to dig.
Dwarfs are known to come in packs. In packs of FUCKING USELESS VAGRANTS MIGRANTS!
Sometimes a proficient macedwarf is able to handle a Bronze Colossus single-handedly. Bronze Colossuses are actually ~7 times taller than dwarves and do not bleed.
Female dwarfs are the manliest females known to exist.
Dwarfs are able to use surrounding items as improvised weapons. Btw, where did you get this floodgate? AHHH IT BURNS!
Standard dwarven hermit.
Nobles [ edit ]
Nobles are the bane of the land. They require ridiculously luxurious apartments and develop the weirdest fetishes possible, then require you to make items out of materials neither you nor merchants can provide. And they jail the most skilled workers for not fulfilling their every desire.
Killing nobles in the most spectacular way possible is one of the most well-known and lulziest entertainments in Dwarf Fortress.
Artifacts [ edit ]
Dwarves get so-called "Strange Moods" once in a while. When in this state, they will claim a workshop for the job they are most proficient in, get some (often obscure) materials and start working on them. Artifacts can be quite literally any craftable item type in the game; examples include millstones, gates, boots, backpacks, and of course weapons and armor. Once completed, you can 'view' your artifact; If you choose to do so, a page describing the attributes of the artifact and its name will appear. For example:
"Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right"
This is a adamantine plate mail. All craftsdwarfsmanship is of the highest quality. On the item is an image of Landslantern the fire imp and Kib Clinchworks the dwarf in Adamantine. Kib Clinchworks is striking down Landslantern. The artwork relates to the killing of the fire imp Landslantern by the dwarf Kib Clinchworks in Headshoots in the early autumn of 107. On the item is an image of a dwarf in Adamantine.
The name of the artifact's creator and the date it was created will also appear.
If a dwarf does not get the materials he needs in time, he goes mad and starts biting. If he does, he will create some hilariously described items.
The cup menaces with the spikes of steel!
Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right
Fire Cults [ edit ]
Dwarves have strong affection to fire, magma and generally anything that burns. The hotter it is, the better.
The only rational reason behind it can be some suicide fire worshiping sect.
Drown the world with magma. Its the only way to be sure.
Dwarf loev magma.
Urist, what do your dwarf eyes see?
Those pants are going to make a valuable addition to my Pants On Fire collection!
Dwarfs don't know that fire burns, so they pick up burning items and bring them to the stockpiles.
A dwarf on fire. Completely unrealistic, in that the dwarf has noticed.
He would put out that fire. But he's on break.
Elves [ edit ]
Elves (singular: elf) are gay, cannibal treehuggers whose only use is elven bone bolts. Their only role in life is offering to trade with you before their diplomats inevitably bitch about how many trees you've been cutting down. You must open your magma death trap and kill them all or you will be EAT BY ELFS.
The only badass elf to ever exist is Cacame Awemedinade, an elf soldier serving in a dwarf-owned city who became king through a hilarious clerical error, then proved his worth killing things with a warhammer.
Elves send diplomats...
...to ensure you don't cut down too many trees.
Ha-ha.
Cats [ edit ]
Cats are the bane of your existence. You must slaughter all of them before they outbreed you and cause you to suffocate since all the air is filled with cats (catsphyxiation?).
Trust your feelings, you know it to be the only solution.
Artist's rendition of a "catsplosion;" from beginning to devastating end.
Forgotten Beasts [ edit ]
Forgotten Beasts are badass motherfuckers. Some of them would make a Tarrasque look like a crying little girl. Their main prey is Dwarves. If any dwarf draws near a cavern, they are immediately at risk of being consumed by the horror. If you see Forgotten Beasts, WALL OFF ALL OF THEM IMMEDIATELY OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.
Getting fishdwarfs lost to carp can bring the fortress down in one huge outburst of violence.
Magma is the answer. Magma is always the answer.
Elephants [ edit ]
Elephants used to be demonic creatures of the plains. They mercilessly killed your Dwarves and then killed the Dwarves that rush out of the fortress to loot the body of their fallen comrade. Elephants never forget, and never forgive, and they never sleep. They spend every moment of every day plotting the downfall of your fortress.
Eventually elephants were turned into much more peaceful beings in the newer versions of the game, so now you can settle near savanna and have your revenge. The vacant place of dwarf-murderer was taken by the vicious carp.
In a strange turn of events thanks to the latest update, Elephants have fallen from the noble title of "bane of dwarves" to a creature that literally starves to death while eating 24/7, thanks to some coding...flaws. Ironically, despite the game making them more peaceful, real-life Elephants are most like the original "train of pachyderm death" portrayal (particularly the African elephants, which are bigger, more aggressive and have longer tusks than the Indian ones).
That's how it all happens.
Fortress Walls are engraved with this kind of pictures.
Skeletal Elephant. Deadly death of death.
Giant Sponges [ edit ]
A recent addition to Dwarf Fortress, the giant sponge has become more feared than even the carp. A giant sponge can easily wipe out an entire army of dwarves with a single charge, which is rather peculiar as they are completely immobile. And they're virtually invincible, as their lack of any organs or blood allows them to harmlessly absorb blows that would kill anything else several times over. How they are able to kill anything with their soft, squishy bodies is a mystery nobody is willing to risk trying to solve. Unfortunately, the most recent update led to the slaying of a giant sponge via crushing it with a maul.
While common Giant Sponges can "drown" out of water, undead Giant Sponges are fucking immortal. Setting it on fire will just create a giant torch of undead death. If you see one, say your last farewells to your crazy stupid brave dorfs.
The good news is now giant sponges are now hilariously vulnerable to getting flattened by mundane attacks. They're still just as lethal, so they're glass cannons now. And since undead are now vulnerable only to getting pulped instead of randomly dying after enough hits, undead giant sponges are basically normal sponges, only amphibious.
Without a nervous system, the only thing it can feel is ANGER!
Hidden Fun Stuff [ edit ]
If you dig below the lava oceans around the bottom layer, you may discover the Hidden Fun Stuff. Down here is the circus, where you can find clowns and the much sought-after candy. Dig deep and see what you can find!
The Cat Paws and Liquor Bug [ edit ]
Given how detailed the game is, some very weird bugs can show up. To give you an example:
The dwarfs can have cats, to keep the rodent population down and for companionship. After one update, cats were suddenly dying randomly, sometimes after vomiting. The developer realized the cause of this bug, which goes as follows:
Cats have paws, which can have substances on them. The AI for Cats is programmed to occasionally lick their paws, among other things. Dwarfs, if they're drinking when ordered to do something, drop their beer on the floor and immediately go do it. This spilled beer was being absorbed by the paws of cats when they walked over the spilled beer. The game was accidentally treating this as if the cat had drunk their body weight in alcohol, rather then the small amount they would in a proper simulation. Cats were progressing immediately to lethal alcohol poisoning upon licking their paws, with some of them making a brief stopover in "nauseated vomiting".
Notably, only the quantity of alcohol being ingested by cats upon licking their paws was considered a "bug". The bug was fixed by changing the contamination system to take into account liquid volumes. Cats can still get mildly buzzed after walking through spilled beer.
That's how insanely detailed Dwarf Fortress is.
The Rip-offs [ edit ]
The chief problem with Dwarf Fortress, from the perspective of marketing, is that the interface is so goddamn hard to understand. Thus, a few developers have got it in their head to make "Dwarf Fortress, but playable by mere mortals". Here are a few identified so far:
Gnomoria. While many long-time Dwarf Fortress player despise Gnomoria for stealing a dragon's-hoard-worth of features from Dwarf Fortress and subsequently departing from the Roguelike genre, it does have redeeming qualities. Namely as a Dwarf Fortress lite. It has a point-and-click interface (more so than DF), an isometric view, full-color GUI, a (relatively) simpler economy and production system, in-game explanations for several gameplay elements, and less options in general. However, there is a project ongoing to give dwarf fortress isometric graphics. (It costs about 8 bucks on Steam currently, so it isn't free, but that's the price you have to pay for being a namby-pamby prissy little princess who needs training wheels on their Dwarven experience the first few go-arounds.)
Rimworld, a game which is basically DORF FORTRESS IN SPESS, almost as detailed, though it features no dwarves (or considering it's in space, no squats). Available on Steam, and has a thriving modding community which does everything from basic changes to incredibly handy utilities to overhauls. There's a WH40k mod on Steam; so instead of your usual colonists dying horrible deaths, you can have your usual guardsmen dying horrible deaths.
See Also [ edit ]
Official
You can find instructions on using it in the recent releases on the Discussion page of this article.
Improvements
Sagas
Gallery [ edit ]The Veteran Affairs Department has finalized a rule that will allow advanced-practice registered nurses to practice to their full authority at VA facilities, however the new permission will not expand to certified registered nurse anesthetists following lobbying from anesthesiologists.
The change has long been debated at the VA and in Congress but is opposed by the American Medical Association, which immediately slammed the rule after its release Tuesday.
“This part of the VA's final rule will rewind the clock to an outdated model of care delivery that is not consistent with the current direction of the healthcare system,” Dr. Andrew Gurman, president of the AMA said in a statement, adding that state law should be followed.
About half of states have full scope of practice laws for nurse practitioners.
The VA believes the rule will make it easier for veterans to be seen by medical professionals by increasing the number of available primary-care providers. The new policy is effective Jan. 14, 2017.
After the VA was slammed for inordinate wait times at some of its facilities, the agency hired more providers, but officials have said bureaucratic barriers have slowed the process.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists had opposed the VA's proposal to expand the scope of practice for certified registered nurse anesthetists. The ASA felt that a physician anesthesiologist should always be present in the operating room in case of a medical emergency.
The group says there is no shortage of physician anesthesiologists, and the rule would mean “lowering the standard of care for our veterans and putting their lives at risk.”
Physician anesthesiologists receive 12 to 14 years of education, including medical school, and 12,000 to 16,000 hours of clinical training. Nurse anesthetists have about half the education and almost 2,500 hours of clinical training, according to the ASA.
The VA appears to have been swayed by comments.
“VHA believes that VA does not have immediate and broad access problems in the area of anesthesia care across the full VA health care system that require full practice authority for all CRNAs,” the rule said. The VA will take comments on that decision until Jan. 14, 2017.
In an earlier comment period following the draft rule, the VA received 223,296 comments. Of those, 104,256 comments were against granting full practice authority to VA CRNAs. Another 45,915 comments supported full practice authority without specific mention of CRNAs, and 9,613 comments supported full practice authority for CRNAs.
Groups such as the American Association of Nurse Practitioners said the move can only help America's veterans.Photos: Celebrity mugshots Singer Trey Songz was charged with aggravated assault and assaulting a police officer causing injury after an incident at his concert in Detroit Wednesday, December 28. Hide Caption 1 of 70
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Photos: Celebrity mugshots American soccer star Abby Wambach was arrested on a driving under the influence charge Sunday, April 3, in Portland, Oregon. Wambach, who recently retired, was arrested shortly after 2 a.m. ET, according to the Multnomah County Jail. She was released on her own recognizance. Hide Caption 4 of 70
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Photos: Celebrity mugshots Singer Don McLean appears in a booking photo after being charged with domestic violence assault on Monday, January 18, at Knox County Jail in Rockland, Maine. McLean is best known for his 1972 hit "American Pie." Hide Caption 10 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter was arrested Wednesday, January 13, in Key West, Florida. He is charged with battery, a misdemeanor, according to his arrest record with the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. Hide Caption 11 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Robert Downey Jr.'s drug problems are almost as famous as his talent. He served time in the late 1990s on a drug conviction, was arrested in November 2000 for drug possession and was busted again in April 2001 in Culver City, California. He received a Christmas Eve pardon in 2015 from California Gov. Jerry Brown for his 1996 convictions for possessing drugs and a weapon. Hide Caption 12 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots In his latest run-in with the law, actor Shia LaBeouf was arrested in Austin, Texas, on October 9 on charges of public intoxication. Hide Caption 13 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Actor Nicholas Brendon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Criminal Minds") was arrested for the fourth time in a year on September 30. He was accused of choking a girlfriend in Saratoga Springs, New York. Hide Caption 14 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Jennifer Ann Lien, who played Kes on "Star Trek: Voyager," was arrested on September 3 in Harriman, Tennessee. She was charged with indecent exposure. Hide Caption 15 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Manu Bennett, best known for playing antagonists in the "Hobbit" trilogy and the TV series "Arrow," was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, and charged with misdemeanor assault. Hide Caption 16 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Jake Broadbent, best known for playing Anakin Skywalker (as Jake Lloyd) in "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" in 1999, was arrested in South Carolina after police said he led them on a high-speed chase on June 17. He was charged with failure to stop for a blue light and resisting arrest, he remained at the Colleton County Detention Center awaiting a bail hearing. Hide Caption 17 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Rapper Rick Ross was picked up by sheriffs in Fayette County, Georgia, on suspicion of marijuana possession. Ross was released after posting $2,400 bail. Hide Caption 18 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Dustin Diamond, best known as Screech from the TV show "Saved by the Bell," was arrested on multiple charges in Port Washington, Wisconsin, on December 26, 2014. He was found guilty in May 2015 on two misdemeanor charges. Hide Caption 19 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Oscar-nominated actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard was arrested Monday, May 25, on suspicion of drunken driving in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He spent the night in jail and pleaded not guilty to aggravated DUI charges. Hide Caption 20 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Public Enemy's William Jonathan Drayton Jr. -- better known as Flavor Flav -- was arrested May 21 in Las Vegas. The list of charges includes speeding, driving under the influence, driving with a suspended license and having an open container of alcohol. He posted $7,000 bail. Hide Caption 21 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Actor Seth Gilliam, who joined the "Walking Dead" cast last season, was arrested May 3 in Peachtree City, Georgia. Police said that Gilliam was going 107 mph in a 55-mph zone and that a marijuana cigarette was found in the car. Hide Caption 22 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Rapper Nelly was arrested April 11 in Tennessee and charged with felony drug possession, authorities said. Hide Caption 23 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Actor Darius McCrary, who played Eddie Winslow on the sitcom "Family Matters," was arrested and released on March 25 for failure to pay child support Hide Caption 24 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots "Criminal Minds'" actor Nicholas Brendon was arrested (PDF) March 13 in Tallahassee, Florida, for allegedly trashing a hotel room. He was arrested under similar circumstances in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in February, and in Boise, Idaho, in October. Brendon is also known for his role on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Hide Caption 25 of 70
Photos: Celebrity mugshots Singer Angie Stone was arrested March 10 on |
unless the government acted out of improper motives for placing him on the list, any libel claim is unlikely to get very far. Public list Mr Weiner has offended many in the US with his views on immigration, Islam and rape. He also angered the parents of children with autism by saying most cases were "a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out", the Associated Press reported. HAVE YOUR SAY It is a privilege, not a right to gain access to any country if you are not a resident Steve, Harrogate The UK has been able to ban people who promote hatred, terrorist violence or serious criminal activity since 2005, but the list was only made public for the first time this week. Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal and Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky are among the 16 named people by the Home Office as being excluded. Also excluded are two leaders of a violent Russian skinhead gang, the ex-Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Stephen 'Don' Black and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe. The remaining six have not been named, as doing so would not be in the public interest, the government said.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThe other 9/11, brief thoughts on Chile, America and China
(llco.org)
9/11 is a day that will live in infamy, but not because of the attacks on the US that killed over 3,000 people. It is less well known is that September 11th is the anniversary of the overthrow of the elected government of Salvador Allende by general Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed forces in Chile. The coup in Chile led to a bloody US-sponsored dictatorship that lasted from 1973 until, roughly, 1990. Like the Pinochet period, the post-Pinochet period is characterized by comprador politics. However, comprador rule in Chile today is not as heavy handed, crass and overt as it was under Pinochet. Certainly more people died at the hands of Pinochet, as a result of US policy in Chile, than died in the attacks against the US in 2001. Certainly more died at the hands of the brutal military and police dictatorship, died at the hands of death squads, and died by the structural violence of capitalism-imperialism than died in the New York attacks. Yet Americans get teary eyed over the latter, not the former. America’s reaction to 9/11, once again reflects that Americans, generally speaking, do not value the lives of people in the Third World. The coup in Chile was just one more crime in a century of crimes perpetuated against the peoples of Latin America and the Third World by the US. The death toll of US imperialism runs into the billions. By comparison, the few thousand who died in the 2001 attacks are a drop in the ocean.
Even though the government of Salvador Allende leaned toward the Soviet Union, having pro-Soviet regimes in Latin America was preferable to the traditional domination by Western imperialism, especially US imperialism. In addition, some of the Soviet-leaning forces in Latin America had a popular and progressive character. Since Europe destroyed itself in World War 2, Europe could no longer hold onto its colonies in the Third World. The US largely took over the management of Europe’s colonies. Thus the old European colonialism was replaced by US neocolonialism. The US reached such imperial heights that nearly the entire US population, including the US working class, became exploiters of the Third World. For almost all of the post-World War 2 period, overall Soviet strength never really matched US strength.
At the time of the 1973 coup in Chile, China was headed down the road of restoring capitalism. When Mao was moving toward the US and meeting with Henry Kissinger, Lin Biao’s generals were turning up the rhetorical heat on the US. Thus there seems to have been a two-line struggle within the Chinese Communist Party. Lin Biao’s policy dominated the Communist Party from 1965 to 1970. Lin Biao’s policy of fighting imperialism as a whole and supporting national liberation struggles began being criticized in Zhou Enlai’s Foreign Ministry as ultra-left. What replaced Lin Biao’s line was an incorrect line that targeted the Soviet Union as the supposed main threat to the world. The new line mainly sought allies against the Soviet Union amongst the comprador states of the Third World as opposed to national liberation and revolutionary forces. Thus China moved away from supporting local people’s war as part of a global people’s war. Even worse, the new line identified Europe and other Western imperialists as potential allies, middle forces, in China’s struggle against the Soviet Union. And, eventually, the US itself became a de facto ally of China — although this fact was left unspoken, even if it was hinted at, in the Chinese press. This new line was reflected in China’s response to Chile’s 9/11. China went from being a base area of the global people’s war in the late 1960s to being one of the first regimes to recognize the CIA-backed Pinochet dictatorship. China’s new line had devastating effects on the proletarian movement worldwide, sending the world revolution into confusion and demoralization. Ironically, one of the reasons that China broke from Khrushchev decades earlier was that Khrushchev was too pro-US. And, decades later, the China of the post-Lin Biao period would become even more accommodating to Western imperialism. The architects of this new Mao-supported line had been people like Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping, both capitalist roaders. Anti-Maoists like Deng would complete the restoration of capitalism after Mao’s death and the defeat of the Gang of Four in 1976. It is a failing of the Maoist movement that it never had the political courage to confront the errors of the Mao era, including the errors of Mao and the errors surrounding the power struggles involving Lin Biao. The communist movement still has lessons to be learned from the other 9/11.Here is the finished sculpture I just got back fresh from the foundry. I'm very excited about this piece. 'Art Works foundry' in Berkeley CA. did a fantastic job molding, casting and patina-ing my sculpture. I want to thank, Mold maker Gabe, Wax caster Felisa, metal worker Steen, and Patina artist Aiya and the others that worked with me on this piece.
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Wow, less than 24 hours after posting this and the response is overwhelming. Thank you all for your comments.
The dimensions of this piece are 19" tall, 28" long and 5" wide.
I will be producing this as a limited edition bronze sculpture only, no resin copies. Edition size of 20.
This is a complicated piece to produce so they aren't cheap.
If you are interested in purchasing one and want more information please e-mail me directly at:
newmanmark@sbcglobal.net
I appreciate your interest in my work.
Mark.A boy walks at a tent camp opened by the Russian Emergencies Ministry to lend support to local residents during the power cuts, in Simferopol, Crimea, November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Pavel Rebrov
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine’s government has asked Tatar activists to allow repairs to the Kakhova-Tital electricity line to Crimea, but will only start resuming power supplies to the peninsula at a time agreed with the activists, the energy minister said on Monday.
Volodymyr Demchyshyn told reporters Ukraine was ready to meet about 20 percent of Crimea’s power supplies once the line was repaired.
Crimea, annexed by Russia last year, is suffering a blackout after four pylons that supplied the peninsula were blown up, worsening diplomatic tensions between Ukraine and Russia. Russia has suspended coal exports to Ukraine in retaliation.
“As soon as we resume power supplies via the Kakhovka-Titan line, supplies of coal will be also resumed,” Demchyshyn said.Governments and telecom companies are working closely on how to lawfully monitor Internet communications.
Photo by Ernest Nikl/iStockphoto.
When Americans are displeased with their politicians, they like to threaten to move to Canada. But if you’re tempted to move north—or even further afield—to get away from plans for increased Internet surveillance by the government, think again. Controversial new surveillance laws proposed in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have quite a bit in common. And it’s no coincidence.
Over the past few months, authorities in these countries have separately been arguing the case for expanded power to monitor Internet communications. Changes could include making it mandatory for social networks and online chat providers to build in back doors for law enforcement eavesdropping and instituting so-called “deep packet inspection” technology to enable monitoring and interception of data.
The plans have prompted an outpouring of negative reaction, much of it centered on concerns about government invading Internet users’ privacy. But what has gone largely unremarked upon is the role played by little-known networks of telecom companies and international government agencies, which have been quietly collaborating to reform surveillance laws so that they are “harmonized” to a similar standard from country to country.
In cities across the world, groups composed of telecom companies and government representatives have met to discuss how to integrate surveillance capabilities into existing and developing technologies. The decisions they have made, largely beyond public scrutiny, could lead to a fundamental shift in the Web’s basic architecture.
Below, alongside links to documents offering insight into ongoing discussions between industry and government on surveillance issues, you can find details about some of the key organizations, countries, and companies involved.
The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions
ATIS is an organization that brings together the communications industry and law enforcement. Focused mainly on North America but collaborating internationally, ATIS’s list of more than 180 members includes the FBI’s specialist Electronic Surveillance Technology Section alongside many familiar companies: Microsoft, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon, among others.
ATIS runs a series of subcommittees and task forces, some of which focus specifically on integrating surveillance capabilities into the latest communications technologies. One recent ATIS presentation, given by a representative from CenturyLink in late 2011, detailed how the organization was working on updating standards for intercepting communications sent over voice over IP chat services (like Skype) and IMS networks. IMS is considered a “next generation” telecom network that combines mobile and fixed networks into one. Law enforcement agencies see IMS as a challenge in part because it can enable difficult-to-intercept mobile VOIP calls.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute
Like ATIS, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute has been working with government and law enforcement agencies to integrate surveillance capabilities into communications infrastructure.
ETSI holds meetings on lawful interception three times a year, attended by up to 80 participants from countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. It has more than 700 members across five continents. Some are government departments tasked with upgrading surveillance laws in their respective countries: Canada’s public safety department; Australia’s attorney general’s department; and the National Technical Assistance Centre, a subunit of the U.K. spy agency GCHQ.
Several of the world’s largest telecom firms—including Vodafone, RIM, Nokia Siemens, and British Telecom in previous years—participate in ETSI’s lawful-interception meetings. ETSI’s January 2012 white paper on “security for ICT” (information and communication technologies) detailed that it is working toward “the standardisation of lawful interception,” and has the “active participation of the major telecom manufacturers, network operators, and regulatory authorities of Europe and from around the world.”
Ultan Mulligan, an ETSI spokesman, said the organization focuses on finding “agreed technical solutions” to lawful interception across borders because it’s not economical for telecommunications companies to have a different mechanism in each country. He added that consumer groups and universities focused on telecommunications and ICT industry can attend and contribute to ETSI’s lawful interception meetings if they are paid-up members. But “private individuals” (including journalists or interested citizens) cannot attend or apply for membership.
An ETSI presentation dated 2011 shows the organization is working to help enable cross-border interception of data held by cloud storage services.
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project unites six telecommunications standards bodies, including ETSI and ATIS, which meet regularly and host a series of quarterly plenary meetings. Jargon and acronym-laced minutes from 3GPP meetings published online occasionally offer a fascinating glimpse into the scale of international collaboration on upgrading surveillance capabilities.
During meetings in Estonia and Italy in 2010 and 2011, for instance, it was revealed that law enforcement representatives from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands expressed reservations about adopting so-called “man-in-the-middle” attacks—a kind of hacking—to intercept communications as they are being sent over IMS networks. The United Kingdom in particular was said to be concerned that performing an “active attack” to spy on people “may be illegal” under British law. The U.K. was reportedly working on a separate method of intercepting IMS communications so it would not have to resort to man-in-the-middle attacks.
In recent weeks 3GPP meetings have focused on the “challenges for interception” posed by cloud storage of data. The group is trying to find a solution that will enable law enforcement agencies to monitor, and have access to, cloud data as part of their investigations.
The Telecommunications Industry Association
The TIA is a trade group based in Washington, D.C., which works to address policy issues and set standards for the telecommunications industry. Formed in 1988, the group operates a series of committees and subcommittees—attended by companies including Sprint Nextel, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Verizon Wireless—which deal with issues covering electronic surveillance. The TIA is currently helping develop standards for interception of VOIP and data retention alongside ETSI and ATIS. Interestingly, it has also been pressuring authorities in India to adopt global standards for surveillance, calling on the country’s government to create a “centralized monitoring system” and “install state-of-the-art legal intercept equipment.”
The Global Standards Collaboration
The Global Standards Collaboration plays a significant role in bringing together organizations from across the world to facilitate “global standardization” of telecommunications infrastructure.
Representatives from the United States, Europe, Japan, China, Europe, Canada, and Korea attend annual GSC meetings, where they discuss and vote on issues affecting the industry—including upgrading surveillance capabilities. Crucially, in 2003 the GSC approved a resolution that called for “global cooperation and collaboration on lawful access and interception.” This was a collective commitment made by all participating organizations—among them ETSI, the TIA, and ATIS—to work toward “common, harmonized, shared systems of law” relating to communications interception.
Convention on Cybercrime
The Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime has been signed and ratified by 19 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Canada has also signed—but not ratified—the treaty, and Australia intends to sign. The convention codifies a commitment to establish a system of mutual assistance for issues related to computer crime. This includes measures related to enabling real-time surveillance of communications content.
A Canadian parliament report in 2006 noted that the convention’s call for “harmonization of lawful access legislation” was a factor in its own push for new surveillance powers. The report also stated that Canada had based a proposed surveillance bill, C-74, on “legislation existing in other countries, primarily the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.”
Designed to ensure that law enforcement agencies could legally intercept any communication regardless of the technology used to send it, C-74 never became law due in part to opposition from the public and civil liberties groups. But Bill C-30, currently being pursued by Canada’s government, is essentially a second generation version of C-74 and would implement many of the same powers.
*****
The latest developments in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, could well be part of a tradition dating back more than 60 years. In his book GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency, academic Richard J. Aldrich noted that after World War II, a series of surveillance and intelligence-related treaties, alliances, and agreements were made between the countries, leading to the creation of “a complex spider’s web of cooperation” that is still in existence.
Unlike in previous decades, though, the proposed expansion of surveillance today is inward-looking: domestic, not foreign. It is linked not to combating state-level threats but to unprecedented technological advances. With more people communicating online than ever before, authorities say they are losing the ability to track and monitor suspects and that secrecy is necessary to conceal their techniques from criminals.
Given this, it makes some sense that governments and technology firms are working together to find solutions. The problem is that the relationship is tainted by a lack of openness.
I’m not suggesting here that we’re in the depths of some sort of grand conspiracy, and nor am I arguing that the FBI should reveal intricate details about its surveillance methods or divulge the inner workings of its most complicated interception technologies—things that might actually be a benefit to serious criminals. What I’m saying is that without greater levels of public scrutiny or input, officials will sow mistrust—and end up defeating themselves. Already some are proposing “surveillance-proof” Internet providers, in part fueled by well-founded fears about clandestine mass snooping programs.
The deeply rooted tension between sweeping demands for increased online surveillance and privacy concerns of citizens is not going to disappear soon, and there are no quick fixes or easy answers. What’s essential is honest debate on surveillance between all sides in all countries. But that debate can’t and won’t happen until governments and telecom companies can at least commit to being more transparent about the scale and purpose of their collaboration.
This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.Robotaxis: nowhere to dominant in 6 years?
What's the likelihood that Robotaxis (converged, driverless Uber/Zipcar) will go from zero to dominance rapidly when they become available? Transportation history has a precedent for rate of adoption: the electric trolley.
The first electric trolley line began operating in Richmond in 1888; within 12 months, the electric trolley was adopted by two dozen other major cities. By the early 1890s, the electric trolley was the dominant mode of intraurban transit. Zero to dominant in 6 years.
Adoption was accelerated by the recognition of its ability to lessen the urban transportation problems of the day. In the 1888, the horse cart was the leading transport mode in spite of its accompanying nuisances: horse manure and horse carcasses left lying in the street. In contrast, the electric trolley used the same embedded rails without leaving unwanted organic remains.
By 1905, the largest trolley system was the San Francisco Bay Area Key System, built by soap magnate Borax Smith. The Key System was a means to an end for Smith's speculative real estate scheme, to extend housing development beyond downtowns, into the East Bay hills and increase its value. Alas, by 1913 Borax lost his well-laundered shirt and was bankrupt.
So let's connect the dots. Robotaxis have the same rapid-change characteristics as the electric trolley: a better, chauffeur-driven experience using EXISTING infrastructure, eliminating the hassle of car ownership (each Zipcar replaces 10 private autos). Unencumbered by driving responsibilities in traffic, robotically-driven humans are free to use in-vehicle time on other pursuits (monetizable at roughly one-third of hourly wage). In 1900, the trolley worked best as a means to Borax's real-estate ends. The same will hold true in 2025 as robotaxis begin to free 5.3M acres of US parking worth $4.99T.
[Show work: First, calculate product of 0.786 cars per American, 314M US population, 90% private cars removed, 350 square feet per US parking space including access pavement and landscaping, 3 parking spaces per US car = 233T square feet of parking freed. Second, ignore parking structures, assuming 100% surface parking. Third, convert from feet to acres at 43,650 sf per acre = 5.3M acres. Fourth, value the free land at $934K per urbanized US acre = $4.99T.]Factory workers in the old Soviet Union had a cynical joke: “We pretend to work. They [the bosses] pretend to pay us.” Similar logic applies in the world trading system. Washington pretends to write the rules; other nations pretend to obey them.
For two generations already, increasingly pathetic American trade officials have turned a blind eye to the blatant barriers facing American exports in key foreign markets. The result has been a tragic roll-call of factory closures in the American heartland.
As today is the day of the Iowa caucuses, it is worth recalling that in Iowa alone – and Iowa is one of America’s less populous states – hundreds of thousands of jobs have been sacrificed on the altar of a doctrinaire free trade theory that overlooks the reality of how other nations run their economies.
Iowa’s employment numbers tell the story. In the 1940s, 31 percent of Iowa’s workforce was engaged in manufacturing. The ratio had declined to 20 percent by the early 1990s and as of last year languished below 10 percent. Hundreds of major factories have closed, many of them producing goods that in their day were considered America’s – and in many cases the world’s – best: Sheaffer pens, Maytag washing machines, Rubbermaid food containers…. Meanwhile the workers who once earned good money in these factories are now in far too many cases washed up among the long-term unemployed.
The problem with free trade is not just that other countries cheat but that they see no reason not to cheat. As Donald Trump has pointed out, the enforcers in Washington who are supposed to hold cheaters to account are cream puffs. Meanwhile cheating confers several key benefits that American officials and commentators consistently sweep under the rug: just the most obvious is that it forces the transfer of American production technology. Consider how China has manipulated General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. They have been told that to sell in China they must manufacture there. Not only that, they must bring their best production technology, which then promptly leaks to Chinese competitors. The result is that China’s productivity soars and in the longer run countless American jobs that were formerly sustained by such technology are wiped out as yet another emergent Chinese industry starts exporting to the United States (the Chinese auto industry is already exporting to other parts of the world and can be expected within a decade to target the U.S. market).
Until not too long ago, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that nations that cheat harm themselves. Now finally after Donald Trump’s apotheosis, Americans are beginning to learn the truth.
Perhaps the single Washington agency that bears greatest responsibility for America’s trade fiasco is the United States International Trade Commission (USITC). Its job is to investigate other nations’ trade cheating, yet it has rarely landed a serious punch on any of the key trade cheaters.
Its role in relation to the Japanese auto industry has been particularly notable. When did you last see the USITC castigating Japan’s auto industry trade barriers? As someone who has followed the story since the 1980s, I can’t remember a single instance. You might conclude from this that the Japanese market is essentially open. The numbers tell a different story. For most of the last fifty years total imports -- from all nations -- have been kept to a mere 4 percent of the Japanese auto market. This has applied whether the yen is high or low, and whether the Japanese economy has been booming or stagnating. Of course, if you believe Japan’s excuses (as conveyed via, for instance, the pages of the Economist or the Wall Street Journal), the problem is that the Detroit companies don’t make cars with the steering wheel on the correct side for Japan’s drive-on-the-left roads. This is obvious nonsense. Not only has Detroit long made some of its models in the Japanese configuration but the Detroit companies’ European subsidiaries make whole ranges of competitive cars configured to Japanese expectations. Perhaps the most telling evidence of how formidably the Japanese car market is protected has been the performance of the Korean auto industry. At last count the Koreans had less than 0.02 percent of the Japanese car market. Yet almost everywhere else in the world they hold their own against Japanese competition. The Koreans’ performance is particularly significant in that they enjoy a captive market in Japan among ethnic Koreans, who form by far Japan’s largest ethnic minority and in many cases are outspokenly loyal to their ancestral home. Perhaps the single most startling figure in the entire Japanese story is that Hyundai, Korea’s largest auto maker, sold a mere 1,700 cars a year in Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Repeated efforts to surmount Japanese trade barriers yielded so little that in 2009 Hyundai shut down its Japanese car sales division.
It was a development that did not seem to catch the USITC's eye. Nor for that matter did it figure in the pages of the Economist or the Wall Street Journal. At all costs the story of the essential openness of the Japanese market had to be preserved. Otherwise, God forbid, Americans might wake to the dread realization that all the talk of opening foreign markets was just talk.Marijuana advocates: Boycott Starbucks Seattle co. says effort is misguided
Proponents of legalized marijuana in Colorado are calling for a nationwide boycott of Starbucks because they say the Seattle-based coffee company supports an organization that is trying to thwart the use of pot for medical purposes in that state.
On Thursday a pro marijuana group held a news conference in front of a Denver Starbucks to draw attention to what it says are ties between the company and the Colorado Drug Investigators Association.
"It's no surprise that law enforcement organizations and their leaders -- whose jobs are dependent on maintaining the war on marijuana -- are lobbying to kill state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries. But Starbucks and other companies' funding of this war should strike any marijuana consumer or reform supporter as truly appalling. It's time to stand up and send them all a message," Mason Tvert, head of SAFER (Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation), said in a statement.
Starbucks says the effort is misguided. The company does not provide financial support to the Colorado law enforcement group, Starbucks said in a statement.
"This organization is apparently targeting us because a local law enforcement organization in Colorado posted our logo on their website. Starbucks has not taken a position on their issue," the statement said. "We have a tremendous amount of respect for the men and women of local law enforcement. However, we have not sponsored this particular organization through our foundation. It is up to the discretion of our local teams to support those groups that are relevant in their neighborhoods. Our stores often support organizations in their community by donating coffee for their events."
The Colorado Drug Investigators Association Web site, which apparently listed other national and Colorado companies besides Starbucks as backers, is no longer working.
This week the Washington state Legislature killed bills that would've legalized and decriminalized marijuana use in this state, however local voters may get a chance to weigh in on this issue this fall. Proponents of a citizens imitative that would ask state residents whether they want to legalize pot are trying to get enough signatures to put the question before voters in November.Not to be confused with Czech Republic
First-level administrative division of Russia
Republic in North Caucasian, Russia
Chechnya (; Russian: Чечня́, IPA: [tɕɪˈtɕnʲa]; Chechen: Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), officially the Chechen Republic (; Russian: Чече́нская Респу́блика, tr. Chechenskaya Respublika, IPA: [tɕɪˈtɕɛnskəjə rʲɪˈspublʲɪkə]; Chechen: Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika), is a federal subject (a republic) of Russia.
It is a Federal Subject of Russia located in the North Caucasus, situated in the westernmost part of Western Asia, and within 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the Caspian Sea.[12] The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. As of the 2010 Russian Census, the republic was reported to have a population of 1,268,989 people;[13] however, that number has been questioned by multiple demographers, who think such population growth after two deadly wars is highly implausible.[14][15]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was split into two parts: the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic. The latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War. Since then there has been a systematic reconstruction and rebuilding process, though sporadic fighting took place in the mountains and southern regions until 2017.[16][17][18][19][20]
History [ edit ]
Origin of Chechnya's population [ edit ]
According to Leonti Mroveli, the 11th-century Georgian chronicler, the word Caucasian is derived from the Vainakh ancestor Kavkas.[21]
According to Professor George Anchabadze of Ilia State University
The Vainakhs are the ancient natives of the Caucasus. It is noteworthy, that according to the genealogical table drawn up by Leonti Mroveli, the legendary forefather of the Vainakhs was "Kavkas", hence the name Kavkasians, one of the ethnicons met in the ancient Georgian written sources, signifying the ancestors of the Chechens and Ingush. As appears from the above, the Vainakhs, at least by name, are presented as the most "Caucasian" people of all the Caucasians (Caucasus – Kavkas – Kavkasians) in the Georgian historical tradition.[22][23]
American linguist Dr. Johanna Nichols "has used language to connect the modern people of the Caucasus region to the ancient farmers of the Fertile Crescent" and her research suggests that "farmers of the region were proto-Nakh-Daghestanians." Nichols stated: "The Nakh–Dagestanian languages are the closest thing we have to a direct continuation of the cultural and linguistic community that gave rise to Western civilization." Dr. Henry Harpending, University of Utah, supports her claims.[24]
Prehistory [ edit ]
1855 Atlas Map of Turkey and the North Caucasus. Map of the American cartographer J.H.Colton. Top right corner, Chechnya is labeled as Gelia, with Chechen cities: Grosnaja ( Grozny ), Basdet and Leshistan cities: Andi, Metiro.
People living in prehistoric mountain cave settlements used tools, mastered fire, and used animal skins for warmth and other purposes.[25] Traces of human settlement that date back to 40,000 BC were found near Lake Kezanoi. Cave paintings, artifacts, and other archaeological evidence indicates continuous habitation for some 8,000 years.[25]
Early history [ edit ]
10,000–6000 BC
6000–4000 BC
Caucasian Neolithic. Pottery is known to the region. Old settlements near Ali-Yurt and Magas, discovered in the modern times, revealed tools made out of stone: stone axes, polished stones, stone knives, stones with holes drilled in them, clay dishes etc. Settlements made out of clay bricks discovered in the plains. In the mountains there were discovered settlements made out of stone and surrounded by walls; some of them dated back to 8000 BC.[27]
4000–3000 BC
Invention of the wheel (3000 BC), horseback riding, metal works (copper, gold, silver, iron), dishes, armor, daggers, knives, arrow tips. The artifacts were found near Nasare-Cort, Muzhichi, Ja-E-Bortz (also known as Surkha-khi), Abbey-Gove (also known as Nazran or Nasare)[27]
900–1200 AD
The kingdom in the center of the Caucasus splits into Alania and Noble Alania (known from Russian as Царственные Аланы). German scientist Peter Simon Pallas believed that Ingush people (Kist) were the direct descendants from Alania.[28]
1239 AD
Destruction of the Alania capital of Maghas (both names known solely from Muslim Arabs) and Alan confederacy of the Northern Caucasian highlanders, nations, and tribes by Batu Khan (a Mongol leader and a grandson of Genghis Khan) "Magas was destroyed in the beginning of 1239 by the hordes of Batu Khan. Historically Magas was located at approximately the same place on which the new capital of Ingushetia is now built" – D.V.Zayats[29]
1300–1400 AD
War between the Alans, Tamerlan, Tokhtamysh, and the Battle of the Terek River. The Alan tribes build fortresses, castles, and defense walls locking the mountains from the invaders. Part of the lowland tribes occupied by Mongols. The insurgency against Mongols begins. In 1991 the Jordanian historian Abdul-Ghani Khassan presented the photocopy from old Arabic scripts claiming that Alania was in Chechnya and Ingushetia, and the document from Alanian historian Azdin Vazzar (1395–1460) who claimed to be from Nokhcho (Chechen) tribe of Alania.[30][31]
1500 AD
First Russian involvement in the Caucasus. 1558 Temryuk of Kabarda sends his emissaries to Moscow requesting help from Ivan the Terrible against Vainakh tribes. Ivan the Terrible marries Temryuk's daughter Maria Temryukovna. Alliance formed to gain the ground in the central Caucasus for the expanding Tsardom of Russia against stubborn Vainakh defenders. Chechnya was a nation in the Northern Caucasus that fought against foreign rule continually since the 15th century. The Chechens converted over the next few centuries to Sunni Islam, as Islam was associated with resistance to Russian encroachment.[32][33]
Caucasian Wars [ edit ]
by J. Grassl, 1856 Map of the Caucasian Isthmus by J. Grassl, 1856
Peter I first sought to increase Russia's political influence in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea at the expense of Safavid Persia when he launched the Russo-Persian War (1722–1723). Notable in Chechen history, this particular Russo-Persian War marked the first military encounter between Imperial Russia and the Vainakh. Russian forces succeeded in taking much of the Caucasian territories from Iran for several years.[34]
As the Russians took control of the Caspian corridor and moved into Persian-ruled Dagestan, Peter's forces ran into mountain tribes. Peter sent a cavalry force to subdue them, but the Chechens routed them.[34] In 1732, after Russia already ceded back most of the Caucasus to Persia, now led by Nader Shah, following the Treaty of Resht, Russian troops clashed again with Chechens in a village called Chechen-aul along the Argun River.[34] The Russians were defeated again and withdrew, but this battle is responsible for the apocryphal story about how the Nokchi came to be known as "Chechens"-the people ostensibly named for the place the battle had taken place. The name Chechen was however already used since as early as 1692.[34]
Under intermittent Persian rule since 1555, in 1783 the eastern Georgians of Kartl-Kakheti led by Erekle II and Russia signed the Treaty of Georgievsk. According to this treaty, Kartl-Kakheti received protection from Russia, and Georgia abjured any dependence on Iran.[35] In order to increase its influence in the Caucasus and to secure communications with Kartli and other minority Christian regions of the Transcaucasia which it considered useful in its wars against Persia and Turkey, the Russian Empire began conquering the Northern Caucasus mountains. The Russian Empire used Christianity to justify its conquests, allowing Islam to spread widely because it positioned itself as the religion of liberation from tsardom, which viewed Nakh tribes as "bandits".[36] The rebellion was led by Mansur Ushurma, a Chechen Naqshbandi (Sufi) sheikh—with wavering military support from other North Caucasian tribes. Mansur hoped to establish a Transcaucasus Islamic state under shari'a law. He was unable to fully achieve this because in the course of the war he was betrayed by the Ottomans, handed over to Russians, and executed in 1794.[37]
Following the forced ceding of the current territories of Dagestan, most of Azerbaijan, and Georgia by Persia to Russia, following the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813) and its outcoming Treaty of Gulistan, Russia significantly widened its foothold in the Caucasus at the expense of Persia.[38] Another successful Caucasus war against Persia several years later, starting in 1826 and ending in 1828 with the Treaty of Turkmenchay, and a successful war against Ottoman Turkey in 1828, enabled Russia to use a much larger portion of its army in subduing the natives of the North Caucasus.
The resistance of the Nakh tribes never ended and was a fertile ground for a new Muslim-Avar commander, Imam Shamil, who fought against the Russians from 1834 to 1859 (see Murid War). In 1859, Shamil was captured by Russians at aul Gunib. Shamil left Boysangur Benoiski,[39] a Chechen with one arm, one eye, and one leg, in charge of command at Gunib. Benoiski broke through the siege and continued to fight Russia for another two years until he was captured and killed by Russians. The Russian tsar hoped that by sparing the life of Shamil, the resistance in the North Caucasus would stop, but it did not. Russia began to use a colonization tactic by destroying Nakh settlements and building Cossack defense lines in the lowlands. The Cossacks suffered defeat after defeat and |
Oregon chapter was accused of working to get Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot, in a bid to weaken Democratic support for John Kerry and ensure a re-election for the Bush-Cheney White House.
After Bush was ultimately re-elected, Koch Industries and other fossil fuel companies enjoyed tremendous kickbacks such as the 2005 energy bill, which Hillary Clinton referred to as “the Dick Cheney lobbyist energy bill,” since it provided enormous subsidies and tax breaks to U.S. energy companies.
The Koch brothers also helped Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has been called a test-case and puppet of the Koch brothers, take down unions and their fight for a reasonable wage and collective bargaining, as well as win a special election that was held after the constitutionality of the governor’s actions were questioned. And the brothers currently own the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives.
As they push to take over the Senate and the White House, some Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are coming forward and asking their colleagues to not let the Koch brothers buy their votes in order to preserve and protect democracy.
“The truth is, the Koch brothers are willing to do anything – even exploit Americans suffering from cancer – to advance their campaign of distortion,” Reid said on the Senate floor in early March. “These two multi-billionaires may spend hundreds of millions of dollars rigging the political process for their own benefit. And they may believe that whoever has the most money gets the most free speech. But I will do whatever it takes to expose their campaign to rig the American political system to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
“Republicans are willing to defend the Koch brothers on the floor of the United States Senate. But are they willing to defend the Koch brothers’ radical policy agenda as well? If Republicans don’t support the Koch brothers’ survival of the richest philosophy, all they have to do is say so,” Reid said.
As the Koch brothers have more than enough money to fund an election campaign, some have wondered why they don’t run for office instead of buying and influencing lawmakers on Capitol Hill and in all 50 states. In fact, Charles did convince David to run for office in 1979 as the vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party against Republican candidate Ronald Reagan.
David Koch may have lost the election, but according to Brian Doherty, an editor of the Libertarian magazine Reason and the author of “Radicals for Capitalism,” the experience changed the way the duo looked at politicians. The Koch brothers saw them not as lawmakers, but merely as “actors playing out a script,” and reportedly said they wanted to “supply the themes and words for the scripts.”
How they planned to influence public policy was going to be where policy ideas originate: academia and think tanks.
Abuse of wealth
Though there are several other wealthy individuals in the U.S. who found and fund private organizations, higher education institutions and super PACs, the difference between the Koch brothers and Democratic supporter George Soros, or even Republican supporter Sheldon Adelson, is that the brothers are abusing their wealth to push their self-described radical ideologies that value profit over all else. Donations made by Soros and Adelson are also much less significant than those made by the Koch brothers, raising concerns about the true intent of the Koch brothers’ donations.
Even David Koch has admitted that the family “exerts tight ideological control” over its interests.
“If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent,” he told Doherty. “And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”
But since the spokespersons for about 45 public and private universities who receive funding from the Koch brothers have continued to deny that the Koch brothers manipulate the curriculum, the Koch brothers’ influence on academia continues to occur without alarming the American public.
Even groups such as Americans for Prosperity are “micromanaged by the Kochs.” That tight control seems to have paid off for the brothers, since during the Obama administration, the president’s public support has dropped to historic lows and his Democratic colleagues have been unseated by Republicans, some of whom are increasingly aligning with Libertarian views.
As the 2014 election season heats up and radical, anti-democratic ideology such as voter ID laws makes its way back into the political realm, the only thing the American public can be sure of is that the Koch brothers are not only funding smear campaigns against politicians whose political ideologies do not help their bottom line, but they are also funding the campaigns of Republican politicians who are pro-big-oil, pro-Wall Street and pro-segregation.
Since the Koch brothers have been successful in manipulating the American political system for a number of decades, even though they hide in the shadows, it’s more important than ever to look at who is funding the think tanks and higher education institutions the media enlists this election season to explain the policies that are at the center of the political debate and will ultimately affect us all.
If we fail to pay attention now, it’s evident from the Koch brothers’ record that only a few of us will continue to be allowed to actively participate in our democracy.It looks like David Stern doesn’t like “skinny jeans, sweater, blazers combo” that injured Joakim Noah had on during the first half of the Bulls game....(Read more)
NBA made injured sidelined Joakim Noah change his skinny jeans during the game
It looks like David Stern doesn’t like “skinny jeans, sweater, blazers combo” that injured Joakim Noah had on during the first half of the Bulls game. Read Nick Friedell’s tweets for the amusing story.
Thanks to Beyond The Buzzer for the pic.
Something is happening– Noah was just escorted off the floor by team security. He was laughing — it didn’t look serious. — Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) February 5, 2013
Turns out somebody from the league office didn’t like Noah’s skinny jeans/sweater/blazer combo. They called and he had to leave the bench. — Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) February 5, 2013
Noah returns to the bench. He has taken off the sweater and is now wearing a striped polo shirt. VladRad sees him and says, “All right!” — Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) February 5, 2013
[youtube id=”Z335_p6OO-I” width=”600″ height=”350″]Zhejiang Province Public Security Bureau A man identified by Chinese media as author Liu Yongbiao is seen after his arrest.
A Chinese crime novelist’s darkest story may be the one about himself.
Liu Yongbiao, 53, who penned a book called “The Guilty Secret,” has been arrested on suspicion of bludgeoning to death four people, including a child, to cover up a robbery 22 years ago, according to local reports.
Liu was taken into custody on Friday after police in eastern China’s Zhejiang province linked him to the 1995 killings through DNA evidence, Chinese news site Sixth Tone reported, citing its sister publication, The Paper.
“I’ve been waiting for you here all this time,” Liu reportedly told police when they arrived at his home in neighboring Anhui province.
He handed arresting officers a letter for his wife, The South China Morning Post reported.
“These past 20 years, I have been waiting for this day,” his letter read. “And today, there is finally an ending. I can finally be free from the mental torment I’ve endured for so long.”
These past 20 years, I have been waiting for this day."
Authorities said Liu and a second man carried out the beating deaths at a hostel in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, in November 1995, according to Sixth Tone.
The killers checked in to the hostel with a plan to rob other guests, authorities said. When a man caught them, they beat him to death. To cover up their crimes, they fatally bludgeoned the couple who ran the hostel and their 13-year-old grandson, authorities said.
The case went cold and stayed that way for years, with the killers having no obvious ties to the victims.
Police reopened the case in June and used modern DNA technology to analyze fingerprints, footprints and towels used by the suspects at the hostel, government-operated news site China.org reported.
“We reopened the investigation several times over the years. There was no progress until we used new DNA technology when we reopened the case again in June,” Shen Lianjiang, Huzhou public security bureau’s deputy director, told China Daily.
Liu’s alleged accomplice, a 64-year-old man only identified by his last name of Wang, was arrested soon after Liu was seized.Why Bitcoin Apps are going to be huge in 2018?
Bitcoins have witnessed a staggering growth in the last one year. Bitcoin registered a growth of 1600% from January 2017 to December 2017 and has grown from around $900 in the beginning of the year to around $16,700 (BTC/USD) as on Dec 15th. Many other crypto-currencies such as Litecoin, Ethereum etc. have followed with high growth rates of their own. They have become more and more acceptable, wider in usage and transactions through crypto-currencies such as bitcoin are becoming more and more frequent. An article in-fact suggests that this growth is far from over, and that such growth was seen in the past as well.
What types of Bitcoin Apps are available?
To use and transact with Bitcoins, mobile apps are now becoming a norm rather than an exception. This is only expected to rise in 2018. Since Bitcoin is an alternate currency of monetary transactions and exchange, we are seeing apps in use such as:
Tools: These are apps which provide with analysis, news, tracking and other value add and are specifically not wallets etc.
These are apps which provide with analysis, news, tracking and other value add and are specifically not wallets etc. Wallets: Like normal currency mobile wallets, bitcoin and other crypto currency wallets also make for very useful apps.
Like normal currency mobile wallets, bitcoin and other crypto currency wallets also make for very useful apps. Payment Apps: Allow you to make payments in Bitcoins or provide for marketplaces with bitcoins as a currency.
Allow you to make payments in Bitcoins or provide for marketplaces with bitcoins as a currency. Game Apps: Games with In App purchases or earnings through Bitcoins when playing games, answering questions, viewing ads etc.
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Selecting the Best Bitcoin or other CryptoCurrency related Apps for 2018
While selecting the top 10 Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency Apps for 2018 we considered the following:
a) App Usage, Reviews and Popularity: We did not consider apps with ratings less than 3.5
b) App features, Uniqueness, Awards, Recommendation from Influencers
c) Reach and Branding of the app through Social media, Articles, Scale and Funding
So here is the List of the top 10 Bitcoin Apps (or best Bitcoin Apps) for 2018:
1. Coinbase App
What does the Coinbase app do?
The Coinbase App is basically a wallet where you can:
✓ Buy and sell digital currency: You can easily buy and sell digital currency like bitcoin, ether, and litecoin directly from your Coinbase account without having to leave the app. This functionality is available in 32 countries.
✓ Connect bank account: You can easily deposit or withdraw money, and buy or sell bitcoin with your linked bank account.
✓ Connect credit and debit cards: You can purchase bitcoin, ether, and litecoin with your linked credit cards in 32 countries.
✓ Connect PayPal: You can sell bitcoin, ether, and litecoin with your linked PayPal account in US.
✓ Merchant services – accepted by over 38,000 businesses such as Dell, Expedia, and Overstock.
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.3/5 in over 125,510 ratings for android | 4.7 / 5 in 376311 Ratings for iOS
Installs: 1,000,000 – 5,000,000 on android.
Mentions / Awards: Perhaps the biggest Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin wallet allowing you to buy and store these currencies. Having 11 M customers and 38 K merchants supporting it. Coinbase incidentally became the first crypto unicorn in August 2017 raising $100 million in funding according to this Forbes article.
2. Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet
What does the Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet App do?
The Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet allows you to send and receive Bitcoins using your mobile phone.
You have 100% control over your private keys which remain in the device unless you export them.
– No blockchain download required, install and run it in seconds
– HD enabled – manage multiple accounts and never reuse addresses (BIP32, BIP44)
– Ultra fast connection to the Bitcoin network through super nodes
– Watch-only addresses & private key import for secure cold-storage integration
– Allowing you to Secure your wallet with a PIN
Ratings and Users
Ratings: Android: 4.2/5 over 4,222. iOS : 2.9 / 5 over 77
Installs: 500,000 – 1,000,000 (on Android)
Mentions / Awards: One of the largest and highly rated (at-least in android) around. Raised funds in crowd-sale recently. Lot of Api Integrations.
3. Bitcoin Wallet
What does the Bitcoin Wallet App do?
• No registration, web service or cloud needed! This wallet is de-centralized and peer to peer.
• Display of Bitcoin amount in BTC, mBTC and µBTC.
• Conversion to and from national currencies.
• Sending and receiving of Bitcoin via NFC, QR-codes or Bitcoin URLs.
• Address book for regularly used Bitcoin addresses.
• When you’re offline, you can still pay via Bluetooth.
• System notification for received coins.
• Sweeping of paper wallets (e.g. those used for cold storage).
Ratings and Users
Ratings: For Android – 4 / 5 in over 17,358 ratings
Installs: 1 million to 5 million on Android
Mentions / Awards: Rated as one of the best Bitcoin wallets. Unique thing is that this is an Open Source wallet and one of the first ones still retaining a simple design.
4. Bitcoin Checker by Mobnetic
What does the Bitcoin Checker do?
Monitor the most RECENT prices of all CRYPTO-currencies on over 80 exchanges from all around the world. Watch the prices displayed in readable notifications right in your status bar. Along with price check, several alarm conditions can alert you about current price changes/level.
★ FREE app
★ Track nearly all virtual currencies or ALTcoins – not only BTC (depending on exchange)
★ Synchronize currency pairs set directly with exchange server (available on some exchanges)
★ Persistence and rich notifications in status bar
★ Display coin prices in subunits: mBTC, uBTC, Satoshi or mLTC.
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.7 / 5 for Android in over 12,107
Installs: 100,000 – 500,000 for Android.
Mentions / Awards: Featured in Android Authority, Softonic, Newbium, Bitcoin News etc. Actively maintained.
5. BitPay
What does the BitPay app do?
Manage your bitcoin finances in one app with the secure, open source BitPay Wallet. Get up and running fast with bitcoin security, store and send funds anywhere, buy and sell bitcoin, and turn bitcoin into dollars with the BitPay Visa Card.
– Support Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash
– Multiple bitcoin wallet creation and management in-app
– Integration for loading, managing, and spending the BitPay Visa Card.
– Integration for buying and selling bitcoin.
– Integration for buying Amazon.com gift cards.
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 in 2170 ratings for Android | 4.5 out of 5 in 270 ratings for iOS
Installs: 100000 – 500,0000 for Android
Mentions / Awards: Featured in Huffington Post, raising $30 million in series B funding after similar Series A raise. Regarded as a very promising Bitcoin wallet. Investors include Sir Richard Branson.
Note: One thing to keep in mind for wallet or payment apps for bitcoin is the high transaction fee being charged in many of these. So just keep your eyes open on that.
6. Copay App
What does the Copay App do?
CoPay is yet another Bitcoin wallet but with a different twist. Copay users can hold funds individually or share finances securely with other users with multisignature wallets, which prevent unauthorized payments by requiring multiple approvals. So the Copay wallet can be shared with other users for joint usage such as:
– To save for vacations or joint purchases with friends
– Multiple wallet management
– To track family spending and allowances
– To manage business, club, or organization funds and expenses
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.5 / 5 from 1760 reviews on Android | 4.5 / 5 from 112 reviews on iOS
Installs: 100,000 – 500,000 for android
Mentions / Awards: Uses hierarchical-deterministic (HD) wallets, allowing for secure in-app wallet generation and backup.
7. Blockfolio
What does the Blockfolio App do?
Blockfolio offers complete Bitcoin and Altcoin cryptocurrency management, with easy to use tools to keep track of all your crypto investments. Get detailed price and market information for individual currencies and manage your entire portfolio all in one place.
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.7 in over 45472 ratings on Android | 4.7 over 2051 ratings on iOS
Installs: 1,000,000 – 5,000,000 on Android
Mentions / Awards / Unique points: One of the best portfolio tracking and management tools. Covers an incredible 2000 cryptocurrencies. Recommended for serious traders.
8. Bitcoin Price IQ
What does the Bitcoin Price IQ App do?
Bitcoin Price IQ is a Bitcoin / crypto-currency price tracker that lets you analyse and check the latest prices of bitcoin and hundreds of other cryptocurrencies including Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, DASH and more.
– Real time Data
– Watchlist and Price alert
– 165 + fiat currencies
– Breaking news
– Claims to be Lightweight and Fasts
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.5 / 5 from 4,152 rating in Android
Installs: 100,000 – 500,000 on Android
Mentions / Awards: Interactive Price charts, frequently makes to the top 10 tool apps for Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies
9. Blockchain – Bitcoin & Ether Wallet
What does the Blockchain App do?
– Send and receive bitcoin and ether instantly with anyone in the world
– Seamlessly exchange between bitcoin and ether
– A security center to help protect your funds from unauthorized access
– Advanced Two-Factor Authentication keeps the bad guys out
– Successfully completed security audits by world-class researchers
– PIN Protection
– 20+ currency conversion rates
– 18 languages
– Highly secure backup and recovery
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.4 / 5 from 28,111 ratings on Android | 4.7 out of 5 in 16156 ratings on iOS
Installs: 1,000,000 – 5,000,000 on Android
Mentions / Awards: One of the most widely used Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether wallet. 21 million users according to their google play store page.
10. zTrader Altcoin/Bitcoin Trader
What does the zTrader Altcoin/Bitcoin app do?
zTrader is a fully-featured, lightweight, and secure trading client for the largest Bitcoin and altcoin exchanges. One can trade hundreds of digital currencies on 17 different exchanges through it.
• Full trading capability with seamless switching between exchanges and currencies
• Charts with many popular technical analysis tools (similar to BitcoinWisdom)
• Market overview (similar to CoinMarketCap)
• Secure encrypted storage of API keys
• Price alerts and percentage alerts
• Chatroom to interact with traders
Ratings and Users
Ratings: 4.2 / 5 in 1,155 reviews for Android
Installs: 50,000 – 100,000 installs on Android
Mentions / Awards / Media: Featured on App Annie, released in 2014. Lot of exchanges and currencies which are regularly added.
We are a mobile app development company based out of Delhi, India which can develop software and apps for you.
Yes, send me some details.
*Image Credits: Google PlayStore pages, App Website. All rights with App owners. Reviews and Ratings for apps may change from time to time. The article reflects ratings around the 3rd week of Dec 2017
Warning: Bitcoin investment and trading is speculative and under market risk. Please use these apps and trade, invest at own risk with all due diligence. Creative Spark Solutions is not associated with any of these apps.The Canucks announced today that they have signed their 6th round pick in the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, goaltender Joe Cannata to an entry level deal. The deal doesn’t come as a surprise, as Lorne Henning told the Vancouver Sun a week ago that the team is "very high on [Cannata] and are in the process right now of trying to sign him." Guess that process if complete then!
Joe Cannata just completed his senior season, in which he nearly carried the Merrimack Warriors to an NCAA tournament berth that ultimately fell short. Cannata’s masterful performance this season earned him First Team Hockey East honours. Here’s the full press release from Canucks.nhl.com.
Read past the jump for more on Cannata.
Though they’ve produced several NHL prospects in recent years (Stephane De Costa, for example) Merrimack is a relatively new DIV 1 hockey program. This season was their best yet, and Joe Cannata was easily their MVP. Here’s Mark McMahon on what Cannata has accomplished over the past two seasons in the ECAC:
Cannata will graduate as Merrimack’s all-time leader in wins, games played, minutes played, saves, goals-against and save percentage. He started all but one game in his final two years and allowed only 27 even strength goals (excluding empty netters) in 27 league games this season. The Wakefield native surrendered more than two goals only eight times this year, as Merrimack went 18-2-4 when scoring two or more goals. Cannata has a 2.18 goals-against and a.925 save percentage this season and a career goals-against of 2.47 and a save percentage of.915.
Very impressive stuff.
This season, Cannata allowed only 79 goals on 1053 shots for a Merrimack team that by all accounts was nothing special. Cannata, however, gave the team a chance to win every game, and they ultimately fell only a single game short of a tournament berth. In that final game against Rhode Island, Cannata was hurt badly in the third period, but stayed in the game and continued to battle hard, making several tough stops to keep the game close.
While it’s likely that Cannata gets a taste of AHL regular season action with the Chicago Wolves before the end of this regular season, the Wolves are very deep in net with veteran Matt Climie and the NHL-ready Eddie Lack already between the pipes. As such the Wolves probably don’t have a place for Cannata this season.
As such, it will be interesting to see whether or not Cannata ends up playing in the ECHL playoffs this Spring. The Canucks’ ECHL affiliate, the Kalamazoo Wings, currently lead the ECHL’s North Division and certainly a goaltender of Cannata’s caliber could be just the thing to push the Wings over the top.
Update (11:15 am) according to Brad Zeimer, Cannata will spend the balance of the regular season with the Chicago Wolves, and he’ll then return to Merrimack in order to graduate with his degree in business administration. Gillis, remember, likes his players smart!
Here’s a feature from NESN about Joe Cannata from earlier this season (includes some highlights and player interviews):1992 MTV Video Music Awards Date Wednesday, September 9, 1992 Location Pauley Pavilion, Los Angeles Country United States Hosted by Dana Carvey Television/radio coverage Network MTV
The 1992 MTV Video Music Awards aired live on September 9, 1992, honoring the best music videos from June 16, 1991, to June 15, 1992. The show was hosted by Dana Carvey at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.
The night's biggest winners were Van Halen and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as each group earned three moonmen that night. Particularly, Van Halen's video for "Right Now" took home the main award of the night, Video of the Year, and received seven nominations, making it the most nominated video of the night. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, meanwhile, won the award for Viewer's Choice and received a total of nine nominations for two of their videos, becoming the most nominated act of the night. Six of the Peppers' nominations were for "Give It Away," and the remaining three went to "Under the Bridge."
The show was notable for a feud between Axl Rose and members of Nirvana as well as Courtney Love. It began backstage before the awards show, when Love jokingly offered to make Rose the godfather of Frances Bean Cobain. Rose threatened Cobain, telling him to quiet his wife, and barbs were exchanged between Love and Rose's then-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour.[1][2] Bassists Krist Novoselic and Duff McKagan almost came to blows over the incident, just before Nirvana were to take the stage.[3][4] The spat went public onstage immediately after Nirvana's performance of "Lithium", as drummer Dave Grohl taunted Rose. Cobain then raised the dispute in post-show interviews at the VMA.[1][2]
Along with Nirvana and Guns N' Roses, the night's performers included the likes of Bryan Adams, Def Leppard, En Vogue, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, and Eric Clapton, among others. Also, there was a special performance by U2 via satellite, with host Dana Carvey playing the drums for them from the Pauley Pavilion. English band The Cure was slated to perform, too, but they had to cancel their appearance, citing illness and exhaustion from the band.[5]
Winners and nominations [ edit ]
Winners are in bold text.
Video of the Year [ edit ]
Van Halen – "Right Now"
Best Male Video [ edit ]
Eric Clapton – "Tears in Heaven" (Performance)
Best Female Video [ edit ]
Annie Lennox – "Why"
Best Group Video [ edit ]
U2 – "Even Better Than the Real Thing"
Best New Artist in a Video [ edit ]
Nirvana – "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
Best Metal/Hard Rock Video [ edit ]
Metallica – "Enter Sandman"
Best Rap Video [ edit ]
Arrested Development – "Tennessee"
Best Dance Video [ edit ]
Prince and the New Power Generation – "Cream"
Best Alternative Video [ edit ]
Nirvana – "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
Best Video from a Film [ edit ]
Queen – "Bohemian Rhapsody" (from Wayne's World)
Breakthrough Video [ edit ]
Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Give It Away"
Best Direction in a Video [ edit ]
Van Halen – "Right Now" (Director: Mark Fenske)
Best Choreography in a Video [ edit ]
En Vogue – "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" (Choreographers: Frank Gatson, Travis Payne and LaVelle Smith Jnr)
Best Special Effects in a Video [ edit ]
U2 – "Even Better Than the Real Thing" (Special Effects: Simon Taylor)
Best Art Direction in a Video [ edit ]
Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Give It Away" (Art Directors: Nick Goodman and Robertino Mazati)
Best Editing in a Video [ edit ]
Van Halen – "Right Now" (Editor: Mitchell Sinoway)
Best Cinematography in a Video [ edit ]
Guns N' Roses – "November Rain" (Directors of Photography: Mike Southon and Daniel Pearl)
Viewer's Choice [ edit ]
Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Under the Bridge"
International Viewer's Choice Awards [ edit ]
Christina – "Jing Mai Klua"
Diesel – "Man Alive"
Nenhum de Nós – "Ao Meu Redor"
The Cure – "Friday I'm in Love"
MTV Internacional [ edit ]
El General – "Muévelo"
Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award [ edit ]
Guns N' Roses
Performances [ edit ]
Appearances [ edit ]
Cindy Crawford – introduced the winners of the professional categories
John Norris – presented Best Dance Video
Main show [ edit ]DALLAS - New Orleans Pelicans guard Bryce Dejean-Jones was fatally shot after breaking down the door to a Dallas apartment, authorities said Saturday.
A man living at the apartment was sleeping when he heard his front door kicked open, Dallas Police Senior Cpl. DeMarquis Black said in a statement. When Dejean-Jones began kicking at the bedroom door, the man retrieved a handgun and fired.
Officers who responded found Dejean-Jones collapsed in an outdoor passageway, and he later died at a hospital. He was 23.
''We are devastated at the loss of this young man's life,'' the Pelicans said in a statement.
It is legal in Texas for someone to use deadly force in order to protect themselves from intruders.
''I just lost my best friend/cousin last night enjoy life because you never know if tomorrow is guaranteed,'' Shabazz Muhammad of the Minnesota Timberwolves wrote on Twitter.
Julie Keel, a spokeswoman for Camden Property Trust, the real estate company that owns the apartment complex in Dallas, confirmed that the complex's apartment manager had sent out an email to residents saying that the person who had been shot had been trying to break into ''the apartment of an estranged acquaintance'' and that this person had ''inadvertently'' broken into the wrong apartment.
Black said he could not confirm that Dejean-Jones was trying to access an acquaintance's apartment.
In Dejean-Jones' only NBA season, which ended in February because of a broken right wrist, the 6-foot-6 guard started 11 of 14 games and averaged 5.6 points and 3.4 rebounds.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called it a ''tragic loss.''
''Bryce inspired countless people with his hard work and perseverance on his journey to the NBA, and he had a bright future in our league,'' Silver said in a statement issued Saturday.
Dejean-Jones was part of the 2014-15 Iowa State team that went 25-9, captured a Big 12 title and made a fourth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament. He was fourth on the team in scoring, averaging 10.5 points in 33 games. He shot a career-best 47.6 percent in his lone season as a Cyclone. He also played at Southern California and UNLV.
Dejean-Jones was suspended late in the 2013-14 season from UNLV for conduct detrimental to the team, and announced that he was leaving USC midway through the 2010-11 season.
''This is a very, very sad and tragic day for everyone that's a part of the Cyclone basketball family,'' Iowa State coach Steve Prohm said.
Former Cyclones coach Fred Hoiberg, now the coach of the NBA's Chicago Bulls, added in a statement that Dejean-Jones was a ''passionate and talented player that lived out his dream of playing in the NBA through hard work and perseverance.''
Besides Muhammad, several NBA players reacted on Twitter on Saturday.
''Crazy how life is man,'' wrote Brooklyn Nets guard Shane Larkin. ''Prayers out to Bryce Dejean Jones and his family.''
Added Quincy Pondexter, one of Dejean-Jones' teammates with the Pelicans: ''This Can't be real life... Rest easy lil bro.''Are Central Banks the Most Efficient State Enterprise? Hummel's Answer and My Explanation By Bryan Caplan
Two weeks ago, I relayed the following story:
Yesterday at the FEE seminar, I got to hear the excellent Jeff Hummel thoroughly debunk the crazy Rothbardian view that fractional reserve banking is “fraudulent.” It was a fun (and funny) lecture, but the target was too easy. So during the Q&A period, I decided to see whether Hummel would embrace a far greater heresy. My challenge for him: Agree or disagree: In developed countries during the last 10-15 years, central banks have become (close to) the most efficient state enterprise.
Now you can hear Jeff’s response (as well as the full lecture): Although he favors the abolition of central banking, his answer to my question is basically Yes. And I agree on both counts. Another rough patch may be coming, but it would be hard to improve over the 2-3% inflation combined with stable output and employment that central banks delivered in the 90s and 00s.
But why have central banks have out-performed other state-owned enterprises? My best guesses:
1. The public exaggerates the harm of inflation, and angrily punishes incumbents who allow inflation to spike. Normally, such exaggeration encourages politicians to inefficiently make large sacrifices for small gains. Luckily, though, low inflation turns out to be, in the long-run, a free lunch. The public’s inflation paranoia conveniently drives politicians to accept this free lunch.
2. The people who run central banks are usually economists. Whatever their problems, economists are – compared to other government officials – unusually likely to adopt economically efficient policies if you give them a chance. So contrary to Rothbard’s populist complaints, giving independence to central bankers has relatively good results.Over at StarbucksGossip, they have a letter from a now-former employee at the coffee chain, who claims he was given the boot from his java-dispensing job because he turned off the in-store free WiFi in an effort to stop customers from looking at porn.
After working at the ‘Bucks for three years, the employee says he was axed on Aug. 29:
Two days prior, a number of men had been using Starbucks’ new free Wi-Fi to watch pornography while customers, some of them children, could see and hear. In order to verify whether or not it was within his power as a Starbucks employee to pull the plug and after a number of complaints from customers, [he] went through all the steps, asking supervisors, calling managers, and even looking through the employee handbook (which not only said nothing about this act being against policy but actually explained how to do it) before cutting the public Wi-Fi… What he did was not against policy.
The StarbucksGossip editor who posted the letter chides the former employee for turning off the WiFi, saying he should just “tell the customers to stop viewing porn, or leave the store — now!”
If you were working at Starbucks how would you have resolved the situation if you saw people openly surfing the web for porn? And is the company in the right if, as he claims, they fired him for turning off the WiFi?
This isn’t the right way to deal with porn-surfing Starbucks customers….. [StarbucksGossip.com]Parenting News: Working Mums Feel Employers Should Give More Flexibility
When many women return to work after childbirth they often find that they can no longer work in the position that they had before they went on maternity leave.
Instead, they are having to choose a less rewarding position to better suit their family needs, leaving many working mums unsatisfied in the workplace.
This has sparked 56 per cent of working mums to say that companies should guarantee women the same position when they return to work, but on a more flexible or part-time basis.
Two thirds of women feel that their career progression is affected by having a child, with a quarter of women admitting they have had to change careers to fit in with their family life.
A further one in four women said they have given up a professionally rewarding role for one that was better for their family and 6 per cent even admitted they have given up work altogether as they could not juggle the two.
Simon Lloyd, HR director at Santander UK who conducted the research, says, “These findings show that companies need to do more to help women achieve a suitable balance between family and work that allows them to achieve their career aspirations.
“We believe that the loss of talented, experienced women from Britain’s companies is one of the biggest challenges that need to be overcome if the UK is to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.”
A third of mothers believe that companies should allow mums to work from home if their role isn’t fixed to a specific location.
A further 30 per cent believe that companies should tailor a plan to each mother for during a after their pregnancy so they can catch up on their career.
A quarter of all women, whether they have children or not believe that women should be given mentoring when they return to work to help them catch up.
Michelle Ryan, Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Exeter University said, “Obviously many factors come into play for a woman planning a family, as each individual’s circumstances will be different.
“However, it’s clear that employers need to create workplaces which offer real flexibility that reflect the needs of today’s employees if we’re to see women appropriately represented at senior management level in the future.
“We need a step change in attitudes to flexible working in order to help create diverse businesses that fully reflect society.”
Have you started a family? Have your workplace been supportive of your changes? Let us know by commenting below or tweeting us @FemaleFirst_UK
by Cara Mason for www.femalefirst.co.uk
find me on and follow me onAn anti-Brexit billboard on a street near you? (Pictures: Getty Images)
Billboards have begun appearing across the country in opposition to Theresa May’s plan for a so-called Hard Brexit.
Campaigners, dubbed Remoaners, have raised thousands of pounds to erect huge posters in different parts of the country.
Woman who killed husband 'had suffered 40 years of control and humiliation'
They have also arranged for a bus to be driven around Westminster so that lawmakers can ‘see it right up to the final vote.’
Article 50 legislation is moving through the second chamber of Parliament but the Government has suffered a set-back on the guarantee of rights for EU nationals.
The group, Stop the Silence, has attracted more than £70,000 and has received more than |
with muskets.[5]
Under Hongi Hika's command, Ngāpuhi began amassing muskets and from about 1818 began launching effective raids on hapu throughout the North Island against whom they had grievances. Rather than occupy territory in areas they defeated their enemy, they seized taonga (treasures) and slaves, who they put to work to grow and prepare more crops—chiefly flax and potatoes—as well as pigs to trade for even more weapons. A flourishing trade in the smoked heads of slain enemies and slaves also developed. The custom of utu, or reciprocation, led to a growing series of reprisals as other iwi realised the benefits of muskets for warfare, prompting an arms race among warring groups.[5] In 1821 Hongi Hika travelled to England with missionary Thomas Kendall and in Sydney on his return voyage traded the gifts he had obtained in England for between 300 and 500 muskets, which he then used to launch even more devastating raids, with even bigger armies, against iwi from the Auckland region to Rotorua.[5][4]
Conflict and consequences [ edit ]
The violence brought devastation for many tribes, with some wiped out as the vanquished were killed or enslaved, and tribal boundaries were completely redrawn as large swathes of territory were conquered and evacuated. Those changes greatly complicated later dealings with European settlers wishing to gain land.
Between 1821 and 1823 Hongi Hika attacked Ngāti Pāoa in Auckland, Ngāti Maru in Thames, Waikato tribes at Matakitaki, and Te Arawa at Lake Rotorua, heavily defeating them all. In 1825 he gained a major military victory over Ngāti Whātua at Kaipara north of Auckland, then pursued survivors into Waikato territory to gain revenge for Ngāpuhi's 1807 defeat. Ngāpuhi chiefs Pōmare and Te Wera Hauraki also led attacks on the East Coast, and in Hawke's Bay and the Bay of Plenty. Ngāpuhi's involvement in the musket wars began to recede in the early 1830s.[2]
Waikato tribes expelled Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha from Kāwhia in 1821, defeated Ngāti Kahungunu at Napier in 1824 and invaded Taranaki in 1826, forcing a number of tribal groups to migrate south. Waikato launched another major incursion into Taranaki in 1831–32.[2]
Te Rauparaha, meanwhile, had moved first to Taranaki and then to the Kapiti coast and Kapiti Island, which Ngāti Toa chief Te Pehi Kupe captured from the Muaupoko people. About 1827 Te Rauparaha began leading raids into the north of the South Island; by 1830 he had expanded his territory to include Kaikoura and Akaroa and much of the rest of the South Island.[2]
In 1835 Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Toa warriors hijacked a ship to take them to the Chatham Islands where they slaughtered about 10 percent of the Moriori people and enslaved the survivors, before sparking war among themselves.[2]
The final South Island battles took place in Southland in 1836–37 between forces of Ngāi Tahu leader Tūhawaiki and those of Ngāti Tama chief Te Puoho, who had followed a route from Golden Bay down the West Coast and across the Southern Alps.
Historiography [ edit ]
Historian James Belich has suggested "Potato Wars" as a more accurate name for these battles, due to the revolution the potato brought to the Māori economy.[6] Historian Angela Ballara says that new foods made some aspects of the wars different.[6] Potatoes were introduced in New Zealand in 1769[7] and they became a key staple with better food-value for weight than kūmara (sweet potato), and easier cultivation and storage. Unlike the kūmara with their associated ritual requirements, potatoes were tillable by slaves and women and this freed up men to go to war.[2]
Belich saw this as a logistical revolution, with potatoes effectively fueling the long range taua that made the musket wars different from any fighting that had come before. Slaves captured in the raids were put to work tending potato patches, freeing up labour to create even larger taua. The duration of the raids was also longer by the 1820s; it became common for warriors to be away for up to a year because it was easier to grow a series of potato crops.
Use of the musket by Māori [ edit ]
The 1807 Battle of Hingakaka, fought between two opposing Maori alliances near modern Te Awamutu, with an estimated 16,000 warriors involved,[8] can be considered the last of the non-musket wars, although as late as about 1815 some conflicts were still being fought with traditional weapons.
The musket slowly put an end to the traditional combat of Māori warfare using mainly hand weapons and increased the importance of coordinated group manoeuvre. The legendary one-on-one fights such as Potatau Te Wherowhero's at the battle of Okoki in 1821 became rare.
Initially, the musket was a tool that inflicted "shock and awe" and enabled traditional and iron weapons to be used to great effect against a demoralised foe. But by the 1830s equally well-armed taua engaged each other with varying degrees of success. Māori learnt most of their musket technology from the various Pākehā Māori who lived in the Bay of Islands and Hokianga area. Some of these men were skilled sailors well experienced in the use of muskets in battles at sea. Maori were not beyond customising their muskets; for example, some enlarged the touch holes which, while reducing muzzle velocity, increased rate of fire.
Initially Māori found it very hard to obtain muskets as the missionaries refused to trade them or sell powder or shot. The Ngāpuhi put missionaries under intense pressure to repair muskets even at times threatening them with violence. Most muskets were initially obtained while in Australia. Pakeha-Maori such as Jacky Marmon were instrumental in obtaining muskets from trading ships in return for flax, timber and smoked heads. Most muskets sold were low quality, short barrel trade muskets, made cheaply in Birmingham with inferior steel and less precision in the action. The range and accuracy of a trade musket (40m range) could not be compared with that of a proper military ("Tower") musket such as a Brown Bess or the later standard issue Enfield which required the less common fine grain black powder.[citation needed]
Maori often preferred the double-barreled tupara (two barrel), shotguns loaded with musket balls, as they could fire twice before reloading. In some battles women were used to reload muskets while the men kept on fighting. Later this presented a problem for the British and colonial forces during the New Zealand Land Wars, when iwi would habitually keep women in the pā. Northern Maori, such as Ngāpuhi, learnt to speed load their muskets by holding three lead balls between the fingers of the left hand. The powder was premeasured in paper twists. When the powder was poured down the barrel, instead of using the ramrod which was slow and awkward, they thumped the butt on the ground.[citation needed] As the barrel was fouled by partly burnt powder residue, the warriors used progressively smaller balls.[citation needed] The muzzle velocity dropped as a result but the smaller balls could still cause severe wounds at close range.
Prohibition measures [ edit ]
From 1845 after the rebellion of Hone Heke, the government enacted a number of laws to attempt to slow or stop the flow of muskets, gunpowder and other warlike stores into New Zealand. The first was the Arms, Gunpowder and other Warlike Stores Act 1845. On 12 November 1846 the Arms Ordinance was passed, followed by the Gunpowder Ordinance Act 1847. Penalties were severe with fines of ₤100–200 for selling a musket to a native in 1848. These laws combined to put a stop to gunrunners selling muskets to Maori. In June 1857 the government passed a law allowing people to have guns and powder for sporting purposes, but in November that year Lt Colonel Wynyard wrote to Governor Brown expressing his concern that this was allowing large quantities of weapons going to Maori, far beyond what was required for sporting purposes. He expressed concern that iwi would use the weapons to settle tribal squabbles with arms. Te Wherowhero, the first Maori king, came to see to the governor at the same time and expressed his concern that so many weapons could be sold to volatile Maori.
A Maori veteran of the Battle of Ōrākau 1864 told Members of Parliament that Maori had been collecting large quantities of weapons for years prior to the battle to protect their land against other tribes, not with the intention of fighting Europeans. After the land wars the government passed the Firearms Amendments Act 1869 making it illegal for any person to sell weapons to a Maori in rebellion. The only punishment was the death sentence.[9]
References [ edit ]A small percentage of the population is asexual. This term is often defined as either a lack of sexual attraction or a lack of desire for partnered sexual activity. Asexuality is something that many people are not familiar with and, as a result, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about it. So, let’s take a moment to review some key facts about asexuality that have emerged from the science to date. To learn more about this topic, I highly recommend Anthony Bogaert's recent book, Understanding Asexuality.
1.) Being asexual is not the same as being celibate. Although people in both groups tend to avoid sexual activity, they are motivated to do so for very different reasons. Asexual persons do not experience sexual attraction in the first place, whereas celibate persons do and make a conscious choice not to act upon their feelings of attraction for a period of time. There are a large number of reasons someone who feels sexual attraction might choose celibacy (e.g., religion, health considerations, substance abuse recovery).
2.) Asexuality does not mean that one has a sexual dysfunction or a fear of sex. Consider a study in which asexual and non-asexual women were shown a series of erotic films [1]. While watching these films, participants’ genital arousal levels were recorded. In addition, they reported their subjective feelings of sexual arousal and their emotional state on a survey. The results revealed no differences in psychological or genital arousal between groups, which indicates that being asexual does not necessarily mean that one is unresponsive to erotic stimuli or that one’s genitals are not functional. Moreover, whereas sexual women showed an increase in positive affect while watching these films, asexual women experienced no changes (positive or negative) in their emotional state, indicating that asexuality is not a simple aversion to sex.
3.) Being asexual does not necessarily mean that one is sexually inexperienced and/or single. Indeed, research has found that many persons who report a lack of sexual attraction are involved in relationships, and some of them are having sex, too. It is important to keep in mind that lacking sexual attraction is not the same as lacking romantic attraction—asexuals often still desire romantic relationships. And, if partnered with someone who is sexual, asexuals may be sexually active either because they want to please their partner or, potentially, because they feel a sense of obligation.
4.) Studies have found that many self-identified asexual persons masturbate, and some have sexual fantasies, too. However, compared to sexual persons, asexuals are less likely to do both. Masturbation is a very different experience for many asexuals, though, in that it is often a “non-directed” activity (i.e., they are not thinking about a specific erotic image while it is happening).
5.) Many scientists are now arguing that asexuality should be considered a distinct sexual orientation. As some support for this idea, research has found that some of the same biological factors correlated with homosexuality are also correlated with asexuality (e.g., higher odds of being left-handed and, at least for men, being later born). This suggests that there may be a complex series of biological factors that contribute to the emergence of an asexual orientation. Check out this article to learn more about why some scientists believe asexuality is a sexual orientation.
Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates.
[1] Brotto, L. A., & Yule, M. A. (2011). Physiological and subjective sexual arousal in self-identified asexual women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 699-712.
Image Source: 123rf.com/budastock
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One consistent idle daydream on the American right is somehow living outside of government. From Ayn Rand's "Galt's Gulch," where a bunch of plutocrats secede from America to gleefully watch society collapse without its job creators, to nutty Silicon Valley plans for "seasteading," somebody is always working on a government-free society.
Over the last few years, many technology-minded thinkers and programmers have made such ideas a reality. Perhaps most notable is Bitcoin, the first fully decentralized currency and payment system. With big government interference all but impossible, surely this virtual money would be the dawn of a new age of freedom.
Nope! The Bitcoin system has all but seized up, and people are abandoning it in droves. The reason is simple: poor governance. It turns out one cannot engineer one's way past politics.
The actual mechanics of Bitcoin are extremely complex, but its major innovation was the block chain. This is a ledger of all Bitcoin transactions, distributed across the internet to remove the need for a central authority, such as the Federal Reserve. It's totally anonymous, and protected with cryptography such that it's nearly impossible to create fraudulent transactions. Make no mistake, this was a truly genius idea, and, as actual experts tell me, a brilliant piece of programming and mathematics.
The initial Bitcoin system was cheaper than credit cards for stores, but had zero protections for fraud. As a result, its primary use was for criminals. Henry Farrell wrote a brilliant essay detailing the collapse of the criminal marketplace Silk Road, created by a fan of libertarian Murray Rothbard who dreamed of being free of government coercion. It was a website where one could buy everything from drugs to stolen credit card numbers using Bitcoin. It has since been shuttered by the FBI.
The basic problem with Silk Road was cheating. Without some sort of system of regulatory authority, theft and fraud was a chronic problem — forcing the site's operator, Ross Ulbrich, to invent increasingly elaborate regulatory systems; he ended up re-creating a much more coercive government in miniature.
As the site grew, so did the attraction to increasingly bold criminals. Eventually Ulbrich resorted to the ultimate coercion — the attempted assassination of a blackmailer — and was nabbed by the FBI. It was like watching the evolution of the modern state out of feudalism on fast forward. Silk Road is dead, but many other sites have cropped up to take its place. Most of them also use Bitcoin.
Now Bitcoin is succumbing to similar problems. It's not the corrosive distrust of a criminal marketplace, but the inherent contradiction of a money and payment structure without any obvious method to control it. Without some sort of control mechanism — in other words, a government — Bitcoin is inherently vulnerable to hostile takeover from deep-pocketed bad actors.
Mike Hearn, who has been a Bitcoin developer for 5 years, lays out the crippling problems. Payment fees are rising fast, and payments themselves are fast becoming unreliable. New Bitcoins are created through complex mathematical calculations (called "mining" in the trade), which now require so much computing horsepower that the new coins can barely pay for the electricity required to create them. The result is miner centralization, mostly in China. Now, a handful of Chinese miners effectively control the block chain, which is running out of space for new transactions. They refuse to increase the file size to ease a payments backlog, because it would threaten their control of the system. Making everything worse, the bandwidth limitations of the China's Great Firewall have further clogged the system. And without some sort of system to resolve conflict (like, say, an election), disagreements between Bitcoiners have decayed into flame wars. Hearn has sold his Bitcoins and quit development work.
All this shouldn't take away from the real genius of the block chain idea and implementation. It could be potentially transformative. But the Bitcoin failure does illustrate that human institutions must have politics in addition to technical expertise. Try to engineer around politics, and it will flood back in the most atavistic and unscrupulous forms. As Steve Randy Waldman has said:
Much of my thinking on economic and social issues comes back to T.S. Elliot’s proposition, "It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good." Once upon a time, I chose to disagree. I thought it was the challenge of our day, and the grand project of modern economics, to build a system in which people pursuing their own self-interest would provide all social goods, in which the benevolent invisible hand would rule all and we’d have no need to rely upon ideas as shifty and manipulable as "virtue." I have done a full 180 on this question. Economic self-interest and formal legal frameworks are simply insufficient to regulate a decent society. [Mortgage Calculator]
Galtian fantasies can thrive only under conditions of relative peace and prosperity provided by stable governance. But, as the vaccine-denying mother who abruptly reversed course when all seven of her children got whooping cough discovered, hard-won truths have a way of reasserting themselves.Once the countryside home and headquarters of Pablo Escobar, Hacienda Napoles is slowly being remade into a family-friendly, safari-themed weekend destination.
It’s an odd transition, and as I toured the grounds late last year, I wondered if the Colombians there felt the same way.
Located four hours east of Medellin, Hacienda Napoles occupies 20 square kilometers of southeastern Antioquia, midway between Medellin and Bogota.
After spending the night at the Rio Claro Nature Reserve, Eric and Karen dropped Viviana and I off in front of Hotel El Lago, conveniently located across the street from the entrance to Hacienda Napoles, after a quick 30-minute drive east along the highway.
We checked into the hotel, bought our basic park tickets for 32,000 pesos ($16) apiece, and had reception call a rickshaw driver to pick us up.
Unless you’ve got a car, this is a necessary step, as the park is located a good distance from the road. You wouldn’t want to walk it, especially carrying luggage or backpacks.
Once in the park, it’s feasible to walk, but everything is so spread apart; I’d at least recommend renting a bicycle if not hiring a rickshaw. Don’t forget, the elevation is much lower here than in Medellin, so it’ll be hotter too.
A full day with the rickshaw will run you 50,000 pesos ($26).
If you don´t have time for a multiple day visit, you can coordinate with Latin Hosts for a private tour from Medellín. Its a long drive, but it allows you to experience the Hacienda and see the countryside of Antioquia.
As we drove deeper into the park, a newly constructed maximum security prison could be seen over hills in the distance.
I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the Colombian government chose Pablo Escobar’s former land upon which to build a prison.
The land was hilly and green, and dotted with numerous manmade lakes, some of which are still home to the largest population of wild hippos outside of Africa.
Pablo Escobar’s wealth knew no bounds, and as he grew in power, he began importing exotic animals like hippos, giraffes, elephants and ostriches.
It is perhaps for this reason that the estate can be so easily branded as a safari-style theme park.
When the Colombian government finally went after Escobar, he abandoned Hacienda Napoles, leaving many of the animals to die of starvation. Those that survived were relocated to whatever zoos would accept them.
The exception were the hippos, which had turned feral and reproduced like bunnies, to the point where finding suitable homes for them all became too difficult.
Now that Hacienda Napoles is being turned into a theme park, more and more animals are being reintroduced. At the time of our visit, the park was waiting to receive three elephants.
Before reaching the animal enclosures, we passed the dinosaurs Escobar had constructed for his son.
My favorite was the T-Rex, which looked more like a caricature of Godzilla, fighting a Triceratops.
Next, we stopped by the old bull ring, which has been chopped in half and redesigned as an African museum.
Not only did Escobar host his bullfights here, but the ring was used for other forms of entertainment, such as musical performances.
As silly as the outside might appear, the interior was nicely done, but I still would’ve rather seen the bull ring in its original state.
Across the dirt road from the bull ring is the Acuasaurus water park. Paying for a more expensive ticket can get you access to this park, but it’s best left for families.
The first real animals we encountered were a rhino, zebra and ostriches.
There were also two pairs of tigers and lions, all of which looked hot in the mid-day sun. I always like to see big cats, but I felt a little sad to see them locked up on this occasion.
They had enough space to run, which is more than I can say for some zoos I’ve seen, but there wasn’t a lot of shade in their enclosures.
The rickshaw driver dropped us off outside a building with snake and butterfly displays.
Before we looked at either, we walked over a bridge to peer down on alligators sleeping in the mud, and drifting through the murky pond water below.
The butterfly enclosure was wonderful.
The snake enclosures were what you see at any zoo. There was an anaconda on display, but we were unable to see it.
Around this time, my camera malfunctioned. I was frustrated, but there was nothing I could do except rely on my iPhone for the rest of the day.
We took a break from the sun to get lunch at the cafeteria.
Adjacent the cafeteria is Rio Salvaje (Savage River), which was the second water park on the grounds, and quite popular by the looks of everyone enjoying it.
Our next stop was a visit with Vanessa, the hippo mascot of Hacienda Napoles. She was hand-raised from birth and is, therefore, used to being around people.
The sign even indicated she answers to her name, which leads to no shortage of visitors yelling “Vanessa” in an attempt to get her out of the pond.
And, believe it or not, it worked! She left the pond and came over to a viewing platform where a bunch of visitors had bought raw carrots to feed her.
It was at this point that Viviana fell in love with Vanessa though one look into her mouth and gaping wide gullet made me wonder what was so cute about hippos.
Across from Vanessa’s pond, and up a small hill, sits the remnants of Pablo Escobar’s antique car collection, much of which was damaged or destroyed when the Monaco building where he was living in Poblado (Medellin) was bombed by the Cali Cartel.
You can also see some of his toys, including an early jet ski and mini-hovercraft.
“Triumph of the State” reads the giant poster that greets visitors who walk past the ruined cars to Escobar’s former home.
Three pictures are displayed, including Escobar in the giant Mexican sombrero, his mug on a Wanted poster, and finally, his body on the rooftop after he was killed by police.
Another poster nearby reads that the structure will not be restored because it is technically difficult, and morally impossible.
And I believe that’s the right call. It’s far more effective to leave the home in ruins.
Inside the rooms are various news images reflecting the terror and violence Escobar unleashed across Colombia. It has a somber effect, as one is reminded of the evil plots he must’ve been forming from this very house.
There were a lot of showers on the first floor, and every time I passed one, I noticed the tiles that were used. I wondered whether his wife picked out the designs herself.
The experience reminded me of my walk through the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where thousands of Cambodians were tortured and killed during the genocide.
From the immense pool, which was drained and in disrepair, as well as the entire front of the house, one had a clear view to the helipad and runway.
Escobar was able to quickly and easily travel between Olaya Herrera Airport in Medellin and Hacienda Napoles via his helicopters and planes. The other members of the Medellin Cartel would’ve also been able to arrive this way.
In the miniseries, Pablo Escobar: El Patron del Mal, they even depict him flying in Brazilian prostitutes to party with while his wife is at their home in Medellin.
The distance was good for not only keeping the police at bay, but also his own wife so he could carry on illicit affairs.
The ramshackle house was my main reason for visiting Hacienda Napoles, but I can’t blame the government for trying to turn the page on a terrible chapter in Colombia’s history.
Update: In February 2015, Escobar’s old house partially collapsed, and for safety reasons, was then demolished.
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Pablo Escobar Historical Tour
If you don’t have the time to visit Hacienda Napoles, but still want to learn more about Escobar during your visit to Medellín, sign up for a half-day tour through Latin Hosts Medellín. Historical points of interest include the Monaco Building where the Cali Cartel tried to kill him, his last safe house where security forces did kill him and his family grave.I apologize in advance, but this is a bit of a break from your regularly scheduled programming. Some of you may know that I’m obsessed with Buzzfeed. It’s been a dream of mine to somehow find a job there- and now it’s possible. They’re looking for an LGBT culture blogger, and I couldn’t think of a job more perfect for me! I would adore each and every one of you forever and for always if you could reblog/share/like/retweet/ skywrite the link to this blog, and tag @Buzzfeed. You can tweet this,for example:
Help me get my dream job @Buzzfeed http://wp.me/p2HWRo-7j #GetAngelHired
Dearest Buzzfeed,
I love you so. I can’t even count the ways. But here are some things I can count- 7 reasons why I’m awesome and you should hire me:
1. I already write LGBT posts for funzies. I have a super awesome blog. You should totally browse around to verify how great it is.
2. I definitely have a take on LGBT news and culture, because:
3. I’m a lesbian
4. I’m chock full of great ideas. Examples:
5. I love conversations! My unique views, opinions, and generally sassy disposition can bring different perspectives to (inter)national stories.
6. Social Media? I essentially majored in that. No, Really:
7. I’m also an SM MACHINE (you can totes click on these):
Twitter (what?! I have TWO of those!)
Tumblr- My Tumblr is also super gay- check it out!
Facebook- but who doesn’t have that, really?
Instagram- I love that shit
LinkedIn? I think it’s dumb, but I have it anyways!
BONUS: I’ve exposed a bunch of people that, due to some ridiculous oversight on their part, have never seen Buzzfeed before.
I hope we’re on the same page, now. Doesn’t this just seem like a no-brainer?
Advertisements× Sen. John McCain Says Doctors Gave Him a ‘Very Poor Prognosis’
Sen. John McCain says doctors have given him a “very poor prognosis” as he battles brain cancer.
McCain underwent surgery in July for a brain tumor that was later found to be a form of glioblastoma, the same type of cancer that took the life of his former Senate colleague Edward M. Kennedy in 2009.
McCain told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday night that he thinks about Kennedy a lot. He said Kennedy continued to work despite the diagnosis and “never gave up because he loved the engagement.”
McCain said he has “feelings sometimes of fear of what happens,” but counters that with gratitude for having “had a great life.”
Read the full story on LATimes.com.SOUTH BRONX, NY—The Lord Almighty finally responded to nearly two decades of praise in hip-hop album liner notes Monday, when He gave a shout-out back to all His loyal niggaz.
"Right about now, I want to send a shout-out to each and every nigga who's shown Me love through the years," said the Lord, His booming voice descending from Heaven. "I got mad love for each and every one of you niggaz. Y'all real niggaz out there, you know who you are. Y'all was there for me, and it's about time I'm-a give some love back to God's true crew."
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"All y'all niggaz, y'all be My niggaz," the Lord added.
As of press time, God has thanked nearly 7,000 of His niggaz, including those in New York's Bad Boy and Ruff Ryders posses, the No Limit soldiers and Cash Money Millionaires holdin' it down in New Orleans, Nelly and the whole St. Lunatics crew, Busta and the rest of the Flipmode Squad, His peeps from back in the day, and all the real ruffneck niggaz in lockdown. He also sent shout-outs to everybody in the Old School, as well as to Lil' Bow Wow and all the other new niggaz just coming up.
"Mad props to P. Diddy, Jay-Z, DMX, Lil' Kim, Mystikal, Eve, Ja Rule, Jadakiss, Trick Daddy, and Xzibit. And one love to Meth, RZA, GZA, Ghostface, and the rest of My real niggaz in the Wu-Tang Clan," the deity said. "These My beloved niggaz, with whom I be well-pleased."
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Now nearing the 48-hour mark, the Lord's first-ever reciprocal shout-out shows little sign of slowing down. Based on estimates of the number of rappers who have thanked Him in liner notes over the past 20 years, hip-hop experts say the historic shout-out is likely to continue through early next week.
In addition to rap's current stars, God offered shout-outs to the original hip-hop heads, including such pioneers of the art form as Grandmaster Flash, Busy Bee, Melle Mel, Jazzy Jay, Kool Moe Dee, Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Red Alert, the Cold Crush Brothers, Fab 5 Freddy, Kurtis Blow, Kool Herc, and the Funky 4+1.
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God also offered shout-outs to the many DJs, record labels, magazines, TV shows, and radio stations that have tirelessly supported hip-hop over the years. Among them are Def Jam, Tommy Boy, Jive, Roc-A-Fella, Rap Pages, The Source, Right On!, The Box, Funkmaster Flex, Ed Lover and Dr. Dre, WBLS 107.5, KISS-FM, and Hot 97.
"For supporting the many artists who have supported Me so faithfully, I say thank you," God said. "All praise to Devante Harrell, Wanda Simmons, LaShell Thomas, and everybody else at Uptown/MCA for making this possible."
As a further sign of His love for the hip-hop community, God assured the nation's rappers that He is taking good care of all their peers currently with Him in heaven.
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"Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Eazy-E, Scott LaRock—some of y'all niggaz are already up in this bitch," the Lord said. "For those of you who were left behind, know that the Lord has got your dead homies' backs. Faith [Evans], I promise I'm taking real good care of your Biggie. He resting in crazy peace, no doubt."
Thus far, God has not played favorites, thanking such fallen-off acts as Hammer and Vanilla Ice in the same breath as vital artists whose careers are still going strong. The Lord has also seen fit to thank the little-known likes of Baby Tragic, DJ Phreek Malik, and Da Ill Collector—MCs so obscure that virtually no one within the hip-hop community has heard of them. All rappers, God explained, are equal in His sight, and none are too small to escape His notice.
"God sees even the smallest sparrow fall," said Dr. Cornel West, Harvard University professor of African-American studies and philosophy of religion. "The same is true of MCs: Whether a major superstar or a complete unknown, all rappers are His children, and He loves them all."
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The sheer volume of names notwithstanding, the nation's rappers are deeply touched by God's gesture of tribute and appreciation, with many stating that they "feelin' Him."
"God is the Original," Brooklyn-based rapper Mos Def said. "The world is ruled by the wealthy and the wicked, but all respect due to the Creator who made this world and who will one day bring justice to the wicked and righteous alike."
Despite the overwhelmingly positive response among rappers, the Lord is drawing fire in certain circles for His use of the word "nigga." On Monday's Larry King Live, conservative activist Rev. Calvin Butts, a longtime ally of the Lord, blasted Him for His "shocking, unexpected use of the racially loaded N-word." Some concerned parties, including decency crusader C. Delores Tucker, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and members of the San Francisco-based What About The Children? Foundation, are calling for a boycott of church services until God issues an apology.
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Reacting to the controversy, many in the hip-hop community are rushing to the Lord's defense.
"The word 'nigga' means different things depending on how it's used and who's saying it," rap legend and Public Enemy frontman Chuck D said. "Judging from context, God obviously wasn't being derogatory. He was using 'nigga' as a blanket term of affection for all His true supporters on the rap scene. At one point, He said, 'I wanna give a shout-out to Ad-Rock, MC Serch, and my man Dan The Automator—all y'all is real niggaz in My all-benevolent sight.' Considering the fact that Ad-Rock and Serch are Jewish, and the Automator is Asian-American, it's clear God isn't talking about race here. He's just paying respect to all those who have paid respect to Him."
"God's the ultimate playa, so naturally He's going to have some haters," rapper Ice Cube said. "But these haters need to realize that if you mess with the man upstairs, you will get your ass smote. True dat."[social_buttons] On March 17, Tesla Motors began limited production of their all-electric, zero-emissions sportscar, the Tesla Roadster. It’s a car that can go from 0-60 in 5.7 seconds without using a drop of gas, and promises to be the first of a wave of new plug-in electric vehicles available in the United States.
It’s been almost 2 years since Tesla debuted the prototype in July of 2006, but Tesla had to delay release until now due to problems with the Roadster’s two-speed transmission. The vehicle will go into production anyway with in interim transmission, and Tesla is offering a free powertrain upgrade, when it becomes available, that will boost acceleration to 0-60 in 4 seconds.
While 900 models have already been reserved (at $98,000 each), Tesla will only build about 600 for the 2008 year (due to the trani problems). Tesla is now taking orders for 2009, and plans are in the works to ramp up production to 2,000 per year in the near future. The company also has plans to release an electric, 5-passenger sports sedan in 2010.
Fun facts about the Roadster:
It’s a 248 horsepower, rear-wheel drive two-seater with aluminum chassis and carbon-fiber skin.
It has a top speed of 125 mph with a range of 220 miles.
The charging time for a completely drained battery is 3.5 hours.
The Roadster achieves the equivalent of 135 mpg at a cost of 2 cents per mile.
Tesla says the lithium-ion batteries will last for 100,000 miles.
For more background on this sexy beast, see Tesla’s website, Tesla’s Press Release, and these articles:
USA Today: Tesla: Little electric roadster that could.
EERE News: Tesla Motors Starts Production of its Electric-Only Roadster
More Electric Cars:
An Electric Car You Can Buy Today: The $20K TRIAC EV
Electric Tara Tiny Steals Tata Nano’s Position as World’s Cheapest Car
Aptera’s $26,000 Electric Car and 300 MPG Hybrid Coming Soon
Subaru Unleashes R1e Electric Car on New York
The World’s Most Fuel Efficient Car: 285 MPG, Not A Hybrid
How Biodiesel Fuel-Cells Could Power The Future (And Your Car)ZURICH -- Describing himself as a "godfather" to women's football at FIFA, Sepp Blatter has acknowledged that its appeal still trails behind the men's game.
Still, this summer's Women's World Cup in Canada can be a "market opener," the FIFA president told BBC World Service radio in an interview broadcast on Thursday.
Blatter challenged the teams in the expanded 24-nation tournament to help achieve that |
-changing relationship between a privileged young man and a working-class activist. But while the story is simple, Metropolis’ look is far from it. The movie’s conception of hellish machine rooms, glamorous urban nightspots, and sexy (but tragic) robots offered a new way of visualizing the future that continues to influence writers, filmmakers, and commercial artists.
Having made the most expensive and exhausting film of his first decade in the business, Lang downshifted a little for his final two silents: 1928’s Spies and 1929’s Woman In The Moon. At the time, the expressionist era in German art was giving way to what was known in some quarters as “The New Objectivity,” and while Lang never fully signed on to the ideal of depicting real life with documentary-like clarity, he did move away from the more florid touches of Die Nibelungen and Metropolis. Spies is another film about international criminal conspiracies, like The Spiders (but much more polished) and Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (but much less complex); and it features some of Lang’s most gripping setpieces, including a classic final scene where the main villain performs a comical shooting exhibition before an audience that doesn’t understand how much danger they’re actually in. But Spies is more matter-of-fact than Mabuse, just as Woman In The Moon is less wild than Metropolis. Woman In The Moon is a space-travel saga that deals just as much with the realistic grind of rocketing to the stars as it does with adventure. The science in Woman In The Moon is laughably far-fetched at times—particularly when the traveling party lands on the dark side of the moon, and determines that the air is breathable—but it’s all treated respectfully, and the result is a movie that’s drier than Lang’s earlier science-fiction/fantasy pictures, while remaining impressively imaginative.
Into sound, away from the Nazis (1931-1934)
5.0 M 1931 5.0 The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse 1933 2.5 Liliom 1934
As one of the premier visual storytellers of the silent era, Lang didn’t embrace talking pictures right away, and when more than a year passed after Woman In The Moon with no new Lang film, some German critics wondered if he’d chosen to give up the business rather than work with a soundtrack. Actually, Lang was doing just as he’d done with Die Nibelungen and Metropolis: immersing himself in research and pre-production on his next project. That project, M, was released in 1931, and recast the crime-fighting themes of The Spiders, Spies, and Dr Mabuse: The Gambler in the spirit of “The New Objectivity.” Peter Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a psychopathic serial killer (of children, no less) whose murders send Berlin into a panic, leading the police to conduct raids throughout the city and obstruct ordinary criminal business. M is rooted in realism, filled with up-to-the-minute details of police work and pathology, but it’s also a pointed sketch of an increasingly divided and dangerous Germany, toward the end of the Weimar Republic. (The original title of the film, Murderer Among Us, reportedly raised red flags among the rising Nazi party.)
It’d be wrong to say that Lang shows more empathy in M for a murderer than he does for law-abiding citizens, but Hans does get a powerful speech toward the end where he curses his own compulsions, while the bloodthirsty frenzies of the media, the cops, the public, and the gangs carry on, unrestricted. M is a powerful plea for personal responsibility, using a shocking comparison to urge audiences away from their habit of just going along with the crowd. But what really makes M such a consensus classic is the way Lang retains his silent-film techniques—telling much of the story without any dialogue, and using images of painful absence to represent the children Hans kills—while finding ways to integrate sound in ways that are suggestive, not merely functional. From Hans’ repeated whistling of “Hall Of The Mountain King,” to the way that a crowd of protestors chants like schoolchildren, Lang creates associations and atmosphere with the new technology.
Lang then carried both the more grounded approach of M and its tough take on German society into The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse, a sequel to his 1922 hit (and also in some ways a sequel to M, in that both M and Testament feature Otto Wernicke playing a police inspector named Lohmann). Rudolf Klein-Rogge reprises his role as Norbert Jacques’ hypnotist/supervillain, but only briefly, since Mabuse dies early in the film, leaving behind a stack of writings that continue to corrupt the people who read them. It isn’t Mabuse himself who guides the choices his disciples make; it’s the idea of Mabuse. Sometimes he appears to people as a spectral vision, and seems to take possession of their bodies; at other times, he’s nothing but a disembodied voice, heard from behind a curtain, in a featureless room, in a shadowy part of the city. Again, as with M, Lang relies on clever sound design and compositions to tell the story, but The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse is more action-packed, like a refined version of Lang’s early pulp serials.
The morally compromised world depicted in the second Mabuse film could be read as a commentary on any era where men do evil in the name of ideology. But Lang always claimed it was a comment on Nazism, and how human weakness allows dictators to rule and fascism to spread. The Nazis themselves didn’t miss the connection. While Joseph Goebbels once asked Lang to make movies for the state, he ultimately banned The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse in Germany. By then, Lang had seen the writing on the wall, and left his home, taking refuge in France alongside his former UFA producer and fellow exile Erich Pommer.
Pommer had a deal with Fox Film Corporation (prior to its merger with 20th Century Pictures) to set up a production company in Paris, and he had Lang and director Max Ophüls in his stable. But Lang’s first and only film for Fox Europa was something of a bust, commercially and creatively. In later years, Lang claimed that his adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s stage play Liliom (which later inspired the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel) was a personal favorite, echoing Destiny in its tale of a grouchy carousel barker who dies, then gets a second chance to prove himself when heaven sends him back to earth for a day. But while Molnár’s scenario let Lang re-deploy his gifts for the fantastical, the story demands a lighter touch that Lang generally lacked. The scenes between Liliom (Charles Boyer) and his lover Julie (Madeleine Ozeray) have some of the social-realist smack that Lang returned to in the 1950s, but they’re so earthy that they undercut the play’s more whimsical turns. If Lang was going to continue his journey into the grimier side of human existence, he’d have to try a different approach—and do so somewhere else.
Crooks and cowboys in Hollywood (1936-1941)
5.0 Fury 1936 4.5 You Only Live Once 1937 4.0 You And Me 1938 3.5 The Return Of Frank James 1940 3.0 Western Union 1941
Because language barriers weren’t as significant in the silent era, Lang was already known to the American film industry before he moved to the States; perhaps because he was already respected by those in the know, he was given some latitude to make “Fritz Lang films” when he first arrived in Hollywood. Lang had to deal with more content restrictions, and interference from studios that demanded changes or cuts. But he also had access to new resources—actors, writers, and crew who could bring his visions to life more quickly and efficiently than any had before—and new locations in which to explore some of his same old themes. Lang’s first five Hollywood pictures run the gamut from fevered social-problem films to colorful Westerns, with one eccentric musical romance mixed in, but the same types of characters pop up in each: hard men trying to atone for bad choices, in communities inclined to judge them by their reputations.
In Lang’s 1936 English-language debut Fury, Spencer Tracy plays the flip side of Peter Lorre’s character in M. Tracy’s Joe Wilson gets accused of a crime he didn’t commit, then gets almost killed by small-towners who burn down the jail to prevent him from wasting their money and time on a trial. Left for dead, Joe sneaks away, then works behind the scenes to bring his would-be killers to justice. Fury is an astonishingly expressive film—much more so than Lang’s last few German pictures—using subjective tracking shots and satirical montages of clucking chickens to mock rioters and make the righteous look phony. Fury is heartland Americana knocked askew, with petty gripes about taxes and lawyers escalating into murderous rage. Lang and screenwriter Bartlett Cormack take a contemporary scourge—lynching—and make their audience live through two different versions of it, asking whether Joe’s more methodical revenge is any less cruel than what was done to him.
Lang brought that same intensity to 1937’s You Only Live Once, which stars Henry Fonda as Eddie Taylor, an ex-con whose efforts to live a clean, blue-collar life with his girl Jo (Sylvia Sidney) are stymied by landlords who don’t trust him, bosses who keep him on a short leash, and old cohorts who use him as a patsy. Like Fury, You Only Live Once has a bifurcated structure, with a first half focusing on Eddie’s increasing disillusionment with the straight life, and a second half about his desperation after he’s charged with another major crime. Lang uses exaggerated perspectives and dreamy imagery to document Eddie’s emotional state at every juncture, from the rippling reflections in a picturesque pond when he’s wooing Jo to the long shadows of bars that stretch across him when he’s in trouble. The film is also corrosively ironic: When Eddie awaits his last meal on death row, one of the guards quips, “First they kill the chicken, Taylor eats the chicken, then they kill Taylor.”
Lang relied on screenwriters for lines like that (You Only Live Once is credited to C. Graham Baker and Gene Towne), and for most of his time in Hollywood, he was stuck with whatever assignments he was offered. Yet again and again, Lang’s films stood up for the dignity of even the most tarnished individual, while suggesting that the real evil in the world lies in the social machinery that grinds people down.You And Me, written by Norman Krasna and Virginia Van Upp, isn’t one of Lang’s best-known films—largely because it’s never been released on DVD in the U.S.—but while it isn’t on par with his masterpieces, it’s practically a thesis statement for Lang’s career, in that it makes that “Who are the real enemies?” question plain. Sylvia Sidney stars as Helen, a parolee working at a department store staffed by former hoods, including the man she ultimately marries, Joe Dennis (George Raft). As Joe considers a return to crime, You And Me honestly explores the desire for consumer goods and the appeal of the outlaw life—occasionally via songs (!) with music by Kurt Weill (!!)—until Helen stops the show with a math lesson for Joe and his gang, explaining in detail why crime only pays for big shots and politicians.
Even Lang’s two early-1940s Westerns are thematically on-point, even though they’re very different in tone from what he’d done before. Colorful and often comic, 1940’s The Return Of Frank James and 1941’s Western Union both take a breezy approach to two historical subjects—the life of Jesse James’ brother after the outlaw’s assassination, and the expansion of the telegraph through the Midwest, respectively—then turn them into studies of morally compromised but still fundamentally decent men. Henry Fonda plays Frank James as a humble, dry-witted guy trying to downplay his infamy even as he’s fully aware of himself as a historical figure in a complicated time for America. And in Western Union, Randolph Scott plays Vance Shaw, a criminal looking to reform himself by taking an honest job stringing wire. Both films make direct reference to the American Civil War—it’s a bone of contention in Frank James’ climactic trial in the former, and something Shaw’s former gang uses as an excuse to steal from Yankee travelers in the latter—and both show people of the past as governed by the same bigotry, arrogance, and desire as their descendants. In a reprise of You And Me’s opening array of luxury items, for example, Lang establishes the way of life in 1860s Omaha in Western Union via a montage of the city’s amenities: guns, booze, and lingerie.
War and noir (1941-1950)
3.5 Man Hunt 1941 3.5 Hangmen Also Die! 1943 3.0 Ministry Of Fear 1944 3.0 The Woman In The Window 1944 4.5 Scarlet Street 1945 3.0 Cloak And Dagger 1946 3.5 Secret Beyond The Door 1948 4.5 House By The River 1950 2.5 American Guerrilla In The Philippines 1950
Over his first two decades as a movie director, Lang was responsible for some of the most memorable images in cinema’s early history, but he’d never filmed anything as shocking as one shot at the start of his 1941 thriller Man Hunt. As renowned hunter Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) settles into a shooting position on a brushy hill, he looks through his telescopic sight at his target: Adolf Hitler. Given that the United States wasn’t yet involved in World War II when Man Hunt was made (or even when it was released), even the implication that a movie hero might assassinate Hitler was a major provocation, which put Lang in a bit of hot water with the U.S. government and the gatekeepers of the industry’s production code. But Lang held firm, and Man Hunt set the tone for all the war movies he’d make in the 1940s. Even after America entered the war—and even after the war was over—Lang made action movies where the enemy wasn’t some vague antagonist in a different-colored uniform. In Lang’s war films, the villains frequently looked and talked a lot like the heroes, and posed a real, specific threat to ordinary citizens, not just soldiers.
Thorndike doesn’t kill Hitler in Man Hunt, but just by targeting Der Führer, he becomes a target himself, tailed by the Nazis even after he returns to London, where he strikes up a relationship with a working-class woman (Joan Bennett) that inadvertently puts her life in danger. In 1943’s Hangmen Also Die (based on a true story, and co-written by Bertolt Brecht), the Nazis occupying Czechoslovakia turn the citizenry against each other while searching for a leader of the resistance. In 1944’s Ministry Of Fear (based on a Graham Greene novel), Ray Milland plays Stephen Neale, who leaves an asylum to enter a beleaguered England where no one will believe his claim that he’s uncovered a network of Nazi spies. In 1946’s Cloak And Dagger, Gary Cooper is Professor Alvah Jesper, a civilian scientist venturing behind enemy lines to uncover evidence of the Nazis’ atomic-weapons program, and dragging other civilians into harm’s way. And in 1950’s American Guerrilla In The Philippines, Tyrone Power plays Ensign Chuck Palmer, who works undercover to keep the U.S. informed on what the Japanese are up to until such time as General MacArthur can fulfill his promise to “return” to the Philippines, though frequently, the Japanese awareness of the lurking American presence makes life harder for the Filipinos.
Lang’s war films aren’t his best work, by and large. They tend to be choppy, staggering great setpieces with long stretches of exposition. Either due to the genre demands or Lang’s bosses’ demands, they sometimes slip too easily into the kind of jingoism that his movies usually eschewed. But Lang and his screenwriters snuck in a few moments of clear-eyed observation on what war does to people, whether it’s the Czechs in Hangmen Also Die feeling like traitors for living their own lives in their own country, or Neale in Ministry Of Fear telling a fortune-teller to skip reading his past and just tell him his future, because a world at war has no time for historical context. Cloak And Dagger is the most poignant in this regard, with Professor Jesper lamenting at the start that the government will spend a million bucks for his secret mission, but not to cure cancer, and then later enjoying a few days of domestic bliss with one of his contacts (played by Lilli Palmer) while knowing that the larger plot they’re caught up in is going to keep them from living happily after. Even the flattest of Lang’s war pictures—American Guerrilla In The Philippines—has its sour side, given that its hero seems more deeply committed to the bottle of Coca-Cola he gets to drink at the end of the movie than to any of the people he’s supposed to be safeguarding.
After Man Hunt, Lang worked on two films that were ultimately taken out of his hands and given to director Archie Mayo: 1941’s Confirm Or Deny (another war film), and the brooding 1942 underclass melodrama Moontide. The latter represented a mode that Lang stuck with for most of the rest of his time in Hollywood, with frequently fruitful results. As the film-noir style he’d helped codify in the 1930s became more commonplace, Lang himself directed a string of unconventional noirs, populated not by gangsters and detectives, but by psychologically damaged middle-class dopes. The ridiculously similar The Woman In The Window (released in 1944) and Scarlet Street (released in 1945) established the template. In the former, Edward G. Robinson plays a criminology professor who’s lured into the apartment of a sexy model played by Joan Bennett, where he accidentally kills a man and then is blackmailed by an unscrupulous mug played by Dan Duryea. In the latter, Robinson plays a henpecked corporate drone who saves a streetwalker (Bennett again) from being beaten by a pimp (Duryea again), then becomes a patsy to both of them, forced to dabble in embezzlement and art-forgery. The Woman In The Window is hampered a bit by Nunnaly Johnson’s talky, slow-paced script and weak ending, but Lang knows just when to point the camera at Robinson: right when the character is moved to exercise his frustrations with his life via violence. Lang pulls the same trick in the superior Scarlet Street, showing the pleasure the hero takes in killing. The difference is that Scarlet Street is more of a thoroughgoing nightmare, in which a man turns the wrong corner, then sees his already-pathetic life fall apart.
Bennett re-teamed with Lang one more time (in fact, she had her husband/producer Walter Wagner hire Lang) for 1948’s Secret Beyond The Door, in which she plays Celia, a woman of means who marries cash-strapped architect Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave), then questions his unusual hobby of recreating the rooms where famous murders took place. Secret Beyond The Door turns into a riff on Bluebeard when Celia becomes curious about the one room she isn’t allowed to see, and then it ends disappointingly, with a bit of explanatory mumbo-jumbo that rivals Psycho’s epilogue for its dime-store Freudianism. But it’s one of the most striking-looking and sounding films of Lang’s career, with dreamy art direction and an at-times-dissonant Miklós Rózsa score. And whether the rationale for Mark’s bizarre behavior makes sense or not, all the shots of his wife and sister snipping the ends off of candles and flowers makes its own point about Mark’s relationship to the women in his life.
Lang wrapped up this era of seedy, psychology-heavy tales of bourgeois murder with the strange, brilliant House By The River, starring Louis Hayward as Stephen Byrne, a successful novelist who begins the movie by strangling his maid when she refuses to have sex with him, then frames his overly helpful brother John (Lee Bowman) for the crime, while using the whole scandal to sell more books. Lang made some great films after House By The River, but it’s the last film he made in Hollywood where the storytelling’s visual components are so front-and-center. The movie is ominous from the start, when Stephen first watches a dead deer float past his opulent home, then gets turned on by the sound of his maid’s bathwater draining through the house’s pipes. For the rest of the film, Lang often frames the action through tall, narrow windows that constrict and define the characters, while he and screenwriter Mel Dinelli (adapting an A.P. Herbert novel) offer some unforgiving analysis of the upper class’ ability to excuse their own crimes.
Hired gun, still fully loaded (1952-1956)
3.0 Rancho Notorious 1952 3.5 Clash By Night 1952 3.0 The Blue Gardenia 1953 4.5 The Big Heat 1953 3.0 Human Desire 1954 2.5 Moonfleet 1955 3.0 While The City Sleeps 1956 3.5 Beyond A Reasonable Doubt 1956
Lang ended up in a precarious position in Hollywood in the 1950s. While his stylistic influence was more apparent than ever (especially in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, who often claimed Lang as a personal favorite), Lang didn’t have enough of a track record of financial success to get his pick of A-list projects. After a run of aesthetically exciting films in the 1940s, Lang mostly settled into making mid-budget genre fare, with few dynamic visual touches—at least not to the degree Lang had used them before. But perhaps because the string of crime pictures Lang made in the 1950s weren’t as high-profile, Lang and his screenwriters were freer to subvert expectations. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Lang frequently had to soften his heroes and his endings, unable to do what he’d done with M and indict mob rule while still having a loathsome protagonist. Lang’s 1950s noirs are even-toned and more conventionally procedural, in the mode of cheap paperback mystery novels, but they still throw curveballs, in the form of surprise endings and main characters who keep dark secrets.
Many of these films also bring to the surface the sexuality that earlier Langs only hinted at. In 1938’s You And Me, Joe Dennis walks into his new wife’s one-room apartment for the first time and sheepishly asks, “Where’s the, uh…?,” unable to say “bed.” But in 1953’s The Blue Gardenia, newly jilted Norah Larkin (played by Anne Baxter) throws herself at wolfish artist Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr), and the two of them drunkenly discuss the merits of a Polynesian cocktail called “The Mermaid’s Downfall.” In 1956’s While The City Sleeps, a newspaper editor orders an underling to rouse a reporter out of bed, adding, “Anybody’s bed.” In that same year’s Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, writer Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) is out with a newspaper publisher’s daughter, Susan Spencer (Joan Fontaine), when she mentions that she’s never seen his apartment, and he cracks, “That’s supposed to be my line.” The Blue Gardenia, While The City Sleeps, and Beyond A Reasonable Doubt are sometimes referred to as Lang’s “newspaper trilogy,” since all three are about crusading reporters and columnists who push sensationalism in the name of justice, and usually end up making a bad situation worse. But they’re also about men and women on the make, and they’re relatively frank about what consenting, unmarried adults do at night.
Along with sex, Lang’s 1950s films took a cue from House By The River and were frequently attentive to class. The plot of Beyond A Reasonable Doubt has Susan’s dad employing Tom to implicate himself in a murder, in order to prove that juries are too quick to hang the death penalty on defendants based on circumstantial evidence. But then the plan goes awry, and Susan has to fight for Tom, wielding the kind of political influence that a non-socialite wouldn’t have. In 1953’s The Big Heat—the toughest and the best of Lang’s 1950s noirs—Glenn Ford plays a cop who quits his job so he can break the law to bring down a mob boss, and throughout the film, the hero makes a nuisance of himself just by bulling his way into the crime-lord’s fancy house and “tracking dirt into it.” The Big Heat is relentlessly, uncompromisingly brutal, and one major way the movie signals that it means business is how its violence makes its way into placid suburban homes and upscale mansions. The most famous scene in the film has a thug played by Lee Marvin disfiguring moll Gloria Grahame with a pot of hot coffee, which is something of a symbol for how criminal ruthlessness sullies what should be beautiful.
Grahame and Ford also appear in Lang’s squalid 1954 melodrama Human Desire (based on an Émile Zola novel), with Grahame playing a battered wife and Ford playing a train engineer. The two have an affair and plot a murder, in what in some ways is a darker version of Lang’s 1952 film Clash By Night (based on a Clifford Odets play), in which Barbara Stanwyck plays a fisherman’s wife who embarks on an affair with a raging misogynist (Robert Ryan) mostly of out of boredom and bad habit. There’s no killing in Clash, but like Human Desire (and Liliom, decades earlier), it’s about the romantic woes of hard-bitten folks who think of themselves as “no good.” When Stanwyck’s character in Clash By Night lifts her glass and says, “That’s why I drink that shellac, to get unborn,” she’s speaking for every “fallen” woman and man who’s just muddling through.
Lang also made two historical genre pieces in this era: the 18th-century underworld adventure Moonfleet, and the flashback-heavy Western Rancho Notorious. The former is entertaining but fairly nondescript, and Lang-like primarily in the way its roguish hero (played by Stewart Granger) dallies with multiple women and resists playing a paternal role toward a young boy he becomes guardian to. Rancho Notorious is a much more rewarding film, and even more like a noir than Lang’s brighter 1940s Westerns. As cowboy Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) tracks the men who killed his fiancée, he hears stories about a mysterious ranch named Chuck-A-Luck, run by a former saloon-dweller named Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich). The time-jumping narrative and the way Rancho Notorious handles exposition—via a recurring folksong—make the film unusual and memorable. The characters with shady pasts and the scene of showgirls riding on the backs of cowboys make it a Lang.
Epilogue, abroad (1959-1960)
2.5 "The Indian Epic" 1959 4.0 The Thousand Eyes Of Dr. Mabuse 1960
Early in his career, Lang tried to make Thea von Harbou’s novel The Indian Tomb into a movie, only to see the project taken from him and given to another director. In the late 1950s, while on the outs in Hollywood, Lang was offered a second chance at The Indian Tomb by a German producer who owned the rights, so he returned to the director’s chair in his old stomping grounds, and made another two-part, nearly four-hour movie. The two films that came out in 1959—titled The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, and sometimes lumped together as “The Indian Epic”—are a strange crossbreed of cheapie Steve Reeves Hercules movies and David Lean, with some near-nude dancing by Debra Paget sprinkled in for spice. There’s a logyness about “The Indian Epic” that’s distressing to anyone who fondly remembers Fury, but some of the old Lang themes are there, as the films deal with forbidden love and character-testing jealousy.
After crossing one long-overdue project off his list, Lang ended his directorial career by taking another pass at Mabuse. Like George Romero re-imagining Night Of The Living Dead for different eras, Lang’s The Thousand Eyes Of Dr. Mabuse revives the idea of a master persuader for the Cold War surveillance age, with the bulk of its action taking place in a hotel that’s been furnished with one-way mirrors, cameras, and microphones. As a murder investigation reveals that some new criminal kingpin may be operating under the name “Dr. Mabuse,” the authorities are drawn to this voyeur’s paradise, where they can watch undressing women and quarreling lovers. Though less epic than the earlier Mabuse films, Thousand Eyes has its share of classic suspense sequences. More importantly, it’s a fitting and chilling farewell for Lang, suggesting the persistence of some kinds of evil from age to age, fostered by societies that on some level must need them to exist.After taking a break last year, the popular Doctor Who series is back this year at San Diego Comic-Con, with star Peter Capaldi making his first appearance at the convention.
Capaldi’s appearance won’t be the only thing that’s new for the series at Comic-Con this year, though, as it’s also receiving a date change as well. After being a Hall H Sunday staple for years, the series is moving to Thursday, July 9 (though still in Hall H).
Along with Capaldi, stars Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald), Michelle Gomez (Missy), and Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin will also be in attendance.
“Tales of San Diego Comic-Con are told in awe on every set around the known fantasy/sci-fi production world. It’s become a fabled kingdom. One I am thrilled to find myself heading for. And to appear in the legendary Hall H, is a further twist to the cosplay and comic madness I may never recover from,” Capaldi said.
While this is huge news, it also opens up some questions – namely, what could this potentially mean for Hall H on Sunday? Hall H has stayed open on Sundays the last few years, taken over by the most popular TV shows. It’s possible that we could see a shift of more TV programming into Thursday in Hall H – especially with Con Man producer PJ Haarsma having revealed that the Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion web series would be on Thursday between “Doctor Who and Marvel“. If that holds true, and with this announcement it looks like it could, we may also see Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and/or Agent Carter get the Thursday Hall H treatment as well.
The new season of Doctor Who debuts this fall on BBC America.
Are you excited about Doctor Who returning to San Diego Comic-Con? How do you feel about the date change? Let us know in the comments.[reposted from HBR Blogs]
To this day, Microsoft Office remains the dominant office software suite, a position it has held since the 1990s. While competitors have emerged to appeal to different customer niches (Google Docs with collaboration or iWork for Mac users), for many people the value of using Office lies in the fact that many others use it; it has stood the test of time. This illustrates one of the strategic benefits of platforms: Once established, they are hard to dislodge. Exit from a platform usually requires customers to leave in a coordinated fashion.
Among other things, a platform is a device for coordinating the choices of many individuals. By contrast, disruption, and particularly demand-side disruption of the type put forward by Clay Christensen, is a force that relies on a steady process of picking off one customer at a time. Kodak did not end up losing the film business because one day nobody wanted film. Instead, they lost the market one customer at a time as people found alternatives in the form of digital photography. And those customers did not have to think about whether their friends were willing to look at pictures taken digitally. They could make decisions of their own accord.
Given this, it might be tempting to conclude that platforms, once established, cannot be disrupted. Yes, there might be a niche group who are underserved, but as long as what ultimately matters is who else is on the same platform, no entrant who targets just that niche will be able to do any competitive damage.
A case in point is the continual forecasts of Facebook’s demise. The usual narrative goes like this: Facebook did well when it was just young people, but when parents joined, the future supply of youth (namely teenagers) dried up and went elsewhere. As a result, Facebook will slowly be disrupted as its active customer base ages.
While there is something to this baseline theory — Google+, a would-be disruptor, premised its entry on allowing users to segment their friends and family into circles — Facebook continues to go from strength to strength. Young people do avoid their parents, but they do this by moving some, though not all, of their social media interactions elsewhere. They remain active on Facebook even if their activity fluctuates in both intensity and nature as they grow.
Facebook appears to have been on alert for potential disruptive threats, which have come largely from other platforms. When Instagram demonstrated that sharing photos on mobile devices was a new social media platform, Facebook acquired it. When WhatsApp demonstrated that messaging was alive and well in a pure form, Facebook acquired it. In each case Facebook paid handsomely — but did little else. Both companies, while under a corporate umbrella, operate as independent brands with largely independent development teams. In effect, Facebook bought an option against possible disruption but did not want to touch or risk anything else about those companies.
Facebook’s tactic appears similar to that of other established companies: It controls possible disruptive events that appear to pick off customers based on initially niche cases by buying the competition.
But what of disruptive effects of a different nature? What if disruption comes instead — as I outline in the April 2016 issue of HBR — from the supply side?
Supply-side disruption arises when a new innovation or technology offers a better way of providing consumer value than the old technology does. For instance, the iPhone was an innovation to the architecture of mobile devices (specifically, how the user interacted with software and hardware) rather than offering any new components. That architecture permitted a rapid deployment of technologies to create the mobile internet, something that established handset makers simply were not in a position to match. Doing so would have completely upended their product development organization. Any capabilities they had were eroded quickly.
Can such a supply-side effect disrupt a platform? To do so, it would have to offer greater value not only to a niche of consumers but also to others so that the disadvantage of a network effect was short-lived. This is arguably what happened to Nintendo and then Sega in the 1990s as others developed better consoles. To meet that competition, Nintendo and Sega had to scuttle many of their existing capabilities.
Could this happen to Facebook? Conceivably. Indeed, Facebook has already dodged a potential supply-side bullet that came with mobile devices. After being slow to invest heavily in mobile, Facebook marshalled resources to do so. In a few short years it created enviable mobile products but also found out how to generate ad revenue on small screens. Its business is now primarily mobile.
How did it do this? With managerial foresight. Supply-side risks come when a firm’s development teams specialize so much that they forget how they are connected. Then when they have to act together, they find themselves in what Gillian Tett calls silos. Anticipating the need to move quickly, Facebook deliberately broke down its walls, going as far as having an initiation program that puts together people from different areas and makes rotation a part of the onboarding process for new engineers. The theory is that, like a social network, creating new social links can reduce long-term barriers. When Facebook had to realign for a new potential threat, the parts could work smoothly.
You don’t wait until the threat is at your door before you react. Instead, you need to know that a threat could arrive someday, and organize yourself accordingly.AMC’s “The Walking Dead” returned for its midseason Season 4 premiere on Sunday, drawing 15.8 million total viewers.
The premiere drew 10.4 million viewers in the key 18-49 demographic.
See video: NYC ‘Deeply Troubled’ by ‘Walking Dead’ Prank
Compared to its midseason finale, the “Walking Dead” midseason premiere performed favorably, easily outscoring the 12.1 million total viewers that the finale grabbed. However, the midseason opener fell just shy of the season premiere in October, which had 16.1 million total viewers.
(In a direct comparison to the Season 3 midseason premiere, Sunday’s premiere came out on top, drawing 3.5 million more total viewers than the Season 3 midseason opener.)
See video: ‘Walking Dead’ Star Norman Reedus Discusses Season 4, Dying, and Saving a Life in Atlanta
Sunday’s performance was particularly impressive, given the competition from the Winter Olympics in Sochi and CBS’s tribute to the Beatles on the 50th anniversary of the group’s “Ed Sullivan Show” premiere.
“With a number of high-profile choices on television last night, for ‘The Walking Dead’ to deliver record ratings is remarkable. Thanks to the fans, who have been so supportive of this show in so many ways. We share your passion for this world,” AMC president Charlie Collier said. “Thanks also to the terrific team of writers, starting with Scott Gimple and Robert Kirkman, who with our outstanding executive producers, cast and crew pour their hearts into this series, always with the fans in mind. I speak for everyone at AMC in expressing my sincere appreciation and our shared excitement for the journey ahead. Chocolate pudding for all!”
See video: ‘Walking Dead’ Cast Debates Zombie Apocalypse Survival Techniques on ‘Conan’
At 10 p.m., the “Walking Dead” companion series “Talking Dead” grabbed 5.9 million total viewers, making it the most-watched premiere in the series’ history, with 3.9 million of them in the 18 |
optotic Bcl-2 protein, 3) prevention of METH-induced microglial and astroglial activation, as well as 4) inhibition of METH-induced hyperthermia.
METH toxicity can be manipulated at various levels, based on its mechanisms of actions. METH enters DA neurons through the DAT and via passive diffusion. In the cell, it accumulates in vesicles, disrupts the pH gradient required for vesicular DA sequestration, and displaces DA into the cytoplasm [32]. DA accumulates in the cytoplasm, which alters the concentration gradient and likely serves to favor the reverse transport of DA via the DAT [33]. DA is an important component of the mechanisms that underlie METH neurotoxicity (see [2]). METH-induced cell death is related to intraterminal DA autoxidation and generation of reactive oxygen species (hydrogen peroxide), quinones, and semiquinones, with subsequent induction of neuronal apoptosis [2]. METH-induced alterations in the activity of monoamine transporter proteins have also been reported to contribute to persistent dopaminergic deficits [34]. Although several mechanisms have been suggested for the neurochemical effects of modafinil [15], its neuroprotective effects against METH toxicity might be more related to its actions as a DAT blocker [18] Modafinil is thought to interact with DAT at a different site than cocaine [35], [36]. Therefore, one suitable explanation for modafinil effects against METH striatal inflammation might be related to modafiniĺs DAT- blocking properties. Modafinil acting as a DAT blocker may have decreased the entry of METH into dopaminergic terminals, avoiding the toxic consequences of high levels of DA into theterminals and the synaptic cleft. This suggestion is compatible with the fact that DAT knockout mice are protected against METH-induced DA depletion, reactive astrocytosis, and reactive oxygen species production in the striatum [37]. This idea is also consistent with the observation that administration of the DAT inhibitor, methylphenidate, 1 hour after METH treatment can also block METH-induced toxicity [38].
METH can cause neuronal apoptosis in addition to terminal degeneration [5], [9], [2]. Some studies have demonstrated that METH can cause neuronal apoptosis in the cortex and striatum of rodents [10], [39], [30] by increasing caspase activity and the expression of proapoptotic Bcl-2 family related proteins, including BAD and BAX genes [2]. In the present study, we show that METH-treated mice displayed an increase in the pro-apoptotic marker BAX together with a decrease in the anti-apoptotic marker Bcl-2. The present findings of METH-induced decreases in the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, but increases in the pro-apoptotic proteins BAX, are consistent with those observed after single large doses of METH [10]. We found, for the first time, that modafinil pretreatment was able to counteract these effects. Mitochondrial dysfunctions have been reported to influence METH toxicity [2]. Under the toxic METH regimen used in the present study, a clear increase in hyperramified-reactive and amoeboid cells (activated states), and a decrease in the percentage of ramified (resting state) microglial cells, were observed. These effects are consistent with a previous report by Thomas et al. [12], who showed (using the same METH regimen on C57BL/6 female mice) that microglial staining was increased maximally at 24 and at 48 hours after METH. Microglial counts returned to control levels after 7 days post METH. As expected, a clear increase in GFAP-immunoreactivity was also observed in METH-treated group at 48 h and 6 days after METH treatment. Modafinil by itself did not induce microglial or astroglial activation at any time point. The fact that modafinil did show preventive effects on glial cells suggests that modafinil blocked early toxic events induced by a METH binge in striatal tissue.
A major clinical danger associated with high-dose METH abuse in humans is the development of hyperthermia [2]. Therefore, we were interested in evaluating whether modafinil pretreatment might modulate METH-induced hyperthermia. We found, after the second, third, and last METH injections, a hyperthermic response in the METH-treated group that was not present in the M+M group, indicating that modafinil co-administration prevented METH-dependent increases in body temperature. Modafinil by itself did not alter core body temperature. Hypothermia was observed at 2 h after the last METH injection in both METH and M+M-treated animals. These effects are consistent with previous reports where the hyperthermic response of METH was followed by a hypothermic response, probably due to altered homeostatic mechanisms induced by the binge METH injections [13]. The neurotoxic effects of METH can be modulated by drugs or treatments that prevent hyperthermia [11], [31], making it difficult to determine whether hyperthermia is a direct participant in drug-induced neurotoxicity or a response that is coincident but does not contribute to nerve terminal damage [13]. Also, it has been previously shown that increases in temperature lead to increases in DAT function [40], therefore, it is possible that, at least in part, increased core temperature enhances METH-induced DA neurotoxicity by amplifying a DAT-dependent neurotoxic cascade [41]. Some authors have also suggested that core temperature responses to METH (i.e., hypothermia or hyperthermia) cannot predict the subsequent neurochemical response (i.e., toxicity or neuroprotection) to drug administration, and that there is a suitable scenario where hyperthermia is neither necessary nor sufficient for amphetamine-induced neurotoxicity [13]. It needs to be pointed out that, even though increases in core temperature are not essential for the expression of METH-induced DA neurotoxicity (either in rodents or primates), the possibility still exists that hyperthermia might contribute to some extent to METH-induced toxicity. Therefore, the fact that modafinil pretreatment prevented METH- induced hyperthermia may contribute to its neuroprotective actions. Considerable evidence has accumulated indicating that stimulation of central DA receptors can produce thermoregulatory responses in most species [42]. The evidence points to the involvement of tubero-infundibular neurons of the pre-optic hypothalamus in temperature regulation, although the mesolimbic and nigrostriatal pathways have also been implicated [43]. In any case, increased release of DA in any of these regions might, in part, be responsible for METH-induced thermoregulatory dysfunctions. Therefore, modafinil might have prevented METH-induced hyperthermia via the same mechanisms described earlier.
Altogether, our results indicate that modafinil treatment can provide protection against DA toxicity, cell death, and neuroinflammation. Modafinil-mediated neuroprotection might be related to DAT antagonism, since other DAT inhibitors also block METH-induced toxicity [38]. Thus, by blocking one of the sites that METH uses to enter dopaminergic terminals, modafinil might have interfered with a wide range of toxic processes induced by METH. This suggestion is consistent with the idea that inhibition of DAT might be a critical factor mediating the efficacy of modafinil in treating cocaine and METH dependence [44], [18]. However, we cannot rule out that modafinil neuroprotective effects against METH toxicity might be mediated by an indirect mechanism linked to thermoregulatory processes. Modafinil, by decreasing the hyperthermia induced by METH throughout the binge, may have decreased METH strength to induce striatal toxic effects. Further mechanistic studies are needed to elucidate which factors contribute to modafinil neuroprotection against METH toxicity, and thermoregulatory effects induced by modafinil certainly need to be explored. GABAergic neurotransmission, dopamine and their interactive effects might also be good candidates for further research. Indeed, it has been shown that modafinil causes a dose dependent decrease of GABA in rat cortex, hypothalamus, thalamus, substantia nigra, hippocampus and also in dorsal and ventral striatum (reviewed in [46]). These effects on extracellular GABA seem to be mediated by modafinil on other neurotransmitter systems, i.e. dopaminergic and serotonergic [46]. The striatum is a complex neuronal network composed by more than 90% of GABAergic cells that receive massive dopamine input and that are responsive to dopamine toxicity [2]. Effects on GABAergic neurotransmission mediated by modafinil (in different brain areas) might in turn contribute to its neuroprotective profile against METH toxicity.
Recent clinical data have supported the use of modafinil for treatment of chronic METH addiction and relapse prevention [47], [48]. Also preclinical studies [49] have found that modafinil could block METH-primed reinstatement to METH seeking in a model of relapse in both male and female rats. In a related study, Reichel and See [50] found that chronic/prophylactic treatment with modafinil during withdrawal also attenuated subsequent relapse to METH seeking in rats. Finally, our results suggest that, when used as a treatment for METH dependence, modafinil may also prevent METH toxic and inflammatory consequences in the human brain.Uncertainty around the future of trans-Atlantic data transfers leaves more than 4,000 companies on both sides of the ocean that had signed up to safe harbor in limbo | Getty Images Privacy shield dead on arrival The EU-US data transfer plan took several tough hits over the past week.
The latest attempt at an EU-U.S. deal to protect data transfers of everything from family photos to payroll information appears to be on the same path as the last collapsed effort.
The main stumbling blocks, again, are European privacy standards, U.S. exceptions that allow for broad surveillance, and concerns about the independence and power of an ombudsman who will review complaints if Europeans feel their data are mishandled by American authorities. Some of those are the very same issues that scuttled the earlier proposal, known as safe harbor.
The blows to the draft came in quick succession over the past week. On Tuesday, European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli said the shield would need "robust improvements" to withstand challenges in the courts. Then on Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution that the latest pact, the so-called privacy shield, violates the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. And sources briefed on the talks said the U.S. has made it clear it will not budge on issues of national security.
The European Commission pushed back a deadline it set for itself to finalize the agreement by end of May to sometime before “this summer," but isn't giving up on the agreement struck with Washington in February. Ruling out any renegotiation in the wake of pushback from EU national regulators and the Parliament, EU officials say they're going to implement the accord, knowing that court challenges are inevitable. Those challenges could take years to get through the court system.
"We keep thinking we're going to reach a date and from that date onwards we won't have any more issues. That won't happen," said David Hoffman, global privacy officer at Intel. "The idea that we're going to solve the international data transfer issue with privacy shield, to me, is an incorrect assumption."
Uncertainty around the future of trans-Atlantic data transfers leaves more than 4,000 companies on both sides of the ocean that had signed up to safe harbor in limbo. Champions of the data pact reacted with frustration to the latest political setbacks in Europe.
"Europe risks drifting into data isolation," said Christian Borggreen, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Computer & Communications Industry Association. "Its tools for data transfers to the world are increasingly challenged."
Julie Brill, a former commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, agreed. "There are some big decisions that European legislators will have to make concerning the way they stand on data versus the rest of the world."
There was more bad news for the industry last week. The Plan B measure many companies have been using for the past seven months is in jeopardy. The Irish data protection commissioner said that Facebook was illegally transferring data using “model clauses” — a fallback many companies used after the European Court of Justice struck down privacy shield's predecessor safe harbor.
Such standard contractual snippets are approved by the Commission, but the Irish data protection commissioner said they also violate the EU's rights charter because citizens can't seek reparation in court if their data is mishandled by U.S. authorities. Ireland will ask the Irish High Court to refer the case to the European Court of Justice.
"It is unreasonable to ask companies to reinvent their practices all the time. We need more legal certainty now, not less," said Paul Meller, spokesman for DigitalEurope, which represents the interests of tech giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft.
Despite the mounting obstacles, the European Commission and U.S. regulators contend the privacy shield will be approved and provide companies the legal cover they need.
The European Court of Justice struck down the safe harbor pact in October, siding with Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, against Facebook. Under safe harbor, companies self-certified that Europeans’ data had the same level of protection in the U.S. The revelations of Edward Snowden showed that was untrue.
There is little doubt the privacy shield will be equally challenged. "As long as far-reaching U.S. surveillance laws apply to [companies], any legal basis will be subject to invalidation or limitations under EU fundamental right," Schrems told POLITICO.
The European Parliament's resolution on the privacy shield acknowledges its improvements over the safe harbor pact, but pointed out that U.S. intelligence services can still snoop on EU citizens' data in ways that "does not meet the stricter criteria of necessity and proportionality as required under the Charter [of Fundamental Rights]” — one of the reasons safe harbor didn't survive the beating at the European court.
Making the changes the Commission requested is delaying the final text. The so-called Article 31 committee of national representatives across Europe is scheduled to meet June 6 and June 20 in hopes of getting the deal approved. The aim is to present it at an informal meeting of EU ministers July 7 at the start of the Slovak presidency of the EU Council.
That moving target is a problem for companies. "Either they go for the bitter pill to swallow and choose providers that keep their data in Europe... or they take the risk of relying on instruments that are being challenged," said Peter Van Dyck, privacy lawyer at the law firm Allen & Overy. "I think that, at this time, they'll have to take the risk."The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, 118-103, in Game 3 at the Moda Center on Saturday, taking a 3-0 lead in their Western Conference semifinals series.
Making a list can be a helpful process, but it's never a perfect solution in an of itself. Our brains crave order, and a list can help accumulate a group of necessary tasks, rank them in terms of priority, and arrange them in an efficient manner. Sticking with a list can provide regular positive feedback in the form of a check mark next to an accomplished item. Every computer program, smart phone and tablet comes equipped with untold methods for creating and tracking lists; you could probably make a list of the best list-making apps if you wanted to and, now that I think about it, someone surely has already done that.
Kindergarten teachers and adult psychologists alike see, and regularly preach, the benefits of list-making. A list can focus attention, reduce stress, help with time management, and ensure accountability. But lists aren't fool-proof. If you turn to a list and ask for help with item No. 6 on the list, that list will just look back at you, in a mocking monotone, and let you know that item No. 6 remains unfinished. If you realize that you won't have time to complete all of the items on your list before a deadline, your list will hit you with upturned palms and a shoulder shrug. You're Cliff Robinson, and the list is always Michael Jordan. If new tasks pop up while you are completing items on your list, the only solution the list offers is to make the list longer, prolonging the process and potentially requiring a reordering or reorganizing of what's left.
There often comes a moment, under the weight of a too-short ticking clock or a too-tall mountain of tasks, when we turn on our lists. Who among us hasn't incredulously repeated a GPS navigation's instructions back to the automated voice when the dang thing made you take a wrong turn? Turn left on Mulberry Street... you idiot. If I did that my car would be in a lake. Who among us hasn't, in the heat of a contentious phone call, ripped off the next five very important things that need to be done, as a way to end a debate and release some rage? I need to pick up the dry cleaning and mow the lawn and buy food for next week and perform surgery on the cat and call the cable guy and and and... so don't hassle me with whatever it is you think is important. Who among us hasn't crumbled up or deleted an impossibly long list in hopes of escaping its clutches? Bleep this. I'll figure it out tomorrow.
Whether it becomes an object of scorn, or a conversational weapon, or a haunting memory, a list can certainly have a dark side, something the kindergarten teachers and adult psychologists tend to gloss over. A list is better than chaos, after all, it's just not always perfect.
The Blazers have reached the point -- after three straight double-digit losses to the Spurs -- where they have turned on their lists. You absolutely cannot blame Portland for this, given how well San Antonio has played, and they have done so without a single player losing his composure. But they've turned nonetheless.
The talk is no longer about specific areas of needed improvement. The talk is no longer about positives to build upon. The talk is no longer about statistical benchmarks that could lead to victory. Instead, the Blazers' lists have become vehicles for the expression of respectful frustration, as a way to explain how thoroughly they are being taken apart by the defending Western Conference champions.
"They move the ball, they share the ball," Blazers guard Wesley Matthews said, beginning innocently enough before diving into his checklist. "[The ball] is not going to stick in anybody's hands. Houston might have been a little easier to defend because you knew where they were going to go. This time, Marco [Belinelli] comes into the game, they run floppy action for him. They run a hammer action for Patty [Mills]. They run angle screens for [Manu] Ginobili, they run angle screens for [Tony] Parker. They've got so many weapons."
Not included in that quote are the sighs and the exasperated voice inflections.
There are just too many items on this list, and too many items that the Blazers simply haven't been able to handle simultaneously. They haven't been able to cover Parker's pick-and-rolls while also paying full respect to San Antonio's shooters and covering the popping big men. They haven't been able to defend for a full shot clock while also clearing the defensive glass. They haven't been able to maintain the effort and intensity that's needed to stop the Spurs' attack for a full first half.
Damian Lillard, much like Matthews, found himself jumping head first into a list that dragged on longer than he probably anticipated.
"Being a championship-level team, a team that just played a [Mavericks] team that runs a lot of the same stuff we run, understanding what it takes to get it done, they've done a better job," Lillard said. "I think we've really competed, fought hard, we haven't given in. It's a handful to be able to guard guys off pindowns, guard the pick-and-roll. Push the ball back at them and then they push it back at us. Screen after screen. They execute really well, use the full shot clock a lot of times. It's tough. There's a lot we could do better, along with all of those things."
He stopped there, but the sense was that his list was even longer than that.
The "wave after wave" talk that was the central piece of Portland's Game 2 reaction was back again for Game 3, and for good reason. San Antonio won the first quarter by 10 points and then won the second quarter by 10 points. Through three games, the Spurs have won the first half by a cumulative 195-130 total. They have won all six first-half quarters individually, including five by double figures. They have scored at least 28 points per quarter in all six quarters, while never conceding more than 26 points.
On Saturday, San Antonio scored a 40-6 bench scoring advantage over a Portland team that was without Mo Williams, due to a groin injury. The Blazers received scoreless performances from Will Barton, Thomas Robinson and Earl Watson, the only reserves to log at least five minutes. Through three games, the Spurs now hold an astonishing 140-43 bench scoring disparity, more than tripling the output of Portland's reserves. Everyone knew it would be bad, but that is unspeakably bad.
"They never stop playing," LaMarcus Aldridge said, and you could hear the list formulating in his head, just like all the others. "If you guard their first option, they've got a second option. If you guard their second option, they've got a third option. That's one of the biggest things I've learned about this team. They're persistent. They're not going to change. They're going to run their stuff over and over and over. Once you mess up, they're going to make you pay. They ran their offense, if we tried to cheat something, they ran a backdoor. We give up an offensive rebound, they make a big three. They're consistent, they play championship basketball."
Lest you think Matthews and Lillard were venting over matters that were specific only to Portland's perimeter players, Robin Lopez was right there singing the same tune, just in a different note. The Blazers bigs were able to square the rebounding numbers in this game, and they actually outscored the Spurs on second-chance points. But they couldn't contain Tony Parker (29 points and six assists) in the paint, they couldn't defend Manu Ginobili's drives without fouling (14 points, including 10 free throws), they couldn't prevent the occasional back-breaking bucket from Tiago Splitter (nine points and seven rebounds), and they were only able to watch and hope that Tim Duncan (19 points on 8-for-18 shooting and seven rebounds) missed his mid-range jumpers.
"There's no question, they were watching that series against the Rockets," Lopez said, seguing without warning from a list of problems San Antonio poses to Portland's defense into a list of problems San Antonio poses to Portland's offense. "They saw how we had success against [Houston], and they changed it up. I've noticed defensively, I've only guarded Tim and Tiago on the block maybe once each. They aren't throwing the ball into the post. They are moving the ball around offensively. [They're] trying to disrupt us, packing it into the key, and running us off the three-point line."
By now, the sheer volume of the items placed on these various lists has gotten so large that it's probably time for a condensed master list of Spurs' strengths, advantages and headache-inducing attributes: offense, defense, specific play types, specific play styles, preparation, playoff experience, consistency, mental sharpness, strategic adjustments, clock management, and depth.
This is what the Spurs do: they whip you so thoroughly that you can agonize all night and still not come up with all the different ways that they beat you.
So much of what happened in Game 3 was covered in Games 1 and 2. Parker was sensational, the Spurs' depth advantage was critical, and Aldridge (21 points on 23 shots) and Lillard (21 points on 21 shots) were held well enough in check that Portland -- even when it narrowed the gap to seven points in the second half -- never truly threatened. The Blazers couldn't get the timely stops, they couldn't get momentum-swinging shots to fall, they didn't play crisply enough to generate premier looks, they didn't protect the ball well enough to keep. Here we go, again, making these damn lists.
Three games was sufficient time for Portland to process the strength of its opponent, to understand that the deck is badly stacked in this series, and to realize that San Antonio has absolutely no plans of easing up on the gas pedal.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich refused to even say that he was "happy" when told of his team's 25-for-25 night at the free throw line. Here he was -- presented with perfection and the most free throws without a miss in a playoff game since 1989 -- and he chose to hassle a reporter about the question, rather than admit satisfaction. In his mind, being "happy" with 25-for-25 in a blowout would be akin to surrendering a shot at 26-for-26 or 30-for-30 or 60-for-60 sometime in the future, when he might really need it.
To circumvent a temper tantrum, a kindergarten teacher might tell an overwhelmed student: "Don't worry about what Bobby is doing, just mind your own manners." To appease an over-worked patient, a psychologist might gently recommend: "Don't dwell on the external factors. Control what you can control."
Portland -- drowning in its unfulfilled lists and staring straight at the possibility of a four-game, season-ending sweep -- found itself at that point on Saturday night.
"Our sole focus is on [Game 4]," Matthews said. "Forget everything else, forget Game 1, forget Game 2, forget tonight. We've got to get Monday. We're a prideful bunch, and we've been through a lot together. We owe it to ourselves, to our fans to not go out like this."
Lillard added: "It's pride. We don't want to come out here and get swept.... We're not going to lay down. We don't have that in us."
No one got chippy with a media member, and no one ducked out early. No one mocked the GPS voice. No one made excuses, rejecting even the notion that fatigue is revealing itself in these blowouts. No one listed their burdens in the imaginary telephone fight.
By turning on their lists, though, the Blazers more or less disposed of their original goals. By opening up about their many shortcomings they indirectly admitted that they are in too deep here. Too many tasks, too many opposing weapons, too little time, too little ammunition.
Replacing the original list? A new, shortened list, one that is composed entirely of items that the Spurs cannot influence.
"We're going to show our character, show our pride and come out and play our asses off on Monday," Blazers coach Terry Stotts said.
Everything this team has done so far this season, including in this series, suggests they should be able to go 3-for-3 on that list, even if so many of their previous check marks will go unused.
Random Game Notes
The attendance was announced at 20,321 (a sellout).
The Moda Center crowd began the game so amped up that there were actually competing "Dee-fense" chants in various parts of the arena. Everyone was trying to help!
You guys have heard me rant about fans leaving games early for years, so you can imagine how I felt about people hitting the exits during a Western Conference semifinals game. If we're lucky, we get to see a team play as well as the Spurs at this stage of the season once every five years in Portland. What possible activity in the state is better than experiencing greatness in person, even if that greatness comes at the expense of your own team. OK, I've convinced no one. Rant over.
Somehow, showing an inspiring video of Damian Lillard's three-pointer against the Houston Rockets on the JumboTron had absolutely no impact on the first-half momentum. Who would have guessed?
If I had to boil down the entire series into one sequence, I might choose a pair of plays from the first quarter. After struggling to get open shots throughout the series, Damian Lillard unleashed a series of beautiful crossovers to lose Tony Parker, nailing a step back move and then draining the jumper. His patented facial reaction and bounce was in full effect. The bench was buzzing as the Blazers took a rare lead. Just 17 seconds later, Tim Duncan drained a mid-range, face-up jumper and showed no visible reaction as he ran back down the court. The Spurs would lead for the rest of the game. That is why they are always referred to as a "well-oiled machine." Ruthless.
As you surely noticed in the write-up above (and can see in Terry Stotts' comments below), the Blazers were quick to refer to the Spurs as "champs" or "championship-caliber."
Here's more from Wesley Matthews (team-high 22 points on 6-for-14 shooting, four rebounds, two steals) on that subject: " They're making us pay for every mistake that we have. They're capitalizing. That's what champs do. We've got to take care of the ball a little bit better."
They're making us pay for every mistake that we have. They're capitalizing. That's what champs do. We've got to take care of the ball a little bit better." Damian Lillard on the lessons from the first three games: "It's just growth. Understanding what it takes to get it done, not only one round, but three or four. We're just seeing them put on a clinic on how to execute, how to guard every option of our offense and to be consistent at it. I don't think we've been consistent enough. I think we're competing really hard. It comes down to being able to play smart also and I think they've done a better job of that."
More Lillard respect for the Spurs: "They're a well-oiled machine. Constantly moving, making good passes, defending really well, everything is just flowing for them. It's like they've seen this movie before. They've done it. A lot of it has to do with us and Dallas being so similar. I think that helps too."
Lillard on how the Spurs are defending him so well: "Everything I do, they're crowding the area. There's not really a lot of things to do, other than pull up for a jumper with a lot of guys there, get to the rim there's a lot of guys there, it's really tough. They're crowding space a lot more than they did during the regular season."
Lillard on the Blazers sticking to their defensive guns when it comes to the pick-and-rolls: "The way we've guarded their pick-and-rolls is the same way we've guarded it all season and [Tony Parker's] been knocking down mid-range jumpers. That's the lowest percentage shot in the league. We're contesting it. They're doing a great job of setting screens, we've been living with it all season, so why change now?"
LaMarcus Aldridge (21 points on 9-for-23 shooting, 12 rebounds) on the Spurs managing their minutes so carefully during the regular season and what that allows them to do in the playoffs: "They understand. [Gregg Popovich has] done a great job of understanding that their level of play from regular season to postseason has to be 10 times better. Every guy on that team that comes on the floor understands Pop. Pop wants this level of play, you know your job, there's no confusion as to what your job is. If you don't do it, you don't play. They're definitely more locked in, more into schemes, it's easier when you play one team seven times to guard guys better, but they're definitely more locked in during the postseason."
Tony Parker on Game 4: "It's always the hardest game. The close-out is the hardest. I think our team is ready. We understand that we went all the way to seven against the Mavericks. It will be nice if we can get it, but we know Portland is going to come out [strong], they're not just going to let down. They're going to play with a lot of motivation. They have nothing to lose. I'm sure they want to win a game in front of their home crowd. So we will have to match their energy and be ready. As a team, I think it would be great if we can get it and get some rest."
Gregg Popovich on San Antonio's big first-half leads: "The only thing worse than [being up 20 at the half] is probably being down a lot. It's hard to keep a lead in the NBA. [Our] third quarters have not been good. They've come after us."
Another really strong night from Nicolas Batum (20 points on 8-for-13 shooting, nine rebounds, seven assists, two steals) that goes for naught.
Before Game 3, John Schuhmann of NBA.com did a pretty thorough breakdown of Tiago Splitter's success defending Aldridge. The post is still totally relevant, given Aldridge's 9-for-23 shooting night.
of did a pretty thorough breakdown of Tiago Splitter's success defending Aldridge. The post is still totally relevant, given Aldridge's 9-for-23 shooting night. Celebrities in the crowd included Jimmy Goldstein, Russell Wilson and Carrie Brownstein.
Following the "snake in the locker room" fiasco before Game 2, the Blazers handed out some stuffed snakes to make light of the situation. Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com got a good picture of one here.
of got a good picture of one here. Before the game, the Blazers had live music out by the fountain in front of the Moda Center with a whole carnival-style set up with booths for fans to make signs, paint faces, take pictures, etc. Even two hours before the game, a good-sized crowd had gathered.
Longtime Blazers writer Wayne Thompson, who was covering the team before I was born and still makes it out to just about every single game, told me on Saturday night that he couldn't remember a team playing better defense or playing more intelligently than this Spurs team. San Antonio committed one turnover against 12 assists in the first half.
, who was covering the team before I was born and still makes it out to just about every single game, told me on Saturday night that he couldn't remember a team playing better defense or playing more intelligently than this Spurs team. San Antonio committed one turnover against 12 assists in the first half. The Blazers handed out red and white "We are Rip City" shirts. The shirts were laid out in such a way that they spelled out "We Are Rip City" in white with the red as the background. It looked really cool entering the arena, but it might have been better to just go with the solid red out once the game started.
So many good signs: "May the Enforcer be with you," "I May be Blind but I still Believe," Lillard is a beast," "Make it rain," "Let's BBQ the Spurs," "No Parker Zone," "This is our year, Blazers believer," "Rip City Messes With Texas," "Play Like it's 1977," "Golden Girls Love Blazers," "Rock it Robin," "Our Town, Or Team, Our Time," "Don't Mess with Mr. O," "T-Rob is a heart Throb," "All my ex's live in Texas," "I've got the hots for Terry Stotts," "I skipped prom for this," "Portland: Where 0.9 seconds happens," "Oregon is Proud Again," "You can't rattle us," "Stomp the Spurs," and "Dame could make Reebok look good."
I gotta say, as a native Oregonian, I love a good Reebok joke.
This guy had a great sign, and a pained, guttural moan when Patty Mills opened the fourth quarter with a three-pointer.
This guy is ready for Blazers/Spurs Game 3 pic.twitter.com/hvv1SSRFfD — Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) May 11, 2014
Dane Carbaugh As pointed out here, there was a large soccer-style tifo display in the 300 level.
After the rough second quarters, booking a good halftime show was a must. The Blazers delivered with an amazing group of back-flippers. One of the participants, who appeared to be close to 300 pounds, rattled off something like 10 straight back flips. Remarkable, physics-defying work. The last time my foot was above my head I accidentally pushed the front brake on my bicycle while riding downhill and I wound up on the concrete dazed, embarrassed and glad I didn't break any of my lungs or anything.
Rob Mahoney of SI.com suggests the Blazers throw out their standard approach and get crazy during Game 4.
of suggests the Blazers throw out their standard approach and get crazy during Game 4. Nothing doing with Chalupas/McMuffins. Anyone leaving early should be denied his or her free coupon.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Enjoy the flowers and remember to read the post, not just the comments.
Terry Stotts' Post-Game Comments
Opening comments
In some ways, this is very similar to Games 1 and 2. Obviously we get down big in the first half, play hard, compete in the second half but the hole is too big. It's disappointing to have a game like this. The crowd was great. We made it interesting in the second half but against San Antonio, if you put your guard down they take advantage of it. They're good because they have a lot of options, everybody is ready to play, everybody is a threat. When the opportunities are there, they take advantage of them.
First-half deficits
It is frustrating. You've got to play through the frustration. It's part of the game, part of the playoffs. We're playing a championship-caliber team, you've got to play through that. It's frustrating to get down 20 in the first half. You look at the scoreboard and it's a hole. I think in all three games, we get in the hole, we keep competing. As a coach, that's all you can ask.
Inexperience is a factor?
Playoff experience? That's an easy answer. I think they're a good team and it's experience -- you can chalk it up to experience, I don't know. Experience is valuable.
Watching tape, have they played better than this?
Well, Game 7 against Dallas. This is as well as I've seen them play all season. But Game 7 against Dallas, they came out of the gate and they haven't stopped since.
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well.
Interestingly, assistant GM A.J. Hinch — one of the executives tasked with decision-making for the GM-less Padres over the past five to six weeks — announced today that he is leaving the organization. Hinch, along with fellow AGM Fred Uhlman Jr. and senior vice president of baseball operations Omar Minaya, helped to oversee the team’s direction at the trade deadline. However, in a press release, Hinch issued the following statement:
“During my time in San Diego, I dedicated myself to do everything I could to help this team win, in the short-term and for the long-term. These last several weeks were no exception. I think the organization is ready for a transition and I’ve made a decision and told [executive chairman] Ron Fowler and [CEO] Mike Dee that now is the right time for me to move on. I’m proud to have always operated in the best interest of the organization and to have established long lasting relationships with people who work on and off the field in San Diego. I wish the Padres and the new GM well in the future and look forward to the next chapter of my baseball career.”
Hinch was not considered for the team’s GM vacancy, although that was due to the fact that he withdrew his name from consideration early in the process. According to the Padres’ press release, Hinch will pursue other opportunities within the game.
Hinch, Minaya and Uhlman Jr. were behind the trades of Huston Street, Chase Headley and Chris Denorfia this past month, which returned prospects Jose Rondon, Taylor Lindsey, R.J. Alvarez, Elliot Morris, Yangervis Solarte, Rafael De Paula, Abraham Almonte and Stephen Kohlscheen to the organization.Labour has a new leader - David Parker - but it's just for the next few weeks.
The party's divided caucus were able to agree on a few things this morning in a three-hour meeting. Parker's acting deputy will be Annette King.
* Beehive Live
* Opinion: Is Labour being blinded?
* Cunliffe formally resigns
* The ugly spat
And MPs have recommended to the party's council that a primary style run-off contest take place before Christmas. The council will set the date on Thursday.
Former deputy Parker said it was "always a privilege" to lead the party, even for a short time. He's already ruled out contesting the race, against David Cunliffe and Grant Robertson. He announced this morning that Cunliffe lost his confidence.
"I think we can get through this," he said. "We are a 98-year-old party, we ain't going to disappear."
Parker said it would take too long to wait for the completion of a review of the election campaign before selecting a new leader.
"We also asked if it's possible for the reviewers to provide an interim report."
There will be no gag on MPs: "You can't have a contest without people robustly exchanging views." But he said leadership contenders were warned to "be responsible."
King, a Labour MP since 1984 and a member since 1972, said the party has weathered worse and she is unfazed. "The 1980s were much worse than this. Whenever there is a loss by a party there is going to be a time of turbulence. I have to say I've been there and seen that before. There is turbulence, I know it is exciting for the media all this turbulence, but we will come out of it, and we will get through it and we will be a strong party...people move on and parties rebuild."
Parker and King both offer "stability and experience," she said.
Parker said Prime Minister John Key should be "worried by the Labour party." But not in Parliament in the short-term. "We are the same people we were before the election, sadly, because we haven't brought many new people into Parliament. I think the qualities that you saw in advance of the election will be displayed afterwards."
He says Labour MPs will be "the butt" of National party jokes. "We are pretty practised at it so we are getting better at dealing with the barbs."
"We'll not be shrinking violets," King added.
Cunliffe last night compared himself to former prime ministers Norman Kirk and Helen Clark. "That's for him to decide who he'd like to be compared to or modelled on," King said.You’ll find The Painter’s Palate in the Odyssey Building, which also doubles as the “Festival Showplace” on event days during the Epcot Arts Festival.
You might recognize it as the Craft Beer area during the fall Food and Wine Festival.
In addition to offering tables, air-conditioning, and a roof, the area also doubles as seminar space, so you have the opportunity to watch and listen while you snack if you so choose.
This is where you’ll find that Trio of Savory Croissant Doughnuts that have permeated the majority of Disney’s marketing for the Festival, in addition to the Flatbread, a few items that we’ve seen elsewhere, the beer flight, and one of the better drinks in the Pomegranate Mule.
The menu.
The $9.50 Trio:
Whipped Herb Cream Cheese with Sea Salt
Chicken Mousse with Fresh Herbs and Everything Bagel Seasoning
Spicy Tuna with Sriracha Mayonnaise and Sesame Seeds
As a snack credit, this is a slam dunk and should be the most expensive eligible item on property. I thought each of the doughnuts was a bit off-putting in its own way – the cream cheese version was overwhelmingly herb-y and there was so much of it that the top kept sliding off. I think the filling would have worked better on a cracker and I ended up spooning about half of the salty filling onto each half of the doughnut. The Chicken Mousse did not taste like chicken and the copious amount of salt in the “Everything Bagel Seasoning” overwhelmed everything else. The Spicy Tuna version seemed like it was trying to replicate the flavors from the Hawaii booth during Food/Wine as you get both the tuna/seaweed from the poke and the spicy mayo from the slider, but I didn’t think the thickness of the tuna ball really worked against the crispiness of the doughnut.
Overall, I wasn’t mad that I tried any of it, but the doughnuts are a lot more novel than they are a good mechanism to get these fillings into your mouth. Use a snack credit if you can.
The $5.25 Margherita Flatbread with Basil Pesto and Balsamic Drizzle was the most forgettable item we tried, though that may have been due to whoever was squirting the balsamic on top not realizing that the vinegar was not the main ingredient.
Otherwise, the cheese coverage was pretty lousy – there’s barely any on the far left or right pieces, and then little seasoning on the center pieces. On the plus side, the tomatoes were fresh, vibrant, and juicy and the sauce, which is only present on the piece second-from-the-left, was sweet and nuanced. At best, this is going to be an average cheese flatbread and your money may be best put to use elsewhere. On the other hand, there are very few vegetarian items available and there is some heft to this dish.
The $4 Pop’t Art: Abstract Designed Sugar Cookie with Chocolate Hazelnut Filling is very abstract…very abstract…with an incredibly sugary sugar cookie underneath incredibly sugary icing underneath more incredibly sugary icing. There is just a touch of hazelnut filling towards the center – I didn’t even realize it was there until getting through about half of it. It’s okay to break off and share among a few people, but you might feel a little jittery if you eat the whole thing yourself.
This is our second run-in with the $6.50 White Chocolate (Figment) Puzzle on an Artist Palette, which may be a fun little activity as you have an opportunity to “paint” the chocolate with a variety of colored icings, sprinkles, and blue unbranded chocolate candies (Mars where u at?). Just based on flavor, I’d put the money towards The Masterpiece Kitchen’s Triple Chocolate Mousse.
Nailed it.
The $7 Mary Blair White Chocolate Art Painting with Chocolate Easel is teeny tiny and the art is not actually painted on…it’s a sticker…but it had a rich chocolate flavor and is precious to look at. What else is there in life?
I liked the $9.50 Pomegranate Mule featuring the Ginger People Ginger Beer and Van Gogh Vodka enough that it’s what I’ve been making at home over the last few days. It’s:
1.25 ounces vodka
2.25 ounces ginger beer
2.25 ounces pomegranate juice
.25 ounce lime juice
Just quadruple that. But it’s mixed fresh at the Marketplace and has a nice fruity, almost Sangria-like flavor that almost completely masks the vodka.
The Neapolitan Nitro Beer Flight is a nice lineup. The 3 Daughters Queens Court Strawberry Blonde Nitro, brewed in Saint Petersburg, Florida, adds local Plant City strawberries at the end of the secondary fermentation process giving it a surprisingly light and fruity flavor. Usually I find these sorts of beers to teeter on medicinality (not a word), but this one is easily drinkable, light, and fruity. The nitro process is meant to create a much smoother, creamier liquid than your typical beer brewed with carbon dioxide and that difference is most notable in the Breckenridge Nitro Vanilla Porter. Here, you get a much thicker mouthfeel than you would with their regular Vanilla Porter, but still with the same roasted malts and chocolate backbone that is typical of the style. It’s definitely worth trying on tap either by itself or as part of the trio. Finally, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout is a world class beer – even thicker and more velvety than the Breckenridge entry with more of a bitter chocolate flavor. Very good.
Overall, most people looking to try a few things at the Arts Festival are going to gravitate towards the Doughnut Trio on the novelty front. And that’s fine – you may also enjoy the fillings more than I did. The Pomegranate Mule and Nitro Beer Flight are also worth checking out.Pandagon is daily opinion blog covering feminism, politics, and pop culture. Come for the politics, stay for the complete lack of patience for the B.S. and bad faith coming from conservative leaders and pundits.
Oh man, the misogynist internet never stops being a fascinating font of wrong-headedness. The latest memorable dive into painful stupidity comes to us from David Futrelle and the folks at the Blue Pill: The incredibly depressing ladies auxiliary of the Red Pill (a subreddit dedicated to spinning out misogynist bullshit under the pretense of “pick-up”) has a thread where they talk about how they see The Stepford Wives—both the movie and the book—as a morality play about why women should act like submissive sexbots of the sort the “wives” in the story actually are.
It starts with a woman quoting this passage from the book:
“You must have been very young when you were president of the club,” Joanna said. “Which means you’re intelligent and have a certain amount of drive. Are you happy now? Tell me the truth. Do you feel you’re living a full life?” Kit looked at her, and nodded. “Yes, I’m happy,” she said. “I feel I’m living a very full life. Herb’s work is important, and he couldn’t do it nearly as well if not for me. We’re a unit, and between us we’re raising a family, and doing optical research, and running a clean comfortable household, and doing community work.”
The woman who quotes this says, “Kit’s response to Joanna helps me put words on how I feel about relationship dynamics,” without noting that “Kit” is not in a “relationship” because Kit is not a human being. Kit is literally a robot. You don’t have a relationship with a robot. A relationship requires the presence of two autonomous people interacting, not a man ordering his preprogrammed housework/sex robot around. She cannot live a full life, because she is not alive. She cannot feel, as she has no feelings. Jesus.
The whole thread is like that, with women reading the story completely backwards from how it’s obviously meant to be read, by supporting the husbands of Stepford and sneering at the wives for making the husbands resort to such drastic measure. “The book has a cringe-worthy passage about Joanna’s fit refusal to do housework,” sneers one.
“The main character was a psycho,” writes another. “She not only did not work, but she also didn’t really take care of the house or kids, and pitched a fit when her H got angry when she would opt to hang out with her friend and get high.”
TL;DR: Sure, the husbands of Stepford literally kill their wives and replace them with robots, but this woman sometimes finds housework boring. That’s the real crime here.
But it’s hard to be too mad, because of comments like this: “Because obviously, a pretty housewife who never complains and who isn’t a feminist is too good to be true, so she must be a robot! ;)”
I can’t feel anything but pity for someone who is so desperate for male approval that she slobbers to a bunch of misogynists about how she’s a good girl who will take whatever crap you dish out without ever complaining. Jesus.
These women probably don’t know it, but the author of The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin, wrote another classic horror story about a man who believed that his wife was his property to dispose of however he liked: Rosemary’s Baby. So I think any strained attempt to suggest that he was somehow trying to satirize feminism is clearly mistaken. Guy in Rosemary’s Baby sells his wife to Satan to be raped and forcibly impregnated. Levin clearly takes a dim view of this particular attitude towards women.
But it’s worth taking a moment to point out that The Stepford Wives isn’t just satirizing men who are so weak-minded and egotistical that they crave perfectly compliant, submissive women. After all, if that’s all the men of Stepford wanted, they could just divorce their existing wives and create their robot wives from scratch. They could make their new “wives” even more perfect-looking, instead of modeling them on real women who, however pretty, have idiosyncratic features that would read as “flaws” to someone so conformist-minded.
No, what takes Levin’s story to the next level is that he grasped that these misogynists don’t just want a generic robot wife. They want to take a woman who exists in the real world, a woman with talents and flaws and a will of her own, and bring that woman to heel. Levin captured the intensely personal nature of misogyny and how sexist men inflict their beliefs with a specificity that is chilling. It’s not about “women”, generically. It’s about claiming a woman as “your” woman and proceeding to dominate her, in this case, entirely.
In other words, it’s not just a satire of sexism, but a poignant metaphor of domestic violence. Levin has a lot of flaws as a writer, but I appreciate how he understands the role that gendered violence plays in maintaining the social order. Rape and domestic violence are portrayed fantastically, because it’s horror fiction, but the motivations and implications of these acts are rooted firmly in how they work in the real world.
That point is critical to keep in mind when considering the recent temper tantrum by online misogynists over this stupid “sexbot” non-controversy. Two random professors from Europe have decided to form a group, whose actual size and importance is questionable to say the least, to fight against sex robots. “We propose that the development of sex robots will further reduce human empathy that can only be developed by an experience of mutual relationship,” they argue.
I’m skeptical. Their argument sounds like a variation of the widespread but poorly evidenced conservative belief that heterosexual men, if left to their own devices, naturally abhor women and therefore have to be coerced, often through sexual blackmail, into relationships. They mention prostitution a lot on the site, but I would point out that the existence of prostitution undermines this concern. Men can already purchase sexual gratification without the supposed troubles of a relationship. And yet, at the end of the day, most of them want a relationship anyway. Even the misogynists do, which I’ll return to.
The existence of this website—which I’m not entirely convinced is not a Poe—has all the MRA sorts in a tizzy, because they really want to believe, sans evidence, that feminists are craving their cock and therefore are trying to kill off any robotic competition for it. No, I’m not kidding. Milo Yiannopoulous trots out a half-witted, possibly drunkenly written explanation for this at Breitbart, titled “Sexbots: Why Women Should Panic”. Because we are supposedly going to be deprived MRAs offering their penis to you. Which actually induces a sense of relief, if there was any chance of it actually happening.
“When you introduce a low-cost alternative to women that comes without all the nagging, insecurity and expense, frankly men are going to leap in headfirst,” he argues. It’s the standard package misogynist argument.
Let me be extremely fucking clear with the MRAs that are flipping out over this: I wish that there were sex robots that you could masturbate into, especially if having one would make you leave living women alone forever. Sadly, I am extremely skeptical that will happen.
It simply isn’t true that the only use men have for women is sexual release and some housekeeping, and that they loathe us otherwise. For one thing, healthy, non-misogynist men really, truly do want actual relationships with actual human beings. Yes, that can be hard sometimes and people fight and aren’t always on the same page, but at the end of the day, most of us crave that kind of intimacy that you simply cannot simulate.
But, as Ira Levin realized in the 70s, even misogynist men—men who do want women to be compliant and submissive—still aren’t satisfied with the idea of having a woman, any woman, just show up in their house to serve them quietly. No, to the detriment of us all, they, like their non-misogynist counterparts, tend to get attached to specific women. After all, they are human beings. So, like normal human beings, they are attracted to specific people whose looks and personality just does it for them. They feel affection, even love. But what happens is that gets distorted through their misogynist lens. Instead of being happy to just be with the woman they love, they instead develop an obsession to own, control and possibly consume (not literally, to be clear) her. That’s why domestic violence happens in the first place. The abuser falls for a very specific woman, but as soon as he gets her, he starts trying to contain and control and eventually squash her so that can possess her more thoroughly. That’s why, when a woman leaves her abuser, he doesn’t just shrug and move on. He wants this specific woman. She is “his” woman. He will often stalk her and try to repossess her.
Honestly, I wish misogynist men would just simply hold generic hate for women and that they could be taken off the dating market completely with sex robots. But that’s not how this works. Misogynists are always going to end up fixating on specific women. Their ability to love has been perverted by their ideology, but the instinct to gravitate towards specific individuals still lingers within them.
That was made evident by this MRA, found by Futrelle of course, who fantasized about modeling the sexbots they long for after ex-girlfriends. But his reasoning was particularly interesting:
It’s not because you just like how your ex looks, which again, doesn’t make much sense anyway as you can almost always design an idealized sexbot that doesn’t have the idiosyncratic physical flaws actual people have. It’s not even about sex at all but knowing “she will be furious”. This is not the reasoning of a man who indifferently views women as sex dispensers that would work a lot better if they didn’t talk so much. That’s the thinking of a man who is hung up on a specific woman and is casting around desperately for ways to make her think about him as much as he thinks about her. And that’s why, sadly, I don’t think that even if they could make good sexbots, that those sexbots will be taking many men off the dating market. Even men who really shouldn’t be there in the first place.Barrett Brown, whose case became a cause célèbre after he was charged with crimes related to the Stratfor hack, has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors, according to court filings.
Prosecutors filed a motion this week in a Texas court agreeing to seal the plea agreement, which the court granted (.pdf).
Brown's attorney, Ahmed Ghappour, won't discuss the matter, due to a court-ordered gag, but another document filed by the government this week (.pdf) hints at the nature of the deal.
In the document, which supercedes two of Brown's previous three indictments, the government charges Brown with two crimes: allegedly assisting the person who hacked Stratfor after the fact, and obstructing the execution of a search warrant targeting Brown.
The first charge is a new one and relates to assistance Brown allegedly gave the person who hacked Stratfor "in order to hinder and prevent [his] apprehension, trial and punishment."
According to the government Brown worked to create confusion about the hacker's identity "in a manner that diverted attention away from the hacker," which included communicating with Stratfor after the hack in a way that authorities say drew attention away from the hacker. The hacker is not named, and it's not clear if it's convicted Stratfor intruder Jeremy Hammond, or an earlier hacker who's known to have penetrated the company first.
The obstruction charge relates to an attempt by Brown and his mother to hide a laptop from authorities during a search of her home in March 2012. Brown's mother was separately charged with obstruction and given six months probation.
The two charges greatly reduce the amount of time he could face at a sentencing hearing, which previously had been estimated at more than 50 years.
Brown's earlier indictments were poised to become a First Amendment test case. He was charged with 12 counts centered around a link he posted in a chat room that pointed to a file containing data stolen in 2011 from the intelligence firm Stratfor, or Strategic Forecasting. The data, stolen by Hammond, a member of the loosely affiliated Anonymous collective, included company emails as well as credit card numbers belonging to subscribers of Stratfor’s service.
Brown didn’t steal the data but simply copied a hyperlink from one public chatroom and reposted it to another.
Eleven of his charges accused him of aggravated identity theft for possessing and trafficking in stolen authentication features — which authorities identified as the three- and four-digit card verification value (CVV) printed on the back of the cards.
Last month prosecutors dropped these eleven charges against Brown, after his attorney filed a motion to dismiss on grounds that Brown's alleged conduct did not violate identity theft statutes as written.
The twelfth charge, for access device fraud, had remained in place. That one accused Brown of illegally possessing the stolen cards — presumably cards that were found on his computer after he downloaded the Stratfor cache himself.
But that charge has disappeared from the superceding document the government filed this week, which replaced the indictment. In its place is the new charge for accessory after the fact.
Brown is scheduled to be re-arraigned, on the charges on the superceding document, on April 29 in Texas.
Brown is also facing charges related to threats he allegedly made against an FBI agent. It's unclear if the plea agreement will cover that indictment as well. If it does, and the two cases are combined, Brown's maximum statutory sentence would likely be five years.
Brown has been in custody since he was arrested in 2012 while in the middle of an online chat.Khalid Mohammed / AP Relatives of Muiessar Anam, a victim of a suicide bombing, mourn before his funeral in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, April 24, 2009.
At least five bomb attacks in Iraq in the past 48 hours have left some 140 people dead, wounded dozens more and raised fears that the country may be returning to the sectarian violence from which it has only just emerged. On Thursday three bombs in central Baghdad and areas northeast of the capital killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 100. On Friday, a double suicide bombing at the most important Shi'ite shrine in Baghdad killed another 60 and injured 125 more. The bombs went off as people gathered for Friday prayers at the mosque and tomb where the prominent Shi'a saint Imam Mousa al-Kazim is buried. Last weekend, a pair of mortars or rockets slammed into the Green Zone, the first such attack since mid-January. The number of murders across Iraq that appear related to insurgent violence has also risen over the past few weeks.
Is Iraq unraveling again? Nervous Iraqis worry that the new spate of violence is a sign of what could happen when the U.S. begins pulling its troops out in June (the complete withdrawal is slated for the end of 2011). (See pictures of Iraq's travails through the last six years.)
Much of the fear is based on what a U.S. withdrawal means practically. One example: U.S. military officials are in the process of closing Camp Bucca, the main U.S. military prison in Iraq. The closure, in line with the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement, has American officials handing some suspected insurgents to Iraqi authorities but letting hundreds of others go with no proper investigation or trial to determine their guilt or innocence. U.S. military officials have long acknowledged that some detainees held at Camp Bucca are likely innocent. But allegations of insurgent ties against many others will go largely unanswered as the prison empties in the coming months. And as hundreds of prisoners go free, many Iraqis worry that former inmates who were indeed involved with the insurgency will return to their old ways.
That worries Sheik Mustafa Kamil Shbeb al-Jabouri, a tribal leader from a town south of Baghdad and a member of the Sunni Awakening movement. Dozens of former prisoners have resettled in his area. Each time one arrives home Jabouri sits down with him for a chat. "We give a little lecture to anyone from our area who's been released from Camp Bucca and come back," says Jabouri, whose tribal fighters have been working with American troops against insurgents since 2007. "We tell them that if they behave well, there will be no problems. If not, they will be right back in prison."
Like other Iraqis, Jabouri wonders who exactly is behind the latest spate of killings. Possibilities include agents of Iran as well as a reconstituting Ba'athist movement. The umbrella insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq remains the most vocal and visible among Iraq's militants, however. Many Iraqi security officials, insurgency experts in Baghdad and Awakening leaders worry that the militants, who melted away during the U.S surge, may have reformed into smaller, yet increasingly lethal, movements in their existing havens of Mosul and Diyala province. Indeed, there is some fear that al-Qaeda may be infiltrating the Awakening.
The increase in suspected insurgent attacks was already apparent before the waves of former prisoners began emerging from Camp Bucca. Several Awakening leaders and officers in the Iraqi security forces interviewed by TIME say they do not believe that the former Bucca inmates are contributing to the rise in violence these days.
But Jabouri remains watchful, for good reason. The remaining insurgent fighters in Iraq have a particular interest in assassinating Awakening members, many of whom once cooperated with the insurgency before joining forces with the Americans. Jabouri says he has survived 51 assassination attempts, and believes at least some of the former Bucca inmates now returning to his area have been involved. "Some of them I know helped make bombs meant to kill me," he says, knowing that there may be more attempts. The quest for vengeance is Iraq's curse.
See TIME's Pictures of the Week.
See the Cartoons of the Week.Americans' aversion to voting for Mormons has spiked since Mitt Romney's first presidential bid in 2007 — and the people most wary of Mormon candidates are not Evangelicals, but rather political liberals and non-religious voters, according to new research from a leading scholar of anti-Mormon attitudes.
The overall increase in anti-Mormon attitudes among liberals may be an unanticipated consequence of the "the continuing candidacy of Mitt Romney and Mormon activism against same-sex marriage," the study suggests. And its findings may be alarming to the Romney campaign because among the study's other findings is that voters' perceptions of Mormonism are closely tied to whether they'll vote for him.
According to American National Election Studies, nearly 35 percent of national respondents said in February they were "less likely" to vote for a Mormon. That's up nine points from 2007, when Pew found 26 percent of voters expressing concern about pulling the lever for a Latter-day Saint.
The uptick in anti-Mormon voter attitudes may come as a surprise to those who predicted Romney's candidacy would have a mainstreaming effect on his faith. But as University of Sydney scholar David Smith, the paper's author, writes, just as President Obama's successful candidacy didn't put an end to tense race relations in America, Romney's political assent hasn't cured the country of anti-Mormonism. In fact, as the data shows, Romney's rise may have lead to increased anxiety about his religion among his natural political opponents.
According to the paper, concern about Mormonism has remained relatively stable among Evangelicals, with 36 percent expressing aversion to an LDS candidate in 2007 and 33 percent doing so in 2012. But among non-religious voters, that number shot up 20 points in the past five years, from 21 percent in 2007 to 41 percent in February. There were also substantial increases in Mormon-averse voters among liberals — 28 percent in 2007 and 43 percent in 2012 — as well as moderates, who went from 22 percent in 2007 to 32 percent this year.
"Aversion to Mormons is still an important foce in American public opinion, and one that seriously affects Romney's chances even if he ultimately overcomes it," Smith writes in his paper, available online here.
Smith is the author of a detailed analysis on anti-Mormonism in the 2008 election, which suggested that the belief that Mormons aren't Christian was tightly linked to opposition to Romney among Christian conservatives.
The new study argues that the single most accurate predictor of how a voter views Romney is how he views Mormons — whether or not they are Christian, patriotic, hard-working, and friendly. Strikingly, the correlation between attitudes about Mormonism and support for Romney is even stronger than political ideology or party identification.
Perhaps most potentially distressing to Romney's campaign is the study's finding that conservatives who said they were less likely to vote for a Mormon were much more likely to say they were undecided or would not vote at all in a contest between Obama and Romney. Pundits have been predicting for months that anti-Mormon Republicans would stay home in November; this study reaffirms that idea.
The paper comes with an important caveat: the survey data was collected in late February and early March — in the heat of the Republican primaries. At that point, Romney was the clear frontrunner, but far from the presumed nominee. Since his opponents dropped out, Romney has earned plaudits from Republican operatives and activists for uniting the right behind him with his combative campaign style.
The two questions that remain are whether Romney can overcome Christian conservatives' deep-seated theological differences by taking the fight to Obama; and whether he can have to win over swing voters and moderates, whose perceptions of Mormonism have worsened over the past five years.Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. leaves his committee office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, saying that he was going to speak to the news media in his home state of Montana before discussing his retirement from the Senate. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Max Baucus' surprise announcement that he won't run for a seventh term could mean a free-for-all for a Senate seat that has not been open since 1978, with a popular Democratic ex-governor and a freshman Republican congressman already showing interest.
Republicans said the open Montana seat helps their chances to gain six seats in 2014 to win a Senate majority. But many Democrats relish a potential early return to politics for former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who left office in January because of term limits.
Baucus told The Associated Press he made the decision not to run Monday night, even after he raised $5 million for a re-election fight that now won't occur.
He and his wife talked daily about the decision over several months, he said. They're building a new home in Bozeman and Baucus said he is looking forward to spending more time outside of politics.
"You have to do what you think is right for yourself and your family," Baucus said. "Life goes on. There is a time and place for everything."
Supporters lauded Baucus for a political career that spanned five decades, for playing a key role in some of the nation's biggest political debates and being the standard-bearer for the Montana Democratic Party through some very lean times.
But others — including some liberal detractors — sensed opportunity, which will likely lead to a boisterous battle to fill the power vacuum.
It didn't take long for Schweitzer's name to surface as a favorite for Democrats, while many Republicans advanced U.S. Rep. Steve Daines as their favorite.
Other possible GOP candidates include Denny Rehberg, the former congressman coming off a bruising and unsuccessful bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, and former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, who served from 1993 to 2001 and later chaired the Republican National Committee.
Schweitzer, who previously said he's "not senile enough to be in the Senate," on Tuesday sounded as though he were open to the idea of replacing Baucus.
"Some people see a pickup on the side of the road with a flat tire and say that's a problem. I'm the guy that stops and says, 'I'll fix it.' I like challenges. I like positive outcomes," Schweitzer told the AP.
If Schweitzer runs, he would likely be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination and could even scare away Republican candidates, said Dave Parker, a political analyst at Montana State University.
"Schweitzer's in the catbird seat. It all begins and ends with him. He's the most popular politician in the state right now and if he runs he clears the field on both the Democratic side and the Republican side," said Parker.
Others said regardless of Schweitzer's decision, Republicans are bound to mount a determined campaign — and spend heavily — for the open seat.
"It's going to be another real race again. It's an open seat, so no matter what the race starts today," said Craig Wilson, a political analyst at the Montana State University, Billings.
University of Montana political analyst James Lopach predicted a Daines matchup against Schweitzer. He said Daines will find it hard to resist a Senate run — no matter the opponent.
"He's got to run statewide anyway. Why not run for a six-year position instead of a two-year position? The Senate is more prestigious and more powerful," Lopach said.
Daines' spokeswoman Alee Lockman said the new congressman is giving a run "serious and thoughtful consideration." His office released a statement saying the congressman appreciates Baucus' lifetime of service and that "it is critically important that this seat be filled by someone prepared to change the direction and culture of our nation."
Former U.S. Rep. Rick Hill, who lost to Steve Bullock in November's gubernatorial election, said he will be trying to convince Daines to run.
"He is a new leader with new ideas," Hill said.
Rehberg, who is now a co-chairman of the Washington-based public-strategy firm Mercury/Clark & Weinstock, did not return a call for comment Tuesday.
Two lesser-known Republicans already have announced their intentions to run — state Sen. Champ Edmunds of Missoula and former state Sen. and gubernatorial candidate Corey Stapleton.
On the Democratic side, EMILY's List President Stephanie Schriock and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau are possible contenders if Schweitzer decides not to run.[1] Ancient Greek youth practicing with a ball depicted in low relief on the belly of the vase. Now displayed at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens
A bottle ( Lekythos ) in gnathia style Eros, depicting a figure playing with a ball, third quarter of the 4th century BC
Episkyros (Greek: ἐπίσκυρος; also called ἐπίκοινος epikoinos, "commonball")[2][3] was an ancient Greek ball game. Highly teamwork oriented,[4] the game was played between two teams of usually 12 to 14 players each, with one ball and the rules of the game which allowed using hands. Although it was a ball game, it was violent, at least in Sparta.[5] The teams would try to throw the ball over the heads of the other team. There was a white line called the skuros[4] between the teams and another white line behind each team. Teams would change the ball often until one of the team was forced behind the line at their end. In Sparta a form of episkyros was played during an annual city festival that included five teams of 14 players.[6][7][8][9][10] It was played primarily by men but women also practiced it. The Greek game of episkyros (or a similar game called φαινίνδα - phaininda,[11] probably meaning "deceiving game", from the verb φενακίζω - phenakizo, "(I) cheat, lie"[12]) was later adopted by the Romans, who renamed and transformed it into harpastum,[13][14] the latinisation of the Greek ἁρπαστόν (harpaston), neuter of ἁρπαστός (harpastos), "carried away",[15] from the verb ἁρπάζω (harpazo), "(I) seize, snatch".[16]
A depiction in low relief on the belly of the vase displayed at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.[1] shows a Greek athlete balancing a ball on his thigh. This image is reproduced on the European Cup |
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